Strange Mysteries 4

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Fish Tales: The Guppy Anthology, casts a wide net across the mystery genre, delivering thrills, chills, and gills. This water-themed collection features locked room puzzles, police procedurals, cozy characters and hardboiled detectives. With a pool of motivations ranging from greed and revenge to loyalty and justice, these stories will lure you in with killer hooks and fishy characters.

Strange Mysteries rides again! What can we say about this third edition of the incredibly popular Strange Mysteries series? Only that it is stranger and more mysterious than ever -- enjoy! - Jean M. Goldstrom

Strange Mysteries 2 offers no less than 40 tales, each one strange and mysterious.

This collection of Strange Mysteries is the largest book Whortleberry Press has ever had the pleasure of presenting to readers, with 275 pages chock full of strangeness and also of mystery! Detectives, murders, science fiction, fantasy, mainstream – whatever your favorite short-story style, you'll find it among this book’s 26 selections. It’s strange, it’s mysterious, it’s a fun collection – enjoy!

Congratulations Warren!
Your story, “Reader of Dreams,” was voted the top favorite in the 2009 Strange Mysteries anthology! It certainly was one of my favorites – well written, researched, dryly humorous, good solid characters, action – it has everything! Thanks for a delightfully thoughtful and intriguing story – hope you will keep writing for us!
Best wishes,
Jean Goldstrom, Editor of Whortleberry Press

National Best Books 2008 Award (sponsored by USA Book News)
Fiction And Literature: Anthologies Category

“An exceptional collection of intriguing stories sure to send the heart racing. This anthology has it all: humor, suspense, mayhem – what more can readers want?”
— L.C. Hayden, author of the Harry Bronson mystery series

“A maximum offering. A wonderful mix of new writers and favorites. Dip into it like you would a box of fine chocolates.”
— Barbara D’Amato, author of Death of a Thousand Cuts and Good Cop Bad Cop

“A fun collection of mystery short stories from great authors.”
— Lorie Ham, author of the Alexandra Walters mystery series

"Warren has a hell of a knack, oops, I mean a heck of a knack for bringing characters to life." — Bob Iles

“The Angel of Death parked her car, flipped down the visor, studied her reflection in the mirror. She turned her head a quarter turn left and right. Then she checked her teeth.”

“I was in disguise when it started, designer sunglasses, boat shoes without socks and a tailored Italian suit. I wandered around a high-class shopping district called the Country Club Plaza, waiting for someone to act like an idiot. That’s how I made a living.”

“I was in disguise when it started, designer sunglasses, boat shoes without socks and a tailored Italian suit. I wandered around a high-class shopping district called the Country Club Plaza, waiting for someone to act like an idiot. That’s how I made a living.”

“Ricky’s House” won second place in the Fiction category of the Winter 2007 Missouri Writers’ Guild Awards.

"The house that Ricky Coolidge lived in was different. I couldn't have told you how or why that summer after I finished the fourth grade, but I knew it was. I don't think I realized that the blistered yellow paint and scuffed white trim needed painting. I had only a vague awareness that, unlike any other yard in the neighborhood, the grass had turned yellow two weeks before school let out and by mid-June it dried into a dusty brown. The yard would continue to be different until the first hard freeze turned every yard in Kansas City drab. I wondered if the difference was because Ricky's dad was hardly ever there. I got the idea it would not be good to ask.”

“A Lady of Quality” won first place in the Best Short Story category of the 2006 Missouri Writers’ Guild Awards.

I have been fortunate to know a few people who opposed the racial inequality that permeated the world around them despite facing financial ruin, social isolation and even threats. This story is dedicated to them. Bigotry is such a corrosive crime against the human spirit that it scars those who practice it, those who are subjected it to and those who witness it too.

The Last Word” was published in the inaugural edition (March, 2006) of the DownGo Sun E-zine portion of the Kansas City Historic Northeast Cultural Arts Commission.

I was happy that one of my short stories was accepted for the inaugural issue of DownGo Sun. The editor did not tell me it was accepted so I was quite pleasantly surprised when I checked to see if the E-zine was up and discovered that it includes my story. I think you’ll find an interesting mixture of styles and voices in the various offerings.

Writing “The Last Word” (March 30, 2006)

The historical incident described in this story happened pretty much as I described it. General Hooker sent away all of his couriers with orders and then noticed that a regiment had stalled in place and was taking fire while its officer dithered about what to do. Knowing that even veteran soldiers would begin to run if they continued to take casualties without a chance to respond, the general looked around, spotted George Smiley of the New York Tribune, and asked him if he would carry a message to the regiment. Smiley agreed. Smiley’s conversation with the commander of the regiment and with Hooker after that in the story are consistent with what Smiley reported at the time.

Choosing to tell the story from the point of view of the soldiers, made the humor much darker. Emergency workers, police, military personnel and others who deal with death on an up close and personal basis develop black humor which have them keep their sanity, but doesn’t sound funny at all to people who haven’t shared those experiences.

Proving Holmes’ point are these twelve stories, the winners of The Great Manhattan Mystery Conclave writing contest. They take place in Manhattan, Kansas, The Little Apple®.

In these pages you will meet a murdered professor of agriculture, a biker auntie, two looters who think a flood is their ticket to riches, and a couple of computer nerds whose geo-caching games turn deadly.

Add a teen reality show star who is trying to escape the paparazzi, a man hanged on a sign protesting a dam project, a pregnant woman murdered during a flood, a missing boy, and a pair of dead flamingoes.

The recipe for suspense continues with a missing hen that provides Sunday adventure for neighborhood children, a glamorous woman who sets out to con a con man, and two brave children who face danger when pro-slavery riders come looking for their father and John Brown.

Writing “Beecher’s Bibles" (March 10, 2006)

The thing I remember most about writing this short story was that it took me nearly as long to write the first sentence as it did to write the rest of the story. I knew what I wanted to say, but I could not get it to come out in the words that I wrote. I’m not sure that I got the sentence “right” so much as I eliminated successive sentences that did not convey quite what I wanted, coming ever closer until the current first sentence was the last one left.

When I needed to find out how a breech-loading single shot black powder rifle works, I looked on the internet. The wonderful thing is that you can find out almost anything on the net. The terrible thing, of course, is that you can find out almost anything on the net. As university teachers have told me, the internet is the greatest source of misinformation that we have. I found three independent sources of information and since the story’s publication black powder shooters have told me that I got it right.