Nestled in the foothills of West Virginia, Ron Earl Phillips lives with his wife, a daughter, a German Shepherd, and one too many cats.
Shotgun Honey silently celebrated its 12th anniversary on April 6th. You may wonder why we didn’t make a big deal about the anniversary and the honest short answer is it’s been a busy year. You can relate, right? Since COVID time has been premium, and it seems there is so little time to be had. We do what we do, and what we do is fiction.
On May 1st, for the first week of the month, Shotgun Honey will be open again for flash fiction submissions. As a flash fiction venue we have run the gamut of crime stories. There are very few subjects we haven’t touched. We do not publish stories that are sexual exploitive, condone racism or hate speech, or veiled political diatribes. We are aware that stories should not live in vacuum, so, please use common sense. There are also some tropes that we feel have run the course: serial killers, organized crime, and told from the grave. We’ll read them, but you need to make sure you hit the mark. That mark is of course 700 words.
From May 15th – May 31st, Shotgun Honey Books will be open to queries. We are looking for novellas (30-45k words), short and full length novels up to 80k, and potentially a short story collection. For 2024, Shotgun Honey Books will have 6-8 releases. We looking for stories with a focus on the human condition and what has lead characters to go down a path of criminal enterprise or allowed them to survive criminal acts. Is there redemption or is there continued darkness? What is the fallout and who are affected?
We have had several recent Grit Lit and Rural Noir releases, and we would like to keep close to that wheelhouse. Who we’re reading: S.A. Cosby, Kelly J. Ford, Chris Harding Thornton, Eli Cranor, David Joy, Steph Post and so many others. But to get an idea of what we’re looking for check out recent and upcoming releases in our book catalog.
For our first decade, Shotgun Honey was a free marketplace. Meaning not only was the content free to the reader, but also the contributor was not compensated. We could no longer continue this policy and the fiction content became a paid marketplace in 2022. Shotgun Honey would like to continue publishing these flash fiction offerings and continue providing these stories for free, but that is a hard task when our site ostensibly doesn’t produce money. So perhaps a compromise.
If you value Shotgun Honey content, you can become a supporter via Patreon. There are five levels depending on the content you wish to support. There have been inquiries about book clubs, so two levels were created for a digital and paperback versions of our book releases. On non-publishing months you will receive a book from our catalog. All books will be delivered within 2 weeks of release.
As part of the Patreon campaign we will be releasing two serials, Pele’s Prerogative by Albert Tucher and The Man with the Remade Face by Matt Phillips. Pele’s Prerogative is a continuation of Tucher’s Big Island Mysteries featuring Officer Jenny Freitas. Phillips’s The Man with the Remade Face will take career criminal Jimmy Rox Brutus and the reader to the edge of madness in this horror-noir send-up. Pele’s Prerogative will launch in late May and The Man with the Remade Face in late August.
Serial Reader supporters and above will have full access serials.
One of the best ways to support Shotgun Honey is to buy Shotgun Honey Books. And it has never been easier. Books and swag are available in The Shop. But maybe you want to shop local? Shotgun Honey Books are distributed by Ingram Content Group, making our books available to booksellers in North America and Europe. If your bookseller doesn’t stock Shotgun Honey Books, you can ask them to order it. If they can’t or won’t (why wouldn’t they) order the book, we have an affiliate shop on Bookshop.org. Not only do they typically discount books, they share a percentage of the sale with local sellers. Our books are also available with most online book retailers, including Amazon who provides the largest return for paperback sales.
Pick your poison. A sale is a sale.
Whether you support Shotgun Honey with your contributions, your book orders, patronage, or on your favorite social media platform, we — I — personally want to thank you for 12 years of FICTION WITH A KICK!
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