Pandemic Walks Part 3 - Another Walk at York River State Park - Williamsburg, VA

We took another walk at York River State Park. After just a few weeks, the marsh grass had browned and more leaves had fallen though a good bit of color was still on display, and the sky was very blue on a crisp November morning.

Open air at any time during a pandemic is welcome.

I don't know that I have profound thoughts beyond that, but it's good to remember what's just a short distance from home.

SEE ALSO: PANDEMIC WALKS PART 2

Click for larger images.

New Short Story - The Fury - in Sanitarium Magazine No. 3

 

I was excited to receive a contributor's ebook version of the new issue of Sanitarium this morning. It includes a short story from me called "The Fury."

It's a bit of literary horror fiction, I suppose, as well as a tale of suburban revenge. Neighbors can drive each other crazy after all, and frustrations of the job can carry over to other areas of life. 

The mag's actually a hefty volume with 28 authors included, so it's really like purchasing an anthology. Like most books, it would make a great gift idea too!

Order now!

New Resident - Miss Zoë Moonshadow - Russian blue mix

My wife Christine began studying the Heritage Humane Society's website a short time back, feeling possibly ready to adopt a cat again. 

Oliver Littlechap passed away a year ago. Some of the pain of loss remains, and his absence has been apparent during quarantine. The empty spot, where he sat at our back door looking out, has been a regular and the most-obvious reminder. 

But we've reached a point of mostly thinking back fondly, warmed by his memory and the joy he brought. He was a gentle, good natured soul even though he was a fierce hunter when we lived at the edge of a wooded area in Texas.

We've always been happy too for the time he got to be the center of attention after cats older than he and higher in the pecking order of cat society crossed the rainbow bridge. 

As she perused cats, seeking the temperament that might match our own--and be right for our furniture--Christine realized it was proving a bit difficult and that Oliver and Ashley, the last two arrivals in our household found us. 

Oliver ambled about with other neighborhood cats until he discovered our back patio might be a spot for an occasional treat and Ashley was blown into our yard in Texas by the outer bands of Hurricane Rita. He was hungry and plagued by earmites, blind in one eye, and easily a good fit in our household once he decided he'd make us his own.

Christine weighs decisions with extraordinary care anyway, so candidates in search of a forever home required deep contemplation.

SEE ALSO: DIAL M FOR MONTY

In a field of much need, with many deserving, something about a small Russian blue mix kept drawing her attention. Wide-eyed and a bit nervous in photos, reports indicated the 5-year-old dubbed Keesu was sweet natured but reeling from her experiences and life in a kennel.

She'd belonged to one service member who'd re-homed her when a deployment notice demanded it. Keesu wound up with the humane society because her new owner was deployed as well without the time for finding yet another home.

Keesu had done well with other pets though she had been terrified by larger dogs. 

Christine and I donned our masks and went for a visit. The kitty was in a cat bed inside her cage, draped with a comforting curtain. The staff had been doing all they could to keep her calm and comfortable.

She emerged slowly but greeted us pleasantly and rubbed her head against her bed much the way our tom Monty greeted us on a pound visit in Central Louisiana. 

She won our hearts in an instant, but we had learned on the way in someone previously had expressed an interest. Protocol dictated 24 hours for a decision. I hesitated to get too attached to her on our visit, given our relationship might be brief.

We went back home, and I felt more anxiety than I had expected. A few minutes with her had been all it took to confirm Christine's instincts in reading about her and studying her website pictures. 

Happily the call came early the next morning, a Sunday, and we made arrangements to pick her up that afternoon.

She spent time under our bed once we brought her home, a little longer not venturing from the bedroom, taking her meals in the master bathroom. 

But gradually she began to spend more time with us and travel a little further and a little further outward until she made a trip downstairs to visit Christine at her makeshift, quarantine-time office on our dining room table.

SEE ALSO: MONTY MEETS BIGFOOT

In a little more time, her name emerged. We suspected Keesu might have come from a figure in Elder Scrolls, a visual match for her grey features. But she wasn't responding to it. Not always an indication in cat life, but a fresh start seemed warranted and the humane society staff had thought a new name should be fine.

Something elegant and maybe Jazz Age, Christine suggested, but Zelda Fitzgerald's tragic end dissuaded that first notion. Zoë--"life" in Greek--slowly processed as a possibility. 

Life seemed a good and appropriately ironic fit for a cat of ash color in the midst of a pandemic, a burst of new energy in our world, a more permanent home for the new feline friend. 

And Cat Stevens tunes hit the soundtrack of our lives, triggered by a cover version of "The Wind" on the Netflix series Grace and Frankie. 

Moonshadow followed and became an earworm, and obviously the surname of a grey "leapin' and hoppin'" new resident, a new wind for the soul. 

Miss Zoë Moonshadow.

 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - The Most Deadly Game Novelization - The Corpse in the Castle

When I was very, very young my mom discovered a series airing late on Saturday nights, and by late I mean probably 9 p.m. our time. That was of course, The Most Deadly Game.

It starred George Maharis and Yvette Mimieux. And my mom recognized Ralph Bellamy right away. 

The first episode she watched may have been the first broadcast. It involved the series team of criminologists investigating a string of murders with a strange murder weapon. (Spoiler warning, it was a sling shot.)

We watched after that until the show's brief run was over. "Murder is the most deadly game and these criminologists play it." 

I remember the witch-themed episode best because it scared me at the time.

Two novelizations were published, the second after the series went off, I believe. Surviving episodes can be found at Modcinema.  Sadly the witch and slingshot episodes don't seem to be around any more. 

SEE ALSO: NEW PEOPLE TV TIE IN NOVELIZATION 

Yes, Fool's Run Author Copies Arrived

 Unboxing is always an exciting time. UPS moved them fast. 

Flash of Fear - Come Sunday - Crime/Horror Flash Fiction Reading

Here's an all new Flash of Fear installment, "Come Sunday, recorded to coincide with the release of Fool's Run. 

This little tale set in the Great Depression was written for a crime fiction flash contest, and I later wrote a 10-minute play that brought in a couple more characters. I think it works best with just the narrator telling her story.

SEE ALSO: FOOLISH FIRE

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - Ed Noon and The Flower-Covered Corpse

I discovered Michael Avallone and his detective hero Ed Noon via a Writer's Digest cassette on mystery writing.  I've mentioned that often in interviews and online forums.

I began to watch for his titles, especially those about his hero Ed Noon. The sixties entries from the series were the most plentiful at the used book shops around my home town. I had to do mail order for the first book, The Tall Dolores. 

I believe this was the first I picked up, though I found one of the Spy to Mr. President Noon titles as well. 

SEE ALSO: Biblioholic's Bookshelf - The Doomsday Bag

This one, The Flower-covered Corpse is copyright 1969 and is from the Curtis Books run of Noon titles with the Gil Gerard-lookalike model as Noon. 

 

SEE ALSO: Biblioholic's Bookshelf - The Tall Dolores, Fifties Private Eye
 

A little more on Avallone and Noon

A Vintage Ad That Looks About Right in Coronavirus Pandemic Times

Not sure now where I ran across this the other day, but I snagged it because at the very least it looks like a prophetic depiction of QVC and HSN shopping if not quite Zoom meetings and Face Time calls. the gist of the message was that someday you'd be able to shop by TV. "All kinds of exciting new electric appliances are just around the corner. 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf: Malko No. 1

Billed at times as "The French James Bond," Prince Malko Linge starred in the SAS (French for His Serene Highness) series created by Gérard de Villiers.  

To my knowledge, only a handful have been translated into English. Those were published by Pinnacle in it's early incarnation that focused heavily on men's adventure series. 

6 of My Favorite Hardboiled Detective Tales

 I've often mentioned in online musings that I discovered the detective novel via a bit of young reader's naïveté. In the wake of Chinatown, a host of new detective films rolled out of Hollywood. I was a little young to catch them in theaters, but movie-tie-in editions or re-issues led to my dipping a toe into the water of the hardboiled reading universe, starting probably with Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely. 

I ran across Lew Archer around then as well in a combo of The Drowning Pool movie tie-in and the TV movie based on The Underground Man, and those books tipped the line of dominoes.

Since I'm blogging again with a little more frequency, I thought I'd throw out a few of my favorite hardboiled novels, maybe obvious or maybe not. I'm working from memory, so my fondness above all is what prevails here. This is by no means a definitive list nor is it a complete list. 

1. The Chill by Ross Macdonald

Far from my first Lew Archer, it remains a standout for me. It's post Galton Case and Macdonald's transitional period where his style and psychological themes matured as he dealt with the pain of his troubled daughter's struggles. 

As a younger reader, it struck me most for it's pace and the momentous twist that often gets a classical reading by scholars. It's the tale of a
young bride who takes a powder on her honeymoon. Lew's hired to find her and warns us early he should have walked away from the job offer. He's soon embroiled with university professors, a murder, possibly false testimony and a great deal more. All of the Archers are slim books. This one reads like lightning yet never seems rushed or condensed. 

I guess it's special too because my old man read it first and liked it a great deal. We clashed on some topics but rarely books, and he read much of my collection back in the day and liked a good detective tale himself. 

SEE ALSO: ARCHER AT THE BEACH

2. “The Gutting of Couffignal” by Dashiell Hammett

I found The Maltese Falcon somewhere in the mix of paperbacks at Waldenbooks when browsing other
titles. I was gaining a knowledge of the hardboiled school when I gave it a try. I didn't like Sam Spade and The Continental Op--who I met first in The Dain Curse--quite as much as I did Chandler's Marlowe as my tastes were developing. I sensed what I've come to call the romance of Chandler. Granted he had crime in the hands of criminals and all that, but the style, the humor, and elements that would shape film noir appealed to me more. Hammett seemed a little more pragmatic, at least as I thought of it. However, I found a battered used 1967 Dell paperback copy of The Big Knockover at my favorite used book shop, The Book Nook in Alexandria, LA. 

I know it's a story and not a novel, but many of Hammett's novels, like Chandler's, took shape in novellas. (Chandler, of course, called it cannibalizing.) It's kind of Die Hard on a private island. This one's an island of the very rich. The Op is on hand to guard wedding presents when the only bridge to the island's dynamited and a band of robbers with machine guns mounted on a car rush in on a raid. The Op has to take them on, and he's up for the job. It's a men's adventure tale. There's a mystery twist, of course, but I read it as action first as a kid. It took time for it to grow on me in other ways. It was really in re-reading with more mature and sophisticated eyes that I've come to see the magic Hammett had going on and to appreciate the Hammett style. 

SEE ALSO: Where Bush Street Roofed Stockton

3. The Judas Goat by Robert B. Parker  

A review of this one, the fifth book in Parker's Spenser series, popped up in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine as I was finding my way in understanding the mystery genre. 

Spenser had been around for a while by then and his friend Hawk had been introduced as a respected adversary in earlier books. Spenser doesn't take assassination cases, the review noted, but he is up for a bounty hunt. Hired to track down a group of terrorists responsible for the death of a client's loved one, Spenser does some globe hopping with Hawk helping out. The humor is powerful in this one, and the action is plentiful and brutal at times. EQMM reviews used to grouse about a lack of detection in Spenser books, but I always found them engaging with or without a puzzle, and this one was a great introduction. Everything culminates in a brutal battle with bad guys in an Olympic village.

5. When the Sacred Ginmill Closes by Lawrence Block

I discovered Matthew Scudder by way of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and the fabulous story

"A Candle for the Bag Lady." He's an ex-cop, driven to "serious drinking" by the accidental death of a child as he stopped a holdup and one of his bullets ricocheted. Via the gateway of that story and Block's column in Writer's Digest, I moved on to the early Scudder novels, and back to the novella "Out the Window" via a second hadn AHMM. After a significant character arc culminated in Eight Million Ways to Die (1982), the series paused until the prequel, Ginmill (1986) that grew out of the novella "By the Dawn's Early Light" in the collection The Eyes Have It edited by Bob Randisi. 

It's set in Scudder's serious drinking days. There's a holdup at an after hours club, and Scudder's pressed into tracking down the perpetrators while simultaneously working on other cases. Dave Van Ronk's song "Last Call" that provides the book's title, is a core element as Scudder contemplates his existence and his drinking life. Happily that's readily found online these days. You can listen along with Matt as he experiences the song's spiritual resonance.

SEE ALSO: THE BOOKTAKER: A NAMELESS DETECTIVE STORY

6. S is for Silence by Sue Grafton

When I was teaching horror, mystery and suspense in the classroom, I could never get through a lecture slide about Sue Grafton without tearing up as I read her daughter Jamie Clark's remark upon her mom's death and the culmination of the alphabet detective series about female P.I. Kinsey Millhone: 

“...out of the deep abiding love and respect for our dear sweet Sue, as far as we in the family are concerned, the alphabet now ends at Y.”

Z is for Zero was never to be, but the twenty-five book series documenting Kinsey's adventures is quite substantial. For me, S, No. 19, is a standout. 

It's a character study with Kinsey's 1987 case harkening back, via alternating chapters, to the 1953 disappearance of a woman named Violet Sullivan. Flashbacks paint a picture of the fifties world and a snapshot of Violet's rebellious nature with a new car a pivotal element. It's a little different and definitely a great glimpse of Kinsey at work. 

Again, those are just a few, but they, for me, are great excursions into the hardboiled world. 

For more hardboiled fiction thoughts, visit my guest post over at Charles Gramlich's Razored Zen. 

In the Vicinity

 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf Special - Diamonds are Forever RIP Sean Connery

Very sad to read this morning of Sean Connery's passing. I'd thought of him recently, perhaps because of  the not-much-loved League of Extraordinary Gentlemen cropping up on Amazon Prime. 

My first Bond in the theater was The Man With the Golden Gun, for my friend and I, a fun, glossy action extravaganza despite how it's viewed these days, or by critics then.

My first Bond book however was the tie-in edition of Diamonds Are Forever, Connery's return to the role. Ads on TV and even on the radio made it sound thrilling. 

My old man bought me the novel off the drug store paperback rack when it cropped up and that introduced me to Ian Fleming's world. Combined with the radio ads, the cover helped me understand the disparity between spelling and pronunciation of Sean. 

RIP, Mr. Connery. You and Bond are forever. 

Goodreads Giveaway - Three Fool's Run Signed Print Editions!

 

Just a brief note here. It's less than a month until the release of Fool's Run, my new detective thriller. 

Leading up to the release from Crossroad Press's Gordian Knot imprint, a Fool's Run Giveaway is underway through November 21, 2020 on Goodreads. 

SEE ALSO: Fool's Run Cover Reveal on YouTube

You can enter to win one of three signed print copies. 

Publisher's Weekly said: "This thriller-cum-caper will keep readers eagerly turning the pages."

A NetGalley reviewer just gave it five stars saying: "I like this book because it's well written in a tough language, the pace is very good, there are twists and thrills, and it's fast and easy to read."

Another NetGalley reviewer said: "Fool's Run by Sidney Williams is a superb read! It is an engrossing page turner of a read well worth the time spent."

Read all the NetGalley Reviews!

ENTER THE GIVEAWAY NOW!

Pandemic - The Walks Part 2

 

My wife Christine and I moved to Williamsburg in 2019. We'd planned to travel more in the state this year. Those plans got a little upended. 

SEE ALSO: PANDEMIC - THE MEALS

But since outdoor activities reduce stress and are reduced-risk, we've been trying to do a little more in that vein. 

The other morning we put on our hiking shoes and headed out to York River State Park. It's not too far, temps are dropping just a tad, and it was a road not yet taken. 

It's a road with a great deal of variety, especially since it borders the York River, as the name suggests. 

The river's history is ancient and fossils, shells and shark teeth can be found on the beaches, along with other interesting fare including periwinkle snails amid the marsh grass.

SEE ALSO: PANDEMIC - THE WALKS

It brings that sense of awe that comes with the brush of an ecosystem that's alive yet linked to thousands of years of befores.

In the autumn it makes you think of the cycle of decay and renewal. 

And the memories of things lost and yet alive within us. 

 

And a reminder that as winters approach, there is something beyond the cold, something to wait for and reach toward. 

Pandemic - The Walks

When my wife, Christine, visited Williamsburg in the fall of 2018 for a job interview, she found the area bathed in an array of colors we hadn't seen for a while in Florida. It was an array we actually seldom saw in Louisiana or Texas. 

My point of comparison, at least from what she described, was a view of the area around Nashville in the late '80s when I flew in there for what was then the World Horror Convention. The view as the plane dipped toward the airport was amazing. 

A late summer dry spell and a few other factors delayed the change of leaves last fall, so we saw some color change but not as much as either of us had hoped for.

Late summer 2020 proved rainy. I guess the year has that going for it at least, and in these pandemic times, outdoor activities, at least, can be enjoyed without as much risk or worry as a trip to the grocer.

SEE ALSO: PANDEMIC - THE MEALS

In just a few paces from our place in the New Town area, I've been a bit amazed by the display, even on a foggy morning.  

It's a mix of red's golds and oranges I wasn't expecting. 

Did I mention the orange?

Reds were actually the first change I noticed driving by. They are reds so red. 

And the gold and brown...

It's been pretty astounding to step out the door and walk a few paces. 

It's soul-restoring in a bleak year. We've been through a lot. Am I optimistic yet of a time beyond this moment? Maybe not yet optimistic, but hopeful. 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - Night Prayers

Jove, 1986

 

Pandemic - The Meals

Christine watched a New York Times webinar last night called Breaking the Bubble: Staying Creative and Connected  while working from home. It was interesting and meaningful, and part of the emphasis was on meal planning. 

I realized Christine and I are fortunate and already quite a few pluses in our favor when quarantine kicked in. 

Ritualistic

I'm pretty disciplined, perhaps ritualistic. I've worked from home a great deal for eight years. I taught for seven online and in the classroom. The past year I've been writing and teaching exclusively online. 

At my old school, we were allowed to do most of our grading from home. Reading creative work, I had fewer distractions except for my cats when they were alive. I learned to work with a laptop high on my abdomen and a cat in my lap.

SEE ALSO: THE MY GARDEN SANDWICH

The host of the webinar noted she often debated whether to spend 45 minutes in meal prep just for herself, but long ago I came to find some joy in the process. 

It was always a nice break from a full day of grading to pause for a sandwich. Not to mention the fact I learned to make deli quality. 

A reuben with a dash of Russian dressing I always kept on hand. Italian sandwiches with pepperoni and cheese melted to just to bubbly with just a touch of brown. Pastrami on rye. It was always a little hard to find sandwich-sliced rye like I wanted, but otherwise those were wonderful.

International

I'm from the South, but I guess I got a little international with my lunches, and if I shifted to salads, I'd craft quite a Caesar, sometimes Greek for variety.

Chopping cucumbers, slicing purple onions and tossing in a fall-colors blend of little tomatoes I could get from my grocer made it a bit of creative effort.

I became the dinner chef as well because Christine worked in an office. It was not far away, but the commute took a while in 5 p.m. Orlando traffic. I got pretty good at stir fry, baked chicken and fish.

That all continued when we moved to Williamsburg. Nowadays with Christine at home, we bump into each other in the kitchen from time to time, but we get by.

I never saw myself as training for quarantine times. It was just a bit of ritual as I mentioned. I tend to keep to a schedule in my head. That's all mixed with meditation, I suppose. 

That made me realize I have a lot of rituals. The morning coffee, the Saturday dinner, the writing/grading balance. Reading time. A TV break. 

I guess that's helped me keep on track a bit in these very dark times. I didn't know I was trying. 

May it help you too, if it's useful.

SEE ALSO: FOOD FOR THE SOUL

 

Validation

I always sweat a bit about reviews, and when Crossroad Press said they'd be sending a review copy of Fool's Run to Publisher's Weekly, I perspired a bit more. It's a natural move, but you never know what's going to be said.  

READ THE PW REVIEW

A friend who's also a publisher told me not to worry. Bad reviews can still mean sales and discovery by new readers. What a critic didn't like might be what a reader of the review is looking for. 

Brutal opening in a horror tale? Sign me up!

I guess all the sweating made the positive review all the more meaningful. 

Writing a novel is a bit like putting a puzzle together, and it's also about decisions and judgment. 

Once upon a time, I didn't think I had anything new to offer the detective novel. I wrote three trunk private eye novels starting in college and just after I started as a reporter. 

They primed me for writing the first novel that sold, Azarius, but I didn't feel I had anything new to offer the private eye tale. I put my Benjamin Ross stories away and moved on.

ADD FOOL'S RUN ON GOODREADS

I returned to the form while teaching a mystery writing class and studying and codifying the mystery in its various forms for students. 

Si Reardon, hero of Fool's Run, took shape as a flawed former police officer on a dark mission. I didn't want him to simply go from one interview to another and piece a puzzle together.  I hoped to juggle the tropes of the mystery form a bit and swirl something a little different.

The reviewer from Publisher's Weekly seemed to get that. Someone will come along who doesn't love it, but so it goes. 

Pre-order the novel 

Fools Run Cover Reveal - A Look at the First Si Reardon Novel

Cover Reveal: Fool's Run - A Si Reardon Novel

 Coming November 24, 2020

Pre-order now on Amazon

#coverreveal #cover #thriller #mystery

Biblioholic's Bookshelf: The Sorceress by

Haven't done one of these in a while. Manor Books, 1977. 

Inside, other books by the same author are noted: Mondo No. 1, 2 and 3 and Dachau Treasure. 

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."