Songs of a Befuddled Muse contains thirteen surprising stories that draw you into the lives of people facing life-changing inflection points in their realities.
These stories reflect the quirky nooks and crannies of the author’s mind. They include:
- Times of Life and Death: Ian Harland, a field historian specializing in Tudor history goes back in time to witness events in real time. As his life in 2085 falls apart, he becomes increasingly entranced with the enchanting but doomed Lady Jane Grey.
- The Severed World: When Ian brings Lady Jane back to his own time, he finds that that the world had changed dramatically from the one he left and that his promise that she would be safe in 2085 was wrong in every conceivable way.
- Curved Space: The captain of an interstellar ship whose sleeping crew has awakened to find all their food rotting, jokingly calls back to a distant Earth requesting a pizza and is shocked when a the delivery shows up at his airlock.
- The Big Gumshoes: A clown PI must investigate the murder of his old friend and the mentor of both his careers. Along the way, he finds love, battles a corrupt side show and must solve the mystery of the dog left at his trailer door.
- Something That Will Not Let Go: A woman at the end of her rope returns to her childhood home and discovers the imaginary friend that helped her survive an abusive childhood is still there and willing to help her exact revenge.
The book contains twelve short stories and one novella. Some are funny, some are suspenseful, some are dark. All of them will leave you thinking.