New Short Story!

"Library Creatures" benefit anthology

It’s my honor to be included in a new anthology of fabulist fiction supporting the Tom Burnett Library in Iowa Park, Texas. Jim Curtis (OldNFO) has been editing these anthologies for the past few years in support of a wonderful small town library, and they’re always good reads. I like anthologies for when I need a bit of a sit-down but don’t want to get enmeshed in a whole novel. Sometimes you just need a little diversion, and there are some great stories in this anthology that will do just that.

The theme for this, the third in the “Haunted Libraries” series, is “library creatures,” and it was up to each writer to decide what that meant. The results are actually quite varied, from cats prowling in the night after something unusual (Tom Rogneby’s “Night Watch”), to a flea trapped in an actual flea circus (Cedar Sanderson’s “Horace’s Grand Adventure”).

All of the stories are good reads, but several really stood out to me. Matt Green’s “Bookwyrm” gives us a small-town librarian caught up in an old (really old) feud with surprisingly high stakes. “The Librarian”, by Christopher Markman, would have made a great episode of “The Twilight Zone.” Remember, kids, there are consequences to your actions. Greg Radabaugh’s “In The End There is Hope” is a solid “urban fantasy” tale featuring a couple of problem-solving heavy-hitters who I wouldn’t mind seeing team up again for future adventures. I’d be remiss not to mention “Black Quartz” by Jesse Barrett, whose own Facebook post about the book launch reminded me to do my own announcement. I’m kind of slow sometimes.

An unexpected pleasure is “The Librarian and the Cursed Centaur.” The title kind of gives it away: there’s a cursed centaur who figures prominently in the story. Even so, I found Richard Cartwright’s story charming, and could actually see it fleshed out to novella length. For something completely different, Ross Hathaway’s “Narrative Hygiene and Other Communicable Diseases” is a deep (several floors deep) dive into the true horror of Washington DC bureaucracy and red tape. If Douglas Adams and Jasper Fforde had collaborated on a story after careers dealing with government tomfoolery, they would have produced something like this. I wasn’t always sure what exactly was going on, but the quirky (but consistent) style and razor-sharp wit swept me along. The ending makes sense to anybody who’s ever had to deal with government, the military, or any big bureaucracy (but I repeat myself).

“Rock, Paper, Scission”, by Lee Allred, caps off the anthology with a flourish. Set in his dystopian wild west world where the American Civil War resulted in a split into not just two but four factions, this story is a classic “a mysterious stranger comes to town” yarn. In this case, we get two strangers for the price of one, and a wild tale of multicultural magic that culminates in an epic showdown. This is another story where I’d love to see the protagonist again in some future tale. In the meanwhile, I’ll have to content myself with reading Allred’s other stories set in his “Deseret” universe, starting with “Tracting Out Cthulhu” in the “All Made of Hinges” anthology.

For my story, I decided to make the library itself the “creature.” The inspiration came from the Clive Barker novella “The Thief of Always.” I stumbled across it as an audio book at my local library many years ago. The blurb intrigued me, and I checked it out. I normally find Barker’s work off-putting, but was pleasantly surprised by his tale of young Harvey Swick, a kid dying of ennui until he is invited to a mysterious place where he finds his every wish granted. Of course it doesn’t take long for Harvey to find out that all is not right with the Holiday House and its denizens, and he has to step up to some serious challenges.

The kid in my story also finds a place that seems to be too good to be true. It eventually makes him question the nature of reality, and perhaps gives him a peek “beyond the veil.” I had fun writing it and hope you enjoy it.

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All proceeds from the sales of this book go toward the library. The writers, the editor, and the cover artist all donated their time and skills.