By Hank Cotton
The Ugly Duckling
Hank Cotton, a Hotshot Truck Driver, doesn't know that he’s picked up an unlikely passenger.
In this, his debut story–our hero Hank Cotton, is tasked with getting not only a travel trailer from Indiana to Florida; but also Jenny Deal, a thirteen year old runaway that’s been kidnapped and forced to perform as a sex worker.
Will Hank be able to out run her pimp, and out smart the crooked Alabama lawmen looking to stop him?
Find out how Jenny got in this mess–whether Brooke, Hank’s wife will understand why he’s got an underage sex worker with him, and whether Hank is able to get his cargo delivered safely in this novelette length story titled, The Ugly Duckling.
By G.L. Merritt
Opera Rose and Other Devotions
Opera Rose and Other Devotions is a triptych of a life—Southern-rooted, grief-marked, and stubbornly alive.
Before she was Gray, she was Grace. A girl who learned early how to care for everyone else, how to keep her own heart tucked away beneath layers of old paint. Home was always a moving target—a series of temporary arrangements: a suitcase at a cousin’s house, an empty bed, a makeshift safe place of bean bags and Christmas lights.
In The Bluff, a young girl stands on the edge of something she doesn’t yet understand—watching the boy she loves dance with gravity, already learning how to survive.
In Headstone, a woman finally opens herself to love—and discovers that healing doesn’t mean you won’t be asked to pay for it. What follows is not just grief, but the unraveling of everything she thought she had already sorted through.
In Opera Rose, she is left with what remains: memory, ritual, and the quiet, deliberate choice to feel again—or retreat into the safety of what she knows.
This is a story about midlife becoming—not the kind that announces itself, but the kind that happens quietly, in kitchens, in cars, in the space between who you were and who you’re still becoming.
It’s for the keepers of prayer candles, the makers of analog mixtapes, and anyone who has ever had to learn that human emotion doesn’t run your life—it runs beside it. And that is more than okay.
By Rick West
First Light
A man comes back to the place he once escaped, chasing a feeling he can’t quite name and doesn’t fully trust. The beach hasn’t changed much—same salt air, same slow mornings—but the people have. One woman carries the weight of a past that never settled; the other stands rooted in the present, sharp-eyed and harder to read. What begins as coincidence tightens into something else entirely—money moving in quiet currents, decisions made just off the record, a sense that the ground beneath it all is less stable than it looks. Jake doesn’t go looking for trouble. He just walks into it like it’s been waiting.
As a storm builds in the Gulf, the lines between loyalty, desire, and survival begin to blur. What starts as rivalry shifts into something more dangerous—and more honest—between the two women, leaving Jake caught in a gravity he can’t control. The hurricane becomes both clock and judge, bearing down on a town where everyone knows just enough to stay silent. And when they finally leave—at first light—it’s not escape. It’s reckoning. Because some places don’t let you go clean. They let you leave… and then they follow.
By Rick West
When The Boogeyman Comes Calling
"When the Boogeyman Comes Calling" is designed to help you navigate the darker parts of your psyche that inevitably haunt you after you have been wounded by someone you loved. The message is clear; face the beast, transform it into a partner, find ways to minimize the damage, learn from it all, and move on.
Our biggest fears come calling in the otherwise quiet night. They come into our awareness unexpectedly and unwantedly, much like the mythical Boogeyman from kids' tales. However, the adult Boogeyman is far more accurate and much scarier than the fairy stories that parents tell kids to get them to “act right”. The Boogeyman we see is the personification of our fears, insecurities, anger, remorse – the bitterness and negativity that tends to follow a “failed” relationship.
Finding yourself suddenly alone is a brutal shock, but it’s also an opportunity to learn and grow. We examine the tumultuous, often ridiculous emotions that arise when a significant relationship ends. We explore how to be alone, how to manage our feelings, find solace in isolation, remain calm in the face of difficulty, and, in the end, proceed with bravery and elegance.
It doesn’t matter what happened, or how, or why. That’s a story to share with your friends, or a stranger on a plane. Assigning blame is a huge barrier to recovery. This guide is about you, not the other. They are gone. In general, it’s best to simply let them go and not look back. If children are involved, or a business, or mingled assets, it may be impractical to simply walk away. But, when someone disrespects you, or becomes indifferent to you, move on. Run, don’t walk.
So, this guide is not about finding reasons to blame the other. It’s about staring down your negative emotions and converting them into an ally. The beast is certain to pay you a visit. This book is about how to handle that moment and move on.
Southern Writers Guild
We are the Southern Writers’ Guild: a deliberate assembly of stubborn scribes—poets, novelists, essayists, playwrights, journalists, songwriters—who stake our claim on this tangled South, by blood or by choice or by some inexplicable pull that won’t let go.