Every writer has at least one weakness, something they don’t do as well as they’d like. They know it, and their readers know it. Raymond Chandler knew he didn’t do plots well, which is why the structures of his novels a) don’t bear up to scrutiny, and b) are often cribbed from his previous short stories. Of course, what he … Read More
New Anthology: FLYING HIGHER
I’m not a poet. I feel I should say that at the outset. But I have written a poem, “O Captain! America’s Captain.” It’s now part of this anthology: It’s a labor of love, as they say. Editors Michael Damien Thomas and Shira Lipkin loved the idea, and they approached me and the other authors, asking us to channel our love … Read More
Available now: Hurricane Sandy benefit anthology
The Hurricane Sandy benefit anthology Triumph Over Tragedy is now available. It includes 41 stories for $6.99 (one of which, “Wrap,” is by me), so it’s basically only 18 cents a story. And all the proceeds go to the Red Cross for Hurricane Sandy relief. It’s available for the Kindle here, and the Nook here.
The Blurring of Lines
Recently, while reading the Janet Sternburg-edited collection The Writer on Her Work, I had an unexpected epiphany (I know, epiphanies are always unexpected, but work with me). It was the realization that my life in 2012 is almost exactly Anne Tyler’s in 1980. Tyler, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Breathing Lessons and The Accidental Tourist, contributed the book’s first … Read More
Interview: Andrew Brasfield, songwriter of Cold Wind
When I began planning Time of the Season, my holiday-themed e-book chapbook, I already had two of the stories. Both the title story and “A Ghost, and a Chance” had been around for a while. But I wanted to write something new, and I’d gotten such a good response from my novel, The Hum and the Shiver, that I decided … Read More
Announcing Time of the Season
So this year I’m trying something new: through the good folks at Story Vault, I’m releasing a three-story ebook chapbook for the holidays. It includes: “Cold Wind,” a Tufa story that updates us on Bronwyn and Craig from The Hum and the Shiver. “A Ghost, and a Chance,” in which Sir Francis Colby from Blood Groove crosses paths with the … Read More
Announcing Haunted: 11 Tales of ghostly horror
A few weeks ago I promised an announcement for fans of Blood Groove, my first novel about vampires in Memphis in the Seventies. Here it is. Sir Francis Colby, the Victorian spiritualist and the only man to ever defeat vampire Baron Rudolfo Zginski, returns in a new adventure, “What’s the Frequency, Francis?” as part of the anthology Haunted: 11 Tales … Read More
Interview: author Deborah Blake
I was lucky enough to read “Dead and (Mostly) Gone” before its publication in The Pagan Anthology of Short Fiction. Deborah Blake, author of two non-fiction Pagan themed titles (Everyday Witch A-Z and Circle, Coven and Grove), created a compelling heroine and told a brilliant story in her first published fiction, which also won second prize in the Llewellyn/PanGaia Pagan … Read More
Book release: The Pagan Anthology of Short Fiction
My short story “Draw Down” is one of 13 included in The Pagan Anthology of Short Fiction, available now from Llewellyn Books. The introduction is by noted author Diana L. Paxson.