Caribbean Halloween Killing: A True Story
By David Walls-Kaufman
We never knew some things about my gentle Grandmother Loyd. She kept those things secret. Darkly secret. Black secret.
Halloween stories are ridiculous. And I say that as a man who has had probably four run-ins with ghosts, not including this one. But this all happened.
My earliest memory of her was of her sweet, loving face beaming at me when I was three and leaving with my friends to Trick or Treat down my suburban street in Austin. She wore a 1950s pleated sleeveless, collared dress and waved goodbye to me and said, with music light as a wind-chime in her voice, “I’ll see you again after you go around.” Only years later, after the unlikely deaths in Puerto Rico around our vacation home, her old home, did the prescience in those words strike me.
New Fiction for Halloween: The New Boss
A Halloween Short Story
By Mark Ellis
Texas Governor George W. Bush has just touched down at Portland International Airport. The word is out on talk radio: Bush will hold a rally at Memorial Coliseum at 7 pm. Halloween in the year 2000 dawned with the eternal chance of showers that make a Portland fall forecast, and Kyle Waldenburg wonders why W is bothering. It’s common knowledge that the Rose City is the progressive capital of a state Bush has no chance of winning.
That doesn’t stop the Reagan Republican divorced father of two from rounding up his children, Lance and Lindsey, fifteen and nine respectively, after getting permission from ex-wife Kay to take them out of school early.
“You never want to miss a chance to see a president,” he’d told her.
“I’ll agree to this,” Kay had replied, “but God forbid that man should become the president.”
Gangster Town: The First 2 Chapters from Book 3 in the American Blackout Thriller Series
The action continues in Fred Tribuzzo’s action-packed adventure
By Fred Tribuzzo
Cricket was half awake, and her dream continued to play outside her bedroom window. Her father’s profile, head down, as he was thinking or getting ready to give an answer to her question soon morphed into her great-uncle Tommy, a young soldier returning from World War Two. Other faces appeared, dissolved, people she had known, loved, and lost.
She was filling her lungs with her first conscious breath when the face outside the window turned into a white leopard. The big, wide face peered at her peacefully, eyes warm on the surface yet streaming the vastness of nature.
She quickly lifted herself up on one arm, disturbing her husband’s sleep. The animal had to be on its hind legs.
Purchase Gangster Town here on Amazon. Also check out this sample from Pulse of the Goddess: American Blackout Book 1 and the opening chapters from book 2, Slaves Beneath the Stars.
New Fiction, Chapter 4: Stealing Cars and Co-Ed Bars
Serial installments of the novel ‘A Girl, A Dog, a Boat’ continue
By Audie Cockings
The guys I dated before Todd weren’t anything to write home about – seemingly pleasant company, but not engaging in a lifetime sort of way. And I had zero man-luck in med school. There were too many willing undergrad girls looking to land a doctor so the single males in med school were severely oversexed…
I thought I was modern. A go-with-the-flow kinda girl who wasn’t in a full-on sprint to coupledom. But after being propositioned by far too many drunk partygoers, I concluded that I’m nicer than I put on. Perhaps all of those years of Sunday school stuck because a roll in the hay was of no interest to me.
That, coupled with the fact that I never really had a serious long-term boyfriend kept me in good standing with Flossie and her friends at church who regularly asked God to send me a husband before I gave up and sinned. She said that if she waited then so could I. She also said that the best husbands are friends first.
Editor’s note: Click here for chapter 1, here for chapter 2, and here for chapter 3 in this weekly fiction serial.
New Fiction, Chapter 3: Splinters and The Pressure Cooker
Serial installments of the novel ‘A Girl, A Dog, a Boat’ continue
By Audie Cockings
Mom had planned on staying another few days, but after the physicality of my loss was over I kindly asked her to go. I was so confused. I didn’t know why I was mourning someone I never knew. I couldn’t talk about it. As much as I loved Mom’s company, I felt a big cry coming on and wanted to be alone.
The weeks following only further solidified my sorrow. Everywhere I went there were pregnant women and new babies. It was as if the cervically-gifted were breeding with each other. Multiplying
themselves just to mock me. My only solace was food and I was beginning to resemble a tub of salted caramel.
Editor’s note: Click here for chapter 1 and here for chapter 2 in this weekly fiction serial.
New Fiction, Chapter 2: Johnny Hustle
Serial installments of the novel ‘A Girl, A Dog, a Boat’ continue
By Audie Cockings
Mom wanted to stay. She knew exactly what I was feeling: unspeakable loss. She’d had much of that in her life. Much more than mine. She lost both her parents very young, in a car accident. And of course, she lost her best friend, my dear father.
Dad was the most hard-working man of his time and entirely self-made. He ran off and joined the army at seventeen so he could have enough money to marry his high school sweetheart. After being a radio guy for three years and getting some experience in supply-chain management, Johnny left the Army to be a tin-knocker like his old man. He turned their petite carport into a sheet metal fabrication shop that slowly but steadily became a very profitable business venture. After retiring, Dad consulted for his old competitors who knew him by the nickname of “Johnny Hustle.” Nobody worked harder than dad. He could make or fix anything with a pencil, a ruler, a heavy pair of snips, and a Phillips head.
Editor’s note: Click here for chapter 1 in this weekly fiction serial
New Fiction Serial: A Girl, A Dog, A Boat
Chapter 1: Listen to Your Mother
By Audie Cockings
She told me this would happen. At sixty-eight years old, my mom, Flossie, hit the nail on the head, yet again.
She was right about Andy, Marc, James, Julian, Miguel, and now Todd. I should have stuck with serial monogamy. That seemed to hurt less.
I knew it was coming but seeing Todd’s photo in The Capital Paper yesterday, cosseting a certain female named Barbie Joe caused a pain in my chest that I didn’t think possible. Todd may as well have hung me upside down on a cross, cut my heart out and BBQ’d it for his new anatomically correct and (somewhat) well-bred subdeb. I was done.
New Fiction: The Hidden Rider
By Tamara Wilhite
“This tissue graft sounds like everything the implants are but more,” I said.
“That’s exactly right. It will live off excess blood sugar or fat, whatever fuel source is readily available.” The doctor was nothing but professional.
“The implants can do that and run off batteries.”
“The graft is actually more advanced, since it will never need to have the batteries changed, and it can change itself.”
“Bio-rejection is a risk”
“Yes, true, but the Marcon Biologics C model caused thousands to get sick when the biologically derived plastics inside of it caused bio-rejection when they started to break down,” the doctor countered.
“That’s poor material selection. And the implant itself in this case is biological. It could be considered a parasite,” I told the doctor.
The First Chapter For New Thriller ‘Pulse of the Goddess’
The first book of Fred Tribuzzo’s ‘American Blackout’ series is out now and volumes two and three are coming soon!
By Fred Tribuzzo
“Emily Cricket Hastings!” Sister Marie shouted in lieu of God Almighty as the bullets whistled by and the porpoising ’67 sky blue Barracuda left the road at high speed.
Cricket made a hard right turn and sped the Plymouth convertible through a sunny field of tall grass, aiming for the woods alongside a white farmhouse.
“Stay down,” Cricket yelled, her long, dark hair a war flag, leading the battle.
Inside the forest she slid to a stop behind a row of oaks lining a large meadow and flew out of the car.
Click here to purchase Pulse of the Goddess: American Blackout Book 1.
New Fiction: Free Gershwin!
A hilarious short story from the creator of the Bad Road Rising series
By Mike Baron
Sully was on a Boy Scout camping trip in New Hampshire the first time he heard Rhapsody in Blue. It was after lights out, although the boys continued to giggle and pass a rubber rat from bag to bag. As they dropped off one by one into sleep, music floated in the rustic window from a counselor’s cabin, faint, mysterious, and overwhelming. Sully poked himself with his Boy Scout knife to stay awake for fifteen minutes after the performance, so he could learn the name of the piece.
Sully’s mother swore she’d played Gershwin for him in her womb and that he was born singing but that’s a mother for you. Sully worshipped Gershwin above all others.
