What I did during the pandemic: I was lucky enough to be invited to contribute to two projects.

The first was an exquisite corpse story I read about on Twitter. Steve Weddle and Nick Kolakowski wrangled the writers. Each of us had to write a chapter based on the preceding writers’ chapters. As Steve wrote: “The topic was this: Not pandemic. The idea was to be an entertainment, a temporary escape from the daily news statistics. The authors were told ‘Have fun.’”

Contributors included (not in order): Nick Kolakowski, Steve Golds, Richie Narvaez, Andrew Case, Beau Johnson, R. Daniel Lester, Terri Coop, James Hannah, Dan Fiore, Scott Adlerberg, Alec Cizak, Jason Beech, Eryk Pruitt, Jason Butkowski, S.A. Cosby, Michael Paul Gonzalez, Jerry Bloomfield, Tom Leins, Steve Weddle, E.A. Aymar, Seamus Heffernan, Matt Phillips, Ben LeRoy, Chad Rohrbacher, and Lein Shory.

You can download the whole corpse here. See if you can guess which chapter I did. . . . Yes, you’re right, Chapter 14.

I was also asked to contribute to an anthology of covid-related stories called Lockdown, edited by Nick Kolakowski and Steve Weddle. Proceeds from the anthology will go to support the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (BINC), as it seeks to help booksellers recover from the covid-19 crisis.

The premise is this: “A mysterious virus sweeps across the country, mutating rapidly as it jumps from person to person. Cities are locked down. The skies are clear as all planes are grounded. Some people panic, while some go to heroic lengths to save those they love–and others use the chaos as an opportunity to engage in purest evil. In Lockdown, 19 of today’s finest suspense, horror, and crime writers explore how humanity reacts to the ultimate pandemic.”

Contributors include: Hector Acosta, Scott Adlerberg, Ann Dávila Cardinal, V. Castro Angel Luis Colon, Jen Conley, Terri Lynn Coop, S.A. Cosby, Alex DiFrancesco, Michelle Garza/Melissa Lason, Rob Hart, Gabino Iglesias, Nick Kolakowski, Richie Narvaez, Cina Pelayo, Renee Asher Pickup, Eryk Pruitt, Johnny Shaw, and Steve Weddle.