Jack of Harts

I just received a notice that the Veiled Guardians has been selected for the gargoyle anthology I wrote it for.

Yes, it features gargoyles. And the Gothic Church on the New Haven Green.

The funny thing is that they asked for no real world religious stuff. I write Captain William Carter as a straight up son of Puritan Connecticut and a paladin of the Almighty God who calls on the archangel Michael for help when he is fighting otherworldly monsters. I was wondering if that would quality as a real world religion or not. It appears it did not. 😉

The really interesting bit to me is that this make three different publishing houses that have agreed to publish my short stories. And each company has taken Wyrd West stories where a Texas Ranger in the 1800s is fighting otherworldly creatures while praying to the Almighty God, and in some of the stories that each house has picked the archangel Michael appears in some way. Sometimes just flashing lights and an encouraging nudge. Sometimes full manifestation of the angel in the world. There is a real market out there for Christian-friendly fantasy and science fiction. Where the hero is a faith-based Christian. And I’m so happy that multiple publishing houses see stories like that and take them and publish them.

Note that I write my Captain William Carter stories as if they take place in the real world, just with monsters and otherworldly creatures that never made it into the history books. Maybe the folk lore, but we all know the folk lore is fiction, right? 😉 All of the stories I’ve written with him so far take place in the past, and I research to try to make everything in the story historically accurate when it comes to the roads or other infrastructure. The weapons common at the time of the story. Vehicles. Telephone technology. The slang that I use. I write my stories for modern people to read, so there is a lot of words used that wouldn’t exist at the time, simply because language drifts, but I usually try to put at least a little bit of easily-understood period slang in my stories. The one that was just selected as a warning in it. “Anyone on the road tonight, they’re not Simon Pure.” It’s an easy bit of period slang, that is easy to understand even from a modern perspective. And I try to make the religion in my stories the same way. As accurate as possible to the period, while also being clear that this is a guy who prays for the blessing of the Almighty God to fight monsters that every credible source in the world says do not exist.

I’m just doing another happy dance over here, as I await the contract for another story of mine to be published. Yes, I know nothing is nailed down until the contract is signed and the story is published and I start getting checks, but just hearing that they liked my story enough to include it is another little occasion where I get to bust out my happy dance.