Writer and Editor C.B. Calsing/ G.G. Royale

I am thrilled to announce another short story acceptance. This one from Knight Writing Press . The anthology is based on "be careful what you wish for." I love this theme and used to teach The Wishgiver  to my third graders and have them write companion stories to go with it. I can give my freshman English teacher credit for that lesson idea; she let us write vignettes to fit into Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine.  I guess today we'd call that fanfiction. My story for this anthology, "Death Stopped for Florencia," is not fanfiction, but it is a bit of an homage to the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, one of my favorite writers. I don't remember when I first read Love in the Time of Cholera  or "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings," but I've revisited those pieces many times throughout the years and continue to draw inspiration from them. Of course, the title is a nod to Emily Dickinson as well. I hope you will enjoy my story in this a...

Matthew Lyons’s A Black and Endless Sky is a gripping horror novel that begins strong, releases some of the tension, and then builds to a hard crescendo. After Jonah’s divorce, he and his sister, Nell, decide to road trip from San Francisco to Albuquerque. To start things off, they get in a bar fight with some bikers. Then it’s all downhill from there when Nell becomes possessed by a demon in the Nevada desert. With the wounded bikers and an exorcist dogging their every move, siblings have to figure out how to free Nell and get home. I find it difficult to enjoy a book when I don’t genuinely like any of the characters. I didn’t find any of them to be particularly sympathetic. From the beginning, Nell is problematic with how she baits her brother into fights. Jonah is somewhat likable at the beginning, but then his character flaws reveal that even he is not going to be the hero of this story. When Ann, the exorcist, comes on the scene, I was expecting to like her and thought she might ...

My story "Haunted by the Absent" will appear in "The Theme is Revenge" from  https://darklakepublishing.com/ . A collection of gothic suspense set in the 1800s, the anthology certainly promises to be dark and atmospheric. I can't wait to read the other stories included. Here are the links to Amazone and Goodreads. The release date is April 28, and the presale starts the week before. Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09TJB3LS6 Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60506253-the-theme-is-revenge

 My story, "Squid and Girl, Girl and Squid" was selected to appear in Dead Sea Press's Death in the Deep anthology. I'm particularly excited by this because it is a charity anthology, raising money for the Shark Trust. My antagonist in this story is a sleeper shark, and I did quite a bit of background reading about sleeper sharks and giant squid (my main character). I found this little video particularly fascinating while I was working. Learn more about this anthology and others like it at https://www.bloodriteshorror.com/dsp