The 78th Delusion

August Can Go F*#K Off!

Wow, has August been a turd month for sales! I’m pretty sure, historically speaking, August and January are always my worst months, sales-wise, but this is just pathetic. I haven’t had so many days of not selling one single book in a month in a while. I’m doing my best not to take it personally or get worried about it, considering it’s August and that is a slow month, but deep down it certainly makes me feel kind of shitty. And uncertain. And maybe a little bit scared. It’s looking like the worst sales month I’ve had in over two years.

Publishing seems like a pendulum. If something is good, that pendulum will swing the opposite direction and put me in my place. I really don’t know why it has to be that way. For August, I think the Gods of Publishing are punishing me for having such a wonderful time at Books and Brews 2. They’re looking down—or up or from whichever direction the Gods of Publishing sneer—and laughing. “You thought that was a good one, eh? Take this, asshole!”

I’m used to the ups and downs enough now to brush them off—or at least I keep telling myself that—but August has gotten to me a little bit more than I expected. Y’all need to stop having fun in the sun and read a damn book or three!

On September 2nd my next book, a Spooky Splatter Double, comes out. Two times the terror; two times the fun!

Eat Shit and Die

All he wanted to do was kill himself but the tweakers just wouldn’t let him. They were the reason his life went to shit in the first place. Beware a man with nothing to live for because that man has nothing to lose!

When the Fall Consumes

He had everything: a good job, wealth, a big house . . . a family. He had the kind of money that could make the most twisted dreams come true . . . and that’s exactly what he did.

This double-shot of horror is up for pre-order at just $.99, which is half of the cover price, so jump on this because the price will go up on the day of release.

I recently read The Grave by Charles L. Grant. He’s well known as one of the beacons of quiet horror, and for good reason. Despite myself being known for writing horrific stories that primarily lean to the more extreme side of things, I don’t typically read that kind of stuff. That’s just what comes out sometimes when I write. It isn’t always by choice, and that’s not all I write, damn it! What I decide to read in my idle time is, for the most part, by choice. And I tend to not seek out extreme fiction. That might be part of why I enjoyed The Grave so damn much.

The story follows a guy who finds things for people. Like antiques and hard to come by stuff. remember, this book was published in the early eighties, way before everything you could ever want was at your fingertips on the internet. As he is on the hunt for a few customers, he is drawn into a mystery the reader almost has a hard time ascertaining. The brilliance of this is that the last third of the book begins to fold in all the little breadcrumbs that have been put down in the first two thirds, weaving them together in an almost magical way. What struck me, from a writer’s perspective, was how he spent so much time setting things up with atmosphere and dread into what seemed, for a hundred pages or so, to go absolutely nowhere, but then wham you realize each little detail was more meaningful that you thought.

Simply incredible. One of those books crafted in a way I desperately wish I could craft a story, which is to say this one was quite influential on me. Does that mean I want to write my version of The Grave? Not at all. It means I want to learn a new method of telling a story and use that somewhere in a future tale.

That’s it for this edition of Confusions, Delusions, and Formidable Impressions. I started this newsletter on kind of a negative note, though I hope it didn’t really come off that way. So, I’ll end it on something positive. Due to my alpha gal diagnosis a few months ago—read about it HERE for more details—I’ve had to drastically change my diet to avoid red meat, butter and milk. That has forced me to eat different proteins and stay away from cheese and butter-rich dishes. The result has been weight loss. I went from 220 in June to 198 in August. I haven’t weight under 200 since I was a teenager. This is amazing and really goes to show how diet is the major contributing factor to much of our health problems. I’m already not pre-diabetic anymore and hopefully I can get my blood pressure under control so I can get off the low dosage blood pressure medication I’m on. Changing one’s diet is a very difficult undertaking. Unfortunately, I had to deal with the threat of anaphylaxis to get my shit under control. Almost everyone I talk to says they’d freak out if they couldn’t eat meat or cheese anymore. It really hasn’t been that hard. The one thing I miss the most is pizza, but I couldn’t get a good pie in Knoxville anyway. I actually had a dream I was eating pizza and then I realized what I’d done and freaked out.

See you next time. Read some books and tell the world about them!