I’m lucky enough to have my work included in The Rabbit Hole Volume 5: Just…Plain…Weird anthology along with quite a group of talented authors. I especially love the teaser
Welcome to the Rabbit Hole. On our fifth excursion into the warren of the odd, 37 authors lead us down their own little burrows of strangeness : an army of penguins, music that cures, aliens that communicate through old cartoons, images of the future that save, unwanted visions of the now, and, oh yes, it is raining lawyers. All have one thing in common, they are just…plain…weird.
Weird can be funny, weird can be sad, weird can be thoughtful, weird can be mad, but the one thing in common is that weird shares experiences you have, thankfully, never had.
Just be careful, all little bunnies are not nice, but they are memorable.
About the Author
Taija Morgan is a professional fiction editor with short stories and non-fiction articles published in various anthologies and magazines, such as Opal Writers’ Magazine, the Aurora-nominated Prairie Gothic anthology (2020) and upcoming Prairie Witch anthology (2022) from Prairie Soul Press, Tales to Terrify’s horror podcast, and When Words Collide’s In Places Between anthology (2019). She has bachelor’s degrees in psychology and sociology that contribute realism and insight to her dark, twisted fiction. She is a member of Crime Writers of Canada and was editor of CWC’s 40th Anniversary anthology Cold Canadian Crime (2022).
How the stories came about?
I set this story in Post-WWII England. My paternal grandparents grew up there during the war, and I wanted to get the details right, so my grandmother kindly assisted with that. I wanted to capture the desperation that can come with grief, the impossible-to-consolidate realization that a person you’ve loved is simply gone forever, and how that can drive a person to do things they wouldn’t otherwise consider themselves capable of, how it can twist someone into the thing they fear, how what a person once feared can become the thing they long for. In the case of my main character, Marjorie, I wanted to show how, like so many, she’s already a ghost long before she dies.
Opening
Marjorie Liddell had never seen a ghost, but she wanted to more than anything in the world. She tried to sit patiently, but her heart thrummed beneath the starchy white fabric of her dress. A stout lady with flowing grey locks placed three tarot cards on the table in front of her. Marjorie wiped her clammy palms on her skirt beneath the tablecloth. The warm, sugary scents of popcorn and candyfloss from the bustling fair beyond the tent flaps permeated every surface. Her gaze lifted to the woman’s light-grey eyes, so like Marjorie’s father’s, and that had to mean something, didn’t it? Surely, it was a sign.
Enjoy!
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