Author:
Alex McGilvery has been reading since before he can remember, and writing almost that long. He has published 18 books and is author and editor at his imprint Celticfrog Publishing. He lives in Kamloops with his dog and the stories clawing their way out of his head.

The Heronmaster includes the title story, which is the tale of Leaper who grows from a tadpole to become a legend. Murder in the Woods is a noir style mystery with animals rather than people. Nick, a young wolf, is forced to seek out the answer to Bob the moose's disappearance. Sammy is a the story of a young man on a cruise with his new car, the elderly man he takes with him and a red balloon. Madison's Meteor tells the story of Frank Madison, a farmer outside of the town of Madison which has fallen on hard times with the closing of the plant - the main employer for the town. Frank finds a meteor one night and changes start in both him and the town.

The Heronmaster

The creature let the rock go out into the pond to float on the surface. It leaned back against a tree and let out a groan. Then it did nothing. 


It did nothing for the rest of the day except pull things out of the log it carried and eat them. Why didn't it eat the flies buzzing in clouds around its head? Occasionally it threw away a dead frog and attached a live one in its place before throwing the thing back out into the pond.


The sun touched the trees when the red and white rock disappeared. The creature shouted and pushed itself onto its feet and began pulling on the branch, which now bent like a reed in a windstorm. At the other end of the line was the deadly swirl of the Leviathan. It had eaten the frog and was now fastened to the branch the creature held by the thinnest of vines. 


In this battle of giants, Leaper hoped the strange creature would win and go back to wherever it came from.


Chapter 33: The Heronmaster, Part 4