Since I was a boy, I’ve loved twist endings – in stories, on television, at the movies, anywhere they can be found. Give me a surprise ending, I’m in.

I love them!The Twilight Zone was, of course, the pacesetter in this arena when I was a kid, with episodes like “Eye of the Beholder” and “The Masks” and “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?” Over the years, Star Trek blew our minds when the Borg took Picard and made him one of their own; later, Boomer shot Adama on the bridge of the Galactica; in Westworld, William was actually the Man in Black and Bernard was actually a host. And at the movies, there was the iconic ending of Planet of the Apes; Donald Sutherland at the end of the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers; and just about anything from M.

Night Shyamalan. No surprise that over the years, I’ve managed a few sting-in-the-tail tales myself – and with my latest new fiction collection, I’ve amassed enough to put them all into a single book.

Some of them are (I hope) shocking; a few are (I hope) amusing; I hope all of them are entertaining. STRJuly 2024.