Last month saw the release of the third installment of BOTH BARRELS anthology series from Shotgun Honey Presents. LOCKED and LOADED features 25 stories of crime, hard cases, and troubled souls. A little something for everyone from writers both budding and established.

• “A Boy Like Billy” by Patricia Abbott
• “Border Crossing” by Michael McGlade
• “Looking for the Death Trick” by Bracken MacLeod
• “Maybelle’s Last Stand” by Travis Richardson
• “Predators” by Marie S. Crosswell
• “Twenty to Life” by Frank Byrns
• “So Much Love” by Keith Rawson
• “Running Late” by Tess Makovesky
• “Last Supper” by Katanie Duarte
• “Danny” by Michael Bracken
• “The Plot” by Jedidiah Ayres
• “What Alva Wants” by Timothy Friend
• “Time Enough to Kill” by Kent Gowran
• “Copas” by Hector Acosta
• “Yellow Car Punch” by Nigel Bird
• “Love at First Fight” by Angel Luis Colón
• “Traps” by Owen Laukkanen
• “Down the Rickety Stairs” by Alan Orloff
• “Blackmailer’s Pep Talk” by Chris Rhatigan
• “With a Little bit of Luck” by Bill Baber
• “As Cute as a Speckled Pup Under a Red Wagon” by Tony Conaway
• “Chipping off the Old Block” by Nick Kolakowski
• “Young Turks and Old Wives” by Shane Simmons
• “The Hangover Cure” by Seth Lynch
• “Highway Six” by John L. Thompson

LOCKED and LOADED is available in both paperback and on the Kindle.

An Eye on Singles

In June we start a monthly schedule of Singles with Timothy Friend’s western GUNMEN.

Available June 8th in print and digital formats.

GUNMEN is followed by previously announced THE FURY OF BLACKY JAGUAR by Angel Luis Colón in July and HURT HAWKS by Mike Miner in August.

We are also thrilled to announce the addition of GOLDFINCHES by Ryan Sayles, to release in September, and TEXAS, HOLD YOUR QUEENS by Marie S. Crosswell, following in November.

Submission Mission

BLIGHT DIGEST closes submissions for issue 3, which will be due out in late June, early July. Final readings and selections are being done and we will have notices going out in the following week. Thank you for all the varied submissions. We look forward to packing the next issue of BLIGHT DIGEST with 10-12 tales of fright.

SHOTGUN HONEY, our online crime flash fiction site is always open to subs. We are looking for stories 700 words and below to fill our twice weekly story slots for the summer season. Follow in the footsteps of Shotgun Honey alumni who have gone from our flash fiction world to book contracts, writers like Rob Hart, Patricia Abbott and Brian Panowich, who all have fantastic books coming out this summer.

ONE EYE PRESS SINGLES are open to submissions until we fill out out 2015 and 2016 schedule. The novella series is looking for stories that are between 25-45k words in length, primarily crime, hard luck, noir stories. We are actively looking for at least one horror cross-genre mash-up to fill our October Singles slot. We are not looking for Sci Fi, Fantasy, Romance or Western submissions at this time.

Goodbye THE BIG ADIOS

When we decided to open shop and publish some books, it was mostly to fill publisher Ron Earl Phillips’ love of two genres: Crime and Western. The first manifestation of THE BIG ADIOS was a struggling website, eponymously named. The hope with transitioning from website to a digest format was to open a venue that had some substance, giving the writers and readers something tangible and less ephemeral than just a website. Perhaps if the digest was our singular focus, perhaps if we had foreseen how much a single issue budget requires we would have scheduled the debut issue better, and not book-ending it with sister digest BLIGHT DIGEST. The perhaps and what-ifs aside, the hard fact is when something doesn’t sell even to limited expectations, then it’s hard to justify continuing the series.

THE BIG ADIOS WESTERN DIGEST and the previous contributions will be rolled into the new One Eye Press website in June.