"Last Halloween" / Shroud Magazine / Fall 2010

Kevin Lucia is guest editor for the upcoming Halloween special issue of Shroud Magazine released on Halloween 2010, and had sent out an open call. You can order this issue here.

After a long dry spell, I finally kicked my writing back into gear and wrote "Last Halloween" for the issue. I used to carry a small notebook with me as story ideas came to me, and more recently a Palm Pilot. I had two ideas jotted down, the first noted a few years back during trick or treating - what if a mother and her kids went trick or treating, but no one else did, for some reason everyone was afraid to go out at night but she insisted on bringing her kids - how would the neighbors deal with the situation, and what, exactly was the situation? Another note I'd taken was the concept of ghosts being drifters, like mist, wandering, wandering. There was more to that idea, but I simply used the drifting ghosts, coupled with the woman taking her kids out on Halloween when she should no longer be doing that, and the result, I hope, is a pretty cool story of loss, yearning and addictions - and withdrawals - people have for one another, and the past.

"Living by the Highway" / Cemetery Dance #60 / June 2009

Moving this from from the original posting from 2007, when the story was sold since the issue has just been released! In 2007, Robert Morrish bought that my third short story for Cemetery Dance Magazine. To say I'm thrilled is, well, true. :-)

I wrote this piece in early '06 actually, during what I'll refer to as my "blue period." I wrote it on and off over the course of a couple of months, late at night. I started with the title. Years and years ago, about nine to be exact, I wrote another story with the same title. It was OK, not great, but I was a newbie writer and earning my chops. After I retired the story and tucked it in mothballs, the title kept itching my brain. I knew one day I'd write a completely new story with this same title. As it is, a few others pop into my head now and then that would go well with it, but this one is what I wrote. Inspired by the homes I see as I roll onto Interstate 290 in my home city, it's a moody piece, and has gone through a few iterations over the last year and a half. It garnered an Honorable Mention in the Chi-zine 2006 short story contest (was not published, however, only the winners got that honor, which in the end worked otu well). I revised it pretty extensively. And, well, the rest is history... at last.

"Deux Poissons pour Nourrir les Foules" (French translation of "Two Fish to Feed the Masses") / Borderline #11 (France) / October 2008

My short story, "Two Fish To Feed The Masses" has been reprinted in the French horror magazine Borderline. The theme of the issue is zombies and this story fit right in. Funny, because the editor, Lionel Bernard, solicited the story from me (which originally appeared as an original piece in my old collection Christmas Trees and Monkeys) over a year and a half ago. Never heard back, so I assumed nothing happened with it. The other day, a slick magazine appeared in my mailbox from France, issue 11, with my story as the headline. Pretty nice! Anyway, if you can read French, check it out.

"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).