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.
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
https://dimshores.bigcartel.com/product/dim-shores-presents-volume-2-anthology
+ 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
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
Good riddance, 2020! For sure, this year has not been the all-around best of times. However, writing-wise, I’ve actually been doing pretty good this year. According to my annual custom, I will review last year’s achievements, then make a few goals to shoot for going forward.
"The Station Agent’s Wife, 1927" is the strange story of a new mother living in Augustus Valley at the peak of its heyday as the mining capital of West Virginia. All things are looking up when her husband gets a new job with the C&O Railroad as the station agent. But we all know how fast things can go south in Augustus Valley. Soon she finds something terribly wrong with the house provided by the railroad.
I’m proud to announce that "Music for a Peripheral Companion" has just been published in Vastarien: A Literary Journal Volume 3 Issue 2.
New short story alert: "The Apocalypse of Moses" has been produced for audio by the good folks at Tales to Terrify.
This episode of Tales to Terrify includes two short stories, the first being "Red Lotus" by Leah Capgras (read by Brian Dobyns), followed by mine, "The Apocalypse of Moses" (read by Scott Fulps).
Preorders are finally live for the new weird horror anthology Dim Shores Presents, Vol. 2, edited by Sam Cowan. Visit the Dim Shores webstore and secure your copy of the limited first edition now! Along other fine authors, you’ll notice my name down there on the front cover:
The first edition will be limited to 150 copies, and I’m betting they’ll sell out fast, so order yours today.
I am very proud to tell you that I’ll have a new short story published in the upcoming anthology, Dim Shores Presents Vol. 2, due out sometime in the latter half of this year from Dim Shores.
“AV_NEST.CASEFILE” introduces a new character to Augustus Valley, an investigator who works for a top secret branch of the West Virginia state government who is tasked with reporting on mysterious goings-on around the state. It will appear alongside fiction from writers including C.M. Muller, Jennifer Loring, Mari Ness and a bunch of other winners!
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Boy, 2019 was rough for me, for reasons which I will not detail in this post. But ever since I’ve started this blog, I’ve done one of these year-in-review/looking-ahead posts, so here goes. Please forgive my lack of pictures and GIFs—the internet connection where I live is exceedingly slow and unreliable, and I must avoid that kind of thing unless I’m at the library or coffee shop or some other place with high speed internet that won’t poop out on me in the middle of my work.
Last year I set some goals for 2019. I did not meet any of them (well, I sorta met one).
2019 goals:
This Bigfoot story is becoming about as elusive as Ol’ Sassy himself (have I made that joke before? I feel like I’ve made that joke before). I did make some progress in the fall, after finishing a novella (more on that in a bit), but I ended up putting it off again. I came up with another book idea I was more excited about at the time. My wife and some other people also think it is a pretty good concept, so I decided to set aside Sasquatch in favor of this one while I have some enthusiasm and creative juices flowing (kind of a gross expression, right?). So, thanks especially to Emily and John Little for encouragement in making this decision and telling me there might be something special in my new idea. I’m already making quicker, steadier progress on that book than I had been on Bigfoot. I’m not totally scrapping that one, though. I have some really good writing already done for it, and if I can pull off the rest of the story well, I think it will be a good one. I’m just not ready to finish it, I guess. But I have a good feeling about the new book.
Still have not found a home for Schafer (a novel I wrote in 2017 about an evil hypnotist, though I have yet to hear back from a number of publishers, any of which I would be very happy to work with.
I had planned on writing at least five short stories in addition to finishing the Bigfoot book. This is the only sorta check-mark on the list. At the beginning of the year, I started on a short story that I just could not finish. While I wrote in fits and starts, and did not make quick progress on it, it continued to grow into something exceedingly strange, ungainly, and lovely. At last, in September, I wrote THE END on this little monster, which came out to 21,300 words. So, it’s the length of five short stories, even though it is a single novella.
This is actually kind of cool, as I have been interested in writing a novella sometime in the future—only I ended up actually doing it by accident. As my 2019 goals were otherwise unmet, I’m going to fudge this one and give myself the credit. A novella is cool, yo. I’m not sure yet when or how it will be made available to the public, but I have some ideas.
For a moment I was the Region 2 Representative for the West Virginia Writers, and had some plans for that which never panned out. Coincidentally, as of November, I don’t even live in Region 2 anymore.
English Lit CLEP exam hasn’t happened yet. Should be soon, though. Transportation issues are complicated at the moment.
I’m not going to get into all the reasons that 2019 was hard on me. One of them, however, was an unexpected job change for my wife and a move from Bartow to Parsons. Emily and I are glad we were able to stay in West Virginia (and we love being in Tucker County), but the last part of the year was extremely chaotic and stressful. I am surprised I don’t have any noticeable gray hair after all that happened (I did catch one or two strands during the ordeal, but they’re gone). We still don’t have it all figured out, but we’re getting used to our new situation, and are both extremely grateful to God for what we see as His quick provision in a very uncertain and desperate time. I try to use this website to focus on my fiction rather than religious commentary, but I feel I would be wrong if I did not briefly utter a quick word of thanksgiving here. Things could have looked much worse for us at the end of 2019. We are greatly relieved.
In fact, there were some very bright spots to 2019. I had a whole lot of fun at all the book events I attended. At the Lewisburg Literary Festival, I broke my total sales record for that event. Same at West Virginia Book Festival, where I should have brought more books—I sold out of Little One! I was honored to be guest at the Haunted Majestic this October, a haunted house boat floating on the Ohio River near Huntington.
And, like I said before, it felt good to write my first novella. It is a very weird story, though. Who knows what will happen with it.
I saw only one of my short stories in print for 2019, “The Puddle Girl of St. George” (ironically, my wife’s new job is located in St. George).
And while I only saw one story newly published, I received some really encouraging responses concerning other unpublished work about which I’m not ready to go into detail. Suffice it to say that I finished the year with greater confidence in my ability and the quality of my short fiction. I hope to have some more exciting, less vague-blogging news for you later this year.
Honestly, while I do have some writing goals to set forth, there is some practical, real-life stuff which is going to have to take precedence over my writing. But related to my continued pursuit of a profitable fiction writing career, I reckon the following are worthy targets:
Yeah, I already put down my deposit on Camp Necon. It will be my first time attending, and I’ve heard great things. This year, it will be held in Salem, MA, which is pretty cool, because I don’t think I’ve ever been to Salem.
Other than that? I feel like I’m forgetting stuff that should be in this post. But I gotta tell you, I’m too tired right now to care. Have a happy new year, everybody.
PS — I haven’t drawn up a “Best of 2019” list yet, and I don’t know if I will—even less likely to do a “Best of the Decade” list. But I wanted to quickly recommend Michael Wehunt’s newest novella, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Bad Can Ever Happen Here, published by Nightscape Press last September. You can click that link to buy it directly from the publisher, as a limited, numbered paperback, autographed by the man himself, Michael Wehunt, one of my favorite contemporary writers. Only 118 copies remain at the time of this writing.
OK that’s it. I gotta go make dinner. So long!
“The Puddle Girl of St. George” is a unique kind of ghost story set in the beautiful, haunting St. George, West Virginia. I’m very proud that it was selected for publication in the annual Anthology of Appalachian Writers.
Even though this volume (Vol. XI), featuring guest editor Karen Spears Zacharias, was technically published back in June, I’ve been waiting to post about it until there was a working link for ordering the book. For some reason there was a listing for it on the Shepherd University Online Bookstore for a while now, but it has been listed as Out of Stock until this month. Well, better late than never—you can order it now!
