Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. - Ferris Bueller

It's been another hectic week. My family moved most of our stuff into the new place this last weekend and have been ridiculously busy ever since. So, writing, editing, audio serializing, etc. have all taken a backseat to that. Sorry for the delay. Shining in Crimson is still in the proofreading stage. Given that my wife is one of the proofreaders and she's been just as busy with said move and one of the other proofreaders seems to have disappeared, things aren't moving as fast as I would like them to be. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel, let's just hope it's not a big ass train!

On a brighter note: Stacey's answer on my last blog quiz won her a free chapbook of The Quiet: A Novella! And if you follow that link you will find that said chapbook is now available on Amazon and linked to the Kindle edition as well! And it's prime eligible for any fellow Amazon Prime users out there. And for those who don't have Prime, Prime gives you free 2 day shipping year round for one annual flat rate. There is a free version of Prime for students and there are various forms of free trials as well. So, if you haven't already, it's highly worth checking out if you purchase on Amazon often.

Now that things are starting to somewhat slow down here, I'm going to attempt to finish Episode 4 of the audio serial within a couple of days. We'll see how that goes.

In the meantime, I think I'll give out 10 free ebook copies of The Quiet... The first 10 people who email me at shiningincrimson@gmail.com with the subject line "The Quiet Free" and their preference of format in the body of their email will get them.

Now to get back to work and cursing time...

Thursday, August 18, 2011

The Chapbook arrives... early

So, even though when I ordered proofs, I wasn't supposed to receive them until the 22nd, they came yesterday. I've looked them over and they seem to be in good order. So, as of like five minutes ago the chapbook of The Quiet is available here on Createspace for $6.99 plus shipping and will soon be available on Amazon for the same price as well. So, if you've been holding out for a really real copy, here it is!

*Edit*
Speaking of, I'm going to keep the quiz/contest going until August 22nd, so get over to this post to answer the quiz. The best answer wins one of the proof copies I just received of the chapbook version of The Quiet plus my super sloppy signature! This copy has Proof written real big on the back of the last page and will be one of only 3 copies! So, get your answers in!

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

It's here... Read Horror's Meet the Writer piece on yours truly...


I'm featured on Read Horror's Meet the Writer today! I just wanna take the time to thank Michael Wilson again for all he's doing for the horror writing community! If you haven't checked out Read Horror yet, and you're a fan of horror fiction, you need to get off your ass (well, not literally) and get over there! You'll find many more great Meet the Writer pieces, there's a Meet the Publisher section, some great interviews, reviews, previews, interviews, news and columns!


Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Enter to win a copy of Shining in Crimson and help it get more exposure!

Right now the Goodreads.com giveaway of Shining in Crimson is on page three of the most requested. If it gets to page one a lot of people will see it! Please, if you haven't already, help me out by entering to win! And you never know, you could end up being the winner!





Goodreads Book Giveaway





Shining in Crimson by Robert S.  Wilson



Shining in Crimson


by Robert S. Wilson



Giveaway ends October 02, 2011.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.




Enter to win


Monday, August 15, 2011

Shining in Crimson audio serial airing on Australian Radio Show!

The Shining in Crimson audio serial will be featured on the Isobelle Carmody Replay show hosted by James Roberts on Phoenix FM! To tune in from the US go to Phoenix FM and about halfway down the page is a web link to stream live. The show is this Friday morning and starts at 9 am central/10 am Eastern/7am Pacific. Here's the description for this week's show:

THE LIVE WEB STREAM IS BACK AND RUNNING—I HAVE IT ON GOOD AUTHORITY. SO TIME FOR A REPLAY OF ISOBELLE CARMODY.
This Month on Crazy Talk/ Word Berserk. It's all about Australian Authors. Here my exclusive interview with Isobelle Carmody from her recent visit to Bendigo. As well as some extracts from her Books. Remember 12-3am on www.phoenixfm.org or 106.7fm if you are in or around Bendigo. Don’t forget to tune in for your chance to win books from the Untitled Pocket Book and so much leading up to the Melbourne Writer’s Festival. And don’t... forget your chance to WIN WIN WIN! CHANCE TO WIN ONE OF SEVERAL COPIES UP FOR GRABS OF THE UNTITLED POCKET BOOK COLLECTION OF WRITING. EXCLUSIVE! Robert Shane Wilson Will also be premiering his latest vampire podcast. We are leading up to the Melbourne Writer’s Festival where I should have some great interviews and exclusive competition for all of my valued listeners.

So, check it out if you can!

Friday, August 12, 2011

Release up(dates) and a chance to win a signed chapbook of my novella, The Quiet!

Release dates make a lovely sound as they swish right by, don't they?

There's a lot going on right now. In fact, if anything else were going on beyond what's already happening, I think my head might fucking explode! Shining in Crimson is at the proofreading stage. I'm still hoping to have it ready by the 15th but as that date crawls closer and closer with that murderous look in its eyes, I'm beginning to worry. Meanwhile I have a nearly similar problem with the release of the chapbook of The Quiet. I ordered proofs today for it and they won't arrive until the 22nd and I moronically set a release date for the 20th. Go figure.

So, from now on I'm not setting anymore fucking dates, I swear. I'm just going to say, "When the snake reaches the nearest mouse in the land of the withering sky, my newest book will come out!" Then I can get away with any date I want, huh? I'm more than on schedule for the hard copy release of Shining in Crimson, since I still have like a month and a half on that, though.  

At this point, I'll just say that Shining in Crimson ebook will be out soonish. If not on the 15th very, very shortly thereafter. And The Quiet chapbook will be out sometime shortly after the 22nd... I apologize for the inconvenience. But so you know, this is just the sort of shit that happens to me all the time, so you'd better get used to it.

Episode 4 of Shining in Crimson.... is still not done. I will be recording it soon. A friend of mine, the brilliant mind behind Feed The Dead (a music contributor to Episode 2), has given me permission to record at his place so that I can get it done soon. So, keep an eye out on that.

Reviews will be coming for both Shining in Crimson and The Quiet soon. The Quiet is so far getting 4 and 5 star reviews on Amazon.com and Goodreads.com. So, if you haven't checked them out yet, there are excerpts for both on this page up above.

I'm going to start posting more often on here about other things than just my shitty books. Time just seems to be pushing me along and I need to just start pushing back and saying, "Screw you time, I'm sick of putting up with your static bullsh..." anyway, you get the point . So, with that said, it's time to start the process. I leave you with an apropos quiz:

If you could go back in time and change anything, the most terrible trauma from your past, would you do it? Even if it meant murdering a part of your very being, becoming a completely different person, transforming into a much darker version of yourself? If yes, why? If no, why not?


Best serious, thoughtful answer in the comments will win a signed chapbook copy of The Quiet! Be sure and leave contact info though, the last winner never claimed their prize! The proofs are scheduled to arrive at my door August 22nd. I will then immediately turn around and mail one of them to the winner as is plus my terribly messy John Henry. So, get those answers in! Just to give you a view of what you'll be writing for, here's a pic of the cover spread:


Saturday, August 6, 2011

Giveaways, the anthology, and clowns... wait, no... no clowns... sorry

I have some good news if you're one of the awesome users of Goodreads.com! You can now enter to win a free chapbook copy of my novella, The Quiet! And if you're not on Goodreads.com yet, why not? It's a great place to share what books you're reading, want to read, have read, and just about anything else with other book lovers. There are also tons of giveaways just like mine. And I guess I've never mentioned on here that there is also a giveaway for a paperback copy of Shining in Crimson, huh? Well, there is. And it's been up for a while and ends on the date of paperback publication, October 2nd. Links, you say? Well, here you go:

Enter to win a chapbook of The Quiet!

Enter to win a paperback of Shining in Crimson!



In other news we finally found our new place to live and the anthology Not in the Brochure: Stories of a Disappointing Apocalypse came out for Kindle on Amazon.com. Not only is The Quiet one of many stories, poems, and a haiku in this anthology, but all the proceeds go to help fight illiteracy! It's only $2.99, well worth the cost of helping people learn to read!

Thursday, August 4, 2011

‎"Zombies aren't always ponies and cupcakes." - Jacob, my 10 year old son...

So, a lot has happened in the weeks since Episode 3 went up. I've been back and forth doing final polishing on the novel and proofreading has started. It's looking more and more like an August 15th release for the ebook depending on how fast proofreading goes.

I haven't started on Episode 4 yet, I've been too busy with other things. My family is desperately fighting what feels like a losing battle to get a new place in the town we've lived in for about 6 years now at a price we can afford with enough rooms to accommodate the four of us. We've been searching all summer and as soon as something seems like it's going to work out, something unexpected goes wrong.

So, hopefully this week I can get started on ep 4. We'll just have to see. As usual if you have any music to submit please do. Just send links or mp3s to shiningincrimson@gmail.com I haven't gotten a single submission since Episode 2. I found and contacted contributors for Episode 3. So, if you've thought about submitting and are hesitant, what have you got to lose?

In other news, keep an eye out on the Read Horror site as they not only have a wonderful site dedicated to horror literature, but they also do a piece called Meet the Writer. Established and up-and-coming horror writers are fielded a series of questions about their work and their favorite horror works/authors. Michael Wilson is the editor/writer who apparently runs the show and he's doing a fantastic job with it.

I've turned in my answers for Meet the Writer so depending on how many other authors are in queue, I'll be featured there. I've already found a lot of interesting new authors to check out. I'm honored to eventually be in their company.

The Quiet has received its first Amazon review! 5 stars and an excellent review! I'm querying various review sites and reviewers to consider reviewing The Quiet. If you have a site and you're interested in reviewing it, email me at shiningincrimson@gmail.com I would prefer interested parties already be an active book reviewer. I can provide an e-copy in any format and very shortly there will be...

Drum roll please...

A chapbook version of The Quiet and a giveaway of one copy on Goodreads of the aforementioned chapbook. So, keep an eye open for that announcement when it happens. In the meantime it's still just 99 cents for Kindle on Amazon and there are Kindle apps for just about every device on earth excluding Palm WebOS devices. Get with it Palm!

But anyway, as always thanks for listening to the audio serial and/or reading my stuff and giving it a chance amongst the exponentially growing cluster of independent and traditional authors out there. In the meantime, I have a lot to do. So, I'll end this post with some shout outs. Some authors to check out in case you haven't: J.T. Warren, Scott Nicholson, Gary McMahon sounds interesting, as do Shaun Hutson, and Wayne Simmons! So, go forth and read!

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

The Quiet (part 1)

1



The garage door rose slowly as James Benton rushed to his car on the morning after the first darkness had passed. Once in the car and backing out, he lit a cigarette. He took note that it was one of those rare days when none of his neighbors appeared to be leaving at the same time. He flipped his ashes outside the window as he pulled out of the cul de sac. Then he leaned over and turned on the radio. The speakers crackled out white noise. He changed the station and found that anywhere he moved the dial, nothing came through but static. He shut off the radio and muttered to himself, wondering what would go wrong next with the old junker.

When he got to the main road at the entrance of the housing complex, he stared in shock at the empty road for a moment. He peeled out, thinking it was one of those lucky times when he might be able to gun it the whole way and barely make it. He crossed under 465 and took the next right as he always did. This road was always empty. But as he pulled up to the light at State Road 31 with its large grocery store, many restaurants, and other businesses, he started to wonder what was going on. Had he forgotten a holiday?  He looked at the calendar on his phone as he stopped. September 26th. He looked back up at the road ahead of him. To his right the exit would take him over the bridge he’d just crossed underneath. Even on Christmas Day, some traffic had existed. He didn’t have time for curiosity and he needed to get to work, so he zoomed out onto the empty road.

He took the 465 West exit, looking out for oncoming cars. There were none. After a moment he saw a car up the hill. "There," he told himself, "there's nothing weird going on, you’re just fucking crazy." He tried the radio again as he came closer to the car much faster than he expected. The radio crackled static as he reached the car. He understood immediately. The car sat still in the far left lane of the three lane highway with no one in it. He looked in his rearview then. Still not a single car coming. He couldn't see any up ahead, either. His chest tightened. He thought about turning back and going home or maybe running off to his brother Joel's on the east side of town. Joel. He pulled out his cell phone again and quickly scrolled to his brother's name in the contact list and hit send. As the fourth ring sounded, he saw something moving up ahead, beyond the bridge for Mann Road. Smoke rose, way off in the distance. It became clearer as he came around the curve of the highway. Thick, black smoke fought its way up into the atmosphere from something on the ground. Joel's voicemail answered and James closed his phone.

The smoke came from the bright orange fire engulfing the 70 West exit. It must have originally been several cars, but now just looked like a burning pile of twisted metal. The flames rolled in great waves from within the pile-up. James found himself veering over to the left, as far away from the flames as he could. He let off the gas as he tried dialing 911. The phone rang and rang as he came alongside the burning metal sculpture. When he’d passed the scene, he found himself watching the fire roll up into smoke toward the sky in his rearview. The sight mesmerized him. The fire far behind him, he realized the phone was still ringing, so he closed it.  He saw more and more deserted cars as he came closer to his exit. Some just sat in the middle of the road, some had veered off, and some had piled into each other. Half of the latter were on fire. He slowed down to exit, but instead passed the Sam Jones Expressway. He was pretty sure the upside-down Crown Victoria would be impossible to get around.

He continued down the road, wondering what to do. His eyes refocused from staring at a semi jack-knifed into the East Washington Street exit with a Ford Explorer wedged underneath its trailer. Along all the exits and medians of different roads, he hadn't seen a single blade of grass. Where the grass should have been, lay rich, brown soil. He shrugged it aside as simple landscaping at first, but now that he came to the sixth or seventh exit, he knew it had to be something else. He stopped the car and got out. After turning off the engine, he noticed the piercing silence. As he stepped out, the air tasted stale. He leaned on the concrete railing of the bridge that stood over Washington Street for a long time. Other than the distant sounds of factories, he heard nothing. No cars, airplanes, people. Not even birds. He looked down at the road below him, leaning over the concrete slab to see under the bridge. At the edge of the road lay the only thing to be seen shy of road, dirt, and concrete. A single battered doll with one large, black eye, one empty gash where the other eye should be, and curly, red hair lay in the earth, looking up at him. A cool wind fluttered over and he shivered.

He got back in the car and sped on to the next exit, 10th street, finding it void of any wreckage. Going up the ramp, he saw nothing different from anywhere else. He could see a few cars abandoned randomly off in the distance. Everywhere grass should be, bare land replaced it. And then he saw the tree. James slammed on the brakes, his tires screeching against the pavement. The tree stood lonely, towering over a grassless landscape. The roots showed visibly where they entered the ground. It was an unnatural sight, making the tree appear naked in some way. James put the car back into drive and went over the median, making a u-turn toward the exit for 465 going the other way. Once he rolled back onto the highway, he began to speed. He had a few things he needed to check before he ventured east to Joel's house.

This time, as he pulled back into the housing edition he'd lived in for the past seven years, James took notice of the lifeless quiet that had escaped his notice earlier that morning. It seemed as if the life had been sucked from the place, figuratively and literally. Not a sound or glimpse of movement caught his attention as he crept down the road. His head hung out the window, listening and looking around for some sign of something, anything alive. Then it clicked. He couldn't remember seeing or hearing anything alive. Except the tree. The tree looked just as alive and healthy as him. But only one.

He looked through the bare, dirt yards for another tree. He passed his own road continuing the search, until after an hour or so he’d combed the entire complex with nothing to show for it. When he got back home, he drug himself out of his car, feeling bleak and confused. He went straight into the kitchen and turned on the water. Then he wet his hands, splashed the water over his face, and ran it through his hair. He tried to clear his mind.

Stretching his back, his eyes closed and his head back, he let a drop of water touch his tongue. It tasted stale. No, it tasted beyond stale. He knelt down and took a gulp straight from the source. It tasted purer than any bottled water he’d ever drank. Usually, his water tasted so vile you could barely drink it. It had an odor so strong, he found himself taking shorter and shorter showers over the years. He leaned down in front of the powered stream and took a long sniff. No scent at all. A thought occurred to him, striking him dumb.

Leaving the water on, he ran up the stairs to the loft. As soon as he was on the second floor, he found himself leaning over the banister, completely out of breath. When his lungs didn't feel full of razor blades, he walked underneath the entrance to the attic. Gripping the chord that hung from the door, he pulled it, bringing the door down and revealing the enclosed ladder. He experimented with putting his weight on the decrepit ladder. It seemed to still hold him. He went up, reaching blindly for the string hanging from the overhead light bulb. When he felt it, he tugged, lighting up the messy attic. The light cast an eerie, yellowish hue on the room.

He knew exactly where to look for the old microscope. He hadn't used it since college, but he used it enough then to make up for the many years since. He took a deep breath and blew the top layer of dust from the top of the box. The word Olympus appeared in bright orange letters. The sight made James smile with nostalgia.

He was back in his kitchen 20 minutes later with the dusty old microscope set up on the counter. He cleaned off its lenses and several slides. Then he turned the water down until it merely dripped. Putting the first slide under, he collected one good drop then carefully put it in the microscope. Pulling a small bottle from his pocket, he took a second slide. Opening the bottle, he let a drop of the murky liquid inside drop onto the slide. He set that one next to the other. On the third, he lightly spit and slid it into place with the other two.

He focused in on the first slide. It was more transparent than the glass itself. He couldn’t see a single living organism. Next, he looked at the murky water, gathered from the neighborhood pond behind the housing edition. Aside from murky clouds of soil, he saw no evidence of anything that was, or had ever been, alive.

The third one interested him the most. He expected to see what the other two lacked, but found nothing more than thick, slimy liquid along with traces of mucus and remnants of food. James didn't remember much from microbiology, but one thing he did remember: the human mouth flourishes with life. But the slide with his saliva contained nothing alive at all.



Buy the full novella The Quiet for Kindle for only 99 cents