Readers of my new story, “The Christmas Cabinet” (appearing in the Summer 2026 issue of Assemble Artifacts Short Story Magazine) are introduced to a new mysterious, small mountain town: Port Crayon, West Virginia.
October is my favorite month, and one of the reasons is all the fun events I get to go to. I hope I get to see you at some of these. Please come by and say hello.
October 4th – Mysticon 2025 – Ravenswood, WV
I have the honor of being a guest speaker at Mysticon 2025, at the Ravenswood branch of the Jackson County Public Library. This celebration of cryptids, the paranormal, and all things unexplained & spooky starts at noon and goes until 7 p.m. on Saturday, October 4th. There will be speakers, contests, vendors, face painting, crafts, raffles and more. My talk is scheduled for 2:30, but you’ll want to hear from the other speakers, too. When I’m not giving my presentation (or looking for some food), you can find me in the vendor area selling my books! For more information, follow Jackson County Public Library on Facebook, and join the Ravenswood Mysticon Facebook group.
October 25th – West Virginia Book Festival – Charleston, WV
The West Virginia Book Festival is probably the biggest celebration of books and authors in the state, and it’s held every year in our lovely state capital, at the Charleston Coliseum & Convention Center. As always, find me again in the Marketplace Vendor area on October 25th, working that 9 to 5 shift at my book table.
See you there!
I hope ya’ll get a chance to experience either of these fun fall bookish events. Please come and say hi! I always love seeing you guys.
How did I miss it? The excellent podcast, Chilling Tales for Dark Nights, released the audio version of “The Yellow Carousel” in January last year (see “Episode 233: Slippery Slopes”). This weird Appalachian horror story, which was originally published by Cosmic Horror Monthly, then reprinted by YNST Magazine, is set in the Augustus Valley / High Point area, and remains one of my favorites. Nick Goroff narrates it excellently, and the fantastic vocal talents of Kyle Stroud and Rissa Montañez breathe new life into the characters Silas and Emma. The narration is enhanced by some superb, tastefully applied sound effects, my favorite being the howling coyotes. When I wrote this story, I was living in a very rural area, quite similar to Silas’s and Emma’s home, and on many nights I woke to coyotes’ frenzied yipping. Initially unnerving, once I got used to their unique vocalizations, they became quite beautiful and comforting to me. Not so comforting for Emma, unfortunately.
Chilling Tales for Dark Nights, Episode 233: Slippery Slopes, opens with Jackson Arthur’s story, “Black Ice,” which is also narrated by Nick Goroff, along with Danielle Hewitt (Danielle voiced two of my stories—“The Station Agent’s Wife, 1927” for Tales to Terrify, and “She Will Come to Brood” for Creepy). “The Yellow Carousel” follows at 33:40. Find it on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Read along to the audio by pulling up the story on your phone or computer for free at YNST Magazine.
If you want more of my spookies flushed down your earpipes, I keep a Spotify playlist where I add any free audio narration of my stories whenever they are available there. Check it out and save it to your own Spotify profile for easy access!
Thanks again to the team at Chilling Tales for Dark Nights, and to you readers and listeners, for all the support. Be sure to leave a review thanking them for doing such a great job on “The Yellow Carousel”.
“The heart-racing mystery will keep readers wondering who to trust and how the story will end.” — Publishers Weekly
Kindle owners, rejoice: this week, my ghost thriller, Little One, is discounted on Amazon down to only 99 cents in the US and UK for a few days. That’s right, just one dollar for hours of snowy hauntings, delivered hot and ready to your Kindle. That’s cheaper even than the Dollar Tree these days!
It was a warm September evening in High Point, West Virginia, when Silas first saw the Yellow Carousel.
Early September is upon us—summer’s last gasp, anticipation of autumn, maturing sunflowers… And, for a certain retired surface miner and his wife, the Yellow Carousel’s arrival.
Though squash vine borers have decimated my wife’s acorn squashes, zucchinis, and delicatas this year (still holding out hope for a couple of pumpkins that look okay), it’s been a good year for the rest of the garden, including our sunflowers.
Sunflowers are my favorite flowers. I’m big on Russian Mammoths, but we tried some new ones this year to add more color and variety in size. Can’t help smiling whenever I see them. How can those big, bright petals bring a person anything but joy?
Say a giant sunflower-shaped carousel sprouts suddenly in your back yard. Weird, sure. But would you really think it such a bad thing? You can forgive a lonely old guy like Silas if he’s not overly wary when it happens to him. But beauty is often as dangerous as it is alluring.
If you haven’t yet read my Appalachian weird horror story “The Yellow Carousel” (Cosmic Horror Monthly #35, May 2023 – read online for free), September is the perfect time. Take it out on the back porch after work, while the evenings still have a touch of late summer heat. If you have a sunflower garden like me, plop your chair right there among their heavy heads nodding in the breeze. Maybe make yourself a cup of tea to sip as you read, to fight off that chill when the sun goes down behind the pines.
And if something strange appears in your lawn, or in the playground across the street, or your neighbor’s backyard…
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Silas and Emma have settled into a quiet retirement in High Point, West Virginia. There’s nothing so peaceful as a September sunset painting the pines that edge their field. From this magic twilight emerges the Yellow Carousel, as if planted and grown just for Silas. Why shouldn’t he climb its sunflower petals and mount its undulating deer?
Emily and I recently took a quick weekend getaway to historic Berkeley Springs, WV. Located in the eastern panhandle, its warm mineral springs became a huge attraction as our country was started, leading to its founding in 1776 by George Washington as America’s first spa. Its original name was "Bath," meant to be a competitor of sorts to the English city of Bath in Somerset. While I’ve never been to its English counterpart (based on a quick Google, Somerset’s Bath looks much more impressive—sorry, Berkeley Springs), we did enjoy our short stay at the historic Country Inn as well as our appointment at Berkeley Springs State Park’s heated Roman Bath House. There, for a period of time you can reserve a private heated pool of natural mineral water all to yourself, or to yourselves, if a couple, like Emily and me. Emily chose to wear a swimsuit, but wanting to get the most out of the experience, I of course went in "full Roman," a phrase I came up with when we got there, which I’ll leave you to interpret for yourself.
So, for obvious reasons, there are no pictures of Emily and me in the bath. However, I do have pictures of this cool little Edgar Allan Poe figurine we found at Jules Enchanting Gifts just across the street. Check out this neat little guy!
I haven’t updated you guys on my latest writing project until now because whenever I start something intended to be a novel, I’m afraid that I won’t be able to remember how to write again, or I’ll get to the end and it won’t be long enough, or it will turn out to be an incoherent, unpublishable disaster. Well, I’ve been deep into a project I started this spring, and I’m relieved and excited to go into this weekend having crossed the 40k mark! What’s more, I think it might resemble something you may actually want to read.
Fresh feasting for your famished earholes, hot off the audio griddle. Curtis M. Lawson, host of the podcast Wyrd Transmissions, has interviewed me. Listen to us chat a little about my writing and a lot more about other stuff.
Okay, this is over a week late, which translates into about three months in Internet years, but I would be remiss if I failed to direct any interested parties toward Gwendolyn Kiste’s interview of me on her blog.
If you’re at all curious about my influences, inspirations, and my thoughts on recent and upcoming works (primarily my recently released novella, Unknowing, I Sink, and my upcoming novel, Schafer), you’ll want to take a look.
While you’re over there, please peruse the rest of Gwendolyn’s website. She is an incredibly talented and accomplished horror and dark fantasy writer, having won the Bram Stoker Award(R) three times, if I recall correctly. Her works include the Stoker-winning novel The Rust Maidens and her new novel, Boneset & Feathers, which I am currently reading.
It was quite an honor and pleasure to chat with her and talk about my humble writing.
Well, it’s official. The first draft of my fourth novel is D-O-N-E! Continue reading →
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