The following interview is with Steven E. Wedel, author of Okie Werewolf Seeks Love in The Beast Within.

Hi, Steven. Could you start us off with a little info about yourself? We here on the forums are so used to seeing text and avatars that it can be easy to forget there are human beings behind the words. What’s a day-in-the-life-of-Steven Wedel like?

A: A day in my life? hahaha Yeah. My alarm goes off at 5:30 a.m. and I’m generally conscious and moving by 6:20. I drive about 20 miles to the inner city high school where I teach English, tell jokes, play therapist, fundraiser, grade papers, etc. Then I generally come home and piss off my 14-year-old daughter because of a cell phone or boyfriend issue. The 16-year-old boy is fairly self sufficient these days, but the 8-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son have homework, want food, need booboos bandages, etc. I make dinner, my wife comes home, I stare at the TV while she talks about her day. Put the kids to bed. Shower. Then maybe I get to write for a little bit. I can’t sleep without reading for a while, so I do that until around 12:30 a.m. Five hours later the alarm goes off. Rinse and repeat.

That may sound like I’m not happy, but that isn’t the case. I’ve had a lot of jobs and three careers since graduating high school in 1984, but I can honestly say I’ve never had a job I liked as much as being a teacher.

The only thing I’d change about the above is my older daughter. I miss her being Daddy’s little girl.

As a writer, what do you find is the most challenging part about crafting fiction, and how do you overcome it?

A: Finding the time is my only real problem. Once I’m sitting down and in writing mode I don’t have too much of a problem. Because it sometimes takes me a while to actually get to the keyboard, I get to mull the story over in my head a lot, so when I sit down I know what I want to do and it flows pretty fast and smooth.

Then my wife reads it and tells me where I screwed up.

What initiated your interest in the horror genre?

A: Halloween II. That’s 2, not 11, or whatever the franchise is up to now. I hadn’t seen the first one, but me and some friends went to the second one and I was impressed with Michael Myers’ body count. Then my high school sophomore composition teacher assigned us a short story, so I wrote a piece that’d get a student arrested these days. It was called “Insanity” and was about a kid who was picked on and how he offed his enemies in cool, gory ways.

Eventually I matured and realized that horror fiction is the only place you can really explore supernatural and violent themes.

Any personal experiences where you might’ve felt like a character in a horror novel?

A: There was that time I was feeding my daughter’s ex-boyfriend through a meat grinder ?

Actually, I have a bird phobia. Send a werewolf after me. Throw me in the vampires lair or drop me into a horde of zombies. Just please don’t make me walk through the Wal-Mart parking lot when those big black birds are hopping between cars and wheeling around looking for roosts or scraps or fresh eyeballs.

You’ve explored the werewolf mythos in your novels, even been typecast as a werewolf writer, yet your fiction isn’t always limited to the werewolf sub-genre. Could you tell any potential new fans out there what other types of horror fiction you’ve written?

I have a new novelette that will be out about the same time as The Beast Within. It’s called Little Graveyard on the Prairie and I really think it’s my best story to date. It has a maturity I don’t think I’ve explored before. It’s a ghost story, but not all the ghosts are dead people. Bad Moon Books is publishing it as a limited edition.

Another published novella is Seven Days in Benevolence. This was my foray into extreme horror. It’s another ghost story, this time about a newly single mother and her two daughters who move into a new house in a small town. There are some ghosts residing there, too, and they’re kind of at war with each other. The ending is very graphic and has turned off some readers.

In 2010 Bad Moon Books will publish The Prometheus Syndrome, a novel with deranged hillbillies, a mad scientist, a zombie, a ghost, and rock-n-roll. I have a few other non-werewolf things I’m still shopping around, too.

Writer’s block strikes sooner or later; are there any home remedies or writing exercises you use to stave off the dreaded curse?

A: I used to work for a daily newspaper. For the two years I was there I consistently led the newsroom in number of bylines per month. I don’t believe in writer’s block. You don’t write, you don’t get paid. You don’t get paid, you don’t eat.

That’s not to say I don’t procrastinate. I do. Big time. The thing to do is put your butt in the seat and write something, anything, just start writing and once you hack away for a while the good stuff will start flowing again.

Could you give us a non-spoiler synopsis of your story Okie Werewolf Seeks Love?

A: I suppose I should mention that I step outside the rules that apply to most of my werewolf fiction for this one. Still, I’m sure someone will write to me and say, “In Shara you say werewolves can only do _________ when they ________, but in this story it’s different.” That’s cool. They’re paying attention. Stepping out of my mythos was a conscious decision, and now I can point to this interview as proof that I knew what I was doing.

I wrote this story specifically for conventions. I have this Okie twang that I can’t mask, so I try to come up with some redneck humor/horror stories I can read at the conventions I go to. This one was originally written as a telephone call-in dating message, but I changed it to a letter to the editor. Basically, Randy Bragg is a good ol’ boy living on welfare and whatever odd job money he can get when he’s bitten by a werewolf. That means he’s gotta bathe a little more often, and use flea shampoo, but he gets to lick himself in places he couldn’t reach before, so he feels it’s a pretty fair trade. His ex-girlfriend, however, wasn’t so happy about it, so he wrote this letter looking for a new woman. He’s willing to share his gift, and he might even share his next six-pack if the babe is really smokin’.

Thanks, Steven!

(ps: if you want to read a REAL interview with Steven, check out this link: http://www.fearzone.com/blog/interview-wedel)

And now, here’s an excerpt of Okie Werewolf Seeks Love from The Beast Within:

OKIE WEREWOLF SEEKS LOVE, BY STEVEN E. WEDEL

Dear Beasts & Babes Magazine,

First, I sure want to thank you for the service you provide. I love the articles and pictures. I had no idea this here kind of magazine existed. Thank God for Google!! Anyhoo, after reading about those hot babes what liked German shepherd love, I thought maybe if you printed up this letter for me it would help me find a woman that likes furry loving.

My name is Randall William Bragg. I’m a single white male living in Moore, Oklahoma. I ain’t got a lot in the way of income. Just what I make with my old Chevy pickup, hauling firewood, trash, moving furniture ? that kind of stuff. I do some lawn work in the summers and sometimes go all the way up to Edmond for odd jobs. I get some government money, too, on account of my grandma being a Cherokee Indian. And ’cause I keep losing regular jobs.
I had a girl, see, but I lost her. She left me. It’s OK, though. I’m over her. You’re not getting a guy on the rebound. Nope. Chelsea Bryson is history. Water under the bridge.

Bitch!

Anyways, yeah, I’m about six-one, with some extra baggage. I like my beer, you know, and don’t get no regular exercise. I’m forty-one years old, with most of my teeth and in pretty good health. I almost graduated high school. I would of, but I got kicked out of the vo-tech when me and Ronnie Crawford was lighting farts in the bathroom. The fire wasn’t as bad as they said it was. After that, I figured I didn’t need no more schooling. They’d already learned me how to repair farm machinery, so that’s what I did for a while. But, after Old Man Henry’s tractor blew up and kilt him, nobody’d hire me to do that shit no more. Weren’t my fault.

Anyhow, see, I guess there is something you probably should know about me, besides my income and health and stuff. About nine months ago I got myself bit by a werewolf.
I swear it’s true. Swear it on a stack of Bibles!!
I was clearing some brush out of Emily Drummond’s back pasture last summer. She’s a good-looking woman, though a little older than me. Her husband’s in the National Guard and got sent off to Iraq, so she ain’t got nobody to help her. She don’t pay much, but she looks good in her tight shorts and T-shirt. Woman never wears no bra, neither. But, like I was saying, she’d hired me to clear some brush off her spread out by Newcastle because of the fire danger. I chopped and bundled all morning, then sometime after noon I knocked off for lunch. I had me a peanut butter sandwich and a beer. Maybe two beers. I don’t know. It was a hot day and the work was hard. I fell asleep in the shade of my pickup.

When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was the smell. Something nasty was blowing in my face. It smelled like somebody’d put a fan behind a freezer full of meat that had gone bad. It was all warm, too. I opened my eyes and it was night, a real dark night under the cloudy sky. There was something real close to my face. It was so close I couldn’t see nothing. I kinda crab-crawled away from it a bit. That got me away from the meat smell, but then I could smell something like wet dog.

I tried to get up, but when I done that, the thing grabbed my ankles and jerked them out from under me. I fell on my face, and then the thing was on my back. I thought maybe it was a Bigfoot. It pinned me there for a while, then started shifting around all strange-like. That worried me. Cuz the last thing I wanted was to get rear-humped by a Bigfoot, even if it would get me on the front page of one of them funny-papers they sell up near the registers at the grocery store. That’s when it bit me. Right in the meaty part of my left thigh. Hurt like hell! Well, I looked down, and saw it was a wolf what had bit me.

I swear, it wasn’t a wolf before. It was huge. Man-size or more. Like a Bigfoot, ya know? Standing on two legs. Wasn’t no wolf.
Well, then this wolf just ran away, and I was all alone. I hauled my ass back to my truck and got home. I poured some whiskey?good Jack Daniels?on the bite to clean it. Course, had the bottle open, so I drank some of it, too. Why not? Didn’t go to the doctor on account I ain’t got no insurance. If you answer this letter, I’m hoping you do have insurance, by the way.

Also, I heard the rabies shots really hurt. That wolf wasn’t foaming or nothing. I knew it didn’t have no rabies. So, you see, wasn’t no real need to go to the doctor, anyway.

The following interview is with Belea T. Keeney, author of Lure of the Wolf in The Beast Within.

Hi, Belea. Could you start us off with a little info about yourself? We here on the forums are so used to seeing text and avatars that it can be easy to forget there are human beings behind the words. What’s a day-in-the-life-of-Belea Keeney like?

A: I wish I could say it was terribly exciting and filled with drama and danger to go along with the book’s theme, but, um, it’s not. I edit and proof for a living so most days I’m working on other writers’ material?words, words, words. Just me and the screen.

I live in a semi-rural area so when I am done with work, I try to get out to the barn and horse around. Missy, a retired Thoroughbred is my current ride, and she’s a big ol’ sweetie. At home, listening to the owls hoot at night and seeing the occasional fox or bobcat tickles me no end.

What initiated your interest in writing?

A: Probably Miss Thigpen, my third-grade teacher. She assigned a story project, and I did one really fast — totally blowing if off — and she handed it back to me with the notation, “You can do better.” And I did. And, believe it or not, it was a werewolf story!

As a writer, what do you find is the most challenging part about crafting fiction, and how do you overcome it?

A: Evoking character without Info Dump-ing. That’s a tricky line to walk because readers need to understand certain things about a character and how to show that without veering into lecture can be tough. The more I write, the more I see that sometimes, depending on genre and tone and length, the less you say, the better for the reader.

Any personal experiences where you might’ve felt like a character in a horror novel?

A: Actually, when I was about three, I supposedly fell into a hole while wading in some shallow water. I distinctly remember looking up and my hands not reaching the surface. To this day, I remain un-convinced that something didn’t grab me.

You’re an editor with Torquere Press and Samhain Publishing. Are there any words of wisdom you could pass along to writers on how to polish their manuscript?

A: Probably the biggest issue I see with new writers is too much backstory too soon. Readers don’t need to know the history of a place or someone’s life story in the first pages of a story or book. They need interesting characters doing interesting things in an interesting way. And in general, characters waking up or going about their normal, everyday life is never going to be a compelling start.

For more experienced writers, I would say one issue I see consistently is not using scene setting to do some of the work. A setting can help evoke character, mood, subtext and, of course, place, all at once. One writing exercise I sometime assign students is to write two pages of dialogue then place that dialogue into two entirely different settings. A marriage proposal dialogue set in a butterfly garden with birds chirping and a burbling fountain is going to have an entirely different feel and tone than that exact same marriage proposal set at a father’s graveside in a cemetery with snow on the ground and bare trees looming over the grave.

Writer’s block strikes sooner or later; are there any home remedies or writing exercises you use to stave off the dreaded curse?

A: Do something physical that lets your brain focus on something else entirely. For some folks, that’s yoga or running or kayaking. For me, it’s riding horses. It gives my head something specific to track on and lets my subconscious clank away unencumbered.

Where can we see more of your work?

A: “The Tale of Trapper Tommy,” which also happens to be about a werewolf encounter, is available for audio download at Sniplits.com, and it’s in the small-press anthology, Florida Horror: Dark Tales from the Sunshine State. That’s it for my Belea stories. My romantic smut, written under a pen name, does much better. Ahem.

When the submission call went out for Beast Within, what was the first idea that came to mind? What made you choose the were-creature in your story?

A: “Lure of the Wolf” was actually inspired by a visit I made to Dahlonega, Georgia in the late 90s. Through happenstance, I scored a really cool house-sitting gig for an isolated campground there, and it was so dark and creepy at night that the writing came pretty easily. For the universe, I just extrapolated a bit on current trends in predator species. Depressingly, most of them will probably be gone from the wild by 2040.

Could you give us a non-spoiler synopsis of your story Lure of the Wolf?

A: When a librarian meets a werewolf who has lost his pack, her life changes in ways she never imagined.

Thanks, Belea!

A: Thank you and to the readers; I hope they enjoy the anthology.

And now, here’s an excerpt of Lure of the Wolf from The Beast Within:

LURE OF THE WOLF, BY BELEA T. KEENEY

“I think there’s a werewolf living in my azaleas,” Vivian Postlewaite said to her sister one Saturday morning in early April.
“They’re not your azaleas, Viv. They belong to the college,” Angela replied.
“Well, I fertilize them every summer; I prune them. I’m the one who takes care of them.”

The sisters were pawing through a thrift store. Vivian held up a pale turquoise cardigan with an embroidered rose on the left side. The rose was delicately stitched with creamy silk at the center of its blossom, and graduated threads of wine, pink, and mauve for its petals. And so soft. She rubbed it against her cheek.

Angela glanced at the sweater. “Ooooh, that’s dreadfully frumpy. It looks like something a librarian would wear.”
“I am a librarian.”
“Well, you don’t have to dress like one. When I ask you to come with me to find clothes for the theater group, I don’t expect you to buy clothes for yourself.” Angela held out a bright red circle skirt. “Don’t werewolves migrate north in April? I remember the news doing the regular little spiel about them just around tax time. It’s illegal to harass them, they’re a protected species, blah, blah, blah.”
“I always watch that coverage. The hundreds of them together, loping up to the mountain path?”
“You wouldn’t find it fascinating if you had children,” Angela snapped. “They’re just a bunch of mutants. Good riddance, I say.”
“There hasn’t been a recorded werewolf attack on a human in over fifty years,” Vivian protested.
“Recorded or not, they’re dangerous. I’m glad the president approved the funding for those programs, all of them. The Vampiric Studies Office, the Lycanthrope Commission. For God’s sake, it’s 2045. At least now someone is keeping an eye on them. When I think of the way you and I grew up, with them running around ?” Angela sighed dramatically, like the former theater major that she was. “It’s a wonder we never ran into one of them back in the day.”
“Maybe this one was separated from its pack,” Vivian said. “It’s left quite a lot of rabbit bones and fur. I filled up nearly half a trash bag yesterday?”
“Just call the Commission. They’ll send out a trapper and you’ll be done with it.” Angela held up a ghastly lime-green shirt. “How about this one?”
“It’s a little bright, don’t you think?”
“It’s colorful. I’m buying it.” Angela flounced to the payment scanner.

Vivian fingered the turquoise sweater, then put it down regretfully. Maybe it was cashmere. An old-fashioned sweater for an old-fashioned girl. Its label was long gone; it was just a cast-off now, someone’s throwaway.
Vivian sighed and left it behind.

***

A week later, Vivian stepped through her back gate, where a forty-acre botanical garden had been abandoned and forgotten by Dahlonega Community College’s administration years before. It was technically the school’s property, but Vivian considered this section her own. Among mature rhododendrons and azaleas, camellias and magnolias, she’d set up feeders, birdbaths, and managed a twice-yearly fertilizing schedule that took an entire weekend.

Vivian relished every morning as she gazed over her picket fence and sipped her coffee.
Dahlonega, Georgia sat at the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. Vivian had settled into her position at the college library with relief thirty years earlier. Angela was nearby, just down in Atlanta, if overbearing in her older-sister-knows-best sort of way.

Vivian bought her tiny cottage, once the caretaker’s residence, when the college subdivided some of its land during a funding crunch in the 20’s. It suited her, with its old-fashioned operable windows and wood floors. She painted her rooms lilac, sage, and pink; she grew roses over twin arbors in her backyard, and lived a life as quietly as expected of a librarian who’d never married.

She ambled through her azaleas, her steps soft on pathways decades deep in oak leaves. Never mind that it was a Saturday, never mind that she could have come anytime during the day. She’d waited until dusk. The half-moon shone through the oaks’ greening branches. Some of the azaleas were still in bloom; whoever had originally planned the school’s gardens had done it so that the azaleas would be in flower for nearly four months of the year. Rich tones of fuschia, pink, salmon, and violet flowered on the shrubs or lay on the ground in soft death. The spotted and striped flowers bloomed last, hybrids that required a bit more warmth in the soil to burst forth.

A four-step footbridge rose over the tiny stream that trickled through the property. Vivian plopped down on it with a sigh, then tugged off her shoes, her knees creaking. She rubbed her callused heels.
I’m getting old. Lugging those realpaper books around and being on my feet all day. She dangled her toes in the foot-deep stream. The icy water helped soothe the ache in her pudgy feet. A soft breeze from the north pushed her gray hair off her forehead.

She counted the smooth stones at the bottom of the streambed. She’d learned it from a yoga teacher ten years before, back when she was still willing to get on the floor and do stretches in front of other people. Clear your mind, count something universal and eternal, let it all go ? At two hundred and thirty three, the dirty smell of rot made her look around. The werewolf stood ten yards away from her, upwind, its nose buried deep in salmon-colored azaleas. It faced away from her, golden pelt looking rich and oily. Its shoulders were broad, the deep chest and wide back looking enormous. Nearly two meters tall, its clawed hands drew up a flower-loaded branch to its face. Vivian thought she heard it inhale deeply. He likes the flowers, too.

The werewolf stood on broad wolf-paws, claws curled into the oak leaf mulch, its legs shifting a little to balance its enormous torso. Those long legs could run up to thirty miles per hour, according to the Xenospecies book she’d read long ago. Vivian’s heart lurched like a jumping frog. She gasped.
The werewolf whirled around to face her. Shredded leaves and azalea flowers drifted to the ground. Vivian’s face and chest flushed?yes, clearly a male werewolf?and its large ears swiveled towards her. His mouth opened, long white canines gleaming in the moon’s light. He had orange eyes that stood out from his golden fur like volcanoes.

He can hear my heartbeat. He knows I’m scared.

When we first took on this project it was originally planned as Graveside Tales first book.  Little did we know what my partner Anthony Kendall and I were getting ourselves into.  After reading through 400 submissions and approximately one year later The Beast Within is available at Graveside Books as well as other fine book stores

All interviews are conducted by The Beast Within editor Matt Hults.

Enjoy and thanks for your continued support!

~Dale L. Murphy

---

Greetings, Gravesiders!

The time is at hand. The Beast Within out now, and to remind you all what a awesome anthology this is, I’ll be posting interviews with the authors as well as excerpts from their stories. Don’t miss’em, people! This is good stuff!!! And to make it last, I’ll be posting one interview a day (in no particular order), leading us right up to the release date and beyond. Each interview will have it’s own topic, so feel free to reply and let the authors know what you think of their stories—OR continued the interview yourself by asking questions!

Now let’s start things off with INTERVIEW 1!

The following interview is with Michael J. Hultquist, screenwriter, editor, and author of Colugo Men in The Beast Within.

Hi, Michael. Could you start us off with a little info about yourself? We here on the forums are so used to seeing text and avatars that it can be easy to forget there are human beings behind the words. What’s a day-in-the-life-of-Michael Hultquist like?

A: I describe myself as a screenwriter, author, business owner, and total chili head. I’m a repped screenwriter with a certificate from UCLA. I’ve had one movie produced, VICTIM, and another one with a much larger budget in the works for 2009. Fingers crossed!

As an author, I’ve published a bit of short fiction in the last year, including stories in Graveside Tales’ FRIED! And THE BEAST WITHIN anthologies. I’m also awaiting publication of my novel, OFF TRACK, from Lilley Press (http://www.lilleypress.com) in November of this year.

As a business owner, I operate Quist Interactive, Inc. (http://www.quist.net) where I develop web sites and multimedia for various clients of all sizes.

And as a crazy chili head, I run Jalapeno Madness (http://www.jalapenomadness.com) and Chili Pepper Madness (http://www.chilipeppermadness.com) where I go on and on and ON about hot peppers. It’s a fun hobby.

As a writer, what do you find is the most challenging part about crafting fiction, and how do you overcome it?

A: The hardest part for me is choosing the strongest ideas and losing interest in stories that I’ve started. I get so many ideas from everywhere. It’s impossible to tell them all. So rather than jumping into a story, I like to outline first. I can structure out several ideas and leave them sit in my story folder a while, then revisit them later. If, after a time, I still feel the initial excitement I felt when I got the idea, and if the outline feels strong, I’ll dig in.

My stories have become much stronger this way, and I’ve seen an increase in acceptances as well.

You are the co-editor of Graveside’s up-coming Halloween anthology Harvest Hill. Based on what you saw with submissions to that book, what advice would you give someone who’s new to submitting writing to an anthology?

A: We received a lot of great stories for the anthology. The biggest problem I found was the use of passive voice and some weak writing in general. Sentences need to grip the readers by the throat and throttle them into submission. Avoid “seemed to” and “began to” and other weak constructions. Activate as much as possible. There are cases where passive voice is called for, but as a general rule, verbs are the better choice.

I learned a lot about my own writing in working on this anthology.

Any personal experiences where you might’ve felt like a character in a horror novel?

A: I used to be an aggressive driver. I’m sure I pissed off a lot of people in the world, but several years ago I was nearly the victim of road rage. I cut off the wrong person and found myself chased through miles of I-88, zipping in and out of traffic, trying to shake the crazy bastard that wouldn’t let up. The guy was a pit bull and my ass was a lamb chop. My wife sat next to me, frozen, and I remember asking her if we still had the crowbar in the trunk because I felt it would probably come to that.

Luckily I found a sharp exit and cut out before the maniac could follow, but I did learn a lesson. I’m not quite so aggressive anymore on the road.

Writer’s block strikes sooner or later; are there any home remedies or writing exercises you use to stave off the dreaded curse?

A: I don’t get writer’s block. Outlining helps tremendously. I know some writers hate outlines, but if I know where I’m going, I have far more freedom to craft at the scene level, so creativity flourishes. At least for me. It’s more difficult with short fiction. This is why I love themed anthologies. They’re giving you an idea to work with. I’ve tried some fun tricks, though. Try these —

Choose two words at random from the dictionary to form the title of your story. I wrote and sold a story called “Flying Fish Rhapsody” this way. Weird combination of words. “Flying Fish” is apparently one word in my dictionary.

Take the first line of any story you admire and use it as your first line. Continue on. When the story is done, either change or drop the first line. I wrote “Boken” this way and it was accepted to “Our Shadows Speak, Vol 2″.

Still, just because a person doesn’t get writer’s block doesn’t mean everything they churn out is gold. You still need a strong internal editor.

Tell us more about your screenplay work.

A: I consider myself a screenwriter first. I love screenplays. I love the structure and the process. I am a collaborative writer and I believe that has helped me gain representation, because I love working on teams. VICTIM went through several drafts with notes from the producers before finally being filmed. I’ve written or co-written 4 other scripts for the same people in the same way. One of them is slated for production in early 2009, as long as everything goes according to plan, but things can easily change with the film industry. Still, it feels very positive and I’m quite hopeful it will happen, just as VICTIM happened.

VICTIM is still seeking a distribution channel, but these are the guys that made THE COOLER, CHAOS, RUNNING SCARED, and more, so I’m sure they’ll find the best deal for the movie. They spent a lot of money to make it, so they are motivated.

When the submission call went out for Beast Within, what was the first idea that came to mind? What made you choose the were-creature in your story?

A: I loved the concept and wanted to submit right away. I knew straight off that I didn’t want to sub a werewolf story. I figured there would be too much competition. I realize were-dogs aren’t so far off from wolves, but as I researched ideas, I came across some old Asian legends involving were-dogs, or Colugo Men, and knew immediately I’d landed on an idea. It all grew from there.

I also had a previous notion about how one might subdue a were-creature in order to witness the transformation first-hand. Combine it all, and you’ve got my story.

Could you give us a non-spoiler synopsis of your story Colugo Men?

A: Colugo Men is a revenge tale about a retired surgeon who loses his grandson, the only person left in his loveless life, to a were-dog attack. This surgeon concocts a meticulous plan of revenge, but must also convince the local sheriff that it truly was a were-dog that killed his grandson and not some wild animal. So he plots, and yes, his surgical skills do become key to the story.

Thanks, Michael!

And now, here’s an excerpt of Colugo Men from The Beast Within:

COLUGO MEN, BY MICHAEL J. HULTQUIST

My name is Earnest Price, and I am 86 years old. I am dying of cancer that started in my lungs and has spread to my brain and spinal cord. I have been bedridden for the past 6 months, and I foresee no chance of recovering even enough to walk to the bathroom and piss in a toilet. I’ll be dead in a week, and my jailers can toss me into the crematorium, but I’d like to plead my case one last time.

I am not a heartless murderer. In my life, I was a soldier. Absolutely, I’ve killed men, all in times of war, all in proud service to my country. I was a hunter. I’ve killed beasts that could rip your head off with one swipe. I was a doctor. I’ve healed far more men than I’ve killed, more than you can count. Healing and killing were the only things I was ever good at, the only things that made me feel whole inside. Holding someone else’s life in my hands, the control, the Godlike choice?yes, I found it intoxicating. But I am not guilty of the murder of Chu Muunokhoi, and I will stand by that statement until my dying day, which won’t be long now.

Chu Muunokhoi was not a man. Yes, I killed Chu Muunokhoi, and Chu Muunokhoi died in the cellar in 1980, but Chu Muunokhoi was not a man. Chu Muunokhoi was a Colugo Man. You’d probably better know that term as cynocephalus, or weredog.

Scoff if you will. I’d seen one before, long ago in my youth, while hunting in east Timor. The natives had killed one with a silver-tipped spear. They’d already set the creature’s body ablaze by the time I arrived, but its blood-soaked head sat atop the spear for all to see, impaled by the silvery blade. Its gore-matted fur shone brightly in the light of the full moon, as did its fearsome, flesh-ripping teeth. The locals were terrified of it, but to me it was nothing more than a larger, menacing dog. I would have written their fears off as foolish superstition, but when I woke the next morning, there was no dog head on the spear. In its place was the head of a man.

In the years that followed, I came to forget about the Colugo Man, even to convince myself that what I had seen was not real. How could it be real? I lost touch with those thoughts, until years later, when Chu Muunokhoi killed my grandson.

This was not long after my son, Edward, died in that car wreck. I loved Edward, but he was a stupid drunk, and being both stupid and a drunk will inevitably catch up with you. He wrapped himself around a tree going 90 after one of his all-night benders and got what he deserved. I realize this sounds cold and unsympathetic. The prosecutors hammered me for it, and it’s probably part of the reason I’ve been stuck in here the last 20-some-odd years, but it doesn’t matter now. I didn’t respect my son, and my son didn’t respect me. But since he was dead, that meant I was charged with the care of my grandson, David. It was David who changed my life.

David’s mother left him and Edward when David was a baby, and after Edward died, I contacted her to let her know David would need her, but she wanted nothing to do with him. I can’t imagine a woman giving birth to a child and having no connection with it, feeling no remorse for the abandonment. But that was the case, and I had no choice but to take David in.

I flew down for the funeral, paid for the service and the cremation. David insisted on picking out the urn, a bronze piece with deep black etchings. He gripped it to his chest for weeks afterward and morbidly kept it in his room. I often caught him staring at it with blank, tortured eyes, and I felt for him. David was a curious child. He showed a great aptitude for science, but I saw in him a certain sense of wanderlust and strength uncharacteristic of a boy his age. I saw myself in him. When David came into my home, with his wispy brown hair and his darting eyes, his probing nature, his powerful genetic resemblance reminding me of my own father, I found something in myself I’d lost. At the age of 60, I found purpose in someone other than myself.

Before long, I was thankful for David. I came to love him like I could never love my own son. With David, a connection grew between us I hadn’t anticipated. So when Chu Muunokhoi murdered him, I had no choice but to seek retribution.
I had moved David to the country by then, to a small community north of Harvest Hill, Tennessee. I was a retired surgeon living in Nashville when David entered my life, and the city wasn’t the ideal place to raise a boy his age. A ten-year-old needs open space and green fields, not the concrete confines of the city.

My sister, Constance, owned a small cottage on a twelve-acre lot a ways off the main highway, which by city terms wasn’t a highway at all but an occasionally traveled road with infrequent streetlights. The southern edge of the property butted up against a vast stretch of woods that spread outward in a pie-shape all the way to the county line. She left it to me in her will four years earlier, and I never had the heart to sell it. I considered it good fortune for David. He took to the place quickly. I enrolled him in the Harvest Hill middle school, and over the next six months, we began to heal from our mutual loss.

Our favorite activity was roaming the woods, the great, vast woods, bountiful with opportunity for exploration. We found sloping hills and fallen trees and lively fishing ponds. We found birds and bats and coyote tracks. David’s face lit up with each new discovery, and those smiles magnified my hopes for our future.
But Constance never told me about what lay beyond the woods. Today I understand. Too late for David, of course. Harvest Hill has a history with odd goings on, too much to tell. But now I know. There were several weredogs roaming the town from 1969 through 1980. You’d never believe it, but they’re more common than you’d think. They’re smart animals. Think about it. You’d have to be smart to co-exist with humanity and still be considered a folktale. The Chinese had their “Dog Jung” or “Colugo Men.” The Europeans called them “Cynocephali.” The American Indians called them “Shungmanitu Wa Chah.”
They stick to themselves mostly, feeding in the woods like other animals. Most people mistake them for coyotes on the rare occasions they encounter one. The night I encountered one in David’s bedroom, it was clearly no coyote.

That morning, David spent a long time in the woods. It was Saturday, Halloween. He’d risen early, before 4 am, and slipped out the back door. I figured he had himself a secret out there, a special fort to build, a hole to dig, or a trail to explore. I heard him go but said nothing. I could tell he was working extra hard to keep quiet, so I let him believe he’d done a good job. I’ve had secrets myself, and I thought the woods were safe enough for him to make a solo excursion.

But he stayed out too long, and I grew concerned. Still, I waited. At 6 am, with the sun just coming up through the trees, he returned. I confronted him to ask what he’d been doing out so early in the morning. He looked visibly shaken.

“Are you all right?” I asked him.
“I’m okay,” he replied, but I could tell it was a lie.
“Were you exploring?”
“Yes,” he said. “I found the perfect place.”
“For what?”
“To bury my Dad.”

It was time to say goodbye, he said, but his lips quivered and his eyes darted toward the open window, toward the woods.
“Something was watching me out there,” he said.
“What?” I asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t see anything, but I could tell it was there.”

Here I made my critical error. I should have trusted him. As a hunter, I should have recognized the signs. I should have understood David might have the same intuition I had about such things, about being stalked by a predator. But no ?
“Probably a raccoon,” I told him. “They tend to roam in the darkness.”
David nodded. I drew him to me, and we hugged each other, not knowing it would be for the last time.

That evening, I took David into town for trick-or-treating. I hoped it would take his mind off his father. He created his own costume from objects in my closet: an old stethoscope, a tattered surgical smock, some bandages from a leftover first aid kit. He was a young doctor. I beamed. We marched door to door amidst the groups of other children, David collecting a small bounty of candy in his pillowcase while I waited by the curb, watching him with a smile.

Back home, David went to his room with his candy. I stood on the porch before the measureless woods. Yes, the moon was fat and full, so huge you could almost reach up and poke it with your finger. David ate Halloween candy and eventually fell asleep while I drank a snifter of 20-year-old cognac. I thought of Edward, and of my sister. I thought of my wife who died so long ago. I thought of all the people in my life that had passed on. Such morbid thoughts for an old man’s head, at the precise moment the Colugo Man murdered and devoured David in his bed.

Throughout history they have existed in folklore and nightmares…

By day they walk among us, hidden in plain sight. They are our neighbors and friends. But when the sun sets and the full moon rises, the beast within comes out…

And the hunt begins.

Grab a silver bullet and prepare yourself for 20 tales of animalistic terror crafted by authors from around the world. Travel across the ages and go beyond the myth to discover the horrific secrets of the werebeasts. See what lurks in the swamps of Florida; sprint across the rooftops of London in a deadly chase; follow an unfortunate soldier’s footsteps into the forests of Africa; find pity for a wounded soul who has yet to realize the full nature of his powers. These stories and others are ready to take you through a series of bone-snapping transformations that will make you howl for more.

From ancient cultures to the high-tech future, nowhere is safe from the shape-shifting bloodlust of The Beast Within.

The Beast Within Final TOC

The Claws of Native Ghosts by Lee Battersby
Like Cat and Dog by Michael Stone
Gift of the Bouda by Rick Farnsworth
Hatchet Job by John C. Caruso
Yard Sale by Norma Lehr
Desert Heart by William D Carl
Let’s All Welcome The New Guy by Raoul Wainscoting
Beached by Joel A Sutherland
Needs to be Met by Mark W Coulter
Some Touch of Pity by Gary A BraunBeck
The Night John Fell by Richard Moore
Okie Werewolf Seeks Love by Steven Wedel
The Marine by John Palisano
Lure of the Wolf by Belea T Keeney
SQ 389 by David W Hill
Crop Frogs by Gina Ranalli
Of Silver Bullets and Golden Teeth by Trent Hergenrader
By the Light of a Silvery Moon by Vince Churchill
Colugo Men by Mike Hultquist
The Immaculate Conception by Matt Hults

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