The Giveaway
We made a puzzle out of the Legends cover.
Follow the tour to find the clues hidden in the guest posts, readings and promos.
Name the Legend each story is based upon as you go through the tour.
.jpg)
For each correct answer, you earn one of ten puzzle pieces.
At the end of the tour, the three people who have collected the most puzzle pieces
will win a free digital copy of
Legends: Monsters that go Bump in the Night
___________
“The Urbexer’s Girl”
Not that long ago, I read about a Cleveland high-school girl who fell to her death. She was intelligent, well-liked by classmates, and had a gymnastics background, if memory serves. She did handstands on building edges for fun with a boyfriend filming her. She would post these to her social pages for her friends. The abandoned grain clusters on Old River Road are still standing, although on the verge of collapse. This area today is known as The Flats, a popular college-bar scene on the west side of downtown Cleveland extending down to the Cuyahoga River, once notorious for catching fire. There is also one in Collinwood owned by Rockefeller & Co., the most prominent member of “Millionaire’s Row” from the city’s glory days.
On her last day alive, she was on top of one of these derelict elevators doing the kind of stunts she always did for posting to her social media later. This was shortly before the terms “urbexer” and “urban exploring” became as well-known as they are today in popular culture.
I was thinking about her while watching a YouTuber’s uploaded video post filmed from an abandoned Ford Motor factory or powerhouse in or near Detroit. He sounded more like a trail guide from the national park service than someone who took death-defying chances. He videoed the decayed structure from the ground floor, commented throughout while his camera canned the graffiti on the walls left by taggers and ground debris from squatters. The biggest chance he took was to trespass into the building past a gate. I made my character Rory envy him for the large number of followers he had, whereas he always took risks in his explorations, yet didn’t have the internet popularity of other urbexers.
That YouTube vlog brought back some memories of my youth when my friends and I used to explore a derelict textile building in my neighborhood that we called “the Sweater Factory.” Breaking into the first floor was no feat because nothing was secured or locked. Doors were pried open or missing. We jumped through holes in the floorboards to crawl from room to room oblivious of any rats we might encounter. The top floor was reached via wobbly metal stairs through an open door. We looked out over the harbor from an intact roof and even filmed our “World War II” movies with my cousin’s Super 8 camera.
The middle floor, however, was the one that stuck in my memories. Every window broken, the massive black spinning jennies looking the same as when the factory operated back in the nineteenth century. We played a game by climbing onto the eight-foot open windows to jump to a tree branch. It was stupid because the trees that grew alongside the factory were wild sumac, dense with water, with supple branches so flimsy that you could snap them off. We used them to whip rocks and the sides of the building; their leaves left green smears on the red-brick walls.
Most sumac were short,stunted, a few poked branches through the broken windows. This one tree, however, was a good twenty-, twenty-five feet tall with branches thick enough for climbing. One boy named Jimmy enrolled in my elementary school after the year had begun. New to the neighborhood, he was a small, red-haired kid with freckles spattered across his nose, and he was friendly and agile. He had taken my spot on the football team. Jimmy would show off by jumping from the ledge to the branch and hanging there one-armed, scratching himself under the armpit while making Ooooh-Oooh noises like a cartoon monkey.
Below him were piles of broken concrete with rebar sticking out, rusted cans and broken bottles from Depression-era bums that used to hang out there to drink. Falling into that rubble might not have been fatal, but it would have guaranteed a trip to the hospital. Because Jimmy had replaced me on my eighth-grade football team, I felt a surge of envy mixed with something else—a darker impulse. In other words, I wouldn’t have been traumatized if he fell and severely injured himself.
That rotting building became the setting for three other published short stories: “The Girl from the Sweater Factory,” another ghost story in a horror zine; a drabble (“The Urbexer Decides”) in Punk Noir; and a tale about a body buried under the floorboards titled “A Serenade for Rats” for a crime-fiction blog. The Hosea S. Johnson textile factory on Hulbert Avenue in my hometown ended business in the 1920’s and was demolished decades ago, yet it provided me seeds that grew and left some still scratching away in my memory bank.
So, the legend my story comes from is the ghost girl of Cleveland.
Tell us in the comments which legend this story is associated with to claim puzzle piece 7.
_____
About Robb T. White
Robb White lives in Northeastern Ohio. He is a Derringer-nominated author of genre fiction and three series detectives: Thomas Haftmann, Raimo Jarvi, and Jade Hui. Betray Me Not was selected for distinction by the Independent Fiction Alliance in 2022. His 2024 publications include a collection of noir tales: Fade to Black: Noir Stories of Grifters, Drifters, and Unlovable Losers. A new thriller is Jersey Girl from Close to the Bone Publishing, U.K.
_____
About Legends: Monsters that go Bump in the Night
These diverse shiver-inducing tales introduce readers to ghosts and monstrous creatures, which each hold a certain sense of justice. Introduced by multi-genre author Kaye Lynne Booth, these stories are a celebration of legends of old, and some new ones, too, but there are no happy endings.
__________
“It Was No Stroll In The Park”, by Abe Margel
My story, ‘It Was No Stroll in the Park’, combines the Jewish notion of gigul, the reincarnation of souls, with one of a trouble making reincarnate in 1950s Toronto.
Sraga, the reincarnate, complains to Mendel, the protagonist, there has been a mistake or he would not have found himself wandering Toronto’s streets. Mendel is a young thug living in the then poor Jewish neighbourhood of Kensington Market. Sraga gives Mendel a lot of grief and Mendel would desperately like to be rid of the strange little man.
Tell us in the comments which legend this story is associated with to claim puzzle piece 8.
_____
About Abe Margel
Abe Margel worked in rehabilitation and mental health for thirty years. He is the father of two adult children and lives in Thornhill, Ontario with his wife. His fiction has appeared in Chewers, The Hemlock Journal, Yellow Mama, Brief Wilderness, Freedom Fiction, Ariel Chart, Mystery Tribune, etc.
___________
Wrap Up
Also, don’t forget to get those Mustang pictures in to try and match the car in Chris Barili’s “The Legend of Trooper 666” story for a chance to win a signed print copy of the book. (Available to U.S. residents only due to the expense of International shipping.)
Winners will be announced in a special post on Sunday, on Writing to be Read.
Pop in for tomorrow’s tour stop over at Writing to be Read where Kaye Lynne Booth will be hosting a guest post from contributing author Sara W. McBride about the wonderful contributors to the Legends anthology, and sharing a reading from her story, “The Last Stage”.
__________
Tour Schedule
8/17 – 8/21 Legends – Kaye Lynne Booth, et.al
Poetry by Mich: https://michnavs.wordpress.com/2026/08/17/day-1-legends-tour/
Hotel by Masticadores: https://hotelmasticadoreshouse.wordpress.com/2026/08/17/day-1-legends-tour/
Masticadores Phillipines: https://masticadoresphilippines.wordpress.com/2026/08/17/day-1-legends-tour/
Tues. 8/18 – DL Mullan – guest post & Rebecca M. Senese Promo – Kaye Lynne Booth –Writing to be Read: https://writingtoberead.com/?p=72488
Wed. 8/19 – Danaeka Scrimshaw – guest post & Joseph Carrabis – Video post & reading – Carla Johnson-Hicks – Carla Loves to Read: https://wp.me/p6H3KI-kJa
Thurs. 8/20 – Robb T. White – guest post – Abe Margel Promo – Undawnted: http://www.undawnted.com/2026/08/undawnted-presents-legends-day-4.html
Fri. 8/21 – Sara W. McBride– guest post about authors & Kaye Lynne Booth – audio reading – Kaye Lynne Booth – Writing to be Read: https://writingtoberead.com/?p=72831
Sun. 8/23 – Contest Winners post – Writing to be Read
________________________________________
Book your WordCrafter Book Blog Tour today!
