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Monday, March 31, 2014

There Goes the Neighborhood

Neighborhood WatchLooking for a short, creepy novel with more plot twists and surprises than the crooked branches of an old oak tree? Stuart R. West's Neighborhood Watch is the book for you and here to talk about it today is Mr. West himself.

Why set Neighborhood Watch in Kansas of all places?

I'm sorry, sorry, sorry. I live in God-forsaken Kansas. It sucks. The good thing is the state is ripe with creepiness, which makes good fodder for tales of the abnormal. "Write what you know."

Friday, March 21, 2014

Last Request: A Victorian Gothic

Last Request: A Victorian GothicMy story Last Request is finally seeing the light of day as a self-published novelette. This piece has taken a long road to publication and doubled in size from a 6K short story to a 12K novelette along the way. I wrote the bulk of original story while vacationing on the Outer Banks in North Carolina. Why I would write this particular story while watching the sun rise over the boundless Atlantic is hard to believe. If you read the story, you'll understand just how odd that is.

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

M. R. James and Cthulhu

A sketch of Cthulhu made by
H. P. Lovecraft in May 1934.
When horror aficionados think of horror and tentacles, the first words that come to mind are H. P. Lovecraft and his creation Cthulhu. A malevolent monster combining elements of a human, octopus, and dragon, Cthulhu first appeared in Lovecraft's short story “The Call of Cthulhu,” published in Weird Tales in February 1928. Here's a passage from the story describing a statue of Cthulhu.
It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence, and squatted evilly on a rectangular block or pedestal covered with undecipherable characters.

Sunday, March 9, 2014

My Writing Process Blog Hop

My good friend Stuart R. West (http://stuartrwest.blogspot.com/) of Neighborhood Watch and Tex, The Witch Boy fame tagged me for the My Writing Process blog hop. You can see what Stuart had to say about his writing process here.

What am I working on?

I'm working on a rewrite of a thriller novella as requested by a publisher. I'm also working on the first draft of a frontier story featuring zombies and a novella that I seem to have been working on for years based on "The Fall of the House of Usher." When I'm not working on the stories above, I'm writing chapters for a novel with Lyn Perry about werewolves among the Pilgrims.

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Good King David Release

King David and the Spiders from MarsThe anthology King David and the Spiders from Mars is now available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle. This is a fabulous collection of seven tales drawing their inspiration from Old Testament stories. I'm stoked that my offering, "Good King David," stands among them.