The 75th Delusion

Dreams of the Flesh bag

If you’ve been reading these newsletters as they are released, first off, you rock! And secondly, you know that I was diagnosed with alpha gal from a tick bite and can no longer eat mammal-based protein. At least not for a year, after which I can get tested again to see if I’m alpha gal free. So, no beef, pork, lamb, butter, cheese, milk, etc.

Many people have said they couldn’t do that. I suppose it would seem that way when you’re not the one who went into anaphylactic shock and earned eleven staples in your head. I’ve been told by some people that they would risk it and keep their EpiPen close by in case of anaphylaxis. Again, that’s from someone who didn’t go through what I dealt with.

Truth is, it has been fairly easy to navigate a pescatarian diet. The most difficult thing is that my wife has had to make sacrifices. She’s been great about it, but it’s definitely a bummer to not be able to grab a pizza or have to think carefully about where to eat in the rare event that we eat out. Fortunately, she can get pizza with our son and it’s all good. On my side of things, it has been easy making these drastic changes in my diet, and the benefit is that I am losing weight and getting healthier. Bloodwork has shown that by blood sugars are in a normal range and I am no longer pre-diabetic, for instance. That’s a win.

Welcome to Confusions, Delusions, and Formidable Impressions!

I wasn’t entirely sure what to write about in this newsletter. They’ve been sneaking up on me lately. Part of that is due to my strange writing schedule. It’s not that my actual time to write has changed, but that I have been working on a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that doesn’t involve much actual writing. For instance, I’ve been drowning in edits for novellas and short stories that are forthcoming this year. Everything seemed to drop into my inbox at once. I have also been getting two audiobooks ready for release. I have commissioned cover art for Spooky Splatter Pulps number two, which will be a Spooky Splatter Double featuring the stories “Eat Shit and Die!” and “When the Fall Consumes.”

As far as writing goes, I am working on a secret collaboration. It’s only secret because we haven’t announced it yet. This makes two secret collaborations you can look forward to later this year and in 2026. I have been writing Back Alley Baby Fights. I have a solid idea for a Baby Fights trilogy, but it’s been slow going. I really am not a big fan of sequels, so it’s hard for me to keep my interest keyed into this one. I’ve been jotting down notes for a novel that I am excited to work on. It will be based on a short story I wrote years ago but never managed to get published. It will most definitely be quieter horror. But like anything I write, it will have that gritty, grindhouse feel. I think. But who knows, it might be quite a departure from the norm.

The traveling Movie Show is slowly building steam and getting great reviews. I am thankful for each and every person who has read the book and shared their thoughts on social media. The biggest takeaway most readers have is that this one deviates from the more extreme stuff I am better known for, like Baby Fights and Disco Rice, for something of a more traditional horror story with a heavy dose of mystery, while still remaining gritty and having its gory moments. Readers have said it’s a nice palate cleanser, especially when getting burned out on too much of the hardcore stuff.

I call this my love letter to B-horror films. And I must say, it pairs nicely with Death Obsessed, which I hail as my love letter to death scenes videos like Faces of Death and Traces of Death.

It’s been said there’s no such thing as bad publicity, so when a man is murdered at the premiere of their debut film, Death Obsession, a small group of young filmmakers decide to make the best of a bad situation.

The Traveling Movie Show is a cross-country tour of the last drive-in theaters in America. A way to build buzz for a new horror film. But murder is close on their tails and fear of the tour being shut down has caused this misfit group to take fate into their own hands.

As they cover up each new death in each new town, they begin to turn on one another, wondering who the killer is. In the blistering heat of summer as they travel across the Midwest, they find out that some secrets weren’t meant to be kept. And sometimes killers are born of celluloid, dreams, and blood money.

Lookout for this The Clubhouse Vol. IV to drop soon. I wrote a story for this one called “Flesh Bag” that was inspired by a very strange dream. It is very rare that dreams inspire my fiction, but this one was so odd that I had to write a story about it. When I was asked for an extreme horror story, I almost had to turn down the invite because I just don’t have any extreme ideas in my head right now. But that damned dream kept coming back to me—how weird it was—and I knew I had exactly the type of hardcore horror story I’ve been wanting to write. I am very pleased with how this story turned out and I hope readers enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

That’s it for this edition of the newsletter. I have been toying with the idea of serializing a novel. I think I mentioned it in the past newsletter, so this is me reminding myself that I’m floating said idea. Who knows. It would be a completed novel that has been edited. I can’t post chapters as I write them. I’m much to self-conscious for that. Though the short stories I post on here typically haven’t been edited, I am a firm believer in using an editor and would not want to subject readers to a rough version of a serial rather than something polished like you would get purchasing one of my published books.

It’s still in the planning stages, which is to say, it’s just a thought in my mind.

Thank you, as always, for reading Confusions, Delusions, and Formidable Impressions. Go out and read a horror book. When you’re finished, tell the world about it.