Two stories of the Mohawk Valley published this week: World War I at home and UFOs in the 1960s

"Battle at Indian Cave" was published on October 24 by Sundial Magazine. This is a story set in 1918 when anti-foreign feelings were running very high in the midst of the pro-war frenzy encouraged by the Wilson White House. The gang of boys, and one girl, at the heart of this story are all from various slavic nations within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and quite alienated from the red-whte-and-blue spirit animating much of the Mohawk Valley in that fateful year.  They decide to hide a disabled older boy from the draft, with tragic consequences.

Sundial Magazine recently included my earlier story "The Colonel Takes Command" in their first-ever print anthology of American historical fiction, Dim and Flaring Lamps, available at Amazon in electronic and paper formats.

"The Golden Stairway to Heaven" appeared on October 23  in Litbreak, a site devoted to publishing new writers. I wrote the first version of this story many years ago, inspired by rumors of a UFO sighting that I first heard at the long-closed Half Way House, a tavern midway between Little Falls and Dolgeville. That tale was probably just drunken fantasizing but somehow the idea of a flying saucer landing up near Salisbury Center stuck in my mind. This story is the result.