Catch of the Day

I received the nod from Severed Press today; "Grim Adaptations" will be part of the Dead Bait anthology.

Part of the story takes place at a pond from my childhood (in my fictional world, it is filled with zombie catfish). The same pond inspired "The Scavengers Lying in Wait", due in Harvest Hill next October.

These shots were taken last spring. Behind the camera, through about twenty yards of trees, is Greenwood Cemetery, home to more dead than the number of living in my hometown. Damn if this isn't a great locale for a horror story.

The pond used to stretch off to the right in the bottom picture. A buddy and I would hang out on Sunday afternoons and catch dozens of bullhead. We used to freak each other out, too, what with the scores of tombstones within shouting distance.

Good times.

Awful Things I've Done to My Hometown...

Natalie Sin started it, Catherine Gardner put together a nice list of her own, and now I'm adding my mutated entry...

Top Ten Awful Things I've Done in/to My (Surrogate) Hometown*:

10. Planted a hungry, snarling, barbecue-loving THING in the shadows.
9. Converted a lumbering claymation giant into an art critic.
8. Drowned a lonely boy so he can continue looking for playmates in the afterlife.
7. Unleashed a murderer who is stuck in a bizarre time warp (like a skipping record).
6. Blessed a murderous country road with children--undead children.
5. Given a few innocent citizens an addiction to human eyeballs (they just want to collect them).
4. Populated the storeroom below the high school auditorium with vampires.
3. Sent a poor farm boy to war to learn to listen to the dead and follow their commands.
2. Allowed a swarm of doberman-sized beetles to devour most of the citizenry.
1. Populated the pond behind our local cemetery with the undead who were denied a dignified burial.

*Most of my stories take place in the fictional town of Springdale, Kansas--a sad mock-up of my own home of Clay Center. These ten happenings have all taken place my surrogate town.

The Old Flat Mile

I received word yesterday that my short piece, "Care and Feeding of the Old Flat Mile" wiggled its way into The Black Garden.

The Old Flat Mile is an actual road just outside of my hometown (see the picture above and one below). It did inspire quite a load of terror when I was in high school--we would run timed mile intervals there during cross-country practice. Yes, the Old Flat Mile was exactly one mile long, and pretty flat. I remember a lot of sweat and dust on that road. A few blisters, too.

The story is fiction, of course. This should be a fun anthology.

Peace.