West Side Story

Ever wonder what happened to Chino and Maria after that final scene in West Side Story? I took a stab (sorry, Tony) at telling their tale in “Doc’s at Midnight,” a new short story published in Midnight Hour: A Chilling Anthology of Crime Fiction, edited by Abby L. Vandiver and published by Crooked Lane Press.

I proudly share pages with Tracy Clark, David Heska Wanbli Weiden, Abby L. Vandiver, Callie Browning, Frankie Y. Bailey, E. A. Aymar, Valerie Burns, Delia Pitts, Faye Snowden, Jennifer Chow, H-C Chan, Gigi Pandian, Tina Kashian, Elizabeth Wilkerson, Stella Oni, Marla Bradeen, Christopher Chambers, Rhonda Crowder, and Raquel V. Reyes.

Midnight Hour strikes 11/9/21! Here is an excerpt:

Thirty indoor and outdoor venues on sixteen acres, an acropolis of the arts. Squatting broadly on what used to be called San Juan Hill, where African-Americans and Puerto Ricans once tried to live until they were eminent domained out. A pair of star-crossed fools meet again in misadventure involving blackmail and murder, the continuance of a story that started decades before. The woman limos through two hours of traffic to be here. The man is already there, waiting, pushing a hand cart stacked with boxes of light bulbs.
     When she turns and sees him, nothing happens.
     She looks right through him, doesn’t register the hand cart. She wears a dark purple trench coat, a black dress underneath, a large quilted leather bag. Her eyes do not want to settle on him. Perhaps she does not recognize him. To be fair, it has been forty-something years since the trial, and he may look a bit different now, thicker skin on the wide, swarthy face he was once both conceited about and ashamed of. But his hair has never been better.