Tag Archives: novel

New Novel Coming Soon: THE NIGHTLY DISEASE

I’m stoked to announce DarkFuse will be publishing my new novel, titled The Nightly Disease (previously No Sleep ‘Til Dying).  This is the “hotel novel” I never seem to shut up about, based loosely on my own experiences as a hotel night auditor.

Check out this fucking cover painted by the lovely Zach McCain:

nightly_disease-1

Sleep is just a myth created by mattress salesmen.

Isaac, a night auditor of a hotel somewhere in the surreal void of Texas, is sick and tired of his guests. When he clocks in at night, he’s hoping for a nice, quiet eight hours of Netflix-bingeing and occasional masturbation. What he doesn’t want to do is fetch anybody extra towels or dive face-first into somebody’s clogged toilet. And he sure as hell doesn’t want to get involved in some trippy owl conspiracy or dispose of any dead bodies. But hey…that’s life in the hotel business.

Welcome to The Nightly Disease. Please enjoy your stay.

The Nightly Disease will be first be released as an online serial for the paid subscribes of DarkFuse Magazine throughout the month of October. Every night next month, a new installment will be posted at 11PM EST, which is what time I would be clocking in at my hotel if I lived somewhere with an Eastern Standard Timezone. But alas! I am Central, so each installment will actually be posted an hour before my shift begins. Which makes sense, because the hour before my shift is often the cruelest.

You can order an annual subscription of the magazine HERE, and if you enter the code CheckMeIn you’ll even receive a 50% discount. Note: this offer expires on September 29th at 11:59PM EST.

The Nightly Disease will also be published  as a limited edition (52 copies) signed hardcover early next year. Pre-orders for this hardcover will be made available sometime in October, so keep an eye out. Subscribe to my newsletter if you want me to email you the moment you can pre-order it (subscribe in the sidebar to your right).

I’ve also received many queries about paperback and digital editions. The answer is yes, those will be made available sometime in 2017 as well, but right now the publisher would like to focus on selling the 52 limited hardcovers first. So if you can’t afford the limited edition signed hardcover when it’s available, hey, it’s okay, there will be cheaper methods of purchasing it sometime down the road.

Until there is more news to report, I recommend liking my Confessions of a Night Auditor page on Facebook, which I regularly update during my night shifts.

The Dead Always Got Their Revenge (Richard Shiver)

On the surface her plan was brilliant in its simplicity. Return home, take the place of her twin sister, and live out the rest of her life in relative peace. Unfortunately even the best laid plans had their flaws. This one involved Margaret’s alter ego Candice, who was hell bent on leaving a bloody trail in her wake. But not even Candice had planned for one simple truth.

The dead always got their revenge.

Diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder at an early age Margaret could honestly say she had never been alone a single day of her life. Like two peas in a pod she shared her physical self with the other half of a divided psyche, a separate personality known as Candice. The difference between them was like that between night and day. While Margaret exuded the wholesome innocence of a country bred farm girl; Candice portrayed the character traits of a manipulative, conniving, sociopath whose only concern lay in doing what was best for herself.

When Candice takes control you can bet things are about to get crazy…and very bloody.

Though Margaret physically killed the handyman who raped her when she was seventeen, her alter ego was responsible for the act. Thirty years have passed and Margaret is serving a life sentence for the killing she had managed to keep under wraps for seven years. She is confined to a Mental Health facility where a new doctor has been assigned to her case. One of his first acts is to reduce the dosages of the medications that have kept Candice suppressed.

Candice seizes control and embarks on a murderous rampage as she seeks to regain the life that had been taken from her. She leaves a trail of bodies in her wake as she returns home where the ghosts of the dead have waited patiently for her return.

 

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Richard Shiver grew up listening to ghost stories told by his grandmother as they sat on the front porch while screech owls punctuated her words. As a teen he survived on a steady diet of Creepy, Eerie and Weird Tales comics as well as Saturday night creature features with Count Gore Deval.

In the past he has worked as a carpenter, a truck driver, in retail sales, and fast food. In that time he has read everything he could lay his hands on. Aware that one day, he would breathe life into the chills he’d first experienced on his grandmother’s front porch.

Richard currently lives with his wife in Lavale, MD. When he’s not spinning tales of terror he can be found in his wood shop making a mess.

Post Mortem Press to Publish TOXICITY

I have sold my debut novel, Toxicity, to Post Mortem Press.

While I already have two story collections currently available (True Stories Told By a Liar and They Might Be Demons), Toxicity will be my first novel. I am beyond thrilled to be a part of the Post Mortem Press family. My short story, “In the Attic of the Universe”, was previously published in their New Dawn Fades anthology.

In the past, they have published writer greats such as Clive Barker, Joe Hill, Harlan Ellison, Jack Ketchum, and Jonathan Maberry, along with up and coming talents like Jessica McHugh, Christian A. Larsen, Kenneth W. Cain, and Brad Carter.

Toxicity has been my baby for a long while now. All in all, with all the rewrites and edits taken into consideration, this is a novel that took eight years to really complete it at the stage it currently resides. It is a black comedy about awful people continuing to put themselves into awful situations.

There will be more details in the coming months, including a micro-website for the novel which will encompass reviews, blurbs, and everything else related to it.

Here is what Richard Thomas, one of my early editors on the book, had to say about it:

Toxicity seeps under your skin, infecting you with black comedy, shocking violence, and the stinking desperation of bad people rotting in the sun. And yet somehow, we still root for these dark souls—and that is the genius of Max Booth III.”

—Richard Thomas, STARING INTO THE ABYSS

Toxicity has a targeted release date of March 2014.