• Winner of the Robert L. Fish Award for Best First Short Story of 2003 from Mystery Writers of America
• Winner of the Macavity Award for Best Short Story of 2003 by Mystery Readers International
• Nominated for the Anthony Award for Best Short Story of 2003 by Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention

Presumably our neighbor had a first name—one that could be used in polite company—but I had never heard it from my father.

"Bastard Beaumont's out to pave the world. One square inch of asphalt at a time."

Dad was a big believer in green space. He and my mother had built their lannon stone ranch when it was the only house on a lonely stretch of county road fifteen miles west of the city. That was long before their highly anticipated first child, Joan, died in infancy; long before I finally came along, dragging my feet some ten years later; and long before my mother—apparently finding motherhood, once achieved, less than it was cracked up to be-had walked out.

It was also long, long before urban sprawl, complete with the offending asphalt driveways and cookie-cutter houses, had turned my father into what he had always abhorred: A suburbanite. With neighbors.

• Nominated for the Macavity Award for Best Short Story of 2004 by Mystery Readers International
• Winner of the Derringer Award from the Short Mystery Fiction Society

The dream was in living color, and she was gorgeous: Blonde, blue-eyed and young — maybe 20 to my 33. And svelte, 110 pounds against my 175.

She also was tall, though since we were horizontal it was hard to be certain about that. The top of her head came up to my nose, putting her about five inches shorter than my 6'1", assuming we were lined up toe-to-toe. Which we no longer were, since she was slipping slowly down my torso, her blonde hair leaving my face to brush my neck, then my chest, then my belly, then —

"What I remember was being on my feet—all of a sudden on my feet, but I didn't know how I got there. And everyone around me, they were on their feet, too, and I could see their hands slapping together and I could see their mouths moving, but I couldn't hear them. Couldn't hear anything because I was standing in this place of pure light and noise, a place like nowhere I'd ever been before. And I thought, right then: This must be what heaven is."

Heaven?

Contrary to the voice-over, the video on the monitor in front of TV8 producer Wendy "Jake" Jacobus looked more like hell.

But hell sure made for great TV.