Black Petals
Horror/Science Fiction Magazine
July 15th, 2026
Issue # 116
BP Editor's Page
Well, folks, while no one was looking, I hit the big 82. That's a lotta trips around the sun. It's great to have lived in two centuries, and eight decades. Thinking back to when I grew up I can't believe how easy we have it now, especially kids. I grew up on a farm in southern Michigan, not a cattle ranch or anything so grand. We were dirt farmers. There was no crop insurance, so if your crop failed things got really thin until the next year. We had no air conditioned houses, let alone tractors or combines. We were out in the dirt and sun and heat. Harvest was particularly tough, because when you cut grain and it runs through a combine, all the outer husks are removed in the process and a certain amount of that winds up in the air, being blown about and breathed by people. Most likely stuff like that is why I don't have allergies.
Like most farm kids, I considered school just something you had to get through before you could get on with your life. I left at the end of 11th grade and joined the Air Force. This was during the cold war and just before Vietnam. In the Air Force I got my GED, and was assigned to Military Police, which started me off on a law enforcement career. I eventually took some college courses, too, so I'm not totally ignorant. Met my wife in Wichita and have lived here ever since. Never missed the farm at all and would never want that life again.
Never wrote anything for publication until 1999, when I wrote a story and "sold" it to a little magazine called Black Petals. It was being published out of Manitowoc, Wisconsin by a nice lady who went by the name of D. M. Yorton. Not her real name. Later that same year, she decided she didn't want to be a magazine editor anymore and she offered the magazine to me. I published it as a print mag until issue 41, when I got tired of losing money and took it to the Internet. And here we are. I've often thought about what will happen to this little hobby mag when I snuff it and pass on to whatever comes next. But, for now, I'm not gonna worry about it, I intend to stay right here at the old laptop, playing editor and having fun.
p.s. Please pay attention to our lead story, They Came Through the Shadows, by J.M. Linguet. He is a newcomer to Black Petals and we really want him to do well. Once again this issue, we are doing both flash fiction and micro fiction along with our regular stories and poems. It's a pretty big issue and I hope you enjoy it. If you like what we're doing, tell your friends. The software on WIX, our new web host, allows us to look at all our visitors, not their names or anything, but where they check in from and how many hits we get and from what countries. We enjoy being world-wide...
Wichita, KS
7/15/26