PUBLISHED AT THE X-PHILES

 CAPISTRANO
One of my favorite one-season wonders was " The Night Stalker ," a Friday night frightfest with more than it's share of creepy laughs. Darren McGavin played the lead, Carl Kolchak, a seedy, middle-aged wire service reporter given to tacky suits and straw hats. Every week, Kolchak would stumble onto some manifestation of the unknown, from unfrozen cavemen or a headless homicidal biker to Satan stealing souls in the guise of a politician. Really cheesy, really great TV, plus terrific cameos by old-time comedians and movie stars. In my tale, Kolchak is drafted by Mulder to investigate a mysterious migratory creature linked to a series of health food store killings, a bestselling toy phenomenom.

WEREWOLVES OF BURBANK
James Scott Rockford (of The Rockford Files) was the king of cool for us '70s kids -- the greatest private eye ever to be beaten senseless on behalf of an ungrateful client. Whether he was looking for a missing heiress or dealing with corrupt smalltown politicians or pulling off a million-dollar scam on some corporate scumbag, Rockford always knew what to say and how to say it in a way that would get him punched in the nose. My story finds Rockford entangled with a pop music superstar, greedy showbiz agents, tough guy cops, a demon monster, and a pair of federal agents named Mulder and Scully.

MURDER WITH A FUTURE
The greatest TV detective of all time? Get outta here! Lt. Columbo , LAPD. The first time I saw this show, back in junior high, I thought this was the heighth of the television art -- the clever cat-and-mouse games, the deliciously elitist villains sowing their own murderous destructions at the hands of clumsy proletariat Columbo. Well, I had a thought, years ago: What if they got Shirley MacLaine, made her a Hollywood psychic who kills somebody for something they're going to do in the future, and set Columbo on her trail. Well, they never did it, the maladroits, so I wrote this tale of detection teaming the good lieutenant with Agents Mulder and Scully.

TOMODACHI
The first of my non-crossover stories features Robert Patrick Modell, a maladjusted maniac known as The Pusher, who is into Samurai lore and who can psychically talk anyone into doing his bidding or even, in one case, having a heart attack. The Pusher was featured on two episodes of The X-Files, "Pusher" and "Kitsunegari." When I found a site devoted (somewhat disturbingly) to Modell, I posited to them this scenario: What if Agent Mulder woke up one morning, went to work,  found himself partnered with The Pusher, and had no idea anything was amiss? The story within the story deals with past life regression and murder in the pharmaceutical industry.

GRACE LAND
In this, the finale of what has come to be known as my Hollywood Trilogy, Agent Dana Scully is induced to unearthing one of the most famous "missing" persons in history -- Elvis Presley -- before a crazed Elvis impersonator can make The King dead again. This story features a pair of characters from the X-Files canon: Jose Chung, a sci-fi/expose writer who was portrayed by Charles Nelson Reilly, and Morris Fletcher, a sleazy federal Man in Black played by Michael McKean.

WHEN HARRY MET SCULLY
One of the most common type of X-Files fanfic is the "shipper story," devoted to exploring and or expanding the emotional relationship between Mulder and Scully. Well, I felt a bit left out, so I applied myself to the task. However, I'm not the most adept at things romantic, so I took a different slant and composed a sort of X-Files chick flick/supernatural comedy. Substitute Meg Ryan or Sandra Bullock for Gillian Anderson and Tom Hanks or Hugh Grant for David Duchovny.

SOUL SURVIVOR
One of the more mystifying media trends of late is the networks' aping of the "reality concept" popularized by MTV (as in "I want my, I want my"? Dire Straits? Heathens!). This involves taking a diverse group of real people with workaday jobs such as performance artist or aromacolorist and narcissistic personalities, placing them together in a claustrophobic environment where their vapidity and egos will begin to collide, and then listen to their self-conscious ramblings to the cameraman. If you can't tell, I think it's just FAB!! Actually, though, I did think it would make for an interesting narrative experiment and a good way to explore the nearly psychic connection between our Mulder and Scully. In this novelette, Mulder is competing with a Survivors-type crew in a sort of haunted Big Brothers environment off the coast of Maine, feeding televised clues to a decades-old mystery to Scully back home. Point of interest: After I completed this story, I was told the British were planning to produce a Survivors-type show in a haunted house. Eerie? Uh huh, yeah.

SAMPLER
I recently accompanied the wife on a week's odyssey to Pigeon Forge and Nashville, Tenn. I will admit at this juncture I'm no big country fan: Waylon and Willie sounds to me like a urinary exam gone terrrribly wrong. But I remembered the 50-50 partnership that is marriage, kept murmuring "barbecue" to myself, and started plotting this tale of murder and magic in Music City. This is what I'd call meat-and-potatoes X-Files: A serial killer, folklore-steeped intrigue, and some supernatural comeuppance for the villain. Yee-haw.

KENNETH ETIAM  
My good new friend Stacy at The X-Philes has been kind enough over the last several months to publish several of my stories, and this tale is my Christmas card to a hard-working student who gives others the opportunity to create and share their enjoyment of The X-Files. This is a Christmas story about a man who finds himself in a situation similar to Jimmy Stewart in "It's a Wonderful Life," but with nightmarish implications. Fox Mulder takes the Clarence the Angel role here, with partner Scully a concerned observer. But this is no "ordinary" X-file, as I hope you will discover.

DEFRAG
Since an early age, I've loved the old-fashioned Ellery Queen/Agatha Christie-style whodunit, especially what's known as the "locked room murder" -- the homicide committed in a room sealed from the inside or in the snow, with no footprints surrounding the body, or in a space station with no other astronauts around to have committed the deed. This is my attempt at the locked room, with an old-fashioned dying clue and a mansion full of suspects thrown in. For a new-fangled touch, the victims is a Bill Gates sort of fellow, and my Sherlocks are no other than our good agents, Mulder and Scully. So pull up an armchair and see if you can figure out who or what dunit...

REMISSION
My mother, Jean Ross, died on Mother's Day 1993. She was a scientist at a time when a lot of women wouldn't have felt welcome in the field. She had a wry sense of humor, but woe to anyone who injured or slighted her family. If you had Jean Ross in your corner, you had a formidable champion. Cancer was about the only foe she couldn't face down in my lifetime. I married in 1993, months after my mother's death. My wife as well has been my champion, and each year, she walks for cancer victims and survivors. So when I decided to write a solo case for Agent Dana Scully, something a bit more reflective and somber than is my normal style, I focused on two factors my mother had in common with Scully: Her scientific acumen and her battle with cancer. For this story, I brought back an old X-Files nemesis, Leonard Betts.

CANARY
The resignation and departure of Agent Fox Mulder last season sent X-Files fans into a chronic stage of anxiety. The recent announcement that the X-Files would be closed at the end of this season elicited varying reactions: Resigned satisfaction from those who couldn't accept Scully without Mulder or the Files without either; frustration from others (myself included) who believe John Doggett was a worthy heir to the files and that the storytelling of Chris Carter and company was still in top form. But enough, already. We all wonder where Mulder is right now (no, not sipping margaritas with Tea Leoni), and I speculated that he just wouldn't be able to stay from the wierd and phantasmagorial. But how does former Agent Mulder cope without a gun or official sanction? To answer that, we travel from 31 million B.C. to the remote reaches of man's future and learn a little about a distinctly Illinoisan phenomenom called the Tully monster...

LOVE, HONOR, AND OBEAH
The new alliance I've begun with the splendid folks at Virtual Season 11 (soon to be VS12) began with what famed neurotic George Costanza might have called a collision of universes. With the demise of The X-Files after nine seasons, I felt a distinct lack of closure. Thus was born 10X, my fanfic continuation in the style and spirit of the series. And thus I ventured into murky territory. I promoted my new "season" at the former Haven discussion group, where Doggett and Reyes turned out to be fighting words for many of the fans. Bloodied and bruised after a dozen or so replies to my initial posts, I launched into a volley of e-mails with Vickie, one of the Watchers of her own universe, now known as the Virtual Season. After discovering our common ground -- we're both Illinoisans, we work with bureaucrats on a daily basis, and we love Fox and Dana -- I persuaded Vickie to visit my universe. The result, Dreamcatcher, wound up shaping the climactic nexus of my mythology. As my "series" came to a conclusion at the end of 2003, Vickie generously invited me on board her own universe, which takes off following the events of Je Souhaite. This is vintage XF, sans my pals Doggett and Reyes but with Mulder and Scully finally having acknowledged and consummated their shippiness (huh?). Thus, this story, written for a VS crossover challenge, is somewhat lighter and banterish. In what I feel to be a fitting touch, Love, Honor, and Obeah -- a story of witchcraft and the law -- features one of the stars of my XF Sunday replacement, The Practice. Read how ethically challenged Boston attorney Alan Shore -- with the aid of our agents -- defends a man who killed to protect his family from sorcery.

 ASURYA LOKAS
This one, another short-short, was written for a VS Valentine's Day challenge. Mulder and Scully's parallel universe romance offered the backdrop for a story of post-911 paranoia, Eastern religion, and an impossible "murder" motivated by, well, it's a Valentine's story, right?...

MOA A MOANA
My first full-length adventure in the VS universe, and probably my best-researched tale. Ripped from (recent) headlines and inspired by a recent Hawaiian vacation, this is a real fish story complete with genetically engineered "killer(?)" tuna, CIA experimentation, and island "little people." As for the title, look it up yourself for a chuckle... 

BANSHEE
In honor of St. Patrick, we take you back to an early episode in the life of Fox Mulder, Oxford crinimal psychology prodigy, and his old flame, Phoebe Green, as he investigates a banshee in Dublin and a mystery that literally screams to be solved...

TRICK OR TREATISE
As Virtual Season 12 commences, we find our intrepid agents knocking once again at the door to the unknown, on Halloween night. This time around, I lampoon the world of academics as I unravel this tale of serial murder and ancient ritual...

DARK MEAT
Mix Thanksgiving with a mildly demented family not unlike my in-laws, crazed gobblers, retro ghosts, and two visiting FBI agents, and you have a holiday tale flavored by my vocational interest in agriculture...

SLIM DICKENS
I love time travel stories -- all those twisty, sinister, neck-snapping anomalies. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure may be one of my favorite riffs on the theme, though I gotta admit my hatred for Ashton Kutcher subsided when I caught The Butterfly Effect recently. So when I set out to write my VS12 buddies a Yuletide story, I decided to rewrite history with a zany, time-torturing Christmas Carol... 

DOCKED
One of my favorite X-Files X-periments was Kill Switch, that great William Gibson story of artificial intelligence and virtual life, with one of the greatest opening acts ever on TV. I tapped my own inside perspective on Congress and current affairs to compose this cyberspace adventure with an Agatha Christie twist...

THE BICOASTAL, BILOCATED, FLY-BY MURDER CASE
Columbo meets Mulder again, this time in a tale of two horror writers, a killer who apparently can be two places at once, and a coupla guys who like to bust impossible crimes...