Tansy Undercrypt

The hard copy of “Small Towns, Dark Places” was to be in circulation on August 1st, but that hasn’t happened yet and here’s why:

I self-published the e-book through BookBaby and think they handled everything amazingly well; it was my intention to use them for the actual printing also. Unfortunately, the cost of that is so epic and sort of mind-boggling that I have decided to print them elsewhere to save money and pass the savings onto readers.

In the original arrangement, the book (coming in at around 100 pages), would have cost upwards of $10-12 to break even. Insanity. It’s not an heirloom. Going with a different plan allows me to cut that almost in half, improving my karma immensely.

So, we’re looking at the end of the month for the new release date (I’ll say “8/31″ to make it sound official), with a release party to follow if you happen to be in the Minneapolis area.

Thanks for your interest and patience, everybody.

As well as being the answer to life, the universe, and everything, it’s also where my book, “Small Towns, Dark Places”, is being ranked in iBooks fiction/horror fiction!  iBooks metrics report that I am #42 in the U.S. market and #117 in the Canadian market (where I would not expect to rank at all, because of the “American small town” theme of the stories).  Not sure how many horror entries are currently in the mix for measuring, but even hitting the Top 50 somewhere is epic to me.  Thank you, iBooks People, for buying and for liking!

‎”Small Towns, Dark Places”, my first published collection of short stories, has been released in its ebook format and is out on Amazon for the Kindle, Barnes & Noble for the Nook, iBooks for iPad, and several others. I HAVE A FAVOR TO ASK: if you purchase the book and read it, please, please, PLEASE rate/review it. Your honest feedback is important to me personally, to like minds shopping in the aether, and to the energy arc of the project from here to eternity. Thank you!

‎”Small Towns, Dark Places” by Tansy Undercrypt. A frightening migration fills a barn with unwanted guests. A young boy rings the doorbell of the neighborhood haunted house. Man’s best friend fights off something that isn’t human anymore. In thirteen darkly fascinating and deliciously grim tales, the residents of a cursed Midwest encounter the mysterious, terrifying, and deadly. (Available by ebook by the end of June; in print end of July.)

The process of selecting the thirteen stories that comprise the upcoming collection brought up a hard question:  do you mix the really dark stuff in with the friendlier stuff?  Old school, I am a “horror fiction” writer; new school, I write “dark fiction”. Is there a line between those two and, if so, is that line a “do not cross” kind of thing? In a group of short stories, amidst the eerie, creepy, darkly funny, and grimly melancholy, is it desirable, permissible, or even expected to put a couple of real doozies in there? What happens to the doozies if you don’t put them in – a separate doozies volume? Who would read that nasty little volume, where nothing brought the happy? In the end, it was easier to simply say “These fit the construct; they’re going in” rather than spend more time researching what others recommended. Needless to say, I’ll be watching the reactions to a couple of stories within the collection with great interest.

Working towards a May deadline for June e-publishing; everything’s a bit frantic right now.  At least I have a title for the short story collection; that helps with momentum a great deal.  Strange how the thing having a name provides focus.  Running for the finish line …

I’ve submitted a story for inclusion in ‘Machine of Death 2′; please think good thoughts about “Liquidation”!