The cover of Great Old One’s Publishing’s BUGS anthology, due out later this year. Cover design by MJ Preston.

My short story “Shitty Almonds” was accepted to Great Old Ones Publishing’s Bugs anthology due out later this year.

I don’t want to spoil what it’s about—Great Old Ones Publishing anthologies always contain a diverse number of pieces on their given topic, so when it comes out I’d encourage everyone to just pick it up—but I will tell you what inspired it.

Back in May of 2008, my friends Jen and Rob Mayette got engaged on a trip the three of us were on in Walt Disney World. Later that summer, they had an engagement party—quite a large one. The groom and I were outside taking a breather from the chaos with a few other writers– Lauren Baratz-Logsted, Greg Logsted, Andrea Shicke Hirsch, Lauren Simpson and Rob Mayette, and somehow we got on the discussion of wedding favors. Since I was going to help Jen with those, I made some crack about being really excited that the favors nowadays are not limited to the usual shitty almonds…because my father had just passed away and in the process of cleaning out his house, I was horrified to open a hutch drawer and find tulle bags of almonds from decades-past weddings that were disintegrated (seriously????).

Lauren loved the title “Shitty Almonds” and suggested we could make a blog out of it, a blog about a wedding planner and all the disastrous stuff she sees at weddings. Obviously, that blog idea never got off the ground—it just wasn’t something I wanted to spend time on—but the idea for this story came out of that discussion. I will give you a hint: it’s got something to do with weddings, stale almonds, and a bug that looks really scary but actually isn’t (if you’re a human, that is!).

That’s it for now! I’ll keep you posted on the antho publication date. In the meantime, check out MJ Preston’s post about the antho here…and learn about what almonds at a wedding symbolize here.