Crossroads Press releases the Catherine Cavendish Collection!

Crossroads Press releases the
Catherine Cavendish Collection!

The Ghosts of Ruthin Gaol

A few years ago, an article appeared in local Welsh newspaper, The Denbighshire Free Press, which included an appeal from a former Ruthin man curious to discover the identity of the ghost of a young girl he had encountered in the town 63 years earlier.

The girl was blonde, her hair in ringlets, and she wore a blue dress. When David Thorp saw her, she was walking slowly up Upper Clwyd Street. It was night time and she was illuminated by the light from a window, but she cast no shadow and appeared to be floating slightly above the ground.

When the paranormal events assistant at the gaol (Karen Messham), read of his experience, she contacted him. His description matched that of the daughter of a former governor. Her name was Josie Walmsley and she was born in 1862. Ms Messham says she has spoken to Josie many times as the young girl plays in the gaol, slams doors and has allegedly been recorded, singing the alphabet.

She is, however, not the only ghost to haunt the cells and walkways of the prison.

John Jones escaped twice – once in 1879 and then in 1913 when he was shot and died soon afterwards. Now he doesn’t seem able to leave.

William Kerr, Ruthin’s cruel and infamous Gaoler from 1871-1892, used to beat and starve prisoners as well as infuriate them by jangling his keys outside their cells. One day he simply disappeared, having left the Gaol on a perfectly normal day. No one knows what happened to him but his jangling keys and incessant banging on cell doors can still be heard today.

Then there’s William Hughes who was the last man to be hanged in the Gaol. He murdered his wife and on the 17th February 1903, six people watched him die for it. But he has never left…

Ruthin Gaol is open to the public and is a creepy enough place in the day time, but a number of paranormal groups have staged night time vigils and reported many strange phenomena. Mists have appeared in cells (see photo), people have been touched, one investigator was sworn at as she explored a lower cell, one person felt as if they were in cold water up to their chest and experienced a sense of panic and voices were picked up on a camcorder that hadn’t been heard on the night, including an entity that called himself ‘Jake’.

Do you dare to visit the ghosts at Ruthin Gaol? Here’s the info you need: Ruthin Gaoland here’s a Film Clipyou may find interesting. As I always say – don’t have nightmares…

There are ghosts and devils and paranormal activity in my novella The Demons of Cambian Street. Here’s what to expect:

Sometimes evil wears a beautiful face…

After her illness, the quiet backwater of Priory St Michael seemed the ideal place for Stella to recuperate. But in the peaceful little town, something evil is slumbering, waiting for its chance to possess what it desires. When Stella and her husband move into the long-empty apartment, they’re unaware of what exists in the cupboard upstairs, the entrance to an evil that will threaten both their lives…

You can buy The Demons of Cambian Street here;

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

About the author

Following a varied career in sales, advertising and career guidance, Catherine Cavendish is now the full-time author of a number of paranormal, ghostly and Gothic horror novels, novellas and short stories. Cat’s novels include the Nemesis of the Gods trilogy– Wrath of the Ancients, Waking the Ancients and Damned by the Ancients, plusThe Devil’s Serenade,The Pendle Curseand Saving Grace Devine.

Her novellas, Cold Revenge, Miss Abigail’s Room,, The Demons of Cambian Street, The Devil Inside Her, andThe Second Wifehave now been released in new editions by Crossroad Press.

She lives with her long-suffering husband, and a black cat who has never forgotten that her species used to be worshipped in ancient Egypt. She sees no reason why that practice should not continue. Cat and her family divide their time between Liverpool and a 260-year-old haunted apartment in North Wales.

You can connect with Cat here:

 Catherine Cavendish

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An interview with author Robert Shane Wilson

We are here today as a stop on the The Robert S. Wilson Thrown-Together-at-the-Last-Minute-Due-to-An-Overwhelming-Amount-of-Procrastination-and-Indecision Blog Tour and Book Giveaway Contest! = https://www.facebook.com/events/459398677533097/

ROBERT SHANE WILSON

This is a real honor. Robert Shane Wilson has been delivering the goods as an author and editor for enough time to leave a good mark on many people’s psyche. His work reminds me of Dan O’ Bannon, and the very wonderful 1980s science fiction/horror/noir field. I loved those stories and films. Please bring back Ellen Datlow and OMNI and T.E.D. Klein Twilight Zone! I cherish the issues I have. Robert continues that tradition, although his work is most certainly his own. We’ve been friends online for a while, with one of my favorite stories is learning that he uses a DANA portable word processor to work from. Having seen ads for them for years, Robert turned me on to finding a used one for a song. I love it. I love gizmos. Anything that helps creativity. I love where he writes. So please, check out his work. It’s the good stuff. He’s embarking on a brave new journey, not unlike one of the heroes in his stories, toward a new world. Now, let’s find out more about him.

You’ve got some new projects being released soon, with a brand new business model in mind? Can you talk about that a bit? What inspired this?

Sure. My debut collection Where All Light is Left to Die just came out via eBook and is about to do likewise in trade paperback any day now and my novella SoulServe: A Ray Garret/Lifeline Techno Thriller is set to come out September 30^th. I’m also putting out a novella from my collection as a stand alone (The Nesting Place) and a new revised and expanded edition of my 2011 novella The Quiet. And to make that sound even more confusing, Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing also released my short experimental cosmic horror story The OTHERS as part of their One-Night Stands series of eBooks earlier this month.

As for the business model, it’s a bit of an experiment. Recently Hugh Howey, bestselling author of WOOL, wrote a very interesting blog on a strategy for new self-publishing authors to kick start their careers. What I’m hoping to get out of this strategy is a boost in exposure to both my already available titles as well as a good kick start to my new ones. Hugh calls this strategy the Five-Down-and-One-in-the-Hole plan and it’s emulated from what has happened recently to a lot of midlist authors who have self-published.

What happens is a midlist author will decide to self-publish their entire backlist pretty much at once shortly before putting out a new title. Readers are suddenly seeing several books from the same name and that name is sticking for them enough that they decide to eventually take a chance on that author’s work. The idea is to shortly afterward put out another title, the “one in the hole,” as something new for readers to sink their teeth into now that they’ve already been reading your recent barrage of titles (Hugh and his source Liliana Nirvana suggest releasing your “one in the hole” title about one month later).

When I read Hugh’s post, I was in a unique position in that I already had five titles I was planning on releasing (well one rereleasing, but yeah…). Thing is, traditional wisdom tells authors and publishers to separate releases so you can give each book time to breathe and give yourself time to promote each accordingly. But in my experience, the more I learn about the current book market, the more I feel like taking a chance on new creative ideas can lead to some wonderful opportunities. And if nothing else… It’s not likely to make things any more difficult than they already are. So, for me, it was worth a shot to make it so all these titles would be available right around the same time.

For my “one in the hole,” I’m going out a little further than suggested and shooting for putting my third novel RISING FROM ASHES: EMPIRE OF BLOOD BOOK THREE out in December. So, I’m not following the idea stringently by any means but hopefully it gives my work a bit of a kick in the right direction.

Do you think the new era of authors taking over much of their promotion and content has affected the way writers write? With everyone writing series, and hoping to cross-sell the titles, how has this effected the genesis of storytelling?

I think in today’s new publishing paradigm many writers are a lot more aware of marketing. In a big way it’s a huge burden to writers these days, self and traditionally published. And I’m sure that affects what plenty of writers decide to write etc. Myself, as a reader, I’m a lover of book series and as a writer, I’ve come to enjoy them as well because it really allows you to get deeper and deeper with dynamic character development and interaction. But I can see how some writers are leaning toward series when they probably wouldn’t have otherwise in order to build a selling platform.

As for the genesis of storytelling, I’m not sure it matters. We’ve been telling stories since we were living in caves, hunting and gathering. I think what matters is that we keep telling stories as individuals and as a species. Passing down our ideas to each new generation and inspiring even more great stories. That’s one of the greatest things that makes us unique among the our ancestors and we should celebrate that.

Sure if someone puts all their effort and time into worrying about what will sell over what they are passionate about writing, they’ll end up with nothing but dry crap to show for it, but there’s nothing wrong with balancing the two. “Here’s something that’s selling well and I love to read and write it. Here’s something else that’s selling well and I love to read it, but haven’t tried writing it. I think I’ll give it a shot.” I mean the best musicians and performers are fluent in many different styles and I’m a firm believer that writers can only gain by doing the same.

I get the feeling a lot of authors are writing to the market. They’re even mimicking the covers of best-sellers with their graphic work. Do you think this is a good thing, because it is leveling the playing field, or do you think this is crowding the market with a lot of mediocre work?

I think this kind of goes back to my last answer to some degree. I honestly feel like as long as there are people writing, there will be different levels of quality. Different people write for different reasons. Obviously Amazon has opened the floodgates for anyone who wants to try their hand at being a writer to do so. This is both a great and terrible thing all at once. For the promising young writer who is willing to still put in the effort to hone their craft and toil with each new work toward making it better or more original than the last, this is fantastic. For those who would rather rush out everything they can for the purpose of trying to make a quick buck, I think it’s inevitable that they are going to fail and quickly.

That said, many new great writers out there aren’t getting noticed because of many factors including the huge amount of competition out there right now—a lot of which being one big pool of shit from those aforementioned folk trying to make a quick buck. But also because, and this is another great and terrible conundrum, Amazon is taking the market and to be seen on Amazon is to follow Amazon’s rules both spoken and unspoken and it’s they’re not exactly working very hard to make those rules straightforward. But given the huge ratio of bad material out there, I get it. It’s like a marketing democracy not too far off from the current state of United States politics—one where the lucky and the rich win out. If you can afford to throw down 10k on advertising, Amazon is more than happy to make you a bestseller. If not and you happen to have the magic power to get hit by Amazon’s bestselling lightning as authors like Amanda Hocking and J.A. Konrath, among many others, have, then aces, you win every writer’s secret little soft fuzzy dream—the ability to make not just a living writing, but a damn fine one.

Who or what are the new gatekeepers?

Readers are the new gatekeepers. And I think, in comparison to the history of this business, this new paradigm is the evolutionary equivalent of the Cambrian Explosion. When the Cambrian Explosion happened, life on Earth went from just a small number of variations to very near the nearly incalculable variety of species we see today. Likewise, we went from a small variety of book publishers funneling out what they felt was the best material to readers to tearing away that funnel and allowing the open slush pit to go straight to the reader where they can find new writers in droves that may never have even managed to get printed with the previous model.

What distinguishes your work from the flood of self-appointed writers multiplying on Amazon every day?

Ha! Nothing I say can answer that question… Except maybe this. I wrote it. And there is no other me. Otherwise, it’s up to readers to decide if they want to take a chance on me. (Hint: I have several free stories out in eBook land available and there’s always the sample option on any of my longer works. All free ways to decide for yourself if my work can be distinguished from the dreck.)

You’re well known, and highly regarded, in the horror fiction circuit, as an editor. How did that come to be? Do you think your skills as an editor have informed your personal fiction for better or for worse?

If anything I’m blipping slightly on some far away edge of the radar, maybe. I probably mostly owe that to my work on Horror for Good: A charitable Anthology and as Editor in Chief of Nightscape Press. And yeah, if a writer wants to better their craft, I would highly suggest trying their hand at editing on a purely experimental basis to begin with. Get together with another writer you’re friends with who has a reasonably thick skin and is willing to take your criticism with a grain of salt.

That way if you make some mistakes along the way you don’t pull someone down with you along the way. Haha. Seriously though, I started editing in late 2011 just prior to working on Horror for Good and each pass I did on other people’s work taught me more. But I won’t lie, editing the work of solid professionals was even more hugely eye-opening. And yet at the same time, no one gets better who isn’t already studying the subject of their affections with vigorous determination and constant practice. For writers that’s reading everything you can get your hands on with a critical eye and writing and writing and rewriting and writing and writing and rewriting some more and… you get the idea.

If marketing and sales were of no concern, what would you write?

Well, the same things I write now. Sort of. I balance how much my eye is on the market and how much my eye is on what I’m passionate about. They’re mostly pretty much the same thing. That said, I would love to break out more in the science fiction market because most of what I write has a huge element of mixed in. So far that doesn’t seem to be in the cards. And very recently I realized that I’m okay with that. I’m okay with that because there are two science fiction markets. There’s the stringent very particular science fiction market that doesn’t jibe too well with darker fiction and there’s the popular fiction market where science fiction has, in my opinion, more room to breathe. I think my sci-fi has the potential to some day end up in that latter market. With hard work and some luck, time will tell I suppose. It very well could be that my brand of SF just isn’t anybody’s cup of tea and even still, I can live with that. The best tip I ever learned was to write for yourself, because you can’t please everyone and when you try too hard to please everyone, you only end up pleasing no one.

Our influences often change as we develop as artists. Who inspired you ‘then’, and who inspires you ‘now’?

Ooh, love this question. I think my biggest horror inspirations from childhood were The Twilight Zone and various 70s and 80s horror and sci-fi movies (Brainstorm, Blade Runner, An American Werewolf in London, Swamp Thing, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Friday the 13^th, Killer Clowns from Outer Space, Alien, Predator, Communion, Night of the Comet, Saturn 3, Tron, D.A.R.R.E.L., Cat’s Eye, The Last Starfighter, Terminator, Labyrinth, and tons of others. But in the written word… Then would be Stephen King, Anne Rice, William Golding… etc. But the biggest scares in my early teens came from reading Whitley Strieber’s “non-fiction” alien abduction books like Communion, Transformation, and the author’s supposedly “true story written as fiction” Majestic. I was twelve years old when I first read those books and I was quite impressionable.

At the time, I already believed in that sort of thing and Strieber’s books only gave me terrifying fodder to add to my already growing fear of small beings coming into my home in the middle of the night and ripping me from my bed. Nothing scares like something you think is real. Hands down, nothing else has scared me as much since.

Today I’m a skeptic who doesn’t believe in anything supernatural, and while that might affect my ability to be scared to some degree, I’m still able to be creeped out and enjoy a great work of the macabre. I’d say my biggest influences now are authors like Peter Watts, Richard Matheson, Harlan Ellison, Philip K. Dick, Michael Marshall Smith, Stephen Graham Jones, Laird Barron, Ursula K. Le Guin, Peter Straub, King still, definitely, Neil Gaiman, George R. R. Martin, and Joe Lansdale. I’m more recently becoming especially enthralled with weird fiction and cosmic horror. I’ve long been intrigued by H.P. Lovecraft’s spectrum of horrific ideas, but I can’t say I’m the biggest fan of his prose style, so I’m slow to read as much of his work as I would like.

What’s your writing routine?

Whenever I can balance free time and focus. So, in other words not nearly as routine as I would like, but I’ve been working to turn that around.

My favorite question is always HOW do you write? MS Word on an old PC? Longhand in spiral notebooks? Tapping into your iPhone? I love specifics. Give me the software you use. The versions. Why you use them. Also: what is your writing environment? A nook in the dining room? A home office that looks out onto a meadow? The lunch room at the day job with a set of headphones so you won’t be disturbed? That stuff I love!

Recently I made room for an office that’s closed off from the rest of the house and have done most of my writing there. I’m a typing kind of guy. I write by hand far too slowly and much sloppier than your typical doctor’s signature. If I had to rely on reading my own handwriting, I’d be screwed. I mostly write on my PC with either Microsoft Word 2003 or Wordstar 7 (I’m a Wordstar Diamond addict. I’ve even created a small script program via AutoHotKey that allows me to use Wordstar commands with any Windows program—XP and 7. WS fans, it’s available here! You’ll need to set up your caps lock to work as a control separately though…).

Nearly a year ago we moved out to the country just across the street from a body of water called Defeated Creek (even though it looks bigger than many lakes I’ve seen). And directly across from the mouth of our driveway is a nice clearing in the trees that separate the road from the water. When the weather is accommodating I go out there with a little word processor device called an Alphasmart Dana—you know what I’m talking about, John!—and a fold out camping chair and go sit in front of the water and write. Best writing spot ever. Well, the best I’ve found anyway.

Here’s where you can contact and hang out with Robert:

Website: http://www.shiningincrimson.com

The Robert S. Wilson Thrown-Together-at-the-Last-Minute-Due-to-An-Overwhelming-Amount-of-Procrastination-and-Indecision Blog Tour and Book Giveaway Contest! = https://www.facebook.com/events/459398677533097/

Amazon author page: http://www.amazon.com/Robert-S.-Wilson/e/B005EU57AY

Goodreads author page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4807116.Robert_S_Wilson

Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/robertswilsonauthor

Twitter name: @EmpireOfBloodRW

Ello: @robertswilson

Bio:

Robert S. Wilson is the author of SHINING IN CRIMSON and FADING IN DARKNESS, books one and two of his dystopian vampire series: EMPIRE OF BLOOD. He is the Bram Stoker Award-nominated editor of BLOOD TYPE: AN ANTHOLOGY OF VAMPIRE SF ON THE CUTTING EDGE, a co-editor of HORROR FOR GOOD: A CHARITABLE ANTHOLOGY and NIGHTSCAPES: VOLUME 1, and lives in Middle Tennessee with his family and a silly obnoxious dog. His short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies, online, and paper publications, and his cyberpunk/horror novella EXIT REALITY was chosen as one of e-thriller.com’s Thrillers of the Month in July 2013.

His debut fiction collection WHERE ALL LIGHT IS LEFT TO DIE was just released on September 23rd and the second novella in his cyberpunk/crime thriller Ray Garret/Lifeline series, SOULSERVE, is available for pre-order and will release on September 30th. He is currently working hard to finish a number of novels and novellas all at once like a blind juggler given knives and led into oncoming traffic.

 

 

THE BRING JASPER TO JUSTICE BLOG TOUR

THE BRING JASPER TO JUSTICE

BLOG TOUR

The whistle is blowing. That means I’ve got a new iron train stopping at the wordpress station today. And what do we have here? UK author Jasper Bark is here to talk a little bit about his work.

For more background info on Jasper please check out: http://www.jasperbark.com/bio/

Do you think horror has a purpose, above giving people a comfortable, entertaining scare?

I really do believe it has. In my opinion the best horror stories use the weird and other-worldly as a metaphor for a deeper or more personal truth. I also think that the world is quite a scary place at the moment and because of this the tropes and motifs of horror are some of the best ways of addressing the contemporary world. A lot of the horror writers coming up at the moment seem to be interested in social commentary in the same way that the New Wave and the early Cyberpunk writers previously used science fiction as a vehicle for social comment.

Why should people read your work?

Because I need the money!

Also because they’ll discover imaginative, edgy and unexpected fiction that explores social and spiritual issues while pushing at the boundaries of what genre fiction can and ought to do.

Because I’ll take them to places they’ve never been before and will never get to visit again. That’s a money back guarantee.

STUCK ON YOU:

What were you thinking when you took an urban legend and turned it into a delightfully twisted story called Stuck on You?

Mostly – “Gee, I bet this will make ’em toss their cookies” I wasn’t actually sure it was an urban legend when I stumbled across it on an obscure forum while researching something else. The person posting it seemed to think it was a true story. In fact the tale first appeared on the Darwin Awards site, which is devoted to deaths that are so dumb the victim is given an award for not muddying the human gene pool with their decided lack of smarts. So there’s some debate as to whether it actually happened or not (my guess is definitely NOT).

It was one of those little snippets of information that stuck to the seamy underbelly of my imagination and wouldn’t let go until I wrote a story to get rid of it. Taking the Piss, another story that’s collected in the forthcoming collection: Stuck on You and Other Prime Cuts, was just the same. It was inspired by something hideous I read about that just wouldn’t leave me alone. I sometimes create stories as little traps for the vile and hideous notions that infest my psyche, so I can be done with them and pass them onto my unwary readers. Think of it as a public service.

Stuck on You goes to some pretty extreme places, did you ever worry that you were going too far?

All the time. The fear for a writer working on something like Stuck On You is that you’re going to lose half your readership. That what your describing is going to gross them out so much they’ll throw the story down in disgust. So I would try and slowly ease the reader into each new incident that befalls the main character Ricardo. I would build to a gross climax then scale it back a bit. The thing about the story is that just when you think it’s gotten as low as it can go I’ll find a new depth to plumb, but you have to let up a bit in between. The intense levels of eroticism helps with this as did the black humour. Many readers have said they squirmed while reading it, or felt sick, but most have also said they laughed too, which is good because there is a strong element of slapstick in the story.

There are some really erotic and sexual scenes in Stuck On You. Were they fun to write?

Yes, but they were also very hard (if you’ll pardon the pun). That’s because, in my experience, Sex and Violence are the two hardest things to write well. Not many people have first hand experience of extreme violence so their depictions of it can sometimes seem inauthentic or clumsy. While most people have first hand experience of sex, we make ourselves very vulnerable when we talk or write about it in great detail. Mainly because we’re revealing something of ourselves that’s very intimate when we do. What’s more, its very difficult to find the right language to approach sex without sounding like either a clinical sex ed. description or a euphemism laden dirty joke.

Champions of ‘Quiet Horror’ often claim that ‘anyone can throw in a bunch of sex and violence and get a response’ but I think they’re wrong about this. You’ll get a response, but it won’t always be a good one, because not anyone can write sex or violence well. That’s often why many authors stop at the bedroom door and only hint at the violence. I think they’re making a virtue out of a necessity. However, I do think you can write something of great quality that’s also extremely violent and highly erotic. That’s one of the issues I was hoping to address with Stuck On You. You’ll have to read it to see if I’ve succeeded but I can promise you that if you like either sex or violence you won’t be disappointed.

Why should people read Stuck On You?

Because it’s the sickest, filthiest and most inexcusable thing you’ll read all year. If you think you’ve read everything in horror think again this will take you to an all time low. It’s the ultimate guilty pleasure, the sort of book you have to read with one hand free, partly to hide behind and partly to do other things with.

VIDEO FOOTAGE:

Here’s an episode of Resonance FM’s Atomic Bark show wherein Jasper talks at length with presenter James DC about old time Radio Horror Shows (very fascinating, very frightening):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6Z3goixWwc

CAPTURED SOULS book trailer

Here’s a book trailer for Sephera Giron’s latest Captured Souls. I found this book insanely creepy and had one point in the middle where I literally had to look away and read later. Like the quotes say: this is kind of like a female Frankenstein, working on the perfect lover, and things go south from there. Yours truly supplied the video editing and the new track from SHAME, my electronic music project, provided the theme.

The description of the book:

Can science create the perfect lover? Or only a living hell?

Dr. Miriam Frederick is a brilliant professor at a large university. But her latest experiments are decidedly unsanctioned and far more chilling than anyone could imagine. She is determined to answer questions that have plagued mankind for millennia. What is love? What is lust?

Her first specimen is an author with a gift for language. Specimen Two is an athlete with amazing endurance. Specimen Three provides physical beauty. But once she has trapped her subjects, her twisted attempt to create the perfect lover will have unexpected—and nightmarish—results, not just for her captives, but for her as well.

Here’s the trailer:

And a link to grab the book, if what you see helps convince you.

http://www.amazon.com/Captured-Souls-Sephera-Giron-ebook/dp/B00H8QNBYQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391831871&sr=8-1&keywords=captured+souls

CHIRAL MAD 2 – Book Trailer

Here’s a book trailer for CHIRAL MAD 2.

The creative process took some time for this piece. It began with the music. A dilemma. What does chiral sound like? Cranked up the synthesizers and played until stumbling into a sound, and then, a rhythm. Layered the tracks and demoed. Then, realized the second half of the song would have to be like the first, only slightly different. Things that are chiral are quite similar, yet, are not mirror images. The most famous examples are hands, eyes, and ears. Did my best to try this with music, as well. First, the attempts sounded horrendous, so it was done with more subtlety. This is published by my electronic music outfit, presently named SHAME.

From there, sculpting the images took time. Several were used over and over, but flipped, with artistic effects added. There’s a slight story to it. A young boy begins wide-eyed, but as things progress, his sight is twisted, colored, censored, until he eventually sees a chiral pattern in everything. The patterns were made by feeding outtakes from my in-progress experimental film From The Sky into a video generator and going to town. So every part of this book trailer was made by hand, and none of it was borrowed. Everything was created just for this.

Please check out the finished piece here:

And, of course, if you’re interested in what Chiral reads like, try:
http://www.amazon.com/Chiral-Mad-2-Michael-Bailey/dp/1494239973/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390672914&sr=8-1&keywords=chiral+mad+2

Three new short stories unleashed this week! Massive end-of-year update

It’s been a busy week for me. I’ve got a couple of new book trailers out.

Over on  my YouTube page, there’s new pieces for C. Courtney Joyner’s SHOTGUN, which was an amazing experience. Composing and performing the music was a big challenge, and really feels like I nailed it. It’s currently playing all over the place, including WalMart stores, so look for it.

There’s a piece for Robert S. Wilson’s BLOOD TYPE: An Anthology of Vampire SF on the Cutting Edge, which also features my story, “A River Of Blood, Carried Into The Abyss”, my first published piece of science fiction, which is beyond thrilling for me. Another big thrill is seeing my HWA mentee Usman Malik making his first pro-sale. He’s one to watch. Even Ellen Datlow has noticed! The book also helps Cystic Fibrosis, so please consider supporting it.

I’m trying to drum up some more support for NERVES by creating a new book trailer. I actually shot the footage during my band’s travel to Las Vegas. If you’ve read NERVES, can you please leave a review for the book? At one point, there were over 30 reviews, but many are now missing. Us independent artists need your reviews.

Recently, me and Lisa Morton ventured into Griffith Park one winter night to shoot a teaser trailer for her upcoming epic, NETHERWORLD. It’s a fantastic book, and Lisa’s really kicking butt. Do check it out! Reading her awesome book MALEDICTION right now and loving it, especially the Los Angeles locations.

WRITING

This week saw the release of three wonderful books: Blood Type: An Anthology of Vampire SF on the Cutting Edge, featuring, “A River Of Blood, Carried Into The Abyss”, and also “The Geminis” in CHIRAL MAD 2. Both these anthologies have some amazing lineups of authors. Last, there’s The Bestiarum Vocabulum from my specialty press Western Legends. I know there’s a prejudice against it, but I will disclose I have a story, “The Kappa” inside. This will be the last Jp story in a Western Legends book for a while, if ever.

Hoping 2014 will finally see the release of another long form project from me. I’ve got three irons in the fire, so here’s hoping one turns out. It’s been just as hard getting the second one out as was the first. Was not expecting that.

Thanks for checking in and reading all this. It’s been a very busy 2013. Next year looks even busier. And who knows? There may be one last thing before the year’s out…

Brand new NERVES book trailer

Hey, y’all. I’ve got a brand new book trailer I put together for NERVES. It’s live action, and was shot in the Nevada desert, right where the first scene actually takes place. The music was fun to compose, too. Got to play director for my own adaptation.

Also: I need Amazon reviews for NERVES. If you’ve read it, please post one. If you have reviewed it, please check it’s still there. They took down a bunch, mysteriously. If you haven’t read it and would like to, in exchange for an honest review, let me know and I’ll hook you up. This is a limited time offer, though, okay? Thanks for all the support. And hopefully if this round of ‘getting it out there’ goes well, some press will be interested in its prequel, ASHES, currently half-way transcribed.

“Summer’s End” Book Trailer

This is very exciting for me, as it marks my first true HD book trailer. I’ve shot in HD plenty, but never had the means to do a full HD 1080p trailer. So here it is. It’s for Lisa Morton’s very cool novella, “Summer’s End” from Journalstone. The artwork is from Harry O. Morris, the fellow that has done a lot of work with Thomas Ligotti. I spent a ton of time on the sound design. I recorded the strings via keyboard and then reversed them. A lot of the stings were heavily changed versions from royalty free discs I’ve had. Now, the only lame thing is that my speaker system (Klipsch) has died on me. I sure hope I can repair them. I’m very bummed about this because I’ve only had them a week. I haven’t had a good speaker system for a few years, and loved having these. Here’s hoping they’re resurrected.

“Summer’s End” book trailer 

“Summer’s End” at Amazon

Lisa Morton’s Website