Had a few minutes to breathe today, so I recorded a new video newsletter. It’s a bit long at 18 minutes, but it covers a lot of ground including The Easton Book Festival, Shore Leave 45 SF convention, Lehigh Valley Comic Con in August, my recent Pennsylvania Press Club awards, and my latest short stories in the new Bright Mirror and Retreat anthologies. Click here to listen.
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Mindful Writers Retreat, we chose “retreat” as our theme for this year’s charity anthology and our members did not disappoint. From the Lehigh Mountains of Pennsylvania, to Rehoboth Beach in Delaware, across the Atlantic to Ireland and Italy, and south of the equator to Belize and Africa, our heroes are in search of the illusive inspiration to create a life of their dreams. The quest leads them through forests and jungles, by carriage and train and plane, into libraries and flower shops, and even a convent and a monastery.
I hope you enjoy the opening scenes from my story, “A Certain Magic” and consider picking up a copy of Retreat. All proceeds benefit House of Ruth Maryland.
by Phil Giunta
Why was this place so familiar? Keri Lange had never been to Ligonier, Pennsylvania before yesterday afternoon and yet, she’d been haunted by a relentless feeling of déjà vu from the moment she arrived.
Keri paused along the trail as the first rays of the rising sun highlighted the resplendent autumn colors of the surrounding trees. Her gaze swept across the expansive field of green and brown grass bordered by a narrow, meandering creek on its north side and Macartney Lane to the south. Beyond the far edge of the field, opposite the trail on which she stood, sparse traffic flowed along Route 711.
Macartney Lane was the only road in or out of the Ligonier Camp and Conference Center, her home for the next four days. Nestled in the Laurel Highlands region of the Allegheny Mountains, the five-hundred-acre property was a summer camp for kids, but a group of writers from the nearby Pittsburgh area rented the place for a weeklong retreat every October. It was the perfect location to break away from life and get into the creative flow all while nestled in the bosom of Mother Nature. Although Keri lived several hours away, she’d connected with a few of the local writers at a recent conference and was invited to join them.
One of the first things she’d learned during orientation was that many of the writers took sunrise walks to clear their minds before immersing themselves in their work. For Keri, it was a welcome change of pace from the stress of urban life.
To her right, a path of dirt and stone wound its way up to the distant crest of a hill. Keri was tempted to make the climb but she’d been walking for over an hour and her stomach was grumbling. She made a mental note to tackle the hill tomorrow and continued along the trail until she arrived at Macartney Lane. There, a large wooden sign served as an information marker about the Wilpen train crash that had occurred a few hundred yards away on July 5, 1912. The trail on which she’d been walking had once been a branch of the Ligonier Valley Railroad and the site of a horrific collision between a passenger train headed north to Wilpen and a freight train carrying coal on its way south to Ligonier on the same track. Twenty-seven people were killed and twenty-six injured.
Overcome with inexplicable dread, Keri backed away from the sign and darted up the road to the lodge as if some calamity might befall her if she lingered too long on the trail.
***
The rest of the morning passed without further apprehension. Seated against a window in the first-floor lounge, Keri had become so absorbed in her writing that it was almost lunch time when she glanced up from her laptop. Contemplating the next scene in her story, she stared out at the grassy hill behind the lodge and the tree line beyond—until the blast of a train whistle jolted her. She glanced around the room at the other writers, but none of them appeared disturbed by the sound, even when it happened again.
Maybe they’re used to it, since most of them have been here before. But I thought the railroad was long gone. A brief Google search confirmed that it had been decommissioned in 1952. So where did that whistle come from? It was so close!
Keri was tempted to dash outside and track it down until retreat organizers Carla Poole and Barry Sharpe gathered with two other writers and started toward the back door.
Carla leaned toward her as she sauntered past. “Comin’ to lunch?”
Keri closed the lid on her laptop and joined them as they made their way out of the lodge and up the hill to the cafeteria building. “Did any of you hear a train whistle a few minutes ago?”
“Train whistle?” Carla shook her head. “Nope. I don’t think any trains run through this area.”
“The lodge offices are just down the hall from us,” Barry said. “Maybe one of their computers makes a train whistle sound when an email comes in or an alert pops up.”
Keri shrugged. “I guess that makes sense.”
“How’s your writing going?” Carla asked.
“I’m one scene away from finishing this reincarnation story I started last week. It’s about a woman who travels back to her previous life in order to rescue someone and change history. I was struggling with the ending, but this morning’s walk helped clear my mind.”
“That’s what this retreat’s all about,” Barry said. “There’s a certain magic about this place. The guided meditations we do after lunch should help you stay in the creative flow and knock out that last scene.”
“That’s the plan. Once the story’s done, I can give it a quick edit and send it to my critique partners.”
“You still have three days left,” Carla said. “Got anything else?”
“I could work on a novella I put aside a few months ago,” Keri replied. “Unless I get an idea for something new. I see there was a train crash here back in 1912. Maybe I’ll research that. Might get a story idea out of it.”
“That happened two years before this camp was founded.” Barry opened the door and motioned for the women to precede him into the cafeteria. “We’ve had enough strange occurrences here over the years to wonder if this place is haunted by some of the people who died in that crash.”
Keri recalled her unsettling experience on the trail. “That… would explain a lot.”
To continue reading this story and many other wonderful tales, pick up a copy of Retreat from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, or your favorite independent bookstore. Thank you for supporting small press publishing and a worthy cause!
We’re five months into the year and for me, 2025 is delivering a heaping tablespoon of stress and turbulence on a personal level but on the writing front, the outlook continues to be bright.
To recap, my SF adventure tale “In the Span of a Heartbeat” was published in January in Black Cat Weekly online magazine issue #176. This was my first time submitting and publishing with them. I’m pleased to report that at the end of April, Black Cat Weekly accepted a supernatural story from me called “Where Halloween Never Ends.” It will be published in one of their October 2025 issues. Stay tuned for more info. It’s an honor to work with editor and longtime genre writer John Betancourt.
The Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group, of which I’m a member, publishes a themed anthology every odd year. For 2025, the theme and title are Writing a Wrong and I’m pleased to have my ghost story “Give Them Peace” included. It’s the first short story featuring Miranda Lorensen, my psychic-medium protagonist from my novels Testing the Prisoner, By Your Side, and Like Mother, Like Daughters.
In early April, I learned that I’d won two first place awards from the Pennsylvania Press Club—one for my novel, By Your Side, and one for a time travel story I wrote last year called “A Thorne in Time” about a scientist and detective who travel back twenty years to stop a serial killer. That story was published in Ruth and Ann’s Guide to Time Travel (Celestial Echo Press, August 2024). All first place winners in every category are forwarded to the National Federation of Press Women communications contest to compete against other state affiliates. Results will be announced in June.
My next science fiction story comes out on May 20th. It’s called “Isaac Geary’s Instant Utopia” and will be published in a utopian science fiction anthology called Bright Mirror.
Finally, I have a supernatural tale called “A Certain Magic” that will be included in a charity anthology later this year from Year of the Book Press in partnership with the Mindful Writers Retreat. The retreat takes place every February and October in Ligonier, PA nestled in the Laurel Highlands region of the Allegheny Mountains. I attend the five-day October retreat almost every year as the area is gorgeous in autumn.What’s next? Well, all new writing projects are on hold until I finish a series of home improvements through spring and summer. However, I’m compiling the first of a two-volume collection of my short stories that have been published over the past decade. I hope to have it out by the end of the year with volume two slated for 2026… if all goes well.
Once the renovations are over, I hope to resurrect a project I started two years ago—a sequel to Like Mother, Like Daughters. The first draft was nearly finished before I put the project aside to work on a spate of short stories for various publishers and deal with a series of personal and family matters. At least I’ll return to the project with fresh eyes, which can’t hurt.
I’ll be back with updates about Bright Mirror and Retreat in the coming weeks. I’ll probably post them to the “What’s New?” section on the front page of this site. Until then, be safe, be healthy, and enjoy a good book!
I took my beatings in 2024, from being hobbled by severe arthritis in my knee to my mother’s sudden death in June to a home repair imbroglio that is now in litigation for who-knows-how-long. This was one of the most chaotic years of my life, filled with stress, grief, anxiety, and depression.
Despite all of that, I had plenty of reasons to be grateful. So many, in fact, that I filled my gratitude box (pictured below) with slips of paper on which is written all of the exceptional things that happened to me throughout the year. On New Year’s Eve, which is tomorrow as I write this, I’ll open the box and review each slip as a reminder of those wonderful people, places, and moments that sustained me in 2024 even through the darkest days. I’d like to take a few moments to list some of them here.
Testing the Prisoner (second edition) continued to win awards this year, picking up seven more including the spring BookFest competition, an International Impact Award, two PennCraft awards, the Pennsylvania Press Club, National Federation of Press Women, and the Independent Author Network.
By Your Side (second edition) was released in July amid the aforementioned chaos and while I could not give it the promotional attention is deserved, it went on to win three awards in the fall BookFest competition and has been submitted to three other awards. Results to be announced next year.
After a two-year dry spell, my short story efforts also rebounded with the publication of “A Thorne in Time” in Ruth and Ann’s Guide to Time Travel – Volume I by Celestial Echo Press. The book was released in August with a successful book launch at the Philadelphia Science Fiction Convention (Philcon) in November.
In early June, I was stunned when Black Cat Weekly—an online SF, fantasy, and mystery magazine edited by the amazing John Betancourt—accepted my science fiction adventure tale “In the Span of a Heartbeat” which will be published sometime in the first quarter of 2025. Watch this space!
In October, I spent a beautiful five days in Ligonier, Pennsylvania at the Mindful Writers Retreat, an event I attend almost every year. It’s a chance for me to focus on writing without the distractions of life and to connect with a community of writers in the western PA area that I otherwise only chat with on social media. More, the Ligonier Camp and Conference center is nestled in the Laurel Highlands region of the Allegheny Mountains, which is resplendent during autumn and perfect for walking through the woods and along the trails.
In November, my science fiction story “Isaac Geary’s Instant Utopia” was accepted by Oddity Prodigy Productions for their upcoming science fiction anthology, Bright Mirror, slated for a March 2025 release.
This month, my ghost story “Give Them Peace” was accepted by the Greater Lehigh Writers Group for publication in our 2025 anthology Writing a Wrong, also due out in March. Per tradition, the book will launch at the Write Stuff writers conference.
And to cap off the year, I submitted a story to Flame Tree Press yesterday for their Robots Past & Future anthology to be released in August 2025. The deadline is January 1, 2025. I learned about the open call on December 3rd and managed to conjure up a story by Christmas Day. My critique partners were kind enough to turn around their comments within three days.
Although I had to cancel my summer vacation and my appearance at Shore Leave when my mother died, I managed to attend Farpoint in February, the Write Stuff writers conference in March, and the Lehigh Valley Comic Con in August and again in December. As always, they were wonderful experiences and I’ll back again on the con scene again next year, including Shore Leave.
So while life knocked me down this year, it couldn’t keep me down. I’m still moving forward with gratitude, hope, and a determination to thrive in 2025. I wish you much peace, joy, and success in the new year.
After a year’s absence, it was pure joy to return to Ligonier, PA during the third week in October for the Mindful Writers Retreat nestled in the Laurel Highlands region of the Allegheny Mountains.
Everything about the Mindful Writers Retreat is magical, the gorgeous fall foliage that surrounds us, the amazing writers who have become my tribe since I began attending in 2018, the guided meditations we practice each day, the peaceful sunrise walks through the woods, and of course, the hours of quiet writing time each day.
All of these elements come together at the Ligonier Camp and Conference Center, resulting in an extraordinary experience that keeps me coming back almost every autumn (I’ve missed only two since 2018).
On Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, I took sunrise walks through the endless woods and trails of the Ligonier Camp. As always, these beautiful excursions bring enormous peace to the mind, heart, and soul and, of course, they’re excellent for the body as well.
I spent the first two and a half days editing works written by fellow members of the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group. Every odd year, our group publishes a themed anthology of short stories, essays, and poems. I’ve been on the editing team for these anthologies since 2016. We’re gearing up for our 2025 anthology, Writing a Wrong. I managed to finish all nine pieces that were assigned to me by Wednesday morning.
The latter half of the week was spent on a sequel to a novella that I’d published in 2018 called Like Mother, Like Daughters. As I did with my first two novels, Testing the Prisoner and By Your Side, I plan to reissue Like Mother, Like Daughters along with its sequel in one omnibus edition. That might happen in 2025, but more likely the year after.
On Wednesday afternoon, I ventured into town with another writer, Lilan Laishley, to ship some items I had sold on eBay the previous Friday. While there, we took the opportunity to cast our votes in the town’s scarecrow contest. It’s a Ligonier tradition that some of the local businesses set up scarecrows around the center of town. Residents and tourists are then afforded the opportunity to vote on their favorite. In this case, there were about 25 scarecrows to choose from.
Afterwards, we stopped for ice cream at the Ligonier Creamery before heading back to the lodge for more writing time.
On Thursday afternoon, I walked down to the local creek where I meditated for a brief time and basked under the autumn sun. Thursday is our last full day at the retreat and in what has become a tradition, most of us took a break from writing to gather around the hearth in the evening.
However, one of our longtime members, Lori Jones, had the brilliant idea to take a night walk through the camp to some of the cabins scattered about the property. This turned into a quasi-paranormal investigation that ended in a breathtaking star gazing event.
This year’s Mindful Writers Retreat was the most magical one yet. The weather was gorgeous for the entire week (it usually is), our group participated in our usual hijinks and shenanigans, and I managed to accomplish everything I’d planned for the week.
The only time I ever dislike a Friday is when I’m at the retreat because that is the day all of us part ways and return to reality. Deepest gratitude to Kathie Shoop and Larry Schardt for all they do to organize the Mindful Writers Retreat twice a year. I already look forward to next October!
As I write this, the sun is rising on the final morning of the 2022 Autumn Mindful Writers Retreat. As always, it was a magical week at the Ligonier Camp and Conference Center nestled in the Laurel Highlands in western Pennsylvania.
Mother Nature blessed us with five days of clement weather and vivid fall colors. I managed to finish three more chapters of my novella-in-progress and when I wasn’t writing, I hiked through the woods and joined my fellow scribes in afternoon meditation.
On Tuesday and Thursday evenings, I stole away from the retreat to participate in two Zoom sessions with fellow members of the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group. The first was a discussion panel on Writing Genre Fiction with Dianna Sinovic, Michael Daigle, and Rachel Thompson. The second was an Author Dialogue with Dianna wherein we enjoyed an informal discussion about various aspects of writing. Both Zoom meetings will be included in the programming for the upcoming Easton Book Festival.
On our final evening of the retreat, the group gathered around the fire for a few hours of relaxation and socializing. Now, it’s nearly time for our final brunch together and then I’m on the road home with fond memories, some lessons learned about book marketing, and solid progress in my current project.
Deep gratitude to retreat organizers Kathie Shoop and Larry Schardt and to the staff at the Ligonier Camp and Conference Center. I look forward to future retreats!
