Look up "good" in the dictionary and Rail Henry’s picture will be there. He works hard to help support his parent’s large family, and everybody likes him. He is also a senior in high school and he has never had a girlfriend. But there’s this one girl, Sunday Tice, who smiles at him. He thinks that maybe she likes him in a special way. They don’t talk since Rail is black and Sunday’s old man is known to be a bigwig in the local KKK. The fact that Rail has panic attacks around girls doesn’t help either.

When he is given a vision of Sunday flying across the sky, Rail decides to go for broke. Unfortunately Sunday comes with some serious baggage because she comes from a long line of witches. Going for broke with her could get him killed, or worse. With some help from the words of D. H. Lawrence and a footrace through the woods, Rail convinces Sunday to be his girl. Soon they both realize they are soul mates, and Rail finds a strength within himself that he didn’t know he had. He will stick with his girl no matter what.

Sunday’s "grandmother" leads a coven of witches who call themselves The Consorts of Apollyon. The consorts of Apollyon practice infanticide which makes them the mortal enemies of The Brides of Satan because babies are innocent. Satan has no purchase on the souls of infants, so why would Apollyon, who is certainly not as powerful as Satan, allow such a thing? Grandmother and Apollyon are both due for a serious smackdown from the Prince of Darkness, but nobody has seen Satan for a while. 17 years to be exact.

And Sunday is leading Rail down all kinds of paths that don’t seem so "good". What would happen if all Rail’s goodness could be flipped to evil? It seems that Rail Henry, the good kid, may hold the ability to tip the scales of power in Hell itself.


The South sucks, but Southern rocks. I wanted to write a story about southern people who are not from the South. That might actually be a good description of the people of Southernmost Illinois. This story is finished, but you can help me shape it by telling me what pulls you into the story and what pushes you out of it. Does it read smoothly. Are the characters engaging and well-developed? And so on. I’m not afraid of criticism, but I don’t need you to tell me how to write my story. What I super interested in is your reaction to it.

All information is welcome. This is my first time doing anything here on Inkshares and I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t even know how much of The Autumn Witch I should post here. In fact, I could use a mentor. ...Buehler.... Buehler...