Tag Archives: Shotgun Honey

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 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