Ripper's Ring - Steven R. Southard (Poseidon's Scribe)

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What are Animals up to in Fiction?

Animals don’t read. People do. Why, then, do authors include critters in their fiction? First off, most readers like animals. But what literary purpose do animal serve?

Diogenes from *Ripper’s Ring*, created using perchance.org

I’ve blogged before about the pets owned by authors. But authors write about animals as well, and my topic today is about how animals make stories better.

The Talking Kind

From ancient times to the present, authors have penned tales about talking animals. Though they make endearing characters, I’ll gloss over them in my post today. For the most part, talking animals merely substitute for human characters. Speech serves only to make these animal characters more relatable and places the story in the realm of fantasy.

An author may, however, write about normal, non-magical animals that have been given the power of speech. Science fiction author David Brin exemplified this in his Uplift Universe series, where humans biologically manipulated some Earth animals and designed in the ability to speak.

In any case, according to editor Mary Kole, stories with talking animals aren’t trending. She suggests including a talking animal only if your story won’t work any other way.

Purposes

Why include regular, non-talking animals in fiction? In a valuable post on the subject, editor Moriah Richard listed three reasons: tool, weapon, and companion. Richard noted these purposes overlap and do not constitute all possible uses. I’ll explore the ones Richard listed and add some of my own.

Tool

For any attribute humans possess, (except speech, higher level thought, and manual dexterity), you can name an animal that surpasses us. Access to narrow places, burrowing, seeing, flying, hearing, smelling, speed, strength, and swimming—certain animals have us beat. Often, in stories, we read of a human using a trained animal as some sort of tool. For hearing and smelling, writers often choose dogs. Easy to train and readily available, dogs are also well known to readers, so require little description. For transportation, horses seem ideally suited, though other animals can suffice.

Weapon

I suspect this use occurs less frequently in fiction than the tool use. A weapon is a kind of tool, though, so you can regard this as a subset of the previous use. For attacking other people, dogs again represent a good choice, due to their trainability, their speed, and their teeth.

A writer may use all types of other animals as weapons in a story, including bears, bees, hawks, lions, sharks, and dozens of others. However, these belong in the difficult-to-train category, and might just turn on the person who releases them.

Companion

Perhaps the most often used purpose of animals in fiction, companionship provides the author several opportunities. When a character enjoys a companionable relationship with an animal, it endears the character to the reader. It also portrays, by inference, the kind and caring nature of the character.

Examples include the film Hachi: A Dog’s Tale and the book Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog, by John Grogan. A stranger example might be Life of Pi by Yann Martel, featuring a tiger as companion.

Antagonist

I’ll add this purpose to Moriah Richard’s list, though the traditional role of antagonist doesn’t fit most animals. Animals do not often oppose a human through hatred or malevolence. They act according to their natures, but humans may hate them for that, so it’s more about the human’s feelings than those of the animal. In stories with animal ‘antagonists,’ often the real antagonist is another human or a psychological struggle inside the human protagonist.

Examples include Moby-Dick by Herman Melville and Jaws by Peter Benchley.

Symbol

This blogpost at MasterClass.com explains the use of animals as symbols in literature. As metaphor, the animal represents something else, often some quality of humanity, without stating the comparison in an overt way.

The albatross in the poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Coleridge symbolizes good luck. The bird in the poem “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe symbolizes the persistence of grief. The owl Hedwig in the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling symbolizes Harry’s innocence, which he loses when the owl dies.

Conscience

An animal may also serve as a sort of unwitting conscience for a human character. The character who talks to a pet may arrive at a solution to a problem without any reaction from the pet, and nevertheless credit the animal with providing valuable assistance.

My Own Animal Characters

Mutant from “The Cats of Nerio-3” created using perchance.org

I’ve rarely included normal animals in my stories. Not sure why. Mutated cats serve as ‘antagonists’ in “The Cats of Nerio-3,” a story appearing within In a Cat’s Eye. A basset hound named Diogenes assists a detecting in locating an invisible murderer in Ripper’s Ring. In that story, the dog serves as tool, companion, and conscience.

Whatever you do, don’t write a shaggy dog story—then you’d be barking up the wrong tree. Okay, I guess it’s off to the doghouse for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

September 15, 2024Poseidon's ScribePermalink Leave a comment

Mystery of Jack the Ripper Solved?

According to recent reports, a researcher has uncovered the identity of Jack the Ripper, the famous serial killer of London in 1888. But did she name the right man?

Sarah Bax Horton, a former police volunteer and great-great-granddaughter of one of the original investigators, identifies the killer as Hyam Hyams, an alcoholic and ‘wandering lunatic.’

Hyams already figured on the list of over a hundred possible Ripper suspects. Ms. Bax Horton might be right, but it’s astounding that over 130 years of professional and amateur sleuthing have not resulted in a definitive identification.

Could the Ripper have come across an artifact, a device, that rendered his identification impossible? If so, what was that device and what became of it?

I explored those questions in my ebook Ripper’s Ring. Read it to learn how the serial killer might have remained undetected. Follow the progress of the only Scotland Yard detective who stood a chance of solving the crimes.

Perhaps you’ll conclude that, after thirteen decades, the guy who correctly fingered the guilty perp is—

Poseidon’s Scribe

July 21, 2023Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Creating Troubled Characters

Readers can be drawn to characters with mental troubles. All fictional characters have troubles, of course, since conflict is necessary to good fiction. But today I’m focusing only on characters with mental disorders.

Note: nothing in this post is meant to diminish or glorify the real problem of mental illness. People with such disorders should seek and obtain professional help, and there should be no stigma attached to that.

My purpose is to discuss how an author should portray a fictional character with a mental disorder. Anyone who reads books or watches movies knows that audiences are fascinated by such characters. Troubled characters ratchet up the conflict and drive the plot. They also give readers and viewers a glimpse into the complexities, wonders, and horrors of the human mind.

This week I attended a Zoom lecture by Loriann Oberlin, who writes fiction under the pen-name Lauren Monroe. Unlike me, she is an expert in psychology. Her talk inspired this blogpost, but everything in this post is my interpretation.

In her talk, Ms. Oberlin referenced the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5). This book, published by the American Psychiatric Association, discusses disorders such as neurodevelopmental; schizophrenia spectrum; bipolar; depressive; anxiety; obsessive-compulsive; trauma- and stressor-related; dissociative disorders; somatic symptom; feeding and eating; elimination, sleep–wake; disruptive, impulse-control, and conduct; substance-related and addictive; neurocognitive; personality; and paraphilic; as well as conditions such as sexual dysfunctions and gender dysphoria.

Ms. Oberlin stressed the importance of doing your research so you can depict a particular mental disorder correctly. I’d amend that advice just a bit. It’s easy, when conducting research, to go down rabbit holes and research too much. So, learn when to quit doing research and shift to writing your story. If your character’s behavior and speech don’t exactly match some known disorder, don’t worry about it too much. The APA occasionally comes up with new ones.

Here are my suggestions if you wish to create a troubled character:

You should include a backstory explaining the character’s behavior. You needn’t start the story that way, but perhaps work it in as a flashback. Did the disorder spring from one or more events in the character’s childhood?
You need to reveal the character’s symptoms to the reader early and throughout. Remember to show, don’t tell, these symptoms.
Is the troubled character the protagonist? If so, then some sort of change is required in the story. Perhaps the character takes steps to overcome problems caused by the disorder. Or maybe the disorder brings consequences for which the character must suffer. Perhaps the character struggles with the disorder, then finally comes to terms with it.
If a different character is the protagonist, then the troubled character need not change, but your protagonist must change, perhaps by learning to accommodate the troubled character’s disorder.

Here are examples where I’ve used troubled characters in my fiction:

In “Ripper’s Ring,” Horace Grott is a loser, barely qualified for his job carting bodies to the morgue in London in 1888. He comes upon the legendary Ring of Gyges that enables its wearer to turn invisible. In time, that new-found ability turns Horace into a serial murderer—Jack the Ripper. The story is partly in Horace’s point of view, and partly in that of the detective tracking him down.

In “The Six Hundred Dollar Man,” Sonny Houston is a nice young man with virtually no negative traits, living in the Old West. After being trampled by farm animals, he’s given a steam-powered arm and legs by an inventive doctor. These superhuman abilities change Sonny and he descends into madness. The story is told from the point of view of the doctor, who comes to realize the consequences of his well-meant invention.

In “A Tale More True,” no character has a mental disorder, but I cite the story because Ms. Oberlin mentioned how ‘Munchausen Syndrome’ has been renamed ‘factitious disorder imposed on another.’ The famous fictional character Baron Munchausen, the one with such fanciful lies, appears in my story. The attention given to the baron’s tall tales inspires my protagonist, Count Federmann, to make his own trip to the moon.

Now that you’ve read this post, if you do write a story about a character with a mental illness and that story becomes a bestseller, and you’re invited to make speeches and give interviews, don’t forget to thank—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 20, 2021Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Twistery History

When writing fiction, do you set your tales in historical times? If so, you must resolve the inevitable conflict between The Facts and The Story. In other words, you’ll have to twist some history.

Author Colin Falconer expresses the problem well in a post titled “How to Mix Historical Fact and Fiction.” He says real life is chaotic. It doesn’t obey the rules of fiction. It’s filled with aspects that interfere with a good story.

Here’s a table that contrasts historical fact and historical fiction:

Historical Fact	Historical Fiction
Chaotic, messy	Planned, ordered
Mostly boring	Mostly interesting or exciting
Has real people, with infinite complexities	Has a protagonist, antagonist, and supporting characters
Events occur as they will, often by chance or coincidence	Events occur in a believable order, in a way that supports the plot
How people lived is as interesting to us as what people did	What characters do is more important than details of how they live
Historian’s aim is to get the facts right	Fiction writer’s aim is to entertain and engage the reader

I should also mention an important distinction between historical fiction and alternate history. Colin Falconer writes historical fiction, where he takes a set of historical events and fictionalizes them. I write alternate history, set in another universe whose history matched ours until some Point of Divergence (PoD), after which things proceeded quite differently.

Even in alternate history, though, readers want to know the author took the trouble to study history and get some details right. If the story takes place in the past, readers expect the author to transport them there, and not jar them with anachronisms like the clock striking three in the second act of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. (I know, I know—Shakespeare might well have deliberately used a not-yet-invented clock as a dramatic and metaphorical device.)

Here’s how I twisted history in my most recently published alternate history tales:

In “Ripper’s Ring,” set in 1888, the PoD occurs the moment a troubled mortuary worker comes across the legendary Ring of Gyges, the invisibility ring mentioned by Plato. Other than that, I tried to remain true to the facts about Jack the Ripper. I did invent a fictional Scotland Yard detective, but the rest of history didn’t get much twisting.

Regarding my story, “Ancient Spin, (in the Hides the Dark Tower anthology) I hesitate to categorize it as alternate history, since it’s about the Biblical Tower of Babel. Still, I gave my characters Babylonian names and tried to depict the mood and scene after the collapse of a large ziggurat in that time period.

“After the Martians” takes place during our World War I, but the PoD happened sixteen years earlier, in 1901, when the Martians of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds invaded. Since the combatants in my story use Martian technology, that changes the very nature of the war, so my story doesn’t bear much resemblance to the actual conflict. Even so, my photographer character uses an actual camera from that period, and the old woman treats the soldier’s injuries using techniques of that time.

My story “Instability” (in the Dark Luminous Wings anthology) derives from a legend about a medieval monk in a British monastery around 1000 A.D. I tried hard to get details right about life in a Benedictine monastery including daily schedules and the layout of the abbey. I used one of the actual abbots of Malmesbury Abbey as a character. Aside from the improbable legend itself, I didn’t do much twisting of history in this one.

“The Steam Elephant” (in The Gallery of Curiosities, Issue #3) takes place during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. The PoD is my assumption that the events and characters of Jules Verne’s novel The Steam House were true. Again, I strove to keep details of the Battle of Isandlwana accurate, including the names of British commanders and the Zulu king. However, since my story occurs twenty-two years after the setting of Verne’s novel, I stretched things by assuming his characters remained nearly unchanged despite the passage of years.

As you write your historical fiction, try to strike a good balance between getting facts right and telling an interesting story. If you have to twist some history to do that, well, you’re in good company along with—

Poseidon’s Scribe

April 14, 2019Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Technoethics and the Curious Ape

In the movie Jurassic Park, the character Ian Malcolm says, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” Today, I’m focusing on another technology topic, namely ethics in technology, or Technoethics.

Our species is innately curious and inventive. We possess large brains and opposable thumbs, but lack claws, shells, great speed, camouflaged skin and other attributes employed by animals to attack prey or to avoid becoming prey. These circumstances make us natural toolmakers.

From the beginning, we found we could use our tools for good or evil. The same stick, spear, bow and arrow, or rifle we used to kill a rabbit for dinner could also kill a fellow human. The different outcome is not inherent in the tool, but in the heart of the person employing it.

For each new technology in our history, there was at least one inventor. This person took an idea, created a design, and often used available materials to assemble the new item. Were these inventors responsible for, in Malcolm’s words, stopping to think if they should?

With some technologies, like the plow, the printing press, the light bulb, and the automobile, it’s certain their creators intended only positive, beneficial outcomes. The inventor of the automobile could not have foreseen people using cars as weapons, or that one day there’d be so many cars they’d pollute the atmosphere.

With other technologies such as the spear, the warship, the canon, and the nuclear bomb, the inventor’s intent was to kill other people. Why? The usual rationale is twofold: (1) My side needs this technology so our wartime enemy does not kill us, or (2) If I do not invent this technology first, my enemy will, and will use it against my side. Given such reasoning, an inventor of a weapon can claim it would be immoral not to develop the technology.

I’m sure there are unsung examples of would-be inventors refusing, on ethical grounds, to develop a new technology because they feared the consequences. The only example I can think of, though, is Leonardo da Vinci. Although he had no qualms about designing giant crossbows and battle tanks, he drew the line at submarines. Though at first excited about giving a submarine design to the Venetians for use against the Turks, da Vinci reconsidered and destroyed his own plans, after imagining how horrible war could become.

That example aside, the history of humanity gives me no reason to suspect future inventors will hesitate to develop even the most potent and powerful technologies. It’s our curious ape nature; if we can, we will. Only afterward will we ask if we should have.

As a writer of technological fiction, I’ve explored technoethics in many of my stories:

In “The Sea-Wagon of Yantai,” a Chinese submarine inventor intends his craft as a tool of exploration, but an army officer envisions military uses.

In “The Steam Elephant,” a British inventor sees his creation as a mobile home for safari hunters, but then imagines the British Army employing it on the battlefield. Only the narrator character fears what war will become when both sides have such weapons.

In “Leonardo’s Lion,” da Vinci actually builds his inventions, but hides them away and gives clues to the King of France about where to find them. The King never sees the clues, but decades later a ten-year-old boy does, and must decide whether the world is ready for these amazing devices.

In “The Six Hundred Dollar Man,” a doctor imagines how steam-powered prosthetic limbs would have saved crippled Civil War soldiers, but fails to foresee how super-strength and super-speed could turn a good person bad.

In “Ripper’s Ring,” a troubled Londoner in 1888 comes across the Ring of Gyges that Plato wrote about, an invisibility ring. Possession of that ring changes him into history’s most famous mass murderer.

In “After the Martians,” the survivors of an alien attack in 1901 take the Martian technology (tripods, heat rays, flying machines) and fight World War I.

As we smart apes start playing with bigger and more deadly sticks, maybe one day we will stop and think if we should before we think about whether we can. Hoping that day comes soon, I’m—

Poseidon’s Scribe

March 10, 2019Poseidon's ScribePermalink

What Hath Smashwords Wrought?

Amid all the holiday rush, you meant to buy three of my books as gifts (or for yourself), but somehow forgot. Good news! That same $12 you were going to spend now buys four (4) books, or even more.

Smashwords is holding an End of Year Sale, but they’re letting it run over one day into 2019. All the books in my What Man Hath Wrought series are 25% off.

For $2.99, you can get After the Martians, Ripper’s Ring, Time’s Deformèd Hand, The Cometeers, To Be First/Wheels of Heaven, Rallying Cry/Last Vessel of Atlantis, A Tale More True, Against All Gods, Leonardo’s Lion, or Alexander’s Odyssey.

For just $2.24, you can get The Six Hundred Dollar Man, A Steampunk Carol, Within Victorian Mists, or The Wind-Sphere Ship.

These stories explore the theme of people dealing with new technology, a problem to which we all relate. I put my characters and technologies in historical settings, so these are all alternate history stories or secret histories.

Take advantage of Smashwords’ End of Year Sale, and enjoy some books by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

December 26, 2018Poseidon's ScribePermalink

What the Tech?

Today I’ll introduce a new feature to my blog. I’ll be exploring the way people deal with new technology. It’s a theme in most of my stories, and I’ll be discussing it in some depth in this and future posts. I’ll still offer guidance to beginning fiction writers, but I’ll also pursue this technology topic on occasion.

I’m not concerned so much with any particular technology itself, but rather the relationship between humans and new technology. This relationship can bring about a number of problems, including:

Technical failures during development and testing
Development of a technology without considering its harmful or immoral effects
Unanticipated problems brought about by use of the technology
Lack of acceptance of, or opposition to, the technology by others
The technology’s failure to live up to its hype
The possibility that the technology may change the user in some way
Eventual complacence brought about by success of the technology leading to new failure modes

In many of my stories, I show characters struggling with new technology and encountering several of these problems. Here are some of the most recently published ones.

In “The Unparalleled Attempt to Rescue One Hans Pfaall” in the Quoth the Raven anthology, there are two new technologies. One is the hot air balloon, in which my characters voyage to the Moon in 1835. The other is a mysterious machine they find on the Moon, a device that maintains both the satellite’s atmosphere and the life-link between paired individuals on the Earth and Moon. The balloon causes no problems, but one character’s ignorance and rashness causes disaster when he operates the Moon machine.

In “Target Practice” in the Re-Launch anthology, the technologies are a future underwater prison and one-man submarines. They use the mini-subs in a cruel training exercise that always results in the death of an inmate. The challenge for my protagonist is to exploit weaknesses in the technology and possibly survive the training exercise.

In “The Steam Elephant” in The Gallery of Curiosities, Issue #3, the technology is a mechanical, steam-powered elephant. In 1879, the British owners and occupants of the elephant are confident they will prevail in a war with primitive Zulu ‘savages.’ Perhaps their confidence is misplaced.

In “Instability” in the Dark Luminous Wings anthology, my medieval monk protagonist invents a pair of bat-like wings to achieve human flight. Other monks in the abbey are convinced he’s insane, and his first flight is not problem-free.

In “The Cats of Nerio-3” in the In A Cat’s Eye anthology, I mention several technologies, but the most important is an artificially intelligent computer. The AI believes itself far superior to its human companion, but perhaps it shouldn’t count humans out so soon.

In “After the Martians,” aliens leave their technologies behind after a failed invasion of Earth, and people use them to fight World War I. The Martian tripods and heat rays change the very nature of the war.

In “Ancient Spin” in the Hides the Dark Tower anthology, the technology is a giant stone tower, designed and built in Biblical times. After the tower’s collapse, its inventor considers how to avoid the blame.

In “Ripper’s Ring,” the technology is an ancient ring that can render its wearer invisible. Not only does this change the ring’s finder in negative ways, it complicates the detective’s search for him.

In “A Clouded Affair” in the Avast, Ye Airships! anthology, the two competing technologies are a 19^th Century steam-powered ornithopter and a 20^th Century diesel engine biplane. Which one wins the battle?

You’ll see this topic considered in detail and related to more of my stories in future posts by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

December 23, 2018Poseidon's ScribePermalink

½ Price Sale on Many of My Books!

You’re looking for some great beach reads for your Kindle this summer. You keep hearing about that author—what’s his name?—who everyone is talking about. That’s right, it’s Steven R. Southard, the one who calls himself Poseidon’s Scribe.

You’ve been meaning to read my books, but you keep thinking they’re so darned expensive. Well, you’re in luck. Your wait is over.

For the month of July only, Smashwords is offering many of my books (the ones in the What Man Hath Wrought series) for ½ price! That’s right, get two for the price of one.

Here’s how to take advantage of these great prices. When you click on any book at my Smashwords site, a message will appear telling you to use a specific code at checkout to get the discount.

Here’s the list of stories and their prices during July:

After the Martians
$2.00

Ripper’s Ring
$2.00

TimesDeformedHand3f Time’s Deformèd Hand
$2.00

The Cometeers
$2.00

To Be First and Wheels of Heaven
$2.00

Rallying Cry and Last Vessel of Atlantis
$2.00

A Tale More True
$2.00

The Six Hundred Dollar Man
$1.50

A Steampunk Carol
$1.50

Against All Gods
$2.00

Leonardo’s Lion
$2.00

Alexander’s Odyssey
$2.00

Within Victorian Mists
$1.50

The Wind-Sphere Ship
$1.50

Better take advantage of this limited time offer before Smashwords wakes up and realizes what they’ve done. Heck, you could buy all 14 books for a cool $26. How’s that for value?

Remember, go to Smashwords and grab these deals while they last. Tell ‘em you were sent by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

July 4, 2016Poseidon's ScribePermalink

When Characters Wrest Control

Sometimes, while playing God, writers get surprised. Occasionally, while we’re creating our little worlds and our little people to inhabit them, one of those people doesn’t stay in the intended space.

Wresting Control Today I’ll consider the topic of characters getting too big for their britches, and assuming a bigger (or different) role than the one planned for them. When this happens in your writing, should you take it as a good thing or a bad thing?

This has happened to me a few times. In my story “After the Martians,” the character Frank Robinson is a war photographer. He’s meant to be a secondary character, pursuing a parallel plot line that intersects the protagonist’s life near the end in a meaningful way. However, Frank became a little more compelling than intended and darn near overshadowed the protagonist. I kept most of his exploits in, so the reader cares what happens to him and follows his plot line with interest.

In “Ripper’s Ring,” Diogenes is a Bassett hound owned by a Scotland Yard detective. You know how some movie actors dread performing with animals because the animal might steal the scene? That nearly happened with droopy old Diogenes, whose seeming lack of interest in following a scent made him an endearing comic character in an otherwise dark and philosophical story. I kept him that way.

There’s a French servant named Fidèle in my story “A Tale More True” who almost ended up having a more compelling personality than that of his master, the protagonist. Once again, he was a secondary character meant to provide comic relief and to showcase the protagonist. However, he tended to get the best lines, and to be the one suggesting the right course of action. I kept him as I’d written him, since the story is a voyage of learning and discovery for his master, and Fidèle is a necessary part of that.

Another servant, this time a plump Irish one named Daegan MacSwyny, nearly took over my story “Within Victorian Mists.” I’d meant this secondary character to be funny and unintelligent, but he ended up being secretly wise in almost magical ways. As with Fidèle, he gently prodded his master, the protagonist, toward the right answer at every step, though it’s never clear whether that’s by intention or accident. MacSwyny and all the Victorian Mists characters appeared again in “A Steampunk Carol” but there the servant kept to his secondary status.

In each case, a secondary character threatened to take over the story by force of personality and by being more endearing than the protagonist. That’s just the way my muse rolls.

But not only mine. Other writers have blogged about this phenomenon. Mae Clair lets it happen, for the most part, and later writes separate stories featuring such characters.

Melanie Spiller had written such a good scene about the death of a character whom she hadn’t meant to kill off, that she kept the scene in. She’d once been told a character wresting control of the story is a sign you’ve created a believable character.

When a character takes on a bigger role, you have choices. You can:

Let that character go in this new direction, at least to some extent.
Rewrite the story to keep the character as intended.
Delete the character.

So far, I’ve always chosen option 1. Other writers choose either 1 or 2. It would be gut wrenching to opt for 3, so I suspect that’s rarely done.

When you play God by writing fiction, do you have characters wresting control every now and then? If so, what do you do? Or do you just like that word ‘wrest?’ Rise above your role as a blog post reader, and leave a comment for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 26, 2016Poseidon's ScribePermalink

The Envelope Please…

All the votes are in, and the critters.org site has released the unofficial tally of their 2015 Preditors & Editors Readers Poll. In the Horror Short Story category, Steven R. Southard’s “Ripper’s Ring” came in…

…drum roll, and dramatic pause…

4^th out of 17.

That’s great, and I’d like to thank all the wonderful people who voted for my story. It’s an honor to make the top top10shortstoryh ten (top five, even) of the nominated horror short stories of 2015. I’m proud of “Ripper’s Ring” and gratified that readers think enough of it to send in their votes.

One caveat—apparently the results are unofficial at present. If those standings change, you’ll learn that news right away from—

Poseidon’s Scribe

January 17, 2016Poseidon's ScribePermalink