Need You Like I've Never Done Before

For those of you quick on your lyrical feet, you might recognize the title of this post from the Beatles song - Help!

This past weekend, a charity anthology that is carrying one of my reprint stories (Distractions) was released. Help - an anthology of horror, fantasy and SF benefiting Preditors and Editors is available in hardcover, ($35.95) paperback ($28.94) and ebook ($6.25) versions from Lulu.com.

I donated Distractions to the anthology, which is attempting to help raise funds to support Preditors and Editors (a fantastic website designed as an information spot for writers that evolved into an authoritative warning spot for writers, helping them avoid pitfalls and publishers/editors that have been known to take advantage of writers).

I thought that Distractions would be a fitting story for the anthology because it's about a writer struggling to produce a sequel to a blockbuster fantasy novel he penned a decade earlier. Frustrated with all the normal life distractions that have gotten in the way of him getting the sequel written, Maxwell Bronte embraces a popular self-help book about eliminating distractions and takes its advice to a darkly disturbing extreme. It's a dark humour tale that I originally wrote for the World Fantasy Con 2001 CD-Rom edited by Nancy Kilpatrick and over the years I've gotten a lot of comments and positive feedback from readers about it.

Of course, you can read an early version of Distractions in its entirety online for free (follow the link for Distractions from my One Hand Screaming site -- yes, it was reprinted in my short story collection in 2004) -- and if you enjoy it, I'd ask that you please consider purchasing one of the 3 versions of this book that is available from Lulu.com and enjoying the other stories in this 629 page anthology featuring work by Gary Braunbeck, Garry Charles, Brian Knight, Stephen Mark Rainey, and many more.

[EDITED UPDATE: It appears as if the information at Predators and Editors is no longer working. So, for those interested in being wary of scams who find this article, you might want to check out Reedsy's up to date article about scams for authors to avoid called Authors Beware: Scams and Publishing Companies to Avoid.]