The Harrow Press is also moving along on Mortis Operandi, with several stories accepted and a handful more about to be decided upon. We’re also closing a deal on some fabulous cover art, so with any luck we’ll be able to unveil that soon, too!

Mortis Operandi submissions are still open, of course — if you have a story about a criminal investigation that involves the supernatural in some way, please send it along — the submission guidelines can be found on The Harrow Press website.

From my introduction…

As long as we don’t see them, the world’s evils will remain confined; the cat will be alive; the trauma will be nothing but a bad dream; and the monster out there will be nothing more than the wind rattling the windows, after all.

Ignorance might be frightening, but it offers plausible denial.

It’s only after we open our eyes — turn on the light, peek inside the box, gaze into the abyss — that the damage is done. Evil escapes, the cat’s fate is sealed, the repressed trauma returns —

— the monster turns and meets our eyes.

See the Day Terrors page on The Harrow Press’s website for the full introduction and a table of contents.

The Harrow Press, the editing side of my life, has just announced its new anthology — Mortis Operandi. We’re looking for stories that feature (1) the investigation of a crime, and (2) the supernatural. They don’t have to be horror — we’re open to just about any genre and treatment. What we want is to be wowed by something out of the ordinary. I’m sure we’re going to get dozens of submissions featuring vampires or ghosts and murder set in the U.S. and U.K. Nothing wrong with that, to be sure, but after you’ve read the first six or seven stories along those lines, that submission about environmentally related chicanery and thirsty statues in Mumbai is going to look darn refreshing. So if you’re inspired to try something a little different in the criminal-investigation line, by all means, send it along!

We’re also looking for some great cover art, so artists, if you have an image already that you think would be appropriate for the new anthology, or if you can create something quickly, please let us know! It has to be a book cover, which means you need to leave in space for the title and editors’ names, and, of course, include a back cover; alternatively, we might accept some really nice art that we can manipulate (frame, maybe) to create a cover. Hey, it costs you nothing to send us a link to an image you think we might like, so please do!

Kfir and I have posted the table of contents for Day Terrors over at The Harrow Press. The anthology will be published February 2011.

Day Terrors will be the second POD horror anthology published by The Harrow Press and edited by Kfir Luzzatto and Dru Pagliassotti, and the third horror anthology from The Harrow staff. Our previous publications were Fear of the Unknown and Midnight Lullabies.

And then I ended up 4,000+ words over the top limit. Almost all of that lovely history and description was left on the cutting-room floor. Oh, the agony! But thank heavens for my two fantastic beta readers, who helped me make the cuts and strengthen the story — I couldn’t have done it by myself.

So now I’m tackling the edits on The Harrow Press‘s Day Terrors, which was in abeyance while I finished the C&C story — sorry! But I’m back on it now.

And I’m also contemplating participation in National Novel Writing Month. I missed it the last two years because I was working on other projects (a novel, Boys’ Love Manga), but other than DT, I have no pressing projects at the moment. So … maybe Clockwork Heart 3? I kick-started CH and its sequel during NaNoWriMo, and An Agreement with Hell. I find it a great way to get started on a novel. But it’s more stress and deadline pressure again. Hmmm…..

Turned out it was a burning lightbulb’s smoke being sucked into the ventilation system, though….

This is the Clockwork Heart sequel in the paper edit; chapter one. It’s going to take me the rest of the week to finish the editing process, I suspect, unless I can really power through on one of the days I don’t have to teach.

My newswriting students get their articles back looking like this and freak out. They don’t realize I’m just as strict with myself!

If you visit The Harrow to check on one of your published stories or poems and the file doesn’t show up when you click on the link, please let me know in email; as we unglitch the site, we’re finding some files that are there but, for some reason, aren’t displaying externally. We’re working to resolve that problem, as well.

Day Terrors will be The Harrow Press’s second print-on-demand anthology (the first was Midnight Lullabies) and The Harrow staff’s third (Fear of the Unknown was compiled and edited by The Harrow but published through Echelon Press).

…And in the meantime, I am spending far too much money here at Yaoi-Con. Hmm, I have to carry all these books home with me, don’t I? *gulp*