This is Halloween!

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New Release! Bad Apples 3: Seven Slices of Halloween Horror

I'm pleased to announce the release of Bad Apples 3: Seven Slices of Halloween Horror. And I must say, I'm proud to have my humble contribution, "The Uncle Taffy's Girl," appear alongside excellent stories by authors whose work I greatly admire.

I'm biased, of course, but I do think this is the best Bad Apples yet.

Grab it now in Kindle or paperback!

Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Amazon AU



Paperback Editions also available at: Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million

New Release: Taboogasm

Title: Taboogasm

Genre: Fantasy/Science Fiction/Dark Humor

Length: 162 pages

Imprint: new dollar pulp

Release Date: 7/26/2016

Description: 

Bill likes booze. He likes women. But he doesn't like to work. Luckily for Bill, if he plays the lottery, he wins.

Every single time.

What happens when a low-life starts living the high life?

What happens when a deadbeat loser becomes the luckiest man alive?

He draws some unwanted attention, naturally, from dark and powerful forces, and before he knows what's what, his days on Earth are numbered.

Bill's luck just ran out.

Order the Kindle Edition (Illustrated)

Order the Paperback (Illustrated)

Taboogasm: Illustrated Signed & Numbered Limited Edition Hardcover

(only 30 copies available)

Order the Limited Edition Hardcover

Celebrate Short Story Month with Edward Lorn's "The Morning Dew"

It's FREE (today only). It's a bit of weird horror. It's by Edward Lorn. It's Short Story Month!

Grab it!

New Release: Tipping

I've just released a new short horror story about tipping cows.

Amazon US | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Australia

Kill Your Thirst for Halloween Horror!

Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Amazon AU

Dead Roses - Released!

I'm happy to announce that Dead Roses: Five Dark Tales of Twisted Love is now available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions. And, as a thank you to our fans, the Kindle edition's digital list price has been reduced from $4.99 to $2.99 for the first week.

This is a horror anthology of all new tales from the same people who brought you last year's Bad Apples: Five Slices of Halloween Horror. My contribution to this one is a novella(!) entitled Loving the Goat.

Well, here's a little more about all the stories in the book:

ELEANOR, by Jason Parent

When Father Stuart McKenzie finds a disfigured girl abandoned on the steps of his church, he decides the child is a blessing from God and raises her as his own. But the special needs of Eleanor demand more from Stuart than a father can give.

LOVE LIES IN EYES, by Evans Light

Nathan falls for a beautiful girl from across a crowded room, but she disappears before he can muster his courage. Obsessed with getting a second chance, he's about to learn that true love isn't only hard to find...it can be hard to lose.

PANACEA, by Adam Light

Decades of marriage haven't tarnished Rob's affection towards his dear wife Molly one bit, and he's not about to let cancer snatch her away, no matter the cost. But every medication has its side effects, some more than others.

CINDER BLOCK, by Edward Lorn

Toby's dad may have hit the road long ago, but his mother still loves him - along with every other man in town, that is. But after the beautiful Lauren shines a light into his dreary world, he realizes just how crazy love can get.

LOVING THE GOAT, by Gregor Xane

Embattled comic book artist and notorious animal lover Bill Capra is willing to do anything (literally) to get his dirty paws on the fabled object of his desire, even if it means his own destruction.

(This book contains adult content and is suitable for mature readers only.)

Order a copy of Dead Roses now!

Kindle Edition 

(40% off for release week!)

Paperback

Signed Limited Edition 

Hardcovers & Paperbacks 

THE RIGGLE TWINS is FREE on Amazon!

As I've previously announced, my novelette The Riggle Twins is presently on the 2014 Bram Stoker Award's preliminary ballot. To celebrate, I've decided to give the story away for FREE on Amazon through Wednesday of this week.

The Riggle Twins first appeared in last year's Bad Apples: Five Slices of Halloween Horror. Yesterday, it was announced that the same people who brought you that thing are putting out another thing next month called Dead Roses: Five Dark Tales of Twisted Love. So, if you're interested in either anthology, this story should give you the flavor of these books.

If you grab it, I do hope you enjoy it.

Get The Riggle Twins FREE from Amazon!

I'm on the 2014 Bram Stoker Awards Preliminary Ballot!

I am much, much more than pleased to announce that my novelette "The Riggle Twins," which first appeared in Bad Apples: Five Slices of Halloween Horror (Corpus Press), has managed to make its way on to the 2014 Bram Stoker Awards Preliminary Ballot in the Long Fiction category.

This doesn't make me or my story a nominee. To claim that distinction, "The Riggle Twins" will have to be voted on to the final ballot by Horror Writers Association (HWA) lifetime/active members.

At this time I'd like to congratulate everyone listed on the preliminary ballot. Best of luck to all!

The announcement at Locus Online.

The original HWA announcement on Facebook.

About the Bram Stoker Awards

Professor Challenger: The Island of Terror by William Meikle

This novella serves as an homage and as a sequel to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. In addition to literature's most famous detective, Doyle created an irascible beast of a manly adventurer known as Professor Challenger.

Here's how he's described in The Lost World:

"His appearance made me gasp. I was prepared for something strange, but not for so overpowering a personality as this. It was his size, which took one's breath away – his size and his imposing presence. His head was enormous, the largest I have ever seen upon a human being. I am sure that his top hat, had I ventured to don it, would have slipped over me entirely and rested on my shoulders. He had the face and beard, which I associate with an Assyrian bull; the former florid, the latter so black as almost to have a suspicion of blue, spade-shaped and rippling down over his chest. The hair was peculiar, plastered down in front in a long, curving wisp over his massive forehead. The eyes were blue-grey under great black tufts, very clear, very critical, and very masterful. A huge spread of shoulders and a chest like a barrel were the other parts of him which appeared above the table, save for two enormous hands covered with long black hair. This and a bellowing, roaring, rumbling voice made up my first impression of the notorious Professor Challenger."

While Meikle did an excellent job of telling this story with the same flavor and style of Doyle's writing, I don't feel that he did enough with Challenger's character. Sure, the Professor is featured prominently in the narrative but not prominently enough for a man who, from what I understand, is like a force of nature. I wanted more rude, bombastic behavior, more displays of brute strength, more bravado, more cunning intellect.

Perhaps Meikle will write another piece featuring Challenger. If he does, I'll read it. This was action-packed and fun to read. Some of the scenes inside the lighthouse in the end are especially fine.

Recommended to fans of Doyle and/or Challenger.

Read this book!

Mr. Tucker & Me is FREE for a limited time

As my holiday gift to you, Mr. Tucker & Me will be FREE to download from Amazon through 12/22/14.

WARNING: This short is not horror, and it's not a holiday story. It fits somewhere in the science-fiction & fantasy spectrum.

I hope you like it.

Got to Amazon and grab it!





And speaking of free, you can also grab "It Came From Hell and Smashed the Angels," if you're so inclined.

When We Join Jesus in Hell by Lee Thompson

The title of this thing is one of the best titles ever conceived of for a work of horror fiction. Frankly, that was 99% of why I bought this book. I didn't read the ad copy for it or any reviews. I just liked the title and knew the author had a good reputation.

All right.

Now, this isn't a long piece, so I can't say much about it without spoiling it for folks. I'll just say four things:

1) It quickly rose to a level of 'holy fuck!' that I wasn't quite ready for (which, of course, in hindsight is a great thing)

2) It went on a detour of sorts that I couldn't have been more pleased with

3) The writer's voice is unique and immediately compelling

4) I've already purchased two more books by Mr. Lee Thompson because I was so impressed with this novella (and the bonus short story included with this edition)

Highly recommended!

Read this book!

The Hanover Block is now available in paperback

The paperback edition of The Hanover Block is now available.

You can get it here.

If you order the paperback, the Kindle Edition is FREE.*

And, of course, you can still buy just the Kindle Edition or read it through Kindle Unlimited.

If you read it, I hope you like it.

And I'd also like to say thank you! to everyone who's already bought a copy. I most sincerely appreciate your support.

Paperback / Kindle Edition

*Offer available only through Amazon's Matchbook program. See Amazon for details.

Deadlift by Craig Saunders

I liked this. The taut storytelling, the stripped-down prose style. It read like not a word was wasted.

Deadlift's a cool noir tale with a unique central conceit that, on its own, would have made for a pretty fine read, but Saunders mixes in a little something extra that takes this up another level for me.

I didn't much care for the ending, but I would imagine that I'd be in the minority in this regard.

Recommended.

Read this book!

Fog Warning by Edward Lorn

Edward Lorn's not afraid. That's the scariest thing about reading his stuff. He's got no problem going into that dark basement without a flashlight, and you just know that it makes him so damned giddy to drag you down those rickety stairs right along with him.

He loves taking flawed people, real people, and putting them through the wringer. But I think he especially likes the wringer.

I'm pretty sure Mr. Lorn has his pockets stuffed with blank fortune cookie slips and whenever a harrowing moment of human devastation springs to mind, he jots it down on a little wrinkled piece of paper and saves it for later. I imagine he's got a giant bowl on his desk--the one he used to pass out candy on Halloweens past before the neighborhood kids stopped coming to his door--filled to overflowing with fortunes foretelling awful fates. And when he's writing, and he comes to a point in the story where he says to himself 'time for something awful to happen,' he grabs a slip of paper from this bowl and smiles like a mischievous little boy reaching out to snap a bra strap. Really. Fucking. Hard.

He grabbed a doozy this time around. And I can see him now jumping up and down in his chair and clapping his hands together like one of those little wind-up monkeys clanging their cymbals together.

Clang, clang, clang, hee, hee, hee....

Full Disclosure: I served as a beta reader for this story. I did some light editorial work on this one, too. Edward Lorn's also helped me out in this manner for some of my stuff. You may think that the above review is biased now that you know this.

Read this book!

The Hanover Block Released!

The Kindle Edition of my new novella, The Hanover Block, is now available.

You may order it now, if you please.

It's also available for $0.00 to Kindle Unlimited subscribers.

What's it about?

Living in the long shadow of a tragic accident, Marion struggles through his solitary suburban life. He's resigned himself to a static existence, to living and dying in a world where every house looks exactly the same. Then he notices changes in his neighborhood. Tool sheds and playhouses are cropping up all over, hastily constructed and set at odd angles. The nutjob down the road builds an outhouse in the middle of his front yard, and the guy right next door is erecting two geodesic climbing domes, one nested inside the other.

People are doing strange things on their lawns.

Monstrocity by Jeffrey Thomas

This book had a lot of elements that I like: a vast, nasty SF city populated with alien and human monsters, general sleaziness and grime, an investigation into the occult, sex, violence, and gore. But I was bored to tears for the last 40% of it and couldn't wait to be finished so that I could move on to something else.

The vast conspiracy seemed pretty nebulous, and I found it hard to care about how things would turn out. I wasn't impressed with the world-building either. One of the major alien races seemed to have been constructed based on the George Lucas alien creation method wherein you must use exaggerated and bigoted cultural caricatures.

I'll give Mr. Thomas another go, but I'll likely skip his other Punktown stories.

Read this book!

Cruelty (Episodes 1-5) by Edward Lorn

Full Disclosure: You might think this review is biased because Edward Lorn and I are friends who help each other out with beta reading/editing/proofreading and the like. However, you must also keep in mind that I wouldn't offer to read early drafts of some creepy Internet stranger's work unless I really and truly enjoyed something else I'd read by that person. Early drafts are often pretty shitty. Lorn's aren't. But most are. And I didn't read this book as an early draft. I bought it fair and square from Amazon, and I'm under no obligation to review this book, and Edward Lorn's under no obligation to review any of my work.

Of all the works I've read thus far by Edward Lorn, this is my favorite.

I must also point out that the next installment of this serial was due out in September, and I don't have episode six of Cruelty on my Kindle yet.

My calendar must be broken.

Read this book!

Fuckness by Andersen Prunty

Full Disclosure: I don't know the author of this book. I've never interacted with him. He didn't provide a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I bought this book on Amazon and will likely be paying interest on this purchase for the rest of my life. I've seen this book around, popping up here and there, for quite some time, and I never much cared for the title. I thought it was kind of gimmicky and really didn't have much interest in picking this up. Then a friend recommended it and, since I sometimes listen to people, I got an electronic copy and soon discovered that the setting for this story is likely an analog for my hometown; the geographical coordinates of the place match exactly, along with other details provided by the author. This fact alone would make any review I'd write biased, because when I was reading it I was filled with a cold and bitter nostalgia. So, I don't think it would be fair to write a review of this book. All thoughts on its contents are tainted. Read it yourself if you want to know what it's about. You might like it. You might not.

28 Far Cries by Marc Nash

The flash pieces in this book are like ZIP files that need to be unpacked.

No. That's close but not quite right.

This book is like a display case filled with 28 finely crafted, exquisitely detailed miniature sculptures. You have to pick each one up in turn, examine it on its own while lying on a hammock for a while, before returning to the case to pick up another. After reading one or two of these pieces, I decided to take my sweet time with this collection, and I'm glad I did. You could read this in an afternoon, I suppose, but I wouldn't recommend it. These flash fiction pieces have drag. (And somehow I mean drag as in the longitudinal retarding force exerted by air or other fluid surrounding a moving object.) There are little gnarly bits sticking out of these stories that you should allow to snag your attention. You should take some pleasure in examining the embedded hooks. You can tell the author has worked and reworked these pieces, grabbing different disparate bits over time and mashing them into place, working them in, rubbing and rearranging until they work.

Nash is playing with language here. That seems to be his main focus. He likes obscure and archaic words, and especially words or phrases with double or triple meanings. It was fun to see how he'd mash ideas together, reconcile juxtapositions, flog a pun to death, turn concepts inside out, and meditate on a peculiar concept until it nearly breaks under his scrutiny. In addition to inspecting the meaning of words, Nash is also obviously obsessively concerned with the sounds we make when we speak them. There is a rough rhythm to these pieces, a lot of hard consonant sounds that pop and crack and jolt and jar as you go.

This collection isn't for everyone. Many of the pieces aren't proper stories. Many are more like inspections of objects and concepts at a microscopic level. Yes, you will find stories in this thing, but there are plenty of chunks of writing therein that could just as easily be labeled anti-story. If you think you might like that sort of thing, give this a go. I had fun reading it. But, admittedly, it was less the pleasure one usually associates with reading and more the kind of fun one has while solving puzzles.

Read this book!