Rita, a Prick, and a BOOM #FridayFlash

My Editor Larry Kollar has been on me for a while (years) to play along with #FridayFlash It's finally happened.

Rita, just Rita, likes to tell me about Jesus through lipstick covered teeth—and I let her because she buys me coffee and a cheese danish. Every Wednesday night, seven forty-five on the dot. Outside the Starbucks, that’s always open, even when it’s too cold and too hot. I listen as she puffs on the first of two, three, seven cigarettes.

I’m often late, but she never is. She’s always at the table, two large drinks and bags of pastries that aren’t killing us any faster than our other addictions right after Wednesday Worship. She’s never late because the pastor is never late.

The pastor is never late because he’s got a blond, or a poker habit that no one expects he’ll ever give up.

Except for maybe his wife.

It’s a conundrum she tells me—and always she manages to drag a dyed red tangle through her orange red lipstick then. I am sure both faux rouges, her hair and her blood stained lips, probably bare exciting names like Sunset Strip Beach, and Serial Killer, but all I can think is fake, fake, fake.

Like everything else in this town.

It’s a conundrum she tells me because Las Vegas is a place of few principles. One of them just happens to be, that God can’t possibly see us through so many blinking, blinding, tubes of neon light. You take away the one thing people know for absolute certain and all hell would break loose—if all hell hadn’t already broken loose.

I don’t have to agree with her, I just have to eat cheese danish like I haven’t in three days—and there is a real good chance I haven’t. Time doesn’t make sense here. You forget things but only because everyone wants to forget things. Rita, just Rita, as been in Las Vegas so long I don’t even think she remembers her own last name.

But maybe that was on purpose. I don’t remember my last name either. Everyone just calls me Pete—or four letter words I don’t need to repeat right now. Know what I mean?

I open my mouth—because if there is one thing I’m good at it’s that, and the coffee aftertaste threatens to escape. I open my mouth to tell Rita I’m not sure if God exists—but then I see an angel staring at us.

So, I know I’m not about to die. Don’t ask me how, I just do. But this angel’s presence means someone is about to go, and we’re the only ones on the patio.

At least Rita went to church today.

Rita, just Rita, digs her hot pink fingernails into my the bony part of my wrist—and I just know this is it. I know she’s seen the babe that’s lounging up against the wall—smirking at me—but she hasn’t, because she isn’t. Rita is looking somewhere else—down the sidewalk, and into the crosswalk. There’s a man in a smart looking suit taking wide strides against the signal. He’s looking back at Rita.

“That’s him,” she hisses.

And I wonder about the guy. His nothing special and middle aged. He does look like a bit of prick, but I still don’t know what Rita means by him.

“My husband,” she clutches her coffee tighter, but doesn’t look like she plans on getting up. “Pastor Williams.”

I’m still looking at Rita—and she’s mess, so I figure I’ll laugh about the irony of her last statement in private later. But I do smirk at the angel against the wall, and she smirks back.

Let’s hope the prick has life insurance.

He makes it as far as the hedges that distinguish the patio from the dirty streets of Vegas. Sweat sprouts from everyone of his oversized pores. There is a cliche smudge of lipstick on his collar, and it’s more Fremont Street Hooker than Rita’s shade, so I smile at him like an idiot.

Not that it matters because he’s about to drop dead.

I’m hoping it’s awful.

He doesn’t look at me as he starts stammering apologies, and I’m still smiling when I see her. She’s topless, and while that does take some of my attention, it’s not really that weird for The Strip. The blood slipping from her rib cage however, kind of is. Know what I mean?

The minute Rita sees her, her eyes grow to the size of stop lights—and she turns as red as one without pausing for the caution signal. She clamps her serial killer colored lips closed.

The hooker is digging in her purse of all things—and I hope it’s for clothes—then I hope it’s not her that’s about to croak and out pops the littlest gun I have ever seen. It could be a toy. The barrel is as long as a tube of lipstick, but it still goes BOOM, and the prick still drops in one bullet.


Like my #FridayFlash ? Grab my brand new Anthology Coffin Nails and Other Beasts for other dark and different tales--including another story about Pete, The Underhanded Dead. Coffin Nails is just a buck.


Need something dark and tragic that's a but longer than a short story? You can grab the e-box set of Skeleton Lake, and The Skeleton Song for just $3.00
OH and BTW, you can still enter to win the Kindle Fire HDX
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Buy COFFIN NAILS AND OTHER BEASTS for a buck! Enter to win a Kindle Fire HDX!

Coffin Nails is here! Get the Anthology for just $1.00
Read the description: One part literary fiction, one part horror, and all Angela Kulig. Darkness drips from every page, and just when you think you're having a good time, you find out someone's died, someone's been dead, and someone is about to rob your grave. 

In Coffin Nails, Angela Kulig weaves the sort of tales we all hoped she didn't have in her. Frightening and often crass fantasy mingles with the paranormal and surreal in this swift anthology. 

If it was any longer, we'd all have nightmares.

Click on the cover to get yours--and don't forget, you can still enter to win a Kindle Fire HDX!

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Happy New Year! Thanks for 100k hits! Happy 200 post! (Oh and BTW all my books are on sale for .99!)

This is my two hundredth post.

ALSO, AngelaKulig.com hit 100k hits in December but I could never find the right time to talk about it. But I wanted to say thanks--so I extended all my book sales an extra day. I have blown past that number now, and it is entirely humbling that anyone cares at all way I say.

So! All of my ebooks are just .99 today January 1st 2014! Tomorrow they all go up to reflect Green Envy Presses new pricing structure, so get them while you can. COFFIN NAILS is ready to go--expect the update soon.

The Stocking Your Ereader Sale

THEStocking Your Ereader
Sale has ended.
Come back 1/15 for details on the next one. Enter until then to win a Kindle Fire HDX.

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Authors! Sign up now for the "Stocking Your E-Reader Sale"

As per the rest of of 2013, I am a day late and a dollar short. Since I posting the sign ups so late I am allowing you submit books until 9PM Pacific Time Christmas Day! As usual, listing in the sale is absolutely free--however, some of the rules have changed so make sure you check it out! (Believe it or not, there are actually less rules!)

1. Must have an ebook priced .99 or FREE by 11:59 PM 12/25
2. Must be willing to post sale information at least twice a day on whatever social media networks you are into during the duration of the sale 12/26-12-31. (I.E. 2 tweets a day, or a facebook post and a google plus post, or any combination you can think of)
3. Must post sale information on your blog or website sometime during the sale.

I have also simplified the sign up form! Ready to commit? Click here. Then leave a comment and let us know you're coming!

Not an author? No worries! Make sure you check back after Christmas for awesome books, awesome prices, and fantastic giveaways!

COVER REVEAL! Coffin Nails & Other Beasts!

Whoa! I wish I could say December was a month of laziness--but alas, it only looks like I'm slow! I've baked over 200 cookies, I've song dozens of Christmas songs, and shopped for everyone on my list! I am done early, and that's good because now it's time for some bookish work!

First on the list, a cover reveal! Here is the new (and kind of creepy!) cover for my new anthology; Coffin Nails and Other Beasts.

I will be out soon. Until then, enjoy the introduction of it.

I was a strange child. In high school,  my clothing was mostly black, and mostly plastic. In the third grade,  I vowed that one day, I’d be an author. Oh so sweet innocence, if only I had known then what trouble that one little desire would bring me! It middle school I became obsessed with the idea of winning an obscure reading contest—that earned be a journal from the dollar store with gilt edges. I could have read Goosebumps or Babysitters club, but I read The Jungle Book first, and wrapped up my epic win with Moby Dick. Oh Ishmael my friend! You’re a freak, but so am I!

It would be nice to say my taste for the obscure ended in my childhood; instead I refined my individual preferences as an adult—well assuming of course I am an adult, to be honest I am not quite sure.

So Coffin Nails.

Perhaps you are like some and wonder, “Why that?” Why indeed! Well perhaps you understand the reference. The Christmas Carol by one amazing and legendary Charles Dickens is one of the most iconic and celebrated Christmas stories of all time—and it doesn't need my say so to make it true. Marley was dead to begin with. Dickens leaves no doubt of it, and he goes on to say he is deader than a doornail but then strays; something I am fond of doing myself! Dickens remarks that he doesn't believe that door nails are quite dead—he supposes that a coffin nail would be deader.

And I concur.

A Christmas Carol may have started my love of dark stories for the season, but nothing, not even my own book of them—seems to be able to end it.

P.S.
Sign ups for the next ebook sale start tomorrow!

Thanks for a great sale!

I would like to spare a few moments to thank the readers, the writers, and the tweeters for making THE GREEN TUESDAY SALE a success. Today I'm feeling slightly hung over, 4 hours a sleep a night for two weeks will do that to you!

Just some house cleaning notes, I am trying to wrap up the editing on DUST OF THE DEAD SEA so it can be out to you guys soon. I know you have been waiting, I really need to stop injuring myself!

I also have a surprise Anthology out later this month. It's called Coffin Nails, and Other Deceased Beasts. It includes an excerpt of a novella out next year called BONE DEEP. It's a Hollows novella, and it's about Alex and Lena--told from Alex's POV immediately following the events of Skeleton Lake and during the events of DUST OF THE DEAD SEA.

In other boring, mundane news; I am migrating my newsletter soon. Look for new sign-ups in the next week or so--and a contest to go with that.

And above everything else, keep your eyes and tweets ready for information on the next sale coming 12/26! Forms will be up for participation soon. It runs until new years and is called THE STOCKING YOUR EREADER SALE.