Random Acceptance: “Suicide Corners”

It had to happen eventually … I reached into my nine-inch-thick folder of responses and pulled out an acceptance letter.  But this one has a twist.

Review: “The Orphanage”

So this week we watched The Orphanage, which can perhaps best be described as a casserole of The Devil’s Backbone and The Others, with a pinch of The Sixth Sense and a little Poltergeist garnish.  Sadly, though, this casserole was only baked about three-quarters of the way, so it’s still a little runny on the inside.

The Orphanage wasn’t quite as good as most of those other films I just named as ingredients, and it was nowhere near as good as The Devil’s Backbone.  But it was much better than The Others, which my wife and I both found to be a great big predictable snoozefest.  (Even I almost fell asleep watching The Others.)

Anyway, The Orphanage involves, yes, an orphanage, and some orphans, and some treasure hunting, and some weird noises, and a tall, skinny, less funny version of Zelda Rubinstein’s medium, and some ghosts, and the usual crowd of people who don’t believe in ghosts vs. the one person who does.  It has a few jolty moments and an ending that I half saw coming and that half surprised the heck out of me.  I like to be surprised by movies, so I was half satisfied.

My wife had really been wanting to see The Orphanage, mostly on the strength of its good reviews and its association with Guillermo Del Toro, a director she worships, but only when the people in his movies are speaking Spanish.  Unfortunately, The Orphanage put her to sleep in about 30 minutes, and when she woke up, she didn’t bother to ask how it ended.  Not a good sign.

“Dragon Stones” Now Available

Dragon Stones is now available direct from Lulu.com!  I’m still putting the finishing touches on the formatting before submitting it for distribution via the usual channels, but at this point I think that further changes are unlikely.  (And if I do change something after you buy it, then you will have a rare limited edition copy!)

As I’ve mentioned, Dragon Stones is a fantasy novel, so anyone who’s been a little squeamish about reading A Flock of Crows is Called a Murder or Long Before Dawn or (especially) Night Watchman needn’t fear — the goriest thing in Dragon Stones is a swordfight between a couple of the characters (but I won’t spoil anything by saying which).  If you enjoy fantasy novels, check it out — I don’t think you’ll be disappointed!

In other news, I’m still editing and formatting my ghost story Father’s Books as my next release.  Although it’s a horror novel (again), it’s not nearly as, um, intense (*COUGH* gory *COUGH*) as Night Watchman or Long Before Dawn, so even the squeamish might be able to read that one.  I’ll have my wife look at it and report back; nobody’s as squeamish as she is!

“Long Before Dawn” Available From Lulu.com!

Long Before Dawn is now available from Lulu.com in both print and electronic versions. Huzzah! It will eventually be available from Amazon.com and other booksellers, but that is still a week or two away as I have yet to receive my ISBN. I will post a follow-up when this is ready. In the meantime, if you’re interested in purchasing a copy of Long Before Dawn directly from my Lulu storefront, you can do so here (check the link in the sidebar) or here.

In the past, I’ve made a habit of giving free, signed copies of my books to anybody who asks for one. This is partly because I’m more interested in having readers than in making money (although I wouldn’t turn down big bucks for the movie rights), partly because hardly anybody asks for one, and partly because I’m not really comfortable exhorting people to buy my stuff. (This is why I need an agent.) However, it’s been pointed out that giving away books online could get prohibitively expensive, so I’m going to have to forgo the “free” part, and exhort people to buy my stuff*. I will still be more than happy to sign copies, though. If you’re interested, drop me a line.

Thanks, and happy reading!

*Please buy my stuff. (Maybe if I keep saying it, I’ll get used to it.)

Underground with the Mouthless Girl

Back when I wrote mostly horror, I accumulated quite a collection of reference books of ghosts, spirits, and various and sundry monsters. (This was before we could just hop on the Internets and pull information out of the worldwide series of tubes.) One of my favorite reference books was The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits, which listed literally hundreds of ghouls and beasties from around the world. “Underground with the Mouthless Girl” is about a rather nasty ghost from India called a churel, which is the restless spirit of a woman who died in childbirth. “Underground with the Mouthless Girl” appeared in “The Earwig Flesh Factory” from Eraserhead Press in the summer of 2000.

This story is not particularly gory, but I’ve always considered it one of the most creepy and unsettling things I ever wrote. You have been warned.

The girl catches Michael Osborne’s eye as he comes out of the men’s room. She’s sitting on a tall stool at the end of the bar, with one long, impossibly shapely leg extended toward the floor, like a dancer doing a pirouette. Silky black hair flows over her shapely neck and shoulders with the grace of a waterfall, concealing what her scanty red summer dress would otherwise reveal.

Osborne slides onto the stool next to her; it is inexplicably unoccupied on this noisy, crowded night. She looks at him and smiles. Her skin has a lustrous walnut sheen that goes perfectly with her jet hair. Her eyes are wide and dark and shaped like some exotic nut. For a moment Osborne finds himself speechless.

“Hello,” she says.

Osborne finds his voice before he begins to stutter or babble. “Hi. I’m Michael. You can call me Mike.”

“I’m Madhur.” She has a slight Indian accent. Aren’t they the ones who do all that kinky Kama Sutra stuff? “You can call me …” She looks him up and down. “… anytime.”

Just who is picking up who, anyway?

It’s Getting There

I’m currently finishing up the Lulu edition of Long Before Dawn. The formatting is just about finished; I think the finished result is looking pretty good. More to the point, so does my wife, and she’s picky. (She won’t actually read the book, because it’s full of nasty gory stuff, but she will comment on fonts, margins, graphics, etc.) I have the latest print edition coming to me; my plan is to read through it as if I were an actual reader, and if I don’t find anything wrong, I will release it for sale. I’m planning to take advantage of Lulu’s ISBN service and make the book available through Amazon.com and other book sellers, so we’ll see how that goes.

Although the book is not yet available, you can get a sneak peek at the cover. In the PDF file, it’s laid out Back Cover/Spine/Front Cover, as if you had put the book face-down on a table in front of you. The photo on the back was taken in a small cave at Cabrillo National Monument in Point Loma, San Diego; the photo on the front is a shot of the moon from our backyard. I’m not sure I’m entirely happy with the blurb on the back of the book, so I do invite comments on how to make it catchier. (As I said previously, self-promotion: Not my strong point.) I realize you might have to actually read the book to know how to plug it on the back, but this way is more of a challenge.

That First Step Is A Lulu

So seeing as the mainstream publishing world has never quite known what to do with me — I have a portfolio of rejection letters eight inches thick full of comments like “highly enjoyable but we have no idea how to market it” and “skillfully written, but not everyone wants to read The Books of Blood by Clive Barker” (I used to get compared to Mr. Barker fairly regularly) — I’ve decided to bypass them and start publishing books myself, with the first one being that old standby, the vampire novel, coming soon via Lulu. Watch for Long Before Dawn to be available in the next few weeks.

I’ve set up a small homepage at Lulu which for now will serve as my main writing, media, and publishing-related site, although I’ll likely continue to cross-post material here … assuming Dennis lets me sit at the keyboard every now and then.

“A Flock of Crows” Reissued

The reissue of “A Flock of Crows is Called a Murder” is now available from Amazon.com. Now you can get it for $15.99 instead of paying $40 for an out-of-print copy. And there was much rejoicing …

You

The idea for “You” came from a coworker’s desk calendar of practical jokes, one of which was to leave notes for people that just said — wait for it — you. And what better time to leave prank notes than Halloween? “You” was accepted (and paid for) by Brutarian Quarterly for the Halloween 2001 issue, but it’s not clear that this issue ever appeared. It still counts as a sale though! They’re my rules, I make ‘em up …

There wasn’t anybody at the front door, just a big jack-o’-lantern with a kitchen knife stuck through the side. Hank could see the blade through the thing’s gaping mouth, the metal blackened by the flame of the stubby candle that guttered within. He stepped out onto the porch, the old boards creaking and groaning beneath his feet. Whoever had left the jack-o’-lantern had rung the bell and then vanished into the night like a coward.

He noticed a piece of paper pinned to the creamy orange rind. With one hand steadying the pumpkin, he yanked out the knife and dropped it off to the side, then picked up the note. It said, in big black letters, YOU.

Was that supposed to be a threat?

He blew out the candle, picked up the jack-o’-lantern, and took it inside. He put it on the kitchen counter, then went back for the knife; but it was gone. Whoever had left the pumpkin must have taken it while he was in the house.

Hank returned to the kitchen and spent a moment looking at the jack-o’-lantern. Probably just some kids picking on him; maybe they figured he was some kind of weird hermit or an axe murderer or something. He remembered his own childhood, when he and his friends had harassed old lady McGill simply because she never came out. They would ring her bell and run away, leave flaming bags of dog shit on her porch, unscrew the bulbs of her outside lights … whatever they could think of. Never anything as overtly threatening as this jack-o’-lantern trick, though; they were just having fun. But times had changed.

He had become old lady McGill.

And the kids had become psychopaths.

A Flock of Crows: The Missing Epilogue

As originally written, “A Flock Of Crows” had a brief epilogue. Because of length considerations, the publisher cut a lot of material, including the epilogue. At least one reviewer then mentioned that he thought the book would have benefited from the inclusion of an epilogue (and I was like, “See, DarkTales?”) Now, through the magic of the Internet, you can read the missing epilogue and decide for yourself if it improves the ending. *** SPOILER ALERT *** This epilogue will reveal a great deal about the fate of several major characters. If you haven’t read the whole book and don’t want to be spoiled, DON’T READ THE EPILOGUE. Posted in Excerpts | Tagged: crows, epilogue, horror | No Comments » « Previous Entries   Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Andreas09 by Andreas Viklund.