Busy Writing, Beyond the Four Walls and A Great Story To Read!

Well, I've been out of touch, but then I've been busy trying to write a story for Forbidden Love: Wicked Women. I've got one--the 'wicked woman' is definitely wicked. I won't go on, it's basically finished and edited through once, now waiting on my friend and her views. Then editing again and hopefully submitted by this weekend. I actually wrote two different stories, the other based on this villianess from my almost finished werewolf horror novel, Obsession. She's a nasty piece of work, but I actually thought I made her sympathetic, which shocked me as writing her in Obsession she was a no hold back punches monster.
Got copies of Beyond the Four Walls in mail yesterday, from the new printer. Very nice, smaller than what Lulu.com did for them, but nicer print. I'm taking some to Fantasci 5 for signing and then rest ot Horrorfind Weekend. And we got the cd of Wedded Magic, along with basket ful of magical/wizard goodies, so stop by my table at Fantasci 5 and sing up to try and win it all. It's free to do so, you just have to be in person to win--at my panel with horror author, Elizabeth Blue at 2:15PM.
If you can't make Fantasci, whether to something else going on, or not live near Virginia, you can get Beyond the Four Walls through Naked Snake Press or through Shocklines.com at http://shocklines.stores.yahoo.net/befowabbypak.html, and shipping is free anywhere in the United States.
The incredible cover art is from an artist friend of mine, Susan Wickham (S.L. Wickham), who has a MySpace at SLWickham'sMySpace.Com In this chapbook of four ghostly tales, ghosts haunt more than houses and arent always bound by four walls as proven by the four stories in Beyond the Four Walls.
Stories:
Spectre Dreams and Visitations
Gray Dust
Hard Drive Haunting
Call In The Night
In Spectre Dreams and Visitations, a paranormal romance gone wrong, Sherry buys an old book of ghost stories at a yard sale for some good reading and finds that it results in something far more than she can handle or even wants. And haunting proves to be a dusty business for one reporter staying the last night of a reputedly haunted movie theater before its demolition in Gray Dust. Hard Drive Haunting reveals to a young woman that surfing the Internet does even more terrifying damage to her life than a computer virus to her computer. And in the last ghostly tale, Call in the Night, a woman finds that the call shes been receiving each night is definitely more than a wrong number.

An excerpt from "Spectre Dreams and Visitations":
The smell of old books rose up in the air from the volumes on a table at the yard sale, allowing Sherry to feel welcomed by the presence of dear old friends. Friends that gave comfort and took one to faraway places, all the while sitting in a chair or lying in bed.
What can I do for you? asked the plump old woman, thin wisps of pearl-white hair wiggling wildly on top of her balding pate as she shook her head. Her face, an overabundance of wrinkles, didnt hide the twin points of cobalt that were her eyes as they sparkled at the younger woman. A combination of peppermint and pepperoni combined with the odor of cigarettes drifted over to her as the old woman came closer.
Sherry took a couple steps back. Im looking for something scary, a fat volume of ghost stories. Nothing modern, no, I dont feel a need for descriptions of blood and gore. I want something from the eighteen hundreds, or at least, no later than nineteen-twenty, the young woman
said dreamily, When ghost tales were meant to give the reader a taste of the shivers, wondering what was hovering in the shadowy corner and could only seen out of the corner of the eye, not the gore-ridden slasher trash that lines the pages of horror stories today.
The old lady grinned broadly, her teeth yellow from the cigarettes she obviously smoked constantly. A mist hovered mid-air around her, a combination from the cigarettes and dust rising off the books.
I have just the book for you, my dear, croaked the woman, something that was my nieces. She died a year ago and I got all of her stuff. She had a penchant for ghost stories herself.
Its not something modern?
The publishing date in it said 1910.
Let me see it.
The woman reached into a dusty cardboard box under the table. Something must have stayed my hand from putting this book with the others on this table. I had this feeling inside me to wait and Im glad I did.
She handed over a big heavy volume, the dust jacket old and tattered. The title, faded but still readable, was Spectre Love Tales. Sherry flipped it open, scanning through the many titles of short stories on the pages within and saw something definitely worth reading as she sat tonight in her big comfy chair, a cup of hot coffee nearby to sip occasionally as she read.
She closed the book and looked up. Ill take it.
She pulled some money out of her purse, but the old lady stopped her.
Its yours free of charge. I couldnt sell it, not after it was found clasped in her hands.
What do you mean?
It was found with her body.
Sherry glanced down at the book in her hands. Oh my. She looked back up. How old was your niece?
A tear slipped out of the womans eye and trailed down a wrinkle on her cheek. She was only twenty-eight. Like me, she had a fondness for peppermint candy and pepperoni pizza.
Thats young.
More tears welled up in the womans eyes. Yes, she was.
Sherry felt uncomfortable, and after a thank you and good bye, left the yard sale. As she unlocked her car a slight breeze came up, bringing with it a sound like the soft moan of a woman in pain. It startled and unsettled her. Then it faded away. Her glance caught the book cradled in her arms and she shook her head at her imaginings. She opened the car door, climbed in, and drove away.

A good story to read and that I enjoyed--it's free and on-line--is The Fallen by Angeline Hawkes-Craig. It was first published in August 2005. The website is ScienceFictionFantasyHorror.com, the same bunch who accepted my horror flash fiction, "Werewolf for Hire", which when it's up there, I'll let everyone know on my website Fantastic Dreams and here and at Pamela's MySpace.com . So if you enjoy angels and devils ,you can read it at http://www.sciencefictionfantasyhorror.com/article.mgi2?article=fallen . Angeline has a story in the same upcoming anthology as me, Beyond the Blackened Mirrors: Tales of Dark Romance by the imprint of Coyote Moon Publications :Silver Moon Erotic Books.