I’m in the process of breaking out each state of the 6 or so along Route 66 and publishing the resulting shorter books as e-books with the names “Ghostly Tales of Oklahoma: Route 66,” etc.

Some time ago (2008) I wrote all of Volumes II and III of “Ghostly Tales of Route 66” for Bruce Carlsen of Quixote Press. Volume I was supposed to have been a collaboration with another writer, but this other writer did not take the task as seriously as I did and was fond of writing 50-word stories, while I was writing 5,000 word stories, which I was traveling to research. I also was getting feedback from Dr. Barbara Croft’s short story class at the University of Chicago, and the writers in that class were fantastic (unlike the help I was supposed to be getting.) In fact, while researching the famous Resurrection Mary ghost tale at Resurrection Cemetery and taking pictures, I lost my watch, which had a faulty catch.

The collaborator, by contrast, told me he was “going to write all mine from my living room” and also said, “Bruce will put a cover on anything.” I don’t think the latter is true, but the former sure was. And this person did not own a computer at the time, so good luck on research. Unfortunately for me, with his 50-word stories about shoveling skeletons (!), he was in charge of layout and subsequently put his name on MY story about Resurrection Mary.

I had written said story and submitted (just MY name on it, because just I wrote it) said story to the Chicago “Tribune’s” scary story contest held near Halloween, well before the publication of the Ghostly Tales books. The story rose to the top 3% (top 24 out of 800 entries), but did not win the competition, since that depended on locals voting for it, and I live in East Moline.

Still, it was a nice honor and the story ran  in the “Tribune” with my byline and nobody else’s. However, the collaborator had the nerve, during the layout (which he was in charge of) to put HIS name alongside mine on my “scary story,” despite having written none of it, and has maintained that it is also his story, which it is not.

Subsequently, we had a rather large disagreement over the appropriate way to give attribution in a short story collection. My contention, after getting a look at his contribution(s), and seeing HIS name on MY story: “You put YOUR name on YOUR stories; I’ll put MY name on MY stories.” [His big claim to ownership was that he had mentioned this ghost story to me. Actually, EVERYBODY in Chicago had mentioned this story to me.]

Things went  downhill quickly after that, with the same would-be “collaborator” claiming authorship of my Quad City Times reviews that were published in the local newspaper when he was 8 years old, and actually having the additional nerve to say that he had typed them up, when the truth is that I nearly typed my fingers bloody and wrote all the trivia in the book “It Came from the 70s: From The Godfather to Apocalypse Now.”

Recently, he sold his usual line of bilge to Amazon, claiming ownership of my Resurrection Mary story because his name was on it (because HE put his name on it, over my objections, and it was too late to remove it by the time I found out.) Amazon subsequently “blocked” the book from publication, although it can be re-published if I remove that story—and I have a later version of the story that I wrote for “Hellfire & Damnation II,” so that can happen, also. I’ve stubbornly refused to remove it, so far, but a different publisher pointed out that I could use the version I wrote for “Hellfire & Damnation II,” and I’m considering that option.

However, meanwhile, it seems fairly logical to “break out” each state I wrote stories for, individually, before putting in a later version of my “Resurrection Mary” story. This way, there will be either 6 or 7 books, rather than just one.

The e-book is only up with and by permission of the paperback publisher, Quixote Press. They certainly are well aware of the book’s existence in e-book format and are supportive of my efforts to get the book available in e-book format. Marilyn Carlson’s exact words: “Do what you gotta’ do to get the book back up. We’ll back you all the way.” Obviously, they know all about the book and we have an agreement on the profits, if any.

All this is by way of saying that the shorter version of JUST the Oklahoma stories from Volume II WITH additional photographs have gone up on Amazon in Kindle format only. During the lead-up to Christmas, they were on sale for 99 cents, but the price has now gone back up to $2.99—still a bargain.

If you are a reader who prefers paper, the appropriate version to purchase would be Volume II—[although there are stories about Oklahoma that I wrote in Volume I, as well, but I did not include them.] I had enough pictures and material just from the Fort El Reno Ghost Tour to produce a short book perfect for reading on a plane trip, with one very mysterious photo of “ghostly orbs” inside the most haunted house on the grounds of Fort El Reno.

Next up will be New Mexico & Arizona. Following that will be Texas, which is also complete. After I write one or two more stories for California, it will be good to go and—with the blessing of Bruce and Marilyn Carlson—I’ll then circle back and re-issue “Ghostly Tales of Route 66,” the longer book with no pictures, possibly with a new cover.

So, there’s a mean-spirited, unethical act that really backfired on the perpetrator. I probably would not have had the idea to do this except for this truly low act on this individual’s part. The “break it out by states” idea is working great, with the smaller Oklahoma book at #34 on one list and #90 on another today. Readers seem to like the pictures, which I put back in.

This is not the exact cover I went with, but it’s close and the picture (which I took while driving the Mother Road) is the same.