Tag Archives: Daydream Believer

New short story, new anthology: I’ve been looking forward to DAYDREAM BELIEVER all year

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Sometimes crime short stories are mean and brutal. Sometimes they’re nostalgic, or at least my story “This Just Doesn’t Seem To Be My Day,” in the new anthology “DAYDREAM BELIEVER: Crime Stories Inspired By the Songs of the Monkees,” is.

When I heard that my friend and author Michelle Kubitz was accepting submissions of short stories for the anthology, which she was co-editing with Lawrence Allan for publication by Ron Earl Phillips and Shotgun Honey, I knew I had to contribute. I even went up to Larry after he appeared on a panel at Bouchercon in Nashville and excitedly told him I had a story I wanted to sub.

As a grade-schooler in the 1960s, I loved the Monkees. The music and the silly TV show definitely, but what made me jump at the chance to submit a story was my association with the Monkees and my brothers.

Before I was certain who the Monkees were exactly – TV actors? TV characters? Musicians? Four cool and funny guys? All of the above? – I spotted their debut album in my oldest brother’s room. I put it on the turntable and immediately loved the music. It wasn’t a new album by that time, but it was still fantastic, with songs that cemented the Monkees in my mind as a favorite band.

My brothers were 10 and 12 years older than me, so it was more like having a couple of uncles around than brothers. But I wanted to be accepted by them, and finding some common ground in music was something I dearly loved. One album cut in particular, “This Just Doesn’t Seem To Be My Day,” stands out in my memories as a fast, funny song that I listened to over and over.

About the time I was 10, my brothers were planning a party in a field our dad and mom owned, south of our 100-year-old farmhouse and south of the equally aged barn, and I really wanted to be a part of it. I wheedled my way into going around town with my brothers as they picked up things they needed for the party: ice, beer, extension cords, probably other things I was too young to understand.

My story in the anthology varies from that real-life day – although both ended in a fairly dramatic manner at the party that night – but both accomplished something I desperately wanted: To be closer to my much older brothers.

Not all of my stories are as nostalgic, or true-to-life, as this one. But thanks to DAYDREAM BELIEVER, I can relive that day and its fairly calamitous ending.

Thanks to Shelley and Larry and Shotgun Honey for the chance to relive that day and that evening.

I think you’ll like DAYDREAM BELIEVER, and not just for my story. The other authors with stories in the anthology are Holly West, Lawrence Allan, Eric Beetner, Lina Chern, Libby Cudmore, Michael Downing, Jeff Esterholm, Michel Lee Garrett, Paul J. Garth, James D.F. Hannah, Sean Patrick Little, Alan Orloff and Raquel V. Reyes. It’s a great group of talented people.

You can find DAYDREAM BELIEVER at

https://shotgunhoney.com/announcements/news-announcements/book-release-daydream-believers-anthology/

The year of anthologies for me – three of ’em, anyway

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Two of the nicest folks you’d ever want to write for, Shelley Kubitz and Lawrence Allan, today released the cover image for DAYDREAM BELIEVER, an anthology of crime fiction inspired by the music of The Monkees. I’ve got a story in the anthology and I’ll tell you more about it on or before, as they say in legal documents, the book’s publication on September 29. (Or slightly after, depending on how my September goes.)

The table of contents for this anthology is a dream team of crime writers, and I’ll get into that at a later date also.

I’d hoped to have a story in four crime fiction anthologies in 2026, but that was not to be, for reasons too sad to get into here or almost anywhere.

So in 2026, a year in which I definitely de-emphasized short stories to work on novels, I’ve got stories in FIGHTING WORDS, BAD INTENTIONS and DAYDREAM BELIEVER and I couldn’t be happier about that.

The experience of writing short stories in any small bit of spare time I wasn’t working on getting my crime novel SEVEN ANGELS ready for publication by our Constellate Publishing – link at the end of this post – and working on my next three novels, I was inspired me to write an upcoming article for CrimeReads interviewing seven – count ’em! – seven crime writers about what they preferred to write, short stories or novels, and where they love to see their short stories published.

I’ll write more about that and talk about those seven wonderful authors closer to the time the CrimeReads story comes out.

Here’s that link to Constellate Publishing, by the way. We’re still looking for manuscripts of all kinds to consider for publication. We’re offering various editing and marketing services as well.

Constellate Publishing

Two years since my first story published in an anthology, MOTEL

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It’s been two years since the first time one of my short stories was published in an anthology. The Cowboy Jamboree Press MOTEL anthology, edited by Barbara Byar, came out in March 2024. I’d had short stories published before, starting in 2023, and of course my non-fiction had been published since 1977 and in true crime books since 2016. But having a short story in an anthology was a very cool development.

I still really like the story, “Independence,” about an unnamed cowboy passing through a small Tennessee town who gets caught up in a conflict between some small business owners and the corrupt sheriff. If you read my upcoming second novel, SEVEN ANGELS, you might realize that town is Seven Angels. I never cite the town by name in “Independence” but the sheriff in the short story is named and he’s the same corrupt sheriff as in SEVEN ANGELS.

It was a kick to have the story published in an anthology and a few followed. It’s always a kick, although I suspect the anthologies you have to purchase have smaller readership than the stories published online. Still a kick, though.

This year, in 2026, I’ll have short stories in three anthologies I know of, including my story “A Fighting Life,” about foul-mouthed kids in 1948 who figure out they can make money by scrapping with neighborhood kids, which is in the just-published-in-paperback FIGHTING WORDS. My story “This Just Doesn’t Seem To Be My Day,” about a kid spending the day with his older brothers in 1970, will appear this fall in DAYDREAM BELIEVER, an anthology of crime stories based on Monkees songs.

And a while back, I had a crime story accepted for an anthology that hasn’t been announced yet.

For me, three stories in anthologies in one year is a lot, so I doubt there will be others. But I’ll submit some stories and we’ll see.

Here’s a link to the paperback of FIGHTING WORDS is you want to read my short story and the work of some really amazing authors:

It comes and it goes and it comes around again

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My morning began with a rejection but ended up with signing a short story contract, all threaded through writing some totally separate piece of work.

Man, every day is a little game of expectations versus reality for all of us, but that’s especially evident for writers.

The rejection email, as these things go, was from an editor and fiction outlet I haven’t tried before. It was direct and to the point but also gracious, saying a couple of nice things about the story I’d submitted and they’d rejected. Much better than a form rejection – I got one of those just a while back – and even thanked me for my support of them on social media, which will absolutely continue.

This rejection stung, man. It was for a story I wrote for an earlier anthology call for submissions and honestly, I really like this story. It’s not my typical crime-wimey story. It was, dare I say it, hearfelt.

But I’ll submit it again somewhere and I’m sure I’ll submit something else to the humane editor who rejected this particular story this particular morning,

So i got back to work. I’m close, very close, to finishing a 5,000-word short story to sub to an anthology/collection that I really want to be included in. I’ve got a few more words to write.

Then I signed a contract for the anthology you see above, DAYDREAM BELIEVER: CRIME STORIES INSPIRED BY THE MUSIC OF THE MONKEES. The anthology comes out this fall and has some wonderful writers in it and I’m happy that editors Shelley and Larry chose my story to include.

Then I got back to working on that 5,000-worder. And I wrote this.

(I’m thinking about having a snack later, if you need that much insight into my day,)

All of this could be filed under the life in a day of a writer. Or maybe managing expectations. Or dealing with rejections and successes.

To writers and other people: Push on. The only way out is through.