Books by Eric Douglas

Thriller fiction and Non-fiction

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    • Return to Cayman: Paradise Held Hostage
    • Heart of the Maya: Murder for the Gods
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      • WV Voices of War / Common Valor
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    • Dive-abled: The Leo Morales Story
    • Keep on, Keepin’ On: A Breast Cancer Story
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Stingy Jack-o-lantern and the will-o-the-wisp

October 31, 2016 By Eric Douglas

jack-o-lantern and Halloween flash fiction

Research into the origins of the jack-o-lantern for my weekly newspaper column inspired the following pieces of Halloween flash fiction. It brought me to tales of the original Jack-o-lantern and the will-o-the-wisp. Both stories are conversations. The first involves medieval man encountering the will-o-the-wisp. The second speaks to the legend of the Jack-o-lantern itself.

If you want to read the column, you can find it here.

 

A light in the distance

Is that a traveler ahead? I can’t quite make him out.

It must be. I see his light. It keeps moving.

I don’t know why anyone is out on a dark night like this.

We’re out.

Yes, but not by our choice.

Call to him. Maybe he will guide us.

I did, but he doesn’t answer. He seems to keep moving away from us.

Hurry along. We’ll catch up to him. We’ll be safer traveling together. We don’t know these roads and our light is failing.

The road ahead is getting soft.

The traveler made it this way, didn’t he?

 

Stingy Jack

You’ve tricked me, Jack. Not many men can say that.

Don’t be embarrassed, Devil. Not many men are like me.

In spite of those you’ve cheated, for releasing me, I promise I won’t take you to Hell when you die.

Then it’s to heaven for me?

Well, no. I promise I won’t take you to Hell. But He didn’t say He would take you in, either.

What’s to become of me?

You’ll walk the earth for eternity. As a boon, I’ll give you a burning ember to light your way.

How will I carry it?

In a pumpkin, of course.

 

This is the fourth year for Halloween fiction and flash fiction. You can read the previous years, and stories from other writers who participated in my annual call for stories, on the Free Fiction page.


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Filed Under: Adventure, Books, New Releases

2016 Halloween Flash Fiction Collection

October 31, 2016 By Eric Douglas

2016-10-24-19-05-49A few of my writer friends agreed to submit their own 100 word Halloween Flash Fiction stories for your entertainment. The challenge of writing flash fiction is to tell a story, to illicit a reaction, while using exactly 100 words. It’s a fun and interesting writing challenge. What is not said is just as important as what you do say. Probably even more so.

Follow the links and read the various submissions. Every writer goes about this a different way. You’ll like some, hate others and be totally creeped out by at least one, if you let your imagination take over.

If you want to read previous collections of Halloween stories, or longer scary stories, visit my Free Fiction page.

Check back throughout the day as more stories come in.

My two stories are

A light in the distance

Stingy Jack

Patrick Newman

Stu’s Halloween Dive

JD Byrne

“All the Wishes” – Another Very Short Story

Loren Eaton: I Saw Lightning Fall

The Everlasting Arms

 


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Filed Under: Books, New Releases

Call for Halloween Flash Fiction

October 18, 2016 By Eric Douglas

Think you can make someone’s skin crawl in 100 words? No more, no less? It’s that time again. Get working on your Halloween flash fiction for the 2016 Halloween Flash Fiction Collection.

The rules are simple: Write a flash fiction piece, about Halloween, and post it to your own website/blog by October 31. When you do, send me the link. On All Hallows Eve I will post the links to all of the stories I receive on my website.

No payment, this is just for fun. And I won’t be approving or editing the stories. That’s why it goes on your own site/blog. You take responsibility for it.

If you want to see the previous three years’ worth of collections, you can find them on my Free Fiction page.

Now, get to work and have fun with this writing challenge.

(Share this with anyone who you think might be interested.)

Filed Under: Adventure, New Releases

Diving flash fiction

August 30, 2016 By Eric Douglas

There are times when writing a book makes a writer lazy. When you have 80,000 to 100,000 words to tell a story, you can take your time. A bigger challenge is writing a story that has characters, plot and suspense in 1000, 500 or even 100 words. It becomes just as important what you leave out as what you put in. You leave it up to the readers to use their imagination to fill in the blanks and decide what happened.

The following flash fiction pieces were written for another project, but they never got used. Rather than rot in a metaphorical drawer, I’m sharing them here. Just because.

The first piece is a flash fiction detail from my novel Cayman Cowboys, set on Grand Cayman. The second is an original Flash Fiction piece. Both are 200 words.

From Cayman Cowboys

Groggy from the blow to his head, Kelly took stock of his surroundings. Waking up on the cold metal bench, he guessed he was in a chamber. He couldn’t see much through the portholes in the steel compartment, but he knew he was underwater. How did he get here? How was he going to get out?

Kelly didn’t know if anyone was coming for him so he decided to swim for the surface and pray he could make it. The diving bell’s air supply was off so he didn’t have a choice. He could suffocate where he was. He could drown in the water. Or, he could make it. He had one in three chances, but he had to give it a shot.

The sun was rising outside and he could see just a bit more through the portholes. The vague morning light didn’t tell him much. He could just make out the reef below him, but he could be in 20 feet of water or 90.

Kelly stilled himself, and did his best to slow his heart rate. He could tell the air in the bell was getting stale. It was time to go. He had nothing to lose.

Watery grave

IMG_2850.jpg“Shipwrecks creep me out a little bit,” Rick said as he assembled his dive gear.

“Why?”

“It feels like someone’s watching me. I get the feeling that there are ghosts.”

“You don’t have anything to worry about,” Greg lied to his new dive buddy. They had just met and Greg didn’t want to miss the dive for some silly superstition. “This is an artificial reef. No one died on board. It was completely empty when it went down.”

Satisfied, Rick followed Greg to the swim step. Descending along the anchor chain to the bow of the wreck, Rick felt uneasy. The water was warm and visibility was good, but he felt a chill. He could clearly see the hole in the hull of the cargo ship in front of him. It had been torpedoed.

Rick was mad at Greg for lying, but he knew his new friend was right. There were no ghosts on board the ship. He was just being silly. He followed Greg through the pilot house and then they turned toward an interior corridor. Rick hesitated, but decided to stay with his buddy.

It was the last decision he would ever make. Neither body was ever recovered.

Filed Under: Adventure, Books, Diving, New Releases

Locations from the novella ‘Oil and Water’

August 15, 2016 By Eric Douglas

oil and water 6 lowAll of the Mike Scott novels and novella are set in real locations, places you can find on a map. With one exception, they are also places I have visited and spent time exploring. (A section of Wreck of the Huron takes place in Cuba on the Isle of Pines and I haven’t been there. Yet.)

Each of the following photos represents a scene in the latest Mike Scott novella Oil and Water. It is set on the beautiful western Caribbean island of Curacao. Read the story and then check out the photos to imagine yourself there!

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Page 9

 

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Photo of me diving in Curacao, by Lynn Bean. Page 17
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Page 58
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Page 58
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Page 72
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Page 72
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Page 80
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Page 85
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Page 94

Filed Under: Adventure, Books, Diving, New Releases, Photography, Travel

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