California, That Might Have Been
There are fifty-eight counties in California, if you can believe it. Each has a rich history… a history that sadly lacks elements of magic and the fantastic. We were tasked with changing that.
I picked San Luis Obispo, and wrote of how it become a county in 1850… with the help of werebears.
The California Cantata anthology is available from Kazka Press, in Kindle or Nook edition. There are six unique stories in this anthology, and thankfully mine is among them. Please enjoy.
Okay, guess I should sleep. My story outline is mixing up its syncretism with its eschatology with its psychopomps. And there’s a Fimbulwinter in there somewhere. And angels on motorbikes. And rum flavored with gunpowder. *yawn*
You are the greatest person of all time. I regret only that you are anonymous, so I could thank you by name.
Many thanks for reading, and for the extra goodreads love. I just recently reformatted and touched up “Umbril’s Tale”, and am considering some form of self-publishing for it.
For the curious: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17448239-umbril-s-tale
Dave
“It should be remarked, and I hardly think that the point has been noticed before in this connexion, what gloomy yet intensive delight the mid-Victorians took in funerals, interments, and all the trappings of mortuary woe. How raven-black was the velvet pall, how solemnly nodded the hearse-plumes, how awful stood the train of mutes, how long was the deep crape worn by the relicts of the deceased, how fruity was the old port wine, how rich the slabs of cake! Their minds loved to dwell upon sepulture and the charnel.”
- Montague Summers, Introduction, The Supernatural Omnibus, 1931
A brief scene, just shy of a thousand words, is nestled in the middle of Crack the Spine’s 47th issue. Please do have a read… and enjoy the other remarkable prose and poetry throughout the issue.
“And you?”
“I am interested in other things. I have a good life but I must write because if I do not write a certain amount I do not enjoy the rest of my life.”
“And what do you want?”
“To write as well as I can and learn as I go along. At the same time I have my life which I enjoy and which is a damned good life.”
- Ernest Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa
“Get to making.”
“Make your novel readable. Make it easy to read, pleasant to read. This doesn’t mean flowery passages, ambitious flights of pyrotechnic verbiage; it means strong, simple, natural sentences.”
