As of this week you should be able to find all three of my latest stories on the shelves, or, for those who can’t get to bookstores that carry lit journals, you can order them all online, whether in print or as a digital type deal.

The first story to show up is called Hunted by Coyotes, published in The New Quarterly, issue 129. The theme of the issue is ‘The Wild and Unwonted,’ and the story is introduced briefly in the issue’s foreword…

‘In “Hunted by Coyotes,” Kevin Hardcastle’s startling and gritty story of a modern day peddler selling electricity door-to-door, coyotes roam the subdivisions—a frontier of sorts.’

This story is a long piece that got a lot of good attention from Pamela Mulloy, who had the patience to work with me on revisions and help narrow it down to the stuff that counts. You can grab a copy here on TNQ’s site, and can learn more about the other great work in there by clicking the ‘Welcome to this Issue’ link.

If you haven’t had your fill of prairie mayhem, you can have a go at this other story in EVENT issue 42/3, called Old Man Marchuk. It involves an RCMP constable stationed out in the middle of nowhere, trying to handle a situation involving a trigger-happy old man and a county that favours frontier justice. For more info on the other contents, or to grab it online, go here to EVENT‘s brand new site. 

The third story, One we could stand to lose,  appears in the pages of the venerable PRISM international, issue 52.2. This happens to be their theme volume for the year, the ‘Love & Sex Issue.’ I managed to sneak into this one with a story that is probably stretching the boundaries of the theme by not really involving any sex whatsoever and, probably a tenuous claim to the love part as well. But I think I got lucky by being published in this issue rather than a later one, not only because of the other writers involved, but also because of one of best covers going for any journal. PRISM folks run it down as follows…

‘Kevin Hardcastle’s “One We Could Stand to Lose” tells the story of an isolated man’s complicated love for the decrepit flop house where he has worked for years.’

Get this guy here at PRISM‘s online store.   Huge thanks to Jane Campbell for her work on this, and for the insanely quick turnaround from submission to publication.

If anything else turns up I’ll write about it on here, and no doubt will be tweeting nonsense about all manner of things as well. In the meantime, I hope people manage to read some of this stuff and keep on supporting literary journals throughout the country. They keep writers honest and often give them the encouragement they need to continue grinding on. This past year that has been of real significance for me, I can promise you that.

Thanks all for the support and for reading my work. I appreciate it always. Hardcastle.