Like I said in the title, what ever it is you celebrate… have a happy one!  To make all your family’s dreams come true this holiday season, give the gift of books.  What?  Do I know of any good ones?  Why yes I do!  As you can see to the left…Daily Flash 2012 from Pill Hill Press is now out (and please the bottom of this post).  I have two tales in it and there is a ton of great stuff in it from many great authors like my friend Wesley Southard.  The book is 366 stories, one for each day of the year, and each is 500 words or shorter so that you can read each day’s story in a few minutes.  Taking the train, taking the bus, stuck in traffic?  Pack this tome with you and never be without entertainment.  Now about my stories…

“The Conversation” is the November 23rd story and is a very personal one.  This was the one where I bleed on the page.  Every time Brantly speaks, the words coming out of his mouth are my words and my feelings.  It needed to be told.  I originally had a longer story planned, but I could never make it work the way I wanted it, so I tossed it out.  Problem with this story is that due to the subject matter, it hung around in my head.  When I saw the submission call for Daily Flash, I sat down and tried again.  The result is something I hope you enjoy, I bled it out for you.

“On the Wings of Darkness: A View From the Dark Frontier” will find you when the calendar flips to August 26th (I might have the dates flipped- if I do forgive me).  While trying to form an idea for a series or a collection of interwoven short stories, this was the first part of the concept I came up with.  Now that I’ve had time to work it the overall arc more, some stuff has been altered slightly from how it is described in this story and you’ll have to read about it later.  This one was hard to write due to trying to pack it full of background, but still try to tell a story about how one man views the new world he finds himself in.  I had fun with it, so you are allowed to have fun too!

This week also saw another anthology with a story from me go on sale.  Wicked East Press’s Under the Stairs came out with my story “Calvary Hill”.  I guess I’ll give you a quick story note on this one too.  I never really set out to write a Western and strangely enough, I find myself doing it again right now as we sit here talking books.  This one started out being focused on something and then I found myself more intrigued by the other main character more.  In fact, two characters from the story appear in the new story and the town is penciled in to pop-up again when I get the chance.  Calvary Hill still has more story left in it, blowing through the empty streets like tumble weed in the desert wind.  Overall, I enjoy the story a lot. 

I have updated the Biblio page with links to the four books with my stories at this point.  The links can take you to multiple places to shop, so have at it.  If you like something you buy, please go back and leave a review or press the like button on the book’s page.  As long as I know you want to read them, I’ll keep writing them.  This page should be changing soon as it will morph over to brentabell.com or something close to that and I am going to set up a fan page on Facebook so I can separate things over there (you are ordered to ‘like’ it when I’m done).  My Amazon Author’s Page is up and looks nice now that there is more than one book listed for me.

So, have a happy whatever and support your local and other small press authors this Holiday Season.  Goodnight…