It’s October (aka spooky season), so that means I’m back in Wicked Shadow Press’s Flash of the Dead Halloween Anthology. This time for 2026, and they really went with a nice cover this year. As always, they’ve got a tremendous lineup. Most of the stories are what’s called “flash fiction,” and these are tales which usually run between 500 and 1,500 words in length. What I like to call small bites. While most of the stories are themed around All Hallows’ Eve, my tale is about the horrors of time travel. You know, like being stuck in a time period you can’t adapt to or like very much? Or being in quarantine. Or, even worse, the horrors of being forced to reside with somebody you don’t like… and ingest castor oil. Read my story in Flash of the Dead Halloween 26: “Nothing but Time and Oil.” Pictures and links will be below as usual.
Wicked Shadow Press presents…
Flash of the Dead Halloween 2026 – Flash Fiction Anthology
Edited by Parth Sarathi Chakraborty
Featuring new Dagstine story: “Nothing but Time and Oil”
BUY THE BOOK IN USA (also available in India/Asia):
Some of you might remember a couple of months back I had a time-traveling western tale featured in a genre publication on Amazon. That magazine made it to the number one spot overnight (Mobius Blvd). Well, my story The Missouri Man is back! It’s been reprinted in the current issue of Dark Horses Magazine. From Hobb’s End Press. It is edited and compiled by Wayne Kyle Spitzer. The tale is about a lawyer who one day finds a hole in back of his refrigerator. And that hole is a time tunnel, leading back to a frontier era in which he must become an unlikely hero. I’ll leave the usual pics and links below. Check it out in case you missed it the first time around. The June issue is a whopping 352 pages! It is available in print and Kindle formats.
Hobb’s End Press presents…
Dark Horses: The Magazine of Weird Fiction – June 2026 Issue
Featuring Dagstine reprint:“The Missouri Man”
AUTHOR LINE-UP:
Join us for a monthly tour of writers who give as good as they get. From hard science-fiction to stark, melancholic apocalypses; from Lovecraftian horror to zombies and horror comedy; from whimsical interludes to tales of unlikely compassion–whatever it is, if it’s weird, it’s here. So grab a seat before the starting gun fires, pour yourself a glass of strange wine, and get ready for the running of the dark horses!
In this issue:
BEYOND THE BEATEN PATH Jenny Morelli
BEYOND THE BREAKERS Chris McGinley
GORE Andrew Albritton
THUNDER ROAD Wayne Kyle Spitzer
HOW NAVIGATION WORKS Griffith Pound
THAT TIME WAS THE PLACE WHERE I EXIST Robert Pettus
THE GATHERING OF THE DRAGONS Matias Travieso-Diaz
THE SILVER FRONT George P. Cross
THE WORLD BEYOND THE WATER Daniel Burnbridge
GHOST INQUISITOR Bill Walthall
CHILD OF CENTAURUS R.A. Daunton
DRAINS David Castlewitz
FIVE SOFT FINGERS Sophia Krich-Brinton
LISL Lisa Marie Miller
NEURAL CRUCIBLE Ernesto Sanchez
THE GROMSKIN Mark Nuzzi
THE MISSOURI MAN Lawrence Dagstine
A TASTE OF TRUTH Bill Diamond
PLUNGE Anuel Rodriguez
Buy or SAMPLE the publication on Amazon now!
DARK HORSES MAGAZINE/HOBB’S END PRESS MAIN WEBSITE:
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Happy September to you all. Autumn is just around the corner, and this is where I start getting a lot of short fiction acceptances and stuff published. Always September through December. And for this website post, I am currently appearing with a reprint in the Substack publication: “Androids and Dragons: A Journal of and about Speculative Fiction.” It has hundreds of followers, hundred of readers. It’s a token-paying market. There’s a lot of these Substack newsletter publications (in the form of modern webzines), popping up these days. In the old days, when I first started getting published, a lot of webzines were hosted by Lycos or Geocities. Or they depended on programs like Dreamweaver and Flash, to look stylish for the time period. It seems Substack is becoming a major platform to build your fiction-reading audience. Stories can be emailed to subscribers, direct to their inbox. You can read a short story anywhere, not just home computer but on your phone on the go. And it pops up really quick on search engines, because the one thing Substack has going for it is many a search engine algorithm. The editor is Jenna Hanan Moore. I’ll leave any links down below, direct or otherwise. And the name of my reprint is: “Past and Present Company Excepted.”
Androids and Dragons: A Journal of and about Speculative Fiction
Substack Publication – Edited by Jenna Hanan Moore
Featuring Dagstine reprint: “Past and Present Company Excepted.”
Photo credit: Caras Jr. on Unsplash, 2025.
The September Edition Opening Page – (click link, be redirected):
And speaking of Substack publications or newsletters, I’ve updated my own personal one recently. But only with a quickie. You can find a link to that right below…
It is with pleasure to announce that here starts a busy couple of weeks, as I have a lot of new material coming out in the “speculative fiction” genre. Books and anthologies in hardcover, paperback, and either Epub or Kindle formats. In the case of the book below, an upcoming audiobook. All these short stories are brand new, never published. From West Mesa Press, via Three Cousins Publishing, comes an anthology on time travel and the troubles or dilemmas that go with it. The Trouble with Time. Edited by Robert Allen Lupton, and it lands at a whopping 316 pages. The cover art is by Mark McConnell. For this book, think of stories related to The Butterfly Effect or Looper. That theme. And read my new story, “Past and Present Company Excepted!”
The Trouble with Time Anthology – Edited by Robert Lupton
Featuring Dagstine Story: “Past and Present Company Excepted”
Details from Amazon (copy-pasted):
Everyone at one time or another has wished that they could go back in time and change something. Perhaps to prevent a world tragedy, kill a despot, or tell an ancestor not to drive to town on a certain day. Perhaps the journey backward would be to obtain foreknowledge about the lottery, the presidential election, the stock market, or even the World Series. The reasons to wish for time travel are legion, but if the truth be told, if we could go back in time, the first thing most of us would do would be to punch our younger selves square in the face.
Changing time can have unexpected and dire results. Think “The Butterfly Effect,” or “A Sound of Thunder.” The scales have to balance. Good intentions often have unintended consequences and even the most benign attempts to intervene are likely to make things worse, far worse.
Twenty-two stories about time travel by talented writers from around the world, each of whom fearlessly explores the dangers and joys of time travel uniquely. Come along for the ride. There’s plenty of time – or is there?
The next book I’m in, and I believe this is my 6th anthology acceptance of 2024, is time travel themed. I have a lot of stuff floating out at time travel markets at the moment. It seems like every few years the subject of time, the mechanics and physics surrounding it, being able to travel backwards and forwards to a specific era and meet somebody historically important, becomes popular again. However, for Culture Cult Press’s latest book, A Stitch in Space Time, I decided to submit a fairy tale-style “mashup,” where Lewis Carroll (aka Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), uses H.G. Wells time machine and tech to travel through a surreal but alternative version of Wonderland. And from a scientific point of view, it involves the Queen of Hearts. What I like most about Culture Cult Press — besides their stellar covers, immaculate interior design, and major distribution throughout India — is that a portion of the proceeds goes to help street animals without owners in Kolkata. Be sure to check out my time travel-themed story in A Stitch in Space Time Anthology, entitled: “Lewis Carroll and the Time Machine.” Links and pics below, and in the side column just to the right.
A STITCH IN SPACE TIME Anthology – published by Culture Cult Press
Edited by Jay Chakravarti – 22 Stories revolving around time travel
Featuring Dagstine Story: “Lewis Carroll and the Time Machine”
AVAILABLE IN PRINT PAPERBACK or as a DIGITAL EPUB (direct links):
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