R. Michael Burns

Had an absolutely wonderful time at the recent Christmas in July book sale sponsored by Author! Author! For me, there were two big highlights: getting a long-overdue to sign side-by-side with my dear friend — an amazing horror writer — Morgen Leigh. That, and being told by a very charming and enthusiastic young woman that it was as if I wrote Mr. Menace just for her. I hope she likes the book itself as much as she liked the idea of the book.

Many many thanks to Chris Mandeville and Laura Hayden for organizing this event and being so kind as to invite me. And of course, thank you so much to everyone who came out for it and especially the very lovely and probably pretty close to perfect human beings who were nice enough to buy some books.

Mr. Menace — Audio Book

Narrated by Christopher Harbour

After several years of being out of print, my first novel Windwalkers is now back in print, available from Amazon.com in both Kindle and paperback formats!

Once upon a time, it was tradition to tell ghost stories around Christmas. This is the origin of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” and the reason for the line “There’ll be scary ghost stories” in the song “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.”

What follows is my first effort at telling a Christmas ghost story of my own. It’s a side story to my unpublished novel Laughing Teddy (a book about a haunted toy store moving into a small Colorado mountain town), but I believe it stands well on its own.

It was originally published in the e-zine New Myths. It’s one I’m quite fond of, both eerie and sad…

So put on some classic Christmas songs (my top choice would be the Judy Garland version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”) and enjoy…