Last year I was fortunate enough to have two(!) of my stories selected by the Story of the Month Club. Unfortunately, last year ended up being the last year of the Story of the Month Club. (Hangs head in moment of silence).
The good news is they have put out their 2016 anthology, and you can now read both of those stories, along with 11 other great stories, even if you weren’t a member. Yes. I know that adds up to 13. The Story of the Month Club was generous and tended to provide a baker’s dozen of stories each year.
A Little Bird Told Me was a short story originally written for a charity anthology that unfortunately failed to come to fruition. A magical fantasy set in another time and another place, it was supposed to be representative of women overcoming addictions and becoming the stronger for it. It was published by The Story of the Month Club, May 2016.
The Thing in The Bush was one of my favorite stories to write. A bit on the horror side, a bit for children, it was hard to find a home for it. But I did. It was published by The Story of the Month Club, October 2016 and republished in Woe and Wonder: 2016 Story of the Month Club Anthology, January, 2017
The idea for this story came from an experience my sisters and I had when we were young. Every morning, as we would leave for school, and every afternoon when we came back, something in the big evergreen bush by our front porch steps would rustle around as we passed by… eventually we came to consider it part of the family. My sister dubbed it The Thing in The Bush.
It was still there when my parents moved out of the house nearly 20 years later.