"The Station Agent’s Wife, 1927" is the strange story of a new mother living in Augustus Valley at the peak of its heyday as the mining capital of West Virginia. All things are looking up when her husband gets a new job with the C&O Railroad as the station agent. But we all know how fast things can go south in Augustus Valley. Soon she finds something terribly wrong with the house provided by the railroad.
Short Stories
NEW SHORT FICTION: Read “The Puddle Girl of St. George” in the Anthology of Appalachian Writers
“The Puddle Girl of St. George” is a unique kind of ghost story set in the beautiful, haunting St. George, West Virginia. I’m very proud that it was selected for publication in the annual Anthology of Appalachian Writers.
Even though this volume (Vol. XI), featuring guest editor Karen Spears Zacharias, was technically published back in June, I’ve been waiting to post about it until there was a working link for ordering the book. For some reason there was a listing for it on the Shepherd University Online Bookstore for a while now, but it has been listed as Out of Stock until this month. Well, better late than never—you can order it now!
Two of my loves have intersected (NPR’s 100 Best Horror)
I don’t listen to the radio as much as I listen to podcasts, but most of my favorite podcasts are derived from public radio, so NPR is dear to me. And they are piling on some major bonus points. Having polled readers for their favorite horror novels and stories, judges who are well-known within the horror fiction community sifted through the results and whittled them down to an expertly curated list of one hundred! Find them here and figure out what you need to add to your reading list. I’m happy to say that one of the works I nominated made it to the list: “The Repairer of Reputations”, which is one of my favorite short stories and the first in Robert W. Chambers’ unforgettable classic collection, The King in Yellow.