Inside Voice: Haunted Coal Ridge

Haunted Coal Ridge #10

by Chuck Sperati

A series of intertwined supernatural stories that will make you wonder where the darkness ends and the light begins. All small towns keep secrets, but in Coal Ridge when the secret gets out, it begins to feed…again.

Story 10: “Inside Voice”

Caleb's not so popular in the real world, but he loves his video games. For him, nothing quite matches the thrill of hunting enemies in complex battle maps, while chatting with his online friends.

Emily is trapped in a dark place and she's not alone. While looking for a way out, she hears Caleb, but she's not the only one that's found him.

Now Caleb and Emily are prey in a real-life hunt on the most terrifying level of all—Coal Ridge.

33 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2018

About the author

I've always been a reader, falling in love with The Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia in grade school, moving through Asimov, Clarke, King, Orwell, Bradbury, Anthony, and so many others over the years. Also an avid tabletop RPG gamer, I picked up my first Dungeons & Dragons red box in 1977 and have never put the dice down.

I began writing seriously in college (which was a long time ago), publishing a short story and an RPG adventure in the Star Wars Adventure Journal, and started a novel...then I let life get in the way. Though I never stopped writing, I shared my work with very few people until 2009 when I self-published my first two sword and sorcery fantasy novels without really knowing what I was doing. It could have gone better.

Recently, I found myself inspired and have been writing much more prolifically, splitting my time between short stories and returning to my fantasy world with a lot more stories to tell. After a lot of research, I've decided to follow the self-publishing route and have been slowly gathering an audience. Putting together a website and a Facebook page to help with marketing, I've received a lot of encouraging positive feedback and still feel like I'm just getting started. I would not be so arrogant as to claim that all of it's good and it's possible you might not like any of it, but hopefully you can find something entertaining that lets you climb in and escape to another place...if only for a little while.