I had two self-made story prompts that I referenced for “Getting Personal” – each entered into my IDEAS file over ten years ago: Personal Injury Specialists – when the injury needs to be personal, and Dangerous Bidding. I know the story that resulted had next to nothing to do with those ideas, but that was … Continue reading
Last Week’s Goals All my blog posts published on schedule. One submissions returned from markets and was sent back out. I have finished revising and formatting my 10th Detective Jimmy Delaney story, and it’s now out on all my platforms for pre-orders at a reduced price. The release date is April 12th. (The collections with … Continue reading
Just kidding! It’s just a blotting out of the sun that we like to make much ado about. **Before I continue with today’s post, it occurred to me that since the release of “The Phantom” is this Friday (Detective Jimmy Delaney #10), it would be a good idea if I were to offer a reduced … Continue reading
“Lasting Impression” came into my mind with the image of a strange creature fading into the woods. I thought it might be a good origin story for Sheriff Audrey Harper in “Sasqwhat?” and then the story rolled out from there (and in typical PANTSER fashion, the creature wasn’t what I first thought it was, either.) … Continue reading
“Date Night” gained me my third honorable mention in the Writers of the Future contest. I have some odd notes about how this started out as an alien mind possession (which I don’t remember at all), shifted to demonic possession, then just a summoning of an old acquaintance with whom our ailing witch shares more … Continue reading
Not all of us are angels, and there are reasons that Santa has a NAUGHTY list along with the NICE one. Would Santa really just drop a couple of lumps of coal in a misbehaving boy’s stocking, or would he do something a little more meaningful – perhaps send him to “Sleep with the Snowmen”? … Continue reading
We’re all familiar with the notion that sometimes the wrong people are in charge – through an accident of birth, or cronyism, or plain dumb luck people wind up in charge of underlings who are more qualified, leaving the underlings to question their masters’ intelligence. I thought to explore the idea with servant robots, but … Continue reading
I wasn’t thinking of anything in particular when “Saturday He Fed the Cat” came to me. It may have been influenced by the death of our 15-year old westie a couple of months earlier (Katy – the namesake of the story’s protagonist, and the westie pictured on the cover. She never told me that she’d … Continue reading
The expression “The Wolves Will Come” was supposed to be a negative and represent a danger; colonists are on the run from their enemies, and they are forced to leave their home and their elderly behind. I wanted the elder to be abandoned by necessity, but proudly, not as a victim. It wasn’t until I … Continue reading
When I wrote “Dempsey’s Debut” I was thinking about an alien species judging us by our violent past (maybe not just judging us on it, but interested in us specifically because of it.) As all distant relationships go, they were not reading us quite right (they were seeing our gladiator movies and boxing and other … Continue reading
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