Woke up early this morning to get breakfast with a friend before opening the bookshop. My stomach is full of biscuits and gravy and my heart is also full of those things. Clogged might be the more accurate word here. I’m sorry, I’m not a vocabologist.
The last couple months of my life have been stupidly intense as I’ve put a lot of things on temporary hold to finish writing a novel way past the agreed-upon deadline. Thankfully Ben at Apocalypse Party is kind and patient, and I can finally say I Believe in Mister Bones is finished as of a couple days ago. It clocks in at around 101,500 words. Over 60,000 of those words were probably written in the last 40 days. My brain feels like spaghetti. I don’t know what I mean by that but it sounds right. I want someone to latch their lips onto it and slurp it up.
Shit, now I’m craving spaghetti.
Anyway, I now await edits and hope that the book isn’t a colossal piece of shit, although I suspect it might be pretty good. I also suspect a lot of people in the indie horror community might hate me after reading it, but what else is new, right? For those unaware, here is the premise of the novel…
The email’s subject line reads DO YOU BELIEVE IN MISTER BONES?
The recipient: Daniel Addams, one half of the Texas small press known as Fiendish Books, co-run with his wife Eileen.
Despite being closed for submissions, curiosity gets the best of him and he takes a look at the anonymous author’s bizarre manuscript—only to find himself obsessed with the titular Mister Bones, a mysterious entity rumored to steal your bones as you sleep, one by one, until he’s replaced your entire skeleton with an unknown substance.
But is Mister Bones real, and has Daniel unintentionally summoned him?
Or, as Eileen suspects, has he finally cracked from stress and lost his mind?
From the writer of WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING and ABNORMAL STATISTICS comes Max Booth III’s I BELIEVE IN MISTER BONES, a harrowing exploration of indie horror publishing, internet curses, and the universal terror of the human skeleton.
This will be my first full-length novel since Maggots Screaming! (2022). I believe the intention is to still release it sometime in October, so expect pre-orders to open very soon. Get those wallets ready, friends. I’m going to need all the help you can afford pushing this thing.
Here is the front cover, illustrated by Trevor Henderson:
I should also mention my friend Betty Rocksteady is in the process of creating a bunch of gnarly interior illustrations for the book. 9 in total, I think. She’s mostly finished by this point. There’s still a toe-sucking illustration she owes me, though, judging by this message from yesterday:
Most if not all of them are either spoilers or heavily NSFW, so I probably won’t share any online and will instead insist on you checking them out in the published novel once the time is finally here. The art she’s creating in this book might be the best work she’s ever done?? Really great shit.
Beyond that, I’m gearing up to start posting more about the release of ‘The Dillo, which is a new novella of mine that’ll be included in the first-ever flipbook collection from Ghoulish Ghosts, the imprint we (Ghoulish Books) created with Little Ghosts Books. More on that very, very soon.
I’m now trying to catch up on a thousand editorial projects I’ve fallen behind on. So expect some radio silence from me online for a while, probably. There’s a lot to do. And, now that this novel is finally finished, it all feels much more achievable. Huge weight lifted.
I might try recording new episodes for the various podcasts I host for some reason. Gonna try.
KillerCon is this weekend in Austin, TX. Lots of pals will be tabling there. I won’t be attending. Maybe my first time since it returned to Austin that I haven’t tabled there? I’ll miss a lot of you. Please don’t die in this heat.
My friend Bob Pastorella should be stopping by the shop later today, too. He’ll be picking up copies of his novella Mojo Rising, which we published many years ago. 2014? 2015? Can’t even remember anymore. He’s attending KillerCon, so obviously wants copies to sell there. While here he will also be signing a contract for his next novel, to be published in 2025 through Ghoulish Books. More on that later this weekend. Definitely make sure you’re subscribed to our free newsletter.
I actually need to still make sure the contract is ready to be signed before he shows up. Which means giving up on this blog for the day. More tomorrow? More never? No idea. I’m not committing to anything here. If I bail, I bail. Or maybe I’ll blog every goddamn day until I die. Maybe I’ll even schedule a few in advance, casting blame on certain people for causing my death, which I’ll constantly reschedule until I’m no longer alive to do so, then it’ll look like I’ve returned from BEYOND to get revenge on my murderer.
IF I DIE TOMORROW PLEASE ARREST MINDY ROSE I AM SURE SHE IS RESPONSIBLE SOMEHOW.