The Importance of Anthologies

As I said in my last post, Mocha Memoirs newest anthology release is Ghosts, Gears, and Grimoires, a Steampunk horror collection. The new Sherlock Holmes anthology is currently in production. Last year, we produced Avast, Ye Airships! and An Improbable Truth: The Paranormal Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Past anthology offerings included In the Bloodstream and The Grotesquerie.

Why should you care?

Many reasons. First of all, an anthology is a brilliant way to see the work of many different authors for a substantially cheaper price than if you bought their longer works without knowing anything about them. Of course, we hope that you will want to see more of their writing, but if someone's style doesn't resonate with you, you have other stories to read.

Tying in with that, it is a great way to find new favorites. An anthology usually has a mix of authors--some you may follow regularly, and others you may never have heard of. With a small press, you are even more likely to find some unfamiliar names.

Anthologies usually have a unifying theme or subject matter, which means that you are going to be getting stories that all relate to something you are interested in. Like Airship pirates, or Sherlock Holmes. :)

It can be a lot of fun to collect the authors' autographs too--though sometimes a challenge, as we have many foreign contributors. Which is another benefit: you get to see varying perspectives when you have authors from around the world.

Finally, you don't have to invest a great deal of time all at once to reading it. With short stories from different authors, you can pick and choose the order to savor them depending on the time you have to devote to reading at the moment. Anthologies are great for Kindles and other readers when you might be stuck in a waiting room or a long line.

Search for anthologies on Amazon, and you will be amazed at the variety of offerings. Of course, some may be higher quality than others. In these fast-shifting days of publishing revision, there are many anthologies that have been cobbled together quickly--but even the worst that I have seen have a gem or two in them, and for a reasonable investment.

And Mocha Memoirs has treasure chests full of carefully-chosen gems for you to enjoy!

SUBMISSION CALL!!! Curious Incidents: More Improbable Adventures

Mocha Memoirs Press is pleased to announce that they will be publishing another Sherlock Holmes anthology with editor A.C. Thompson! So sharpen those pencils and get ready to write.

“The game is afoot!”

Welcome back to Baker Street! Holmes and Watson are there to greet you once more with amazing tales of murder, mayhem, and mystery with a supernatural twist. This time the great detective and his stalwart companion will venture into alternate universes, histories, and futures to solve puzzling cases of the paranormal beyond the bounds of imagination.

In Curious Incidents: More Improbable Adventures, I am looking for stories that diverge from the original canon setting of Victorian England. The adventures should be paranormal in nature, but the universe is completely open. In fact, stories set in the traditional Victorian will not be considered. Some examples of alternate settings might be: steampunk, weird west, distant future, space, ancient world (ok, so I’d just really like to see if someone could do it…), dystopian, American noir, or even modern times (BE CAREFUL WITH THIS. I CAN’T PUBLISH SHERLOCK BBC FANFICTION!).

Word of warning:  Sherlock is a beloved character with a very distinct voice and manner.  We want to be sure that we keep and/ or expand on those attributes that have made him a literary icon. However, I am very interested in seeing diverse characters in starring roles (gender, ethnicity, etc.). The entire original canon is available on Kindle for FREE.  Take advantage.

This time, I’m a little more flexible with genre. I am looking for stories that will fall into the speculative fiction genre and all its subspecies (horror, sci-fi, fantasy, steampunk, magical realism, gothic horror, etc.). I’m even being adventurous this time and allowing for a romantic element as long as you stay true to the character, but NO EROTICA (it’s not that kind of book). The important thing is--- it has to have a paranormal thread. These are CURIOUS INCIDENTS, not everyday occurrences.

Let your imaginations run wild and give me something I haven’t seen before!

Publication of CURIOUS INCIDENTS: MORE IMPROBABLE ADVENTURES will again be handled through Mocha Memoirs Press and therefore, all submissions are subject to their general guidelines which include, but are not limited to:  no bestiality, glorified rape, necrophilia, hate language, etc.  We are not seeking erotic stories for this anthology.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: October 14, 2016

Minimum word count:  4,000 not to exceed 8,000

Payment:  split royalties + 1 contributor copy.

General Mocha Memoirs Press Submission Guidelines:

·         Submit your work to animprobabletruth.mmp@gmail.com with “CURIOUS INCIDENTS” Sub: [Your Story Title]; [Your Name] in the subject line. Attach your story as a DOC or DOCX file. Submissions sent in the body of the email will not be read.  Stories should be in 12pt, Times New Roman font.  Please double space. Don’t forget to include a title page that includes all contact information.  

·         Include a brief cover letter in the body of your email stating your name, pen name (if using one), story title with word count, a brief (1 paragraph) synopsis, and bio.  

·         No simultaneous submissions, please. We ask that you do not submit a story to us and to another market at the same time.

·         Multiple submissions—sending more than one story for consideration—are okay. If sending more than one story, please send them in separate emails.

Writing Characters I Don't Like

I don't always like my characters.

Is that weird? I don't know how it is for other authors, but I tend to go where the story is, and sometimes this leads me to share headspace with some people who are just irritating or downright offensive. I'd like to think this helps me cultivate empathy, but it's also really, really annoying. It can also be difficult to try to wrap my mind around a viewpoint that's far, far removed from mine. If that's part of the story, though, that's my job, so I do my best and let the chips fall where they may.

The Other Man is a title near and dear to my heart, though I can't say I'm overly fond of Andrew, the main character. He's blue collar working man and I've grown up in a family of those, so you'd think that'd give him some leeway with me. Nope. His desire to conform, his hunger for the typical, apple-pie American dream, his constant excuses for why he's the victim in his situation, his condescension of others - even his own family, and his paranoid worry about people who aren't like him...it was hard to write, to say the least, especially knowing what was coming with the ending and how it could potentially be viewed.

 The idea of a man unnerved by his wife liking a particular rock star actually came from personal experience - I've known a few people who have actually had to end relationships because their significant others didn't agree with their taste in something or other. One in particular actually broke up with their significant other because of a singer they'd never met, never interacted with, but happened to like a lot. It wasn't to the point of being unhealthy of obsessive, but their partner made a constant deal about feeling like they were living with the singer and didn't measure up. I showed my friend the manuscript before I ever considered publishing it, and thankfully they have a sense of humor and loved it, even if the overall situation was far different than theirs. Still, what the ever-lovin' heck have we come to if we have to bully a person over their musical tastes? It's still a surreal thought to me.

 I've had the experience where I felt like I was being changed or encouraged to change so the other person would be more comfortable, to the point where I just didn't feel like myself anymore. It's a horrible feeling, one I never want to revisit. I really wanted to play with this overall idea, but I also didn't want to make it a gag or a gimmick or some punchline at the end. There is a twist, but hopefully the reveal is  a release of tension and a moment of epiphany and not a gimmick. I'd hate for it to be viewed that way, because at the end of the day, I think we all hide parts of ourselves. Andrew just does it in a very vehement, spiteful way.

Maybe he irritates me because I can understand being disillusioned. You know how it is, we're filled with all these notions as kids to the point we think we can conquer the world as teens, and then we have the rug pulled out from under us. Maybe my discomfort is that I have to acknowledge that I get Andrew's general frustration, even if I don't agree with his motives. I think that helps, though, it keeps him entitled but not a complete monster, or at least hopefully helps the reader look at him with disappointment rather than all-out hatred. He's a good talking point for a character: at what point do we have to get over our life frustrations and try to do the best we can, to what point do we have a right to be disenchanted with how our lives have gone?

His family doesn't make it easy on him, mind you. Granted, they're not terrible, but young kids are weird, and I may have based some of their behavior off mine as a kidlet to make things extra weird. You're welcome. His wife is Ivy League but opted to be a stay-at-home mom, a decision he never quite stopped resenting, because his own background is somewhat less in his eyes. It's an interesting dichotomy, he sees her as above him, worries about what secrets she may harbor, but also knows how to press her buttons, even though everything seems to press his. He's interesting, Andrew. He's irritating and I disagree with his fatalistic attitude, his black-and-white clear cut view of the world, his judgment of people. I disagree with him and he angers me at times....but oddly, I'm glad I wrote him, because he's also, hopefully, a character that will leave people thinking and talking.  If he got me thinking about how I could be a better person and how I can better channel my frustrations, hopefully he can do the same for others. Plus, his kids are hilarious and amazing, so there's got to be some potential in him somewhere.

Amazon         B&N

The Anticipation Versus The Bang

There's a famous Alfred Hitchcock quote that sticks with me every time I write a horror story: "There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it." The man could not have been more right, especially when it comes to dark fantasy when it mixes with horror. Obviously this applies to the horror genre, building up the atmosphere until the scary monster leaps out from the shadows onto their victim, but with dark fantasy there always seems to be more in the way of atmospheric scares than splatterfest gore.


Think of any scary story you've ever read. Imagine reading it alone at home one night. You're unable to go outside because there's a huge thunderstorm crashing around your house. Thunder and roaring winds make the windows rattle and the blinding lightning is making you blink, your eyes seeing the shadows take new, towering shapes.

You shift on your couch and try to make yourself more comfortable, wrapping your blanket around you as though it will protect you from whatever tricks your mind is playing. You tell yourself that it's just a stupid storm, and go back to your book. In it, the main character is moving toward the attic to find out what they heard. Their hand is shaking on their flashlight, their footsteps creaking the on the attic stairs. Past the wooden groans and their pounding heart, they hear the raspy breathing coming from the attic. Your own pulse begins to quicken. You know something is up there, and you want to tell them to turn around. But they won't. The storm rages beyond you. 

The character enters the attic. They step onto the floorboards and see nothing, but the tortured breathing is louder than ever. It's coming quicker, moving from shadow to shadow. Your mind is telling the character to run back down, but they take another step. The trap door slams shut behind them. They spin around, choking on their scream, and lift their flashlight when they see–

The door of your house slams open. You jump and scream, the book flying out of your hands as you whirl around–

And see your husband standing there with a bewildered look on his face.

Not a true story, but I had you going, didn't I?

While I was writing my latest Mocha Memoir novella, Hotel Hell, I focused on heightening the tension. The story revolves around a young man named Milo who searches for his missing fiancee, only to come across a hotel with dark, disturbing secrets. Concentrating on the creepiness of the hotel was key. Adding in little situations where Milo and the readers know something isn't right, but they can't figure out what. Even when I was planning the story, I knew I had to write it as though the hotel itself was a character with a mystery, and that its employees were just as terrifying as the building itself. Creating the horrors inside the hotel was the funnest part, and I think it made the impact of the climax so much more frightening. It's amazing what you can imagine if you take an ordinary object, and twist it into something that Neil Gaiman would create.

For me, dark fantasy and horror tend to go hand in hand, as they both concentrate on the anticipation of the danger. Both genres want to set off warning bells in your head, even though you're dying to turn the page and see what lurks behind that corner. They feed each other, one building on fear in the readers heart through romantically twisted scenarios while horror weaves itself into the cracks, like glowing red eyes through the slits of your closet. Don't worry– I'll save that story for another time. 

Happy Halloween! 

- - -
Amy Braun is an aspiring urban fantasy and horror author addicted to monsters and mythology. When she isn't writing, she's reading, watching movies, taking photos, or gaming. She was the recipient of April Moon Books Editor Award for "author voice, world-building and general bad-assery" in 2014.

Her current work includes the novellas Call From The Grave, Needfire, and Hotel Hell, and has short stories in the Lost In The Witching Hour anthology (Charlatan Charade) and AMOK! (Dark Intentions And Blood). She also has two more short stories that will be featured in two different anthologies, as well as her first full length novel releases in 2015. More information on these releases and Amy can be found online through her blog, Literary Braun, or followed on Amazon, Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
- - -

Short and Snappy

Last weekend, I was on a panel at ApolloCon discussing short fiction, and was there still any market for it. The resounding consensus was YES!

As the print magazines began to disappear, there was a brief time when the market might have been shrinking, but as people turn more and more to online venues for their reading pleasure, it has come roaring back. There are probably more online magazines looking for short fiction and poetry today than there ever were print. And new anthologies are announced daily.

What does this mean for you as an author/reader? It means that there are dozens--if not hundreds--of ezines and anthologies to read and/or write for. These short story markets are a great place to hone your craft and make a little money.

It is true, that with the growth of the marketplace, you might not be seeing the same financial return as offered by the big magazines of the past, but it all adds up in the long run. Personally, I made more off selling to anthologies and magazines last year than royalties.

So, where do you start? There are basically two ways to go about it. Write a story and then look for a market that it fits, or find a market that looks interesting and write a story to submit to it. Either way can work. In fact, sometimes writing a piece for a specific market can break up a pesky Writer's Block.

Once you have decided you are ready to write short, there are several wonderful resources to find markets. My personal favorite is ralan.com, because it is free and open to everyone. There are also several excellent Facebook groups with specific focus that have been helpful. These require that you be added to the closed group, but I don't believe anyone is ever turned down. They start with OPEN CALL: and then the specifics. Search for OPEN CALL: and you should get the entire list. There are groups for Horror; Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Pulp; and Crime, Mystery, Suspense for sure. There may be others, but I haven't had call to join them yet. :)

At the next level, Duotrope is considered a must-have tool by many in the industry, but it is not free. On the other hand, it provides a Submission Tracker, and many analytics that aren't available on the other sites mentioned.

Finally, there is the old standby Writer's Market which has now brought in an online component. If you still like the doorstop paper version, you can get it--or you can get it with a year's access to the online version too--or, it looks like, you can now just register online for a year on the website. So many choices!

Spend some time with these market lists, play with words a bit. Short fiction, as I said, can hone your longer pieces, as you learn to write tight description and compelling characters that must grab the reader's attention on the first page. It can supplement your income and start spreading your name around. If people read one of your stories in an anthology, and like it, that can help them decide to give more of your work a try.

And if you need a place to start, try writing something for our Steampunk anthology Avast Ye Airships!

Lumberjacks, Vampires, and Writing What You Know.

'Write what you know' has to be one of the most-given pieces of writing advice in the entire history of the craft. I remember really hating this as a teenager. I mean, what had I done in life? All I wanted to do was crank out some story so I could pass some class or another, and they wanted me to write what I knew and slant it to some theme or assignment that I couldn't even choose? Bleh. I knew nothing in the scheme of things except living in what I perceived to be a boring town and going to school. As I grew I still remained somewhat ruffled about this piece of advice, even as I wrote for fun, because I liked writing speculative fiction and there's no way you can "know" that sort of thing, right?

Yeah, I can be an elitist idiot that takes things literally at times. 

Now, I realize how lucky I've been to have the experiences I've had - no matter how mundane. Every little interaction, every emotion, every experience is fodder for something and has the potential to be magic. Plus, I consider my insatiable curiosity one of my better traits. Both come in handy when I'm writing fantasy and horror. Don't believe me? Let me explain (Come on, you had to be expecting this, otherwise it would be a very short and pointless blog entry).

As a kid I harbored a deep and burning grudge that my parents got to pick our summer vacation choices. I was convinced I must have been a serial killer in a past life. As we cruised down the American highways I would always collect brochures at rest stops and dream of what it must be like to have parents who loved me. After all, only heartless maniacs would pass up waterparks, amusement parks, giant malls, pointless roadside attractions, and other obvious vacation spots for every historical site that could possibly enrich my mind and raise my history grade (that didn't need raising, thanks). I would sigh and fondle over those brochures and hope against hope that Gettysburg was closed during the week or maybe every worker in every historical site in Philidelphia would go on strike or something. 

To be fair, this resentment usually lasted a couple of days until we were actually well into our vacation. It probably didn't help that we were crammed into a small tent trailer and at least one of my parents has an overpowering sense of humor that does not do well in enclosed spaces, especially when paired with a kid who wants to read or listen to music or sleep and dream about whatever power ranger is dreamiest or something (Who knows. That was ten million years ago). 

Eventually, though, I would lighten up and enjoy myself. Truth be told, we probably shouldn't have done most of the Revolutionary and Civil War battle sites in the same trip; to this day I still tend to get a lot of them mixed up. There is also the story embedded in family folklore about the time when I was like four and we went to Mesa Verde and somehow everyone thought it was a good idea to go on a tour that involved actually climbing ladders and hand and foot holds up the canyon walls and across the pueblos. (Also to be fair, these were fenced in and I was flanked by both parents and the park guide. Still, retelling this story is guaranteed to give my relatives heart palpitations). There were other adventures I was probably guilty of - the same trip out west might have involved a trip to the dinosaur museum in Utah that featured a dig site at the time and because I saw it on Reading Rainbow I may have tried to make a break for it so I could climb up to the fossils and be at one with the dinosaurs (hey, they let Levar Burton do it on TV...). There may have been one museum visit in Peoria where we stayed right up until closing and I may have been almost locked in with an exhibit of an exposed burial mound that revealed hundreds of exposed skeletons. To this day I remember the panic of trying to find the door as the minutes ticked down until five, caught between the vertigo of an outdoor balcony that was fairly high up, and the madness of having to walk right by this gigantic room full of exposed full skeletons. I was eight. When I read the Bradbury story "The Next in Line" I actually broke out in a cold sweat remembering my own experience. 

By the time I was a pre-teen, though, I began to get fascinated with some of the mundane aspects of history. I really liked hearing about what it was like in the everyday life of different Native American tribes or the colonists before the Revolutionary War. I liked learning about miners, and to this day some of my favorite books are by Laura Ingalls Wilder (including her journalism collection and her diaries). Admittedly, though, my mind tended to wander and I was always adding my own flair to things. I remember distinctly during the Philadelphia trip wondering what it would be like if the displaced ghost of Benjamin Franklin was the one giving us the tour, and I probably added my own flair to many other trips that I'm not remembering. There was at least one trip I spent sketching disturbing looking trees that Brian Froud would be proud of. Still, there is something to be said for the hardcore lives these everyday people lived. The adversity they had to put up with is incredible. When I read about pioneers, the Dust Bowl, or any number of hardships that make up American history, I'm humbled. I mean even back as a teen I recognized that I was a huge wuss. It also doesn't help that part of my family history has had books written about it, which just goes to prove that I am a definite wuss and a disgrace to all those that came before me who could survive in the wild in subzero temperatures without even a blanket and walk away like it was nothing.

So it probably isn't a huge surprise that I would still be fascinated with reading about the everymen of American history: the miners, farmers, pioneers, laborers, and lumberjacks. I remember reading the books of Lilian Jackson Braun, who also tends to gravitate to similar topics (though without the ghosts and evil trees), in my adult years and really began to wonder if I could do something with that particular interest of mine in a speculative sense. But what?

There are many elements of speculative fiction I "know," not because I've lived them, but I am a huge geek and darn proud of it. I was perusing different educational sites about lumber camps and came across the entry "mooner." While not really defined, it referred to a supernatural creature that haunted lumber camps.

This fit in nicely with the speculative things that I geek out over...specifically, vampires. I love vampires. I love reading new takes on them, I love the movies, I love the folklore. Not everything vampire is good, and I appreciate when people know the mythos and work with it instead of against it. Barring this, I like when people use vampirism as a metaphor or backdrop for something else. I'm not one of those who outright prefer evil vampires over vampire romance or urban fantasy smooth criminal vamps over mindless feeding corpse-like vamps or old school Dracula/Gothic types. If it's done well, if it works, then I'm willing to give it a chance. Still, I like my vampires to use their teeth, and I think playing the moral grey area is always interesting. I think there can be romance mixed in with bloodshed, there can be mindfulness mixed in with a hunting mindset. It's the contradiction that makes things tense, and it's the knowledge that you're never going to win against something like that that makes the genre so full of possibility.

While maybe not an obvious choice, I like the use of vampires as metaphor, the thought of them being like Nietzsche's superman, but with teeth. I also like thinking about what happens when a normal person is tossed into that type of lifestyle and has to make reason of all the horrible things they're expected to do to survive (or is it any worse than any other pioneer trying to survive in an unsettled country?). 

That time period and life in the lumber camps was hard enough as it was...what if there was something bigger and badder than the strongest lumberjack? What if there was something to balance out all the shenanigans that tended to go on in the saloons during the weekends? What if there were motives bigger than the obvious, a subtle game being played, although it could never be won? It was an intriguing thought, and when put together with the historical aspect, I suddenly had a really interesting concept. Not only that, but the blend of bad boy lumberjack, innocent newcomer, well-meaning townspeople, and this sense of "other"...well that was too good to pass up.

Now I still had to look up things, I still had to do my research. Still, I can't help but think this story would never have come about if I hadn't gravitated to my own love of history and tendency to warp things to my whim (As you can imagine, my parents just love knowing what was in my head during all those family trips). 

Curious to see how all of this could come together? Well you'll just have to read the book to find out!

Kindle    Mocha Memoirs Press

Like many young men at the end of the 1800s, Bill signed on to work in a logging camp. The work is brutal, but it promised a fast paycheck with which he can start his life. Unfortunately, his role model is Big John. Not only is he the camp’s hero, but he’s known for spending his pay as fast as he makes it. On a cold Saturday night they enter Red’s Saloon to forget the work that takes the sweat and lives of so many men their age. Red may have plans for their whiskey money, but something else lurks in the shadows. It watches and badly wants a drink that has nothing to do with alcohol. Can Bill make it back out the shabby door, or does someone else have their own plans for his future?

Real-world Magic and Holiday Idealism

I'm really not a cynic.

True, I tend to possess a certain sarcastic...something, and I will admit to seeing the practical and logistical side of life a little too much for my own good. December is traditionally a month where all the weird in the world tends to come after me with a crowbar, and I've had more loss during this month than I care to remember. Still, there are times when I do let my optimism and idealism see daylight. Case in point...

For a long, long time I did different sorts of event work, and I've moonlighted as an elf once or twice. One year, I was doing a one person show at a small venue, a kind of kid sing-along deal at a holiday extravaganza that a lot of communities throw between Thanksgiving and New Year's. We were getting okay crowds, but the night in question things were pretty light. I had taken my break to run across the venue and grab some much-needed hot chocolate (it was a cold year), and I'd tossed my parka on over my neon elf costume (long story short, I was decked out in more day-glo colors than a Christmas wreath in the eighties). I'd stopped by the petting zoo because admittedly I'm a bit of a softy at times, and heard a gasp behind me and turned to face a shocked little girl who probably was no more than seven or eight, maybe nine. I gave her a wave and a smile, plugged the next performance of the show to her group, and and went about my business, only half-paying attention when she ran up to her mother and started whispering to her.

Back at the show venue, I found the girl's little group of friends and chaperones coming in close behind me, probably following me since the signs were pretty sparse. I did a quick sound check and my tech helped cue everything up, and we began...

The show itself wasn't that structured - I routinely moved some things around if I felt things were dragging or if the crowd was getting restless. What I wasn't prepared for, though, was for the little girl to stand up in the middle of one of the ten thousand monologues I had to go through and ask "But why doesn't everyone believe in Santa Claus? Isn't he real? You're an elf, you can tell me yes or no!"

If you've never known the singular, brutal panic that comes with being asked a delicate question in front of one of the child's parents while you're supposed to stay on track and in character and there's no other actor in the show but you, well, it's a special kind of terror. Not only that, but days before I'd lost a family member that had been very dear to me and still hadn't quite come to grips with having to continue the gig through the holiday season while dealing with the loss...and now I had to somehow figure out what to tell this hopeful little girl without ticking her mother off, throwing the show completely off track, or a thousand other things.

My mind was vibrating while struggling for an answer, I was trying to intuit some sort of instruction on the mom's shocked face, and my tech was behind a Christmas tree and inaccessible. Who was I to tell this child what she should believe? Who was I to even know, in the scheme of life, what even I believed?

 It may not seem like much, believing in Santa, but I had the power in my answer to either crush dreams, keep a belief alive that may not be appreciated by all parties involved, or ignore the kid and just get on with things. From the anxious rustling of the Christmas tree and the embarrassed looks on the adult audience members' faces, the latter was what was expected. It would have been easy. It would have been somewhat permissible to play it off as having to keep with the show, despite the audience participation.

I couldn't do it.

It was almost a bizarre, out-of-body experience, but I found myself calling the kid up to the stage while I sat on the edge, bright pink tight-clad legs curled under the day-glo green skirt. Just as strangely, as I looked into her hopeful face, I found the answers I needed, myself. 

"You know, Santa's one of those funny things, like love and other things you can't see. Not everyone is going to say they believe in it because they're afraid of sounding silly, but it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. You can't always see everything that's real with your eyes, you know. Sometimes you have to see things like that with your heart."

She processed that, nodded deep in her winter coat and piles of wrappings, and after a moment looked up at me with the kind of big, charming grin only a child can flash. "Then I'm gonna still believe in Santa Claus. You're an elf, you know what you're talking about!"

We sang some songs together and eventually I got back on track to the latter part of the show, but it didn't really matter if things went off the rails or not. In some ways, that was probably the best performance of the whole run.

Afterwards, I got many quiet compliments from a lot of adults hanging around. I found it hard to accept them, hard to express how important it was for me to speak as close to the truth as I could. The fact is, I may be an adult, and I may get how the world works, but if believing in Santa, or even the possibility of magic, the possibility of love, the possibility of goodness this time of year makes me happier....then I'm going to do it. I want to believe in goodness, in people, that things can get better. Besides, that little girl was as much of a magical elf to me as I was to her...that one evening pulled me even a little bit out of the darkness of grief I was surrounding by. By being able to make the holiday just a little better for that little girl, I was able to heal myself just a little, as well. The memory still makes me smile, and I've taken it out and examined it lovingly every year, just like I would any ornament or bauble I put up at home.

I don't always let it out in my daily life, but I like when I can let that same possibility and idealism out in my writing. Of all the pieces that I currently have published, Holly and Ivy is probably the most fanciful, the most optimistic, the most idealistic. There's some sadness, some loss, true, but winter brings those things...just as it brings us opportunities to make our own magic, just as it brings us closer to spring. 

After losing her job and her boyfriend, Holly returns to her parents’ farm. Embarrassed and hopeless, she doesn’t expect to bump into a forgotten childhood friend that wasn’t supposed to exist. Ivy is not only a dryad, but she lives in the pine trees Holly’s family grows to sell at Christmas. As the old friends reconnect,Ivy not only shares her strong opinions, but gives Holly a charm that will change both their lives. As days melt into weeks and the seasons change, Holly’s life magically turns around. Christmas not only brings surprises, but a choice for the human woman. What’s more important: stability, success, and love, or keeping a promise to an old friend?

Mocha Memoirs Press Store         Amazon     Barnes&Noble

Plus, remember, when you buy Holly and Ivy (or Under the Mistletoe by Siobhan Kinkade) during the month of December, you can get a FREE copy of the e-book co-written by SH Roddey and I - Lost in the Shadows!

All you have to do to claim your book is email us (susanhroddey@gmail.com) after you buy it and tell us (a) which book you purchased, and (b) the next to last word of the story. Once you're confirmed, we'll send you your very own copy of Lost, free of charge, in either ePub or Mobi format, your choice. Sound like a deal?

Shhh...Whispers in the Dark is here...

I will refrain from being too smug in this post but I am quite pleased with myself. I've put together a collection of shorts that I believe do a fine job of weaving through the world of the macabre. When I think of horror, I don't just picture a man with a butcher knife ready to cut me to neat little pieces. I also don't focus on just ghouls and goblins, haunting the shadows of a darkened room. For me, the thrill of the scare is housed in a reality of fear. Could this happen to me? No matter how implausible it may appear, if my life was shaped as the character in the narrative, could I too experience something like this. This definitely speaks to the suspension of disbelief theory but for me when it comes to horror, I should want to deny the facts that are presented to me because to acknowledge them would acknowledge just how vulnerable I can be.

When I wrote these stories I thought of the implausible and the importance of suspension of disbelief, but I tried to stay grounded in the human desire to deny at all costs what can harm them. The reptilian part of the brain should be activated and when my readers close their eyes at night, a little voice should whisper ever so softly to them, "It's always safer to be afraid of what's in the dark."

Happy Reading!

Whispers in the Dark

The floorboards squeak but you aren’t moving, there’s a fleeting caress across your shoulder but you’re alone, a light rapping on your window and yet, there is no rain. These are whispers in the dark. Delve inside a world where intuition is key and negligent dismissal can cost one their life.

Thirteen tales of encounters that will make you question if everything is as it seems. Thirteen tales that will make you just a little more conscious of that stranger on the street, that scratching at your backdoor, that telltale silence in your home…

Blurbs of Horror: In the Bloodstream

Not so fast, creepy critters...we have one more new title to showcase and give you shivers...

Amazon    MMP Store

The love of horror is like a virus. 

It gets into your bloodstream, causing an insatiable hunger for more. There is no cure, only 

the ability to soothe the craving until the need—once again—grows too great. And you 

crave: 

Urban legends that are sickeningly real. 

Attempts to cheat death that don’t quite succeed. 

Creatures with power over this world and the next. 

Twisted desires of the flesh that must be met no matter what the cost. 

Just in time for Halloween and all its thrills, “In the Bloodstream” brings together some of 

horror’s most imaginative new writers. These thirty-one short stories will infiltrate your 

system and leave you wondering about that creaking outside the door, while satisfying 

your need for the darkly disturbing. 

At least for now…

***

So now you have some options to tear into this Halloween, some titles to curl up with in the dark to delight to. Just remember to make sure that the doors and windows are locked tight, there's nothing under your bed, and that any strange phone calls you might receive can't come from inside the house. After all, you want to enjoy these reads, and it's better to be safe and scared than sorry..

Blurbs of Horrors: Whispers in the Dark by Janet Eckford

Ha! I bet you thought that was it, didn't you? Not so fast, fear fans...there's some new titles to sink your fangs into....

Amazon   MMP Store   

The floorboards squeak but you aren’t moving, there’s a fleeting caress across your shoulder but you’re alone, a light rapping on your window and yet, there is no rain. These are whispers in the dark. Delve inside a world where intuition is key and negligent dismissal can cost one their life.

Thirteen tales of encounters that will make you question if everything is as it seems. Thirteen tales that will make you just a little more conscious of that stranger on the street, that scratching at your backdoor, that telltale silence in your home…