Screen capture from hyperion-tales.com

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.

I don’t have a lot of details yet, but my “E.E. Durban, Occult Consulting Detective” short story “Blood Trail” has been accepted for publication by End of the World Publishing.

The theme is called Zehlreg Augustus Grindstone’s Spectacular Western Oddity Emporium and is “where the Wild West meets the vast worlds of Fantasy!”

More specifically:

Our theme is intentionally broad to allow would-be contributors to rustle the dogies of their imaginations as freely as possible. A few ideas we have had, purely as examples, are: What would it be like if there had been dwarves around for the California gold rush? What animals elves or orcs might drive and what antics might ensue? How would a saloon fight go if some folks in the saloon were magic users? For that matter, what would magic look like/be used for and how would the general populace use it? Show us Sitting Bull with magic that controls water! Show us ghost riders chasing the Devil’s herd! Show us Billy the Kid with a wand! Or on a dragon! Or both! Show us Annie Oakley, Magic Missile Sharp-shooter! The possibilities are endless.

I already had a couple of characters and world-building completed with Emma Elizabeth Durban and her partner Bobby Bill Thornton. You may have heard of them before on this blog when the short story introducing them “Wolf in the Wind” appeared in this anthology.

My current tale “Blood Trail” is set about a year later with the primary location being San Francisco in 1888.

I don’t want to give too much away about my story, but it does involve something I think of as “mail-order vampires.”

The “Hyperion” creators tell me that this anthology is scheduled to come out in October 2024, so just in time for Halloween, which is perfect for what I’ve written.

The Kickstarter for the book will launch on May 1st and I’ll keep you apprised of info as it comes in.

Hi Ho Silver, Away!