Another One!

Some of you may be getting a little tired of this, but me, never!

Eric J. Guignard sent an addendum to yesterday's email noting another nice review, hot off the press, of Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations. It's from Michael R Collings, a Senior Publications Editor for JournalStone Publishing, an Emeritus professor of English, popular author of best-selling horror novels and GOH at the last World Horror Convention. You can read it HERE.

And yes, he mentions me - why else would I be so excited and divert from my morning routine to immediately post this?

The twenty-five stories, all by fine writers with a careful eye toward craft and artistry, range from the quietly atmospheric to the overtly horrific…ribcages erupting from the living bodies of men. Some incorporate traditional horrors, such as ghosts and Lovecraftian behemoths; others introduce entirely new levels of creatures and creations. In Caw Miller’s “The Small, Black God,” a stone statue becomes the instrument of vengeance and death. In Rob Rosen’s “Buried Treasure,” the treasure found in the northern desert wastes is both that which is sought and something more. Gitte Christensen’s “Whale of a Time” evokes another time and place while simultaneously playing with multiple levels of a manipulated reality. Andrew S. Williams’ “The Talisman of Hatra” subsumes overt horror beneath a challenging story of love and betrayal. Jonathan Vos Post’s “Sumeria to the Stars” transforms the starkness of mathematics into possibilities almost—but not quite—beyond imagining; in its closing lines, it provides a counterpoise to Bruce L. Priddy’s re-creation of ancient epic in “Gilgamesh and the Mountain.”

Anyway, as said, I'll never get tired of this. It still amazes me that a story one has worked on for ages mostly in isolation, all the while wondering whether anyone else will want to spend a portion of their precious time with your creation, is actually being read by real live people out there in the great big world, and that some of them are actually really enjoying it! Talk about a warm fuzzy feeling deep in the cockles of my writerly heart. And (she said smugly) I do think WOT is doing rather well for a story that was rejected 11 times before Eric enthusiastically snapped it up. Lesson learnt: you either click with editors and readers when you do these riskier pieces, or you don't. Must remember this.

Now, must return to my trusty writing keyboard (with a smile on my face). I'll be back to blog later. Maybe.