The Front Porch

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

The Front Porch: the place, literal or figurative, where Americans watch the world go by.

Journalists help expand America’s front porch to a worldwide stage. They put on a pretty face and soften the blow of ugly news. They must hold the line between “need to know” and “too much information.”

But when the horrors of the world become just another day at the office, what cost will delivering the news exact on those at its heart?

[Rusch’s] short fiction is golden.

—John Mark Eberhart, The Kansas City Star

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Jan 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386471547

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award. Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award. She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson, romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter, and futuristic sf as Kris DeLake.  She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own. To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.

Book preview

The Front Porch

The Front Porch

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

WMG Publishing

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The Front Porch

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Also by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

The Front Porch

It starts subtly enough : Hey, nice lead, son; you gotta real flare for words. Try covering this. Write it up for me, will you? And you do, you get the front page, and a byline, and you find out that people read this stuff. They talk to you, they write you letters, they answer your words with theirs, sometimes in another article, always in print.

Or maybe it starts this way: maybe you have a handsome face, and someone puts you before a camera, and you see how wonderfully serious you look, how authoritative even at the ripe old age of 22, and you like your face better when you’re standing in the rippling wind of a hurricane, screaming into a microphone. Somehow your hair looks neat even though it’s blowing across your eyes; somehow your cheeks look rosy even though they’re windburned; somehow your lips look just kissed even though they’re chapped. You may not be articulate, but who is in the middle of a hurricane? Does it matter? You look good, you feel good, and when you get back, you hear: Hey, nice story, son. You got real flare. Try covering this. Make it interesting for me, will you?

After a while, the beginning stories—the moment we got hooked—all sound alike. We talk about beginnings because they’re easiest, the sweet memories, sun-kissed, dappled, all the clichés. We tell them for the same reason romance writers write about the engagement and not the marriage. The marriage is ugly, it’s work, for godsakes, and private, and hard to admit to. The engagement, the flirtation, is the only thing we can still smile about.

We sit in cold rooms in hotels all across the country and talk to each other, hands