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***Midway is a tie-in novella that compliments The Harvesting, Book I in The Harvesting Series.***  Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, for the beginning of the end.  Carnie. Ride jockey. Roustabout. White trash. Tilt girl. Gypsy. Cricket has been called a lot of things, but she never thought survivor of the zombie apocalypse would be one of them. One day she’s barking on the midway, and the next day, the world is eating itself alive.  Cricket, along with Vella, a tarot reader, and Puck, Cricket’s mangy mutt, find themselves running for their lives, but where can you hide when mankind has fallen? Cricket will need help if she hopes to survive.  Luckily for her, we were never really alone, and apparently, magical forces want to keep this tilt girl alive.  Join Cricket in this unique zombie apocalypse series. It's all fun and games until someone ends up undead!

Midway Excerpt

“Tilt-a-whirl, tilt-a-whirl, tilt-a-whirl! Come on ride my tilt-a-whirl! I’ll whirl you round the world,” I barked to the mostly empty aisles at the Allegheny Fairgrounds.

I looked up and down the aisles. The place was like a ghost town. While bags of pink and blue cotton candy hung in the food joints, cherry red candy apples glistened in the sunlight, and over-grown stuffed purple monkeys hung at the game booths, ripe for winning, no one was around to stuff themselves with carnie delights. The smell of kettle corn still perfumed the air, but for a carnival that was usually packed with excited townies, I swore I wouldn’t be surprised if a tumbleweed blew down the row.

After a bit, two young boys came up to my line. They were the only kids around. The older looked to be about twelve. The younger, a good two inches under my height bar, had pulled himself up to full height and tried not to meet my eyes.

“Tickets,” I said to them.

Confidently, the older boy handed me his ticket and passed through. The younger boy hesitated. Guessing he’d be all right, I let him through. The older boy slapped him a high five when they thought they were out of earshot.

I turned the key and started the ride. The boys smiled at me. I waved to them.

“Hey Cricket,” Harv, the balloon-pop agent across the aisle, called to me. “Where is everyone? Allegheny Fairgrounds is usually packed. I’m gonna go hungry.”

I leaned over the gate and twirled my blonde braid, checking out the split ends. “I heard someone say it’s the flu keepin’ people home. You know they closed LAX? I hear it’s gettin’ real serious. You get a flu shot?”

“Naa. Damned thing always gives me the flu. You know, Bud’s got it. He’s been laid up in his RV all day.”

“Anyone been by to see him?”

Harv shrugged. “He’s grouchy when he feels good. I don’t imagine he’d be a barrel of laughs when he’s sick.”

“No man is. Even the common cold has you all actin’ like a bunch of babies.”

“This coming from a blonde,” Harv replied with a laugh.

“You better watch yourself. I’ll come pop your balloons.”

“Baby, a grenade couldn’t pop those balloons,” he said with a laugh.

I turned back to the boys. They were all smiles; round and round they spun. Since no one else was around, I let it run until they signaled they’d had enough.

Around nine o’clock that night, the owner, Mr. Marx, came by. I had not seen a soul on the fairway since the boys left. “Sorry, Cricket. We’re going to teardown to get ready for the jump to Cincinnati. We’re just burning juice and not making a dime. This place is dead; not a soul here.”

“All right then,” I replied, and Mr. Marx wandered off. I realized he hadn’t said a word about when he would pay us for Allegheny Fairgrounds, dead or not.

Moments after he left, the first of the evening fireworks shot across the sky. The dark sky was illuminated with gold and pink. I waited for a moment, expecting to hear the excited oohs and ahhs that usually followed what was a pretty measly fireworks display, but there was nothing, just the pop and crackle of the fireworks, followed by silence. Eerie.

I whistled for Puck, my mangy mixed breed and the only male I swore I would ever truly love. After a few minutes, the hound-shepherd mix with honey-colored eyes appeared looking dirty and happy. I found him about a year ago. Well, actually, he’d found me. We were getting ready to leave Crawford County Fairgrounds when he showed up at the tilt begging for scraps. I made the mistake of feeding him a leftover funnel cake, and after that, I couldn’t shake him. He was a mischievous little devil, and Vella, the tarot reader, gave me the idea for his name: Puck. She said it was the name of a rascally faerie creature. It fit him. From that moment on, Puck and I were always together. More than once, a growl and flash of teeth from Puck had gotten me out of a jam. I loved that mangy mutt.

“Up to no good, were ya?” I asked, scratching him on the head. He licked my hand and wagged his tail. I closed up my till and headed to the bunk house to look for some extra muscle to help with the teardown. As I passed through the midway I saw most of the other joints and booths were already closed. Mama Rosie was just closing up the snake show when I came by.

“Marx closed down everyone up here already?” I asked her.

“They’re all sick, Sug,” she replied as she dropped one of her small snakes into her bra. I shivered. Everyone loved Mama Rosie, but no one understood her relationship with her babies. She always had one hanging out of her bra, hanging around her neck, or stuffed in her clothes. Mama was a big woman who liked to wear baggy, loud-colored gowns. I hated sitting next to her at dinner. You never knew when one of the babies might suddenly slither out of her hibiscus-print dress.

I set my box down and helped her push the trailer door closed. “How about you, Mama? You feelin’ all right?”

“I think I ate something bad at lunch, but I’ll be fine. You headed back to the bunks?”

“I guess. I was hopin’ Beau and the boys would come give me a hand.”

“Sug, Beau would give you a hand, arm, leg, or toe if you asked. Why don’t you give that boy a chance?”

“Oh, Mama Rosie, I don’t feel nothin’ like that for him.”

“But you run off with townies often enough.”

“Well, we all have needs.”

Mama Rosie laughed loud. “You got that right. I thought maybe you were hoping someone would marry you out of the life.”

“And give up all this?”

Mama Rosie hooted again, her boisterous laughter filling the empty aisles.

While the smell of Chinese food, funnel cakes, and fried sausage still filled the air, there was no one around. Power was still on, so the midway sparkled in a rainbow of light, but the place was like a ghost town. I had never seen it like that, and since I’d practically grown up in the carnival, that was saying something. Several game booth agents had even left their plush hanging—now that was odd.

As Mama and I passed by Iago’s Traveling Torture show, Mr. Iago came out. I winced. After three years of traveling with Great Explorations carnival, I had yet to warm up to Mr. Iago. His show was creepy. I’d once had a look inside. The place was hung with all kinds of pictures of people being tortured, and he had old torture devices like the rack, an iron maiden, a wheel of fortune, and other small harmful contraptions. Mr. Iago was as creepy as his show. On the outside he looked normal enough, just a funny-looking little bald man with too-big-ears and a pointed nose, but it was what I felt coming from inside him that set me on edge. I never looked him in the eye.

“Mama Rosie, Cricket,” he called politely.

“You headed back too, Mr. Iago?” Mama called cheerfully.

“Yes, ma’am, I am,” he replied softly.

“You make any scratch today?” Mama asked him.

“Well, I don’t like to discuss finances,” he told her in his quiet manner.

“He don’t like to discuss finances,” Mama said mockingly to me. “All right, Mr. Iago. You just go on with yourself then.”

“No offense, Mama Rosie,” he replied quietly.

“Of course not,” she said and rolled her eyes at me.

When we got back to the bunk houses there were half a dozen people sitting outside at a picnic table listening to the radio. I spotted Mr. and Mrs. Chapman. They owned three of the grab joints; Mrs. Chapman waved to us. She was a biblical woman whose savory corndog breading had won top prize at a competition last year. If you didn’t mind hearing her recite verse all day, she was fine to be around. Red and Neil, two ride jockeys, were there as well. Red ran Big Eli; Neil ran the swings. The resident lot lizard, Cici, was snuggled up to Red. I was surprised to see Vella there as well. Vella, the tarot reader, was a Romanian immigrant who called herself the only authentic Roma, which she said meant gypsy, in America. Even though she was just a little older than me, Vella scared me. She’d never done anything to me and was really nice, but she scared me all the same. The others said she was dead-on accurate with her readings and often had bad news to give. I didn’t want to be around anything like that.

“What’s the news?” Mama Rosie asked.

“Lord, help us! This flu is something else. They have quarantined almost every city on the west coast: LA, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco. . .you name it. They got the national guard on the highways keeping people out,” Mrs. Chapman said.

She was quiet then. We listened: “And inside Portland Central Hospital, military personnel have opened fire on seemingly-rabid patients,” a female reporter was saying. “Reports from the scene indicate that a riot broke out at the hospital when patients, suffering from side-effects of what now seems to be a pandemic flu, began attacking other hospital patients and employees. CDC officials have confirmed that increased violence appears to be associated with the afflicted and continue to advise everyone to avoid direct physical contact with those with the illness. Martial law has been instituted in all major west coast cities and cities across the south. Cities across the northeast and central US have issued a curfew. There have been reports of runs on banks, grocery stores, and fueling stations.”

“What are they sayin’ on TV?” I asked.

Red shook his head. “We can’t get a signal in. No one’s dishes are working.”

“President was on the radio. Told everyone to be calm,” Cici said.

“Easy for him to say. They probably got him stashed in a bunker somewhere,” Mr. Chapman replied.

“Highways are gonna be backed up. And nobody’s gonna be interested in a fair, not at Allegheny and not in Cincinnati. But I bet if we don’t jump, Marx is gonna stiff us,” I told the others.

They nodded.

“Well, if y’all will give me a hand, I’ll pay back the favor,” I told Red and Neil.

“No problem, Cricket. You see Beau around?”

I shook my head. “I just came lookin’ for him.”

“He’s sick,” Vella said. She rarely spoke, so when she did, we all turned to her. “Leave him be,” she added, her voice still thick with her Romanian accent.

Vella had been shuffling her cards the whole time we’d been listening to the radio. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who noticed.

“What do the cards say about this flu, Vella? Should we hit the road? Stay put?” Mama Rosie asked.

“Devil’s work,” Mrs. Chapman whispered under her breath.

“They say the same thing over and over again: the Tower.” She laid out a card for us to see.

When Mr. Iago leaned in to look, I moved away. My skin crawled having him so close. I took a step toward the other end of the table and put my hand on Mrs. Chapman’s shoulder. She patted my fingers. On the card Vella had laid out was the image of a tower on fire, two naked people falling from it to the ground.

“What does it mean?” Mama Rosie asked.

“The end of a way of life. Chaos will pave the way in a new world for those who can survive the destruction.”

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Julianne Snow Interview

From the mind of Julianne Snow comes an undead collection of stories that feature the gamut of emotions and situations. Presented in flash fiction and short stories, the tales are sure to leave you wanting more and checking over your shoulder. How would a group of children handle an uprising of the undead? What would you do to save a loved one only to find out that you’re facing a different threat altogether? How would a country react to a timely warning at the end of a war? What happens when a vampiric Romeo hits on an unsuspecting human? In a world where the undead are common place and protected, what happens when speed dating produces a love match? Purchase Links Amazon USA Amazon UK

Excerpt From Glimpses Of The Undead
HORSE

It neighed softly, fear flickering in its eyes. The poor animal was scared and with just cause.

A horde ringed its paddock, each of them straining against the wire fence, trying to get in.

It circled the inner sanctum, nervous energy twitching its muscles as it pranced. The undead surrounding it keened desperately for the meal only a few feet away.

The fence bowed slightly before snapping back, propelling part of the gathered group backward. With the wall of bodies behind them, they snapped forward again, the tension on the fence finally causing it to buckle inward. Like molasses, they flooded into the pasture, each of them slowed by the sheer number clamouring to get in.

As the undead sought out the entrance to their prey, the animal saw its chance.

With hands scrabbling to catch hold, it bolted in the opposite direction, barely clearing the fence as it jumped. Hands continued to grab at the fuzz-covered muscle as it mowed down any who stood in its way.

Clearing a copse of trees, it was brought up short. The numbers in front greatly outweighed those behind. Flight took over again and it bolted through the middle, only to be stopped by the sheer number of bodies packed tightly together.

Within moments it fell, its attempt at escape over.

 

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Erin Hayes Interview

Blinded by a mysterious seizure when she was three years old, Bash Martin has managed to carve out a normal life for herself as an adult. Yet she still yearns for a deeper connection with her twin sister Lily, who has always been jealous of the attention their parents bestowed upon Bash due to her disability. A dream vacation seems like the perfect chance to heal their relationship, but Bash soon realizes there is something terribly wrong with Lily and that her sister is hiding a dark secret. And when a supernatural fire engulfs their hotel and corpses come back to life, the sisters are plunged into a nightmarish world that threatens not only their lives, but their very souls.

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Rhonda Hopkins Interview

When Sarah escapes from her brutal abductors, she promises to return to rescue her twin sister, but with the walking dead invading Fort Worth, TX, she is forced to rely on a competitive coworker who made her work life hell for years. With her coworker weakened by cancer treatments, her sister still imprisoned, and zombies looking for an easy meal, Sarah’s only plan, if she can pull it off, is Survival. Purchase Link Amazon USA Amazon Uk

Survival Excerpt

 
Sarah Jamison's gaze met her twin's fear-filled blue eyes. "I—"

"It's no use. The cuff is too tight. You're going to have to leave me." Dana put her free hand on Sarah's, stilling their frantic motions.
   
"No. I won't leave you. Maybe I can . . ." She turned, taking in the empty basement—the cement walls, exposed pipes, and her sister handcuffed to one of the metal cylinders. A small amount of light trickled in through the one lone window, but there was nothing she could use as a weapon. Unless . . . .
   
She strode over to the dangling pipe from which she had managed to extricate herself earlier. Grabbing the unattached end, she tried wresting it clear of its fittings, her own wrist dangling handcuffs which clinked against the metal with each pull. Rust and time made it impossible to remove.
   
"Sarah—"
   
"No." Tears ran down her face. "I can't leave you, Dana."
   
"You have to. It's the only way we're both getting out of here. You have to go for help."  
   
Sarah knelt beside her sister who reached out and wiped her thumb across her cheek, brushing the tears aside. 
   
"I'll be okay until you get back. I won't give them any excuse to throw me out to those . . . ." Dana choked back the word they had both been avoiding, choosing another instead. "Creatures."

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Emily Goodwin Interview

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Ellie Morgan has played the role of the good girl her entire life. She follows the rules, works hard, does what she's supposed to do, and rarely takes an unnecessary risk. But when she's turned down again and again for a promotion at work, Ellie decides she must do something drastic to prove her skills as a police officer to everyone at work...and to herself.  But the small drug deal she tries to bust turns out to be bigger and more dangerous than she ever imagined, and she finds herself kidnapped and smuggled across the border to Mexico. Her life is now in the hands of Alejandro Calaveras, a handsome and powerful cartel leader.  Alejandro promises not to kill her...as long as she agrees to obey him. With his dark eyes, tattoos, and devil-may-care attitude, Ellie agrees, knowing that submitting to someone as dangerous and sexy as Alejandro could be her undoing...or her escape.  From the moment he lays eyes on her, Alejandro is drawn to Ellie. As an American police officer, Ellie is the forbidden fruit, the enemy, the one who has the power to destroy him.  After he gets a taste, he wants more. And Alejandro always gets what he wants.  TEASE ME is part one of a three part novella serial. It is approximately 33,000 words long.    Tempt Me, coming 2.17.15  Take Me, coming 3.10.15

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Bound By Blood Cover, Blurb & Excerpt 

Sometimes the monsters in the dark are real... As a child, Lili Banta ignored her grandmother's cryptic warnings to avoid children outside their Filipino community in Houston. When many of those other children fell ill, Lili ignored the whispers in her community that a vampiric aswang walked among them.  Years later, Lili returns to Houston to work for the Quarantine Station of the Center for Disease Control—but she is plagued by dark, bloody dreams that consume her nights and haunt her days. When a strange illness attacks the city's children, Lili is called in to find its source, and maybe even a cure. But in order to save the city, she must first acknowledge the sinister truth: A monster stalks the night—closer than she ever expected....

Bound By Blood Excerpt

Bound by Blood A Night Shift Novella by Margo Bond Collins Urban Fantasy, Horror Release Date: November 10, 2014

Sitting straight up in bed, I gasped and threw myself back against the headboard, the thud dying away along with the remaining shreds of my dream.

But the word still ricocheted through my mind.

Aswang.

Until yesterday, I hadn't thought of the term in years—not since I'd left Houston for med school in Maine, determined to get as far away from home as I could.

But this resurgence of the same, odd illness that had swept my city years before was apparently also dredging up the old stories from deep in my subconscious: the aswang, a vampiric woman who lived a quiet life by day and fed on children in the night, flying back home on bat-wings just before dawn.

My unconscious mind had clearly also expanded on the idea, casting me in the role of aswang and adding schizoid conversations with a chorus of internal voices.

Great. I'm insane in my dreams.

And I'm a monster.

Shuddering, I wiped my hand across my gritty, raw eyelids.

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It's alive! It's ALIVE!!!! At Hell's Gates - Origin of Evil, a charity anthology with ALL funds going directly to the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund a charity which supports veterans suffering from PTSD and TBI is now available to purchase across all platforms. Twenty-three tales of terror to give you nightmares, from some of the greatest names in horror right now, including Mark Tufo, Shana Festa, Ian Mcclellan, Stevie Kopas, S.G.Lee, and many many more. You'll even find a gruesome tale from myself within those creepy pages...

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