Listen now to “Drifting Into the Black” on Tales to Terrify

The folks at Tales to Terrify have done it again! My scifi horror short tale, "Drifting Into the Black", has been given new life in audio. Just released today, Episode 486 of the Tales to Terrify podcast is sure to meet your dark scifi/space survival horror/action/dread needs. Give it a listen on your way to work, or sitting at home alone in the dark.

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Dim Shores Presents Vol 2 shipping now

We all expected the preordered copies of Dim Shores Presents Volume 2 to have been printed and shipped out by the end of 2020. Personally, I also expected that the limited edition run would sell out quickly, or at least before publication date. Neither of those things happened, because nothing happened according to plan in 2020.

It was a rough year, all right?

But, finally, some good news: for all of you who did preorder this exciting new anthology of strange and dark tales, I’ve received word from the publisher that they’re rocking and rolling again. Delays are in the past, awesome stories in your future! I’m sure you’ll hear from Dim Shores soon with shipping info, if you haven’t already.

And for any of you who thought, "Gee, I kinda wanted that book before the limited run sold out, but it’s probably too late now . . . " Guess what? Good news for you, too. They still have copies that haven’t been claimed (I’m not sure how many). Only $18.00 gets you this delicious beauty:

Dim Shores Presents is an anthology series spotlighting some of the best new writing in speculative fiction. Weird horror, strange science fiction, and dark fantasy rub shoulders with each other here, weaving a tapestry of uncanny beauty and fearful wonder.

+ 6” x 9” trade paperback
+ Printed on 60# natural paper
+ High-quality print of front cover art
+ New Dim Shores vinyl sticker
+ This edition limited to 150 hand-numbered copies

https://dimshores.bigcartel.com/product/dim-shores-presents-volume-2-anthology

So don’t be dumb. Order yours and find out why Dim Shores is one of my favorite small presses in the genre!

#weird #horror #scifi #darkfantasy #smallpress #indiepub #dimshores #weirdart #weirdfiction #weirdhorror #shortfiction dim shores presents vol 2 shipping now

Get #Superheroes TCA Anthology V3 today!

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My short story, “The Bald Man”, can be found only in The Crossover Alliance’s new anthology, Superheroes, which is out TODAY! You can order digital editions in almost any format directly from them, or you can find the paperback and kindle version from Amazon. Nook lovers out there, you’re not left out in the cold, either. Barnes and Noble has the epub, as well as the paperback, if you want to get it there.
Short on cash? Enter the rafflecopter giveaway, and you might win a free digital copy of this anthology, plus even more!
Like to listen to stories? The Untold Podcast has a free audio edition of one of the stories in this anthology, “The Trojan Initiative” by Clayton Webb.
For more information on The Crossover Alliance and what kind of books they publish, click on their logo below:
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Hemingway vs. Bradbury

I mentioned in a previous post that I had a goal of finishing both The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway and Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales over the course of the year by reading at least two stories from each per week. So far I’ve read ten from Hemingway and eleven from Bradbury, so I’m ahead of my goal.

I’m not totally inexperienced with either of these writers, though I’ll admit to not having investigated their work as much as I should have. Before this year, I had read Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea, a handful of his short stories, and Ernest Hemingway On Writing, a book published posthumously collecting a bunch of quotes about writing he made over the course of his career. For Ray, it was Fahrenheit 451 (an inevitable favorite, as I’m a huge dystopian fan AND a huge book fan, so there you go) and Something Wicked This Way Comes (in which I was a little disappointed, I’m afraid).

The title of this post is “Hemingway vs. Bradbury.” Of course it really isn’t fair to pit the writers against one another, but of course going into a book you can’t help but have certain expectations. And one of those expectations I had was that Hemingway’s stories would be “better” literature than Bradbury’s, while Bradbury’s would be more fun to read. I was wrong (about the first assumption).

Hemingway is a master at inner conflict, human nature (emphasis on the man), and epiphany, of course, but none of his stories have floored me yet like Bradbury’s. “Lafayette, Farewell” and “The Rocket” nearly brought me to tears (okay okay, “The Rocket” really did bring me to tears…). Of course, to be great, a story has to do more than engage your emotions in some way, but it should do at least that, and while Hemingway’s whole shtick is melancholy and beautiful prose, Bradbury’s got ’em both in spades, as well as joy and the fantastical, whimsy and humanity. No disrespect to Papa, either, because he certainly deserves it. But I definitely went into Bradbury with my expectations inappropriately low. He’s amazing.

Dark Horizons available now

Now available on Amazon: Dark Horizons: An Anthology of Dark Science Fiction edited by Charles P. Zaglanis, published by Elder Signs Press, and featuring short fiction by—guess who—me!—among other very talented writers. And though I haven’t been able to confirm this for myself, as the closest one is over 300 miles from me, Zaglanis announced on his Facebook page a while back that Barnes & Noble has agreed to stock the book in their stores.

I’m proud to have my story “Drifting Into the Black” reprinted in this very nice volume next to other good fiction by various authors, including James Dorr. Everyone, please get a copy for yourself!
 

Reading List: Feed by M. T. Anderson

Ever since I was assigned to read Orwell’s 1984 in high school, dystopian fiction has been one of my favorite literary genres. With The Hunger Games and Maze Runner series having captured American pop culture’s admiration, dystopian lit (or, at least, YA dystopian) is now a favorite of many others.

Before YA Dystopian was as big as it is today, M. T. Anderson wrote Feed, published in 2002 by Candlewick Press (in 2012, they released a newer edition, pictured below, which I have not read–as far as I know, all they changed was the cover).



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