It’s hard to believe that 5 months ago I announced that we would be be producing our first print/ebook anthology. It seems so long ago to be such a short period of time, but there it is, only 5 month.
In that time, our quartet has read through nearly a 100 stories of all aspects of crime fiction. We could have easily produced another full issue, quality through out. The stories you will find will take you from revenge, to envy, to greed and to need. Bad things done for every reason under the sun, with small moments of hope. In the end, because I can’t count past my 10 given digits, we have 29 stories from writers from around the globe. Some writers you will know from the virtual pages of Shotgun Honey, others writers we’ve wanted to work with before, all lending their unique voice to our first collection, SHOTGUN HONEY PRESENTS: BOTH BARRELS.
Our roster:
- Andrew Nette
- Cameron Ashley
- Chris Holm
- Dan O’Shea
- Frank Bill
- Garnett Elliott
- Glenn Gray
- Hector Acosta
- Holly West
- Jen Conley
- Jim Wilsky
- Joe Myers
- Julia Madeleine
- Keith Rawson
- Kieran Shea
- Matthew C. Funk
- Michael Oliveri
- Naomi Johnson
- Nigel Bird
- Nik Korpon
- Patti Abbott
- Paul D. Brazill
- Peter Farris
- Ray Banks
- Steve Weddle
- Thomas Pluck
- Tom Pitts
- Trey R. Barker
The anthology will contain a foreword by Kent Gowran, our humble benefactor and the originator of Shotgun Honey. Without Kent the site and this anthology would never be, for whatever contributions the current editors and future editors bring to Shotgun Honey, he is our founding stone. Thank you Kent for giving us this chance to share these stories with the world.
The cover was painted by Ray Dillon, who has worked for just about ever comic publisher big and small in a variety of roles, as well as doing production art for networks like Discovery Channel and HBO. Along side his equally talented wife Renae DeLiz, Ray is constantly working and at the same time always on the outlook for new work big or small. I think he did a fantastic job, I only hope I haven’t muddled it up with the cover dress, which is still a work in progress.
Staying on track, SHOTGUN HONEY PRESENTS: BOTH BARRELS should hit Amazon as both a print and ebook on October 2nd.
Thank you to all the writers who submitted stories for this first volume. It was a pleasure to read all your stories. Thank you to the final 29 writers and your patience with me from mail bombs to final edits.
And thank you to our readers.
Until next time,
Ron Earl Phillips
