A stranger arrives in a remote village set deep in the secluded valley of Gruseltal. He is a bounty hunter seeking to capture a local werewolf. Elsewhere, an unhappy and relapsed vampire searches for love by sending out his pet bats. The arrival of a comet one night portends strange events. Meanwhile, in the city of Wurststadt, a devious, high-ranking politician plots revenge for his humiliation at the hands of the villagers a generation earlier. Ultimately, he is challenged by the local pastor, and a group of courageous villagers willing to travel to Wurststadt to thwart his divisive plans. And, throughout, local hero, Karl, uses his ingenuity to improve the living conditions of his fellow villagers. These, and other events and characters, combine to form an intertwining tale that is as thought-provoking as it is comical.

Michael Smith is a regular contributor to short fiction journals, and his work has appeared in Fabula Argentea, Witcraft, Literally Stories, Heimat Review, The Hooghly Review, Little Old Lady Comedy, and many other online literary journals. The starting point came when I read Austin Kleon's inspirational book 'Steal Like An Artist'. Kleon wrote, "When I was asked to talk to students at a community college in upstate New York in 2011, I sat down and wrote a talk based on a list of 10 things I wished I'd heard when I was starting out." Number 3 on that list of ten things is "Write the book you want to read." And that's what I've been doing ever since. After privately sharing a few stories, family and friends began encouraging me to publish.