Story: "Jingle Bob"

I have the honor of having a story featured currently at Cullen Gallagher's new webzine for western fiction, Fires on the Plain. The story, "Jingle Bob,"starts thus:

When she woke, Proud Mary saw the ghost standing right there beside her bed again. “You are sleeping on my grave,” it said, wild eyed and grimacing. Its lips didn’t so much move as pucker. She could have laughed, but she had to wait till her skin stopped crawling with gooseflesh.

By then the damn thing was gone, with a jingling of bells. The air smelt of something rancid.

“Jesus have mercy,” she muttered and slid out of bed to open the window. Outside, the distant ridge of rolling sandhills lay calm in the faint light of a moonless night. Coyotes warbled somewhere far off.

This had to stop.

For the rest, click here.

Story: The Truest Story of Jesse James

It's 2085. Do you know where your grandchildren are?

Here's my take on the post-apocalypse. The good folks over at Schlock Magazine picked my story "The Truest Story of Jesse James" for their current anthology. It's now up and begins thus:

The town library at Prairie Creek fit into three old crates kept in a storage room where the school teacher lived. Virgil Case, the current teacher, used the books—or what was left of them—to teach reading. His young scholars cut their teeth on the likes of John Grisham, Louis L’Amour, and Reader’s Digest condensed books. 

They also served for history texts, since Virgil had to explain words the kids didn’t understand. Like “martini,” “bushwhack,” and “World Series.” 

Some parents disagreed with him about teaching all that old stuff. His library was about a world dead and gone, and good riddance. About as many argued that if you don’t study the past, you’re destined to repeat it, and nobody wants that. One holdout from either camp said history repeats itself anyway, so what’s the difference?

Continued here.