Strangely Different Stories …
What you'll find on the back cover:
The Nettle Tree, edited
by Kenneth Weene and Clayton Bye, is a collection of genre stretching
and busting stories by some of the most talented writers we have. Their
challenge was to write strangely different western stories in a format
of 3,000 words or less and to take you to places traditional westerns
have never taken you. We think they have succeeded admirably. And with
powerhouse writers, some known and others whom readers will find
delightful discoveries, you will not be disappointed. Our thanks to
Chase Enterprises Publishing for making this anthology possible.
The Nettle Tree is the third annual
anthology of strangely different stories released by Chase Enterprises
Publishing. The first book in the series was Writers on the Wrong Side of the
Road, a collection of strangely different general fiction from writers around
the world. Following on the heels of this well received anthology came The
Speed of Dark, a collection of strangely different horror stories. This book
won four awards, with the title story The Speed of Dark winning an honourable
mention in the Writer’s Digest annual fiction contest. The four awards were
This year’s offering, The Nettle Tree, is a collection of strangely different
western stories.
The point of each of these anthologies is
to stretch or break the genre of choice, while still leaving the stories
recognizable as the original genre.
The Authors
Jeremy C. Shipp
Jeremy C.
Shipp is the Bram Stoker Award- nominated author of Cursed, Vacation,
and In The Fishbowl, We Bleed. His shorter tales have appeared in over
60 publications, the likes of Cemetery Dance, ChiZine, Apex Magazine,
Withersin, and Shroud Magazine. His twitter handle is @JeremyCShipp.
Phil Richardson
Phil
Richardson writes speculative fiction, horror, mystery, and literary
fiction often with a humorous bent. He is retired from Ohio University
where he met his wife in a creative writing class. He has published two
collections of short stories: Little Bits of Out There, and Little Bits
of Darkness, and over 80 stories online and in print including 21 in
anthologies. Two of his stories were nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
His website, PhilRichardsonStories.com, has links to many of his stories
and to his website describing his Navy experiences in the Antarctic.
Casey June Wolf
Casey
June Wolf is a writer of occasional poems and speculative fiction
stories that range from moody slipstream to hard science fiction. She is
a fairly incompetent rider but nevertheless loves the view from a
horse’s back, especially when that view is the hinterland of mountainous
British Columbia. “Fog” is dedicated to her mum, Lorraine, who
introduced her to both science fiction and westerns—and everything else
that’s fit to print. Casey lives in East Van, BC. Read her musings and
find links to her work at Another Fine Day in the Scriptorium:
http://finedayscriptorium.blogspot.ca (And check out other anthologies
from Clayton Bye—you may find a story or three of hers in them, too.)
John Rosenman
John
was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and he is a retired English professor from
Norfolk State University in Norfolk, Va. He has published three hundred
stories in The Speed of Dark, Weird Tales, Whitley Strieber's Aliens,
Galaxy, The Age of Wonders, and elsewhere. In addition, he has published
over twenty books, including SF novels such as Speaker of the Shakk and
Beyond Those Distant Stars, winner of AllBooks Review Editor’s Choice
Award (Mundania Press), and Alien Dreams, A Senseless Act of Beauty, and
(YA) The Merry-Go-Round Man (Crossroad Press).
MuseItUp
Publishing has published six SF novels. They are Dark Wizard; Dax Rigby,
War Correspondent, and four in the Inspector of the Cross series:
Inspector of the
Cross, Kingdom of the Jax, Defender of the
Flame, and Conqueror of the Stars. MuseItUp has also published The Blue
of Her Hair, The Gold of Her Eyes (winner of Preditor’s and Editor’s
2011 Annual Readers Poll), More Stately Mansions, and the dark erotic
thrillers Steam Heat and Wet Dreams. Musa Publishing gave his time
travel story “Killers” their 2013 Editor’s Top Pick award. Some of
John’s books are available as audio books from Audible.com.
Two
of John’s major themes are the endless, mind-stretching wonders of the
universe and the limitless possibilities of transformation and
transfiguration—sexual, cosmic, and otherwise. He is the former Chairman
of the Board of the Horror Writers Association and the previous editor
of Horror Magazine. The Turtan Trilogy is available at
http://amzn.to/20DEA9i
Christopher Wolf
I
was born in Long Beach California and grew up in a Military family. I
spent most of my life bouncing between California and Arizona, finally
ending up in Phoenix in my late teens. I had planned from an early age
to join the United States Army and following in my family’s footsteps.
Fate would intervene, however, and in the seventh grade I found myself
in a full leg cast due to an A.T.C. accident. Finding myself unable to
run, my career plans were no longer an option.
At sixteen I
dropped out of high school. I got my G.E.D. at nineteen and with no
direction spent the rest of my life drifting from crappy job to crappy
job. About five years ago I taught myself how to write to combat the
boredom of being a night security guard on fire watch. I’ve
self-published three books on Amazon, and I’m continuing to tap away on
the keyboard in the hope that people find my stories entertaining.
Clayton Clifford Bye
Clayton
Bye is an eclectic writer whose body of work spans a period of more
than 20 years and includes such classics as How To Get What You Want
From Life, The Sorcerer’s Key and The Contrary Canadian. His more recent
work involves too many ghostwrites to count and some great anthologies
from his publishing house Chase Enterprises Publishing. The Speed of
Dark, a strangely different collection of horror short stories, won four
awards and solid 5 star reviews. To check out Clayton’s work, visit
http://shop.claytonbye.com.
Leigh M. Lane
In
addition to writing dark speculative fiction for over twenty-five
years, Leigh M. Lane has dabbled in fine arts, earned a black belt in
karate, and sung lead and backup vocals for bands ranging from classic
rock to the blues. She currently lives in the dusty outskirts of Sin
City with her husband, an editor and educator, and one very spoiled cat.
Her published works include traditional Gothic horror novel
Finding Poe; the World- Mart trilogy; and the dark allegorical tale,
Myths of Gods.
Richard Godwin
Richard
Godwin is the critically acclaimed author of Apostle Rising, Mr.
Glamour, One Lost Summer, Noir City, Meaningful Conversations,
Confessions Of A Hit Man, Paranoia And The Destiny Programme, Wrong
Crowd, Savage Highway, Ersatz World, The Pure And The Hated,
Disembodied, Buffalo And Sour Mash and Locked In Cages. His stories have
been published in numerous paying magazines and over 34 anthologies,
among them an anthology of his stories, Piquant: Tales Of The Mustard
Man, and The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime and The Mammoth Book Of
Best British Mystery, alongside Lee Child.
He was born in London
and lectured in English and American literature at the University of
London. Find out more about him at his website www.richardgodwin.net ,
where you can read a full list of his works, and where you can also read
his Chin Wags At The Slaughterhouse, his highly popular and unusual
interviews with other authors.
Salvatore Buttaci
Salvatore
Buttaci is an obsessive-compulsive writer whose poems, stories,
articles, and letters have appeared widely in publications that include
New York Times, The Writer, Writer’s Digest, Cats Magazine, The National
Enquirer, and Christian Science Monitor. An English instructor at a
local community college and middle-school teacher in New Jersey, he
retired in 2007 to commit himself to full-time writing.
Two of
his flash collections, published by All Things That Matter Press, are
available at Amazon.com. Another of his books, still selling well, is A
Family of Sicilians … http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/B
uttaciPublishing2008
Buttaci resides in West Virginia with his wife Sharon.
Ken Weene
“The
best part of being a writer is the endless opportunity to do life over.
The worst part is knowing that I still won’t get it right.” With that
motto in mind, Kenneth Weene offers an ongoing stream of books, short
stories, poems, and essays. Visit http://www.kennethweene.com to find
more of his work.
Tonya R. Moore
Tonya
R. Moore is a Public Safety professional from Bradenton, Florida with a
penchant for writing speculative fiction. Stories by Tonya R. Moore
have been published in the Writers on the Wrong Side of the Road and The
Speed of Dark anthologies. Her current projects include Flash Fiction
on Patreon, the Spec-Fic Trifecta Podcast, and her space opera novel-
in-progress, The Advent of Hegira.
Tonya grew up reading books by
phenomenal authors such as niverseIsaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Larry
Niven and Anne McCaffrey. Their works portrayed space- faring humans and
unbelievable creatures having fantastic adventures in distant future
and far-flung regions of the
universe. She fell in love with the
remarkable characters and worlds those authors envisioned. Those stories
fueled her desire to write.
Tonya is a fan of anime, manga, and all things spec-fic. She is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Communication.
Website: www.tonyarmoore.com
Kenny Wilson
Kenny
Wilson is a retired attorney who moved to Arizona in 2011. He continues
to write appellate briefs for practicing attorneys which require
adherence to strict formatting and word count requirements. Such writing
compels a tight style that he carries over to write flash fiction and
short stories. Painstaking research is incorporated for historical
accuracy, a necessity for appellate advocacy. Each piece is redrafted at
least twenty times, until it is honed to essentials.
Kenny
enjoys his adopted state by hiking and studying its history. He
describes writing as: “like making moonshine; you distill a potent juice
out of a vat of goo.” He makes every word count.
Jim Secor
Jim Secor
has traveled the world, living, working and studying in Japan, China
and Kansas. He continued his study of language use and origins,
myths/folktales and various forms of
presentation, both
theatrical (where he began) and in print. In this comparative lit
environment, European Medieval lit and Japanese theater have had the
greater influence but through it all is the figure of the trickster, the
trickster hero, a character with a foot in two worlds, often enough
laughing in the face of social and cultural norms. . .and every so often
getting caught in his own net of foolishness.
Jim Secor is, in
this, a profligate trickster of language: the magic and mystery and
open-ended quality of language is his reality. Because, from its
beginnings, language the multifaceted and metaphoric predominated
It is, indeed, a symbol in itself. Ergo, the result must needs be metaphoric.
This
magicalness of language requires a broad and exacting craftsmanship,
which enables him to create scope and depth and a plotting that is not
as prosaic or as straightforward as one might expect. Another important
feature of Jim Secor's writing--one that comes from Japanese Kyōgen--is
the use of verbs to create descriptions instead of the more usual nouns
and adjectives. This emphasis on action as the engine of description
enables him to typify his characters without a lot of dry description.
What people look like is simply not important to his take on
characterization, for he engages the reader's imagination instead of
leaving it fallow passive earth in need of being told what to do with
itself.
A few reviews - and there are many!
Review by David Donaldson, 07/12/2016, 5 Stars
The Nettle Tree
is a fantastic collection of short westerns, with stories ranging from
the standard sheriff and outlaw to the zombie apocalypse to computer
simulation. Every story is its own adventure, and left me wanting more. I
would recommend this collection to anyone, as fans of western, sci-fi,
and fantasy will all find something to enjoy. As a major fan of the
sci-fi genre, the combination of sci-fi settings with old fashioned
western style story telling was a welcome change of pace, one I would
very much like to see more of.
Reviewed By Maria Beltran for Readers’ Favorite
Review Rating: 5 stars!
It is
not very often that one comes across a genuinely unique book, but this
is what editors Kenneth Weene and Clayton Clifford Bye created in The
Nettle Tree. The titles in this anthology take readers through many
different settings, characters, and elements that no one has probably
taken them before, and in thirteen different stories. The major theme is
western, but it comes in different forms and genres like horror,
science fiction, fantasy, science fantasy, magical realism and even
alternative history.
The Nettle Tree, edited by Kenneth
Weene and Clayton Bye, is a compilation of works by thirteen gifted
writers who were each tasked to write 3,000 words, and genre shattering
western stories. The result is a unique anthology of fiction that will
not fail to entertain its readers. From The Carousel to The Nettle Tree
to the Devil Tracker, we are confronted by unlikely characters
navigating through strange circumstances and emotions that stretch the
imagination more than anyone would think possible.
The
Sheriff of Hog Waller is perhaps the easiest to read, but this does not
mean the story is lacking in layers. In State of the Art, reality,
technology and fantasy are deftly blended together that it becomes a
difficult task to identify one from the other. And the caustic humor in A
Hero Comes to Town is indeed a fitting end to a day spent with a book
that you would definitely want to finish in one sitting. Reading this
book is truly a strange and amazing experience!
The
book can be purchased here :
https://www.amazon.com/Nettle-Tree-Kenneth-Weene/dp/1927915104
or here:
http://shop.claytonbye
Book Details:
Title: The Nettle Tree
Publisher: Chase Enterprises Publishing
Editors: Kenneth Weene and Clayton Bye
ISBN (print): 978-1-927915-10-3
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-927915-11-0
Format: Trade Paperback and eBook
Pages:
166
Genre: Speculative western
Price: $17.95 (print) $3.95 (eBook)
