Consider the hotel: a place often found where two or more roads meet. Your home away from home. The place where business meets pleasure, where opposites attract, where the questions of the soul have no distraction but the mini-fridge and cable TV, and where the familiar gets stripped down to crisp white sheets, the smell of bleach, and a mirror that doesn’t quite reflect the same face it does at home.
A hotel can give the illusion of invisibility. What happens in a hotel, stays in a hotel…most of the time. A hotel can give the illusion of luxury. A concierge might bring you anything you want…as long as you pay for it.
And as long as you have a reservation.
Bring your baggage, bring your business, bring your hopes and dreams…
But don’t expect to leave the Crossroads Hotel in the same direction in which you arrived.
Get your copy of Crossroads Hotel at Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, or Apple Books, and find the collection on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and BookBub.
The Stories
“The Bolt Hole: Coin from a Dead Man’s Eyes” by Louisa Swann
A lonely hotel and a slew of lost souls. What could possibly go wrong?
Familiarity brews comfort, an adage the crew at the Bolt Hole hotel fully appreciates. Head clerk Mina Frank loves her daily routine and the souls that work for her. She’s even fond of the grumpy old chef who threatens to kill off all their clientele by serving them poisonous spiders.
Then a stranger strolls through the door and Mina gets that feeling. His arrival promises change but will that change prove useful?
Or will it destroy them?
“The Talent Show” by Leah R. Cutter
Edmund Alexander Montgomery, IV, works on the committee for the annual funeral director’s convention at the Crossroads Hotel.
His job? Handle any emergency the humans at the convention throw at him.
Even when Elvis and the Impersonators, the headliners for the convention, cancel.
He will survive this. Even if it involves funeral directors. Performing.
“The Talent Show” asks, and tries to answer that most serious of questions, what do you call a collection of funeral directors?
“Gap Years” by Dayle A. Dermatis
At 15, Quinn Jacoby disappeared from a Victorian B&B in Portland, OR. Three days later, she returned, but nobody believed her story of going down stairs into another world.
Ten years later, Quinn stumbles upon the same house, now empty and rundown. Something compels her to explore it. What she finds will make her question reality—and teach her she has a unique gift that will alter her life.
Tense and compelling, Gap Years is the origin story for Dayle A. Dermatis’s forthcoming Gap Walker trilogy.
“Memento Temporis” by DeAnna Knippling
It’s thirty years to the day that Jim lost the love of his life, Laina Jarvy, back in 1929. Now a colleague’s wife has a gift for him: a watch that will take him back in time to save Laina, and instructions on how to use it.
Jim’s willing to pay whatever price is necessary to save her–but the offer that he’s given in the past, at the mysterious Crossroads Hotel, smells more than a little like yesterday’s fish.
Is he about to save Laina?
Or get stiffed?
“The Language of Cats” by Stefon Mears
The Crossroads Hotel. A place between worlds. A place of magic and mystery.
Brice McCleary, fighting a hellish rainstorm from the driver’s seat of an old car. Trapped somewhere between Bakersfield and Flagstaff. Hungry. Tired. Stressed near the brink. His only passenger, a beloved cat named Pepperhead.
A passing semi nearly drowns them. Brice must chance an unlit, unmapped exit.
Pain, wonder, and transformation await him at the Crossroads Hotel.
“The Language of Cats”—a contemporary fantasy short story full of subtle magic, and heart. From Stefon Mears, author of the Spells for Hire series.
“Room 308” by Annie Reed
Magic comes with a price. Misuse it at your peril.
Claire’s been an entertainer all her life, and everywhere she’s traveled, a battered black suitcase went with her. When she performed as a stage magician/comedian, the suitcase held her props, each one infused with enough magic to make her slight of hand spectacular.
These days the suitcase contains something far more deadly.
Something dying to get out.
Twenty-five years ago, Claire made a promise in room 308. This Christmas Eve, she’ll return to room 308, unlatch the suitcase, and keep her promise.
Because what happens at the Crossroads Hotel doesn’t always stay at the Crossroads Hotel. When it does, it stays forever.
“Room Service” by Rebecca M. Senese
Deborah escapes to the Crossroads Hotel, wearing ill-fitting clothes, colouring her hair, waiting for a new life.
Searching for freedom.
Until a knock on the door forces Deborah to face her future, trapped within the hotel room walls.
Join Deborah in the contemporary fantasy “Room Service.”
“A Different Turn” by Jamie Ferguson
Angela has lived through five centuries of heartbreak, outliving husband after husband, lover after lover, friend after friend. She goes to the Crossroads Hotel to get a new identity and a new life—again. But this time, her life takes a different turn…
Find Crossroads Hotel at Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, or Apple Books, and find the collection on BundleRabbit, Goodreads, and BookBub.
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