We’re proud as peacocks and pleased as punch to hear the Twilight Tales anthology BOOK OF DEAD THINGS has been nominated for Best Dark Genre Fiction Collection by the Black Quill Awards.
The Black Quill is a readers-choice award given by Dark Scribe magazine.
To cast your vote and check out the other nominees go to Dark Scribe’s website.
Please join Twilight Tales regular Joshua Doetsch as he hosts an evening of readings/booksignings from our Book Of Dead Things anthology, this Sunday evening (November 25th) at Cafe Aeon in McHenry. Cafe Aeon is located at 3918 W. Main Street, and public transportation is available for citydwellers: if Mapquest is to be believed, the cafe is one long block away from the McHenry station of the Chicago-Northwestern Metra line.
Authors that are slated to read include: Tina Jens, Jude Walter Mire, John Weagly, Martel Sardina, Brendan Dedzner, and (of course?) Joshua. The show will start at 7:30p. We hope to see you there!
Do you have plans yet for the Monday after Thanksgiving? Even after all that food, we think you’ll still be hungry…for good fiction! So come down to Twilight Tales at the Mix (2843 N. Halsted) at 7:30p, for a taste of the new anthology published by some friends of Twilight Tales.
Further Persons Imperfect, An Evening of Surreal Stories Read By:
Paul McComas, “The One that Got Away”
Moira Sullivan, “The Pawnbroker’s Deal”
Drew Downing, “The Z Conspiracy”
Elizabeth C. Rossman, “Product Placement”
Brian L. Cox, “November Forgets”
Shirley Bartelt, “Off the Wall”
Jessica Bartlett, “Learning to Walk”Â
Further Persons Imperfect was recently honored at the DIY Book Festival. Copies will be available at the reading, and a portion of all sales of this book will go to Boys Hope / Girls Hope, a not-for-profit network of group homes for high-potential, at-risk youth (info: http://twilighttales.com/www.chicagobhgh.org or http://twilighttales.com/www.boyshopegirlshope.org).
Don’t forget, the MIX offers FREE parking in the adjoining lot!
Twilight Tales will be participating in the Chicago Ghost Conference on Saturday October 27 at the Congress Hotel in downtown Chicago. We will be selling our books and promoting our reading series.
For more information, follow the link to the conference’s website: http://www.chicagohauntings.com/conference.html
John Weagly & Tina Jens will represent Twilight Tales at a book fair
Saturday, Oct. 20th
10:00 am - 4:00 pm
Randolph Cafe @ Chicago Cultural Center
77 East Randolph Street, downtown
(Building occupies the block bordered by Michigan Ave)
John and Tina will join 28 other authors at the fair hosted by the Illinois Woman’s Press Association.
Plenty of Twilight Tales books will be available.
The event is free to the public.
It’s our 14th anniversary in November! And we’re partying a tad early–that is to say, now!
Fourteen years is worthy of a celebration on its own, but at this year’s party we’ll be saying goodbye to two institutions and looking ahead to some exciting changes.
* Our founder and fearless leader, Tina Jens, is retiring.
* As mentioned previously, we’re moving (temporarily) out of the Red Lion Pub as it undergoes a massive rebuilding project.
The party, being held this Monday (October 1st) from 7:30p til midnight upstairs at the Red Lion Pub, will be Tina’s last official day…and our last gathering at the Red Lion (2446 N. Lincoln Ave) until it reopens.
There will be free food, free booze, and great conversation. Oh, and massive book sales! We don’t want to move all those boxes.
Taking over as CEO, while stil retaining his much-loved moderator duties at our regular Monday meetings, will be Eric Cherry. Those of you unable to attend, but who would still like to share personal tributes for Tina, the Red Lion, or congratulations for Eric; can forward them to Mike Martinez at scheduling@twilighttales.com. He will make sure they are presented to the intended recipients on the night of our big party.
Reminder: starting Monday October 8th, Twilight Tales at our temporary home of Mix: The Lakeview Lounge. Located at 2843 N. Halsted, just three buildings north of the Halsted/Diversey intersection. For ‘L’ riders, it’s currently off the Belmont red/brown stop while Diversey Station gets a rehab of it’s own. There’s also free parking, and Monday is dollar beer (Bud/BudLight) night!
The Red Lion is closing this fall for remodeling/renovations. The building will be torn down to the ground and completely rebuilt. They are starting in early October–our planned last Twilight Tales there is on the 1st–and are expected to reopen in early summer 2008.
Twilight Tales will continue throughout the construction project, but not amidst the rubble. Instead, we will be temporarily located at Mix: The Lakeview Lounge at 2843 N. Halsted (one block north of Diversey). Directions can be found here
In the meanwhile, we’ve got an awful lot of *gasp* books! And we’d really rather not lug them all down that flight of stairs if we can help it. So every Monday between now and “Last Call (For Now),” we’re holding a book sale.
Each week, we’ll have a table of books going for $1. We’ll also offer “buy one, get the second half off” on many of our regular titles. And we’ll have other promotional items on a “freebie” table, as we find them.
So please come down in the next few weeks and buy our books so we don’t have to move them!
The Dead have been wandering all across Chicago for events to celebrate the release of Book of Dead Things. Now, in classic zombie fashion, they swarm the upstairs of the wooden building that is home to Twilight Tales.
Monday, July 30th, 7:30pm – 10:00pm
Twilight Tales at the Red Lion Pub (2446 N. Lincoln Ave, Chicago)
Readings and signings by:
C.S. E. (Claire) Cooney
Brendan Detzner
Joshua Alan Doetsch
Tina L. Jens
Chris Kozlowski
Craig D.B. Patton
Mike Penkas
John Weagly
Join us for “Better Dead & Red!” a joint debut event for Book of Dead Things and Tales From the Red Lion.
Thursday, July 26th, 6:30pm – 10:30pm
Kate the Great’s Book Emporium (5550 N. Broadway, Chicago)
There will be readings and signings by:
Richard Chwedyk (RED LION)
Claire Cooney (Dead)
Brendan Detzner (Dead)
Joshua Alan Doetsch (Dead)
Tina L. Jens (RED LION)
Chris Kozlowski (Dead)
Mike Penkas (RED LION)
Larry Santoro (RED LION)
John Weagly (Dead)
We’re happy to present you with the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners in this year’s Flash Fiction Contest held at World Horror.
The rules for the contest are simple - stories must be read in five minutes or less, and they must have a beginning, middle, and end. A panel of celebrity judges choose the winners. Read all three stories in the posts below.
A kid walks. Late afternoon. All alone, he walks along rail lines. He’s walked for miles; for as long as he can remember the day, he’s walked it. Trees push close to the tracks, one side; the other, a graveled drop-off leads to more trees. Pine covers the hillside down to water, maybe a river, a lake, but something watery is off that side of the tracks and down there. He can smell it, the water; mud, fish, mosquito eggs, that kind of smell rises from that side. It’s summer afternoon, late summer, not hot, but warm. Nice. No place to go from here but home. The smells, the feel of the gravel way underfoot, the scent of creosote bubbled from the ties, it smells, yes, like home. Like near-home.
He walks easily, not thinking, not looking, then, a soft click, a sound that would be metallic if it weren’t smothered by leather and the softness of his foot, and he isn’t walking. Now, he looks. The boot, his ankle in it, is caught in a switch. Jesus Christ. Along some track, middle of nowhere, a guy’s walking along, alone, and the thing just closes, thump, like that. It doesn’t hurt, it simply holds him. Fact is, he couldn’t tell if it closed on him, or if he just stepped in it and got wedged there. Doesn’t matter. Point is, he cannot get out.
