Today is the day: Moonlight and Misadventure, the latest anthology edited by Judy Penz Sheluk (Superior Shores Press) is available on Amazon in ebook and print! Get it here: link.
I’m delighted to have my dark tale, “The Moon God of Broadmoor”, included with the works of 20+ amazing writers.
We’ve been getting great reviews, including a 4.7 star rating on Goodreads. Read American writer/editor Kevin Tipple’s review on his blog, Kevin’s Corner, here. And Canadian writer/reviewer, Vanessa Westermann’s take, here.
Earlier in June, I had the privilege of being featured on Art Taylor’s blog, The First Two Pages, where I revealed the craft behind the opening of “Moon God”. Also the challenges I faced moving from scientific and bureaucratic writing to creating crime fiction! Here’s the link.
Here’s an excerpt from my story, “The Moon God of Broadmoor”!
Liz, a young public health inspector, visits the Broadmoor Apartments to investigate a complaint about poop on the lawn.
I parked illegally in front of the building. From where I sat in the driver’s seat, I could see that Mrs. Jack had ample cause to complain. The grass was befouled.
Step one, find Mrs. Jack. I climbed out of the van, but couldn’t spot the entrance to the building. Now what?
My answer came in the form of an apparition: a chubby, middle-aged man wearing a powder blue tunic, shiny mauve tights and gauzy, iridescent cape.
He emerged from a doorway located in the bend of the “U” on my right and sauntered down the fractured cement path that bisected the lawn. He stopped just in front of me.
“I see that I have struck awe in your heart. Don’t be afraid,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“I am Thoth, God of the Moon. How may I help you?”
A large brooch, in the shape of a pink rhinestone flamingo, pinned the ends of his cape to the front of his tunic. His stringy black hair badly needed a wash, but his broad face looked friendly.
Best to play along. “Nice to meet you, um, Thoth. I seek Mrs. Jack.”
“Ah, yes, the keeper of my earthly home. And what is your business with her?”
“I’m with the health department. Mrs. Jack made a complaint.”
“Sad.” Thoth shook his head. “So young and already ensnared in the satanic coils of bureaucracy. You will find Mrs. Jack through there.”
Only one more week till the publication of Moonlight and Misadventure on June 18th! Today it’s my pleasure to welcome fellow author, Bethany Maines to Cyber Cafe. We both share a love for and write noir crime fiction and readers will really enjoy her dark tale, Tammy Loves Derek.
Bethany is an award-winning author of romantic action-adventure and mystery novels that focus on women who know when to apply lipstick and when to apply a foot to someone’s hind-end. She has published several independent novels, two novels with Atria, and numerous short stories in Frolic, Shotgun Honey, and Switchblade Magazine. When she’s not traveling to exotic lands, or kicking some serious butt with her black belt in karate, she can be found chasing her daughter or glued to the computer working on her next novel.
Tammy Loves Derek is a wonderfully dark and scary tale. What inspired you to write it?
I participate in the Seattle Noir at the Bar a few times a year. Noir at the Bar is a live reading event focusing on crime fiction and every time I attend I’m inspired to up my game. Every writer’s take on noir is a little different, but at our January 2020 event, someone made a crack about femme fatales. That got me thinking about writing a crime story from the “bad girl’s’” point of view.
I set out to write such a story planning to read it at our next Noir at the Bar event. Unfortunately, COVID hit, and in-person events were canceled. I had to start looking for a new home for it. I was thrilled when I saw the announcement for Moonlight and Misadventure – I was certain my story would fit in.
And it certainly does! Tell us more about Tammy Loves Derek.
Tammy Loves Derek centers on Tammy Lee Swanley. She has a stable job at a med spa, but she also has a cheating boyfriend and dwindling prospects for getting the gold-plated life she was hoping for. So Tammy comes up with five-step plan for wealth and happiness. Hint: that plan might not include her boyfriend, Derek!
What do you especially enjoy about being part of the Moonlight and Misadventure anthology?
I love the team effort of being part of anthology. It’s nice to work with other authors and I can’t wait to read all of the stories.
Tell us more about your writing. Do you write short fiction or novels or both?
I write both novels and short fiction. Of the two, I find short fiction to be the harder one! Short fiction has to contain so much within such tight parameters. Every word starts to matter!
You love to explore sub-genres in crime fiction. Tell us more!
I have one crime series – The Shark Santoyo Crime Series – which is a bit of a mobster mash-up and my homage to those fast moving pulp reads of old. But I usually write mysteries and what I would call “women’s action-adventure”. My novels are fast-paced, funny, female-driven yarns that keep the reader turning pages. I delve a bit in Romantic Suspense (Oooh! Naked kissing parts!), but we’re not hanging around to stare dreamily into each other’s eyes – there are more people who need to be punched in the face!
My short fiction, however, tends to be straight crime. I don’t know why, but my stories all involve murder, robbery, and/or mayhem. That may say something about my personality, but I’m choosing not to speculate!
How did you become a writer?
I always wrote when I was a kid, but a high-school English teacher told me that I wasn’t very creative. I thought that meant that I probably wasn’t a very good writer, but Simon & Schuster disagreed with her, so she can pretty much suck it. (No kidding!) But I guess my point is that I didn’t think writing was something I could do until after college. That’s when I really started to attack it as something more than a hobby or something I did for my own entertainment.
About Moonlight & Misadventure: Whether it’s vintage Hollywood, the Florida everglades, the Atlantic City boardwalk, or a farmhouse in Western Canada, the twenty authors represented in this collection of mystery and suspense interpret the overarching theme of “moonlight and misadventure” in their own inimitable style where only one thing is assured: Waxing, waning, gibbous, or full, the moon is always there, illuminating things better left in the dark.
Release date: June 18, 2021 in all e-book formats and trade paperback on Amazon and at all the usual suspects.
Exciting news: it’s already June and in a little more than two weeks time, the publication of Moonlight and Misadventure on June 18th.
I’m delighted to welcome fellow author, Clark Boyd to Cyber Cafe. Clark lives and works in the Netherlands. His fiction and essays have appeared in High Shelf Press, Havok, Scare Street, Fatal Flaw Magazine, and various DBND Publishing horror anthologies. He is currently at work on a book about windmills. Or cheese. Maybe both!
Clark’s wickedly twisted sense of humor makes his story “Battle of the Jerrell Twins” such a great read.
Tell us about the Jerrell Twins. No spoilers!
When I was younger, I owned a 1967 Ford Mustang, fire-engine red just like the one in my story. The truth is that it once belonged to my grandmother, who only drove it back and forth to work. My abiding memory of that car is that it reeked of her cigarettes no matter what I did to get rid of the smell. Also, in an earlier draft of the story, I referenced a little horse-shaped hood ornament that I could have sworn sat on the hood of that car — in the center, right at the front. (Gleaming in the moonlight, of course!) But I had to take that detail out because, as my father insisted, 1967 Mustangs didn’t come with hood ornaments. Dads can be such buzzkills.
What gave you the idea for the crazy idiot Jerrells?
In high school, I knew a kid whose dad was a dentist. On a regular basis he kept a canister of nitrous oxide in his car, and bragged about how he lifted it from his father’s office. I remember watching in awe as he and his buddies took hits off that bottle before school. I’d never heard anyone laugh with such delicious fun and reckless abandon before. Or since, for that matter. At some point, I think the kid wrapped his car around a tree or drove it into a K-Mart or something. I always dreamed of finding some way to weave this madness into a story. “Misadventure” seemed to fit.
What do you especially enjoy about being part of Moonlight and Misadventure?
I love the conceit of it more than anything. I had been working on this story for a few months, and it had gone through a lot of tweaks as I sent it off to different places. But when I saw what Judy was looking for in Moonlight and Misadventure, the whole thing coalesced and gave me the frame I needed to tell the story right.
Tell us more about your writing. Do you prefer writing short fiction or novels or both?
I spent twenty years reporting, writing, and editing radio scripts for an international news program called The World, which still airs daily on the US public radio network. When I left that life behind and moved with my family to the Netherlands, I figured it was time to try something new. I’ve been dabbling in short fiction and essays ever since, with an eye toward eventually trying a novel. Maybe it’s no surprise, given the fact that I wrote so long for the ear and not the eye, that I enjoy crafting dialogue more than just about anything else.
What genres appeal to you?
“The Ballad of the Jerrell Twins” is my first crime fiction story. Most of what I’ve written best fits into the horror category, although I tend away from gore and lean toward stories with a psychological twist. No matter what I write, I try to infuse it with humor and not take it too seriously. Perhaps that’s why I don’t have much luck getting any “literary fiction” published.
How did you become a writer? Did you know from childhood or did you decide later in life?
I knew from a very young age that I wanted to write. One of my earliest elementary school memories is winning a prize for some (extremely) short story I wrote in second grade. Later in life, one of the main reasons I became a radio journalist was because I could get paid (poorly) to write on a daily basis. That said, I can’t say that trying to switch gears and write fiction at the age of 50 is the best career move I’ve ever made…
Well, we disagree! Learn more about Clark and his writing here
Whether it’s vintage Hollywood, the Florida everglades, the Atlantic City boardwalk, or a farmhouse in Western Canada, the twenty authors represented in this collection of mystery and suspense interpret the overarching theme of “moonlight and misadventure” in their own inimitable style where only one thing is assured: Waxing, waning, gibbous, or full, the moon is always there, illuminating things better left in the dark.
Release date: June 18, 2021 in all e-book formats and trade paperback on Amazon and all the usual suspects.
