“A fox who reaches the age of fifty gains the ability to transform into a human woman. A fox who reaches the age of one hundred can transform into either a beautiful young girl or a handsome young man at will and can sense the world around them to a distance of over four hundred leagues. A fox who reaches the age of one thousand years, however, becomes a Heavenly Fox, an Immortal of great power, able to commune with the gods themselves.” - Finalist for the Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature, 2012 The fox vixen Springshadow has reached the age of nine-hundred and ninety-nine by taking the form of a beautiful girl and stealing the chi, the life force, of mortal men. She prides herself on having done so without permanently harming any of them, but when, just before her one-thousandth birthday, her mortal lover, Zou Xiaofan, inadvertently forces her to choose between his life or her immortality, she chooses immortality without a moment’s hesitation. As a fox, and thus completely devoid of a conscience, for Springshadow this was no choice at all. Or so she thought. Springshadow soon discovers what a trap immortality can be. Even more serious—and very annoying—is her discovery that her new state of being includes a new emotion, one that feels very much like regret. She knows from there it is only one small step to developing an actual conscience. Intolerable! Yet what can she do to prevent this? When the Goddess of Mercy, Guan Shi Yin, brings her a message from the shade of her former lover, Springshadow believes she’s found her answer. Accompanied by a reprobate Daoist immortal named Wildeye, the Heavenly Fox undertakes a quest through the courts of Heaven and the terrors of Hell to redeem the soul of Zou Xiaofan. Maybe then she can get on with the rest of eternity without regret. Or that pesky conscience thing.

Yamada no Goji is a minor nobleman of ancient Japan who has lost everything—except a single purpose: keep a promise to the woman he loved. In order to fulfill his vow, all he has to do is fight a horde of demons and monsters, bargain with a few ghosts, outwit the sinister schemers of the emperor's court, find a way to defeat an assassin who cannot be seen, heard, or touched—and change the course of history. Fortunately, Yamada specializes in achieving the seemingly impossible, so he is sure in some way to succeed . . . if he doesn't drink himself into oblivion first.

Issue #183 of <i>Beneath Ceaseless Skies</i> online magazine, our Seventh Anniversary Double-Issue, featuring stories by Richard Parks, Rose Lemberg, Naim Kabir, and I.L. Heisler.

Legal Assistant Jin Lee Hannigan thought she had problems enough as a single woman in rundown Medias, Mississippi. That was before Jin meets a homeless man on Pepper Street who just happens to be the King of Hell, and learns that she's really the mortal incarnation of Guan Shi Yin, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, charged with the rescue of unfortunates trapped in the various -- and nasty -- hells scattered around the cosmos. That doesn't even turn out to be her biggest problem. It seems that the Goddess of Mercy is on the run and in hiding, which is why she incarnated as a human in the first place. Hiding from what? Love. But why would anyone fear love? Jin already knows that love is powerful, but what she has to learn, and fast, is that the wrong kind of love is also potentially the most destructive force in all the universe and--even more important--how to stop it.

Issue #150 of Beneath Ceaseless Skies online magazine, a double-issue in celebration of our 150th issue, featuring stories by Richard Parks, Oliver Buckram, Adam Callaway, and Stephen Case.

Issue #226 of Beneath Ceaseless Skies online magazine, featuring stories by Richard Parks and Ryan Row.

Joslyn is barely scratching out a life on the streets of Ly Ossia, constantly dodging Imperial soldiers and scrambling to steal enough to eat. When she’s recruited into the Temple of Somna the Creator as an oracular Dreamer, Joslyn thinks she’s scored the greatest treasure of all—comfort and safety for the rest of her life. That pleasant illusion is shattered when a strange man comes to the temple requesting an oracle—a man whose nightsoul, that part of him that is capable of entering dream, is missing. Once Joslyn discovers this terrible fact suddenly everyone in the Temple, including the kindly Dream Master who sought her out in the first place, wants her dead. Rescued by the man who now calls himself Ghost, they go on the run from the city in a desperate search to for the missing piece of Ghost’s soul, the part that knows what the Temple is planning and how to stop it—before the goddess Somna’s dream that is the world comes to an abrupt and permanent end. With a huge bounty on their heads, the normal run of hired killers is the least of their worries, because the Temple also has access to a very special sort of assassin—one who can strike his victims in their sleep, and do it no matter where they are or how far they've run.

In an ancient Japan where the incursions of gods, ghosts, and demons into the living world is an everyday event, an impoverished nobleman named Yamada no Goji makes his living as a demon hunter for hire. With the occasional assistance of the reprobate exorcist Kenji, whatever the difficulty—ogres, demons, fox-spirits—for a price Yamada will do what needs to be done, even and especially if the solution to the problem isn’t as simple as the edge of a sword. Yet, no matter how many monsters he has to face, or how powerful and terrible they may be, the demons Yamada fears the most are his own.