I’m eagerly awaiting publication of The Protest Diaries by B Cubed Press. It is slated for release in December and will contain my story “The Intervention”. It is an anthology and I don’t believe there is a free way to read it. I’ll post a link to purchase the book once it’s available. I’ll probably post the story on this site sometime in 2022. I want everyone to have a chance to read it. It’s about the devastating and lasting effects on a young man of cult-like fundamental religious protesters (similar to Westboro Baptist Church) at his father’s funeral. Years later they return, and he plans an “intervention”.
Secondly, “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep” will be online at Terror House on January 10, 2022. As usual, I’ll post a link once it’s up. It was originally to be part of the Noise of a Quiet House anthology, which was cancelled suddenly. I really like this story and am glad it’s being released. It is about a boy’s life upended by a serial murderer set in the Raleigh-Chapel Hill area of North Carolina. It’s one of those stories that just seemed to come from nowhere. In reviewing it I found that although the serial murders seem to be the subject, it’s really about a young man’s struggle to define himself while surviving a controlling father. I’ve noticed a number of father/son struggles in my stories which surprises me. My dad and I had a great relationship.
And, I just signed a contract for “Johnny’s Got a Gun” to appear in Screaming in the Night, a horror anthology by Sinister Smile Press, currently expected to release on March 7, 2022. This is probably one of my favorite stories. I have massaged it through various iterations over the past year to get it just right. It’s about three teenage boys who break into a school on Halloween night to gawk at the scene of a school shooting that had happened three days earlier. Mayhem ensues. It’s also part on an anthology so you’ll have to buy the book to see it. Sinister Smile Press will hold the rights for a year, so it won’t be on this site for a while.
If there is a running theme in these stories it’s that all the protagonists are 15 to 17 and all have elements of the coming of age trope. For some reason, that genre attracts me.
Curtisstories 