Hardluck turns the spotlight on Five Star

Here's the general announcement for the Summer issue of Hardluck Stories that John Helfers and I came up with:

"Hardluck Stories announces a call for stories for its upcoming Five Star Publishing edition:

Hardluck Stories, the noir fiction e-zine edited by Dave Zeltserman, is announcing a call for story submissions for a future edition that will celebrate the Five Star Mystery line. Edited by Dave and guest editor John Helfers, who oversees the Mystery Fiction line for Tekno Books, and packager of the Five Star Mystery line, this special edition of Hardluck stories will be open to any Five Star author who wishes to submit, whether they've published in the Mystery, SF/Fantasy, or Expressions lines.

Of course, stories must be noir, the darker the better, and the overarching theme of the edition will be Crime in the City. Stories should be no more than 5,000 words long, are due by July 1, 2007, and should be sent to dz@hardluckstories.com. Authors of the chosen stories will be notified by e-mail. For more information on Hardluck Stories, please visit the website at http://www.hardluckstories.com"

So why a Hardluck Five Star issue? For a lot of reasons, really. One is I have a book coming out with them July 18th. But that's only a small part of it. Without the support of people like Ed Gorman (who created the Five Star Mystery Line), Michael Black, Harry Shannon and Trey Barker, Hardluck wouldn't be what it is today. All of them have of them have been guest editors (in Michael's case, twice), all of them have been contributers, and they all helped shaped Hardluck's vision. There have been other links between Hardluck and Five Star--Jeremiah Healy, who gave Hardluck a much needed boost in the early days by guest editing a special issue of Hardluck, had one of his standalone books published by Five Star and gave me the privilege of publishing one of his stories in the Western Noir issue, as did Bill Crider, who's been a great friend of Hardluck, and also has a standalone coming out through Five Star. Other Five Star authors who've been published on Hardluck include Julie Hyzy and Dave Case. Anyway, Five Star is putting out some terrific crime fiction by some amazingly talented writers, and they deserve any attention Hardluck could provide it. Plus, I'll end up publishing a terrific collection of noir stories in the process. Can't beat that.