I’ve been sitting on this news all summer! But that’s my own fault, because I insist on signing a contract before I announce any of my fiction publications. Which means the contract is signed, and I have a new short story coming out at the end of the year!

“Thlush-a-lum” will be published in the Winter 2015 issue of PULP Literature, a newish speculative fiction magazine that came to be through a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2013.

Issue #5 will be released electronically and in paperback form, and you bet I’ll update you once buy links become available. In addition to four yearly issues of the magazine, PULP Literature runs a number of contests that often feature publication as a prize. Their editors’ blog is also a fount of useful information for writers. Peruse away!

What’s “Thlush-a-lum” about, you wonder? It’s pure horror that would qualify as flash fiction in most markets. The story came about when I challenged myself to write something more focused on the sense of sound than the other four I more commonly use in my writing. Many of those sounds are inspired by what I could hear from my own Southern bedroom window…and a few sounds that I swear I’ve been able to hear no matter where I’ve lived.

The first few lines? Certainly.

Markella’s earliest memories are of the sounds outside her window. At hours when no men moved, rustling branches and shuffling grass woke her. A beating pulse like slower, fleshier helicopter blades banished sleep: thlush-a-lum thlush-a-lum. In summers, the heat in her attic bedroom hot enough to incubate, Markella pushed the window open and dozed to the endless static drone of cicadas. In winters, choking radiator warmth wrapped tight around her, she cracked the window and the low, deep hoots of an owl drifted in with the freezing breeze.

The sounds crept in no matter the season.

And you know I like to include a photo to set the mood when I can…