While so many readers, writers, creatives, and all around cool cats are licking their wounds, nursing their hangovers, and preparing for their goodbyes at the Scares That Care Charity Weekend, I’m over here in east Tennessee writing this newsletter. Wish I could have been there. From the pictures I’ve seen on social media, it looks like everyone has been having a great time.
Welcome to my newsletter. I post it twice a month, usually on Sundays. You can read the previous newsletters HERE.
NEWS
Only 13 days until Mojave Mud Caves goes live. Over at Encyclopocalypse Publishing they thought it would be cool to offer a deal on pre-orders, so they dropped the price to .99 cents. This is a limited time deal, only on the ebook, so jump on it and you’ll get the book delivered right to your Kindle on August 12th.
Circus Oasis got a glowing review from Horror Bookworm Reviews. Go check it out, and scroll through all the other reviews there. Mike Rankin is one of the hardest working reviewers out there, and he has his finger on the pulse of what’s exciting and new right now in horror fiction.
I’ll be attending CreepyCon on August 26-28 with fellow word slinger Chuck Buda. If you are in or around the Knoxville area that weekend, please consider coming down and saying hi and maybe buy a book or two. I will have copies of most of my books there including Circus Oasis, Follow the Maggot Wagon, Tweaker Creatures, Evil Awakens 1 and 2, Stronger Than Hate, Death Obsessed, and many more. Hopefully I’ll have Mojave Mud Caves, but that’s going to be cutting it close. Tony Evans is going to be there too. He’s the king of Appalachian horror, so look for him as well.
I was on the Livid Comics Lair podcast last Friday. We talked Circus Oasis, Mojave Mud Caves, movies, carnivals, fears, and all kinds of random stuff. The conversation runs about an hour long, and we had a blast. You can check it out HERE.
RECENT READS FROM HELL
I’m just about finished reading The School by Ed Kelleher and Harriette Vidal. I’ve been enjoying it. Very much a horror boom novel about a private all-girls school with a sinister past and even more sinister secret in, you guessed it, the basement. Kind of reminds me of something Bentely Little would write, though maybe not as over the top. I’m curious to see how it ends, because I feel like I’ve totally figured it out. Also, I just started The Cursed Among Us by John Durgin. This book has been blowing up the scene since it came out. I’m only a few chapters in and enjoying it.
INFECTED VOICES PART ONE?
So, I’m releasing a short story collection later this year called Infected Voices (yes, for those metal heads in the back, that title is indeed from a Sepultura song). I decided I wanted to release the stories on Godless first, in four volumes, each containing five stories (well, one volume will have six). I already have cover art for the paperback that I haven’t shared yet, but I want to do unique covers for the four Godless volumes. This is a draft of what might be the first cover. Might. I’ve also been talking with Drew Stepek about doing cover art for the Godless editions, but we’ll see. I know this isn’t the best cover, but I’m really trying to get the vibe that so many Godless books have. Bright colors with a touch of the macabre. I made this in Gimp, a free photo editor program. Being that I already spent money on the paperback cover (and it’s really fucking cool, thanks to Chad Lutzke), I’d really like to do these four covers myself, all of them with a matching motif. Now that I’m looking at it, I need to change that to Vol. One . . .
GODLESS
If you’re reading this and you don’t know what Godless is, you’d better fix that. Especially if you’re into horror that is more on the wild side. The extreme side. The do-not-read-if-you’re-easily-offended side. I’m not saying everything on Godless is vile, gory and over the top, but a lot of the content there sure is. It’s a slice of the Web run by the master of mayhem, the man who will chug an entire bottle of MD 20/20 for the sake of art! The great Drew Stepek. Godless is a place where you can find the best in indie horror, usually at better prices than the big guys like Amazon, and the authors get a much larger royalty cut. It’s a win/win. New content drops every day. Check out the website HERE, and follow Godless across all social media platforms, especially Facebook and TikTok. Thank me later.
That’s all for this edition of Confusions, Delusions, and Formidable Impressions. Until next time . . . read as much horror as you can, leave reviews, post about the books you read, and don’t waste a second reading something you’re not enjoying.