The Next Step: Curses Dark & Foul

Good morning everybody, it was an interesting and eventful week with the release of An Arrow Against the Wind in print edition, which finally completed a long journey for that book. Now, I turn my sights on the rest of my projects. If you missed the release news, here’s the post and print links.

Today, however, the priority shifts a little bit toward another upcoming project rather than sharing about my writing and publication schedule. The next immediate release on my calendar is an anthology entitled Curses Dark and Foul. It’s my first anthology, so I’m interested to see how the book will do as I dip my toes in this particular type of writing/publication.

The anthology features three short stories which all involve a curse some kind. I really like each of the stories, including The Black Bag which is the oldest. The Black Bag was written some years ago and the few people who read it at the time really enjoyed the story. It was originally published in an online fantasy magazine that’s long gone. Then it landed another publication in a small fantasy magazine. Its not unusual for a short story to be sold like that several times as the rights lapse, but it was good that it received that much play even in some minor short story markets.

That last periodical in which The Black Bag appeared was in 2010. The next summer, I attended a writer’s conference for the first time. Since there was a competition for best published short story in print, I entered The Black Bag just to see how it would do. Much to my surprise, the story won the contest and even earned more prize money than it ever did in periodicals.

While I was looking to publish The Bow of Destiny, I decided to release The Black Bag as a single short story edition. Over time it’s done fairly well and received decent reviews so I decided to included in this first anthology edition. It’s not unusual for short stories to appear in multiple anthologies and various publication formats, so I’m not too worried re-using it. Plus, it’s not as if my short story e-book edition has sold widely. I also think it’s good to include a short story that has some history in this first anthology and add bit backbone.

But enough of the history of The Black Bag. Here’s a bit of the thumbnail sketch about the story itself. This is a fantasy tale about a young woman whose family runs afoul of witches from from the nearby village. Things don’t go well and the main character, named Coryss, finds herself alone against the witches. These particular adversaries have some rather nasty plans in store for Coryss with their magic, but she’s got some spine and wants to stand up to them. The story takes an unexpected twist or two down to the end and includes some rather unusual magic in the form of curses and, well, I will ruin the story by telling you anything else.

For now, I leave you with some extra mock-up artwork I received. The release date is pending so I don’t have a link just yet but that’s coming soon. I’m also in progress of updating the site with a page for the book among other tasks so look for that soon and an announcement on the welcome page. There is always much to prepare for an entirely new book but it’s quite a lot of fund working on it all. Having the artwork makes the process easier too.

That’s all for this week. Now it’s your turn. You can leave your comments in the section below and I’ll be back next week with a little bit more about another story the anthology. Please share this post on your social media ad reblog it if you liked it. I’ll respond to comments as quickly as I can.

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