Short Story Coming Soon in a New Anthology

My short story "The Fabulous and Tormented Life of a Serial Extra" will be released this August in an awesome anthology from Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing. You can pre-order the book here:

http://perpetualpublishing.com/product/lost-films/

Living Writers Series Reading at SDSU

I'm very excited to announce I've been invited to appear as part of the SDSU Living Writers series this semester. I'll be reading from Secrets of the Weird, and there will be copies of the book available for sale, as well as copies of the limited Civilized Cannibals tape (starting to run low on these tapes, and when they're gone they're gone). 

As a bonus, this event falls on the evening of my birthday! All the info is in the flyer. Come check it out if you can.

Book Review: Lovebites & Razorlines by J. Daniel Stone

On some level, I feel I’ve found a kindred spirit in J. Daniel Stone. I’d previously only read his (awesome) story in I Can Taste the Blood, which offered hints of Barker without resorting to pastiche, and now I’m finally getting around to reading more of his work. Thankfully, Stone is no one-hit wonder.

At the risk of making this seem like the All About Me Show, allow me to begin this review by touching on why I relate to Stone’s approach to dark fiction before I dive in and speak a little more specifically about his work. We clearly have at least a few of the same literary influences (especially the aforementioned Barker, as well as Poppy Z. Brite), and we both cannot resist incorporating the music we love into the fiction we give birth to. However, we use these influences in such distinct and different ways that the similarities are only enough to make a personal connection (which is cool in my book).

Oh, and get this—Stone has a character named Dorian Wilde. I have a character named Dorian Wylde. Methinks we are officially two sides of the same subversive coin. Either that or we share a very unhealthy brain.

Stone’s short stories reek of the streets of New York (though not always) as well as what goes on beneath those streets and in the cracks between, and they frequently (again, not always) delve into queer themes and/or use queer characters. And these characters, whether they are gay, straight, or somewhere in the void, are more or less all outsiders. The sorts of people who are attracted to the underground not because they are “cool” or attempting to be, but because they have no choice but to be there. They simply don’t belong anywhere else. The true misfits and freaks of the universe. Many of the stories in this collection reuse characters from his novels Blood Kiss and The Absence of Light and are intended to be companion stories to those books. I can’t help but feel that, though all of these particular stories were well written and interesting, they would have resonated with me a bit more had I been familiar with the novels. That said, one of my favorite stories in the book fell into the appendage story category (“The Tunnel Record”). Really awesome stuff that is essentially Stone’s personal stamp on C.H.U.D.s. I mean, really, how much more New York can you get than that?

The title story is definitely one of the standouts, a somewhat disgusting tale about a disturbed young man with a Frankenstein complex whose idea to make his own undead patchwork monster does not go quite as planned. My favorite, however, would probably be the closing story, “Ecdysis,” which involves a transformation that goes far beyond the limits of mere gender. But I feel the favorites might become fluid over time. This is the type of collection that if you like one story, chances are you’ll dig the rest. They maintain a fairly consistent tone, with a lyrical command of language that rarely wavers. Often sad, frequently strange, always so, so dark.

Winner of Best Graphic Novel Script at the Silver Scream Festival

I'm very excited to announce that I was the winner of Best Graphic Novel Script at the Silver Scream Festival this year! American Gothic Press will be publishing my 3-issue comic series Hag. Can't wait for this to come to fruition. More info as it develops...

Book Review: The Wish Mechanics by Daniel Braum

I’ve sung the praises of Daniel Braum’s work enough both in person and on this blog at this point that some of my sentiments might come off a bit redundant here, but I’m not stopping until many, many more people convert to the Church of Braum. If you’ve yet to read my thoughts on the genius work of a writer who deserves to be far more well known than he is, this review will hopefully serve as a suitable introduction.

The Wish Mechanics is Braum’s second full collection of short fiction (his first being The Night Marchers). Unless, of course, you count the much shorter collection Yeti. Tiger. Dragon., which only features three stories. I’ve read enough of Braum’s work at this point that I’m guaranteed two things when opening one of his books: 1. I know what to expect & 2. I honestly have no idea what to expect.

Allow me to clarify. My first statement is regarding consistency of style. Some writers are chameleons, deciding their prose should take multiple forms depending on the story’s needs (I count myself as a member of this particular group). Others maintain a strong, steady voice so invariable it leaves you breathless at the ability to accomplish such a feat. Now, I don’t think one approach is necessarily better than the other, but Braum falls firmly in the second camp, and it works as nothing less than a major strength in his case. As for comment #2, despite having a pretty good idea of how Braum’s words will appear on the page (or how they will sound if read aloud), I never know where those words are going to take me. It is this combination that makes Braum a true visionary of modern fiction.

The quality of the stories never wavers, regardless if Braum is attempting magical realism (“Tea in the Sahara”), introspective horror (“Tetsuya and the Ranagareet”), science fiction (“Resolution Seventeen”), or whatever else he chooses to write. His stories are always threatening to transcend genre, skirting around the hallmarks one might expect and instead opting for an emotional rawness that cannot quite be described. Sometimes the tales are deceptively normal, then take a turn for the weird when you least expect it (“This Is the Sound of Your Dreams Dying”). There is always something not-quite-right going on, almost Twilight Zone-esque, but looking toward the future. In fact, I’d love to see one (or more) of Braum’s stories adapted into a Black Mirror episode (the title story, for instance, might be an especially great fit).

In this collection, Braum’s writing is (as always) earnest, poignant, dark, and moving. If you’re a fan of literary fiction that operates on a fantastical level, I can’t think of another living writer who pulls it off with greater finesse than Daniel Braum.

Bay Area Book Tour Coming Up!

Going to be in the Bay Area in a couple weeks for some Secrets of the Weird book tour events. Come out if you're in the area:

Saturday January 20th - QTY Treehouse 1684 7th Street Oakland 3pm
https://www.facebook.com/events/247685545770839/

Sunday January 21st - Borderlands Books 866 Valencia Street San Francisco 3pm
https://www.facebook.com/events/214188619126161/

New Novel to Be Released Sometime in 2018

I'm very excited to announce that my new novel, Sexy Leper, will be released sometime in this coming year by Bizarro Pulp Press. More information to come as it develops...