Random Acceptance: The Edge, “Singletrack”

So of course writing isn’t ALL rejection letters. At least, one hopes it isn’t. Case in point: One of my favorite short stories, “Singletrack”, which appeared in Greg Gifune’s magazine “The Edge”. And as a special yummy treat for those who have been knocking around the Internet as long as I have, please note the Geocities URL in the letter.

Scene-Of-The-Month: “The Wolf”

The votes are in and the winner for the next Scene of the Month is (surprise!) The Wolf. Now I know I’ve been teasing everyone with promises of more werewolf mayhem; there isn’t any in this particular scene, but in the very next one after this, the fun really begins. I’m not sayin’ you have to vote for The Wolf; I’m just sayin’.

Review: “Zombieland”

So I finally got around to seeing “Zombieland”, in which Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg do battle with hordes of undead as well as Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin (in a road trip only marginally less strange than the one she took in “Little Miss Sunshine”). As you probably know from the trailers, Woody and Jesse have much more success against the zombies than against the girls.

Random Rejection: Zoetrope

This week, I reached into the very back of my alphabetically-organized rejection list folder and pulled out this slip, from Francis Ford Coppola’s “Zoetrope” magazine:

July Scene-Of-The-Month: The Wolf

The votes are in and the readers’ choice for Scene of the Month for July is my unfinished werewolf novel The Wolf. Since I posted the prologue a few months ago, I figured I would follow it up with the scene that immediately follows it. Enjoy!

Video Game Review: “Shadow Hearts”

So this week I finally finished up a game I’ve been playing for about six months, a fantasy RPG called Shadow Hearts.  This game is relatively ancient by video game standards (it came out in 2001), but what can I say — I only play one game at a time and I have a stack of games eight inches high waiting for me.  Once I’m done playing those, I can upgrade my PlayStation 2 to whatever is out at that point — probably the PlayStation 6.  But I digress.

The Early Years: Good Story

Ummmm …. no. No it’s not.

A Flock of Crows Is Called A Murder

Not merely the answer to a trivia question, this was the first novel I had published. It was actually the third horror novel that I wrote, after an unpublished (but still good!) vampire novel and the infamous (in some circles — very, very small ones) NIGHT WATCHMAN. Currently out of print, CROWS will soon be reissued by Amazon.com’s BookSurge imprint.

 

 

 

He plowed into her, bore her backwards onto the bed. He was trying to kiss her; his lips, dry and cold and leathery, brushed hers, then mashed against them. She squirmed beneath him, trying to break the contact, but his hands shot up and gripped her head like the edges of a vise.

His mouth opened, forcing hers to open, too. She felt the first clammy, sticky bubbles of slime coming out of his throat, dribbling into hers. Salty mucous, gunk. She couldn’t breathe; he had gummed up her nose with snot, her mouth was full of it.

He wanted her to swallow, that was it; swallow, and breathe, and be like him …

Singletrack

“Singletrack” appeared in Greg Gifune’s magazine The Edge in May of 1999. I used to do a lot of mountain biking in the Adirondack Mountains, and the terrain is based on that (specifically, the trail around Moss Lake). I never encountered any wildlife larger than a squirrel, but the poor souls in this story are not so fortunate. AUTHOR’S NOTE: In mountain biking terminology, singletrack denotes a trail—usually difficult to ride—that consists of one narrow cleared path. The big downhill gave Jackson a momentum boost that carried him up the next rise with only a minor loss in speed, so he was still racing fast when he spotted the shelf of rock protruding from the path. He jerked up hard on the front wheel, but the ridge was too high to hop. He rammed it head-on, flying over the handlebars and into the spindly brambles that grew alongside the trail. They snapped and splintered like thin dry bones. Jackson hauled himself out of the tangle of foliage. He grabbed his bike and dragged it over the spiny stone, then mounted it and began to ride. The bike wobbled and he fell again. He checked the front wheel; its rim was bent out of true. He looked back up the trail. They were coming, coming through the trees; the wipeout had cost him precious yards, he was still miles from civilization, and now his bike was unrideable. How on earth was he going to get away now?

The Short Route

“The Short Route” is one of the first stories I ever had published; it appeared in Vampire Dan’s Story Emporium in Spring of 1998. Of all my short stories, this is still the one that inspires the largest number of “this should be a movie” comments. It was the third night out from the ranch, and Charlie still couldn’t get over the stars. There were so many up there, he’d have sworn he saw every star there could possibly be. He tried to count them every night, but never got very far before he couldn’t remember if he had counted that particular one or this particular one; and tonight was no different. Charlie gave up counting and concentrated on relieving himself and then headed back to camp, still staring into the sky. As he got closer to the fire, the stars began to fade, until all he could see were the brightest ones, just like back in the city. Chase’s sharp voice interrupted Charlie’s mooning. “Watch your feet, New York!” He looked down and saw he was about to put his foot into a frying pan full of grease. As he stepped over it, Chase—it wasn’t his real name, but he liked you to call him that and got ornery if you didn’t—added, with real concern in his voice: “Don’t go slipping and breaking your neck, New York. Gonna need every man we got tomorrow.” Charlie sat on the ground next to Chase and picked up a tin cup. The old guy grunted and filled it with evil-looking black stuff that glistened in the firelight. Charlie took a sip, made a face. Tasted like Chase had started with a barrel full of coffee and boiled it down to this. Chase saw his expression and chuckled. “Too strong for your New York tongue, tenderfoot?” Charlie knew better than to let Chase think anything of the sort. “Not strong enough,” he said. Then: “Is something gonna happen tomorrow?” “Not if we’re lucky,” Chase said.