Ghost Anthology Shattered Veil Accepts Pre-Owned Jeans; Madness Goes To Water Turns Red

Strange is the writing world in these coronavirus stay-at-home days.  Often on this blog the action comes mainly toward the ends and beginnings of months.  It makes some sense, deadlines are often at ends of months for us, the writers, too, so why not let editors’/publishers’ schedules have similar times for sending acceptances, contracts, et al.?  Except that for this month things had to be different.

And so, after gaps of a week or more, we’ve had writing news the first three days of this week, just about exactly mid-month, on the 14th, 15th, and 16th of June.  And now, with only a single day skipped, on Thursday the 18th a “double-header” from The Great Void Books.  The Great Void, we might recall, is the publisher of my novelette “The Garden” in their speculative fiction anthology UNREAL (see March 28, 22, et al.).  But other genre-centric anthologies have been in the works as well and today brought not one, but two stories ac[image error]cepted for their ghost tales and crime books, respectively.

First, then, what was for me a sort of experimental story, using multiple points of view, “Pre-Owned Jeans” (originally published in 2010 in L&L Dreamspell’s DREAMSPELL NIGHTMARES), has been taken for SHATTERED VEIL, for ghost stories, of which Editor Aditya Deshmukh emailed this morning:  This is such a beautiful story.  The intriguing shop, the haunted clothes, and the just ending.  The two deciding to see each other at the end makes it even more beautiful. I ‘m glad to inform you that the story has been accepted.  Then second a novelette, “Madness” (originally from THE WITCHING HOUR by Silver Lake Publishing, 2001), a cross-genre tale of mean streets (and offices) in the city with intimations of witchcraft — or is it? — will be coming out in The Great Void’s crime fiction anthology, WATER TURNS RED, for which Aditya said later this afternoon:  The story kept me hooked until the end. Glad to inform you that I’m accepting the story for the anthology.

And there we are, to which Aditya has added for both:  More details soon.

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Then one more tidbit, discovered today, the aforementioned UNREAL with my biochemical novelette “The Garden” is available on Amazon now, as of June 15, in both paperback and Kindle editions. For more details on that one, press here.