Tales of Winter

Several short stories to carry you through the cold months of the season!

Howdy everyone!

Christmas is upon us at last, marking the end of yet another year. I hope your year has gone well, it’s been a wild one for me! My biggest update is that I have recently become a father, which is both very exciting and very time consuming. The Shrub (baby Bush) is very cute, but I have definitely learned to cherish every bit of sleep or free time I can get. Thankfully, he and my wife are both doing quite well.

But fear not! The desire to tell stories still burns hot within me, and I hope to keep writing for all of y’all, albeit at a much slower, sleep deprived pace. On that note, I do have a few wintry short stories to share with you that I hope you can enjoy on a cold evening by the fire!

First off, I’m very excited to announce that an audio version of Janus, one of my flash fiction stories, will be featured in the Finding Fantasy Reads podcast on December 31. This podcast features stories from a variety of self published fantasy authors, and I’m so honored to be included in one of their episodes! Janus is a fun little story about the Roman god attacking a castle on New Year’s Eve, and it’s one of my favorite flash fictions I’ve written. It’ll be included with a couple other stories, and I’m really looking forward to hearing the episode around the New Year. I hope you’ll give it a listen and let me know what you think!

Second, I wanted to share another wintry flash fiction story with y’all, Winter’s Master. It’s a very short story with a Lovecraftian vibe, and I had fun playing around with a few different tenses and POVs before settling on the final version. Since it’s such a quick read, I just uploaded it here to my Substack, so feel free to give it a read whenever you please.

And finally, I wanted to share a couple of my previously published winter stories with y’all again, just in case some of my newer readers haven’t had the opportunity to try them out. The Canyon of S’el Hathoreth is a Lovecraftian style short story that takes place in the wilderness of 19th century Wyoming. Crafting this story made my history-loving heart happy, and it’s always a blast writing about otherworldly powers and creatures. Looking back, I still think this is one of my favorite short stories I’ve ever written! I was also super pleased with the cover art my wife made for it.

In addition, I wrote The Wreath a couple years ago for Reddit’s NoSleep horror community, inspired by my wife’s Christmas wreath that constantly scratched against our front door. Sad to say, my hints were ignored, and the Christmas wreath is hanging on our door yet again this year. Ah well, can’t win them all I suppose.

Looking back, it’s kind of funny how most of my winter themed stories involve some sort of horror or monsters. Maybe it’s because snowstorms seem to cut us off from the outside world. Or maybe I just happened to be thinking of snow whenever I came up with these tales. Either way, I hope they’re as fun for y’all to read as they were for me to write!

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Merry Christmas, enjoy your holidays, and as always, thanks for reading!

Ryan

Other Works by Ryan Bush

Fantasy Short Stories

A Time Between Spaces - Free!
The Painter (The Kineru Chronicles vol. 1) - Free!
The Goddess of Storms (The Kineru Chronicles vol. 2) - 99¢
Wayfaring Stranger - 99¢
Storing up Treasures - Havok Membership
Janus - Havok Membership
The Beheading Game - Havok Membership
Hunting Season - Havok Membership

Horror Short Stories

People Keep Dying in My Backyard - Free!
The Wreath - Free!
The Canyon of Se’l Hathoreth - 99¢
Winter’s Master - Free!

Other Short Stories

The Puppy Wrangler - Free!
The Green Goddess - Havok Membership
The Iggle - Havok Membership

Short Story Anthology

Vice and Virtue: Havok Season 8 - $3.99 on Kindle!