At the Edge of Darkness
On some upcoming publications
It’s been a slow year with story publications as I’m working on a longer project, a horror novel tentatively titled Buried. It’s about a mysterious Hank Williams Sr. impersonator and a woman who accidentally turns a corrupt Senator and a car thief into vampires while seeking vengeance for her sister's murder. Two chapters from that novel, adapted as stand-alone stories, will be appearing in upcoming anthologies.
The first is “Heard it in a Love Song,” available as part of a crime fiction/horror mashup anthology called At the Edge of Darkness from Shotgun Honey Books. I’m excited about this one because Shotgun Honey consistently publishes some of the best indie crime fiction around, and guest editor Keith Rosson is one of my favorite contemporary horror writers (seriously, check out his novel Fever House). “Heard It in a Love Song” tells the story of a down-on-his-luck drummer turned car thief who gets way more than he bargained for when he picks the wrong Cadillac to steal. At the Edge of Darkness is available for pre-order now and drops just in time for Halloween on Oct. 29th, 2024.
Another chapter from the same novel, re-branded as a stand-alone story called “Forever,” is also on the way in Moonstruck Books’ Nightmare Diaries anthology, available in December, 2024. This one follows the protagonist of the novel, a grieving woman who’s been transformed into what she can only assume is some kind of vampire, as she takes to the streets in a quest for vengeance after her sister’s murder. I’m proud of this one, as it turns out adapting a chapter into a stand-alone story is a lot harder than it sounds, but I think I finally got it right with some editorial advice from the team at Moonstruck.
Both of these stories and the novel they’re a part of had their genesis in “The Drifting Cowboy,” a story about an enigmatic Hank Williams impersonator who shakes up karaoke night a dive bar in Hammer Springs, the fictional South Carolina town that’s home to many of my stories. You can find it here.
Keep these anthologies in mind if you’re looking for something on the dark end of street to read this Halloween and beyond. In the meantime I’ll be working on that novel whenever I find time to write.