I read a ton of stuff in August, more than usual even. It was nice to binge read a little instead of having to spread reading a single book out over a few days or longer. When I read Joe Hill’s Horns earlier this year, I fell in love with his writing style and storytelling skill. I’ve been slowly working my way through his other books, spreading them out a little so that I don’t run through them too quickly….
April was not as heavy on the reading front as March was, thanks to a couple of long reads. Anyone who’s read this blog for a while should know that I am a huge Neil Gaiman fan. It started when my son was young and we discovered Coraline and The Graveyard Book. The stories are dark, twisted, and weird, especially considering that they’re aimed at younger readers, but that’s what we liked about them. My son grew older and into…
Over the past few months, I’ve sneaked in some time to watch a few TV shows of the unusual sort, beginning way back in November. Here are the ones I liked the best, plus some shows I’ve already watched and some I’m looking forward to watching. The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, a Netflix original, was based on the old Archie comic book series. Netflix excels at transforming comic books into really awesome shows, and Sabrina is no exception. It’s a…
A few weeks ago, I decided to write a completely new short story just for my monthly newsletter subscribers, a Dark Fantasy taken from a list of ideas I compiled last year when I was working on stories for Dreaming of a Dark Christmas. (That’s on sale for $.99 (US) right now, so if you haven’t read it, hop on over and pick up a copy.) The story is about a mischievous imp who, inspired by the hymn “Joy to…
As mentioned in last month’s post, I began reading Juvenile Fantasy in late October. I have always loved this particular genre and was thrilled to introduce it to my son when he grew old enough to read it. To be honest, some of my favorite books are categorized as Juvenile, including Susan Cooper’s Dark Is Rising Series, on which the movie of the same name was based. Between me and you, the movie falls far short of the books and…
This month, my favorite short story was “Dear Ms. Moon” by Liz Argall. It’s a cute story about a young woman who’s just trying to look out for her brother. The ending made me laugh so hard, but other parts did, too. I only finished one non-fiction book this month, Become a Successful Indie Author: Work Toward Your Writing Dream by Craig Martelle. Craig is one of the powerhouse indie authors behind the 20Booksto50K paradigm, originally coined by Michael Anderle….
A few months ago, fellow author Rebekah R. Ganiere put out the call to a chapter of the Romance Writers of America searching for authors to participate in a Horror in Romance panel at the upcoming RT Booklovers Convention taking place 2-7 May 2017 in Atlanta.I jumped at the opportunity. Several of my published stories, and a few planned ones, can be classified as both Horror and Romance. The obvious ones, of course, are those within The Vampyr Series: The…
Stephen King was an oft-read author during my teen years, primarily because he’s one of my father’s favorite authors and his books were in our home library. King’s dark imagery has the infinite power to draw the reader in, like a spider luring a fly, and snare the imagination in the vividly drawn worlds he creates. The Gunslinger in its revised and updated version is no different. While King readily admits in prefatory comments to updating the language of this, one…