Traveling Weird Trails: A Huckster Tales Collection
Weird Western/Short Stories
Weird tales from the ever-weirder Old West.
Jimmy and Orville are back for more supernatural mayhem in these four stories. Their penchant for finding trouble is as keen as ever. In “The Wand” Jimmy and Orville face off against a dangerous witch who will not accept no for an answer. “The Miracle of Ed’s Purgative” brings our hucksters face-to-face with a sasquatch who refuses to leave. The dead witch in “The Wayward Corpse” will not stay in her coffin. “The Flaming Emerald” challenges Jimmy and Orville to return a stolen jewel to an angry ghost.
If you are interested in weird tales with a healthy dollop of humor, hitch a ride on Jimmy and Orville’s wagon. The Huckster Tales are for you.
Chasing the Great Corvid: An Incognito Lane Tale
Fantasy/Novella
The Great Corvid, a gem rumoured to be the source of the monarchy’s power, has been stolen. The Queen and her council demand that wizard emeritus Learvin and his cat familiar Nightmawl come out of retirement to lead the search. The most likely culprit is a dragon living in a mountain lair on the other side of Swamp Deslolation. The journey to the dragon’s cave will be hard, but negotiating with a dragon carries its own set of perils. Nightmawl would rather rest his old bones in a tree and flirt with the neighbor cat, but Learvin is not one to turn down a challenge. Their quest will twist in unexpected ways.
The first story in The Cats of Incognito Lane series, Chasing the Great Corvid mixes humor with fantasy adventure in a delightful tale.
Fantasy/Horror/Novella
Well-behaved children have nothing to fear from Krampus, right?
Hans and Helga face a nasty encounter with bully Johan as the days to Christmas count down. But bullies are not the only threat the village children face. Krampus is long overdue to pay a visit. Chickens and ducks have gone missing with hoof prints leading away. Good children like Hans and Helga have nothing to fear, or do they? Johan knows he’s a target. What plot is he hatching to save himself? Is Krampus smart enough to see through it?
Krampus Comes to Town is a novella of treachery and sacrifice.
Fantasy/Novel
Taking from a Barrow? Not a good idea.
Ethan’s family has fallen from owning a manor to scraping by on a small farm. As he approaches manhood, his prospects don’t look very promising. And Arabella, the girl he’s set his sights on, is the daughter of the Squire. Goaded by his younger brother, Ethan enters the Barrow, fights for his life with the tomb guardian, and escapes with a silver gorget.
Ethan hatches a plan to impress Arabella with the gorget. At the same time, the Sniggard, who guards the Barrow, makes plans to retrieve the stolen item. Ethan’s plans go horribly awry. The Squire stands in his way. The Sniggard kidnaps Arabella. And Ethan stumbles into Faerie.
It’s up to Ethan to fix the mess he’s created and rescue Arabella from a life of captivity with the Sniggard. But how’s a farm boy supposed to accomplish any of those monumental tasks?
The Sniggard’s Revenge is a gripping novel of fantasy adventure. If you like strong and dynamic characters, rich descriptions, magic, and trips to Faerie, then you’ll love The Sniggard’s Revenge.
Fantasy/Short Stories
Is a vampire without fangs harmless? Do trolls really live under bridges? What’s a squonk and why does it weep? Where do water wights come from? How do you return a stolen jewel to a ghost?
Those are only a few of the questions the stories in this volume consider. There are varied paths in the fantasy genre and these stories travel many of them. The tales range from weird westerns to fairy tales to classic fantasy with a cat as the protagonist. Some feature magic, others none at all. Some are wondrous, some are woeful.
Strange Paths to Wonder has something for everyone, so dive into a feast of stories certain to satisfy your fantasy hunger.
“The Cat Lady Is Always Right”
Short Story
What would you do to save your landlady’s cat?
Aaron Sanderson overslept through his bar exam. Now, he’s working the dead end of a grocery store checkout lane, waiting for his next shot at the bar. His boss is a jerk and the summer heat is stifling in the old building. Aaron thinks he’s hit rock bottom, until his elderly landlady enters the store with her cat.
“The Cat Lady Is Always Right” is a humorous short story about making a stand for the underdog.
Book 1 in the Comic Cat Tales Series.
A Cat Called Blackjack
Novella
A therapy cat? Who plays blackjack?
Stu’s run of luck at the blackjack table comes to a spectacular and disastrous bad end. With one twenty-five dollar chip remaining, he’s facing a month of ramen noodles until his next paycheck. His friend Harv cajoles him into seeing a gambling consultant who offers an unusual solution for Stu to win his money back. A cat. A very special cat. Guaranteed success claims the consultant. In the world of gambling, nothing is guaranteed.
A Cat Called Blackjack is a humorous story filled with a host of quirky characters. If you’ve ever wanted to take your cat to the casino or want to convince yourself never to set foot in a casino, this story is for you.
Book 2 in the Comic Cat Tales Series.
The Great Contagion: A Merliss Tale
Fantasy/Novel
Plagues kill in more ways than one and Merliss soon discovers she has far more to fear than a disease.
Merliss is no ordinary cat. She’s a young girl’s spirit trapped in a cat’s body. While the magic that banished her has snatched away her human speech, it has given her a life spanning millennia. For centuries she has lived with the cunning folk, assisting their efforts to heal the sick and ward off malevolent creatures. Now a bleeding sickness has thrown the community into chaos.
The cunning man and his apprentice are in danger from the disease. The life Merliss has worked so long to build is in jeopardy. Before she entered the cat, she had trained to be a shaman. Do her centuries of experience hold a secret to a cure? But disease isn’t her only nemesis.
A pair of malevolent creatures move into the neighborhood threatening more havoc. With disease and monsters ravaging the land, Merliss is up to her whiskers in trouble. It couldn’t be worse, until a mob looking for a scapegoat turns its wrath on Merliss.
The Great Contagion is the gripping first novel in the dark fantasy Merliss Tales series. If you like strong and dynamic characters, rich description, magic and intrigue, then you’ll love Jeff Chapman’s imaginative Merliss Tales.
Grab The Great Contagion today to watch Merliss use her wits and magic to rescue her friends and herself.
Cat Sidhe: Into the Witch Lands I
Fantasy/Novel
A human spirit banished to the body of a cat.
Merliss has seen centuries of change, centuries of trouble.
Something nasty has come through one of the ley gates. It walks upright. It talks. And it looks like an oversized cat, but as Merliss can attest, it doesn’t smell like a cat.
It’s a cat sidhe on the hunt for slaves, anyone with opposable thumbs. Merliss travels to unknown territories to rescue a friend and encounters more trouble making her way home. The situation on the moors is far more dire than Merliss and her friends could have imagined.
Cat Sidhe is the first in a fantasy trilogy. Join Merliss on her prowls through dangerous lands.
The Black Blade: A Huckster Novel
Weird Western/Novel
An enchanted blade. An evil old man. An ancient spirit behind a mask. The Weird West just gets weirder.
Orville and Jimmy are a pair of hucksters, struggling to scrape together enough coin for a square meal. While Orville angles for the big score, Jimmy hopes to make an honest buck for a day’s work. When an old man calling himself Marzby asks for help with a supernatural pest, Orville smells opportunity. Jimmy smells danger.
In two shakes of a lamb’s tail, Marzby imprisons Orville and only Jimmy can save him from a gruesome death. The price for Orville’s life? Jimmy must retrieve an enchanted knife from inside Skull Hill and put it in Marzby’s hands in three days time. With the blade in reach, Jimmy runs head on into more trouble: a shapeshifting opossum, a larger than average coyote and an ancient spirit determined to keep the blade where it is. Maybe the evil Marzby shouldn’t have the blade, but without it, how is Jimmy going to rescue Orville?
The Black Blade is a weird western novel in Jeff Chapman’s Huckster Tales series, mixing horror, fantasy, and comedy in an Old West setting. Climb up in the wagon and follow Orville and Jimmy as they once again plunge over their heads into supernatural trouble.
Blood and Beauty and Other Weird Tales
Fantasy/Short Stories
Collects six short stories of fantasy and weirdness. Fans of Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, Greek mythology, and biblical-inspired fantasy will find something interesting.
“Blood and Beauty” tells the tragic love story of a satyr and a dryad.
“Sutter’s Well” records the weird encounter between two boys and a Lovecraftian monster in Appalachia.
“Morphine and Chocolate” draws inspiration from the medieval poem Pearl as it follows a father’s search for his missing daughter from one weird landscape to another.
“The Facts in the Case of M. Hussman” takes inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe and records the horrific consequences of artificially extending life in a steampunk world.
“Shafts to Hell” returns to the Old West and takes the reader inside the mind of an insane miner.
“Good King David” combines the tales of Hamlet and Absalom in a Biblical fantasy world.
Give Me Your Teeth: A Fae Tale
Urban Fantasy/Novella
Jimmy’s mother is not your mother’s Tooth Fairy.
Ten-year old Jimmy wonders where the Tooth Fairy keeps all those teeth. It’s a silly question and he plays along to get some coins, confident there’s no such fae, or is there? What did he really see in the middle of the night? There’s no such doubt about the bully and his sidekick preying on the kids at the bus stop. When Jimmy defies demands to hand over his money from the Tooth Fairy, he moves to the top of the bully’s radar. Will the club-fisted terror really put out Jimmy’s teeth? Or is the Tooth Fairy not so harmless?
Give Me Your Teeth is an urban fantasy novella about a boy’s confrontation with schoolyard evil and the fantastic. You’ll never think of the Tooth Fairy in the same way. This one has teeth, lots of them, and she’s not afraid to use them.
Enter a place where the mundane and the fantastic intersect and discover what the Tooth Fairy really does with all those teeth.
Last Request: A Victorian Gothic
Historical/Suspense/Novella
“For the love of God, cut off my head.”
The last request in Uncle Silas’s will shocks everyone speechless, everyone except his favorite niece, Anna. More than death itself, the claustrophobic Silas fears a premature burial. Will her elders carry out his request? Anna is certain they will not. It’s up to her to do the right thing, even if it is a bit grisly. Armed with butcher knife and candle, Anna heads for the crypt underneath the church in the dead of night. All does not proceed according to Anna’s careful planning. Graves have a way of not letting go.
Last Request is a historical novella set in Victorian England with gothic sensibilities. What’s more gothic than beheadings, nightmares, and a dusty crypt filled with moldering corpses? Your heroine faces plenty of suspense, terror, and horror in her quest to fulfill her uncle’s wish, but there are also moments of comedy along the way. Fans of historical fiction, gothic thrillers, and Edgar Allan Poe will find something to like in Last Request.
So step inside a dark story in the tradition of the penny dreadful, at times humorous and horrifying, but don’t close the door behind you. Someone might lock you in.