Synopsis:
Strangely Different Stories … The Nettle Tree, edited by Kenneth Weene and Clayton Bye, is a collection of genre stretching and busting stories by some of the most talented writers we have. Their challenge was to write strangely different western stories in a format of 3,000 words or less and to take you to places traditional westerns have never taken you. We think they have succeeded admirably. And with powerhouse writers, some known and others whom readers will find delightful discoveries, you will not be disappointed.
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About the Authors:
Jeremy C. Shipp is the Bram Stoker Award- nominated author of Cursed, Vacation, and In The Fishbowl, We Bleed. His shorter tales have appeared in over 60 publications, the likes of Cemetery Dance, ChiZine, Apex Magazine, Withersin, and Shroud Magazine. His twitter handle is @JeremyCShipp.
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Phil Richardson writes speculative fiction, horror, mystery, and literary fiction often with a humorous bent. He is retired from Ohio University where he met his wife in a creative writing class. He has published two collections of short stories: Little Bits of Out There, and Little Bits of Darkness, and over 80 stories online and in print including 21 in anthologies. Two of his stories were nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
His website, PhilRichardsonStories.com, has links to many of his stories and to his website describing his Navy experiences in the Antarctic.
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Casey June Wolf is a writer of occasional poems and speculative fiction stories that range from moody slipstream to hard science fiction. She is a fairly incompetent rider but nevertheless loves the view from a horse’s back, especially when that view is the hinterland of mountainous British Columbia. “Fog” is dedicated to her mum, Lorraine, who introduced her to both science fiction and westerns—and everything else that’s fit to print. Casey lives in East Van, BC. Read her musings and find links to her work at Another Fine Day in the Scriptorium: http://finedayscriptorium.blogspot.ca (And check out other anthologies from Clayton Bye—you may find a story or three of hers in them, too.)
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John was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and he is a retired English professor from Norfolk State University in Norfolk, Va. He has published three hundred stories in The Speed of Dark, Weird Tales, Whitley Strieber’s Aliens, Galaxy, The Age of Wonders, and elsewhere. In addition, he has published over twenty books, including SF novels such as Speaker of the Shakk and Beyond Those Distant Stars, winner of AllBooks Review Editor’s Choice Award (Mundania Press), and Alien Dreams, A Senseless Act of Beauty, and (YA) The Merry-Go-Round Man (Crossroad Press).
MuseItUp Publishing has published six SF novels. They are Dark Wizard; Dax Rigby, War Correspondent, and four in the Inspector of the Cross series: Inspector of the Cross, Kingdom of the Jax, Defender of the Flame, and Conqueror of the Stars.
MuseItUp has also published The Blue of Her Hair, The Gold of Her Eyes (winner of Preditor’s and Editor’s 2011 Annual Readers Poll), More Stately Mansions, and the dark erotic thrillers Steam Heat and Wet Dreams. Musa Publishing gave his time travel story “Killers” their 2013 Editor’s Top Pick award. Some of John’s books are available as audio books from Audible.com.
Two of John’s major themes are the endless, mind-stretching wonders of the universe and the limitless possibilities of transformation and transfiguration—sexual, cosmic, and otherwise. He is the former Chairman of the Board of the Horror Writers Association and the previous editor of Horror Magazine.
The Turtan Trilogy is available at http://amzn.to/20DEA9i
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I was born in Long Beach California and grew up in a Military family. I spent most of my life bouncing between California and Arizona, finally ending up in Phoenix in my late teens. I had planned from an early age to join the United States Army and following in my family’s footsteps. Fate would intervene, however, and in the seventh grade I found myself in a full leg cast due to an A.T.C. accident. Finding myself unable to run, my career plans were no longer an option.
At sixteen I dropped out of high school. I got my G.E.D. at nineteen and with no direction spent the rest of my life drifting from crappy job to crappy job. About five years ago I taught myself how to write to combat the boredom of being a night security guard on fire watch. I’ve self-published three books on Amazon, and I’m continuing to tap away on the keyboard in the hope that people find my stories entertaining.
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Clayton Bye is an eclectic writer whose body of work spans a period of more than 20 years and includes such classics as How To Get What You Want From Life, The Sorcerer’s Key and The Contrary Canadian. His more recent work involves too many ghostwrites to count and some great anthologies from his publishing house Chase Enterprises Publishing. The Speed of Dark, a strangely different collection of horror short stories, won four awards and solid 5 star reviews.
To check out Clayton’s work, visit http://shop.claytonbye.com.
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n addition to writing dark speculative fiction for over twenty-five years, Leigh M. Lane has dabbled in fine arts, earned a black belt in karate, and sung lead and backup vocals for bands ranging from classic rock to the blues. She currently lives in the dusty outskirts of Sin City with her husband, an editor and educator, and one very spoiled cat.
Her published works include traditional Gothic horror novel Finding Poe; the World- Mart trilogy; and the dark allegorical tale, Myths of Gods.
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Richard Godwin is the critically acclaimed author of Apostle Rising, Mr. Glamour, One Lost Summer, Noir City, Meaningful Conversations, Confessions Of A Hit Man, Paranoia And The Destiny Programme, Wrong Crowd, Savage Highway, Ersatz World, The Pure And The Hated, Disembodied, Buffalo And Sour Mash and Locked In Cages. His stories have been published in numerous paying magazines and over 34 anthologies, among them an anthology of his stories, Piquant: Tales Of The Mustard Man, and The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime and The Mammoth Book Of Best British Mystery, alongside Lee Child.
He was born in London and lectured in English and American literature at the University of London. Find out more about him at his website www.richardgodwin.net , where you can read a full list of his works, and where you can also read his Chin Wags At The Slaughterhouse, his highly popular and unusual interviews with other authors.
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Salvatore Buttaci is an obsessive-compulsive writer whose poems, stories, articles, and letters have appeared widely in publications that include New York Times, The Writer, Writer’s Digest, Cats Magazine, The National Enquirer, and Christian Science Monitor. An English instructor at a local community college and middle-school teacher in New Jersey, he retired in 2007 to commit himself to full-time writing.
Two of his flash collections, published by All Things That Matter Press, are available at Amazon.com. Another of his books, still selling well, is, A Family of Sicilians
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/ButtaciPublishing2008
Buttaci resides in West Virginia with his wife Sharon.
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“The best part of being a writer is the endless opportunity to do life over. The worst part is knowing that I still won’t get it right.” With that motto in mind, Kenneth Weene offers an ongoing stream of books, short stories, poems, and essays.
Visit http://www.kennethweene.com to find more of his work.
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Tonya R. Moore is a Public Safety professional from Bradenton, Florida with a penchant for writing speculative fiction. Stories by Tonya R. Moore have been published in the Writers on the Wrong Side of the Road and The Speed of Dark anthologies. Her current projects include Flash Fiction on Patreon, the Spec-Fic Trifecta Podcast, and her space opera novel- in-progress, The Advent of Hegira.
Tonya grew up reading books by phenomenal authors such as niverseIsaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Larry Niven and Anne McCaffrey. Their works portrayed space- faring humans and unbelievable creatures having fantastic adventures in distant future and far-flung regions of the universe. She fell in love with the remarkable characters and worlds those authors envisioned. Those stories fueled her desire to write. Tonya is a fan of anime, manga, and all things spec-fic. She is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Communication. Website: www.tonyarmoore.com
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Kenny Wilson
Kenny Wilson is a retired attorney who moved to Arizona in 2011. He continues to write appellate briefs for practicing attorneys which require adherence to strict formatting and word count requirements. Such writing compels a tight style that he carries over to write flash fiction and short stories. Painstaking research is incorporated for historical accuracy, a necessity for appellate advocacy. Each piece is redrafted at least twenty times, until it is honed to essentials.
Kenny enjoys his adopted state by hiking and studying its history. He describes writing as: “like making moonshine; you distill a potent juice out of a vat of goo.” He makes every word count.
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Jim Secor
Jim Secor has travelled the world, living, working and studying in Japan, China and Kansas. He continued his study of language use and origins, myths/folktales and various forms of presentation, both theatrical (where he began) and in print. In this comparative lit environment, European Medieval lit and Japanese theatre have had the greater influence but through it all is the figure of the trickster, the trickster hero, a character with a foot in two worlds, often enough laughing in the face of social and cultural norms and every so often getting caught in his own net of foolishness.
Jim Secor is, in this, a profligate trickster of language: the magic and mystery and open-ended quality of language is his reality. Because, from its beginnings, language the multifaceted and metaphoric predominated. It is, indeed, a symbol in itself. Ergo, the result must needs be metaphoric.
This magicalness of language requires a broad and exacting craftsmanship, which enables him to create scope and depth and a plotting that is not as prosaic or as straightforward as one might expect. Another important feature of Jimsecor’s writing–one that comes from Japanese Kyōgen–is the use of verbs to create descriptions instead of the more usual nouns and adjectives. This emphasis on action as the engine of description enables him to typify his characters without a lot of dry description. What people look like is simply not important to his take on characterization, for he engages the reader’s imagination instead of leaving it fallow passive earth in need of being told what to do with itself.
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