Welcome to Gnat Smoke Press
Gnat Smoke Press is a publication company dedicated to bringing you the finest quality poetry and fiction from John Ryland. As a southern small press, we revel in southern hospitality and great southern writing. We are unique, perhaps a little quirky, but we always aim to please. Stay a while, have a look around, just be careful which curtain you pull back. Some of them are hiding ghosts.
Coming soon from GSP!
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Do we make our own fate, or are we destined to the future the universe doles out to us? This collection of short stories depicting the darker side of childhood will make you think your own misspent youth was normal. Enjoy A dozen haunting tales of childhood's end and a peek into everything that could go wrong when life develops challenges at an early age, even if it takes years to surface.
Whether it is youngsters left to their own devices, or those who carried their scars into adulthood, innocence eventually ends for all of us. How and when it ends is a different matter altogether.
Work in Production
Family Tree
When Blake Giles witnesses a tense confrontation between his boss, the Sherriff of Akedo, Alabama and a member of the hated Whitestone family, he begins to ask questions that people don't want answered. He soon discovers that the feud between the two families is older and much deadlier than he could have ever imagined, and that it is centered around a strange tree on the Whitestone property that bears the markings that resemble a human face. Uncovering a dark secret, Blake must now solve the mystery in order to save the life of an innocent child, James Whitestone's newborn daughter.
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The Last Elemental
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After Amery Coalfield wins the bid to remove an abandoned bank vault from a vacant lot in downtown Johnson's Hollow, he draws the ire of the town's elder generation. When an old woman warns him of a spirit trapped within the vault, he dismisses her as crazy- a theory confirmed by her niece- but the seeds of wonder soon grow. Determined to find out what has been hidden in plain sight for fifty years, he decides to open the vault. When he does, he releases an entity on the town that is hell bent on avenging the death of her band of elementals- earth spirits that only wanted to live in peace. Drawn to the beautiful, but deadly winged woman, Amery must now decide whose side he's really on.
Three Nights at the Jupiter
Centering on three days in early June, when the small town of Friendly, Alabama prepares for its annual macabre ritual, officer Truman Malone finds himself in the middle of a complex mystery that he doesn't want to solve. Every June 3rd the entire town sequesters in their home to avoid a mysterious creature who feeds on members of the community. When Truman begins to investigate who or what it is, his life begins to unravel. Is the killer the eccentric owner of the Jupiter Hotel, where he lives? An old reclusive woman that some claim hails from Romania? Could it be the woman that he loves? His boss, the chief of police? The mayor? The only thing he's sure of is that it could be anybody.
A Meeting of Consequence
The first time Carver Willis and Benjamin Howard meet is a fiery crash that takes both their lives. But then each man wakes to the same day again, with only vague recollections that something bad happened. As each man relives the same morning, he must piece together the chain of events that leads to his death. Unfortunately, avoiding the crash causes more problems than expected. The whole world stops in its tracks.
When they meet a strange man who tells them that they must go through with the crash, each comes face to face with their own mortality and is forced to make a hard choice.