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/

Signings for California Screamin' at Warwick's and Dark Delicacies

A couple of upcoming signings for the new California Screamin' anthology, which features my short story "The Perfect Playground." Myself along with various other authors for the book will be at Dark Delicacies in Burbank on Saturday November 4th from 4pm to 6pm, and a few of us will be signing at Warwick's in La Jolla (the info is in the flyer above). Hope to see some of you there!

San Diego Horror Professionals Volume 3 Now Available

Volume 3 of the San Diego Horror Professionals anthology series (Grand Mal Press) is now available! The print version is ready to go, and the ebook should be available soon. This features my short story "The Heretic Lambs," stories by the other usual suspects from the previous 2 volumes, AND stories by a few new additions to the crew. Check it out here:

https://www.amazon.com/San-Diego-Horror-Professionals-Vol/dp/1548519758/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1499312016&sr=8-3&keywords=san+diego+horror+professionals

San Diego Horror Professionals Vol. 2 (Holiday Edition) Now Available on Kindle Version

The second volume of the San Diego Horror Professionals anthology series is now available on Kindle! This book, released by Grand Mal Press, features my story "Coyote Christmas" alongside 5 other dark and horrific tales with holiday themes and/or settings. The print version will be available soon.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N2RYOEN/ref=cm_sw_r_fa_awdo_t2_uYSsybKFQCMGF

Book Review: I Can Taste the Blood by Various Authors, Edited by John F.D. Taff & Anthony Rivera

I’m a man who appreciates innovation. It doesn’t take avant-garde insanity to grab my attention, just the gumption to approach things a little differently. As a writer and avid reader, I especially love books with an innovative approach. For this particular project, John F.D. Taff can proudly claim the title of visionary. Inspired by a crude scribble in a public restroom, Taff eventually decided to assemble a crew of miscreants and madmen with one goal in mind: each write a novella with the title “I Can Taste the Blood.” The result? A themed anthology that essentially has no theme at all. The five stories contained within could not be more disparate from one another, but they still fit so perfectly well together. Allow me to elaborate a bit.

The first story, by Josh Malerman, succeeds for two main reasons: 1. It exists outside of the restraints of an era, and 2. It is pretty goddamned creepy. A slow burn about a man pursued in the desert by a mysterious fiend that will eventually get under your skin and burrow so deep that you can’t remove it, not even with tweezers.

J. Daniel Stone is the mastermind behind the next story. If someone had shown me this story with no author’s name attached to it and told me it was an unpublished story written by Clive Barker circa The Books of Blood, I might have believed them (and, just to be clear, that should be considered a compliment of the highest order). This is not to say the story relies on sheer pastiche, but it does swim in the same stream as Barker’s early work. Perverse grotesqueries abound, waxing poetic about the boundaries of film and art.

Up third is Joe Schwartz. Less horror, more transgressive crime fiction about bad men doing even worse things. It jumps around in time a bit, which I can definitely dig. I really loved his style overall and without a doubt want to read more from him in the future. However, his ending did commit what I consider to be a cardinal sin in fiction. He almost got away with it, though, and he probably would have had he pushed it just a little further. A minor gripe in an otherwise killer story, though. Don’t sweat the small stuff.

Christ? Where do I even start with Erik T. Johnson? A mad genius? Perhaps. I can’t make a single lick of sense of his story, but that doesn’t stop me from loving it. I like a good challenge. Imagine Gummo by way of Beckett and Burroughs and you’ll be somewhere in the ballpark, but also so far off you might as well be in a different galaxy. Who needs a clear, traditional plot when the language is this mind-melting, when the entire vibe of the tale is like a ganon of leeches sucking your soul away? Exhausting in the best way possible.

The final story is written by the man John F.D. Taff himself. I’ve been raving about Taff for a while…I really do think he’s one of the most underrated writers in horror today. He’s been called the “King of Pain” for good reason. His stories have this way of tapping into the deepest, darkest canyons of your soul. Terrifying, but with a strong emotional core. No joke…one of Taff’s stories in his Little Deaths collection actually had me bawling on my lunch break at work. Though every story in this collection is a standout in its own way, Taff takes the crown here. This story is a bit more gruesome than his usual fare. It takes body horror to a new extreme, but never loses the sensitivity that is ultimately Taff’s brand. I promise, you’ll never think of teeth and mouths the same again.

I can’t recommend this anthology enough. Grey Matter Press continues to prove why they are such a strong force in the modern world of horror literature.

San Diego Horror Professionals Volume 1 Now Available

Grand Mal Press just released an awesome book today: Volume 1 of the San Diego Horror Professionals anthology. This features my short story "The New Music," as well as other dark tales by David Agranoff, Anthony Trevino, Ryan C. Thomas, Bryan Killian, and Robert Essig. It's up for grabs on Amazon right now for the low price of $7.99. Grab it for your significant other/sibling/child/aquatic pet/blow-up doll and give it as a Halloween gift this year. What, you say there's no such thing as Halloween gifts? Let's start this year. It is, after all, the only holiday that matters.

Here's the link:

https://www.amazon.com/San-Diego-Horror-Professionals-1/dp/1539354040/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1475888725&sr=8-1&keywords=san+diego+horror+professionals

UPDATE: There is now also an e-book version, which you can purchase here for 99 cents:

https://www.amazon.com/San-Diego-Horror-Professionals-Vol-ebook/dp/B01MCS4QGM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1476248126&sr=8-2&keywords=san+diego+horror+professionals

Book Review: Gutted by Various Authors, Edited by Doug Murano & D. Alexander Ward

With stories by Clive Barker, John F.D. Taff, Paul Tremblay, and Neil Gaiman, how can you go wrong? You just plain can’t. Add in a few authors who I was somewhat familiar with and a few more I had never even heard of and there’s a lot to love here. Murano and Ward have assembled a collection of what they call “beautiful horror stories.” Other than that, this is not technically a themed anthology. These stories are literary, they are poetic, they deal with themes all humans are familiar with and have been used over and over and over again. Yet—they are all still unique in their own way. As with any anthology, there are some stories that are stronger than others, but thankfully no stinkers.

The strongest story in my opinion is Paul Tremblay’s “A Haunted House Is a Wheel Upon Which Some Are Broken.” It is constructed like a Choose Your Own Adventure story about a girl visiting a house haunted by the ghosts of her past. Depending on how you decide to read it, the story could technically get locked in a forever-long loop, which is the most terrifying element. If I had been in a different state of mind when reading it, I might have still been trapped. Tremblay just has a wonderful style, and he hasn’t disappointed me yet. My second favorite story in the collection is “Picking Splinters” by Brian Kirk, an extremely dark and hopeless tale about a man whose lost daughter is found many years after she went missing. Yowza. I was pretty exhausted after reading that one. Kirk is now on my list of “Authors I Need to Read More Of.”

Style is a big deal in this book, perhaps even more so than plot. Yes, every story has some sort of plot (although some were easier to follow than others), but what’s most important about Gutted is that every writer has a distinct voice and approach to their pieces. They cannot be interchanged, which I think is one of the main keys to being a good writer. No one else can write your story as well as or better than you.

The cover art is pretty great (and appropriate), and each story is accompanied by a black and white Luke Spooner illustration (a man whose work I was definitely familiar with since one of his illustrations preceded a story of mine a few years ago). Nothing more to really say about this one except that you should probably pick up a copy. You know, because it’s real good and all that stuff.

Book Review: Madhouse by Various Authors, edited by Brad C. Hodson and Benjamin Kane Ethridge

Okay, so before I get started with anything else about this book, can we please talk about this cover art? You won’t get the full effect just viewing it on this blog, since it’s a mega-cool wraparound, but holy mutha this is one of the nicest covers I’ve seen for a horror book in such a long time. It’s so weird to think how many awful covers there are out there, uh…“gracing” the covers of various horror novels and anthologies, when the genre is more perfect than any other for the grotesquely gorgeous. Yet, somehow, so few get the visuals right. Makes no sense to me. But Brad C. Hodson and Benjamin Kane Ethridge got it right when they chose Aeron Alfrey as their artist. Luckily, that’s not the only thing the editors got right.

With Madhouse, Hodson and Ethridge have chosen to take an approach that is becoming more popular these days (an approach I’m all for and one I’m shocked was not more common in the past): the shared world anthology. However, Madhouse is more than just a collection of stories that happen to take place in the same universe. The shorts written by the various authors also share space with chapters written by the editors. The result: a fairly cohesive novel masquerading as an anthology. I know it sounds like I’m tickling the editors’ pink parts, but they really did a bang up job of creating this world and guiding the authors they chose to adhere to it and keep a certain amount of continuity. A few characters even appear throughout different stories (Drake is an especially memorable and detestable character). I imagine this was a serious pain in the tuckus to orchestrate, but the hard work paid off.

The premise? A major sandstorm hits a behavioral center in Arizona and things go batshit crazy from there. A lot of mysterious plot threads, most of which remain unexplained (which I’m fine with). Though there is no filler throughout Madhouse and it was difficult to choose standouts, there were a few stories I’d pick if a gun were pressed to my head: “Birdman” by R.B Payne, “The Writing on the Wall” by Robin Spriggs (less a story, more a brilliantly mad recital), “The Fraud” by Jeff Strand, and “Foodfight” by John Skipp. Skipp’s is the most peculiar to me. I recently read this same story in his collection The Art of Horrible People and couldn’t make any sense of it, I suppose because it was removed from its true context. It probably shouldn’t have been included in that collection, but reading it here, as it was meant to be, well let’s just say I really loved it. It’s just plain bonkers (not that the rest of Madhouse isn’t pretty bonkers, but you kind of have to expect a bit of next-level craziness from Skipp). In addition to the awesome stories, there is also a ton of additional killer art throughout by Alfrey.

I can’t recommend this book enough. In many ways, this level of creativity and quality is what I expect of modern horror, so I offer a hearty thank you to everyone involved in the project for delivering on the promise quite a few other writers/editors/publishers do not.

Book Review: The Library of the Dead by Various Authors, Edited by Michael Bailey

So here we have the first anthology I’ve reviewed on this here blog o’ mine, and it’s a mix of a few authors I’ve read and mostly authors I was previously unfamiliar with (though I have seen many of those names around before). That’s typically the case with most anthologies I read, though. However, The Library of the Dead is a bit different than your average anthology. This is not just a random collection of stories with zero connection or even a collection of stories that more or less fit a particular theme (both are approaches I’m totally fine with, by the way). This book goes one step further and creates a single work out of multiple stories.

Allow me to explain…there is a main (albeit short) “narrative” throughout, focused on the ghostly librarian of the Chapel of the Chimes (which, I didn’t realize until finishing the book, is actually a real place in Oakland), and the unnamed “you” being led through the tales of the dead (yes, you become part of the story this way…it totally works). In between these little interludes are the short stories that make up the bulk of the text. All of them are about completely different topics, yet I discovered about halfway through the book that all of them make some connection to Oakland (or at least the Bay Area as a whole). There are also images accompanying each story, something I always appreciate. The end result is a cohesive piece of fiction written by multiple authors, even if it doesn’t seem so on the surface. It flows pretty consistently if you let it, though. From what I know of Michael Bailey and Written Backwards, he prefers an unorthodox approach to his anthologies, something I support to the fullest. Like I said above, I’m completely fine with your basic everyday anthology so long as the stories are good, but why not take it to the next level if you have the itch to do so? And Bailey has an itch that cannot be satisfied. I say bring it on. He also won the Bram Stoker Award this year for this very book, so he’s obviously doing something right.

As for the stories within, like most anthologies, there are some that are stronger than others, but there were definitely no badly written stories within, just some that appealed to me more than others. For me, the clear winner here is “Reliving Through Better Chemistry” by Weston Ochse. He takes an “Oh shit, why didn’t I think of that?” idea and sends it to very dark places no one wants to visit. Beyond that, I really enjoyed his overall style, which to me is just as important as the story. Ochse also had one of the standout stories in the Midian Unmade anthology, so maybe it’s time I checked out one of his longer works? Any recommendations, folks? The story that follows this one, “Cthylla,” by Lucy A. Snyder, is also a standout. Maybe it’s because I don’t really read much Lovecraft/Cthulhu-influenced fiction, but I found this story to be a very refreshing take on the Mythos. Again, like Ochse’s story, it really gelled with my stylistic tastes as well. The most surprising story here was “The Last Things to Go,” a collaboration between Brian Keene and Mary Sangiovanni. Most of the stories in The Library of the Dead fall on the “quiet horror” spectrum (not the type of stuff I typically read, but I’m always open, naturally), which is exactly the opposite of what comes to mind when you hear the name Brian Keene, and this story is perhaps the quietest of the entire collection. Very odd, but cool. Always a good idea to buck expectations. Maybe it was the influence of Sangiovanni? Who knows?

Overall, if you want subtle creeps wrapped up in a solid overall collection, this anthology is a top-notch example.

Phantom Brain Horror Comic Anthology Kickstarter Launched Today

I just launched a Kickstarter project this morning for a comic book that is going to be killer if and when we get the funding.

Featuring work from myself, Shane Roeschlein,​ Megan Hutchison,​ Mike Dubisch​, Mike Feehan, Shaun Stroup,​ and Adam Gastelum​.

You can check out samples from each individual artist's previous work on the Kickstarter page.

Please check it out and help bring this to life!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1260434907/phantom-brain-an-illustrated-anthology-of-subversi