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No sooner have we rattled your sensibilities and shaken your grip on whatever you believed about reality in your "solid, I-can-touch-it" world surrounding you, we come back with another one to upset your now rickety reality even more. In Volume 1 we sliced and diced most of your preconceived notions about time. In Volume 2 we have returned to make a fine mulch of what remains for you to sprinkle in your rose garden. "Why are they doing this to me?" you ask of your local time traveler. "Because it was, is, and will be fun," is the response, accompanied with a twitching little twisted smile. Someday, in the future, you will come to understand -- maybe. Right now, whatever that means, it is enough to enjoy the confusion we have wrought.

So, sit back with your copy of Twisted Tails II: Out of Time - Volume 2, check your clock/calendar and take a fun ride through the temporal halls. We know you'll have a good time. Just remember, all of these stories are designed around the idea that you never know where they're going to go or where, when, or how you'll wind up. From this point forward or backward, you're on your own and we accept no responsibility for any couch time you have to spend with your friendly shrink to bring you back to whatever you think reality is supposed to be.

The authors of Twisted Tails II: Time on our Hands -- Volume 1 and Twisted Tails II: Out of Time -- Volume 2....

Eugen M. Bacon
Darrell Bain
Jeremy Davies
Ann Dulhanty
Anderson Gentry
E. Don Harpe
Christopher Hoare
Jamie A. Hughes
J. Richard Jacobs
Joyce K. Jensen
Biff Mitchell
K. L. Nappier
Marilyn Peake
Lea Schizas
Terence West
Margaret Whitley

The stories contained in Volume 2 are:

MARTIAN COLOURS by Jeremy Davies

IMMUTABLE WITH LIMITS by J. Richard Jacobs

THE THING MOST PRECIOUS by K. L. Nappier

MOONBEAMS UPON STONEHENGE by Marilyn Peake

TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE by Margaret Whitley

SOUL MATES by Eugen M. Bacon

BOY FROM BRUNET'S CAJUN CAFÉ by E. Don Harpe and Eugen M. Bacon

DEVIL'S TRIANGLE by Marilyn Peake

TEN MINUTES by Anderson Gentry

TICKET by Christopher Hoare

Here we go with a review for TWISTED TAILS II: Out of Time - Volume Two

"The Twisted Tails gang is back with a whole bunch of quirky new stories about time travel, which promise to scramble what little sanity you might have left after reading earlier volumes in this popular anthology.

You’ll embark on a trip like no other as you delve into these ten tales from today’s brightest and best science fiction and fantasy authors. Below is a sample of what you’ll get in Twisted Tails II: Out of Time—Volume Two.

'The Thing Most Precious' by K.L. Nappier: Dean wants in on Katie’s little deal with her sugar daddy. His lust for it—as well as his threats of blackmail—gets him included, but some deals are unpredictable.

'Two Birds with One Stone' by Margaret Whitley: Dub, a suicidal man, returns to the past to save his mother from a drunken wife-beater, but it just might mean erasing himself out of existence.

'Devil’s Triangle' by Marilyn Peake: Sail outside the Bermuda Triangle—a.k.a. Devil’s Triangle, The Hoodoo Sea, The Limbo of the Lost, and The Twilight Zone—and hunt for lost ships with a gang of researchers. Who can resist the mysteries of the sea? I certainly can’t!

'Ten Minutes' by Anderson Gentry: You can’t manipulate the space-time continuum all that much with four double-A batteries—or can you? You’ll read about the hilarious results when a genius starts messing around with a time-traveling machine the size of a TV remote control.

I had a blast reading the creative stories in Twisted Tails II: Out of Time—Volume Two. Each author brings a unique blend of imagination to each of the time travel stories included in this collection. If time travel is your first love in the world of fiction, snag this volume, along with Twisted Tails, also compiled and edited by J. Richard Jacobs. Each short story is great for a snack in between meals of science fiction and fantasy novels."

Margaret Marr - Nights and Weekends

Excerpt from a review by Beverly J. Rowe

"These two exciting books explore the concept of time, according to each writer's imagination. Does time exist as a separate dimension with a unique place and definite limits in space? How, exactly does that work?

Each of these stories has a surprise twist ending, designed to catch you off guard, and they really do just that. But be careful...the publisher states that you are on your own...no promise that once you are into a story, you will ever come out. Some stories will give you a laugh, and others will really creep you out and may send you on a time-warp tail-spin of your own."

For the entire review go to the link for MyShelf below:

<http://www.myshelf.com/scifi_fantasy/07/twistedtailsII.htm>

   Here is an excerpt from TWISTED TAILS II: Out of Time - Volume Two

                                          IMMUTABLE WITH LIMITS

                                              by J. Richard Jacobs

5 May 1861 - Liverpool

The sun, reluctant to give up its feeble reign, hangs stubbornly for a time in the west. Shadows—long and foreboding—blend silently with the coming night, reaching skeletal fingers out from the waterfront toward the city as the fiery orb, now barely visible, slides behind an uncertain, hazy peach colored horizon. A man, cloaked in black, head covered with a broad-brimmed hat, hobbles along on crooked legs, poking at lamps atop posts with a long pole, a timid flame at its end. Once a slave to the Jenny Lind, he is now a slave to the Liverpool lamps. He doesn’t mind, though.

She left me here with me mangled legs—whilst she went off to die on the shoals, she did. Wahll, good riddance, I say....

He chuckles quietly to himself about the irony that landed him in his current predicament and scurries along in a sort of sideways shuffle that reminds of a small crab racing the tide as he makes his effort to stay ahead of the incoming mist. The fog, creeping in on cat’s paws, stalks him, swallows him, dims the light from the lamps thus lit—covers all in wet beads trickling together. He never wins his race, but remains undaunted. Tomorrow he will do it again, just as he has for ten years now. He always loses his little race.

The hour of midnight approaches. The streets are hushed still under a canopy illuminated to a dull gray by a pitifully thin crescent of the moon. Otherwise, they are utterly dark save for the feeble glow of the lamps’ stuttering, sputtering flames, and a few candles dancing faintly in kitchen windows of some Irish immigrants’ homes along the far south and north ends—customs that cling to people like moss on rocks, brought to their new surroundings a score or more years ago. The cobbles glisten under a slippery wet scum. A mix of collecting mist, grime, salt and soot. The rounded and worn stones reflect what little light the lamps afford, tiny yellowed diamonds twinkling weakly.

A coach passes by the darkened storefronts, pubs and shops lining the eastern side of the street, a ghostly black and gray image smudged, lacking detail, a tiny light on each side flickering wispy haloes. Hide-sacked hooves and iron-banded wooden wheels thump and clatter against the broad street laid in a strip along the Mersey waterfront. The sound dies quickly in the dense mist as a whisper in dense forest.

The coach slows—stops beneath one of the lamps where a young woman stands as if waiting. She leans toward the coach and speaks quietly to the lone occupant for some time. The coachman, covered in a glistening oilskin cape, its hood drawn tightly about his head and dripping the night from its edges, does not look down. The woman combs back strings of wet red hair with her delicate fingers, fingers capped with dirty nails. The door opens with a slight creak. She giggles, songlike, and steps in.

A quick snap of the reins and a click of the driver’s tongue. The horse responds and the coach disappears in a swirl of gray mist and dim light. Moments later a muffled, terror-strained shriek ruptures the silence. It does not last long and is muted in the mist. No one hears.

Moments later, a flash of blue-white light in an alleyway between warehouses lining the Albert dock pushes a dome of brightness and something else, something solid, upward into the quiet of the shrouded night. For an instant, a dot of yellow-orange light, growing more red as it retreats, can be seen hurtling skyward by anyone who looks, but there is no one to look. Then, it too, is gone. Only the lazy clanging of a buoy’s bell, the plaintive, deep groans in the rigging of mighty merchant ships at dock as they roll slowly in their berths, and the fog smeared glare from the Black Rock Light down the Mersey interrupt the silence and gloom.