Upcoming Reading Event & More!

A while back I had a short story titled, "Beautiful Libby and the Darkness" published in the anthology "Desolation: 21 Tales for Tails," published by Dragon's Roost Press and in support of Last Day Dog Rescue. On Friday, September 26th at 7:00 pm, fellow contributor David Hayes and I will be reading our stories at Off the Beaten Path Books in Farmington, MI.

I'm pleased to be part of this event and honored to have been invited to read.

Speaking of being honored, I have also been asked to be a speaker at Penguicon next year. More on that as events unfold.

Robin Williams & The Movie Network.

I chose to wait until I was a few weeks in before really posting about this just to make sure it was going well and in the direction I wanted. So far, so good. The Movie Network is filling the gap left behind by Yahoo Voices quite well, despite my only being able to write about movies.

In light of the stunning and tragic loss of Robin Williams, we were granted permission to write as many articles about him as we wanted. I waited until the following week because I wanted to review a movie of his I'd never seen. Click here for the review.

I chose the movie review because I couldn't really put into words why my reaction to Williams' suicide hit me so hard. I could have mentioned how my dad was obsessed with him when he first burst onto the scene and how Williams always stood in place of my dad, who died much too young. But even that doesn't really get to the heart of it and I've given up trying to do that for the moment.

Also, if you're interested, here's where I slammed Guardians of the Galaxy.

Sweet, sweet validation.

I don't tend to write easily accessible stories for the mainstream genre market. I tend to see genre as an extension of the literary world, just more dynamic and fable-based. So, occasionally I write something that becomes very difficult to find a home for, a fact my previous post also discussed. This time it is the tale of a sad, lonely woman who's always been a bit too close to her brother who suddenly finds the perfect man entering her life. Of course there's a catch. There's always a catch.

The story has been passed around from magazine to anthology to weekly grocery store newsletter, always with the same result...until now. Below is the acceptance email I just received upon waking and my response to it. Nice way to wake up on a Monday morning:

Hi Christopher, and thanks for the submission, we really appreciate it. Sorry for the long response time, we've been pretty inundated with submissions lately.

I really enjoyed reading through 'The Love of a Good Entity', it was a very well told and compelling story on a character level. Very touching in a bittersweet fashion. If it's still available I'm potentially interested in publishing it on the site; I say potentially because I wanted to ask you if you would consider cutting out the last section of the story. I feel like leaving with the open ended conclusion better suits the sense of loss and emptiness of the story, and the added bit after that seems to detract from the somber and heartfelt atmosphere by making it a more 'conventional' horror tale, in part for its bluntness.

Let me know what you think and maybe we can get something going; if so, I'll put it through an editing pass (though I didn't notice much of anything that needed work on the first read-through, ending aside) and once that's done I'll get the simple contract to you. Is it original (unpublished), or would this be a reprint?

Thanks again for the great story, I think it will make a great addition to our line-up!

Brett Reistroffer - Editor, Bad Dream Entertainment

 

 

Brett,

 

Thanks for your kind words regarding what has been a difficult-to-place story. I agree with you regarding the ending and have always ping-ponged between the open-ended section and a perceived need to explain the aftermath. I have no problem losing the last section for publication. The story is previously unpublished.

 

Also, if you think the amount of time it took between submitting and your response is a long time, you and I just became BFFs!

 

Sincerely,

 

Chris Nadeau

"Floorboards" has found a home.

Most of you have no idea what I'm referring to, but my short story "Floorboards" was read before a small yet captivated college audience two years ago and has been bouncing around the submission world ever since. Now, finally, the annual Triangulation anthology which published my short story, "The Party" in 2011 has included it in their latest collection entitled "PARCH."

 

It just came out and the first Amazon review is already a positive one!