Kris Ashton

Last year I wrote a horror story called ‘The Pub at Crokers Crossing’. While I was pleased with the final product, it had two things going against it. One, it was an Australian story populated with Australian characters, and US markets are often allergic to such qualities. Two, it ran to nearly 9,000 words – too long for most short fiction markets and far too short to be a novel.

I’m super-excited to announce it found a home at Black Hare Press, a small publisher operating out of Melbourne. ‘The Pub at Crokers Crossing’ goes on sale next month in e-book, paperback and hardback and is available to pre-order now.

The blurb: “Two retired couples on a caravanning holiday decide to visit a ghost town they find on an old map, but the town has not been abandoned entirely—as they soon discover in terrifying fashion…”

And here’s a sample to whet your appetite:

The road doglegged before widening out and pushing back the dense brushland. The town hove into view a few moments later: a weather-beaten timber building that might once have been a church or a schoolhouse; a brown and rust-torn water tank perched on drunken stilts; a cleared area (now overrun with weeds) that served as a graveyard for flatbed trucks and ramshackle farm buildings. In the distance, noxious reeds had choked a creek down to a chain of stagnant ponds.

The hotel, hunched in the centre of town like a punch-drunk pugilist, was the only structure in any sort of repair. Sections of the corrugated tin roof curled up at the corners and a creeping plant had run riot through the gutters, but hardwood columns at each end lent the pub an imposing air. Parked outside were a few newish-model cars. Beside us a sign, now more lichen than pine and paint, whispered that this had once been Crokers Crossing.