The Kindle short story “Cora’s Crossing” is available in Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian.
“Moonlight and Ghosts” is available in Italian.
The short story collection “Emily’s Stories” is available in Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish.
Tag: Cora’s Crossing
Book Announcement: Malcolm R. Campbell
In an attempt to reorganize what had become an unwieldy selection of available books, I have taken the following out of print:
- Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire (novel), e-book and paperback editions. The audiobook remains available.
- Emily’s Stories (short story collection), e-book and paperback editions. The audiobook remains available as do the Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish e-book translations.
- “Cora’s Crossing” (short story), e-book edition. The Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian e-book editions remain available.
- “Moonlight and Ghosts” (short story), e-book edition. The Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian e-book editions remain available.
- “Spooky Stories” (two stories), e-book and paperback editions. The audiobook remains available.
The audiobook editions of Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire and Emily’s Stories have outstanding narrators. You can find them on Amazon and Audible. I hope you enjoy them.
All of my books published by Thomas-Jacob Publishing and those that I have self-published remain in print on Amazon, B&N, Kobo, and other online sellers.
This and That from, well, me
Yes, I’m the guy behind the curtain of this blog. Seemed like it was time for a books update:
- Two more of my e-books are being translated into Italian, “Cora’s Crossing” and “Moonlight and Ghosts.” Meanwhile, we’be found a translator to create a Spanish edition of “Sarabande.”
- The sequel to “Conjure Woman’s Cat,” “Eulalie and Washerwoman” is now on the editor’s desk. (uh oh) I’ve seen a partial version of the cover art and it’s looking good. It’s being done by the by the same artist who did the cover art for the first book.
- For years, I’ve put off writing the third book in the Mountain Journeys Series that begins with “The Sun Singer” and then moves forward with “Sarabande.” Don’t laugh, but I didn’t start it sooner because the protagonist knows more about magic than I do, and I thought, “Well, Malcolm, how in the hell are you going to write this book.” I thought about faking it, but that seems wrong. The book’s name will be “Aeon.” Shhh, my publisher doesn’t know about it yet.
- My review of “A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing,” which I posted here recently, also appears on Literary Aficionado. Nice to show up on that site again! It’s been a while.
- Have you seen this article: How Long Until a Robot Wins the Pulitzer? I don’t think it will happen for a year or two. What about you?
- Since this is banned books week, let’s end with a quote about it: “I urge everyone to celebrate Banned Books Week by picking up a book that some closed-minded person out there wanted desperately to keep out of your hands.” – Jessica Herthel
- If any of my books are banned, I’ll be really ticked off and might even use some profanity.
A few updates – interview, a new review, Book Bits, and Glacier Park
I enjoyed my interview over at Deanna Jewel’s blog Tidbits. It will be posted there until February 8. Stop by, say “hello,” and sign up for a chance at a free copy of my e-book ghost story “Cora’s Crossing.” We talked about food, Scotch, writing advice, contemporary fantasy, and location settings.- Meanwhile, I’m trying to wrap up everything I need to do for my fantasy adventure trilogy that’s coming out this year. The Seeker is the first novel in the series, planned for a March 2013 release. For more information on the trilogy, surf over the my website page for an overall synopsis and a book trailer for The Seeker. My website also has a new inspirations and links page with info for writers and lovers of fantasy.
- For those of you who try to keep up with the latest book reviews and author news, I’m publishing ” Book Bits” several times a week on my Sun Singer’s Travel’s blog. Essentially, this is a page of links. The most recent “Book Bits” post was uploaded today.
I enjoyed reading The Woman of Porto Pim by the late Italian author Antonio Tabucchi. An English edition translated by Tim Parks is schedule for release in June from Archipelago Books. I posted my review of this collection of stories this morning on Literary Aficionado. If you’re on GoodReads, you’ll also find a copy of my review there.- With a bit of luck, I might just make it out to Glacier National Park late in the summer season. I’m looking forward to it and hope we don’t get any early snowfalls that kluge up the trip. We’ll see if I can get some pictures of many of the locations I use in my fantasy novels. I’m also curious to see how Many Glacier Hotel looks after the recent updates and refurbishments. Once again, the Federal government is providing insufficient funds for the park’s most basic needs. Here’s a recent story about that: National Park Service memo details $2.5M in proposed budget cuts at Glacier, Yellowstone.
I can’t resist sharing this quote from Terri Windling’s blog: “Current cant equates fantasy with escapism, and current fashion would have it that fantasy is both easy to read and to write. It isn’t. When it is done honestly, by a skillful writer, fantasy takes us far enough beyond our daily perceptions to open us to the essential realities beneath it. This is the true goal of all art.”- Ellen Kushner - And, for a bit of Jock Stewart satire: High Video Game Score Guarantees Lucrative Government Employment
Thank you for the 14,000 views in 2012
WordPress claims—and I believe them—that Malcolm’s Round Table had 14,000 views of its 115 new posts this past year. Thanks for visiting.
A fair number of you were reading my post about an organization called “The White House Boys”, an ongoing story about alleged abuses at the now-closed Marianna, Florida Arthur G Dozier School for Boys. I grew up 90 miles away from that school in Tallahassee.
Obviously, I was aware of the school. I drove past it multiple times. Classmates at my high school always speculated about the people who ended up there. But abuses, that was all new to me until this year. I mentioned this school indirectly in “Cora’s Crossing,” my Kindle short story about the nearby (and purportedly haunted) Bellamy Bridge.
A lot of you have stopped by to read the book reviews both here and on Literary Aficionado. I saw in GalleyCat this morning that GoodReads users published 20,000,000 reviews on that site this past year. I can’t compete with that even though some of those reviews are mine! In 2012, I liked The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling, In Sunlight and In Shadow by Mark Helprin, Goatsong by Patricia Damery and The Storyteller’s Bracelet by Smoky Zeidel.
Many of you stopped by while searching for information about the hero’s journey. Since my reading and writing have been influenced by Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces, I write about the steps on the heropath frequently.
Coming in 2013
You’ll see more about the hero’s journey on this blog in 2013 as my publisher releases my series of novels called The Garden of Heaven Trilogy. Two of my 2012 short stories (“Moonlight and Ghosts” and “Cora’s Crossing”) are now available on Kindle, but there are more on the way. That means, you’ll also be seeing more posts about ghosts, swampy Florida settings, and stuff that happens on dark and stormy nights.
There will be more reviews, too, beginning in January with Paul Blaney’s Handover which is set in Hong Kong during the country’s transfer of power from British to Chinese rule. I had a chance to visit Hong Kong in the 1960s, so I was interested in the author’s perspective of the city as it was in 1997.
I’m waiting for the second installment in Maggie Stiefvater’s four-book series The Raven Boys and Diana Gabaldon’s Written in My Own Heart’s Blood (coming in the fall of 2013). Yes, we’ve had to wait a while for the eighth book in her Outlander series.
As a writer, I don’t like being rushed. As a reader, I’m always in a hurry for the next best thing. With a bit of luck, 2013 will be another great year for both reading and writing, and for sharing thoughts about our favorite books with each other.
Announcing: New Paranormal Short Story ‘Cora’s Crossing’
I’m happy to announce the publication of my e-book short story “Cora’s Crossing” released this week by Vanilla Heart Publishing. Priced at only 99 cents, this Florida Panhandle ghost story is already available on Kindle, PDF on OmniLit, and in multiple formats at Smashwords. The Nook version will be available soon.
Ghost Stories as “Local Color”
If you do a Google search like “Florida Ghost Stories” or “Swamp Ghosts” or “Southern Ghosts,” you’ll get hundreds of hits for spooky stories, haunted cemeteries and houses, and ghost hunter expeditions. Stories and legends are, as authors and journalists often say, part of the “local color”—the yarns, history and experiences that make places unique.
Local color in Marianna, Florida, the panhandle town most tourists know as the home of Florida Caverns State Park, includes a local legend about the haunted Bellamy Bridge across the Chipola River a few miles north of the caves. The story has been around for over 150 years and focuses on a young bride who died when her wedding dress caught fire. Since then, she has—some say—taken up residence at the old bridge, and possibly at the wood bridges that crossed the river before that. Local historian Dale Cox writes about the differences between the legend and the real-life Elizabeth Jane Bellamy in his new book The Ghost of Bellamy Bridge.
“Cora’s Crossing” is Pure Fiction
I’ve always enjoyed reading stories in which everyday people suddenly run afoul of ghosts (and other creatures) out of local legends. Truth be old, when I last drove over Bellamy Bridge, I didn’t see a ghost. However (and this is important), I knew better than to drive over it at night. In “Cora’s Crossing,” two young men do drive over it at night and find more than they bargained for when they discover an injured young woman on the shoulder of the road and learn that the people who put her there are coming back.
The Florida Panhandle is filled with remote coastal areas, swamps, blackwater rivers, and other locations that are perfect for ghosts. Growing up there, I heard hundreds of ghost stories, usually at night when we were on Scout camping trips. Most of them began with, “On a dark and stormy night not far from our camp site. . .” Nothing like falling asleep with a ghost story on your mind. My Boy Scout troop never met up with any of the ghosts in those stories.
But what if we had? Worse yet, what if I had driven my ancient Chevy over Bellamy Bridge on a rainy night? I promise you, I didn’t. This story never really happened. Feel free to go visit the bridge during a thunder storm. Everything will be fine.
If you’re a fan of ghost stories, you may also like “Moonlight and Ghosts,” a story about the ghosts in an abandoned psychiatric hospital.
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