Tag Archives: fiction

Filling the void in indie publishing? Is that possible?

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I won’t pretend to sum up the weird state of small publishing here. If you’re been following the world of indie and small publishing, you know that 2025 has seen some small imprints go out of business – in some cases leaving authors unpaid – and others purport to try to fill that void.

I’m not sure that Constellate Creatives’ publishing arm, Constellate Publishing, the enterprise I’m affiliated with, will fill that void. For one thing, we can’t be all things to all people.

But as we started Constellate’s venture into editing – developmental editing and copy editing — and publishing and marketing a few months ago, it became obvious that somebody needed to be around to step in and catch a few worthy projects. Or maybe juggle chainsaws.

It’s making for a 2026 I’m really excited about. Constellate Publishing will publish my novel SEVEN ANGELS but there’s a diverse lineup of books on tap for the first two quarters of 2026, including a book of mindful self-help, a book of poetry, my novel and two by Jill Blocker, a reissue of her WHAT WAS BEAUTIFUL AND GOOD and her new novel, HAPPILY AFTER EVER. The latter is what’s increasingly termed a “new adult” book and will appeal to readers post-YA in their reading interests.

I’m proud to have noticed that every book besides mine is written by a woman and even mine has a cast of woman as protagonists.

And note the slide I’ve posted above: Constellate Creatives is offering editing, publishing and marketing services, or some combination of those, and at socially-responsible fees based on the regional wage in each writer’s local economy.

Some of us love to edit copy and help with developing your work. Others (raises hand) love marketing. Yes, I’m weird like that. We can’t promise that PR about your book will land on large market-share sites like KTLA, where our news release announcing our slate for the first half of 2026, was picked up. But we’ll be pitching your work and you won’t have to deal with the dreaded marketing.

There’s a button somewhere on the CC site that will lead you to a free consultation. We might be able to answer some questions for you.

https://constellatecreatives.com/

My world and welcome to it: Seven Angels and Middletown, my fictional places

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When my short story “A Fighting Life” was published in the past couple of weeks in the FIGHTING WORDS anthology, it contained the latest reference to the fiction worlds I operate in.

Since I wrote four or five novels back in the early 2000s – books that’ll probably never be seen, unless radically rewritten with what I’ve learned about writing in the meantime – I’ve enjoyed writing in a universe where, despite some timey-wimey variations, most of my characters and storylines play out in a shared world mostly consisting of the small city of Middletown, Indiana – based on my hometown of Muncie, Indiana, which was referred to in 20th century sociological studies as Middletown – and Seven Angels, a Tennessee town based on Jamestown, the small town my parents came from.

The early 2000s books featured Jack Richmond, a Middletown newspaper reporter, and a group of friends including Jess Peterson, an affable cop on the Middletown police force. There are lots of other characters too, including Luna, a topless dancer Jack falls in love with. By the end of the series of books, the two are married and have a son, Cody, and the final, still-to-be-completed book features Jack and Peterson’s desperate efforts to get Cody back after Luna’s ex brutally assaults her and kidnaps the boy.

When I wrote SEVEN ANGELS in 2019, my first crack at writing a novel in 15 years or more, I set it in the titular small Tennessee town with a side trip to Middletown and a pivotal appearance by Peterson.

My next novel, the also unpubished GHOST SHOW, is set in Middletown, but in 1948 and follows the Anderson family, who came to the big industrial town from the small Tennessee town of Seven Angels. No crossover characters, though.

My third novel, THAT OCTOBER, which was just published in June 2025, is set in 1984 Middletown and includes, among secondary characters, Richmond and Peterson at the beginning of their newspaper and police careers, respectively.

I won’t detail it all here, but I’ve returned to the Middletown and Seven Angels wells numerous times in short stories. The foul-mouthed, fightin’ siblings in “A Fighting Life” are pulled from GHOST SHOW. My very first published short story, “Independence” from the MOTEL anthology, is set in little Seven Angels, complete with the sheriff/main bad guy from the SEVEN ANGELS novel.

The seeding of characters from my earlier stories – like Butcher Crabtree, who I posted about here recently – throughout my fiction just goes on and on.

And so do I. To quote one of my (hopefully) self-deprecating quotes, “Enough about me. What do you think of me?”

It’s an e-book kind of day!

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It’s Labor Day and the beginning of fall – don’t argue – and the beginning of Spooky Season – that cannot be argued with – and it’s e-book day here on the ranch.

Just a quick note that THAT OCTOBER, my 1984-set high school crime novel, is available for quick and easy download beginning today on Kindle.

Here’s the link:

Also today, FIGHTING WORDS: BRUISERS, BRAWLERS AND & BAD INTENTIONS is out on Kindle.

The anthology, put together by writer and editor Scott Blackburn, features stories about fighting, fracases, brawlers, pugs and the sweet science, especially when it’s not so sweet.

My story, “A Fighting Life,” begins in 1948 and follows three young siblings – Marie, Peter and Saul – as they discover there’s money to be made, a nickel at a time, taking on other neighborhood kids in bare-knuckle challenges in vacant lots and abandoned buildings.

But besides my story, there are nine other great stories from some of the hottest authors today, including:

Saint Bullethead by Nick Kolakowski, narrated by Chris Andrew Ciulla

Where the River Breaks by L.S. Goozdich, narrated by Victor Clarke

Pure Wrath by A.M. Adair, narrated by Linda Jones

Fight Club by David Moloney, narrated by Chris Andrew Ciulla

Conor McGregor Was a Friend of Mine by J.B. Stevens, narrated by Michael Orenstein

Call Me Mina by Laura Brashear, narrated by Stacy Gonzalez

A Fighting Life by Keith Roysdon, narrated by Courtney Fabrizio

The Grit by Meredith R. Lyons, narrated by Suzanne Elise Freeman

Bourbon BrawI by Ashley Erwin, narrated by Matt Godfrey

The Cleaner by Jason Allison, narrated by Chris Andrew Ciulla

And what’s that “narrated by” element there? That’s because in addition to the e-book, which is available now, there’s an audiobook edition coming right away.

I got to work a little bit with Courtney Fabrizio, who narrated my story, and she is fabulous.

The e-book was upon its debut the Number One new release in martial arts books and it’s a firecracker.

Here’s a link:

2025 so far, so good … ?

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Don’t be fooled by that headline. 2025 is very much a shit show. I’m talking my writing year so far and that ONLY.

I published my 1984-set high school crime novel THAT OCTOBER in June and the reception so far has been pretty good. I have no complaints about how kind and generous people have been. If you’ve read it, please leave a review on Amazon. But buy it from one of the dozens of sites that sell it, especially bookshop dot org or Ink Drinkers Anonymous, the woman-owned, Black-owned bookstore in my hometown of Muncie, Indiana.

Other than THAT OCTOBER, I’ve been pleased to see a number of short stories published or purchased for upcoming publication, including in a future anthology that I can’t wait to tell you about.

In September, I go to my second Bouchercon, the world convention of mystery and crime writers and readers, and I’ll be on my second Bouchercon panel, with a hugely talented group of authors. This one is at 3 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 3, the first day of Bouchercon. This Bcon is in New Orleans, which I’m pretty sure should be mild and breezy by September, right? Right?

But very nearly overshadowing all this is that I submitted, earlier today, a short story to the crime fiction genre’s preeminent market. Now I don’t have any great hope that the story will be published. There are a hell of a lot of great writers out there submitting stories.

But the submission was a goal of mine for 2025. Not to get a story published in that magazine, I will note. Nope. Just to submit a story to them again.

I subbed once before, a few years ago, and their rejection was so perfectly justified but so devastating that I didn’t submit to them again for several years. Hell, I didn’t submit anywhere for a year.

So aside from publishing THAT OCTOBER, and attending and speaking at another Bcon and winning a place in this cool anthology that’s coming up in just a few weeks, getting up the nerve to submit to the Big Show again was a 2025 goal realized.

It’s all gravy from here,

As Homer Simpson would say, “Mmmm … gravy.”

The many lives – and deaths – of Butcher Crabtree

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A lot of writers, maybe most of us, have characters that we love to play with. They might be heroes or villains, but we love to return to them again and again.

Mine is Butcher Crabtree, a character I created back in the early 2000s in DEATH AND TAXES, the first novel I wrote. It was the first of a series of books I wrote about Middletown, Indiana, my version of my hometown, Muncie, Indiana. That first book was about Jack Richmond, a newspaper reporter who investigates the death of the head of the local chamber of commerce and finds that the chamber chief was involved in shenanigans with some unsavory characters.

One of them was Butcher Crabtree, at the time a muscled and menacing, fire hydrant-shaped tough guy who was working as the bouncer at the Gilded Cage, the strip bar in Middletown. In his spare time, Butcher was up for committing murder on behalf of his bosses.

I’ve returned, in the past few years, to some of those characters. Reporter Jack Richmond was a novice newshound in 1984, the time period for my novel THAT OCTOBER, which was published just this past June.

Butcher is in that book, too, although in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him cameo at a Halloween party. He’s referred to as “Uncle Butcher,” but it’s good old Butcher. Complete with his characteristic baseball bat.

(By the way, that’s not Butcher above, but it is Ernest Borgnine in the great 1973 thriller “Emperor of the North.” In that movie, Borgnine is a vindictive and murderous Depression Era-railroad guard. I didn’t have Borgnine in mind when I created Butcher, but at least in that movie, he’s a pretty good illustration of Butcher. George Kennedy is also a passable doppleganger.)

But Butcher isn’t just a tough guy. I’ve enjoyed casting him in a variety of roles, from the threatening old uncle in THAT OCTOBER to his role in my story “Rousting,” published just recently by Pistol Jim Press. In that one, Butcher is a racist sheriff’s deputy who pushes his luck too far.

Butcher also showed up in “The Devil’s Cut,” my story in HOOSIER NOIR 7. In that one, Butcher is once again a sheriff’s deputy and is again murderous.

Is Butcher ever a good guy? Well, in my book SEVEN ANGELS – winner of the 2021 Hugh Holton Award for Best Unpublished Novel from Mystery Writers of America Midwest – he’s a mentor figure for Travis King, a troubled young man trying to make sense of his violent life.

I’ve included Butcher in a couple of other stories, too, and those – like SEVEN ANGELS – might see the light of day sometime, as THAT OCTOBER has.

Butcher often meets his end in my stories. He did way back more than 20 years ago in DEATH AND TAXES and he has since.

I don’t mind that Butcher’s lives and deaths conflict and contradict and that he seems to move back and forth through time at my whim.

When you’ve got a fun character, you don’t want to let them go.

Cold cases still pull at the heartstrings

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I was watching “Ballard” the other week – it’s a good series, by the way, and a very valid follow-up to the “Bosch” series and it’s own streaming sequel, “Bosch Legacy” – and it got me thinking about the cold cases I’ve written about over the decades.

“Ballard,” which stars Maggie Q as Renee Ballard, Los Angeles police detective who is featured in her own series of crime novels by author Michael Connelly, creator of “Bosch,” is about how the Ballard character is “demoted” to the LAPD’s under-funded and over-scrutinized cold case unit.

The unit, comprised of police officers and reserves and a handful of volunteers and interns, huddles in a cluttered series of rooms that look more like storage than an office. The cold case squad is the definition of an effort that is nothing like a priority for LAPD leadership but is an essential thing to the squad members.

Ballard is initially leery of the assignment – punishment, really, for daring to report another cop for assaulting her – but grows to find satisfaction in solving long-unsolved murders, bringing killers to justice and giving closure to survivors.

Along with my longtime writing collaborator Douglas Walker, I wrote about cold cases for many years for the newspaper in my hometown of Muncie, Indiana. The most notable cold case to many was the killing of two teenagers in Westside Park in 1985. Walker and I wrote about it in our third true crime book, “The Westside Park Murders,” released by History Press in 2021.

But our fourth book, “Cold Case Muncie,” released in 2023, is an entire book of cold cases, still-unsolved murders in the Muncie and East Central Indiana area.

We had identified more than 30 cold cases, some dating back to the 1960s or even earlier, during a regular series of newspaper articles beginning in 2010. We went back and re-examined many of those cases for the book.

We interviewed surviving loved ones of the victims and revisited the murder scenes.

We put an emphasis on soliciting any new information about the murders, including a point of contact for each of the police departments responsible for resolving those cases.

And we placed emphasis on the survivors. Many of the cases are illustrated by photographs I took of those people who, today, are still waiting for someone to bring closure for the killing of their loved ones.

I’ve noted before that closure is an elusive thing, even harder to achieve than it seems, and that’s pretty damn hard.

I’m glad “Ballard” has taken up the case of cold cases and I’m glad to have brought some attention to them too.

It should be obvious, but if you write, you’re a writer

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I was interviewed for a podcast recently when I was back in Indiana promoting THAT OCTOBER and I ended a question with an off-hand comment that I’ve verbalized before but this interviewer said she really appreciated it.

“If you write, you’re a writer,” I said.

That seems obvious enough, but I think some writers feel like you’ve got to attain some particular level of success, or something, to consider yourself a real writer:

You’ve got to finish every story or article or book that you begin. You’ve got to publish every story or book or see it published. You’ve got to be paid for every one. You’ve got to be published by a prestigious site or magazine or anthology or publishing house, all to be considered a legitimate writer. (Now that I write that sentence, I can’t imagine what a “legitimate” writer would be anyway.)

None of those things are necessary to being a writer.

For certain, it’s a good thing to finish what you’re writing. That’s good discipline and a sign that you’re able to follow through, even if it’s not your best work. It definitely would be a cool thing to try to get every story or book you write published, but no way in the world does that happen to every writer (maybe to Stephen King or Lee Child, and probably not even them).

Getting paid or being published in some cool place is super and I highly recommend it. But that’s not the definition of being a writer.

Sitting down at your keyboard – that’s mine in the photo; please disregard the random junk in the keys – is part of the definition of being a writer. Or sitting down with your notebook or legal pad and your favorite pen.

You’re also a writer if you’re sitting in a comfortable space, staring out the window, watching random squirrels frisk their way past enjoying the sun, or watching the headlights and taillights of passing cars cutting through the dark. While you’re sitting there, you’re probably thinking about stories or coming up with ideas of ways to execute a scene. Or you might just be letting your imagination roam. You can do the same thing while mowing the lawn or watching TV or listening to music.

There’s enough anxiety and imposter syndrome for writers, and always has been, about writing or what they hope to write or what they have written to feel more of it because they’re not turning out a thousand sterling, perfect words every day.

If you’re exercising your imagination, if you’re mulling over characters or phrases or plots, if you’re making notes or writing it out longhand or you’re dashing out a couple of thousand words every day – even if you go back and start over – you’ve accomplished your goal.

You’re a writer.

The moral of the story is …

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Here’s a mystery for the ages, and one that I’m not going to solve here.

How much is too much for a writer to care about their work? How much is just enough? How much is not enough?

2024 was a good year for my writing in a lot of ways. Several short stories published. The stories were published with some effort on my part but much more luck. Much more.

So toward the end of 2024, as I began to focus on self-publishing my book THAT OCTOBER, my short story production dropped off dramatically. I didn’t chase every call for submissions like I had been for much of 2024. (This followed a LOT of story rejections, by the way.)

Since I hopped off the short-story-submission merry-go-round, I’ve had, unexpectedly, some luck with short stories. A few months into 2025, Shotgun Honey accepted my short story “Trouble, Start to Finish,” submitted in 2024, and it was published in May. (Link below.) Another story that had been held for months is slotted (for now) for publication, this year I think. Another story that had previously been accepted is still set to publish on December 21, 2025, as far as I know.

Then an author I know contacted me and asked if I had a story in a very particular genre that I might be able to contribute to an anthology he was editing. I had had one in mind and pitched it, he said yes, I wrote it in a couple of weeks and it’s going into an upcoming anthology. I’ll be promoting it when I know some details.

So with THAT OCTOBER out and available everywhere, I’m tentatively looking at short-story writing again. A friend sent me a link to a call for subs and I’m sending the super-short story out this afternoon. No idea if it’ll be accepted.

So is the moral of the story that it’s good to take a breather once in a while? That you should focus more narrowly?

Or is the moral of the story that the less you care about something, the more likely you are to achieve it?

That’d be pretty damn twisted, huh?

Trouble, Start to Finish by Keith Roysdon

I love the ’80s, especially for exploring fiction

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Anybody who knows me knows that I really enjoy writing stories set in the 1980s.

My new book THAT OCTOBER is set – for the most part – in October 1984, although there’s some exposition in the book that leads readers back 20-plus years before that.

There’s a “Stranger Things” vibe that a couple of writer friends who kindly blurbed the book noted, although there are no monsters – except for the human kind – in “That October.”

Sara McKinley, my friend who created the wonderful cover for THAT OCTOBER, said she was thinking about “Paper Girls” and other “kids on bikes” stories as she was working on the art. (My kids in the novel are slightly older, although not by much, and more mobile.)

But besides THAT OCTOBER, I wrote another story, “Steel Victory,” which was published in the 2024 Slaughterhouse Press anthology “Maximum Firepower: An ’80s Action Anthology.” The premise behind the Brian G. Berry-created “Maximum Firepower” is that the tales we wrote were inspired by 1980s action movie tropes.

In my story “Steel Victory,” a Captain America-style super soldier escapes from a top-secret lab in 1986 Washington, D.C. This super soldier is no Steve Rogers, however, and when he goes missing he goes on a murder spree.

For the look of the missing super soldier, I pictured Martin Kove, the actor who played the bad guy in “The Karate Kid” and other 80s action pictures and recently returned in the “Cobra Kai” series.

It’s up to three women – the doctor who conceived the project, the “lab rat” who knows more about the project than anyone and the project’s head of security – to track him down in the darkness of D.C.

“Steel Victory” and THAT OCTOBER appealed to me because the time period was very defined and familiar to many of us, even those who were too young to experience it. Everybody knows the trappings of the decade, from “Terminator” movies to “Star Wars” on home video to the music of MTV.

As much as I find my cell phone and the Internet indispensable now, there’s something very freeing about writing about a time when the protagonist couldn’t just pull a phone out of their pocket and call or text some crucial information to someone.

I love research, and one of the things I discovered as I wrote “Steel Victory” was that I couldn’t round up a bunch of those government-issue black SUVs for the search party. SUVs, other than Jeep Cherokees, were not in wide use at the time. So my protagonists had to improvise.

It’s an intoxicating thing, to write about a period that’s so close yet so far away. I hope I get to do it again.

Here’s where you can get “Maximum Firepower” and my story “Steel Victory.”

The pleasure of finding your book for sale – especially unexpected places

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I’m not sure I remember the exact details, but when my first true crime book, co-authored with my longtime writing partner Douglas Walker, came out in 2016, it was pretty thrilling to see the book for sale in bookstores, drug stores, gift shops and online.

It’s one thing to have a book out there and to sell it and sign it, but realizing our publisher, History Press, had actually gotten the first book, “Wicked Muncie,” in stores and online sites, was pretty amazing. History Press kicks all kinds of ass in getting books in stores, by the way. All four of our true crime books found a good home with them.

Another highlight was finding our books offered by libraries, which are very nearly my favorite places on the planet. A while back, I realized our third true crime book, “The Westside Park Murders,” was available through the Chicago Public Library. I’m still boggled over that.

So it’s been fun, with THAT OCTOBER, my new 1984-set high school crime novel, finding the book on all kinds of bookselling sites. I wasn’t certain if I would have to take steps to ensure this because THAT OCTOBER is self-published.

But I didn’t have to. At some point recently I was asking the folks at Ingram Spark, the venue I used to publish the book, if they could tell me when it would be available for pre-order. They responded and noted that it already was available and showed me where Amazon was selling it.

Since that time, I’ve been excited to see that not only Amazon, a site I have qualms about, but Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, Powell’s Books and Waterstones, the famous Brit seller of books, all offer it (for pre-order right now, as publication date is June 1).

So I’ve been on social media, posting links to most of those booksellers and screenshots. It was as especially exciting to see that Powell’s, a bookseller I’ve visited in Portland, Oregon, and have done business with online, offered it.

Oddest place I’ve found the book for sale so far: Saxo, where the book is available for about 259 Danish Krone.

It’s silly, I know, to be so excited about this, but I didn’t think it would ever happen.

Next I’ll be telling you how excited I am to find THAT OCTOBER for sale at Half Price Books or McKay’s.