New Story Published

The latest issue of The Thrilling Detective is out with a story by yours truly. Horns is a Val Lyon short story about rodeos, bulls, cowboys, and barrel clowns. The victim (yes, the victim) is a 1700 pound bag of aggression named Terminator.

This story came about because of a brief article in Sports Illustrated some years ago about rodeo bulls being forgotten champions. Because all of the Val Lyon short stories feature sports, I decided to do one about rodeos. It seemed a natural fit. Rodeos are huge in Hawaii which has a ranching industry and cowboy culture older than Texas. The story kind of languished, however, until Michael Bracken put out a call for submissions to an anthology called Sex, Lies and Private Eyes. That gave me the direction for the story. I finished it, he accepted it, and then it languished again because the publisher, Wildside Press, delayed the project. Finally, in January, Wildside cancelled the project altogether. I immediately sent it to Thrilling Detective. I have thank Gerald So and Kevin Burton Smith at TD for suggestions for improving Horns.

So hop on over to The Thrilling Detective. I hope you enjoy it.