Thrilled to share the official press release from Gravelight Press announcing the September release of their latest horror anthology, Halloween Party 2021. The book includes my South Korean ghost story, “Before She’s Gone Forever.” Click on the image below to enlarge.
Check out the news on the Cape Gazette and Coastal Point!
It’s been too long since I wrote a blog post that wasn’t merely a catalog of interesting articles about writing and publishing.
We’re over the midway point of 2021 and while this year has been nowhere near as miserable as its predecessor, the past six and a half months have served up generous portions of stress and change. I lost two dear friends, turned 50, started a new full-time job, and finished a few home renovations and landscaping projects.
Just to recap events on the writing front, the first quarter was marvelous. In January, my story, “Where It’s Needed Most,” was published in the Mindful Writers anthology, Love on the Edge, by Year of the Book Press. For some unexplained reason, the anthology briefly went missing from Amazon in June but was quickly re-released using Ingram Spark. Proceeds from the anthology benefit Allegheny Children’s Initiative-Partners For Quality, Inc. As a sample, you can read my story for free on Wattpad.
In that same month, my South Korean ghost story, “Before She’s Gone Forever,” was accepted by Gravelight Press for the next volume of their Halloween Party anthology series to be published in September. More details on that soon.
Another of my ghost stories, “Bottom of the Hour,” reached the quaterfinals in the Screencraft Cinematic Short Story Competition and to this day remains in the top 35% of discoverable works on Coverfly. “Bottom of the Hour” was originally published in A Plague of Shadows (Smart Rhino Publications, October 2018).
March saw the publication of Meanwhile in the Middle of Eternity, the final book in the Middle of Eternity anthology series that I created and edited for Firebringer Press. It’s available in all formats except for Kindle, which has been delayed but should be out eventually. In keeping with tradition, three of my stories were included. You can read two of them for free here on my website: “Take a Cue from the Canine” and “So Hungry…” The third is a Finnish fantasy tale called “The Forest for the Trees.”
Also in March, the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group released their latest biennial anthology, Writes of Passage. First in that book is “Help Me Rise,” my tale of a female rock star and recovering alcoholic who struggles to resurrect her career following the death of her husband. It’s the first of two general, or “mainstream,” fiction stories I wrote this year.
The second was “Where Do I Begin?” in which a middle-aged man moves to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware to start a new life only to be tormented by voices from his past. This story was submitted to the annual Rehoboth Beach Reads short story contest, sponsored by Cat & Mouse Press and Browseabout Books. The theme this year is Beach Secrets and the winners will be revealed during the first week of August. Stay tuned!
Speaking of (writing of?) Rehoboth Beach, on July 1, I submitted a detective story, set in that town, to Hawkshaw Press for their 2022 anthology, Hardboiled and Loaded with Sin. They accepted the story within two days! If you’re a writer of detective noir tales and 40 years of age or older, check them out. The deadline for submissions is December 31, 2021.
Of course, no writer’s life would be complete without rejections and I received about a half dozen of them this year. There’s an old adage in this business—if you’re not getting rejections, you’re not submitting enough. I’m shopping around two SF adventure stories and a dark horror tale while working on draft three of a science fiction novel.
That about sums it up for the first half of 2021. I’m immensely grateful for the successes and hopeful about the future. Later this year, I plan to submit several short stories, and one of my novels, to various contests. I’ll post details in the months to come.
Enjoy the rest of summer and stay safe.
In all of the chaos of the election and our Indiegogo campaign to fund the publication of Meanwhile in the Middle of Eternity, I neglected to mention that not only has the Scary Stuff anthology been released, but my author copy arrived on Halloween!
Defintely a treat! Even my ghoulfriend found it a jaw-dropping read and she ain’t easy to please.
The book also came with an autograph checklist card (below).
Scary Stuff, published by Oddity Prodigy Productions, is an homage to the classic EC Comics titles Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror, and Haunt of Fear as well as the magazines Creepy and Eerie. The anthology includes my story. “Burn After Writing,” dedicated to one of my litrary heroes, Harlan Ellison (below).
On what would have been Harlan Ellison’s 86th birthday (May 27), Episode #11 of Got a Story for Ya is LIVE with “Burn After Writing,” a short story dedicated to Harlan and soon to be published in SCARY STUFF, an anthology by Oddity Prodigy Productions.
Legendary writer Adrian Halka has died. Disobeying his mentor’s instructions to burn all incomplete manuscripts upon his death, struggling writer Shane Conrad pilfers one of Halka’s unreleased novels. After publishing it as his own, Conrad learns the blistering consequences of playing with fire.
We often hear about the mystery of Christmas. In Over the River and Through the Woods, we not only have a mystery, but a detective noir tale set in Santa’s North Pole workshop complete with a hilariously crass elven anti-heroine named Tink.
“I didn’t write Tink; I think Tink wrote herself. Her voice was so loud, strong, funny, and irreverent, I had to put it on a page. She may end up in a full-length novel, because I’m not sure she’s done talking yet.” —Abigail Drake, author of “Tink”
Speaking of mysteries, a peculiar woman on the street catches the attention of the protagonist in Maryalice Meli’s story and we soon learn that appearances can be deceiving…
“When I think of Christmas holiday celebration, I think of Wampum, PA. This little Lawrence County town has the biggest parade of any outside Pittsburgh. My story is set at a Christmas parade though the story itself of an elderly woman outsmarting the angel of death has nothing to do with the parade.” —Maryalice Meli author of “The Christmas Angel”
Finally, Amy Morley reminds us that regardless of whether he’s flesh and blood or merely a myth, Santa Claus is a symbol of hope and virtue worth believing in—at any age.
“This is longer than you wanted. But I had to give the whole story in order for it to make sense.
I wrote “Reminiscing on the Nostalgia of Happier Times” as part of a writing exercise when I took a poetry class with regional poet Bill Boggs back in the fall of 2011. The prompt was to write about a memory, and to practice using imagery. As I sat down to write I remember hearing jingle bells in my memory.
The fall of 2011 was actually a very sad time in my life due to unexpected challenges that turned my life upside down. During these months I had numbed myself from feeling anything just so I could get through it without crying every second, so this was a very difficult assignment for me. I was trying not to remember anything at all as a defense mechanism from feeling additional remorse from what I thought at the time was a life full of regrets. But when I thought about what to write, I kept hearing jingle bells.
Those bells brought me back to a memory from November 1993, when I was 15 years old and I met a “Sidewalk” Santa at the South Street Seaport in New York City. I was a sophomore in high school and my marching band had performed in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade earlier that day. We had to wake up at 2AM so I was sleep deprived, so I am not sure what was real and what I had imagined from this memory.
But from this memory, I heard jingle bells. Santa was walking along the pier and ringing a bell. The bells were haunting, and I was drawn to them, almost hypnotized, and I felt as though they were calling me. I walked up to Santa and out of nowhere I told him that even though I was 15 years old, I still believed in him, and asked him what I had to do to get people to believe in me? I told him that it was impossible for people to believe in a mythical being, but somehow there are enough people in this world who continually believe and therefore keep him alive. Yet I was only 15 years old and I felt as though no one noticed me, no one thought I was important, no one believed that I would ever become someone of worth or recognition, but I knew that I was someone worthy. I knew I had talents and skills, I just didn’t know what they were, and I was afraid to even try to figure it out because I knew it would be useless since I felt discouraged and defeated all of the time. I told him that I just needed someone to believe in me. I asked him if he would believe in me since I still believe in him. He told me, “you keep believing in me and I will keep believing in you. And I promise you that things will change for you in the new year.”
And they did. A million different ways they did.
I wrote this poem when I was 32 years old. It was seventeen years after I met the real Santa Claus. I needed him at age 15 and then again at age 32. He was there for me both times; once in person or as a spirit even perhaps, and once again in my memory. Both times he was the one who believed in me, when I was alone, even when I didn’t believe in myself. Both times his presence in my life changed things so significantly that there’s no other explanation as to how he was able to do this, other than the fact that he was the real Santa Claus.” —Amy Morley
Proceeds from the sale of Over the River and Through the Woods benefit the Ligoner Camp and Conference Center, home of the Mindful Writers Retreat. We thank you for your support!
In A Charlie Brown Christmas, cynicism resulting from the commericalism of the holidays is summed up by Lucy Van Pelt when she says, “Look, Charlie, let’s face it. We all know that Christmas is a big commercial racket. It’s run by a big eastern syndicate, you know.”
Well, I’m not sure about that eastern syndicate, but in Over the River and Through the Woods, James Robinson, Jr. addresses this sentiment—as well as his childhood disappointment in learning the truth about Santa Claus—through his honest yet hopeful essay, “The Day the Magic Died.”
“I guess it’s now that I realize—and expressed in my own twisted little way in this piece—is that Christmas used to be a special time for me. As a child, my senses tingled with excitement when I sensed that Santa was due to make his annual appearance. Even as an adult—at the tender age of 38 or so—my wife and I drove around with our three girls with a New Kid’s On the Block cassette playing the entire season. It was a time of reflection, a time to seize the moment to enjoy the good will, the music, and all of the feelings that go along with the experience.
But when it comes to children, the old mantra that Christmas is for children is simple not the case anymore. Christmas isn’t for kids; Christmas isn’t for adults; Christmas is a percentage increase of the of retail sales. Kids don’t just get a bicycle; they get Best Buy Gift Cards, wireless headphones, iPhones, and a bunch of other meaningless crapola. Christmas is impersonal. Christmas is a fit it in when you get a chance, “I haven’t done my Xmas shopping yet,” “We need to get a gift for your Aunt Pearl,” impersonal mess. Christmas is a lazy online scam, a boon for Amazon, a fiasco.
But my pet peeve has to be the commercials that begin to rear their ugly heads in November and refuse to die until after New Year’s featuring Mercedes Benz’s and Lexus’ wrapped in huge bows—the ultimate gift for the few who can afford it, commercialism run wild. —but I siphon whatever magic I can from the modern-day experience.
If you dread Christmas and breathe a sigh of relief when it’s gone, I can’t blame for your feelings. I can’t chastise you if, for whatever reason, you’ve lost the dream. But if a small spark somehow still burns, despite the madness and lunacy that has overtaken us all, enjoy whatever piece of the magic that remains. After all, people are still a little nicer from mid-November until January. They still smile little more and try a little harder to get together as family units. Take solace in the little things. And have a nice Christmas.” —James Robinson Jr., author of, “The Day the Magic Died”
In the final essay of our anthology, Sherren Elias Pensiero reminisces about rockin’ out with The Beatles on New Year’s Eve…
“I wrote this with the memory of a simpler, happier time… before the earth shook beneath my feet… in my mind.” —Sherren Elias Pensiero, author of “‘Twas A Hard Day’s Night and Another Auld Lang Syne”
Proceeds from the sale of Over the River and Through the Woods benefit the Ligoner Camp and Conference Center, home of the Mindful Writers Retreat. We thank you for your support!