The 27th Delusion

Vintage books, looking into the future, and hatchet wielding hitchhikers

Remember that huge load of vintage horror paperbacks I was so eagerly awaiting in the mail? Yeah, well, the seller totally screwed me on that deal. Come to find out a few other people had bought books from this person and also did not receive their goods. On top of that, the communication we all got weas very similar (exact same excuses, etc.). It’s an odd deal all around. I don’t entirely think it was a scam, but that this individual maybe got super busy with other things or just decided they didn’t want to deal with packaging up the books and shipping them. In my transaction they asked if they could include a copy of my book Death Obsessed with a return label so I could autograph it and send it back. Problem is, they stopped communicating with all of us and have not offered refunds, so we’re having to file claims through PayPal. I can tell the seller has seen many of my messages because their Facebook Messenger icon moves, indicating that they’ve indeed read my messages.

Whatever. It was a damn fine haul of books and I’m super bummed about not getting them. But it ain’t the end of the world.

Welcome to Confusions, Delusions, and Formidable Impressions.

News

My Big Cartel store is pretty well stocked up. I now have paperback copies of Secret Basements. Other such titles as Baby Fights, Broth House, The Circus Oasis, Mojave Mud Caves, Tweaker Creatures and more are available.

I am re-releasing my novel Stronger Than Hate in the coming weeks. Death’s Head Press has reverted the rights back to me, so I immediately snatched up some killer cover art and have been busy readying the book for its second edition. The new cover is absolutely beautiful. I liked the original cover art, but ultimately I think it was too dark (in contrast, not theme), and being that it was just black and white, it didn’t pop the way I would have liked. The book did okay, I suppose, but I hope to breathe new life into it with this second edition.

Recent Reads from Hell

I’d been reading 64MM by Dale Hoover, but I had to put it down. It just wasn’t grabbing me enough. That’s fine. Not every book is for every reader. I’m reading Modern Hysteria by Aron Beauregard and loving it. About 3/4 of the way done. Also reading stories from Richard Laymon’s Dreadful Tales.

Cool Book Covers!

Since my quest for ALL the vintage horror paperbacks has been temporarily thwarted, I figured maybe you’d like to see some of my favorite covers from my collection. I have not read all of these books, but have commented on some of them below. These are simply some of my favorite book covers. Enjoy.

Spawn was really good, but kind of like two novels in one. A police procedure and a horror novel about a crazy dude stealing aborted fetuses from the hospital. I liked the crazy dude’s story. Pin is one of my favorite books ever. Kids who grow up in a dysfunctional family where their father used a life-sized anatomy doll to administer praise and punishment, which creates a couple of oddballs who struggle to fit in with society. It’s a weird one. Zombie! has much better cover art than the actual story within, which is more of a thrilling adventure than a horror. Slugs was a good nature vs. man story, but I’d suggest Spawn over it any day. Fungus was fun, though half of the book kind of veered toward military fiction, which is not my jam at all. I enjoyed it, nonetheless.

Why So Many Releases this Year?

I was asked this a few times at AuthorCon 2. I’ve had a few people tell me they can’t keep up. A few, mind you. Not some overwhelming amount of people that would alter my course. Yes, I have released several books so far in 2023 with more to come. Here’s a rundown:

Broth House (Infected Voices Publishing)
Baby Fights (Infected Voices Publishing)
Secret Basements (D&T Publishing)
Stronger Than Hate (Infected Voices Publishing)
Infected Voices (Infected Voices Publishing)
This Damned House (Infected Voices Publishing)
Open - could be the Ain’t Worth a Shit re-release, or Sick! Sick! Sick!
At the Hour of Violence (Encyclopocalypse Publishing)

As you can see, that’s more than one title every other month. Yes, that’s a lot, but I’ve noticed that my books only seem to have about a month’s lifespan and then they’re mostly forgotten about. So what happens during a month when there are no releases? Well, very little sales come in. On the other hand, I am starting to see an uptick in sales from older titles when something new is released. Baby Fights helped keep Broth House in sales for another month, though now sales for both books are down to a trickle. Even some older titles such as Death Obsessed and Brothers in Blood got some love.

This frequent release schedule is part of a three-year plan I came up with. If I don’t see significant results in three years, I will have some serious thinking to do about my future in publishing. There is a lot of time involved in all of this. It’s very unlikely to become a full-time gig, unfortunately. Come 2026, I’ll reevaluate everything.

Also, you can see that I am self-publishing more than ever before. Maybe I’ll get into that a bit more in the next newsletter.

Closing Words

I watched an interesting documentary the other day called The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker. I vaguely remember the wild dude who had apparently smacked some guy in the head with a hatchet to save a woman after the man deliberately ran into a several people with his car. That was weird enough, but only three months later the overnight sensation hatchet wielding hitchhiker, Kai, was accused of murder himself. I’m not going into detail, but I was left with a lot of questions after watching this documentary. I want to know more about the guy Kai killed. Was there any investigation into whether the man had drugged Kai and sexually assaulted him? That doesn’t justify murder, considering the circumstances, but I’m genuinely interested to know more about the case. I’ve known people like Kai. I’ve worked closely with people like him. Despite his jovial attitude, people like that are loose cannons. You have to watch those people closely. But . . . ah, so many questions. If you haven’t seen the documentary, I believe it’s on Netflix. It’s worth a watch.

Farewell, until next time . . .