A big post this time with three pieces of publication news!

First, my flash fiction piece “The Book Traveler” is now available in the Summer 2024 issue (Vol. 18 / Issue 67) of NewMyths. You can read my story and click over to the contributors page to read my answers to a few questions (including when I started writing and why I write).

Here’s a sneak peek of the story:

The Book Traveler

by Karl El-Koura

He didn’t realize his son had come into the room until he heard him cough. Sam Carding’s vision had dimmed so much that he could only see a few feet in front of him now, even with the light cast by the ceiling fixture and both bedside table lamps.  As if the world itself were closing in on him, disappearing; or as if Death with his black cape were approaching, concealing everything behind him.

“Come closer, Ty,” Sam said to his nine-year-old son. His voice was almost unrecognizable in his own ears. Despite the total degradation of his body—so much so that it had been a struggle to make the short journey home from the hospital, where the solemn-faced doctor had whispered to Cassy that her husband had “lit up like a Christmas tree” and there was no more they could do for him. Despite his fading vision . . . the heavy, lead-blanket weight of constant tiredness, the pain everywhere . . . still it was hard to accept that he’d soon be gone, extinguished from this world. But the most devastating part of all was the thought that he could’ve died without the chance to pass on the book to his son. And even now, he’d delayed as long as possible, afraid that his son wouldn’t see anything special about the book, and its magic would die with him.

With hesitant steps, Ty approached. He looked through his eyebrows at his father, stretched out on what was once the bed they used to wrestle in when Ty woke them up too early on Saturday mornings, but now would be Sam’s deathbed. No nine-year old should watch his dad die. It hadn’t been part of Sam’s plan, not at forty-six. Who expects to die at forty-six?

Read “The Book Traveler” at NewMyths.

Second, my short story “A Rehanging at Nine” is available in the Murderous Ink Press Crimeucopia anthology Through The Past Darkly.

Here’s a sneak peek:

A Rehanging at Nine

by Karl El-Koura

Sheriff Jeremy Martins didn’t get home until well after ten o’clock that night. He’d stayed late talking with the Governor, both of them sitting on the scaffold, their feet dangling below like Ernie Johnson’s feet should’ve dangled, the Sheriff explaining, or trying to explain, what had happened with the execution, and negotiating (or trying to negotiate) to not have to rehang Ernie at nine the next morning.

As he pulled into the long unpaved driveway of their newly built farm house on two acres of land about thirty miles outside the town of Elam, one more time Sheriff Martins played out the scenario in his mind of how he was going to explain everything to his very pregnant wife. He’d promised her a trip into town the next morning, which he now had to cancel unless her ideal outing involved getting up early to execute a twenty-three-year-old rapist and murderer and then bury his sad, lanky body in the prison cemetery.

Keep reading by buying your copy of Through The Past Darkly.

Third, Stupefying Stories #25, which was published last summer and includes my story “The Wawa Stick,” is now available for free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers.

Here’s the sneak peak:

The Wawa Stick

by Karl El-Koura

“If you’re attacked by a yancee, set your wawa stick to its highest setting and fire, fire, fire! Attacked by a yancee and don’t have a wawa stick? Enjoy being yancee-food. That’s what you get for ignoring or failing to remember the first rule of exploring Banou—always carry a fully-charged wawa stick.”

—from
A Guide to the Safe Exploration of the Planet Banou
by E.L. Mysher

Jan didn’t have a wawa stick. When her husband’s goon dumped her on this miserable planet, he didn’t bother providing one.

“Enjoy being yancee-food,” he said as he pushed her out the back of the hover-truck. “Enjoy being yancee-food, you stupid” and then some choice words.

Jan was smart enough not to wait on the ground, at least. Despite Ms. Mysher’s pessimism, Jan was certain she could avoid the yancees by climbing one of the very tall trees in the small forest nearby.

Jan was wrong; halfway up she saw a yancee waiting for her on one of the thick branches extending from the top of the tree. She broke off a branch the size of her arm and approached. The yancee stared at her.

“A branch?” he said. At ten feet, the yancee stood twice her height; nevertheless, that was short for a yancee. Jan realized that this was probably a child. “You’re going to attack me with a branch?”

“This isn’t a branch,” Jan said; it was the first time since university that she’d spoken Yantook, but she managed to get the words out. “It’s a wawa stick.”

The yancee made a low-pitched rumbling sound, his species’ equivalent to a laugh. “I just saw you break it off the tree!”

“This? I’ve been carrying this with me all along.”

“It doesn’t even look like a wawa stick.” But the yancee wasn’t moving any closer, and he wasn’t laughing anymore.

“Doesn’t it? Whatever it looks like, I think you’ll find that it feels like a wawa stick.” She pointed the branch at him.

“Don’t!” the yancee screamed, but didn’t bother waiting to see if she’d comply. He dove through the leaves, as if into a swimming pool, and caught hold of a lower branch. Swinging from branch to branch, he made his way to the ground. Without looking back, he fled, arms swaying in panic above his head.

Jan sat on the thick branch at the top of the tree, her feet dangling below her. The large red sun was setting, the small yellow one was rising; she stared at the different colors as they swirled in the sky. She tried to think of how she could get off Banou, back to Earth, back into her husband’s presence, and accomplish then what she should’ve done the last time she saw him: end the miserable bastard’s miserable existence.

But her mind kept wandering, returning to the past, back to the point, almost a year ago now, when things had gone from bad to worse….

Keep reading by buying your copy of Stupefying Stories 25 (free for Kindle Unlimited Subscribers).