A truckload of treats and not too many tricks

I had every intention of posting a Halloween entry, but October was a crazy month, which extended into early November:

- Wicked Haunted, from New England Horror Writers Press, which features my story "The Stranding Off Schoodic Point" went live in October and ended its first day of sales as the number one horror anthology on Kindle, edging ahead of a collection by Stephen King. How is that possible?? Granted, I do know the answer - lots of marketing, lots of promotion on Twitter and Facebook, lots of curious reader - but I'm still blown away by this result.

- The NEHW's book sale at Haunted Happenings in witch-haunted Arkham - I mean, Salem, MA. We officially launched Wicked Haunted in carbon-space on the last weekend in October, and this year, I got to be one of the people signing copies of our haunting ghost anthology, aka, playing "Pass the Book", as I playfully called it.

- The Tewksbury Public Library hosted their annual Authors' Fair on November 4th, with a group of authors from Tewksbury and Wilmington, among them ...me! Since I'd gotten the nudge to get into publishing at this very library where I'd met the New England Horror Writers, I felt as though I'd come full circle. I got the chance to chat with some curious local folks who'd stopped by to check out the selection, sold and signed several copies of my books, and the library bought copies of two of my anthologies, to be added to a collection of the works of local authors. And I get to be one of those authors!


A view of my table, featuring my books for sale, also my swag which included my shiny new bookmarks and a handout of my flash fic "Pumpkin Patrol", which I'd previously posted on Sweek.com for a Halloween contest.

- Somewhat tricky news: for personal reasons, I had to withdraw two Lovecraft-inspired stories, "Horror on the Buffet Table" and "Something Eating At You" from being published. I'm looking around for other potential markets, with some luck, though I could use some prayers and nudges as to places to send them, to find them homes on the printed page (though I may go the self-publishing route some time next year).

- Bite Me, from Macabre Maine, dropped just after Halloween, fitting since a windstorm delayed trick or treating in my town: this toothsome book includes vampire themed poetry and fiction, including my "Food Substitution", a tale I wrote when I wanted to put vampires in a grocery store.

- Deadman's Tome bought my "The Horror In the Stable" for their Cthulhu Christmas anthology, slated to drop in December, just in time for the holidays. In this tale, Herbert West, he of reanimating things fame, learns the true meaning of Christmas. No really, he tries to give some Dickensian urchins a better Christmas than being dead in a stable. Or something.

- And at the moment, I am drafting rewrites on a Christmas tale involving the Yule Cat, on top of writing two stories during the start of this busy holiday season: one is a kind of retelling of Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market, set in a modern coffee shop, while the other is a reverse Beauty and the Beast, in which a young socialite in the Gilded Age marries a man she thinks is a prince, but who may be a beast instead. Any and all thoughts and prayers and shouting at the universe of all kinds sure could help at a time like this (as well as reading and reviewing my fiction that's in print).