Hashtag, A Novel
Hashtag (a novel) – 280 Steps

A twisted and sinister crime story with characters and a world you'll be clawing for more of from the author of DIRTBAGS.

Dirtbags, A Novel
Dirtbags (a novel) – Immortal Ink

In the southern town of Lake Castor, the old mill closed, and jobs vanished. But Calvin Cantrell doesn't care for those jobs anyway. Instead, he dreams of becoming a famous serial killer… Calvin's dreams begin. And so do Lake Castor's nightmares…

It's Morning Again in Lake Castor, by Eryk Pruitt
It's Morning Again in Lake Castor (short fiction) – Fast Women and Neon Lights

…A wild criminal romp inspired by eighties crime movies and television shows, as well as the wacky, over-the-top eighties style and aesthetic…

Short Stories at Great Jones Street
The Hoo-Doo of Sweet Mama Rosa, November, Them Riders and Knockout (short fiction) – Great Jones Street

We ask award-winning writers to recommend their favorite stories by their favorite writers. Then we get that story and ask that writer the same question. Rinse, repeat. 1,000 times a year

The Last Time We Saw Bears in Lake Castor, by Eryk Pruitt
The Last Time We Saw Bears in Lake Castor (short fiction) – Thuglit Issue 19

Gil Tanner had driven the road past the hollows that afternoon. Said wasn't nothing in those woods except for turkey buzzards and county police. "Whoever they found in those hollers is dead as nails…

I'm the only hell my mama ever raised in the Anthology, Mama Tried, by Eryk Pruitt
I'm The Only Hell My Mama Ever Raised (short fiction) – Mama Tried
Crime Fiction Inspired by Outlaw Country Music

The woman caught Donnie Ray off guard. She never so much as said her name, nor offered her hand to shake. No sooner had she laid eyes on him than she stomped across the asphalt in front of his momma's house and threw wild a finger to his face…

Love That Don't Quit, by Eryk Pruitt
Love That Don't Quit (short fiction) – The Haunted Traveler

You catch flashes of her as she crosses the kitchen, from one side to the other. As she clangs and scrapes and gathers, you check out the rest of the room. Look for egress. Door, just over your shoulder. Door to your right. but…

Knockout, flash fiction
Bedtime Story (flash fiction) – Out of the Gutter

There's but a sliver of light in the hallway and you frown, because she was long ago told to shut off the light. But that frown melts quickly away, because you love her and everything that makes her what she is and, more likely, what she will be…

Sixteenths, short fiction
Sixteenths (short fiction) – Yellow Mama

You always loved her arms. Slices of ivory wrapping themselves around you. Sharp, jagged shoulders around which you could run your tongue as you made love. Skin untouched by time or elements…

Knockout, flash fiction
Knockout (flash fiction) – Out of the Gutter
Knockout was a finalist for a 2014 Derringer Award in the category of Best Flash Fiction

A person's phone tells you a lot about them… these days, phones carry so much more information. Say they're on Facebook, then you can find out what interests they have…

The Joe Flacco Defense, short fiction
The Joe flacco Defense (short fiction) – Dark Corners

The blood puddled beneath her husband, then slithered between the kitchen floor tiles she had only last week regrouted. Another reason to hate him, although she'd long lost count.

Roadkill Blues, short fiction
Roadkill Blues (short fiction) – Pulpcore – GERMAN

Chad sah den Toten zuerst. Er lag bäuchlings zwischen einem riesigen Kuhfladen und einem der Betonpfeiler unter der Brücke. Sein rechter Arm war komplett ausgestreckt, ein einzelner knochiger Finger ragte in die Höhe.

The Jackoff, short fiction
The Jackoff (short fiction) – Pulp Modern #8

Jack screamed loud as he could, but not near loud enough. Not over all the assholes in the world out there on the street, catcalling and hooting and hollering. Horns honking and a siren here or there.

Miscellany, short fiction podcast
Miscellany (short fiction) – Podcast read by Eryk Pruitt

You had to go no further than Tompkins himself to hear how dramatic things were or weren't. For more than a year after, folks would get held up in line while trying to buy eggs or Lotto tickets…

Town and Gown
Town and Gown (short fiction) – Page and Spine

Horace Moncrief had mown clear up one end of his yard and down the other and was ready to go after the patch on the side when he saw the dog get hit by the car…

Blood Levee, short fiction
Blood Levee (short fiction) – Pulpwood Fiction

On the third night of rain, we reckoned about thirteen or so negroes were gone. No belongings, no bodies, just gone. First thing come to mind was the river took them. After all, it'd taken everything else…

If God's with the Grey, short fiction
If God's with the Grey (short fiction) – The Realm Beyond #5

"I smell pickles," said the girl. Reverend Wheeler thought no one else to be awake. The child's voice jarred him and he woke immediately, knocking his head against the wall of the cave… "I smell pickles."…

Acquired Angel, short fiction
Acquired Angel (short fiction) – Blood Moon Rising Magazine #56

The smile immediately returned to his face, the smile he reserved for weird old ladies with strange dietary restrictions or eccentric little people who said more than intended…

Taking a Half Day, flash fiction
Taking a Half Day (flash fiction) – Vignettes from the End of the World – Apokrupha Press

She pounded on his door, demanded he open up, let her in. She meant well, but he had no intention of letting her in…

Houston, short fiction
Houston (short fiction) – Thuglit Issue #10

Only hours earlier, I had given Kyle Karver one specific instruction: "Do not take your eyes off the money until you have the weed."…

What Brutal Had Sown, short fiction
What Brutal Had Sown (short fiction) – The Monarch Review

The first time she done it was to bury her daddy. There may have been other ways to go about it, but Rhonda McCloster didn't have the means or, more importantly, the wherewithal…

Miscellany, short fiction
Miscellany (short fiction) – Plan B Magazine

You had to go no further than Tompkins himself to hear how dramatic things were or weren't. For more than a year after, folks would get held up in line while trying to buy eggs or Lotto tickets…

The HooDoo of Sweet Mama Rosa, short fiction
The HooDoo of Sweet Mama RosaZymbol – OUT OF PRINT

The HooDoo of Sweet Mama Rosa was adapted into a short film. It is currently in post production.

Further South, short fiction
Further South (short fiction) – Severest Inks

Meet Melinda… a badass, .22–carrying college student battling a destructive meth addiction whilst on the run from her junkie boyfriend, campus drug dealer Sam Tuley…

Biloxi, 1979, flash fiction
Biloxi, 1979 (flash fiction) – Shotgun Honey

I stretch out my arm toward her and the ruckus raises another octave. She's looking at the gun. She can't believe it. I drop it. It crash lands at the table next to what used to be her husband's head…

Claws, short fiction
Claws (short fiction) – Attack of the B Movie Monsters Anthology – Grinning Skull Press

Vern Herman took a right just past the end of the state highway and headed his pickup south down a bumpy, dirt road, into the swamplands…

Druthers, short fiction
Druthers (short speculative fiction) – Nuclear Town USA Anthology – Dreamscape Press

John Paul crouched lower behind the boulder and squinted, stared hard across a grove of beeches until certain he had indeed saw what had to be the first living human he'd seen in over three months…

November, short fiction
November (short fiction) – Pulp Modern #6

For what seemed a long time, there weren't no place further from Dallas than the piney woods of Lufkin. That November — the one in sixty–three — all us Texans suddenly got lumped together…

Them Riders, short fiction
Them Riders (short fiction) – Southern Gothic Anthology – New Lit Salon Press

Wilbur Turgow dropped the dew–soaked newspaper and stared hell–fire toward the neighbor's yard…He hoped to high heaven they heard his footseps shouting across the way long before he made the front door…

Scoop, the series
Scoop (the series) – Pantheon Magazine

Miles Del Riccio stepped out onto his front lawn as the sun peekd over the horizon and was surprised to see his newspaper waiting for him. “That's a first,” he muttered. Miles normally checked the lawn, found nothing, and angrily dressed himself for work…

Brigade by Eryk Pruitt
Brigade (short fiction) – Trysts of Fate

Solandra Sinclair was one in a million. Everything about her, so uniquely different. Even her name: Solandra Sinclair. The perfect combination of sibilance and alliteration, as if she were some carefully crafted sentence from a romantic novelist's back pocket…

A Way Yet To Go, short fiction
A Way Yet to Go (short fiction) – Brief Grislys

The book ended no different this time than it had the previous seven times he'd read it. Nor did the remaining television episode. Those never do. They followed a simple scientific formula: a daily routine interrupted and, in a pre–formatted time frame, sanity must be restored…

Those Who Help Themselves, short fiction
Those Who Help Themselves (short fiction) – The Speculative Edge

A woman shielded her baby from the rain. Damn thing howled and hollered and I nodded in her direction, as if to say I understood. She answered by pulling a cell phone charger from her purse and wrapping the cord around the child's throat…

An Afternoon with the Parkinsons, short fiction
An Afternoon with the Parkinsons (short fiction) – Avalon Literary Review – OUT OF PRINT

A car full of jailbait whizzed past like a rocket and beeped its horn until it screamed up and down the neighborhood. Their high-pitched wails could be heard until they were long gone.
"That's my dad," said Peter…

Coda, short fiction
Coda (short story) – Mad Scientist Journal

The specimen is Sam Tuley, chosen not just for his overzealous sex drive, penchant for alcohol and violence, and inability to make the most of a second chance, but rather because, try as he might, he will forever be damned to a hospital bed with tubes going in and out of him. This is where I found him. This is where our journey began…
This was my first published story.