Pen Pal novel update

50,144 words. Awwww, yiss!

But paid work just came in, and as barry_king said, "I have an economy to feed," so... more of that later.

A Land of Deepest Shade

Hello there story! You became available without my even realizing it.

Let me introduce to you "A Land of Deepest Shade," in which a wife tries to do right by her dead husband. It is in the most recent issue of The Colored Lens, a wonderful publication that I became aware of when they published barry_king's excellent story "Pythia."

Alas, though, The Colored Lens is a pay-first, then-read electronic publication.
That being said, should circumstances so conspire, it's available here, through Amazon.

A couple of story facts...

The title comes from the shape-note hymn "Idumea" (or "And Am I Born to Die?"):

A land of deepest shade
Unpierced by human thought
That dreary region of the dead
Where all things are forgot

... and the story had its genesis when I saw a gravedigger, digging a grave at noon, in 100-degree heat, in a quiet graveyard.