Bottles, Sockhops Late Saturday P.M. Arrival

It came in the mailbox, a quite late arrival having been officially published last year in August.  That’s when the PDF copy arrived.  Ah, but this was one of those publishers that doesn’t give print authors’ copies as well, so I’d (blush) finally ordered a copy myself.  The anthology, from 18th Wall Productions, is SOCKHOPS & SEANCES (see September 28, August 14, et al.), and the story is “Bottles,” originally published in CROSSINGS (Double Dragon, 2004), a cross-genre anthology — in the case of “Bottles,” [image error]crime and horror — as well as reprinted in THE TEARS OF ISIS.  So what can one say?

The story, anyhow, is a favorite and one I didn’t appreciate fully until I was going through stories for TEARS (it had been rejected by ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S way back when, though I now realize possibly for being too cutting), the tale of a young Puerto Rican woman caught up in late 1950s anti-Communist fever.  With vampires.  But the thing is with the politics now, and “Bottles'” reminder of the underside of an earlier era, it struck me that it may be even more relevant in 2019-20 than it was even for 2013’s THE TEARS OF ISIS.

For those with a yen to see if America was great back then, you can find it on Amazon by pressing here.