S. B. Watson
Mystery, Adventure, Suspense
Published Works
July/August 2026, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Cover Story
Locked-Room, Impossible Crime. In the late 19th-century, an old man tells his granddaughter of an impossible game of whist, played by the game's greatest player, and challenges her to solve the puzzle of the cards.
June 2026, Inkd Publishers
Detectives, Sleuths, & Nosy Neighbors III
Locked-Room. When an entire herd of stock horses disappear from the middle of a snowy pasture, the rancher calls the local sheriff to investigate.
A Slim Deroga Mystery.
May 2026, Black Hare Press
Patreon Stories & Year Eight Anthology
Speculative, Horror. A lonely woman muses on the unforgiving nature of the desert.
May 2026, Crashed Landings
Sci-Fi, Kids on Bikes. A band of high-school frenemies are brought together, and forced apart, when something strange crashes in the woods outside of town.
May/June 2026, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
Locked-Room. A symphony bass player is found dead, locked inside his hardshell bass case, with the only key inside, with him, in his pocket.
An Arch Palafox Mystery.
"Response to a Guy I Argued With in a Pub"
Blog Post for EQMM at Something Is Going to Happen
March 2026, Punk Noir Magazine, Find What You Love and Let It Kill You #3
Speculative Crime. A cat muses on life.
Free to Read!
A standalone novelette
February 2026, Black Beacon Book Kindle-Only Novelettes
Locked-Room. A circus elephant disappears and his trainer is murdered during a 10-second blackout in the big top. Who better to solve the case, than the sad clown?
The Valley of the Weeping Moss
January 2026, BFS Horizons #19, British Fantasy Society
Sword and Sorcery. A wild axeman flees the unerring pursuit of a sorcerous tracker.
January 2026, The No Sleep Podcast - Suddenly Shocking Volume 21 (premium content)
Horror, Dark Crime. An copy editor remembers a recent death at the paper.
January 2026, Crimeucopia - Can You Dig It?
Neo-Noir, Hardboiled, Musical Crime. One Discothèque in the highest-altitude town in the world is about to get gnarly on a saturday night.
October 2025, Camden Park Press - Cooking Up Death
Locked-Room, Fairplay. A newspaper columnist is embroiled in a series of dangerous accidents on a luxury paddle-wheeler excursion down the Mississippi.
In the Arch Palafox setting.
Includes a recipe!
October 2025, Black Beacon Books - Samhain Screams
Horror. A 18th century American printer is cursed by a spell from across the seas.
Includes a tarot reading!
September 2025, Crimeucopia - What the Butler Didn't See
Locked-Room. Arctic explorers take shelter from a blizzard in a very peculiar igloo, with a very peculiar inhabitant.
August 2025, Black Beacon Books - Steampunk Sleuths
Fairplay, Traditional, Alternate-History, Steampunk. When a reputed geisha disappears within a gated community, her protege decides to investigate.
June 2025, Crimeucopia - A Load of Balls
Adventure Mystery. When local police seem disinterested in the unexpected death of a rural baseball coach, a few of the boys from his team take the investigation into their own hands.
April 2025, The Third Black Beacon Book of Mystery
Locked-Room, Traditional. A man is shot at close range from within a tight circle of witnesses, who hear the shot from a different direction.
A Dougal Grieve Mystery.
The Miraculous Walk of Saint Ebrulf
December 2024, A Winter Kiss anthology
Medieval Crime, Inverse Locked-Room. In 11th century Normandy, the centuries-old body of a saint walks through a solid wall, and across twenty miles of snowy countryside, to celebrate the advent at a different abbey... or does it?
A Norman Saga Story.
November 2024, Crimeucopia - Great Googly Moo!
Noir, P.I. Fiction. A bum solves crimes for five cents a pop in 1950's Portland, Oregon.
October 2024, Crime Wave
Medieval Crime, Locked-Room. A vicious baron is visited by thieves, whores, and a Papal legate, all in one night. All is not what it seems.
A Norman Saga Story.
August 2024, Mystery Magazine
Medieval Crime. A desperate band of relic counterfeiters in medieval Normandy argue over a problem, and develop a curious solution.
A Norman Saga Story.
June 2024, The Black Beacon Book of Pirates
Pirates, Adventure. A 17th century Africa Gold Coast slave recounts his time in the house of a notorious pirate on the run.
The Problem of the Disappearing Heart
June 2024, Crimeucopia - Through the Past Darkly, a Criminal History
Locked-Room Mystery, Traditional. A man's heart is vanished by a stage magician, who seems nearly as surprised as the audience.
A Dougal Grieve Mystery.
January 2024, ScribesMICRO issue 37
Drabble, 100 words exactly. Read it and find out.
Free to read!
January 2024, Ill Winds and Wild Weather
Hardboiled. Two nervous travelers take shelter from a hailstorm beneath an overpass, but they're not alone.
Now out of print.
June 2023, Punk Noir Magazine
Hardboiled. A man suspects his neighbors of murder in a wealthy Mexico City suburb.
Free to read!
June 2023, The Back Forty anthology
Sci-fi whodunnit. A desert drifter appears in town, and even he wonders where he came from.
Crime poem published as three-week series at The Five-Two.
Crime Poetry. Three poems examine a murder from all the angles.
All free to read!
September 26th, 2022, daily fiction, Mystery Tribune
Hardboiled. A P.I. plays cat and mouse over a high stakes divorce case.
Free to read!
April 2022 issue, Mystery Magazine
Speculative crime. A garden daffodil muses on the nature of love.
October 2019 issue, The Dark City Mystery Magazine
Hardboiled. A young girl with a cutting addiction is forced to face her dark past.
Fall 2017 issue, Spinetingler Magazine, now out of print
Ethnic Crime. Child soldiers struggle over illegal African gold shipments.
Into the Rain
Published in The Machinery magazine, November 2016 issue, now out of print
Speculative Fiction. A Viet Nam vet runs into a divergent version of himself.
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