The 33rd Delusion

Is death metal safer than country?

Baby Fights has outsold all of my other books 3 to 1 in the month of July. And so far, of my Infected Voices titles, it is the only one that has sold in the month of August. I’m not sure what to think of this.

Baby Fights was like knocking out a sharp little pulpy exploitative horror. It didn’t take all that long to write. It’s a good story. It has fleshed out characters. But I don’t feel like it’s my best story. One of my craziest, yes. And people seem to like it.

This is where some authors consider writing something similar to the book that’s doing well. Or a sequel.

Naw. I’m going to continue writing the stories I want to write. And I’m going to continue to hope that readers will like them too. I happen to think my forthcoming book This Damned House is my best.

News

The release date for This Damned House has been set for August 21st. I should actually have signed copies available before then. If you follow me on social media, you will know exactly when those are available at ressighorror.bigcartel.com. I’ll make a note about signed copies when I get them. Maybe as soon as next week.

Cover art by Christy Aldridge

Consider grabbing this fine anthology that came out earlier this year. Razorblade in the Fun-Size Candy features a line-up that just won’t stop! And in that line-up is a story by me called “Is That Voodoo Doll Anatomically Correct?” These are humorous horror stories, as you would expect in a collection edited by Paul Lubaczewski. My story deals with a voodoo doll, if you couldn’t tell.

I will be at CreepyCon in Knoxville, August 25-27 with my buddy Chuck Buda. I will have copies of all my most recent books, as well as some of the older ones. If you are in or around Knoxville that weekend, consider dropping by. The con is in a new venue this year. The convention center downtown. I’m excited to see any improvements from the venue they used to hold the con at.

In This Damned House

This Damned House is four novelettes tied together with a wraparound story. The first story is called “Clean Freak”. My wife is a bit of a clean freak. I’m cool with that, but it can get to be a bit much. This story is in no way about her, though. I took the idea of someone who is obsessed with cleanliness, and what happens when filth gets into their home despite their momentous efforts to keep the place spiffy. But there’s something deeper beneath the surface of a sudden pest infestation. Because our pasts will sneak up on us sometimes, won’t they? We try to hide things because they are ugly. And sometimes the ugly comes out of hiding.

This is a story that might make some readers feel squeamish. At least I hope so. And I doubt you are going to see the end coming.

Recent Reads from Hell

I am currently reading Maggots Screaming! by Max Booth III. I’ve been looking forward to this one for a while now. I’ve been enjoying the book but finding some of it dialogue heavy. That worked really well in his book Carnivorous Lunar Activities (a book I fucking loved!), but it’s dragging the pacing down a bit in this one. Also reading Childgrave by Ken Greenhall. Hard to believe this is the same author who wrote Elizabeth. Economy of words and a tight plot helped make Elizabeth a genius story. Childgrave has meandered on about this guy’s infatuation with some harp player for over 100 pages, merely hinting at the fact I’m reading a horror novel rather than a bland romance. It’s good enough to continue, but had I not read his masterpiece in Elizabeth, I might have already put this book down. (On a side note, Elizabeth was written under the pseudonym Jessica Hamilton.)

I finished Magic Wagon by Joe Lansdale. What can I say, this man can pretty much write anything and it is entertaining. Magic Wagon was no exception. Historical fiction with that signature bizarre touch only Lansdale can achieve.

Closing Words

So, my wife and fourteen-year-old son are at a big country concert in Georgia tonight. As I was writing this newsletter, I started getting messages from my son telling me that things were getting bad. People were puking in trash cans, spilling beer on his mother, etc. I told him to be safe. To watch out for each other. Then I started getting messages asking for help. Fights were breaking out. And some asshole threatened my son. Some drunk adult was threatening a fourteen-year-old. Security was too scared to do anything. Well, after the asshole threw his beer at my wife and son, they left. I’d been encouraging them to leave, but texts fall on deaf ears amidst blaring country music.

I’m still shaking as I write this. I’m three hours away, you see, so if something bad happened, I am not there to do a goddamned thing. Strangely, I was talking about this very subject with a guy at work on Friday, how helpless he felt when he drove a truck and would be across the country away from his family.

Anyway, the moral of this story is that my son was safer when I took him to see Cannibal Corpse in a small club than he was at a big country show in an open-air arena. Go figure.

Actually, that doesn’t surprise me.