Huzzah! Strangely Funny VI is now available on Kindle, and is free on Kindle Unlimited. Join the authors below for tales of paranormal humor:

• Angel in Hell’s Kitchen By Beverly Alice Black
• Ghost Heist By Kate Franklin
• The Creeping Crust By R.C. Mulhare
• If the Deviant Fits By N.L. Dalton
• Scrim and Shaw and the House Full of Bones By Daniel Hale
• Do I Fat? By Rob Smales
• Poteen and Stout By Stephen McQuiggan
• A New Source of Energy By Rosalind Barden
• Spongeworthy By Stacey Longo
• Papa’s Primo Deli By David Bernard
• Eyewear of the Damned By C.D. Gallant-King
• Accident Prone By Gwen Mayo
• How a Vampire Gets A Tan By Paul Wartenberg
• A Terrible Thing to Waste By David Perlmutter
• Skunknado By B. David Spicer
• In a Silent World By Curtis A. Deeter
• Dial M for Marvin By Robert Allen Lupton
• Interview with Rufus Crain: Rorkson County By Cheryl Zaidan
• Basil's Dream Date By Sarah E. Glenn
• The Last Resort By D.J. Tyrer

The print version will also be available in the near future. 
As always, stay tuned...

Presenting our first Christmas novel: Reindeer by Gareth Barsby! This isn't like other Christmas stories, though, which usually leave you in a diabetic coma. Is it a mystery? Well, there is a criminal conspiracy. Is it horror? There's a scary ghost, and a lot of dead people. Is it a metaphysical fantasy? Um... probably.

Santa Claus never lived at the North Pole; he lives and operates in Purgatory. He brings presents to those that have not yet ascended to Heaven in order to give them hope. His elves and reindeer are the spirits of those who died during Christmas.

Meet his newest recruit, Randall, a Christmas-loving human turned into a confused and curious reindeer. It’s bad enough for Randall that he now has to live in a world where happiness and saccharine is forced onto him daily, but then he learns that the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come has history with Santa, and a crooked man is practicing necromancy so as to ruin Santa’s operation.

Can Randall thwart the evil plan and save the holiday he loves?

To find out, visit Amazon, or enter the giveaway below!

I am pleased to announce that Strangely Funny III is now on Kindle. It presents nineteen stories from talented authors, and I would like to introduce you to one of them.

Nathan Cromwell is the author of "The Tortured Teen." Rather than being interviewed by us, Marla, one of the characters from “The Tortured Teen”, expressed her desire to talk with the author about the story.
 
Marla: You don’t like me very much, do you?
 
Cromwell: You’re a bit of a pain, but I’m sure you’ll grow out of it.
 
Marla: You have me already dead in the very first paragraph!
 
Cromwell: . . .
 
Marla: (After a half-hour awkward silence) What’s up with the picture?

Cromwell: That was a gift from my niece, Mikaela. It’s a statuette of me with a peacock on my head.
 
Marla: Wh--
 
Cromwell: I don’t know.
 
Marla: Okay. So, how did you come up with the story?
 
Cromwell: I was sitting in a coffee shop trying to think of something interesting to write for this anthology. I had started watching a documentary on string theory the night before, and I had recently read Oscar Wilde’s The Ghost of Canterville, so I decided to mix an old-fashioned ghost with modern physics.

M: Do your stories just come to you?
 
C: Sometimes I do write straight through, but mostly I jot down ideas until my muse takes a bathroom break. Then I’ll start arranging my notes into clumps and decide the best plan of attack. Once I’ve got the architecture, I start fleshing out and filling in gaps, and either throwing out or saving things that don’t fit.
 
Marla: Some authors talk to their characters. Do you?
 
Cromwell: I never have conversations with my characters.
 
Marla: Speaking of your characters, how did you come to put me in Atlanta instead of somewhere more goth-friendly, like New Orleans?
 
Cromwell: I used to live there, and I left about the time they were tearing down homes in the shabbier part to prepare for the Olympics. Since I wanted a ghost haunting a brand-new house, that came to mind.
 
M: A lot of authors, myself included—did you know I write heart-rending poetry?—get inspired to write by reading a story and saying to themselves: “I can do better than that.” Do you feel proud that you will inspire so many future writers?
 
C: I’m not some hack! I put a lot of effort and thought into my stories.
 
M: You know, after all that work, it’s unbearably sad that no one will read or even remember this story fifty years after you’re dead.
 
C: (As a pleased smile blossoms on Marla’s lips) That’s not—maybe this—you never kno—oh, shut up!
 
M: And if by some miracle people are still reading it, you’ll be dead but I, the dead girl, will live on in your story. Isn’t that neat?
 
C: (Inaudible).
 
M: Thank you, Mr. Cromwell. I enjoyed our interview. More than you know.

Nathan Cromwell is a living, breathing, swearing teleprompter for the human race, and he does some of his best work on public transport. A military brat, he is from no one place. He did hover in Indiana long enough to earn a BA in English which he has never used for any job ever unless you count this. He has worked in the retail, security, and fitness industries and has acquired all the concomitant bitterness they offer. That hard-won fruit he passes on to you in his stories.
 
Many of his stories are online, and you can find links to them at nathancromwell.wordpress.com.

Don't miss out! We're giving away three free copies of Strangely Funny 2 1/2 on Goodreads. Goodreads is a great place to visit anyway, so get over there. :)

Nightmare Noir is now available on Amazon in the Kindle store, and on Smashwords in other e-book formats.

In other news: the winner of the Goodreads Giveaway is Barbara in Florida. And no, we don't know her.  :)  We had 715 entries for the drawing, which is our highest total ever.

Our Goodreads giveaway for Nightmare Noir ends on April 30th! If you haven't entered yet, now is the time. If you'd like to learn more about Alex Azar and the creation of James S. Peckman, check out his interview on Patricia Abbott's blog.

The second part of my (Gwen Mayo's) interview with Detective James S. Peckman. 
Alex Azar, his biographer, is sharing several cases he finds memorable in a new book titled Nightmare Noir, which will be available on Amazon on Monday.

Which of the cases in the collection had the most impact on your life, and why?

That may be the easiest and most difficult question to answer. 'Control', which accounts the first time Thaddeus and I took on the returning Ibn'Roth. It still weighs heavy on my heart thinking about that first trip to Chicago, and the lives we lost on that case. We may have thwarted this god's return, but I can't count it as a victory.  Too often loss seems to be the driving force for the things I did, and for so much after that case was because of those losses.

I noticed that your first solo case took you from New Jersey to Kansas; for a Jersey boy that must have been like visiting another planet. How did you feel about the vast open fields and near absence of trees?

It was the noise, or lack of, that hit me first.  Newark is very much the sister city of New York, and we share that constant hum of life through sound that the Big Apple has. You could hear your own heart beat in the quiet fields of Kansas. I will say, I do remember stealing a moment during all that craziness to admire the night sky and all the stars that the city's light pollution steal from the view.  

Could you tell us a little about the reasons for naming your weapons? 

Every occupation has its own superstitions and detectives, both paranormal and normal, have their own; it is bad luck to go on a case with an unnamed weapon.  As if to prove the point, during the aforementioned 'Under the Hood of Winter' I lost a favorite of mine that I hadn't named.

Why “Stacy” and “Gwen?” (No, readers, Gwen was not named for me; that is pure coincidence)

We're going back a while now. You're too young to remember a show called Two Faces West, but it was about these twin brothers both played by Charles Bateman.  One was a physician seeking to heal the western town through its citizens, while his more violent brother, the sheriff, was quick with his gun. I was really drawn to the duality Charles brought to the show, something I think is in all of us. But I digress, Stacy was the name of the character played by the beautiful Joyce Meadows.  
Something I haven't shared with many people, Gwen was my daughter's middle name. More than a dedication to her, I feel she's now protecting me.

Have you trained others to continue your work? If not, what do you foresee happening if you retire (now that you've been retired for some time)? 

I hadn't trained anyone to take continue for me.  I wouldn't want to encourage anyone to lead the life I lived during that time. The fact I'm here alive able to talk to you now, is a miracle I thank God for. I know too many good men and women that can't say the same. Unfortunately, the nature of this world that most people don't see means there's always more James Peckmans being brought into the life through similar tragedies I went through all those years ago.  But we should all be thankful there are people standing up to the darkness, so we don't have to.  

Logan Zachary (www.loganzacharydicklit.com) lives in Minneapolis, MN and has over a hundred erotic stories in print. Calendar Boys is a collection of his short stories.  Big Bad Wolf is an erotic werewolf mystery set in Northern Minnesota and its sequel GingerDead Man is due out in January 2015.  His stories can be found in several collections, including: Beach Bums, Sexy Sailors, Black Fire, Brief Encounters, Biker Boys, Rough Trade and The Spy Who Laid Me. 

Just so everyone knows, Logan's story in Strangely Funny II has erotic overtones, but it's not X-rated. I'm sure some of you are disappointed by that news.

In "Catting Around", a meeting takes place where neither party is what he seems to be at face/fur value.

   I came home late one night from the bar and saw the big tomcat standing by my back step. There was a patch of blood along his right side, a dark crimson/black slash across his yellow tiger-striped body. There was a bare spot on top of his head and a nick was taken out of his left ear, clotted with blood. The night was close, and the day’s heat still radiated off the concrete. My T-shirt and cut offs clung to my skin from my sweat and humidity.
   “You poor guy”, I said as I saw him. “Are you okay?” I bent down to scratch his neck.
   The cat arched his muscular back and rubbed up against my hairy leg, sending shivers up my leg, all the way up my spine. 
   What was this strange reaction? I know I didn’t drink much at the bar. I looked up at the moon, almost full but not quite. Two days to go. I could feel my nerves raw under my skin in the moonlight, itching, prickling wherever it touched me.
   I knew how this poor fellow felt. “Did you need something to eat? Drink?” I dug into my pocket and pulled out my keys. I unlocked the back door, and the cat darted into my house. I grew up with dogs my whole twenty-five years on this earth, and after my camping accident, I haven’t owned a pet.
   I flipped on the light to check on where my guest ran to. 
   The golden tom sat in the middle of the kitchen looking at the refrigerator.
   I opened the door and pulled out the bottle of milk and a cold beer. A bowl dried in the rack by the sink, and I poured some milk into it and set it on the floor. 
The cat raced to the bowl and lapped up the milk. His pink tongue dipped into the cool liquid, and he drank quickly.
   I opened the cupboard and found a can of tuna and opened it. I tipped it over onto a plate and set the plate next to the bowl.
   The cat stopped drinking and eyed the pink cylinder of fish. He slowly approached and took a small bite. He looked up at me and gobbled the rest down.
   I filled a glass with cold water and drank it as I watched the cat eat. I kicked off my shoes and set them by the back door.
   The tom cat looked over at me as I bent over. He watched me intently. 
   I looked back at him as I lined up my shoes. I could feel my tight shorts cling to my backside and I looked back at the cat. 
   His green eyes glowed in the kitchen light. His pupils dilated.
   Was he checking me out? I looked underneath him and noticed he was a big old tom. He must know which way I swung.  

Check out the rest of Logan's story for yourself! Strangely Funny II is now available in print and Kindle formats on Amazon, plus several other e-book formats on Smashwords! 

We're also giving away three copies on Goodreads - deadline is August 31st!