"Family at Dinner" / Shroud Magazine / Issue 6 (Summer 2009)

After spending years, literally, on the maybe list of two major magazines (one ended up folding, I finally pulled it from the other), my surreal story "Family at Dinner" has been accepted for publication in the new horror magazine Shroud (http://www.shroudmagazine.com/). This is a slick horror print magazine which has been gaining quite a reputation. The story is slated to appear in the upcoming issue 6 this Spring. This will be the first issue for Shroud's new major distribution program, so the magazine should be available at most every Barnes & Noble and more!

Check out the line up of this issue, L.L.Soares, Rick Hautala, Bev Vincent, and a ton of other incredible writers. This one's going to be quite cool.

"True Fashion" (flash fiction) / Jack Haringa Must Die! / June 2008

Jack Haringa Must Die!

This short-short, in which I kill fellow scribe Jack Haringa in a men's clothes store, was first debuted in my blog as part of Kill Jack haringa In Your Blog Day (a joke birthday gift orchestrated by fellow writers Nick Kaufmann and Paul Tremblay), has now been collected into an anothology of 22 other entries, all originally published in the author's respective blogs on that fateful day. For fun, but also as a fund-raiser for the new Shirley Jackson Awards. Check it out, it's only ten bucks. Order directly from the publisher and they'll earn more towards the award

"Box" / Coach's Midnight Diner 2 (Spring 2009) & Relief Journal (Summer 2008)

Honorable Mention in Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year, Volume 1!

Fellow writer Michelle Pendergrass, who is co-editing this anthology, a follow-up to the successful Coach's Midnight Diner, invited me to write a story. CMD is an interesting mix of Christian themes with horror, not soft or sanitized, no rules, hard horror but which deals in some way with faith. I did some free writing, word association, came up with the image of someone living in a box, and went from there. Personally, though the subject of the story is rather grim and serious, I have to admit it was one of the most enjoyable writing sessions I had with a piece. Also, all humility aside, I think it's one of my best stories in a long, long time. Special thanks to Holly Wang, who works with my wife Janet, who got hold for me phonetic translations of selected lines of dialogue from English to Mandarin Chinese. This dialogue adds a lot to the story, on many levels.

The stories in this anthology are tremendous! "Box" was also featured in Relief Journal 2.2, as a way of promoting the anthology (it was this appearance that garnered the Honorable Mention above). Relief is a tremendous (and refreshingly-liberal) Christian literary magazine.

"Lavish" (reprint, transated into Hungarian as "Bőség" / Galaktika Science Fiction / January 2008

"Lavish", my short story which inspired the novel Margaret's Ark, is now appearing in the Hungarian science fiction magazine Galaktika (the January 2008 issue). I'm sharing the magazine with the likes of Harlan Ellison, which is very cool indeed. The story title is translated as "Bőség".

"Ray Gun" / Apex Science Fiction & Horror Digest #11/ November 2007

Honorable Mention in the 2008 Year's Best Fantasy and Horror!

Ah.... feels good, getting those sales, don't it? I've been so heads-down with novels for so long, I only recently came up for air and cranked out a few short stories that have been scratching inside my head for too long. "Ray Gun" has been recently published by Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest. It's a good fit, I think, as the story itself is a cross between the two genres. Apex has published the likes of Ben Bova and William F. Nolan in the past, so it's an honor to be considered among their ranks!

Jason Sanford reviewed the issue, and said "Another great story is "Ray Gun" by Daniel G. Keohane, in which an old man with Alzheimer's encounters a hostile alien. As the killing starts, the character tries to understand if this is really happening or simply a disease-related hallucination. While this set-up could have been a disaster in the hands of a bad writer, Keohane's steady prose presents the main character and situation through painfully-understated images and emotions, which gently lead the reader toward a tragic but understandable conclusion."

"I Am The Ocean" / Feral Fiction / September 2005

This story was written by me and Stephen Dorato. I knew this one would find a good home eventually - only its home became a broken home before it finally saw the light. It was bought Feb '05 and appeared in the Feral Fiction website just a month before they decided to close down (at least we got paid, which says something). Steve and I had gone back and forth with this over a period of time. I think I wrote the first part, then Steve went over what I wrote and added his own, then it was my turn again. As with many of my co-writing experiences, we didn't quite know where the story was going at first. That evolved as we wrote. I remember at the time I was also thinking of writing "Marginal Way" (see below) and because of that the setting ended up being the same - Ogunquit Beach, Maine. One cool thing about this story, and I forget now if Steve invented these or me... I think hey were Steve's babies, are the clampires. The "Clampire Story" is our pet name for it, and like Cthulu, we think it'll be a household word someday, at least among Those Without Tans. In fact, I'm considering titling my second story collection, some year in the future, Cannibals and Clampires....

"Marginal Way " / DawnSky.com / March 2005

My take on the old reincarnation theory. Janet & I were spending a weekend in Ogunquitt, Maine, when we learned about the seaside walk called the Marginal Way. It follows the coast, overlooking the rocky coves, etc. Really very beautiful. Anyhow, this story came to me while we were stopped and looking out over one such cove. Note: Dawnsky has pretty much shut down these days. I'll probably post the story here or in a new collection someday....

"Leopards in Winter" / Small Bites anthology / Sept 2004

I was asked to write a short-short, 500 word, story, with a beginning, middle and ending, dealing with an "animals attack" theme. I did a Google search on said quote, and found an article on how leopard seals attack penguins in Antarctica. A lot of research and very few words later, here it is. SMALL BITES is a charity anthology to raise money for author Charlie Grant for his uninsured medical expenses. Other authors in this collection include Rick Hautala, Ed Lee, Matt Costello, F. Paul Wilson, Christopher Golden, and literally dozens more. For a full list of contributors and stories, click here. Best place to order it is Shocklines.com (they now have free shipping), or from Amazon you can get either the electronic or paper version.

"Selection" / Cemetery Dance Magazine #48 / April 2004

"Selection", originally written for the anthology "of Flesh and Hunger" (see below), was later bought by Bob Morrish for publication in Cemetery Dance. It came out in April 2004, a couple of issues after "Mermaids" appeared (see below). The story was very well received, at least until folks found out it was a reprint (only technically, though, come on, no one read the other antho), at which point I began to get he cold shoulder again. . I won't get into the story here, since I do so below in the Flesh and Hunger entry. But the second acceptance in a place like Cemetery Dance is a major thing, and for a while it kind of felt like I'd been discovered. :-)

"Mermaids" / Cemetery Dance Magazine #46/ Oct 2003

This is another co-written story, with L.L. Soares. We're both thrilled that the story has found a home in CD, one of the largest and most prestigious horror magazines, well, anywhere. Like how Paul & I worked on "Shattered", Lauran started the piece, I continued it, back and forth. It went pretty quickly from there, though there were quite a few twists and turns in the plot along the way, something that happens a lot, especially with shared-writing stories (see "Shattered" below for a good example). It appeared in issue # 46. Side note: Christmas Trees and Monkeys also received a pretty good review in issue #45 (Sept/Oct 2003).

"Selection" / of Flesh and Hunger e-anthology / February 2003

So, I was invited to write for a cannibalism anthology, and I'd just completed a zombie story. How could I face Eaters of Meat so soon? Make it a science fiction story. Yep. Took the leap. I'd recently been invited to submit a sci-fi story to a magazine I'd once been published in, but I was fine tuning the novel and in the middle of two other stories, so my brain decided it didn't want to write anything sci-fi-ish.... at least not then. As time when on I kept thinking about a sci-fi-ish plot that had been rolling around in my head, so I decided to try applying it to the cannibalism theme of the upcoming anthology. What I ended up with was a hybrid story, part horror, part science fiction. It came out pretty good, all modesty aside. The editor had a time finding a publisher, but finally made a deal with Double Dragon, e-books. Yea, an ebook not print, and you would think Double Dragon, having done hundreds of e-books (almost exclusively), would know how to out one together, but the anthology is pretty bare bones feature-wise. You basically have to scroll to get to reach story, and the table of contents doesn't tell you what page the stories are on. So it could have been put together a lot better, for sure. Still, it's inexpensive, just a few bucks, and John Lawson has gathered some cool authors, including Paul Tremblay, Jeffrey Thomas, Scott Thomas (yep, brothers), Kurt Newton and a lot of other great writers. "Selection" was later sold to Cemetery Dance Magazine (see above).

Christmas Trees and Monkeys, Collected Horror Stories Volume 1/ Self-Published / November 2002

Preliminary Ballot nominee for the 2002 Bram Stoker Award

Finally, decided I wanted some of the stories listed below together in one place. At the time, there were NO small pres publishers even open to look at a collection, and the big houses won't until you're a best selling author with a few novels, so... after some more stalling, i decided to publish this myself - I chose to give all proceeds to the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation as an incentive to get going on it. The collection eventually garnered a ton of great reviews and even made it to the preliminary ballot of the stokers! Not bad.... All of the info (including reviews) you'll need can be found here.

"White Wave of Mercy" / Extremes 4: Darkest Africa anthology / February 2002

Preliminary Ballot nominee for the 2002 Bram Stoker Award

I'm pretty proud of this one. I've been wanting to write something for one of Extremes anthologies published by the now-defunct Lone Wolf Publications for a long time, but was always too intimidated. You see, the stories must take place outside of the US, and be well researched. Editor Brian A. Hopkins (also known as "BAH" for his initials) is a research junkie. That, plus the man's one of the best writers out in the market today. All that makes for a daunting task. I did a whole lot 'o learning for this one, even went so far as to buy (and read) a book on the Mbuti Pygmies. The theme of "White Wave..." is one I've been thinking a lot about lately. One day I asked the old "what would happen if..." question, and came up with one possible answer. My brain finally said "Hey! There's an African Extremes antho coming up you dolt! Now's your chance! Write it." So, taking the only scene I had in my head, of a boy on a remote tropical island seeing the spectre of a white person hovering before him, transplanting him into the Congo, and asking my question, "How far would an agency like the United Nations go if the AIDS epidemic in Africa, currently infecting MORE than a quarter of the entire sub-saharan population, continues on its present course to a level where 75% have/had the disease?" I hope I've, at least subtly, answered the question - at least from on man's perspective... This story was selected for preliminary ballot of the 2002 Bram Stoker award, which is always a nice thing.