All Right Everybody, Let's Get Weird!

          I'd like to take a moment to dance in the faces of everyone who's ever said it doesn't pay to be weird, because it just paid-off big time for me. My short story "Unreality" is available NOW, yes, that's right, NOW, as an ebook from Alban Lake Press's Infinite Realms bookstore, and not only is it weird, it takes great pride in it, and I like to think it's a little bit funny, too. 

          "Unreality" tells the tale of a trio I've written about several times but who make their print debut here: John and Becky Renard, a pair of husband-and-wife paranormal investigators, and Jake Faraday, their friend and devoted Sasquatch tracker and researcher. They're heading in Jake's trusty RV to Perry County, Ohio, to investigate a rash of recent Grassman sightings (for those who don't live and breathe cryptids the way I do, that's a local variant of Sasquatch) in hopes of substantiating the sightings and maybe even have one themselves. What they get when they walk across a seemingly-empty field is much more (and far stranger) than that, though, as they cross a boundary into a world that isn't quite our own—or is it? Bouncing bubbles, flowers blaring music, and a chocolate-milk river are just a few of the oddities that await them and you in this adventure, should you choose to take it with them (and I really hope you do). 

           Who or what have the residents of Perry County actually been seeing? Will the Renards and Jake be able to escape this realm of weirdness? Is there anything Jake won't eat? The answers to these questions and many, many more might just be found within the digital pages of this story—no promises, though.

          Feel free to skip this next part and go straight to buying the story if you want, but I'd like to talk for a moment about the trip it took to get here, since I'm the kind of person who likes to share my process from time to time. Overshare, maybe, some would say, but nobody's putting a gun to Some's head and making them read this, are they? Unless they are, in which case I recant the snark and replace it with the fervent hope that Some gets out of it okay.

          Anyway, back in January I sent an email to Abby, who I know is beginning to seem like a recurring character herself on this site but who I assure you is quite real, and somehow still functional after dealing with me for so long. This email came with the banner subject heading "Huh, this could be fun," which doesn't seem like a ringing endorsement, I know, but I don't always have as much emotional energy to spread around as I'd like and so I tend to save it for the content rather than the headline. I'd just discovered that Alban Lake, who are also publishing my short story "Gator Girl" in the upcoming Midnight in the Witch's Kitchen, had put out a new story call for an anthology called Suddenly, Cows! which proclaimed "Things are too serious around here. We have all sorts of absolutely amazing stories of dark terrors, shapeshifting monsters, and epic fantasies. We really need to lighten the mood" and proposed to do this through "silly, lighthearted tales that illustrate no matter how well planned something might be, that tiny bit of chaos that keeps the universe running can enter in and wreck the best laid plans."

          I loved the idea, and the call came at just the right time. I love my blood and guts and emotional horror probably far, far more than the next person, and I love writing it, but I'd been on an unbroken streak of heaviness and darkness for a long, long time, and here was a chance to lighten up a bit and flex the humor muscles that I also like to think I possess. So I set to thinking up ideas, and in further discussions with Abby, who does exist, the Renards were brought up, since it'd been a bit since I'd written anything with them and it would be a chance to show them investigating the weird instead of the horrific for once, as they have in everything else I've written for them so far. She also brought up Jake Faraday, who brings the fun wherever he drives that RV of his, and thus turned my mind to squatching and all the things that could go strange on a weekend spent tracking Bigfoot. I've always been a huge fan of the "someone sets out on a menial task like doing laundry and suddenly finds themselves fighting lizard men in the eighth and a half dimension" kind of stories, and so I set out to write a story that played off that idea, with my own Renardsian twist (look, guys, you have your own descriptor already!). Once I had the characters, the plot, and the feel of it firmly in mind I tossed in an opening quote from Charles Fort, lifelong compiler of the weird and one of my personal heroes, and "Unreality" was born.

          "But Sarah," you may be saying if you stuck around this long, "'Unreality' is up as an ebook, not as part of any anthology."

          You've been paying attention. That warms my heart. And yes, it is, because when the editor, Karen Otto, got back to me about my submission she said it didn't make it into the print book, but she enjoyed it and felt sure others would as well (so if you don't, you're letting her down too, not just me), so she wanted to post it as an individual ebook in the Infinite Realms Bookstore. I did a happy dance, signed a contract, waited, and here we are today, which goes to prove something I've come to believe more and more: If there's a place a story, or poem, or novel belongs, it'll find its way there somehow. It's not always as fun a journey getting there as it is riding giant colored bubbles with your friend and the love of your life, but hey, that's why they're the Renards and we're not.

          So my sweet strange babies are officially part of our world now, and I hope you decide to jump into theirs. Happy travels!

          In case you missed the link the first time, you can find the ebook here.