James Reese & the Harlem Hellfighters
What to do with an entire National Guard Regiment of Black soldiers from Harlem in WWI? Loan them to the French. The Harlem Hellfighters were born.
New Release, Short Horror Story: Texting While Driving
I have a new horror short story out! It was originally published in my newsletter as part of a “How to Write a Short Horror Story” article, which is now posted on my other blog, Writing Craft. Driving halfway across the country, somewhere north of New Orleans, bored, radio dead, and your passenger asleep. The …
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Review: The Angel of Crows by Katherine Addison
The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison My rating: 4 of 5 stars Sherlock is an angel, not fallen, definitely not fallen, in a London where a wide variety of supernatural elements exist. The Angel of Crows is a collection of intertwined episodes, which is similar to a collection of short stories, yet structured …
Flash Fiction: The Future of Birth Control
It’s a perfectly normal day when I decide that it’s time to go to the coffee shop down the street and end it. The skies are blue, blue with a slight tinge of purple, blue so clear that it feel like living inside a marble. The cloud overhead is white and as soft as a puff of cotton stuffing. I walk through the iron front gate, which is pulled back during business hours, into the courtyard. I walk past the juice shop to the right—bee pollen, vegan cheese, poblano avocado dressing—to get to the coffee shop. The courtyard is paved with bricks in a basketweave pattern. The umbrellas are open, the mismatched patio tables and chairs set out, but there aren’t many people here yet. It’s four o’clock on a Friday and some goth is humming over the stereo, a mournful tune backed by a drum machine. The rainbow flags are out—we still celebrate Pride month here. Palm leaves rustle and birds chirp and squeak.
New Release: A Shrewdness of Swindlers
An old world dies during WWI and another rises in the Roaring Twenties: cruel, sharp, glittering. Magic. 10 tales of fantasy in the Jazz age. A SHREWDNESS OF SWINDLERS Available at all the finer ebook distributors (and a few scummy ones, too)! (That is, no longer as part of the Storybundle.) Now, with short story …
The Grandiosity of the Grandhotel Pupp
The history of the Grandhotel Pupp has stretched from the dawn of the eighteenth century all the way to modern times. You can see it in movies symbolizing the epitome of wealth and elegance; it is one of the inspirations for the movie The Grand Budapest Hotel. The James Bond movie Casino Royale was filmed there, as was the Queen …
Heinlein’s 5 Rules of Business
(Please note! This is a fictional list! Heinlein didn’t write five rules of business–see explanation below. You can find Heinlein’s actual five rules of writing here: www.sfwriter.com/ow05.htm.) Robert A. Heinlein is one of my science fiction “mentors,” a writer I never met but whose works influenced me greatly as a reader and budding writer. I …
The Saga of the Spice Cabinet
The Saga of the Spice Cabinet: In throwing out my expired spices, I disovered what truly mattered to me: garlic!
Five Excellent Weird Fiction Novels in Translation
Tired of reading the same plots by the same types of authors? Need a palate cleanser? Want to interject new life into a reading group that thinks The Help is a controversial title? Looking for an author that can really describe the unsettling, creepy feeling of not knowing whether the people around you mean well …
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New Short Horror Story Release: Trick or Treat (Tenebrosities #4)
Jake’s brother died a month ago, in Afghanistan. Now something that looks a lot like Jake has come back to haunt him. A creepy horror tale about what finds us when we’re vulnerable, on Halloween.