Week 1 of the New Year

New Blog Posting:

It seems that there's going to be a second outing for the anthology Action: Pulse Pounding Tales. I never made the deadline for the first one but bought it and found it was chocker with top stories by both familiar names as well as some new ones. So this time I'm gonna be getting my own attempt in sharpish and hope to make the cut. I'll re-post the details once they've been released.

Anyone looking for a home for their horror stories should consider giving Red Skies Press a whirl, Mark McCrittenden is a top editor and artist and I've bagged a spot in one of his new ones with a re-print of a vampire story of mine: They, the Discarded.

Writer's Talkback is a forum I've been a member of for a few years now. Each month they have a challenge, The One Word Challenge. You're given a word and have to come up with some flash fiction, 200 words max. I've won it a few times, latest being month before last. This month I got the runner's-place with this piece, I was quite chuffed with it for a lunch-time effort. The word was: Brace.

Another, Fresher, Come Hither.

There was more than dust beneath the carpet, and more than carpet above the boards, decades of evil had been swept there. The peculiar shadow in the corner stretched like ethereal elastic, morphing to human-shape, male. His movement fluid, poured ink that had spilled upwards and outwards. His dark mood was on the hob and busily coming to the boil. His eyes, their stare, five degrees past simmering and his saliva nowt but hot fat and spitting from his rump-lips. A new shadow joined the obscene. Breasts to show the feminine in the mirrored shade, shadows stretching her legs, fattening them, copying what was happening in-betwixt, spewing pitch black across the floor in a visual mimicry of the baby that was falling forth from her loins.
The shadows paused as the door inched its way open and a little boy called out. “Momma, I want this room, this room is mine.”
“Okay, honey.” Came the voice from below.
A ghostly tongue swept the rump-lips.
The shadowy umbilical chord wafted away on a dead breeze before showing itself afresh and worming towards the small boy who had no chance to brace himself for the coming horror.

Oh, Thrillers, Killers & Chillers has re-opened for submissions so this weekend I'm planning on putting something together for there, been a few months since I've darkened their doorsteps.