New Collection Preliminary TOC

As I posted yesterday, I’m putting together my fourth collection of short stories. (I don’t count Dead Clown Barbecue Expansion Pack.)

The story selection process is generally pretty easy. With my first collection, Gleefully Macabre Tales, I had to decide if there were some stories that I should just let go, and stories like “A Tender Campfire Tale” and “Paybacks Are Hell” ended up not making the cut.

With the fourth (currently untitled) collection, it mostly just came down to “What stories have I written since Everything Has Teeth that my contracts allow me to reprint now?” With some exceptions…

No newsletter stories are included. Every issue of my newsletter has a brand-new flash fiction story, and I’ve got 31 of ’em so far. I feel like those will be better suited to an “all flash fiction” collection at some point.Original stories for charity anthologies are not included. Stories like “Hologram Skull Cover” and “Death to Trees” (and upcoming tales like “The Deadliest Review” and “Scares That Scare”) were specifically written for the charity projects and I don’t include them in my collections. “Coping Mechanism” from Into Painfreak. I wanted to include this story, but upon re-reading it I decided that it doesn’t stand on its own outside of the context of the shared world anthology.

So what IS included? I’m going to add at least a couple of brand-new unpublished stories to this, but right now it’s…

Good Deeds

Captain Pistachio’s Charming Rampage

The Last Thing You Want To Be

Lab Experiment Turf War

No Tomato

Clyde the Necrophile

Don’t Make Fun of the Haunted House

Ivan’s Night Out

Pointy Canes

Giant Mutant Cockroaches in the Old West Vs. Zombies

Outpouring

Faerie

Green Suits

The Fraud

Hostile

The Great Stone Face Vs. The Gargoyles

Parody

Awakening

Dismemberment Fraud

The Things Whittier Couldn’t Do

Beware! The! Beverage!

Rotten Eggs

Gave Up The Ghost

December Birthday

My Werewolf Neighbor