Regina Clarke
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Storyteller in the ancient terrain of the Hudson River Valley. Loves writing, sparkly things, and lively conversation.
I earned a doctorate in English Literature and was sure I'd teach forever. Instead, I found myself writing for corporations, focusing on network management systems, virtual protocols, and military surveillance software. Who knew? All the while, though, writing fiction has been my passion. I moved 18 times and my books and stories always went with me, even if the furniture didn't. MARI, a fantasy novel, was published in May, 2014, though it was conceived in the heart ages before. MARI became a finalist entry in the ListenUp Audiobook competition in 2016. More books have been written and published since, and my short stories have appeared in Thrice Fiction, Kzine, Bewildering Stories, Mad Scientist Journal, NewMyths, Aurora Wolf, Alien Dimensions, and T. Gene Davis's Speculative Blog, among others. Two mystery stories have been featured in The Strange Recital, a podcast in Woodstock, NY. I was a finalist in the Hollywood SCRIPTOID Screenwriter's Feature Challenge for my script "Second Chances." When not writing, I follow my passions for reading mysteries, watching film noir and 1950s science fiction B-grade (sometimes C-grade) movies, absorbing biographies of writers like a sponge, and feeling reverence for all wildlife. After working on both coasts, in Texas, and overseas, I call the Hudson River Valley my home, and it pleases me no end to live not very far from where Rod Serling grew up and Jane Roberts encountered Seth. I have a brilliant, green, eclectus parrot named Harry who talks a great deal--his favorite expression is "What are you doing?" You are most welcome to visit my website: www.regina-clarke.com. My blog there focuses on self-worth and spiritual inspiration. |
STOPOVER and Other Stories for a Rainy Night
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Cozy and Noir Mystery Short Stories
Arnold Knight is sure he's spotted a crime in the neighborhood through binoculars, to the annoyance of his sister and the police; two men are stuck in an elevator and one decides to tell a scary story, props and all, to pass the time; a private detective is on a personal errand of revenge when he makes the mistake of stopping at an abandoned diner; a new warden uses a Tarot card to uncover a woman's escape from a foolproof cell . . . Just some of the mystery short stories--from detective and police procedural to the cozy amateur sleuth--that come to life in the pages of this collection.
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The Winning of Olwen
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Romance, Contemporary/New Adult
THREE STORIES OF LOVE An Arthurian romance set in a modern city...a lover who finds solace in the legend of an ancient ash tree...a woman much loved by her husband and children who hears voices and is afraid she is going mad. Legend claimed King Arthur himself helped the hero Culhwch meet the demands of the giant Ysbadadden so as to win the hand of his beloved Olwen. Was history repeating itself? Cully Logan wondered, when he met the ethereal Olwen in small city graveyard, only to see her slip away from him into the crowded streets. "Perhaps we were destined to meet, like our namesakes" she tells him, and laughs. Perhaps we were, Cully thinks, as he searches for her. They meet again in a place he never dreamed she could be. "Yggdrasil was a very ancient ash tree and according to legend it was the tree of the Universe. It is said that all ash trees are its children and a source of rebirth and healing." So George Symons learns from Juliana when he comes to her home to help her father puzzle out a bad investment in Belize. The house is a sprawling, somewhat isolated place near the sea. Juliana is enchanting, and he feels he has gone under her spell. She takes him to a massive ash tree and bids him sit under it with her, and tells him of its legend. She becomes his reason for living, and when she is taken from him, he is sure that he has nothing to live for. For Jen Wakefield each day is an unknown. Her husband promises her they are safe, and her love for him and her children, Maggie and Sam, sustains her. For a little while she has been free of the voices in her head. Now they have come again. What was in her control now, she wondered? The slow hours of keeping house and the planting of seeds and the walks on the dunes were what she loved. Would she lose it all?
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The Visitors
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Science Fiction Novella
Jen Taverson is watching the Perseid meteor shower on a hot August night when alien visitors arrive in the field before her in a strange, glowing formation. Everyone she tells about it thinks she has had a hallucination, except Rob McCord, a former international photojournalist whose parents disappeared while looking for evidence of UFOs. The Hudson River Valley where they live has been a locus for sightings since the 1960s, especially the town of Pine Bush. They realize soon enough that the aliens are real. The visitors have come seeking ancient markers in the earth for a portal that has been hidden for over a hundred million years and to prevent one of their own from reaching it.
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The Gatekeepers of Genthor
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YA Medieval Fantasy
In journeys into the virtual forest of Aginmare, thirteen-year-old Gwendolen receives training in the Esoteric, to master inner vision. At home in the summer fields of Genthor, her sixteen-year-old brother Will trains in the longbow with his uncle, a monk in the nearby monastery, and imagines himself as a spiritual warrior. Their lives seem cloistered and safe until a hidden enemy threatens their world and their mother, Roana Nash, who is First Master of the Esoteric. This intruder, through unknown means, has gained a power that threatens not only Genthor, but also the virtual worlds that Roana Nash guards. Gwendolen and Will must stop this to protect what they love. Frightened and uncertain as they often feel, extraordinary help comes to them when they find themselves immersed in a dark journey into the mind of a killer. First there is Gideon, Will’s gerfalcon, who teaches him the power of silence in war. Then there is Ga Fael Fawr, the gatekeeper of the virtual, enchanted world of Aginmare, who gives Gwendolen a sword that is more than a weapon. They must find the way soon, for it is clear the intruder has already crossed the barrier of the Esoteric, and broken the line between worlds.
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The Magic Hour
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Science Fiction/Fantasy
Just as his car climbs above a dense fog to reveal familiar terrain, homicide detective Nathan Byrne loses control of the wheel and crashes. Moments later he is taken into the alternate world of Elaimat. A woman named Naliv tells him the weapon he has with him from an earlier crime scene is a source object from her world, sent into Earth’s dimension by mistake. She takes the weapon and releases him, but his ordinary life changes for the worse. He begins to experience blackouts. More visits from Naliv convince him he is losing his mind. She insists the original loss of the source object has thrown Elaimat out of alignment and unless she and her people can find out why, their world will collapse. He must act as a bridge for them and enter yet another dimension, an ancient time that was the seeding ground for both Elaimat and Earth, where a shaman rules. Naliv and her people believe the shaman will know what to do to stop the otherwise irrevocable loss of their world. Sent by his captain into the backwater town of Canyon City in the Pacific Northwest to rest and get his act together, Nathan works as a backup for the local sheriff. He finds himself drawn to the slower pace of life there, to the work of solving a real-life murder, and to Sela, an artist whose mysterious paintings and outlook draw him in. Yet the blackouts do not stop as Naliv continues to insist he must help her. When events accelerate, Nathan has to choose which world he can call his own.
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SELA, Book 1: The Abyss
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Science Fiction/Fantasy
Shifting dimensions on an abandoned planet fill the mind of a woman who believes she once lived in its thrall across eons of time, as a star warrior called Sela. Yet did she go to the place, an outreach beyond the known universe? Or is the memory a remnant of some random game played by her brain as it senses its own imminent destruction? What of her memory of Ren, the sarcastic and devious ruler of a starship who insists she explore the planet and find a hidden portal? What of Goren, whose love for her is both twisted and futile? Most of all, what of Randall, her best friend, who tells her what paradise can be before he is taken from her? The planet carries voices and landscapes that change constantly. Scenes from the past and future emerge out of the air and play out on the flat sand, leading Sela and Goren ever closer to an abyss that lies waiting to open. Yet for Sela there is more, something sensed from childhood, an awareness that what is also waiting can transcend everything, forever. Is it all true? Did the woman know the planet in another life? Or is memory the greatest deceiver?
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Guardians of the Field
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Science Fiction/Fantasy
A doomsday trigger. A field of magic. A desperate call to those who can see beyond the veil of life and death. The field of the Esarad is the home of scryers, ageless ones who enter both future and past at will. Some seek out the field of magic as sanctuary and others have vowed to destroy it. Karin Anavid is determined to protect her young daughter, born a scryer, from those who would harm her. Maeta, a guardian of the Esarad, guides them both in a desperate race across a land gutted by war. They face a ruler obsessed with finding a hidden route through the ice mountains of Scrinac into the Esarad to annihilate it, and the betrayal of an old friend whose greed has consumed him into darkness. And there is Yorajil, a child of light, who follows her mother and guardian but is led by forces she barely understands to find her true home. Each one is drawn inexorably toward the ruined city of Alcedama and a doomsday trigger that lies at the heart of an ancient prophecy.
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MARI
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Fantasy
For five hundred years there has been peace in the land of Chaimara, but a new threat has arisen. The Keepers who were once protectors are gone. Because she possesses a gift from her mother that holds a great power, Mari is being hunted. When she bands with a group of rebels who live in the mountains of Dromgorden, the truth of the gift is revealed, and so is the path she must claim as her own. *AMAZON READER REVIEWS* 5.0 out of 5 Stars Epic is what comes to mind after reading this engaging tale of a young woman on a journey of self discovery. The intelligent and original plot will appeal to both adult and adolescent readers. There are complex twists and turns right up to the very last page. The intensely descriptive writing style dazzles and makes amazing mystical places come alive. If I could change just anything, it would be to elaborate a bit more on what the future holds for Mari and add a bit of romance. Maybe I will just have to wait for the sequel. *** An adventure for the mind, the imagination, and the spirit If you love a good story that makes you think and feel, one that makes you feel as if you are right there in the middle of the action every time you read it, one that has mystery and adventure, mysticism and magic, then Mari is the book for you. From the wisdom in Widsith's cave, to the frightening Joraghi warriors who can only be defeated by a Keeper, this book has something for everyone who wants to be carried away to a place where bravery counts, where an open mind is a must, and where coming of age really means coming into your power. Mari's journey unfolds not only when she's awake, but while she sleeps, and I really believe that's true for us all. So I will leave you with this quote from her story: "You are asleep and you are awake, both. And both create you---without one there is no life, and without the other there is no purpose." |
Winter's Edge
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Mystery/Suspense
Growing up in a state hospital like Creedmore could have broken Ena's spirit, but instead it gave her the will and drive to seek out the mother who had abandoned her there as a child. Her search leads her at last to a small town near the Shawangunk Mountains in upstate New York. Yet after moving to Harlow, she hesitates to make contact with her mother. Instead, hired to collate archaeological documents at the local college, Ena is drawn into unraveling the mystery of a dig that is being sabotaged, and helping the Welsh-born detective Galen Hill find a killer. When she discovers artifacts stored from a dig in Peru, handwritten archaeological journals lead her to a curious connection between the artifacts themselves and the intricacies of an old video game about a legendary journey through time. What she doesn’t know is that her research is a threat to someone who isn’t willing to let the truth be known. The closer she comes to a solution, the more real danger waits for her. To her surprise, her involvement with Galen grows stronger and deeper as together they seek to reveal their adversary. Gradually, in the midst of the chaos and darkness of what unfolds, Ena begins to find a way to let go of the past...
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Retrieval
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Science Fiction
The owner of a diner in the southwestern desert discovers she is in the middle of an alien scavenger hunt in this science fiction thriller. For Gillian Hall running her diner in the desert is the good life, until a man calling himself Gabriel arrives as her enigmatic and unpredictable new short-order cook. On the same day fiery explosions streak across the sky. Everyone in town assumes the ruckus is part of a military operation from the nearby base. What the explosions signal, however, is the beginning of changes that will alter her quiet world forever as seven starbreakers—alien ships—enter Earth’s atmosphere. One of them is destroyed, scattering valuable and dangerous technology into the desert in its wake. Five ships depart. The last starbreaker, the Menocai, stays to retrieve the lost debris before the military can find it, but its self-absorbed commander, Malakai, has an additional agenda. He wants Gillian as well. He has sent his brother Inac, in the guise of Gabriel, to retrieve her.
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Voices from the Old Earth
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Science Fiction/Fantasy
These are the stories of a city that touches the lives of five people across time. For Simma, it exists on a distant planet where souls seem to disappear and her job is to recover them. For Beornan, creating the songs in his heart is all he wants, but he is seen as a demon because of them and must escape his village to find sanctuary in the city. For Roger Connay, a physicist, the city is a place of wheelers and dealers in high places where power and money are gods, and for a time he is one of them, until he is given the chance to encounter other probabilities. For Kai-lun and Ming, imminent attack of marauders against their peaceful life sends them into the desert and mountains to find the city and a treasure it holds, at the urgent demands of the old one, Ming’s mother. For Enya, the narrator, the lost city was once her hope for a new world and is now a place that appears to her only in visions when she listens to ancient music in a nearby cave. Out of this she hears the voices of the others telling her their stories, and because of them, she seeks a reconciliation of old memories with who she is now.
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Force Field
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Science Fiction
What if migraines and symptoms of schizophrenia were not signs of illness but catalysts for an evolution of perception into other worlds—or even a way for other worlds, other dimensions, to perceive us? Dr. Kate Morgan’s work as senior consulting psychiatrist at Bellingham, an isolated sanatorium in the Mojave desert, has always been a creative and satisfying part of her life. She’s not afraid to give a ride to newcomer, Wyn Roberts, who she finds stranded by the side of the road. What she doesn’t know is that he was waiting for her, assigned to her by a world far beyond the reaches of her own. When severe migraines and hallucinations incapacitate Wyn, he becomes a patient at Bellingham. Kate gradually learns that he is also the object of experiments by the institute’s director, whose actions not only become suspect, but stretch the boundaries of ethics and sanity. As she searches for ways to defend and protect Wyn and the other patients, Kate’s perception of reality, grounded in the scientific method, becomes altered in ways she could never have imagined. She must come to terms with what she discovers about Wyn Roberts and her own capacity for love and healing before it is too late to save them both.
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Gene Pool
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Science Fiction
Night comes to Whitton Falls, and with it a death, and then another, and then a third. For Cate Somers, paleontologist and researcher, the university town she thought of as a safe harbor has an insidious element at work. Whoever--or whatever--is attacking local residents has an agenda that’s accelerating. Cate is called on to help in the investigation, along with the sheriff's nephew, Wyatt, a homicide detective from New York. But everything she assumes about what is going on is altered when her biologist friend Emma analyzes metal objects found at the killing sites. Each one contains the attributes of anaerobic bacteria, the sort that NASA and ExoMars would expect to show up on other planets. The series of murders has left a trail of evidence that has its origins in a peculiar chemistry. The rules of what is ordinary no longer seem to apply. Cate gradually becomes aware that there is a hidden presence, alien and cold and impossible to stop.
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Banshee
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Thriller
An inn for travelers is visited by the fairy power of the Bean Sidhe, the banshee who warns of approaching doom. One of the travelers who stops to rest during a winter storm is Anann. She seeks out a darker spirit, the Lianhan Sidhe who lives in the forest of Scáth Coille, to save her lover. Her journey comes at a cost, more than she ever imagined.
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The Daguerreotype
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Science Fiction Short Story
A disillusioned Professor Inman comes across an 1847 daguerreotype of a famous hotel in Saratoga Springs, NY. He discovers the fragile image is an unexpected portal into the past, into a time he finds increasingly mesmerizing and seductive.
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My Parrot Harry
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Children (Ages 4-6)
A true story about a wonderful parrot named Harry, who has faith that he is an extraordinary and special bird--and he IS!
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