"TREE HOUSE TALES is a fantasy collection of short fiction & non-fiction written between 1983 & 2014. THT was never a planned literary work nor was it a proto-collection awaiting critical mass. It—or rather they—were files saved in a common folder, once manila & now digital. Short stories, artwork, reminiscences, poetry & art kept company for as much as 30 years—all that t "TREE HOUSE TALES is a fantasy collection of short fiction & non-fiction written between 1983 & 2014. THT was never a planned literary work nor was it a proto-collection awaiting critical mass. It—or rather they—were files saved in a common folder, once manila & now digital. Short stories, artwork, reminiscences, poetry & art kept company for as much as 30 years—all that time left to their own devices. I theorize that works which originally had little in common—besides being file neighbors—began communicating in ways humans cannot begin to understand. I think they found they had commonalities they never guessed and not just that "We have the same author" thing. Fantasy, folk tradition & mythic stories about the Fae discovered they had more in common than some author. Horror & humor agreed to disagree. Maybe even work together. Deities and Demons, not so much. Short stories written by and about Aliens compared notes with Tales by and about the Fae, i.e. elves, faeries, brownies or maybe clever mice. Stoahs, dragons, cats and seabirds debated the existence of humans-- beyond their presence in fiction. Wishbones & bear-eating fish learned about “reality” (whatever that is) at the feet of both humorous & scary non-fiction. (feet?) Since none of their fellow literary prisoners were alike, the short works suspected that readers might vary in their tastes. There might be 100s or 1000s of people yearning to read about vengeful trout, queens of the Fae, unlikely aliens kept safe by Witness Protection, what hit men do on their day off, and why tech can be scary & hurricanes terrifying but sorcerers are much worse! Critical mass just sort of happened. Short stories, anecdotes, artwork, poems, extracts & “beats-mes” discovered that they felt homeless & unread because they WERE homeless and unread. Every anecdote & each tale from the Faerie Realm began dreaming about living where Ursa Major, Narenta & a Mother Goose pumpkin patch shared the same saunas. Or finding their true home on the bookshelf of a compulsive reader. Or lurking inside a Kindle waiting to scare their reader inside out! It was time to take their futures into their own … titles, join together & become a book! Not just any book but a COLLECTION!!! Together they vowed never to rest until they had been read not once but many times! Or until their author became a blithering idiot! Or both! Yes, both! “Unread is unknown! “Unknown is unread! “Say it with me!” ----------------------------- Tree House Tales is "A Collection of Short Stories, Non-Fiction Shorts, Art and Extracts From Five Narenta Tumults Novels". Twenty short stories are gathered under the sub-heading "Fantasy, Mostly" while thirteen short non-fiction pieces are under "Reality, Whatever That Is". (Most of the non-fiction is anecdotal.) Thumbnails of fifteen original artworks are scattered throughout the book. Short extracts from five fantasy novels (three still in manuscript) plus an essay titled "How I Write" together make up the last section of the collection.