May Starts with Reprint Story Acceptance

Hark, the call:  It seems like everything’s finally settled down, fifty years into the twentieth century.  War is over.  The economy’s booming.  People are on a long exodus from the city.  It’s all settling.

But the occult lurks everywhere…

In sleepovers, as teenagers intone, “Light as a feather, stiff as a board.”  Or stare into the mirror, calling upon Mary.  They scream, convinced something looks back from inside the glass.[image error]

New music dominates the airwaves, discordant and wild.  They say it’s the devil’s music.

Strange lights dominate the sky.  Are they Russians?  Little Green Men?  Or something altogether stranger?

Perhaps things are not as settled as they feel. . .

So the job was to recall the 1950s with an occult flavor, the anthology to be called SOCKHOPS AND SEANCES.  Reprints would be okay.  It just so happened I had a story, “Bottles,” originally published in CROSSINGS (Double Dragon 2004; also reprinted in THE TEARS OF ISIS), set in 1958 Cambridge Massachusetts.  Historical accuracy would be insisted on (I lived in Cambridge from late 1959 to mid-1964).  But also with vampires, perhaps a bit chancy, or at least someone who believed in vampires combined with a period fear of Communism.  Still, why not, thought I?

And so today, May 1, International Labor Day, the reply came back from Editor Nicole Petit of publisher 18th Wall Productions:  Thank you so much for your submission and your patience as I deliberated on the stories sent in for SOCKHOPS AND SEANCES.  I am excited to tell you that we will be accepting “Bottles” into the anthology.

More to appear here as it becomes known.