Storm On Fifth Avenue

I'll always have a soft spot for this story as it was the very first one to be accepted for publication. Someone (and that someone is Karen Romanko!) is going to give me cold, hard cash for these 2000 words.

The anthology is called Retro Spec and should be published mid-2010. The remit was to write a speculative story involving a heavy retro theme and I chose the 1930s construction boom that saw the New York skyline race upwards.

Storm On Fifth Avenue, without ruining the surprise, is about what happens when the paranormal meets a fast-moving construction project. And the New York of the early 1930s is as much a protagonist:

The great city of New York was waking to another day of opportunity. Along the East River, tugs buzzed around huge merchant vessels, passenger liners heading for Europe. Others pushed giant piles of timber. Along every horizon in every direction, a thousand factories spewed steam and smoke into the air. The machine, oiled by the good people of New York, was revving into action, even at this early hour.

I've always had a fascination for the very fabric of buildings being haunted and another of my short stories, Within These Walls, explores this phenomena.