The strangeness of 2020 is finally in the past and we are now living through the strangeness of 2021. Early last year I walked away from my newspaper career, such as it was, to focus on creative writing. Among the highlights of my year were the publishing of my first two poems and the publishing of three short stories I authored. Over the last few months I put a new skin on my website and launched my first YouTube video. I also received a master’s degree in creative writing and read some of my poems at a couple different virtual events. Now I’m expecting 2021 to be my biggest year yet with more stories and poetry coming, more videos and some other big ideas I have cooking on the way too. In the meantime, here is everything I published in my blog in 2020. It’s not much, but…

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A READING OF “BYSTANDER BOONDOGGLE” EXCERPT

Watch Carl Robinette read his short story “Bystander Boondoggle” which was recently published in Mystery Weekly Magazine’s November 2020 issue. This story has all the classic suspense tropes, except the protagonist has no interest in solving anything. He’s just a bystander waiting for things to get better. More

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PARANOIA, CONSPIRACY, THANKSGIVING – NEW FICTION IN MYSTERY WEEKLY MAGAZINE

The bystander is an often overlooked archetype in crime fiction. The exact opposite is true in Carl Robinette’s short story, “Bystander Boondoggle,” which was recently published in Mystery Weekly Magazine. Read and Excerpt from “Bystander Boondoggle” More

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DEBUT POEMS IN ENTROPY MAGAZINE

Carl Robinette’s debut poems were recently published in Entropy Magazine’s “The Birds” column. The two poems are titled, “Barred White Noise and Blue” and “For God or Divinity or Something Else You Want It To Be.” More

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BRASS KNUCKLE FICTION IN MYSTERY WEEKLY MAGAZINE – “NOTHING DOING”

Daisy Belle is armed with nothing but brass knuckles and a misled sense of justice as she gets to the bottom of nothing. Hold on to your drink and watch Daisy bust open the criminal underbelly of her Southern California beach town as she leaves a trail of empty bottles in her wake. More

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REVENGE & LITERATURE – NEW FLASH FICTION IN MYSTERY TRIBUNE

Carl Robinette explores revenge as a literary concept in his latest work of flash fiction, “Luck & Retribution,” a story published by Mystery Tribune about a hit man who finds the man he’s been hired to kill already circling the drain. It seems Mother Nature has first dibs on revenge in this story. More

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A SOLDIER’S RETURN – “THE HARD RISE” IN EQMM

In “The Hard Rise,” by Carl Robinette, originally published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Hank Garnier is already a small-town hero and the rural press in Los Pinos County is not ready to let go of the past. But when so many of his fellow soldiers were cast out as “baby killers” the last thing Hank Garnier wants is to be called is “war hero.” More