News & New Releases

Happy to learn that an anthology collection of short stories I was included in was nominated for an Anthony Award. Voting will be at Bouchercon World Mystery Convention 2016 in September. Great to be in PROTECTORS 2: HEROES with such company as Joyce Carol Oates, Wayne D. Dundee, Andrew Vachss, Harlan Ellison®, Thomas Pluck, Hillary Davidson and others.

Read more about it here.

Acclaimed author Richard Prosch won the Western Writers of America Spur Award in 2016 for his short fiction. This volume of stories from old Wyoming and Nebraska brings the best of his westerns together under one cover for the first time. A wrecked wagon spells trouble for a Niobrara river man; the leader of a roadhouse band needs a tough man for a dangerous job; a gambler bets on the outcome of a western showdown; a pulp fiction character haunts a woman’s memory of her husband. Old gunnies, laconic lawmen, John Coburn, Whit Branham, and a host of villains bring the action, humor and irony Prosch is well known for. Old favorites and brand new tales firmly establish Prosch as an exciting new voice in Western fiction.

Available at Amazon here.

Good news for a new month! Jo Harper’s first adventure, Waiting for a Comet, is now available as an audiobook at Amazon/Audible, and I’m so happy with the way it turned out! Without a doubt professional talent Ashley Lucas of LucasImages is the voice of Jo Harper delivering an exciting, pitch-perfect narrative. Thanks to Ashley and producer Wade Lucas for a stellar job!

Buy at Amazon / Audible here.

The new year is an exciting time, packed with new potential for short stories. This year, I’m glad to have had a head start with three new stories released in three terrific anthologies.

“Storm Damage” (in Sundown Western Tales, Sundown Press, January 2016).

I was twelve or thirteen years old, eating by myself in the Stockman’s café, when a grizzled old guy in our small Nebraska town sat down next to me. The beer on his breath overpowered the lunch time smell of coffee, fried chicken and potatoes, and his gnarled, spotted hand clutched unpredictably at his knee.

Like it was his solemn duty, he told me a decades old story of lust and lost love.

Like he was doing a public service, laying a lesson on the lonely kid.

Through his bushy white beard, he admitted to being plenty lonely himself.

“Storm Damage” isn’t his story, exactly. The years have rounded the edges and my own experience added the sharp peaks and valleys.

But the idea started back in that smoky cafe, with a long gone old farmer talking to me like an adult, planting a seed of warning.

Please pick up Sundown Western Tales at Amazon or Smashwords.

“The Scalper” (in Western Trail Blazer #10: Western Tales, Western Trail Blazer, December 2015)

Used to be there’d be a hundred different kinds of peddlers traipsing onto your farm place, hocking everything from lightning rods to horses and cows. Drunk barn painters and crooked calf wranglers wandered up every few weeks, and sometimes, if you felt sorry for them, you gave ‘em a few bucks.

“The Scalper” is a story about that kinda Joe. A down-on-his luck dreamer with a chance to step up in the world. If only he’s got the guile to make it happen.

Please pick up Western Tales #10 at Amazon.

“The Alexandria County Library Book Sale” (in Tales From the Otherverse, Rough Edges Press, November 2015)

In August last year, I wrote a single short story every day. The yarns ranged all over the place: from westerns to crime stories, to speculative fiction. Almost all of them fit into an established genre except this one.

Part alternate history, part love note to the library book sales that have helped populate my shelves, this story happened in about two hours start to finish, and was a lot of fun to write.

Please pick up Tales From the Otherverse at Amazon or Smashwords.