I’ll be coming your way as a feature author in Sam’s Dot Publishing’s print, and soon-to-be e-publication too, Cover of Darkness.  This would be my second acceptance to the bi-annual anthology magazine.  Edited by Tyree Campbell.  It’s a big old novelette, one filled with nurses and hospitals and monsters and the truth about humanity.  It is also an historical tale.  Atmospherically, it takes place during the height of The Great Depression.  The year 1930, to be exact. 

CURRENT ISSUES W. LAWRENCE DAGSTINE

Purchase this issue now!

Scroll Down and Buy Now:

http://www.genremall.com/anthologiesr.htm#coverofdarkness1109

Sam’s Dot Publishing Main Homepage (updated monthly):

www.samsdotpublishing.com

Other New Entries: “Magazines”

This is probably one of my favorite covers to anything I’ve ever been in.  You can find an almost novelette-length story of mine in the very popular COVER OF DARKNESS, November 2009.  Published twice a year, it’s a magazine-anthology of lengthy horror, urban fantasy, speculative fiction and other dark tales in-between.  Edited by Tyree Campbell and published by Sam’s Dot.  For this issue, an entire town is destroyed… Dagstine-style.  And that officially ends the Fall 2009 year on Vampires, Werewolves, and Zombies.  This magazine’s a thick one. 

COVER OF DARKNESS – November 2009

Anthology Magazine – edited by Tyree Campbell

SAM’S DOT PUBLISHING HOMEPAGE (updated monthly):

www.samsdotpublishing.com

ORDER COVER OF DARKNESS DIRECT FROM THE GENRE MALL:

 http://www.genremall.com/anthologiesr.htm#coverofdarkness1109

And while you’re at it, pick up the latest issue of HUNGUR:

http://lawrencedagstine.com/2009/11/03/hungur-magazine-9-november-2009-now-available/

Dark stories and poems by: Linda L. Donahue, Ferrel D. Moore, Michelle D. Sonnier, Tyree Campbell, Julie Serroul, Cathy Buburuz, Lawrence Dagstine, David Sullivan, Hillary Bartholomew, Holly Day, Jene Erick Beardsley, Thomas P. Feeny, Miguel de Leon, Stephen J. Williams, and Vanessa Watters.

Other New Entries: “Magazines”

This Japanese anthology offers four spooky tales of the supernatural.

The grandfather of horror anthology film, featuring tales of the macabre.

I suck at organization. Somewhere in the last month I even stopped adding submissions to my little Excel spreadsheet; some subs ended up being jotted down on post-its.

So as I started adding them to Excel today and also thinking of what I’d like to do with novels that are currently in progress, I thought I’d give everyone a very cluttered look at how my writing life is currently being filed away.

Short Story Subs Out (in no particular order)

“The Human Season” – Delerium
“After Passing” – Dark Recesses
“Smaller Parts of the Whole” – Dead Bait (shortlisted)
“Alternative Medicines” – Every Day Weirdness
“This Tour Don’t Roll Through Seattle” – Allegory (shortlisted)
“With This Ring” – Sniplits
“Today’s Bargain” – Devil’s Food
“Riding in Trucks With Ghosts” – 42 Opus Shroud
“Farewell, From the 11th Hole” – Stymie
Collection of 3 poems – Farrago’s Wainscott
Collection of 5 poems – Crazy Horse
“The Drums Will Take You There” – Dia de les Meurtos (shortlisted)
“The Mannerisms of Runners” – Brain Harvest
“Lunatic Mile” – Comet Press Untitled Horror Antho (shortlisted)
“The Broken Arms of Sleep” – SuperDuper secret (I think) – maybe accepted???

Novels

The Bleeding Room – Tor Mundania (full read stages), Super Secret Press(revision process)
Broken Skies – LBF

And then there’s the continuous work to Blood Routes and Birdwatching From Mars.  And the countless anthos that are coming up that I want to write stuff for.  It gets harder and harder to find time for actual work…maybe I have my priorities backwards?…

I’ll have a new, almost-novelette length zombie thriller appearing in a future edition of Sam’s Dot Publishing’s Cover of Darkness.  An “Annual Magazine-Anthology”, they’re mostly known for their tales of horror and dark speculative fiction.   Sam’s Dot will also be releasing my collection FRESH BLOOD, many future issues of Aoife’s Kiss with stories of mine in it, and lots of other great publications between now and 2010.   So stay tuned. 

COVER OF DARKNESS 2010

Published Annually by Sam’s Dot Publishing

www.samsdotpublishing.com

 AVAILABLE AT THE GENRE MALL:

http://www.genremall.com/contents.htm

Previous issues have featured Bram Stoker winner Scott Nicholson, LL Soares, Cathy Buburuz, David Kopaska-Merkel, Kristine Ong Muslim, Angela Albee, Tamara Wilhite, Tyree Campbell, J.J. Steinbeck, Kate England… And many other fine talents…

Other New Entries: “Magazines”

Go to the bargain bin section of any major book barn and you’ll more than likely see something with a title very similar to this one. These books tend to be clunkers, huge tomes with microscopic print on poor quality paper, with a Table of Contents page that could easily be torn from one book and pasted into the next and no one would ever know the difference. Without even opening the book, you know you’re going to find the same two of three stories by Poe, the same tried but true Arthur Conan Doyle stories, and, just maybe, if you’re lucky, an occasional tongue-in-cheek ghost story from Oscar Wilde or Saki. The publishers might get a wild hair and throw in a surprise or two, such as “The Rocking Horse Winner” by D.H. Lawrence, or something by Arthur Machen, but don’t count on it. And therein lurks the really big problem with doing an anthology of this sort. After all, how do you manage to bring together a selection that doesn’t look exactly like a dozen other books already on the market?

Despite the fact that writers have produced a huge volume of horror stories over the past few centuries, let’s face it, not all of them have stood the test of time. Bram Stoker is a good example. Dracula is, by all rights, one of the finest pieces of horror fiction ever put to paper. However, out of the vast body of short fiction that Stoker produced, few stories, with the possible exception of “Dracula’s Guest” and “The Judge’s House” still pack a punch today. One could make similar points about writers such as Robert W. Chambers and Oliver Onion and a dozen or so others. So the question becomes, how do you give us our money’s worth without boring us with the same old stuff?

To that end, the folks at Bloody Books have succeeded with their second volume of Classic Tales of Horror. They put themselves to a hard challenge; namely, giving us something new while at the same time giving us something of high quality, and all in all, they did a very respectable job of it. When I first picked up the book I was a little doubtful, I have to admit. It was smaller than I expected a book of this sort to be, and the cover art a little sparse. Then I turned to the Table of Contents page and saw the lead off hitter, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Schalken the Painter.” Le Fanu is no stranger to anthologies of this sort, with stories such as “Green Tea” and “Sir Dominick’s Bargain” being the usual selections. “Schalken” was a good choice, I thought. Not totally unique, but still a solid story that doesn’t get as much airplay as it deserves. And then I started to scan down the page. I saw a bunch of familiar names, such as M. R. James, who is arguably the finest ghost story writer EVER, and H. P. Lovecraft, and Ambrose Bierce, and Edgar Allan Poe, and I thought, Hmm, not too shabby. Good names, certainly. But here’s the kicker. I started looking at the selections, and I was amazed. When was the last time I had seen Poe’s “William Wilson” anthologized outside of Poe’s Collected Stories? And Ambrose Bierce…everybody’s read “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” and “The Damned Thing,” but “The Moonlit Road?” What a pleasantly unexpected find. I reread it, and was reminded of the feeling you get when you hear an old song that you had forgotten you liked so much. It was that kind of pleasant surprise. I was equally thrilled to see “Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook” from M. R. James and “The Picture in the House” from Lovecraft. “Canon Alberic” is one of James’ non-ghost story stories, and one of his best. Likewise, when you mention Lovecraft, you expect to get “The Rats in the Walls” or “The Call of Cthulhu” or “The Horror at Red Hook,” so one of his lesser known short pieces such as this was a good choice.

But the real thrill, for me anyway, was seeing the three Biggies listed here, George Eliot, Henry James, and Edith Wharton. Anybody who remembers Dorothea’s description of the cottages in Middlemarch knows that George Eliot can write some scary stuff when she feels like it, but when have you ever seen one of her short stories make an appearance in a horror anthology? What a wonderful surprise that was! And the same is true of Edith Wharton’s story “Afterward.” Henry James is, of course, no stranger to the scary story. His masterpiece, The Turn of the Screw, is after all, one of the best pieces of psychological terror you’re likely to encounter. His story included here, “The Friends of the Friends,” is not quite on that order, but still a wonderfully quirky selection that adds to the distinctiveness of this volume.

“The Body Snatcher” by Robert Louis Stevenson and “The Monkey’s Paw” by W. W. Jacobs, round out the book. Neither is an especially unusual choice and can usually be found in most other books of this sort, but they still work well here. “The Body Snatcher” is an eerie tale of grave robbing, and “The Monkey’s Paw,” if you discount Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dried bones in the Old Testament, is probably the first true zombie story–so even if it does get overplayed, it’s still worth a reread.

Perhaps the only stumble Jonathan Wooding made in putting this book together was the inclusion of Mary Shelley’s “The Mortal Immortal.” Like Stoker, Shelley succeeded in giving modern horror one of its finest novels. Frankenstein (or the Modern Prometheus) is one of those books that gets better every time you read it. (I’m talking about the 1818 version, mind you. The later version, the 1832 version–at least I think that was the year–is a classic example of the old adage, If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.) Unfortunately, Shelley didn’t produce a whole lot of merit beyond Frankenstein, and after reading “The Mortal Immortal,” you’ll probably see what I mean. But then again, that may just be a matter of personal taste. You be the judge. What you’ll get when you pick up Classic Tales of Horror, Volume 2, is a compact anthology of unique selections printed on high quality paper in an easy-to-read print. I can only hope for more volumes in this series, because what I’ve seen so far is outstanding. And on a personal note…Jonathan Wooding, if you’re reading this, see if you can stick Coleridge’s narrative poem “Christabel” in Volume 3. Just a thought.

Fresh off of the presses and now available is editor Christopher Allan Death’s ten-story Halloween anthology, BLOODY OCTOBER.  Great tales, trick or treat.  Published by Corpulent Insanity Press, and run by the creators of the Midnight Horror E-Zine.  This is Corpulent’s first collection, and I can’t recommend it enough! 

BLOODY OCTOBER Anthology – Edited by Christopher Allan Death

‘A Collection of Chilling Tales inspired by The Haunted Season’

http://corpulentinsanitypress.com/bloody-october/

Also Available on Amazon.com (last I checked the sales rank was around 180,000):

http://www.amazon.com/Bloody-October-Christopher-Allan-Death/dp/0615222455/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222997100&sr=1-1

Featuring spooky tales by: Christopher Fulbright, Rob Rosen, Lawrence R. Dagstine, Tom Johnstone, Karen L. Newman, Christopher Allen Death, Sam Leng, Kris Ashton, Aaron L. Polson, and Catherine J. Gardner.  Cover art by Steve L. Cartwright.

Other New Entries: “Books & Anthos”

From the publishers of Midnight Horror and the folks behind Corpulent Sanity Press.  A new kind of anthology.  Ten fine writers.  Ten fine stories.  Ten to be revealed. 

BLOODY OCTOBER

An anthology inspired by the haunted season…

Edited by Christopher Allan Death

http://midnighthorror.fortunecity.com/bloodyoctober.html

COMING HALLOWEEN 2008

Other New Entries: “Books & Anthos”

About three years ago, I did not like writing short stories at all.  They are actually quite tricky to write if you are a wordy person like me…someone who tends to ramble on in response to a simple question like “how was your day?” So I started looking for anthologies with themes and strict word count limits to try to strengthen my short story ability.  After about twenty or so miserable short stories, I started to get the knack for them and now try to churn one or two out in the writer’s-block phases of work on my novel-in-progress, The Dark.

My problem is that I tend to make the plots too confusing.  More times than I can count, I’d come up with an idea that seemed great to me but didn’t really fit the current story I was writing.  This often resulted in writing 2-4 short stories at one time.  I was talking to a friend of mine recently, discussing these types of things, and he asked me how in the hell I kept up with the stories, the plots and the charcaters.

Post-It Notes.  That was my answer.  There are several of them on my desk as I type this.  There are two of them directly to my left with ideas and rough sketches for the story I am trying to get finished and submit to the Return to Luna anthology.  On my other side there are four Post-Its with idea for the zombie flash anthology Bits of the Dead.  This anthology has already rejected my crude flash peice “Lost Colony” and good for them; it really is sort of bad.  I was trying to tell a 5,000 word story in 500 (500 being their flash guidelines) and it came out really awkward.  But I am stubborn and will not quit until the deadline.

Then on the top shelf of my desk there is a list of all of the stories I have out there in submission limbo.  Usually I don’t need such lists, but in the course of the last 3 months, my submissions have piled up and I now have 13 stories that I am waiting to hear back on.  I won’t recite the entire list here, but just some of the stories that I am very anxious about:

“Mirrors Facing Mirrors” – sent to the Our Shadows Speak anthology
“King Pumpkin” – sent to the Harvest Hill anthology at Graveside Tales
“An Untold History of Cats” – sent to the Things Aren’t What They Seem anthology at From the Asylum
“After Passing” – sent to the Ghosts in the Machine anthology
“Alternative Medicines” – sent to Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens

Naturally, there are several titles on the list that have been scribbled through due to rejection.  The most recent of these was another rejection for my story “Golden Debris” (the third pass on this story which makes me wonder why I love it so much) and the previously mentioned “Lost Colony”.

So thank God for Post-Its.  I really do need to invest in another color other that green though; my desk has a black top and the thing is starting to look like a really tacky camouflage pattern.

Michael Knost has put together a superb anthology of ghost stories, and reading through Legends of the Mountain State reminds me of one of the main reasons why I love West Virginia.  There’s something about the Appalachian Mountains and the thick woodlands.  To say it’s primal might be a cliche, but inherently mysterious and dark about sloping forests.  Perhaps, as a kid, I’ve read too much Brothers Grimm.  Fair enough.  Being a kid in Germany can do that to a guy.

The contributors represent a vast spectrum, from proven writers within the horror genre to the relatively unknown carving out names for themselves.  There’s the legendary Thomas Monteleone, Kealan Patrick Burke, Tim Waggoner, and many, many more.   Each of these authors takes known urban legends and oral traditions from West Virginia and puts their own personal spin on them.  So, that means appearances by the Braxton County Monster, haunted coal mines, and headless people.  Knost recently has closed his submission window for a sequel, and it’s bound to be as good.  It’s going to be great to see, over the years, this develop into a strong anthology series.