When Lisa Morton proposed we gather a group and release a series of eBooks, each themed, and each featuring some of my favorite authors and people, I jumped at the chance. To hell with my overfilling inbox and commitments! How could I resist doing what I love most? I could not. And here we are with this wonderful collection, named by Eric J. Guignard: STRANGE TALES OF THE MACABRE! For my theme, I immediately picked GOTHIC, as I am presently knee-deep reading and discussing Gothic fiction for a long-running book club at downtown Los Angeles's THE LAST BOOKSTORE. In Eric J. Guignard's, "A Curse and a Kiss" one does not get more Gothic than visiting the world of Beauty and the Beast, with an unusual take, as the story is seen from a different point of view than we've read before: that of Belle! In Kate Jones's, "Mountain", family secrets and old curses play out against a Christmas background with a cast of characters that burn into your psyche like chains rattling outside your door on a cold, rainy night. 'Mountain' is Kate Jonez at her atmospheric best. In Rena Mason's, "Of Earth and Bone", has us meet a surveyor sent to the Great Wall as punishment because of his unrequited love for his boss's wife, but then ends up going back in time and experiencing the Great Wall in a fashion more intimate than he'd ever believed. In Lisa Morton's "Tamlane", you can feel the old school Los Angeles grit and grime. We have an old building brimming with history... some of it may even be supernatural... threatened to be torn down. But will a secret tryst be enough to save the building? Will a father truly listen to his daughter, destroying the past and all the building hides? A terrific piece of modern gothic fiction on all fronts. In my own, "Wings Made from Water", we find ourselves in the midst of a modern gothic story whereas a young man and the family he is forced to live with are haunted by the mysterious disappearance of her cousin in the woods of San Quinlan, California.