From the author: Zomb Valley was created specifically for a flash fiction challenge. The challenge was a 1200 word limit about unicorn zombies. Sounds crazy, right? Of course it does but we all need a little challenge from time to time, that’s why I wrote it. Well that and the heckling dares of a fifteen year old.The cover is mixed media and was a gift from the late Tex Henson. The poem 'We're Unicorns' was published in Interior Verse Plus Pose Prose & Poems. I confess this is not my usual forte and exhausts the scope of my unicorn knowledge but it was fun and that should always be at the heart of reading and writing.

Reviews from the Beta Group: “I count myself lucky to have been included in the small group of beta readers who got a sneak peek at these shorts before the rest of the world.  Not in any particular order: Ms. Hill presents a compilation of two flash fiction thrillers with Scary Man Bridge and Telephone Frenzy. The first being a 1000 word (she may have cut it to 999) exposé of a middle aged man who delights in playfully frightening little girls until confronted with his own fable. The latter is a 500 word masterpiece for word count equaling a complete and riveting story of a woman pushed over the edge by a pre-recorded telephone solicitation. Roses From Ishmael is a short tale that begins with a blue collar worker buying flowers and beer on his way home after an apparent spat and concludes with. Oops, don’t want to spoil it. Just know it is deliciously twisted. Odd Man Out is an emotional short told in first person by a young woman/girl with a morbid fondness for cemeteries. Lastly this little book concludes with a poem titled Would You Know Me. One does not have to be a lover of poetry to appreciate the story told in quirky limerick. Best wishes Ms. Hill, I suspect you and Joe will have an international hit on your hands.” L.B January  

Between the stock market crash, a rich man’s greed and the Navarro County drought an indentured slave is left with few [if any] choices. Jamison Baines Weir is born the son of a sharecropper where hard times and sorrow are a way of life. It is a way of life Jamie never questions until famine and malice force him to leave the dying farm and follow a path that leads to murder and mystery.

All eyes were on Wall Street, but truth be told, the market crash paled in comparison to the Navarro County drought. 

A Form of Free Slavery?
Sharecroppers were provided land for farming, shelter for their family, equipment and credit for living expenses until the harvest. The sharecropper provided labor - his only resource. After the harvest they settled up, the landowner received three-fourths of the profit and the sharecropper one fourth. Of course the sharecropper's share went toward paying his credit bill and often he was left owing so he had little choice but to stay on the farm, do it again and try to produce more so he could get out of debt, but debt was always waiting at the end of the row.  

The Great Depression

Mr. Blymer is the proud owner of a luscious peach orchard but he's also a greedy cantankerous sort. The peach Orchard Ogre is a humorous colloquial short story for all ages told by an East Texas author.

Colloquial
Humor Review:

Picking up where book one left off Unjustified Favor continues with the O'Bromley, Turner and Latrull families sorting through secrets, dealing with death and suspended in the supernatural.

Inside a small hospital, in a rural Texas town there is a peculiar camaraderie evolving.  Clara O’Bromley (fresh out of college) is assigned to ICU, which is no small feat. She has her supervisor, Linda Latrull to thank for that, and for placing her under the direction of a foul-mouthed debutante named Maggie Turner. Maggie is happy to take the young nurse under her wing until she learns that Clara can read more than EKG's. Clara herself is unaware of this ability until she sees into the past; a past Maggie and Linda both have gone to great lengths to hide.

A young man desperate for work and independence finds himself employed in a rural nursing home.

When young Jason gets too close to a resident (a self-proclaimed KGB spy who is under the watchful eye of an agent known only as Chandler) he finds his only way out is in.

Based on a true story.

Savannah Dawn has dreams too. But she mostly dreams of a life without nightmares.

Where it all began and how it all went wrong.

Cloud Wrangler takes the Clan Destiny series to a new level, literally!

Book IV expounds the mystery as well as the history of the enigmatic Duffy MacDougal as well as the woman he loved and the daughter no one knew he had.

Have you ever wondered what is on the other side of a dream, if angels are real or what a rainbow looks like up close?

Cecilia knows.

Janna Hill expounds on the original short story, Hard Candy with Strudel and Tea.   

After a holiday wrought with tragedy, Kathy finds herself desperate, crippled and depressed with only her old companion, Strudel, to see her through.

*Perpetual Darkness is told from the man's perspective; this is his side of the story. Max Hubbard is a drifter and like most transients he prefers living a life of anonymity. That is until he lays eyes on Abigail. "He merely followed his instinct, not giving any thought as to why he watched her."
*Perpetual Spring is told from the woman's point of view; this is her side of the story. After being forced into early retirement Abigail leaves Missouri and settles in the quiet countryside of La Grange. It's in this sleepy landscape she finds herself strangely attracted to the man who is watching her. "Some might consider him a stalker but she preferred to think of him as a guardian of sorts." Is this another Romeo and Juliet? No, but a tragic romance nonetheless.

*Door Number Four: Donald S. Crowley was a CPA by day; a bean counter; a number cruncher and a certified bore. By night he was as stimulating as the hero in his latest read with all the social skills of a brick and to make matters worse he was in love with a door. Not just any door, number four was special. Her alluring smile had caught Donald's eye when he was just a boy and she called him by name. Despite years of therapy and medications she still called to him. Now he would risk his life to see her again and to finally know what lay behind Door Number III.

Looking back: It is like sitting in the third row seat of an old station wagon, staring ahead at the road behind you...

It is not enough to sit in the front seat and see where you were going – you didn't know anyway. To understand how you got here you have to look at where you have been.

In that third row seat facing backwards you might be tempted to stare at the floorboard or the marks on your shoes or the stripes on the asphalt that never seem to end, but don't. To understand you must look up, look back and accept the scenery for what it was.

When the pain and fury and fear rise up --  remember it is only a hill in the distance, you have already passed over. That queasy feeling in your stomach is no more than a sour memory.