Anonymous-9 and Glenn Gray Nommed for Writing Awards!

It’s awards-time online, and two of my up-and-coming clients have been nominated for awards.

Glenn Gray, Rupture, published by Powder Burn Flash, nominated for a Derringer Award, Flash Fiction category, presented by the Short Mystery Fiction Society.

Anonymous-9, Hard Bite, published by Beat to a Pulp, for Best Short Story on the Web, presented by Spinetingler Magazine.

Anonymous-9, Claw Marks, published by DZ Allen’s Muzzle Flash, and Powder Burn Flash, nominated for a Derringer Award, Flash Fiction category, presented by the Short Mystery Fiction Society.

Anonymous-9, Organic Tortilla Chicken Soup with Chopped Finger Garnish, published by DZ Allen’s Muzzle Flash, and Powder Burn Flash, nominated for a Derringer Award, Flash Fiction category, presented by the Short Mystery Fiction Society.

Congratulations to Glenn Gray and A-9, as well as their hard-working, eagle-eyed publishers.

Sandra Seamans kindly reports that on April 1st Derringer judges will choose finalists from all the nominated stories, then that short list will be voted on by the entire Society, and then the winners will be announced, around the first of May. 

Public voting is still open for the Spinetingler Awards.
For voting and a full list of Best Short Story on the Web nominees and links to stories, go here:

http://www.spinetinglermag.com/node/35

Congratulations to all the nominees!

Elaine Ash and Keith Rawson discuss “Life on the Mesa” March 25th/09

Spoiler Warning: If you have not yet read Keith’s story, scroll down to the previous post and read it there, first.

MARCH 25TH, 2009

ELAINE ASH: Hi Keith, how are things in Arizona?

KEITH RAWSON: Great, thanks.

EA: Well, let’s get started talking about your story, “Life on the Mesa.”

KR: Okay.

EA: First, you have a great sense of style and a good grasp of craft. And you already know that’s true to a certain extent because you’re already published in the e-zines.

KR: Yes, I published in the most recent Plots with Guns Issue # 5, the second most recent update of Pulp Pusher and more. [See Keith’s bio at the end of his story, which is the post below this.]

EA: So the burning question is, “Why hasn’t this story been accepted?” And there is a reason why it hasn’t been accepted. And my feeling is, as the writer, you are so close to it…the writer stands in the character’s shoes, and it’s very, very difficult to have an overview of the story when you’re inside the story. So here’s my opinion: the story is not finished. The ending is not satisfactory. As a writer, you instinctively knew you were ending on a very high point of suspense. You felt that, and you knew it. And you said, “Aha this is my ending.” But actually, it wasn’t. Your climax was just getting going.
So let’s talk about the character Mac.

I understand that he’s an individualist, and he’s part of that individualist community, and that’s a very, very interesting part of the story to readers. It’s fascinating. But more about that later. Mac is described as a very large man, imposing, scary, and he’s got all these great survival instincts. But his actions are so brutal and elemental, I didn’t buy that this character would give a hoot to editorialize about an accountant with two children and a wife in the suburbs. That seemed more of something that would be coming from someone who had already worked in a corporate job and escaped, and understood that life. I just couldn’t reconcile that thinking with somebody called “Dirigible” and so I wanted you to tell me more about this guy.

KR: With this type of community there is a very anti-corporate, anti-establishment type of attitude running throughout the entire community. He’s come from rural Arkansas. He feels that overall alienation where he’s been constantly pushed aside by the mainstream and I think that’s where his rage focuses, on that outside society that’s always pushed him back.

EA:What forays has he made into that society that they would have pushed him back?

KR: It’s just his overall appearance. He’s not attractive, he’s the consummate outsider. I do keep him kind of vague and there’s not as much character building in this as normal but the number one thing is…it’s kind of hard to verbalize….

EA: Well, this kind of rural kind of guy has probably never lived in a big city…they might know vaguely that they hate the big corporation, but they would never be so clear about hating a suburban accountant with two children, unless something had specifically happened to make him hate a guy exactly like that.

So I looked and this and I said, “Aha, I think this is Keith talking, and he really hasn’t gotten underneath the skin of this character.” I think the guy would have a lot of rage…but expressed in that particular way? It doesn’t seem genuine to me.

KR: Absolutely. It’s definitely something I can explore a little more.

EA: Get inside the skin of this guy. His external actions are completely believable, how he gathers that water. Here’s the good part, there’s not another false move on your part as the writer. There’s not another thing that doesn’t suit the character. But when I got to that accountant explanation it went, “Clang!” It didn’t fit for me.

Now, if you’re passionate about him expressing himself that way about the accountant etc., then you’ve got to back that up with more that will make it real. So you need to either add more to really make us believe this is the way he thinks, or get rid of it. (Laughs) You have a choice.

KR: In all honesty, it’s not something I’m really holding onto. It’s more or less adlib words on my part, so…

EA: You don’t have to make a decision right now. I’m just pointing it out to you and you can decide later.

KR: What else did you see that could be improved?

EA: The two young people who show up with nice teeth, the city slickers, I believe that he’d have rage against them, because they’re suburban kids that come from people with money. He probably would have taken quite a few dirty looks from people like that throughout his life, but there’s no clue in the story that ties his rage to them. You could drop a few clues in there about a past experience that would make him so vengeful he’d torture and eat them. That’s what I think you were trying to do with the accountant and two children. Your instincts were right, but the example was a misfire.

Now we come to the end, It’s horrifying…but he’s getting away with it. And in crime, most generally, if somebody’s getting away with it, it’s making some kind of larger point. So either the victim deserves it, which in this case, these people obviously don’t deserve this kind of horrible punishment for stealing. Or we have to be so sympathetic to the person delivering this cruelty, that we understand why he’s doing it. We know it’s not right, but we understand. We have compassion for him. And so far we don’t.

KR: In all honesty, with the few other editors I’ve worked with, they’ve mentioned that there’s a coldness running throughout my characters. That the motivation’s not always there, like I’m outside of the character himself.

EA: The reader is surprised by this ending too. Because this cruel streak comes as a complete surprise. We’ve been led to believe he’s an individualist and that it’s dog eat dog out there, but if he was just a normal-but-eccentric guy doing what he had to do, he would have just killed them. It was his job to take care of it for the community, fine. He didn’t need to carry on and torture them. So if he’s gonna torture them, then there’s got to be a really [expletive deleted] good reason why. And you have not set him up as a psychopath. He’s accepted by the community, there’s nothing in his past to make us understand why he’s done this. I came to the end and I said, “Wow, I didn’t expect this, and I don’t understand why this is happening. Therefore, I don’t have a sense of what is going to happen after this story ends.” And that’s what the editor is left with by the end. It’s just hanging. And I think that’s why the story hasn’t been accepted as yet

Now in case you’re wondering, the story will be absolutely kickass once it gets these things resolved. So I think it’s just a little more thinking on your part. Let me ask you this, are you tied to how he tortures them and what he does to her at the end?

KR: I’m always open to suggestion as far as developing the ending. How I look at it is if it can improve the story and provide more punch at the end, then I’m usually for it. I think that was my issue with it as well, because it seems to come abruptly to and end.

EA: If you want to keep this ending the way it is right now, you might want to carry this on a little bit and then have her turn the tables on him. And either she gets away or she kills him. Then you’ve got a surprise, a twist at the end, and all this gratuitous torture is paid off because our victim has triumphed over the bad guy. Because the minute he starts this torturing stuff he’s the bad guy.

If you don’t like that one, there are other choices. Let’s take this from another direction. This story is close to your heart, so what do you think of these young punks showing up and stealing from the community? What do you really think about them?

KR: If I lived in this particular community, and my survival was based on what I could forage, grow and hunt, I would feel pretty damn offended. The elders of the community come to Mac and explain that these thieves are threatening their community because they’re going outside the boundaries we’ve set. The boundaries are that you can’t take away from the community overall. Extreme punishment could very easily happen in this type of society because it’s existing outside of law enforcement, outside of mainstream government. They police themselves. And this is the kind of punishment I could see being meted out, especially since these individuals are considered a menace and they come to Mac and say, “We accepted you. We allow you to exist here. We need this help from you because you’re stronger than we are. We can’t deal with it because we have this abject fear of these two newcomers who are not conforming to our society.” And they basically unleash Mac upon them.

EA: So if the community asks him to take care of the situation and then he does it exactly as planned, that’s not enough for a story. You can’t say it’s going to happen and then have it happen without something going awry, a surprise.

KR: In all honesty, as far as the girl releasing herself and taking vengeance, I’ve see this so many times before in novels, shorts and movies. You can see it coming. She gets out of her bonds somehow and takes her vengeance on a scary character. So I’m not comfortable with that kind of ending. I’m trying to think of what would round it out. What do you think of retribution from the community? They didn’t know that he would actually cannibalize them.

EA: Now there’s an interesting idea. Let me ask you this: what would the community do?

KR: Let’s say that the girl is released from her bonds and kills Mac. She goes running for the other huts in the community for help. But she’s still considered a threat. And their reaction is to take her down and make sure she doesn’t escape.

EA: Now that would work. Let’s just go back here to where the community cast a vote about this. The council elders made a trek out to the couple while they were still alive, and asked them about the stolen food. Expand that scene, give the elders names, and put some dialogue in there while they go to Mac and ask for assistance. We will know them as characters at that point. And they’ll be the ones that appear for the retribution at the end as she goes screaming through the huts. We’ll know who’s going after her.

KR: I like that.

EA: I see you are passionate about this justice system happening outside the norm. This is your chance to expand ideas along that line, throwing it into the dialogue here and there as they rationalize the retribution. It makes sense why they would choose this extreme way to deal with these people because there is no police force going to come and help them. So you can get your thesis in there as an author.

KR: My wife and I lived in an alternative culture when we first got together.

EA: Now we’re getting to the good stuff.

KR: We’re a nice suburban couple now with a nice little house, a lawn and a child. But we used to be longhairs, we travelled, we lived off the land and lived in national parks for four months. Before I met my wife. I lived in a commune with about 4 acres of land where we played music. So we experienced a lot of these types of people who are transient, living out of vans, in forests, this small subculture. And recently we’ve seen them settle in these unclaimed national park areas where they’re not really getting a lot of interference.

EA: Now we’re finally at the meat of what this story is really about. And that is why at the ending, the story is not really finished. The story is not about Mac and his psychopathic personality. The story is about the alternative justice system of these people. So the story isn’t finished until the community’s justice is resolved., and the people handle it however they’re going to handle it. That is the real ending of the story.

KR: I like it. I like where the elders are actually meeting and talking

EA: They could be arguing about what to do, and maybe everybody goes silent. Nobody really wants to spell it out, but we know what this is, the young people have got to be murdered.

KR: Yeah, I see it now.

EA: Mac is almost a red herring in this story. He seems like the main character but he’s not. The real main character is the community, but we only realize it at the end. The minute you started talking about them, you came alive and gushed with information. That passion just wasn’t there for Mac. So he’s really not the heart of the story. The heart is this community of people, of which he is one tiny little satellite, and it’s seen mostly through his eyes until the end. So with that in mind, now you can tell us how you really feel.

KR: Okay!

END NOTE: To clarify, Keith decided that the story needs an additional scene or two with the elders, and an expanded ending. Mac’s character does not need more motivation or explanation, he’s fine as is. In order to get to the real meat of the story, Keith and I had to “walk through” the details of Mac’s character. Only then, did the real story reveal itself. —EA

And They’re Off! Challenge Contributors Start Their Engines

Three fiction writers, at various stages of career development, submitted material that was suitable for my “blog coaching” project. They are:

Keith Rawson
Frank Bill
George Miller

The criteria for submitting a story to the Challenge was that it needed work. No polished, ready-for-publication stuff, I wanted promising stories that needed an editorial tune-up. The deal was, in exchange for one-on-one coaching and comments, the writers would allow me to publish their first drafts as submitted. A day or two later, and after a taped phone call with the writer, a transcript would be published so blog readers could compare their own thoughts and comments to mine.  During the revising process, the writer being spotlighted WILL NOT READ THE COMMENTS SECTION.  Too many voices, too confusing. Later, it’ll be fine…

The stories will be revised in as many rounds as it takes to get it publish-worthy, in my estimation, and then the writer will send it out to an e-zine or magazine. When the story is accepted, I’ll publish the link here and readers can enjoy the final version.

I hope you find this exercise helpful.
And without further ado, here is Keith Rawson’s “Life on the Mesa” published exactly as it was submitted. Keith emailed, “There’s this horror/noir I’ve been shopping around the past few months. I think the story is very solid, quiet, but solid. The problem is I don’t know why it keeps getting rejected? It’s been rejected three times now, and normally I just blow off a rejection and send the next story out. But, as I said, I believe in the story, but maybe I believe in it so much that I’ve got a blind spot as far as it’s concerned. So, as I stared at the rejection, I remembered that you were running your story challenge at your blog, and thought I’d see if you wanted to take a crack at it?”

Let’s see what you think readers. Please make your comments constructive, polite and truthful. I’ll be publishing my opinion in a day or two.

LIFE ON THE MESA
BY
KEITH RAWSON

Mac Bolan sat watching the sudden dark grey of monsoon clouds come quickly rumbling towards the mesa with the heavy promise of lightning and torrential rains. It was the kind of weather you prayed for out on the mesa if you were the spiritual type. Water was a commodity; you either collected it in your rain barrels when the monsoons or the occasional errant storm rolled in, or you traveled the 40 some odd miles into town and paid some faceless, soulless corporation twenty or thirty bucks for the privilege of swilling nature’s finest life sustaining gift out of a poisoned plastic bottle, disgusting. Dirigible, as Mac was known out on the mesa, (The nick name derived from Mac’s massive frame, he stood nearly 6’5 and weighed in at close to 350 lbs, and it was a far kinder nickname than the one he’d lived with for 35 years back on the grid, the far less grander Blimp.) had never needed to buy the corporations water, Mac was all about conservation and restraint. Never use more than you need. Mac never drank more than 4 glasses a day and each drop he consumed was a virtual lesion in survivalism.

Mac’s spot on the mesa stretched for nearly 2 square miles, most of it nothing but barren desert flat land for the exception of his little copse of mutated wind battered Texas live oak where he had built his shack. When he’d moved out here 6 years ago, he’d intended on trying to cultivate his piece of the mesa and grow some kind of crop, whether it was corn, or soybeans, he’d even originally toyed with the idea of planting apple trees and starting an orchard. Looking back, he knew now that these thoughts were nothing more than naivety and ignorant idealism. True, Mac was nothing if not an idealist, but realistically you just don’t grow these types of crops without a steady flow of piped in H2o and, of course, the average yearly temperature shouldn’t exceed 95 degrees Fahrenheit with a constant wind speed of 25 plus miles an hour. Mac figured this all out a couple of months after completing work on his shack and actually attempting to plow and plant. No, the only effective way to grow out in the harsh climates of southern Arizona was to build a green house and have enough ready water on hand to maintain what you’re growing, like Cassidy and his clan a couple of miles down the road.
Mac did utilize his plot constructively, but instead of harvesting food, he collected water. One of the truly wonderful things about the big beautiful blue world Mac occupied with the other 6 billion slightly confused human beings who inhabited it along with him, was that the earth was almost entirely composed of water and there was a means of collecting that water, even if it meant snatching it right from the arid sky. This was particular true at night and the pre-dawn hours when dew would from the cool night would settle on the plants and soil of the desert floor. So on a nearly 1-mile stretch of his plot, Mac dug holes and draped tarps (One of the few items he’d leave the confines of the mesa for and venture into town to purchase.) over the tops of the holes. He’d awake every morning before dawn and harvest the thin, wet leavings of the previous night in old milk jugs. Some mornings, there was hardly enough dew to fill a quarter gallon of one of his jugs and some days he wouldn’t have enough containers to store the entire days harvest in.

This morning happened to be one of those mornings. Starting out today he’d only brought along three plastic gallon jugs, but by the time he’d finished, he’d filled nearly five. This is how he’d known the rains were coming. It was a huge relief. He could just spend the next couple of days letting his rain barrels do his job and he could hopefully enjoy a couple of much needed mornings off; which is why he’d spent the past hour simply sitting under the makeshift lean-to of his shack smiling and watching the purple grey clouds come coasting in. But as much as he would have liked to spend the day watching the storms roll in, he still had work to do, plus he was starting to get hungry, so breakfast was very much the first order of business.

Mac stood up from the thick rotting pine log that was his front porch bench, stretching his long beefy arms above his head, each of his overstrained joints crackling and grumbling with his slow, deliberate movements. He took a couple of extra seconds to rotated his oversized head on his practically nonexistent neck before he turned and opened the front door of his shack and was greeted by the ragged terrified screams of the girl. Mac had forgotten to gag her before he’d left this morning, of course she’d been passed out and moaning delicately under her breath. For some reason, he’d thought she would be in the same condition when he arrived back from his morning chores. He stood motionless in front of the girl, letting the door swing shut with deafening wind blown bang, his tiny brown eyes focused on the girls gaping mouth. She had such milky white glistening teeth for a freejack. Most folks who elected to live off the grid, the very first thing that went to pot were their choppers. But this new generation was so healthy in appearance despite the copious amounts of tobacco and marijuana they consumed. But that was a middle class upbringing for you.

Mac could easily see this girl leaving the life after a couple years of living rough and the effects of the pills, powders, and pot finally losing their charm and heading back into what passed as the real world and going to college, getting married, and popping out two or three new consumers with her corporate accountant husband. She’d probably end up very happy—or at the very least pretending she was happy—out in some preplanned community, cut off from her fellow human beings not by distance and space, but by cinder block backyard fences and the suffocating prison of modern suburban living. Maybe she even entertained these thoughts about her current boyfriend, the aptly named Rainbow child known as Knob. Maybe she thought all of this dreadlock wearing, pot smoking, living off the land thing he was into now was nothing more than a phase? Maybe she thought after awhile he’d get just as sick of it and off they’d ride into the happy red sunrise morning.
Too bad Mac had crumpled Knob’s skull with a sledgehammer.
Too bad most of Knob’s fat and muscle was now cured and drying, hanging from just about every inch of available wall space in Mac’s shack; Knob’s still wet bones thrown into an untidy little pile in the corner near Mac’s cot.
Too bad that she would spend the last moments of her young life in Mac’s ill-smelling, unkempt universe; her final words nothing more than guttural animal cries.

Mac turned away from the girl and headed to his small cast iron stove, muttering:
“Are you hungry?” as he knelt down to feed fire two small logs and a handful of dry kindling, rising slowly and shambling over to his small pantry to retrieve his oatmeal and cook pot.

The girl’s name—at least her Rainbow name—was the entirely uninspired Clover Dancer. She and Knob had arrived on the Mesa a little over 2 months ago in a relatively new Ford Mini-van. They had set up their plot about 10 miles west of Mac’s spot near Old Man Grub’s stretch. The two had been friendly enough at first, walking from spot-to-spot and introducing themselves to their new neighbors. The old school settlers were of course weary of the couple, having experienced the abnormal attitudes of the new generation of freejackers. Most of the young kids who came out to live on the Mesa considered themselves hardboiled anarchists; violent and bad tempered, typically sporting drug and alcohol problems. Not that anyone on the Mesa begrudged or discouraged drug use; shit, most of them had come out to the desert because of some form of substance abuse had reshaped their world outlook. But the number one concern was the destruction of both personal and community property due to drug and alcohol use. But the two had seemed harmless enough, and most everyone thought they would make welcome editions to the Mesa. Mac was of the opposite position of most, and viewed the two as nothing more than befuddled shoppers playing at true freedom; but Mac was an isolationist and generally distrustful of everyone, even of long time settlers and who spent very little time around the rest of community for the exception of when he needed to trade for goods such as oatmeal and clothes.

After a few weeks, the young couple stopped visiting their new neighbors, which was all fine and good as far as most were concerned, but then the thefts started happening. The first was Old Man Grub; several of his ripe melons had disappeared from his make shift greenhouse along with a 3 pound bag of organic kidney beans. Theft, although largely uncommon on the Mesa, was an occasional inconvenience. Sometimes an isolationist would fall on hard times and have difficulty asking their neighbors for help and some fruit or meat would go missing. Usually it was replaced along with a note of apology asking for forgiveness: No harm, no foul.

The only problem was that more theft kept occurring, and there was never any meat taken. Meat was easy to come by on the Mesa and most of the men and some of the women were solid hunters, but fruits and vegetables took time and patience to grow; most of the time seed had to be brought in from the town. To most, produce was more coveted and valuable than wood for fire and building materials. It was a well-known fact that the young couple was vegan and had absolutely no interest in meat or animals products. A counsel meeting was held and the decision was made to confront Knob and Clover Dancer about the thefts.

Five of the counsel elders made the trek out to the couples settlement and asked about the stolen food. What they got for their questions was Knob and Clover Dancer laughing in their faces, admitting to the thefts, and pulling guns on the elders and telling them to move off their spot. The elders moved off, hands up in the air and shitting their pants. The next day another counsel meeting was held about what to do about their violent new neighbors. Most of settlers owned guns and were steadfast advocates for the right to bear arms, but most of the counsel was old and on top of that, cowards unwilling to take a real stand against Knob and Clover Dancer. A vote was cast and what was decided upon was to approach Mac to handle the problem.

The same five elders came to Mac’s spot and asked for his assistance in dealing with the couple. They had come to him before when the Gulf War veteran Phil Gustersen had raped Mary Dandy’s 12-year-old boy, Sparrow. They knew what Mac was. They all knew about the time before, before they knew him as the man called Dirigible. They knew about the women in Arkansas, hell, the whole country knew about what Mac had done to those women; they knew about his first trial where he was sentenced to 150 years and his subsequent appeal when the prior decision was thrown out due to Mac’s defense attorney admitting he hadn’t prepared adequately for the trial and how he believed his client was guilty before accepting the case. The elders knew it all, and consider it nothing more than the past. Mac had proven himself to the community as a top shelf water harvester and respected him for his willingness to help the Mesa’s greatest times of need.

Mac readily agreed to deal with the couple, as long as the elders did not bother him for several weeks after they were dealt with, and that they handle the disposal of the couple’s belongings. He would also need use of Old Man Grub’s flatbed. Mac went to Knob and Clover Dancer’s spot that very night. The two were incredibility easy to approach. They had started a large bonfire and were dancing sweating around it as the speakers of their mini van roared with the psychedelic hum of the Grateful Dead. Both were obviously stoned or tripping balls. Mac was able to take Knob with a single side swing, catching the boy just above the right ear with an amazingly hollow sounding thud. Clover Dancer was quick to react but ran blindly into the fire she’d been so exuberantly dancing around only a few seconds before. Mac pulled her screaming from the fire, throwing her to the dirt and then punching her hard across the jaw before she could run again. He walked the mile back to the truck dragging Knob’s corpse by the ankle and Clover Dancers motionless form over his shoulder and drove home.

Mac bound the still unconscious Clover Dancer to the Main support beam of his shack, arms above her head, gagging her with an old sock and heavy twine. She came awake just as Mac was flaying the boy’s corpse from belly-to-throat, and she started to scream around her gag. She passed out a half hour before he made his way out to the water fields. He’d removed the gag because he was afraid she’d choke on her own vomit or the sock itself; it’d been nearly a decade since he’d been with a woman and he wanted to enjoy the experience.

Mac had finished making his oatmeal and turned and faced the girl again. Her full-throated screams was beginning to work a nerve at the back of skull. He wanted to punch her, maybe shatter a few of those orthodontist perfect teeth. But Mac felt the girl deserved a few minutes to get all that great big nasty fear out of her system; to breathe easy an unobstructed. He approached her with his wooden bowl of steaming oatmeal, holding his spoon out mouth level with her, and asked again:
“Are you hungry?”
Once Mac was within of a foot of her, Clover Dancer’s screams sputtered and turned into a kind of breathless panting.
“Are you hungry?”
He began to trace the edge of her left nipple with the tip of his spoon. The small spot of upraised flesh was small and a perfect rosy pink, and despite the terror that gripped her,
It was still hard and covered in goose flesh. In his younger, wilder years, he would have torn this girl apart; fucked her silly until he was raw and sore and then, out of boredom, would have started trying to stick things inside of her: Beer bottles, sticks, rocks, anything on hand really. But now as an older man, all he could think of as he gently circled the girl’s nipple with his breakfast spoon was how this girl and her former stoner boyfriend would keep him in meat well past the coming fall and winter months.

Mac dipped his spoon into the rapidly cooling oatmeal and brought it to Clover Dancer’s mouth, pushing it, jamming it past her perfect teeth, past her struggling dull pink tongue and down her throat.
“Are you hungry?”
Maybe he wouldn’t slaughter her today? Maybe he would keep her around and see if some of the old feelings came back? And if they didn’t, so what, at the very least he could fatten her up a little with oatmeal and a Knob steak or two.
He brought the spoon to her mouth again.
END

BIO: Keith Rawson lives in the Phoenix, AZ suburb of Gilbert with his wife and daughter. He has had fiction published (or waiting to be published) in such venues as DZ Allen’s Muzzle Flash fiction, PowderBurn Flash, Flashshots, Darkest before the Dawn, A Twist of Noir, Bad Things, Crooked, Pulp Pusher, CrimeWaV.com (podcast), Plots with Guns, Flash Fiction Offensive, and Yellow Mama. He is also working on the final draft of his first novel which is tentatively titled, Retirement

Identity Theft by Robert Weibezahl

It’ll be up on Beat to A Pulp this weekend, and I’m looking forward to the responses regarding this tightly written thriller with it’s double-surprise ending. When the story came in, David and I were impressed with the believeable scenario and nary-a-leak plotting. Robert Weibezahl left no detail unscrutinized in the quest for plausibility, and his dedication really paid off. Please feel free to leave a comment on the BTAP site, so all who read it can share the reviews.