The Fantastic Forum was conceived with ambitious goals, but never realized its potential as my focus on other projects sapped the site and my fiction writing of the energy that a whole hearted effort required, until recently.

Last year, I asked Rhode Island authors to submit stories for an anthology I aimed to use as a free giveaway for yearly subscribers to WarwickPost.com, my now six-year mission to add a home for quality journalism to the Ocean State’s roster of news websites. I received some great submissions, but a theme of haunting tales began to make itself apparent as I pored over the stories. The fact of H.P. Lovecraft’s birthday approaching at the time wasn’t lost on me, either. I decided to follow serendipity’s lead, and create a weird collection of chilling tales. Weird Rhody was born. 

The photogenic and photographically talented Mary Carlos contributed her image, “Salty’s Chair,” to the project, providing a beach lifeguard’s post overlooking a moonlight South County shore. With Mary’s photo, the cover nearly designed itself. 

While a $15 yearly donation will still land you a copy of the original collection, I’ve been itching to see how it fares among fiction lovers, as a standalone piece. So, later this month, I’ll be releasing the anthology for sale here and on Amazon, with my own contribution, Wight Christmas, added in. I’ve added some depth to the original flash fiction piece for the anthology. But the original is yours for the taking, if only you’ll part with your email address so I can keep you apprised of the developments in the Weird Rhody release later this month. Tell your friends: free stuff awaits, and all I ask is a way to tell you the whole thing is for sale before anyone else knows. 

It’ll be a fun distraction from this summer, which, to be honest, is a hum-dinger of ill tidings. It’ll be nice to take comfort in a little schadenfreude, knowing that at least there are fictional folks who have it far, far worse than we do. We can all breathe a sigh of relief knowing that the authors of Weird Rhody are not directing the latest season of America: Democracy in Dilemma. There are still things writers can think up that are worse than what we’re living through. [Checks Google News on phone] For now.