MORE STORIES ARE UP!

I'm happy to report that more of my short fiction is now up on Smashwords, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and others. All are currently on Smashwords because each store requires a few weeks to load new stories. Getting them up onto Amazon (who changed their distribution practices and now requires direct loading onto their site-boo) is going to be another time-consuming process, but you can get the stories in any format from the other stores I listed anyway. Suggest Smashwords (https://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=g.m.+weger). And two of my stories are even FREE! 
Here are some covers. My desire is to entertain YOU, the reader. If you like what you read, be kind and offer other readers your opinion. It is thanks to you that I can keep my dream alive.

AND IT JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER!

I’m so angry I could spit (if I had any saliva, that is). After BookPros, the company I choose to publish my book, went bankrupt, I thought my self-publishing horror story had at last died.

I was wrong.

It just keeps getting better all the time. BookPros had a distribution company called Midpoint, who keeps authors’ books in various warehouses across the United States. During the bankruptcy, Midpoint asked me what I wanted to do with my books. Basically, the options were three: send them to another distributor, to another warehouse, or back to me. As difficult as it was to decide on a fourth option, to destroy them, I chose to do that because the cost of shipping boxes of books isn’t cheap (not to mention the storage nightmare). Still, it felt like condemning my first born child to death.  I lowered the boom and thought that would be the end of that story.

I was wrong again.

Recently, I’d begun putting up some of my short stories as E-books, and also my revised first novel, East Garrison, (to include photographs, illustrations, and new text about mountain lions). While checking for my new cover I ran across Midpoint’s website. Guess what? They had East Garrison for sale. And yes, this is the book I condemned to capital punishment—all East Garrison books at Midpoint were supposed to have been destroyed.

But I was wrong yet again.

Some East Garrison books are in Midpoint’s Kansas warehouse, some are in another warehouse in Little Rock. It has been over two years since I terminated my contract with BookPros (August 13, 2010). Sometime around the beginning of the year 2012 they filed for bankruptcy. Over two years have passed from the time when I gave the execution order for my baby. My innards twisted and I doubled over in pain. I felt the cloud of misery that had been my daily experience for too many years return.

There are no words to describe, to truly make clear the horrible feeling of a writer being ripped off and betrayed by a publisher. Publishers like BookPros are truly evil. They’re the snake-oil salespeople of our time, without morals and accountability. That’s also true about so-called distributors like Midpoint.

So, calling all authors who published their book(s) through BookPros and distributed through Midpoint! Your baby (ies) are likely still up for sale, and you’ll never see a penny. In fact, you’ll probably get a bill for storage. How’s that for another slap in the face of people whose only dream is to be an author? 

For the actual names of the people involved in this money-making scheme, leave a comment, and I'll be more than pleased to comply.

NEW! Previously unpublished fiction shorts NOW on E-Book readers! Go to: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/238493

The first, 

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MISSING WHITE DOT

Frankie killed her small daughter. What kind of a monster could do such a thing to an innocent child? The papers screamed about this crime for weeks. It made headlines from the New York Times to the National Enquirer. Now Frankie's convicted, in the slammer forever. There's nothing more to be said ... but is there? In a macabre descent into insanity made all the more potent and horrifying by the fact that it is unveiled in the pedestrian context of visits to the prison psychologist's office, G.M. Weger, a master of psychological horror, takes us into a journey that is dark-beyond-black. Weger escorts us to the lower reaches of an internal hell in a shocking short that may make the reader want to vomit. Amazing in its power, even more so in the fact that it conveys so much venom in its brief length, Significance of the Missing White Dot goes beyond the realm of the genre into the putrescence of the human soul.

Inside a Federal office building on a defunct army base, a woman is slowly going crazy—without any tangible reason—but rather an illogical, lingering fear of losing her career, her husband, and her mind, after a co-worker is murdered. ELEVATOR GOING DOWN is a horror story about how a person can be driven over the edge of reality and slip into a world of madness.

Originally, House of Wreckers was part of a collection of twenty-five captivating, award-worthy stories published by Mozark Press in October 2010 with the theme of women living the adventure of midlife in their own unique ways. House of Wreckers shows a lighter, gentler side of G.M. Weger’s fiction. This short is about a rich snob’s unexpected holiday tryst with a tow-truck driver.  

Prednisone Nightmares!

Have you ever had them? Prednisone nightmares?

Out of control, cartoonish movies of your life as you boogie down the street under the influence of the evil drug P. Or how about a tall Gollum-like creature that oozes putrid smelling slime, who you push away at the same time that you somehow see something of redeeming value in this foul creature?

One of my monsters is a police officer with a nice enough face, kind of a fu-mancho mustache/beard, but he is as wide as he is tall. Can't accept that. Monster!

They are all you in these nightmares. You - fighting yourself. You- not accepting that even this monster is you. You have to learn to love this part of you. This part of yourself that you see as a monster.

But how can you love a monster ? One that has stolen everything of meaning to you. How can you learn to love the stranger you have become too soon?

P is the enemy. P has always been the enemy. Beware fellow Lupines, beware ever taking evil drug P.

As I enter into my third week of hell under P (by order of the grand poo pah doctor), I relinquish all  illusions of control, and trudge valiantly onward into the land of unknowns; I hold tightly to the wise words of someone, this too shall pass, or is it, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Either one will do at this time.

Wish me a safe and speedy return.

LOOKING FOR MARY

 I became involved in the Whitcher family Cemetery sometime around 2005-2006 and immediately became drawn into the story. I don’t rightly know why, it sometimes feels likes a possession, but soon after beginning to learn about the poor Whitcher family it didn’t take much to figure out the reasons. The father’s name was Thomas Rose Whitcher. He came from England by way of Canada and made his way to California. I don’t have the time to go into the soap opera which the Whicher family became, but prior to writing their story I was interested in the tombstone of Mary Pearson who, as you know came to have her stone rest by amongst the Whitchers.

I began searching to discover why, since her death was in 1935. I soon found that her life ended by a drunk driver where the Community Hospital used to be, and that she was a schoolteacher. Her sister had also been a schoolteacher and had been driving the car and a young girl had been with her that terrible day. Both the sister and young girl had lived.

Later on I received the death certificates of both sisters and found that Mary had been buried in Mission Memorial Cemetery. I went down to Mission Memorial to discover what I could and the funeral people didn’t know anything about it, even saying that they weren’t a cemetery at that time. But I knew that wasn’t true because the death certificate said where she where she was buried. So then I started calling around to the oldest cemeteries and found Mary at Centerio El Encinal, which means Cemetery of Many Oaks. Mary’s body had been actually moved from Mission Memorial to Cemeterio El Encinal July 31, 1945 by her sister Martha Rose, the one who was driving the car when Mary was hit by the drunk driver. Both Martha and her husband George Rose are buried in Mission Memorial.

As I’ve tried to figure over why this may have happened, my best guess is that the married sister’s name of Thomas Rose Whitcher is Elizabeth Pearson, perhaps someone got the last name confused as a relative who belonged there. But as I read this over the Rose middle name of Thomas and last name of George and Martha are rather odd too. There is no explanation for that. As I come to think of it, Elizabeth Pearson’s middle name may very well have been Rose. Still, it prove nothing, because Mary H. Pearson is buried in Centerio El Encinal, or Cemetery of Many Oaks. I’ve gone to her grave site more than one and spoken to the man who oversee the graves. So, rest in peace Mary. You’ve been buried more than once and that’s one time too many. I hope she has eternal peace. But her stone doesn’t belong in with the Whitchers. It’s for bodies, and there is no body resting beneath Mary H. Pearson’s gravestone.

Truth versus Fiction

Almost three weeks ago I gave a talk and PowerPoint slideshow at the National Steinbeck Center about my novel East Garrison. I'd spent a lot of time preparing the slides and thinking about the "motivation" for writing the book, trying to make the talk interesting for the audience. Amazingly, the evening went very well, and I actually enjoyed myself. I'd decided after that talk that I'd put East Garrison to rest and get back to what I really love—writing. But this second book isn't at all like the first. This book is based on a true story, and it takes place in the mid-1800s. I find this so much harder to write. The desire to get the story correct is getting in the way of my writing. Seems like it'd be easier knowing the plot ahead of time, yet to me it's like trying to draw a picture with my left hand. (And I can't draw a stick figure with my right hand!) I'm a believer in nothing worthwhile being easy. If what you're writing is not what you want to write, and you find it difficult and want to quit, its gotta be gold, and you must stick with it until it's done. It'll be a miracle if I ever type "the end" to this story!

The Rat

With a small Russian tortoise in one hand and an overflowing bag of trash in the other arm, I flew through the gate without even glancing down. After depositing the garbage and "Crunchy," the tortoise, I greeted my big black dog, Boomer, and let out a blood-curdling scream. At Boomer's feet lay a slightly damp, foot-long rat. And it wasn't dead. Yet.
Boomer panted happily; his fat pink tongue lolling out of his mouth. I stood glued to the pavement, feeling kind of silly for over reacting to this obvious non-threat. My daughter yelled from the front door, "Mom? Are you okay?" I had to explain the situation and then, of course, the entire neighborhood ran over to get a look at "the rat."
I kind of didn't know what to do. The children immediately suggested feeding it. That seems to be their first course of action for a sick anything. One of the girls wanted to stab it. That scared me. I rushed into the house to get Boomer out of there and collect my senses.
I wanted to put the rat out of its misery because it surely must be dying, but that isn't something a multigenerational humane person does. I've seen my husband crush a gopher with his boot as easily as if he were stepping on winter leaves.
The kids were making a lot of noise, so I peeked through the window. Now my son and his best friend had joined the group huddled around the rat.
Suddenly, I reached to unclasp the window, already in directorial mode, "I know what to do."
"Mom! He needs food!"
"Let's put him in a box until daddy gets home. I'll be right out."
So we did. One girl ran and got a Nike shoe box and a Styrofoam cup that she'd cut down and filled with water. Perfect. Careful not to touch the rat, I gently nudged it onto a flat-nosed shovel and set it into the box, near the water, and closed the lid. Hours later I looked in the box and the rat had died with its nose in the water.

While driving to work this morning, I ruminated on the former exciting afternoon and lamented the rat's demise. I actually said it out loud to myself alone in the car, "poor thing."
I just read a book about a man (Timothy Treadwell or Tim Dexter was his real name) and woman (Amie Huguenard) who were killed and eaten by a bear in Alaska and didn't have the same reaction. Why?
Then the answer came to me.
Because the rat didn't want to die, and there are much crueler ways to die in the wild. My son pointed out that he could have been eaten by "Riley," our wild caught king snake who we recently let loose in the back hill. That's not a pretty way to go.
Yes, that and a million other ways, I thought.
So, what's the meaning of this rumination into the jaws of death? I dunno, but it sure has me thinking about being a vegetarian.