Critical Announcements from the Lunatic Assylum

New from the HuffNPuff Post: 5,280 foods that will make you fat if you eat too much of them and don’t get adequate exercise.

A baby of some sort was born in England. Jan Marshall (author of Dancin’ Schmacin’ with the Scars) has not yet had my love child. (See my earlier TLA post: Jan Kellerman Marshall Wants My Love Child.) This post found it’s way to The Sage News Network, a Canada based Onion-like online zine run by Chris McKerracher and others. Worth a look. Have your cyber passport ready. You’re going international.

I cried because I had no shoes and no iPhone, until I met a man who had no shoes, no iPhone and no iPad. We bought shoes and walked to the Apple Store.

Shortstack is live (metaphorically speaking) at Amazon Kindle Store. 

It costs the same as a Super Grande Double Decaf Mocha Macho Cappuccino with Espresso Shot. Aren’t you hypercaffeinated today anyway? But if you’d rather not help pay the rent at my expensive four hundred square feet Brooklyn apartment, you can get the eBook for free (That’s $0.00 in Amazon speak.) on Monday 7/29/2013. A prize goes to the reader who finds and reports to me the most typos, misspellings, and grammar errors I left in on purpose so Buzz Malone, Chaunce Stanton, Jane Turley, Marian Allen, Phil Simpkin, Karen Wyld, Todd Grundel and the loonies at Google Plus’s Literary Kittens Hate Agents will have something to do while laughing. Keep a pencil and pad of paper with you while reading. Byron Edgington (author of The Sky Behind Me, a memoir; get it, read it) is not in this contest. He has already submitted his list of 147 typos, which have been corrected in the version that is live now. If you are one of the lucky few who have an older version on your computer, save it for the Smithsonian. It is a collector’s item and can be sold on eBay. The paperback edition will be available soon. Have a slice and a glass of wine and be patient.

If you have any money left over after reading Shortstack, here are other books to consider:

Blank Slate Boarding House for Creatives by Chaunce Stanton (I’m 25% into it on Kindle; the can’t-put-it-down point occurred early in this book.)

The Sky Behind Me, a memoir by Byron Edgington. This is next in line for take off on my Kindle.

Silence of Centerville by Buzz Malone. Five stars, my review is on Amazon and Goodreads. Read this while waiting for Buzz’s next great novel due out this year.

Death Lurks in Cock Muck Hill by Phil Simpkin. This is on my Kindle awaiting its turn.

Anything by Marian Allen. See her extensive list of fantasy, mystery books at Amazon.

The House that Smelled Like Urine by Giovanni Russano (Todd Grundel). I haven’t read it yet, but suspect he should rent an apartment at The Luntic Assylum.

Thanks for reading. Hasta la vista?
(The writing at The Lunatic Assylum is the opinion and satire of Timothy Hurley and has not yet been vetted by the NSA.) 

Still to Come in the Fall

Someone wrote to me, “Sure, you write awesomely funny blog posts, Mr. Hurley, but what are you publishing lately?” So here’s a rundown on what is coming up between now and the Holidays 2013.

Stoop Shoe, short story. If the shoe doesn’t fit—wear it. A young woman fresh from Indiana connects on a Brooklyn stoop when she is brash enough to pick up a solitary shoe she finds there. This should be appearing in the print anthology Another Left Shoe from Blue Dragon Publishing this summer, but appears to have been delayed.

Dead Planet Scrolls, science fiction space opera, short story will appear in the eBook anthology Theme-Thology: Invasion in September. Ekahau, the first Mayan on Mars, and landing engineer for VANAG Mining, finds something in a cave that might threaten the landing, disrupt the mining of chlorominium, and confirm that history sometimes takes a long time to repeat itself. This was my first foray into SF, and I enjoyed it. I have half a dozen ideas for related short stories. I might combine those with this one in a Dead Planet book in 2014.

Shortstack, book collection of humor short stories will be published at Amazon as an eBook and small paperback September 2013. Lead story is the old favorite Hanzel and Gretyl a Boomer Fairy Tale. New stories include: The Grumpy Old Men’s Club; Thanksgiving in Eden, Adam’s Memoir; Serving God’s People; Coming to New York; The Strange Case of the Very Absorbing Story; and others. This will be self-published so all editing and publishing errors are on me.

Poe’s Black Cats, horror short story will appear in the print anthology Dark Muses, Spoken Silences from Firbolg Publishing October 1, 2013. Redemption—some minds are too twisted for it, but Preston, the man who hung Poe for burying an axe in his wife’s head, craves it as he lies dying and writing about the secrets he buried in his cellar many years ago. Dark, disturbing, adult themes may be offensive to some. Based on Edgar Allen Poe’s short story The Black Cat.

Waiting on Alma, literary fiction short story will be published in Avalon Literary Review October 31, 2013. I’m happy with this publication and proud of the fiction story based on a real incident. The angels work while Alma’s eighty-six year old widower teaches her physician a lesson about love and patience.

Sunburn, Icarus and Daedelus in Space, humor mashup short story will appear in the print anthology Open Doors: Muses & Myths November 1, 2013 from Wayman Publishing. Plato would not recognize this mangled Greek myth when Icarus pilots the Labyrinth, the Minotaur and Aphrodite to the sun, stalked by evil Theseus.

Looking forward to 2014. Waiting on Alma will become the lead story for a fiction collection that will include Fifty Fifty, currently available on Amazon as a single short story; Stoop Shoe; Along Robinson Creek; Johnny Don’t March; Compost; Professor Myshnakov’s Nightmare; and others.

It's a lot of work, but it keeps me out of the bars. Thanks for reading. See you again?