It's Here--Drunk on the Moon!

Drunk on the Moon, the anthology of stories based on the werewolf/private investigator character created by Paul D. Brazill is now available at Amazon and OmniLit. (It'll soon be available in other stores, including B&N, but they take longer to publish.) This is the e-pub version. The print version will be out early in May.
There are 11 stories in all--including a prequel by Brazill, and the stories were gathered from an international group of writers--Julia Madeleine, John Donald Carlucci, Richard Godwin, K.A. Laity, B.R. Stateham, Paul D. Brazill, Jason Michel, Frank Duffry, Allan Leverone, and me!!
My story, "A Fire in the Blood" features Roman facing off against a Persian fire demoness with the help of another wolf and a mysterious freelance pharmacist.
The stories offer a little something for everyone, and shortly there will be blurbs, including a lovely review from Les Edgerton. The book is $2.99 and well worth it.

Seriously?

According to Blogger stats, the second biggest source of traffic to this blog is a site called Americans Who Hate Obama. WTH?  Not sure what anyone who is on that site could possibly see on my site that says we'd be kindred spirits.

Feminist Fiction Friday

It is Feminist Fiction Friday and I'm fried. I am in week three of the computer changeover from HELLLLLL and last night it took a new and even more annoying turn as we switched over from the Google Cloud to the Microsoft Cloud. Only one of my email addresses works, and it's not the one I use for business. Only one computer (the new one) is linked to the printer but that printer doesn't have word installed at the moment since we were going to try Google Docs.  Grrrr.
So I'm feeling pretty sorry for myself. And then I read about Musine Kokalari.  She was an Albanian writer (the first female Albanian writer) who was persecuted after the Communists took over in her country, imprisoned for 18 years, prohibited from writing after that and died in poverty in 1983 after being forced to work as a street sweeper. According to Wikipedia, when she was terminally ill with cancer, she was refused a hospital bed.It's really hard to find any of her work. Her novel Vepra is available from an amazon affiliate seller for $39.

Resources on Women Writers::

Women Writers Online--the excellent project housed at Brown University. Check it out here.
Emory Women Writers Resource Project. Info is here.

Knit Your Own Cat!

You know, my sister knew how to knit and crochet but that gene just skipped a generation with me. On the rare occasions I sit down to watch television, I don't feel the need to keep my fingers occupied with knitting needles because they're usually busy conveying food to my mouth.
I'm also not really a whimsical person. Yes, I once bought a cement Statue of Liberty for the garden in back of the house I was living in (it was taller than I was and awesome), but it's not like I inflicted my whimsy on passersby, the way I would have if I'd put out a pair of pink flamingos for example.
And yet, when I saw this book, i found myself wishing that I could actually knit because this is the kind of whimsy that tickles my fancy.  (I actually thought it was going to turn out to be a self-help book or something, like the screenwriting manual Save the Cat.)
Knit Your Own Cat. Own the whimsy.

What I'll Be Reading Next: I Am an Executioner

I ran across an interview with writer Rajesh Parameswaran here, and found myself wishing I could have been at the release party for his collection of short stories, I Am an Executioner.  It's one of those books where the publisher has priced the Kindle edition ($12.99) at just four dollars less than the hard cover ($16.99), but from what I've read, the book is clearly the harbinger of a brilliant new talent. I can't wait to read it.

I will make wine of your blood

Photograph by Roger Kirby

Sometimes, short stories insinuate themselves into my work hours, even when I'm completely engaged in an activity (in this case, reading Paul Tobin's fantastic novel Prepare to Die (it'll be out June 5 and if you love great writing, superheroes, love stories or any combination thereof, you will want to buy it).

I kept thinking of Zora Neale Hurston's quote about gods and their worship. Here's the quote:

“All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.”


And then I started thinking about a goblin character I've been playing with, a bad-ass gangster goblin who vows vengeance on a rival. And then I started thinking about the ridiculous but oh so quotable movie line, "I will drink your milkshake."


And then I came up with the line, "I will make wine of your blood." I am not sure what I'm going to do with it, but I know there's a story there.

Saturday Self-Promotion: Four Birds Calling

Photo by Dave Di Biase

I have a ton of deadlines coming down the road in the next two weeks--the release of the Drunk on the Moon anthology, the 5K short story "Broken Angel" for Italian publisher Lorenzo Mazzoni, a couple of book reviews, my submission to Pulp Ink 2.  And the annual deluge of scripts to prep clients for the Cannes film festival is just around the corner too. And in there I'm working on Misbegotten and my shared world project Starcaster.  And while all this is going on, I'm putting together the sequel to my Christmas collection, tentatively entitled 12 More Nights of Christmas. The original collection came out right before the holidays last year and although I think it's a strong bunch of stories, it hasn't really sold well. So all new stories themed to the dark side of the Christmas song--stories of leaping lords and bioengineered partridges and tainted milk sold by a soulless agribusiness company.
Here's a story from the original collection:

Four Birds Calling

 Reg could see the two birds out of the corner of his eye. They were looking at him and giggling, being none too subtle about it.

He knew what they were thinking.

Is it him?

Could it be?

The resemblance really was quite striking. He had the same blond mop-top, the same bedroom eyes, the same succulent lower lip.

He even styled his wardrobe after Thomas, the photographer his doppelganger had played in Blow-Up. The white pants and powder-blue shirt rolled up to the elbows. It was a good look for him.

The shirt matched his eyes.

And eyes are the windows of the soul.

Reg never looked birds in the eye though; he always focused on their lips. Eventually they’d notice and ask, “What?”

He’d always say, “You have the most beautiful lips.”

It worked a treat, that line.