I just want to say a huge Happy Birthday to horror writer Brandon Massey (per Facebook, which I only halfway believe lol) woo hoo! Brandon Massey is one of the leaders of Black horror and speculative fiction in the early 2000’s. He put out several anthologies featuring a plethora of well-known authors—Tananarive Due, Chesya Burke, and Maurice Broaddus–just to name a few. He is especially beloved to me because he published my first short story, The Love of a Zombie is Everlasting in his third Dark Dreams anthology Whispers in the Night. That started a whirlwind of possibilities in my life that revolved around my first love—writing. Thank You Mr. Massey! Going back and reading my story, I still cringe a little, looking at all the errors I made. Yet I am still proud of myself for having the courage to even submit a story, and even prouder that my story was accepted. I only heard about the third anthology from those wonderfully crazy Yahoo! Groups. Remember those, folks of a certain age? LOL. All kinds of people were in those groups, but there were a nice number just for US. I remember conversing with folks like Jelani Cobb and Bomani Jones on all kinds of topics back in the day! One day, I saw a post that said Brandon Massey was looking for short horror stories for a new anthology. As much as I was writing and performing at open mics in the Bay, I hadn’t heard about his two prior collections. However, I had read Thunderland and was determined to shoot my shot.
I am forever grateful that this man took a chance on me and started me on a journey.
