Mammoth Book of Best British Crime, Volume 8

Rather than tooting my own horn yet again, I thought I'd mention this excellent crime anthology I've been reading. I'm about a hundred pages in and haven't hit a clunker yet. I'll probably review it elsewhere when I've actually finished it, but I really like the mix of famous names, not famous names and dark to light selections. It's got me thinking about authors I'd heard of though hadn't read yet, as well as given me a keen interest in the up and comers.

I think one of the key things about crime short stories is that they are such great examples of storytelling. They're never slight in the way that even good 'literary fiction' can be slight, because by definition in a crime novel, something has to have happened. 

Check it out. I got my copy through Book Depository . Although they're currently out of stock, they're usually pretty prompt about getting more in if there's a demand.

Carpathian Shadows

It's been several years now since these anthologies came out, but I got the usual friendly email about royalties from Rob Preece, publisher of Books for a Buck, the other day, and thought it would be a good time to mention this collection in which I have a story, partly because it's taken me awhile to put anything up on this blog, and partly because the process here was kind of interesting.  

My involvement with the project came about through having just taken part in the Muse Online Writers Conference created by the fabulous and really rather amazing Lea Schizas. I'll try to write that up soon, but if you have a little time to give to it in the beginning of October, this free writers conference has some great stuff going for it. Anyway, at the end of the conference, Lea posted a call for submissions for a new anthology. She gave the basic premise, and people were asked to submit stories around this idea. I noticed just now that an Amazon reviewer, Victor J. Banis, gives a concise account of the parameters:

This is a theme-anthology, horror stories with a bit of a twist. The visitors to the Cornifu Hotel, deep in the Carpathians Mountains of Transylvania, are individually invited for a free one day bus excursion to nearby Erdely Castle, said to be haunted. Each story is about a different group of travelers to visit the castle. And with that setting and that common theme, one can rightly expect vampires and ghosts and werewolves--just about all those things that go bump in the night show up here.

As it turned out, there were enough contributors to create two volumes, so that is what happened. My story ended up in Volume Two. In retrospect, the Volumes One and Two idea might not have been the best, as the stories are all standalones and don't have to be read in any particular order.

I am not really a horror story writer, or reader, although I love both Frankenstein and Dracula, as well as some tales from Poe. So my story didn't turn out to be particularly horrific, though I think it's still a pretty good tale.

As with most anthologies of this sort, there was some help with promotion expected, and although I can't now remember what I did in that line, we did all 'show up' one night at a live chat room and chatted with people about the book. I didn't really get to know the people from the first volume, but the writers in the second group were a nice bunch, and I even took a course from one of my co-authors, Kristin Johnson, on short screenplays at the next year's Muse conference which was very good.


Should you be interested, the books are available at the above mentioned Books for a Buck  (this link is to volume 2), and I just happened to notice and recall that my blogging pal has his review of my story linked there. He was kind enough to write a complimentary take on it. And if you do like horror, you should definitely check out his novel at Lyrical Press, where it is available in various ebook formats. 

The Bird Watchers

Happy Fourth of July weekend, everyone. In honor of the day (though largely by coincidence), I've made my self-published novella The Bird Watchers available again. The real reason this is all happening now is that Lulu.com has offered people the option of getting a proof copy of a new  work, and while I've been working on that, which is actually a sequel to this one, I realized that I might as well make this one available again too. "For a limited time only" as they say, the book will be available at cost, or as a free download. At some point I'll probably boost the price a dollar or so but for now, I'd be interested in comments from anyone who wants to take the time. As a self-published book, it's got all the flaws that come with the territory, but more people than just my mother seemed to have liked it the first time around, so give it a go if you'd like.    

The link at Lulu is HERE .

(I also don't know if the download works as a true ebook, but there's nothing to lose by trying it out.) 

The Pirate's True Love

This short, fablelike story is one of my few ventures into the fantasy genre, and in some ways is probably my most successful story yet, if we're talking solely about external success and not how successfully I think it was written. It was actually written quite a long time ago, but was submitted in 2005. A little zine called Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, which I hadn't yet heard of, picked it up and connected me briefly to some pretty cool characters of the contemporary fantasy world, such as Gavin J. Grant and Kelly Link, who run the show there, and Karen Joy Fowler, who may be known best for The Jane Austen Book Club, but also writes great fantasy tales. Kelly Link is also a big name short story writer, with for an acclaimed short story collection called Magic for Beginners.

Anyway, they took the story, and it showed up in their very quirky, very charming and very good zine. I got a lot of mileage out of showing it to my friends, and even got a small amount of cash for it, which, let me tell you, is unusual.

But the fun didn't end there. Some months later, I got a letter saying it had been chosen for a year's best fantasy anthology, edited by Jonathan Strahan and Karen Haber. This was kind of a big deal. Unfortunately, the publisher of the series, Byron Preiss, was killed in a car accident and though his wife tried to keep the company going, it was too much to keep together. At the time, this felt like very bad luck, but of course it was a very small thing in comparison to Preiss's untimely death.

Eventually, Locus Magazine, out of respect for Preiss and feeling badly for the Strahan venture, published the book independently. It came out as Fantasy: the Very Best of 2005 and actually, I like the look of the book a little better than the original format.

And then LCRW brought out their own anthology and it was collected there as well.

Until quite recently, I thought that this story wasn't available online anywhere. But it turns out that the original LCRW #17 was scanned and appears right here. (Though you'll have to scroll up a page to get to the beginning...)

   

Book Country

Over on Do Some Damage,  they've offered up the floor to a peer review reading site that Penguin has launched for genre fiction. It's not really a short story site, but I thought I'd spread the word to any aspiring writers who might pop by. Sounds like a very cool concept.

Shaken: Stories for Japan--Tim Hallinan, editor

I think I'd better start off with a disclaimer. I am not absolutely thrilled by the whole Kindle model in general. I'm a bit uneasy about a future in which all our books are 'in the cloud', and where one corporation might be able to make that book disappear overnight, whether for good reasons or ill. I don't like the exclusivity of the Kindle model either.

That said, though, this is an example of a good use of a new technology. This anthology, a 'Kindle Exclusive', was put together by Tim Hallinan and all proceeds go to help the people of Japan. It's a terrific list of writers who have contributed to this effort, and it's only going to put you out $3.99. You can download a Kindle reader for free to your computer, which I've done for precisely such an occasion. Believe me, reading books on my computer is not going to cut into my desire for real books any time soon, but this was a great idea, and I'm happy to support it. I haven't actually read my copy yet, but this is one of those times where I thought getting the word out was probably more important than any actual commentary I might make.

Here's a list of contributors, in case that might entice you further:

Basho, Brett Battles, Cara Black, Vicki Doudera, Dianne Emley, Dale Furutani, Timothy Hallinan, Stefan Hammond, Rosemary Harris, Naomi Hirahara, Wendy Hornsby, Ken Kuhlken, Debbi Mack, Adrian McKinty, I.J. Parker, Gary Phillips, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Jeffrey Siger, Kelli Stanley, C.J. West, and Jeri Westerson.   

Unless Soul Clap Its Hands and Sing, by Seana Graham

Here's another one of my stories that you can still find online. The Homestead Review picked it up. This was kind of a funny story. Another story of mine had gone out to various magazines, and by the time the editor of the Homestead Review asked for it, it had already been picked up elsewhere. She was gracious enough to ask for something else, and this is what she ultimately got and took. At a certain point in the process, it dawned on me that the name of the editor was sort of familiar, but it took a friend to connect the dots for me and lead me to realize that Jessica Brehany was actually the partner of our former used book buyer JIm Maughn, who is a poet in his own right. When I hesitatingly mentioned the fact to her by email--which was the only kind of correspondence we'd had--she replied that yes, she thought we knew each other, but hadn't wanted to say in case I thought she was taking the story only because of that.

This is one of the few stories I've written that has a specific local setting, so it seemed appropriate that it found a home at a fairly local college in Salinas. It's a story is about Alzheimers and the title is swiped from Yeats. Despite the topic, I don't really think of it as a gloomy tale. But you be the judge of that.

Unless Soul Clap Its Hands and Sing .