Saturday, September 8, 2012

New release and more to come...

In the midst of editing manuscripts to pay the bills and editing/formatting and the like for Nightscape Press, I  finally finished the first draft of Exit Reality a couple of days ago. And what better way to celebrate a coming new release than with...well a new release?

Forcipules is my latest short story release for Kindle. Here's the description for it:

Ever since the local factory was destroyed by the meteorites, Edgar's been down on his luck and drunk. Marilyn wishes he'd just quit moping and look for a job. But that rock he brought home from the debris, it's got a secret. A creepy crawly secret with 15 pairs of legs.


As the town is taken over by something not of this world, Marilyn is the only one in her right mind to witness it. Can she do anything to stop them?

***This short story is an ode to the pulpy science fiction/horror stories of old. Not for the squeamish when it comes to bugs, particularly centipedes.***


You can get it for just 99 cents on Amazon US here: http://www.amazon.com/Forcipules-ebook/dp/B0096TAR40 or Amazon UK here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Forcipules-ebook/dp/B0096TAR40

I took the time to read over the draft of Exit Reality last night to see how I felt about the story as a whole. I read it in one sitting and I hope that it has the same effect on my readers. After five years of researching and developing, three years of which before I even started wrting (and one failed attempt to start writing), and some of the most intimate self-examination I've ever done in any form of communication in my life, I now have an approximately 24,000 word novella that I think is the most intricate thing I've ever written. Combining horror, crime fiction, and science fiction, I think it's a big milestone in my evolution as a writer.

So between the drafting and editing process I should be able to release it into the wild fairly soon. And with that now mostly behind me I can truly focus on finishing Fading in Darkness: Empire of Blood Book Two. Look for more updates to come as things progress.

Monday, September 3, 2012

KillerCon cometh...

So... there's a lot in the works right now. A lot I haven't really touched on here in my blog yet. First of all as the title suggests I should probably mention that I'm going to be at KillerCon in Las Vegas September 20th through the 23rd. This will be Nightscape Press's first convention selling our own books. We'll be sharing a table with the great guys and gals of Blood Bound Books and hopping back and forth between our table and the Horror for Good table which will be selling--you guessed it--Horror for Good: A Charitable Anthology.

Now there's an interesting significance to this convention for me as it will be held at the Stratosphere Hotel. Anyone who's read my novel, Shining in Crimson, knows that the Stratosphere plays a very large role in my book. What many may not know however is that I've never really even set foot there. I did tons of research on the building when writing the book and in some cases filled in the blanks where my research couldn't reach. Us writers have to take some liberties with reality from time to time. If you hadn't noticed...

Shame of it is, I'm not going to this convention for my fiction. I might bring some books, but I'm not sure I'll even be comfortable putting them on the table. As a press owner and editor and self-published author, I keep my fiction separate from my press's titles. But that's a whole other story.

I'll also be at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville along with Mark Scioneaux my fellow Horror for Good co-editor on the weekend of October 12th to the 14th. We'll have a session talking about Horror for Good and fiction for charity in general, that sort of thing.

And speaking of October, I'll be opening submissions on October first for an anthology I'll be editing all by my lonesome called BLOOD TYPE: AN ANTHOLOGY OF VAMPIRE SF ON THE CUTTING EDGE that will also be for charity. This time I've picked a charity called The Cystic Fibrosis Trust that's done a lot of great things to help out a friend of mine across the pond whose daughter has this terrible disease. I'll be aiming for an anthology of vampire fiction that is dark, original, and has a strong science fiction core or reveal much like I Am Legend by Richard Matheson and Necroscope by Brian Lumley, and Peter Watts's vampires in his novel Blindsight. I think it has the potential to be a very unique book and I hope any writers reading this will consider sending me a story to consider when subs open.

At the moment I'm pretty busy with editorial and press work, but I'm getting chunks of writing in between when I can. I'm working toward getting EXIT REALITY out within the next month or so and FADING IN DARKNESS: EMPIRE OF BLOOD BOOK TWO out before the end of the year. So if you're friends with me on Facebook and you see me screwing off, be sure and remind me I have books to get finished! I'll also be getting back to revising and finally finishing up a dusty old novella of mine called THE NESTING PLACE shortly after getting my other two books out. I've also decided that not only will I be writing a novelization of THE QUIET but all these questions about a sequel got my wheels turning and now it looks like I have an idea for a trilogy.

The sad thing about being a busy editor who writes: I suck at editing my own work. Line edits I do okay with, but when it comes to looking at my own work with an objective eye, I'm not so great, so I'm on the lookout for an editor. Ideally I'd like to find someone thorough who would be interested in swapping edits (in other words another busy editor who writes and sucks at editing their own work).

Anyway, this post is trailing off quite a bit, so I think I'll wrap it up. I want to thank those who have been emailing me (or messaging me otherwise) to let me know they've enjoyed my work. It means a lot to me. I can't wait to get more of this awful stuff out of my head and into the world for people to waste their time reading and hopefully enjoying.