Darryl sat in the quiet house, alone in the kitchen, his elbows propped up on the table, his fingers laced, and his head bowed behind them. The house was very quiet. The house was very still.

He tried to gather his thoughts but they just lay there in his head, lifeless. He was numb, he was tired. He had buried his father two months ago. Today, he’d buried his mother. He was the only surviving child. . . .

Epiphany Ferrell writes most of her fiction at Resurrection Mule Farm, named for a mule that survived a lightning strike (and was "never quite right" afterward). Her stories appear in several online and in-print journals including the Potomac, Ghost Parachute, Cooper Street, Prairie Wolf Press Review, Unnerving Magazine, Corvus Review and other places. She is the fiction editor at Mojave River Flash Fiction Magazine and Review and on the editorial staff at Flash Fiction Magazine.

Phil Giunta’s first novel, a paranormal mystery called Testing the Prisoner, was published in 2010 by Firebringer Press. His second novel in the same genre, By Your Side, was released in 2013. You can listen to both on audio for free at Scribl.com: https://scribl.com/browse?au=1017

Phil's short stories appear in such anthologies as Beach Nights from Cat and Mouse Press, the ReDeus mythology series from Crazy 8 Press, and the Middle of Eternity speculative fiction series, which he created and edited for Firebringer Press. His paranormal mystery novella, Like Mother, Like Daughters is slated for release in late 2017.

As a member of the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group (GLVWG), Phil has also penned stories and essays for Write Here, Write Now and The Write Connections, two of the group’s annual anthologies. He also served as chairman of the 2015 Write Stuff writers conference in Bethlehem, PA.

Visit Phil’s website: http://www.philgiunta.com

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The Souk

Joan Wright Mularz was born into a large family on an island in the middle of New York Harbor. It's where she read her first mystery and learned to love reading, writing and drawing.

Through books and art history, she developed an interest in seeing other places. As a college student, she scrimped and saved and headed across the ocean for the first time.

Her experiences as a traveler, parent and a teacher, have influenced Joan to write for young people. Two and a half years living in Italy became the inspiration for her first E. T. Madigan mystery, Upheavals at Cuma. Six years in Germany led to the writing of the second mystery, White Flutters in Munich. Her picture book, What I Like About My Friends, celebrates the diversity she has found through both teaching and travel and another, Island Times, celebrates the multiplication and diversity of animal and plant life found on islands.

She has also written curriculums and educational grants. When not traveling, she divides her time between a small town in Massachusetts and a small town in the western hills of Maine, inspiration for her alliterative alphabet book, Down West — the Other Maine and for her third E.T. Madigan mystery, Maine Roots Run Deep, due out in 2017.

Robert Walton is a retired teacher and a life-long rock-climber and mountaineer. He has made numerous ascents in the Sierra Nevada, Yosemite and Pinnacles National Park. Three of his short stories about climbing were published in the Sierra Club's Ascent. Another, "Three's a Crowd" was converted into a radio play and broadcast on NPR.
He is an experienced writer with five published books to his credit. Many of his short stories have been published in journals and on literary websites. His Civil War novel Dawn Drums won both the 2014 New Mexico Book Awards Tony Hillerman Prize for best fiction and first place in the 2014 Arizona Authors competition. His story “Lulu Garlic, Contraband” was broadcast by Central California NPR affiliate KVPR. Most recently, his western story “La Loca” appeared in “Principia Ponderosa”, The Third Flatiron Anthology, Volume 18. Robert and his wife Phyllis have been married for forty-five years and make their home in King City, CA. Please visit Robert’s website to learn more about his writing: http://chaosgatebook.wordpress.com

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Early spring. Caulder, PA.

Spring is nearly here. I can taste it in the air, a sharp brew of mud and decaying leaves. The wind has no bite. My feet don't crunch anymore as I walk along the forest path. They slide into the skin of the earth and leave furrows behind me. My father hikes through the woods like he walks through life, with a sense of purpose. I can tell he's eager to get to our destination, but he keeps his pace steady and does not urge me to hurry. . . .

Read more here.

Laurel Wilczek is a local writer whose work has appeared in T-Zero Literary Magazine, Be a Better Writer by Pearl Luke and in The Greater Lehigh Valley 2016 Anthology. She was the First Place winner in the fantasy category of the 2013 Golden Rose Contest and 3^rd place winner in the fantasy category of the 2010 Writer's Digest Popular Fiction Contest. Laurel teaches the November Teen Writer's Workshop each year at Hughes library and will be teaching characterization & plot at the September 23, 2017 Pocono Liars Club Workshop for New Writers. She is currently working on a dark quirk fantasy novel due to be completed in summer of 2017.