Flash of Fear - Foolish Fire - A Bit of Flash Horror Fiction

Friction rises among friends on a night drive to check out reports of a will-o'-the-wisp in this tale called "Foolish Fire."



The most recent Flash of Fear was very brief, so this once come quicker than usual. It's an all-new story,  a tad longer, 1,500-words or so.

A Clip from Silverline Live - Bloodline Comic

Reading loglines for upcoming comics projects on the Silverline Live show May 6.

https://www.twitch.tv/silverlinecomics/clip/GlutenFreePopularEyeballGivePLZ

Still Gone

Still Gone 

The sun hits the blinds

Bright, white, blinding.

I can’t quite see the tree,

But the leaves are green again.

The leaves have gone and returned.

Only Ollie is still gone. 

Flash of Fear - A Check-in from Lockdown's Confines

I'd decided to post a new Flash of Fear story reading every six weeks or so, aligning with haircuts. Lockdown put the kibosh on haircuts, but I thought I'd check in with a few words and a new, brief reading, a piece that originally appeared here on the blog.

I hope all are hanging in during this tough time. May it pass quickly. 

  

Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse and Tales From My Dark Side

For a while yesterday (April 18, 2020, in the time of quarantine), Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse edited by Lyn Worthen, which includes my story "Witch of Washington Park," had the Hollywood Squares spot right below Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, and we were on a diagonal from collected stories of Theodore Sturgeon, all in the Science Fiction Anthologies category. Or maybe it was the Zoom spot right below them. Or the Alice below Carol and Marcia.

I know, I know, new things climb into the Top 100 and stay a while, like the fog in a Carl Sandburg poem, and then move on, but it was still a thrill for me anyway. In good ways. Bradbury and Sturgeon are deservedly perennials in those slots. BUT STILL!!!! "...once there was a spot/ For one brief shining moment...Camelot..."

READ ALSO: My Interview with Ray Bradbury

And sorta there's bad in me related to this...
Or a dark side, and the placement soothes an old contusion, I'll confess... When I was a kid in junior high I gave a buck-twenty-five copy of The Martian Chronicles as a Christmas gift at school. It was the cool orange one with the sketch of Bradbury on the cover. You drew a name, you had to buy for a $1 or so in those days. It was a while back.

When my present went to the guy, who was actually happy to get it, a look of disgust crossed this other kid's face. "You always give books," he muttered, spitting the word "books" with about as much contempt of a word as is humanly possible.

READ ALSO: Ray Bradbury - The October Game - Major Spoiler 

Yeah, I gave books, and I still do...
...some of them direct from my brain to yours if you choose. Probably says more about me that I recall that dis, that utterance of contempt. But, uh, I guess I hold grudges sometimes. You know, for, uh, decades. Several decades. So that little thumbnail was fun!

Plague Diary or Coronavirus Thoughts Entry 1

When I went to see The Invisible Man on March 3 word of Coronavirus arrival in the U.S. was on the news, and I was a little nervous though reports of cases were pretty far away yet and it was a pretty empty theater. A couple came in and chose to sit right behind me, of course.

I washed my hands before and after the movie, tried not to touch and hoped for the best. I didn't realize it was the demarcation point, that I wouldn't be venturing out much after, but the world seemed to get crazy after that.

In coming days, Christine, my wife and I visited a bookstore, did our grocery shopping and tried to stockpile soon after we began to stay close to home as word of the spread continued and the alarms sounded.

We moved to Williamsburg, VA, in 2019 following my wife's acceptance job. I've been working close to home since, freelancing, writing fiction and getting prepared for an online teaching job. We had also been looking for a house, and we had a trip to visit Christine's parents planned.

Shortly before the trip as news worsened, we cancelled plans, and Christine spent the vacation days at home, and as we were staying in close, we received word her job would be implementing work-from-home orders.

We've been hunkered down ever since.

Cat Books Here - Get up to 10 ebook titles featuring cats including the pre-launch Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse

Act Now: https://storybundle.com/cats

For a limited time, you can get Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse via a special pre-launch offer. Cat Ladies includes my story "The Witch of Washington Park" and 9 other titles as special story bundle. Pay what you want for 10 titles with six of them exclusive ebooks.

They all feature cats, which are, of course, a great source of comfort. That's how they serve in my story as a heroine faces a brutal future and works to prepare an urban environment for agriculture in a devastated land.

There's also mystery, horror and suspense in this mix. As I'm writing this, 17 days remain on the offer, so act fast and get some great reading to fill your down time.

See the full cover of Cat Ladies edited by Lyn Worthen here.

Horror Flash Fiction - Flash of Fear - Jack-O-Lanterns

A new Flash of Fear installment, this time a reading of a piece that appeared first here on the blog.

More readings here



This story and more short horror and mystery tales are found in the ebook Scars and Candy from Crossroad Press also.

Anthology - Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse Cover Reveal

I'm happy to present the cover art for the upcoming anthology Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse.

Plans for this collection edited by Lyn Worthen began last fall, and that's when I wrote my story, "The Witch of Washington Park." Who knew? The Doomsday Clock from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was set at two minutes to midnight.

In January 2020, it moved up thirty seconds, to a minute and a half.

Visit the Camden Park Press Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse page

The submission call read "It’s time to turn the `man and his dog wandering through a dystopian world' trope on its head..."

I wasn't sure at first what I'd do with that. I began with the notion of a former scientist, her name's Cassandra, making her way through a deserted city and finding a frightened boy holding a cat.

She was working to establish a bit of an oasis where food could be safely grown in an urban environment. Most of the world outside, a landscape ravaged by climate and nuclear disasters, but she and her cat named Midnight were holding on.

She'd grown despondent, however. Taking care of the boy, naming his cat Raven, offering him bits of culture and history while teaching him about agriculture began to give her new life.

Yet threats loom, threats always loom.

As always when a story takes off, the writing experience was exhilarating.

The collection includes many other great tales. Cats that eat zombies. Badass librarians, cat ladies battling something like Cthulhu and much more. It's arriving soon, so keep watching your favorite bookseller's site.

See also: Quoth the Raven featuring my story, "A Cooler of Craft Brew."

The Witch of Washington Park,

I'm excited to announce my 8,000-word story, "The Witch of Washington Park," will be included in the upcoming Camden Park Press anthology Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse edited by Lyn Worthen. Think of it as the flip side of A Boy and His Dog.

The story's set in a future where cataclysmic events have created a wasteland beset by predators of human and animal form alike. Of course.

My heroine, Cassandra, once a scientist, is at work attempting to prepare an urban setting to become an agricultural oasis amid the gloom of a post-apocalyptic world, but she's in danger of giving way to despair. Until she finds a young boy who needs her care.

Nothing's easy for them, of course, and the big threat's in the form of... Well, read it and see.

This story was great fun to write. I'd been wanting to do a little more in the science fiction or speculative fiction realm. The title of the anthology really sparked my imagination.

I'll post links when preorder information becomes available. Probably coming about mid-March 2020.

Flash of Fear - Pilgrim Crime Story Reading

Don't know that I'll be maintaining a weekly pace for these, but here's a new installment in my little Flash of Fear series of readings for You Tube.



This time around it's a crime story with horror elements that originally appeared in Heater magazine. It's a dark little tale of a detective called to a brutal crime scene.

Flash of Fear - Custom Scent - Horror Flash Fiction

I'd been meaning to develop some content for You Tube for a while. With me reading, very brief pieces seem to be the best idea.



This is a bit of flash fiction that appeared first in Sanitarium magazine No. 46. It was kind of fun. Maybe I'll do more.

Love Among the Thorns - A Gothic and Paranormal Romance Anthology Featuring Novelette Strake Hall

I'm excited to be part of the new anthology Love Among the Thorns, a collection of paranormal and Gothic romance stories.

My tale is the 10,000-word "Strake Hall," the story of Aleda Garson, an American archivist who takes on the job of organizing the document collection amassed at a towering castle in the English-Scottish borderlands. It's a daunting task, but she soon discovers a connection with the businessman she's working for, Aaran Strake. He's devoted to bringing the dream of his late father to life, keeping Strake Hall in the hands of the Strake family.

Howling winds, other strangeness and the beautiful financial consultant all threaten to upset any blossoming relationship, however.

There's something cold and frightening at the heart of Strake Hall. Can Aleda uncover secrets amid decaying parchment and crumbling stone in time to rescue a blossoming romance and perhaps even save lives?

Full list of contributors:

Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Lisa Mangum
J.L Madore
Olivette Devaux
Tami Veldura
Gayle Ann Williams
Melanie Cossey
Jadelynn Asher
Michele Dean
C.J. Mattison
Sidney Williams

RIP Oliver Littlechap AKA Oliver Orange Cat AKA Sad Orange Kitty

I wasn't the biggest Game of Thrones fan, but I was engaged enough to keep up with it and certainly to feel the elation in Arya Stark's great moment as she restated the caveat from her childhood in a final episode.

What do we say to the God of Death?  

"There is only one thing we say to death. Not today."

For the past several months, that's been on my mind as Oliver Littlechap showed signs of decline. 

He was the third of four cats who came into our lives beginning in the late nineties. He arrived in 2005, was hanging out with some other neighborhood cats.  I was on my back porch slipping a treat to a neighbor's cat I had a bit of a relationship with and feared wasn't well cared for. 

When Oliver saw a treat, he wandered my way and looked at me hopefully. My first thought was to shoo him away, but he had a look that later earned him the nickname Sad Orange Kitty, and I'm a softy. Over a period of weeks after that, he worked his way into our lives without trying. He was an outdoor cat a while. Then an indoor-outdoor then...

He became the last feline standing a couple of years ago when Ash aka Ashley passed away following the deaths of our original cats Monty and Daisy. "It's his time to be the only cat," we said. "His time." He'd earned his spot at the center of our attention and our world. 

We'd long battled allergies with Ollie. He was FIV positive and we struggled most to control rhinitis, but when antibiotics did their work, even as recently as January, he'd sprint around the house and bounce from windowsill to furniture. 

More recently, other signs of decline had arisen, most notably weight loss. We'd had discussion. The day will come...

Yet we managed his symptoms and saw great days for him. He climbed into moving boxes and supervised as I prepared for our furniture for a move from Orlando to Williamsburg.

When he joined Christine in our new apartment, he was doing so well she feared he'd draw the ire of neighbors as he strolled through the place caterwauling.

That energy faded a bit, but he remained affectionate and close.

A while back, he climbed onto the sofa with me and I realized his pupils were unnaturally large. I knew from our other cats that meant a blood pressure spike. As with all things of that nature, something's causing it.

But what do we say to the God of Death? 

I took him to the vet and got him started on blood pressure medicine, and we got retinal reattachment that restored a good bit of vision for him in spite of those strained pupils. 

Then there was weight loss. The vet okayed Fancy Feast a couple of months back, and he ate joyously and we fed him freely. 

He also regularly took his place on my desk, my lap or at my side waiting to have his fur brushed, and all in all, he felt good. He slept occasionally on Christine's pillow. 

Last Christmas.

But nature will have its way in spite of all the management you do, and in spite of all the "not today" admonishments.

I went downstairs yesterday to find him lying on his side. He'd sleep that way sometimes, but I sensed something wasn't quite right. He didn't rise to wait at the edge of the kitchen for his breakfast.

At first I thought he wouldn't awake at all, but then I realized he was experiencing some distress, that he was weak. I thought it might be low blood pressure, so I fixed some Fancy Feast and helped him sit up. He devoured it. I remembered with a bit of guilt the time I considered shooing him. At least now, one of the last things I could do for him was give him food, food he enjoyed.

But he couldn't manage to keep himself upright. Christine and I got him on a cushion between us and kept him comfortable. I answered messages and emails, waiting until I could call the vet. Who knew Facebook battles could  be a bromide?

It kept my mind busy and off the inevitable. In a way I didn't want the vet's phones to kick over from the answering service to the receptionist, but the time had to come. I asked to bring him in. They said come on. Back of your mind, you think, maybe there's a shot, an IV drip, a pill.

And eventually the vet--a very sweet lady who'd traded off on his care with his primary veterinarian--eventually the vet--though not in so many words, though not wanting to step in for the God of Death said--Today.

He was fading by then, but she gave us a blanket, and we sat across from a statue of St. Francis of Assisi, the Brother Sun, Sister Moon saint. The Brother Dog, Sister Cat guy. The patron saint of nature and animals and little cats.

We sat with Oliver on both our laps and stroked his fur like we did on a thousand nights as we read or watched TV. 

Then he quietly left us. But we sat for a while.

Stroking his fur. Touching his head, remembering. Feeling sad but also thankful that he had been in our lives and part of lives for such a long, long time.

An early Oliver memory

Wane - a poem

Wane

Leaves take on new beauty:
Harbinger of demise.
Verdant energy fades.
Edges curl.
Ribs show.
Essence crumbles
To brown fragments:
Remains and companions
To the memory of the green,
The love of the whole.

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - A Werewolf Among Us by Dean R. Koontz

Baker St. Cyr is part computer part human and all cyber detective. From Ballantine, January, 1973. 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - The Dark Sonata by Beatrice Murray

A fairly recent acquisition. Gothic with a bit of variation. We have heroine in very early-seventies attire fleeing a more standard mansion inmist. This dates from 1971, and the copyright is Richard Posner, who apparently wrote under his own name and a number of pseudonyms in various genres.

Favorite Short Stories - Terror in Cut-Throat Cove by Robert Bloch

Spoiler Note: This one you can't discuss without spoiling something. Flee if you want to read it without influence.

“Terror in Cut-Throat Cove" by Psycho-author Robert Bloch doesn't sound like a mythos tale. It sounds like a pirate adventure, and it opens like a John D. MacDonald crime-adventure story. Yet it's a fabulous excursion into cosmic horror. It's kind of a shame it's not anthologized more, though it is in Bloch's Mysteries of the Worm: Early Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos.

It appeared first in the June 1958  issue of the digest Fantastic,  which had a bit of a nautical theme and a pirate illustration on the cover, probably making the story's impact even more sneaky to early readers.

It's ultimately a tale that straddles the line that might be drawn through Bloch's work, dividing early supernatural and cosmic horror from the more real-world terrors such as The Scarf and Psycho.

It must have been penned around the same time Bloch was imagining the workings of real-life killer Ed Gein's mind for Psycho which would be published in 1959.

This first-person account comes from a writer,  Howard Lane, living in the Bahamas for the cost-of-living benefits. He's doing his nightly drinking at his favorite bar when he bumps into burly, blond and muscle-bound Don Hanson and his girlfriend Dena Drake, who Lane sees as a Christmas tree angel. She's the beauty perpetually attached to guys like Don, as he sees it.

It's Dena who really leads him to help Don, who has a touch of wealth already and has come to the island of Santa Rita to find sunken pirate treasure including a stunning golden altar. So yeah, it is kind of a pirate story and an adventure story after all.

As SCUBA dives begin, hints emerge that there might be more at the bottom of Cut-Throat Cove than pirate booty. One of Don's employed divers meets a fate not unlike that of Mary Crane's in Psycho, the novel. He loses his head. Divers speak of seeing something with tentacles around the pirate wreck as well.

Soon Lane, which interestingly rhymes with Crane when you think about it, is needed for more than smoothing things over with the local authorities. He learns to dive himself and begins to make his way down to the ship alongside Don. It's there influences slip out to touch his psyche and drive him toward goals far beyond attaining Dena.

The noir themes are many. Dena's beautiful but opportunistic, attached to another while remaining an object of lust.

The crime influences don't stop Bloch from taking things to an interesting place in the cosmic realm however. It's eerie and effective, appropriately mythos yet surprising and extreme.

It may be my favorite of Bloch's stories, as intriguing as "The Shambler from the Stars," "The Shadow from the Steeple" and "Notebook found in a Deserted House."

It's a long read, definitely worth seeking out.

Quoth the Raven Interview

Note: Tiffany Michelle Brown, who's also a contributor to Quoth the Raven, a contemporary reimagining of the works of Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Lyn Worthen, conducted this interview with me a while back. It had a lot of fun questions and brought back memories of my dad, so I thought I'd share it here.   


The Quoth the Raven anthology by Camden Park Press celebrates the eerie and influential legacy of Edgar Allan Poe. What is it about Edgar Allan Poe’s work that speaks to you (perhaps from the grave)? 

I think Poe strikes me on two levels. The full scope of his work conveys a mood. It captures the essence of shadow, the dark, grim recesses of the world and the psyche. I was telling someone else that when I was very young, four or five, my dad read me “The Raven.” I didn’t fully understand it, but I picked up enough to be terrified by the pervasive presence plaguing the narrator. That dark tone reverberates through all of Poe’s work in a remarkable way. I guess that’s the visceral impact. Knowing of Poe’s life and challenges, I think, strikes the rational mind. It’s fascinating to see the torments and trials filtered through his artist’s thinking. It’s a glimpse of literary alchemy, and it generates appreciation and sympathy at the same time. What a brilliant and tormented artist.

Pick three adjectives to describe the story/poem you wrote for the Quoth the Raven anthology.

Human. Dark. Infinite. I know those aren’t all labeled adjectives in the dictionary, but if you use them like this, they modify: A human story. A dark story. An infinite story.

Imagine you’re in an old-timey elevator, a rickety one that boasts a well-worn, rusty cage. There’s a man in all black in the elevator with you, and he asks what your story/poem is about. What do you tell him? 

It’s the story of a man who think’s he’s average and ordinary, but actions are swirling around him that will drive him to extraordinary measures using the tools he has at hand, the tools of which he's a master. Choices reveal an almost calm and unexpected cunning and suggest he may be tapping into the very darkest part of his own soul and some collective soul as well. Whew, how’s that? I think that’s something a man all in black in an elevator might relate to.

Okay, I’m continuing with this scenario thing. It’s 1849, and you’re at a gathering of literature lovers, a salon, if you will. Across the room, you spy Edgar Allan Poe, and you simply must go over to him to compliment his work. What is the story or poem of his that you laud to excess? And why? 

I have a second to think, right? I’d be very prone to babble, because I can imagine the look I’d get back from Poe as I touch his shoulder and interrupt his thoughts. I think I’d babble also because there are so many stories and poems that come to mind and possibly I might say something goofy like: Do you know your name is also the first three letters of poem? Oh, you’ve heard that? With a moment to compose myself, I’d settle on mentioning “The Cask of Amontillado,” which is the antecedent for my Quoth the Raven story “A Cooler of Craft Brew.” I encountered it first in high school, and it’s the first Poe story I approached on that visceral and intellectal level at once, and having approached it again, I see the depth of its horror even more in its concise length and the brilliance of its execution as well. There are elegant, grim choices that really set its hook deep, perhaps more so a few seconds after the last words are read.

As a writer, what do you think are the most important elements of dark fiction?

Stephen King writes of what he calls “The Terror” in Danse Macabre, kind of the ultimate level of horror fiction and impact. We feel a breath, turn but there’s nothing there, as he puts it. I think that level really involves suggestion and providing a reader’s imagination just enough to work with. It’s about dropping a hint that invites visualization and contemplation. H.P. Lovecraft was an afficianado of Poe. I think he saw and distilled some of that dark essence from Poe’s work. Shocks are good. Shocks are punctuation points that throw us off balance, but ultimately, forcing the mind and imagination to work and keep working are where dark fiction is at its most powerful.

Ray Bradbury does it in “The October Game.” He doesn’t focus directly on gore. He provides building blocks so that we have an impression of something happening in the dark, then literally he leaves us to look on the horrible scene in the light with the story’s very last line. In a bit of rare restraint, because it stems from Bradbury’s pen, I suppose, the EC Comics adaptation of that story from the fifties gets it right. We’re left with a final panel of shocked faces instead of a typical EC final panel, and that gives us something we can’t escape by closing our eyes. We know what they’re seeing. We’re imagining it. It’s like Bradbury’s channeled the old Zen maneuver: “Whatever you do, don’t think of a pink elephant.”

As a reader, why are you attracted to dark fiction? Why do you think we like to read about the things that terrify us?

I think it’s because my father scarred me by reading me Edgar Alan Poe when I was four. But seriously folks, Kafka said we should read stories that wound and stab us and that if the story doesn’t break through the ice within us or deliver a blow to the head that wakes us up, why are we bothering? Many meditations about conflict and catharsis have been written as well. Deep down, I think there’s a logic to dark fiction and that resonates and satisfies us. It kind of offers a capsule of a bigger, messy, complicated world, a snapshot of a dark moment we can contemplate and from which we stand to glean some understanding.

What’s a story or poem – by any author – that has truly creeped you out (in the best way possible, of course)? What was it about that particular story that just got to you?

Wow, I guess, top of my head, it’s “The Raven” that I mentioned earlier. It put me in that lonely, isolated room with the narrator, and in that isolation and darkness when the tapping begins so does the terror. It’s so pure and basic, and it’s with me years and years and years later.

Who are some of your literary inspirations?

Poe really is an early one. I guess, at least when I was a young person, he was a staple for parents and educators. We had a collection from Whitman, the publisher that did all the TV tie-ins when I was a kid and offered Trixie Belden and Tarzan and the like. Edgar Rice Burroughs thrilled me when I was a kid, the books and comic book adaptations that my father also read to me. This could be a long list, H.G. Wells, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Bloch. Later Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald. Lovecraft and Stephen King come a little later still. Ray Bradbury, August Derleth, Seabury Quinn, the Weird Tales writers who were collected in horror paperbacks when I was in junior high. Like everyone who puts pen to paper, I think there are countless influences.

I’ve always loved the dedication page to the novel Logan’s Run that touches on everything from The Green Hornet to Dangerous Dan McGrew. So, that.

What are you currently working on right now?

I’ve been working on a New Orleans noir novel for a while. It’s called Fool’s Run. I’ve finished a draft, done the heavy lifting, so I’m letting it sit a bit. I think if you do that, then you can delve back into a work and see if it really says what you thought you were saying. I picked up the notion of something growing cold to the author’s eye from an online conversation with thriller author Joseph Finder, so I should acknowledge that. I like to say at the moment I’m on a bit of a vacation as well, writing short stories such as “A Cooler of Craft Brew.” Short fiction’s fun and statisfying. I get back to short stories whenever I can.

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - The D.A. Goes to Trial

Erle Stanley Gardner's best known for his defense attorney detective Perry Mason, but he wrote a few books about young district attorney Doug Selby, who deals with murder cases and the politics surrounding his job. 

The late Jim Hutton played Selby in a TV movie, They Call It Murder. Ed Asner and Leslie Nielsen also appeared. I watched it when it aired back in the day when my old man worked late and I hung out in the living room waiting for him to come home. Didn't know the character history nor of the Perry Mason-tie at the time. Hutton played detective Ellery Queen later in an NBC series that lasted a season. His son, Timothy, would later play Archie Goodwin in the wonderful and sadly only two-season A&E series A Nero Wolfe Mystery.