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“A Bitchy Little Marshmallow Prick” — The Rejected Interview

It’s come to my attention that some weirdo on Facebook has a grudge against me for the way I answered his interview questions last year. Yes, I know, many weirdos on Facebook have grudges against me. This specific case, however, is very amusing and baffling to me.

I am not going to name this person, as I don’t want anybody going after him online or anything like that, but I would like a chance to explain the situation considering the things he has already posted about me.

Okay, so to break down the timeline, on January 31, 2019, I received the following private message from Facebook Weirdo:

To be perfectly honest, I had completely forgotten we discussed doing an interview. I still don’t quite remember the circumstances but I guess he mentioned doing one via a comment on one of my statuses and I agreed. The top message you see in the screenshot is the very first private message he sent me.

Notice it took him almost 11 months to follow up with the actual interview questions. Which is hilarious, but whatever, it’s fine. When he messaged me about it again in November 2019 it took me a minute to even understand what he was talking about (the book I was trying to promote at the time came out in February, after all). I gave him my email address and he emailed me the questions, which I then answered that very night while working the night shift at my hotel job.

I sent him my answers and he never responded or posted the interview. After a couple weeks I went back and looked over my responses and realized I had answered his questions while going through a terrible depression episode. One of the answers in particular (to the “what is your longterm goal?” question) was kind of a bummer to read again, so I assumed that’s why he never ran the interview, although—and I cannot stress this enough—it is probably the most honest I’ve ever answered an interview question!

Most of the other interview questions, however, I gave a mix of serious and non-serious answers. I admit that I often get annoyed during interviews when asked questions that could be answered within five seconds of googling. For instance, at one point he asked what topics I talk about on my Castle Rock Radio podcast, which…I mean, come on, is that really the question you want to ask? So yeah. If I suspect little energy was spent on your question, then I am going to recycle an equal amount of energy answering them.

I also want to point out it took him almost 11 months to come up with the question, “Who is Max Booth III?”…which is hilarious.

I hadn’t thought about this interview in many months, probably since December, until a friend of mine directed me to a status on his Facebook page (I did not have access to it, but that’s why screenshots exist, baby):

Dude’s been stewing over my answers since November and finally posts about it in April. Not once has he said anything to me about it or addressed it in any way until this random Facebook rant. Again, I cannot stress enough how funny I find all of this. That someone would hold such hatred for me over answers I wrote for an interview that would provide free content to his dumb blog. Madness!

I will share one specific comment (well, the response to the comment) that made me laugh until I shot my asshole out of my nose:

“he’d get the Madman”

????

Cool. Very tough.

Anyway. Since the interview was never posted, despite being finished in November, and considering he’s so upset about the answers I gave him all these months later, I guess it’s totally cool if I proceed to publish the interview on my own site, right? That way everybody can see for themselves what a big fucking jerk I am for being so mean to such a poor helpless blogger. I just hope I don’t “get the Madman” now. That would be terrifying.

Okay, here’s the interview:

Tell us about your latest release, Carnivorous Lunar Activities. What’s it about and what inspired you to write it?

If I’m being honest, the book was mostly just an excuse for product placement. I was paid quite handsomely by McDonald’s and Pabst Blue Ribbon to create a novel featuring both of their products. Quite simply, I needed the money, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. As for the actual plot of the novel, I mean, it’s all very generic stuff I copy/pasted from various Wikipedia articles, which I then went through and restructured a sentence here and there; plus, of course, the aforementioned McDonald’s and Pabst Blue Ribbon material.

Other than being an author, you are also a publisher at Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing. Tell us a little about PMMP. What’s it about? What made you start it? What sort of authors do you look for? Where do you hope to go with it?

I started PMMP because I hate myself, and I continue it for the same reason. These days I’m looking less for authors and more for readers—specifically, readers who are willing to pay actual money for a book. As I told a recent customer at Wizard World Comic Con, we publish books so scary they’ll make you come in your pants. Actually, I guess I can’t really refer to that guy as a customer, since he never did buy anything. He kind of left immediately after I told him that.

Give us some insight into your magazine, Dark Moon Digest.

It’s funny, but the name of our magazine is actually a typo. We intended to brand ourselves as Dork Moon Magazine and publish geeky science essays, but after we paid $400 for a banner with the word “Dark” on it, we decided it would be cheaper to just rebrand as a quarterly horror magazine. Turns out, we were wrong. This was way more expensive and now we are very, very poor. Please help us by purchasing our latest issue.

I understand you also run a podcast titled Castle Rock Radio. Where did the idea for this come from and what topics do you discuss on the show?

Well, I mean, that answer is pretty self-explanatory, right? We talk about Dean Koontz books and only Dean Koontz books. The idea came from Dean Koontz, who asked us to produce the show on his own dime. I still can’t believe he even approached us about this, but heck, sometimes the universe throws you a favor, right?

Who is Max Booth III?

Well, he’s not Dean Koontz, I’ll tell you that much.

Being an individual who is involved with so many different creative endeavors, what is your long-term goal in the author/publishing community? When it’s all said and done for you, what do you want people to remember you for? What do you want to look back on and be able to say, “I’m damn glad I did that”?

My goal is to die young. I don’t want to be remembered. I don’t want anybody to notice I’m dead. One day I’ll be working on a project nobody will care about, then the next I will be erased from the universe. I am involved in so many creative outlets because it is the only thing I know how to do. I am not equipped to do anything else because nobody taught me any practical skills as a kid and now I am too tired to teach myself. Every day I wake up and think, maybe this is the day I stop functioning and finally succumb to dust. The concept of success is a delusion. I’ve spent years trying to achieve certain goals, only for the excitement and satisfaction to completely drain away a day after accomplishing them. There is no such thing as “making it”. Some people can just pay their bills easier than others, and that’s about it.

Time for the generic question: Where did your love for writing begin and who inspires you most?

I used to scribble obscene messages on bathroom stalls, and eventually people started paying me for it. Barton Fink from the movie, Barton Fink, inspires me most. Actually, maybe John Goodman’s character is a better choice. In all truth, I’d rather be the head in the box. There’s a head in a box in that movie, right?

Word is that you just signed your next novel with Cemetery Dance. What can you tell us about that?

It is called Touch the Night and, basically, it’s about the universal truth that all cops are bastards.

If you could collaborate with one other author, who would it be and what would you want that collaboration to look like?

I wouldn’t mind collaborating with someone who has rich parents. Maybe then people would actually read my books.

What does the future hold for Max Booth III?

Dean Koontz recently hired me to write a sequel to On Writing, so I guess I better start getting to work on that before I have to return my advance.

What advice would you give to aspiring authors and/or indie publishers?

Immerse yourself into a community of similar creative types.

Anything you’d like to plug?

I have a Patreon and, if you like books so scary they’ll make you come in your pants, you should support it: https://www.patreon.com/pmmpublishing

Also, hey, since I’m updating this interview several months later, you should also go buy my brand-new novella, We Need to Do Something. Otherwise you’ll get the Madman.

CARNIVOROUS LUNAR ACTIVITIES Receives Splatterpunk Nomination for “Best Novel”

Sunday morning, Brian Keene revealed the official Splatterpunk Awards nominations over on his blog, which included my novel Carnivorous Lunar Activities under the “Best Novel” category.

Check out all of the nominations here.

From Keene’s post: “A panel of judges composed of professionals, critics and scholars in the field will now begin the process of reading each nominated work, and selecting a winner for each category. Winners will be announced at KillerCon, taking place in Austin, Texas this August 7th through the 9th.”

KillerCon is one of my favorite conventions and I try to attend it every year. Obviously this year in particular will be a little different, as I’ve never been nominated for an award before. It feels nice. I like the feeling. I feel insane with power. I feel like setting a bank on fire. I feel like eating carbs. I feel like applying hand sanitizer to a paper cut. Hell yeah. That’s the good stuff, baby. Mmm.

I will be wearing one of the following three shirts during the awards banquet at KillerCon. If you have an opinion about which one you prefer, feel free to let me know in the comments below.

You can buy Carnivorous Lunar Activities from your local indie bookshop here.

TOUCH THE NIGHT – My new novel, coming soon from Cemetery Dance

I realized I’ve failed to make any kind of announcement on my blog about the new novel, despite babbling about it nonstop via social media. Most of you suspect blogging is dead. You might be right, which explains why I want to quit all social media and focus only on blogging. I feel like a lot of us are embarrassed about blogging because the word “blogging” sounds extremely childish. You would never tell your parents you have a blog. They would disown you. Or maybe that’s exactly why you would tell them.

Regardless, my sixth novel, Touch the Night, is coming out in June through Cemetery Dance. CD will be publishing the book as a limited edition signed hardcover and also an ebook. Check out the cover art below, from my good friend Dyer Wilk:

I will most likely be self-publishing the paperback edition around August, unless some other publisher swoops in with bags of cash at the last minute wanting to take the rights off my hands, but at this point I do not see that happening. But that’s cool. I am perfectly okay with self-publishing my own work. Those familiar with my history will recall the numerous times various small presses have screwed me over (*cough* Darkfuse *cough*). I do not consider Cemetery Dance a bad publisher by any stretch, but they only asked for the HC and ebook rights, and that’s totally cool with me. Self-releasing the paperback edition will give me wider freedom in always having extra copies on hand at conventions. Sometimes that can be tricky with some of my books published by other presses. Sometimes I have to send multiple emails begging for an invoice because a convention is approaching and I receive crickets and then I do not have any copies ready in time. Self-publishing will prevent such embarrassing encounters from recurring.

I am extremely excited to be working with Cemetery Dance on Touch the Night. When I first started getting published back in 2012, CD was always referred to as a “white whale” in publishing, and honestly it is still considered one. They’ve published some of the greatest writers in the horror genre and for them to be releasing Touch the Night, well…it’s a goddamn dream come true.

I’ve talked about Touch the Night on the blog before, I am sure; although, back then, it was most likely referenced under alternate titles (Cirrhosis and Who Will Survive and What Will Be Left of Them and The Evocation of Mother were the three big titles I’ve used for the book at one point or another). I’m still fond of those titles, but I do think Touch the Night best represents this specific book. It is my longest novel, at 400 pages and 113,000 words. I do not recommend writing a long novel, because–like any book–you will have to reread it numerous times. And even after it’s been accepted and edited, you will probably get stuck reading it two or three more times again. I just finished what I think is my final read-through of the interior proof, and while I did find it exhausted, I was also reminded that it’s actually a pretty kickass book. Sometimes when you reread something you’ve written, you’re hit with a deep sense of shame (the same kind of shame one feels when admitting to having a blog, probably). I’ve certainly experienced this shame. However, none of that was present while rereading Touch the Night. If anything, it reignited my excitement to share it with readers.

After finishing my latest proof, I tweeted about sending my revisions back to the publisher, like any blogger does, and a website called Morbidly Beautiful wrote up an insanely detailed news article about the tweet. I do not know why my tweet warranted this, but I remain very grateful and humbled that someone would want to spend so much time putting together an article about myself and my work. Plus, I’ve never been involved in a BREAKING NEWS report before. I will never stop laughing about this. Read the awesome article over at Morbidly Beautiful. They are now my new favorite place on the internet.

There are some cool, exciting things happening behind-the-scenes with this book, involving Hollywood, but obviously nothing even remotely set in stone yet. There is a very good chance nothing actually happens. But I have a good feeling. I think shit’s going to get wild. At least, I sure hope so. Fingers crossed, right?

Here’s the official book synopsis:

MOTHER! MOTHER! RISE FROM THE GROUND!

Stranger Things and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre unite to form a blood-soaked matrimony of violence and corruption.

Something sinister’s hiding in the small town of Percy, Indiana, and twelve-year-old Joshua Washington and Alonzo Jones are about to find themselves up close and personal with it. After a harmless night of petty property damage leads to the unthinkable, the red and blue lights of a cop car are the last things these boys want to see. Especially a cop car driven by something not quite human.

Enter Mary Washington and Ottessa Jones. Their sons have been best friends for years, and now Josh and Alonzo have been abducted in the dead of night. Worst of all, the local sheriff refuses to believe they’re missing, leaving it up to Mary and Ottessa to take the law into their own hands before a family of ungodly lunatics can complete a ritual decades in the making.

Together they will embark on a surreal and violent journey into a land of corrupt law enforcement, small-town secrets, gravitational oddities, and ancient black magic.

Through Cemetery Dance, the signed hardcover edition is limited to 750 copies. I have no idea how many copies have been pre-ordered at this point. I do know it would be fucking cool to sellout before the release date in June. Especially since I miiiiight be working on a sequel, and it would certainly help convince the publisher to take a chance on it if they know the first book sold out so quickly.

Anyway, yeah, that’s it, I’m done talking. Go pre-order Touch the Night. It’s going to scare the shit out of you.

The Inevitability of the Noose

When I get bummed, I like to watch interviews with David Foster Wallace. It doesn’t make me feel better. Earlier tonight I watched an interview with him back in 1997 when he was on Charlie Rose’s show and I kept thinking, A decade from now you are going to kill yourself. I kept wondering if somehow he knew that, even then, if he could predict that this would all end with a noose.

I have never read David Foster Wallace’s fiction, so I can’t claim to be fan of his written work, but I do like what he has to say sometimes. I enjoy listening to him talk about David Lynch. I enjoy the face he makes after he answers a question and it’s so clear he found what he said sorta pretentious. Like every other white male, I do own Infinite Jest. I will maybe one day read it, but probably not. I’ll read Pynchon first. His writing seems more interesting. However, I can’t watch interviews with Pynchon, because it’s difficult to talk with a brown paper bag over your face.

Early on in my shift at the hotel I tweeted something about how the planet was on fire and the sun was going to explode and our leaders wanted to murder us all, so it was bullshit to wait for anyone’s permission to work on creative projects, that we should do the thing we want to do because our time is finite and we shouldn’t allow it to go to waste so easily. For a brief five minutes, I was so goddamn pumped up with motivation, then…five hours later, I’m still at the hotel, and I’ve gotten exactly nothing done. Instead of being productive on editing or writing projects, I chose to watch interviews with dead people, I chose to go through old email chains that started with optimism and ended in what should have been predictable misery. I listened to a podcast about political grifters.

I spent almost an hour, in between helping hotel guests, researching local therapists, then decided (based on their website listings) that they were all ultra religious and would be a waste of my time.

I’ve never been to a therapist and sometimes, late at night when no one is around, I start thinking maybe it’s a good idea. But I also live in Texas, where everybody’s solution to the blues is “God”. That doesn’t sit well with me. I am not a religious person. I am not a believer. I do not want to be. I am okay without god in my life.

For a brief hour I thought I needed a therapist but now I think maybe I just need to stay the fuck off social media, and if I still feel compelled to make my stupid thoughts public, this blog is the right way to go.

I deleted Facebook from my phone but I kept Messenger and Twitter and I do not know how to rid them from my existence and I do not know if I can. Maybe therapists are good because you can complain about bullshit like what I’ve talked about in this blog and there’s no risk of embarrassing yourself by exposing your privilege. It is so hard to articulate my thoughts and fears and anxieties without feeling like the living embodiment of First World Problems. But also, I barely have time to update a blog, how the fuck do you find time for therapy?

So I don’t know. If therapy is the answer then it will be an answer I ignore.

I guess it’s just hilarious how quickly someone can go from “Oozing Motivation” to “Existential Crisis”.

The one thing on my side is I still find everything very, very funny–even the truly terrible things–and I suppose once that is gone, then I really have a reason to worry.

But until then I’m gonna keep watching these interviews with David Foster Wallace and wonder: When did you know? A decade before? A year before? Five minutes before? Did you know the moment you were born? Or was it a split-second decision that you would have not done if literally anything distracted you for another couple minutes?

And, shit, who knows, maybe I’ll fucking read Infinite Jest after all.

A Year in Publishing (2019)

At the end of every year, writers on Twitter post threads listing everything they published in the last twelve months. I think it’s a neat idea, a way to reflect on any accomplishments you may have made, and also point folks in the right direction of anything they might have missed (haha, imagine the ego I would need to have to actually believe this). However, I can also see the harm here, that someone’s accomplishments might make someone else feel like a failure. Let me just add a quick disclaimer: Despite having a few things published here and there, I still actively ache for nonexistence. There is nothing in this world that will make me not feel like a failure in the longterm. And, you know what, maybe that’s okay.

Anyway here are some things from 2019.

BOOKS

Carnivorous Lunar Activities came out in February from Fangoria. What’s memorable about this novel is, on the drive up to Dallas for the official book launch, I was involved in a massive car accident that completely destroyed my vehicle. I refused hospital treatment and still attended the event. It’s probably not the last time I will give a public reading with a concussion. Let’s hope it’s not, anyway. Buy it from an indie bookstore.

I also sold my next novel, Touch the Night, to a dream publisher: Cemetery Dance Publications. I haven’t posted on the blog about it yet because my greatest skill in this life is procrastination, but yup, sold that motherfucker to CD back in…June? July? Sometime in the summer. It’s coming out “early summer 2020” in a limited edition hardback and eBook. I kept the paperback rights, so I’ll probably self-publish that particular edition around August through my Perpetual Motion Machine label. There are still copies of the limited edition hardcover available if you want to pre-order it.

SHORT STORIES

“Munchausen” – The Pulp Horror Book of Phobias – May 2019

“A Nervous Sleep” – Horror for RAICES – December 2019

“He Blew His Load” – Forbidden Futures #6 – December 2019

Actually not very many short story publications in 2019, in comparison to previous years. Honestly, I haven’t been writing many lately. I did sell two other stories for anthologies that were meant to be released this year; however, both of those projects were eventually cancelled.

Fiction wise, in 2019, I’ve mostly been fucking around with a crime novel I now fear is doomed, and a novella set entirely in a bathroom (which I might be done with? not sure yet. but maybe?). I also started shopping around a story collection, but so far no bites.

ANTHOLOGIES

2019 was the year I lost my fucking mind and co-edited Tales from the Crust: An Anthology of Pizza Horror with David James Keaton, which I published through my Perpetual Motion Machine label. You can buy it here if that’s something you’re interested in for some reason.

PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINE

Speaking of PMMP, I edited and published several other titles in 2019, which are all worth your time more than anything I actually wrote, and those include The Eight Eyes That Watch You Die by W. P. Johnson and Born in Blood by George Daniel Lea–plus, let’s not forget four new issues of our horror quarterly, Dark Moon Digest. Lots more to come in 2020, but this isn’t a post about 2020. It’s a retrospective, goddammit!

NON-FICTION

I’m actually getting tired with this post already, so I’m going to cheat and link to my author profiles on the three usual online venues that publish my non-fiction: LitReactor, CrimeReads, and the San Antonio Current. I also had a piece about the history of stop motion published by Fangoria via Birth.Movies.Death.

I am probably forgetting something. That’s okay. My coffee cup needs to be refilled and PMMP books need to be proofed and the latest issue of Dark Moon Digest needs to be edited and articles need to be written and the slush pile needs to be conquered and podcasts need to be recorded and a top secret non-fiction book needs to be researched and I have to blow my goddamn nose.

Something Indecent with Max Booth III

I’ve talked about it a little bit on social media, but it’s about time I made a blog post about it, otherwise it’s not official, right?

Beginning in October, I will be hosting a comedic variety show on the second Tuesday of every month at Radio Coffee & Beer in Austin, TX. It is called Something Indecent with Max Booth III. What the hell does that mean? Well, I guess you better drag your ass down to the show and find out for yourself.

Check out the amazing logo Betty Rocksteady made me:

I liked the logo so much, I uploaded the design to my TeePublic page. You, too, can wear the cartoon version of myself on your sexy body.

Here is the description for our first event on October 8th:

Radio Coffee & Beer is proud to present the inaugural monthly late-night performance of SOMETHING INDECENT WITH MAX BOOTH III, hosted by—you guessed it—Max Booth III. A variety show like nothing you’ve ever seen, unless you’ve seen a lot of variety shows, then we don’t know, maybe you have seen something similar. With acts by special guests: Shane McKenzie, Jess Hagemann, Lucas Mangum, and Robert Dean! Join us for a strange night of debauchery and hilarious depravity.

It is going to be a blast. I hope. I won’t lie. I’m nervous as hell about it. But still. I gotta do it, right?

RIGHT?

Anyway. Here is the Facebook event page. Please go RSVP.

Location
Radio Coffee & Beer
4204 Manchaca Rd
Austin, TX 78704

Time of event
7:30PM-9:00PM

ABOUT THE GUESTS

Shane McKenzie is the author of many books, including Muerte Con Carne, Pus Junkies, Addicted to the Dead, All You Can Eat, Mutt, Fat Off Sex and Violence, and lots more. He wrote comics for Zenescope Entertainment in their Oz series, Grimm Fairy Tales series, and Grimm Tales of Terror series. The film El Gigante, done by LuchaGore Productions and directed by Gigi Saul Guerrero, is based on the first chapter of Muerte Con Carne. He continues to write screenplays for LuchaGore. He lives in Austin, TX with his wife and daughter. He’s staring at you right now.

Jess Hagemann is a ghostwriter in Austin, Texas. She helps living people put on the page the memories that made them, the expertise they have to share, and the fictions they wish could be. Jess also writes her own fiction, in the vein of Chuck Palahniuk’s pop-culture absurdity, Mark Z. Danielewski’s found-object horror, and Richard Brautigan’s continual dream-state. Her first novel Headcheese won an IPPY award for horror.

Lucas Mangum is the author of several books. His most popular titles are Engines of Ruin, Gods of the Dark Web, and Saint Sadist, but he doesn’t play favorites. He lives in Texas with his family, but can also be found at lucasmangum.com or on Twitter @RealLucasMangum.

Robert Dean is a writer, journalist, and cynic. His essays have been featured in Jackson Free Press, Victoria Advocate, and is a regular contributor to The Austin American Statesman. He’s also been on NPR. Robert is finishing a New Orleans-based crime thriller called A Hard Roll. He lives in Austin and likes ice cream and koalas. Stalk him on Twitter: @Robert_Dean.

One Last Attempt to Become Organized While Setting Myself on Fire For the Entertainment of Others

The other day I woke up around 4PM, brewed a cup of coffee, and sat at my desk wondering what goal I’d try to achieve today. I am forever drowning in a thousand projects at once and most of the time, instead of tackling only one of them until completion, I attempt to do them all at once, which usually results in nothing really getting accomplished.

So, I’m sitting there, and suddenly it hits me: I was supposed to interview Josh Malerman over an hour ago for a new episode of my podcast, Ghoulish. I found this especially distressing considering last time I interviewed Malerman, I stood him up then as well (read the interview here). Luckily, Malerman also forgot we were recording that day, so we agreed to reschedule for later in the week (the episode is set to drop this Sunday evening, which is August 25th for all you time-traveling freaks out there).

This will never happen again, I thought. No longer will my terrible memory and nonexistent organizational skills ruin my otherwise amazing reputation.

That very evening, I went out to the store and purchased a big ol’ planner. It’s nice and pretty and thicc. I spent the next hour jotting down deadlines and projects and appointments and classes I’m teaching and conventions I’m attending and so on. Afterward I looked at all the pen ink in the book and thought, Oh jeez I’m gonna have an anxiety attack now. And then I did, but after it was finished, I went to my night job at the hotel and decided hey, I’m already embracing this new organized lifestyle, why not fully go for it?

What followed was the creation of several excel spreadsheets: one for markets currently accepting short stories, one for short stories & articles I’m in the process of writing or plan on writing soon, and another for short stories & articles I’ve already submitted (a free version of DuoTrope, basically). Here is an example of my excel sheet on story markets (which could definitely stand to be further updated; notice the lack of nonfiction publications):

I even color-coded them depending on how near we were to the deadline. Like I said, this is a recent work-in-progress, so the content isn’t exactly extensive. I also plan on making another excel sheet for PMMP stuff, but one step at a time, okay?

Next up I created an account with Trello and downloaded the phone app (kudos to my friend Robert Dean for recommending it). From their website’s ABOUT section: “Trello is the easy, free, flexible, and visual way to manage your projects and organize anything, trusted by millions of people from all over the world.”

I created three rows: TO-DO, IN-PROGRESS, and DONE. I can drag each task to its new row as I need to. I would love to show you a screenshot of these lists after I added everything I need to do right now, just to let you see a glimpse of the fucking chaos I’ve gotten myself involved in, but a lot of the information is private or can’t be announced just yet, so you’ll have to just take my word for it: shit’s crazy over here, y’all.

Anyway. The point of this post is to say I’m trying to be a better person at being organized, and if you were wishing to also improve these skills, the above techniques might also work for you. Give them a shot. Or don’t. Maybe don’t do anything. You don’t need to listen to me. I’m not your goddamn mother. None of this matters, anyway. We’re all just trying to distract ourselves until death blesses us with its sweet embrace.

Horror Story Contest + Creative Writing Prompts

I’ve teamed up with my local library to judge a horror writing contest with my partner, Lori Michelle. 1st prize gets you $50 and publication in our magazine, Dark Moon Digest. 2nd and 3rd will receive Amazon gift cards and complimentary copies of DMD. Details on how to register can be found here.

It is free to enter, of course. Any contest that requires money up front from writers is immoral. Same goes for regular anthology and magazine open calls. Submission fees will forever be bullshit. Money should go toward the writer, not the other way around.

While I have you, however, I will advertise something that does cost money. Over on our Patreon, I give out a monthly creative writing prompt. Patrons then write up a short story and email it to me. I read every story and offer editorial notes. I do not publish these stories. I only edit them. What you do with the story afterward is entirely your choice.

My usual editing fee is $0.01 per word. With these Patreon prompts, however? It’ll only cost you $5 a month. There’s still a little time to join August’s session.

KillerCon 2019

The most wonderful time of the year has once again arrived. This weekend in Austin, TX hundreds of indie horror writers will celebrate the genre at KillerCon. Lori Michelle and myself will not only be attending, but we’ll also have a vendor table selling various books we’ve published through our small press, Perpetual Motion Machine. Our latest anthology, Tales from the Crust: An Anthology of Pizza Horror (which I co-edited with David James Keaton), will see its book launch at this event. If you aren’t coming to KillerCon and still wish to purchase the anthology, do not fear: we are still offering pre-order options over in the PMMP webstore.

If you’d like to see me read at KillerCon, I’m scheduled to give a reading on Friday at noon. I think I’ll probably perform a recent story I wrote specifically to give at readings called “The Silent Disco”, which you can hear me read over on Patreon. Otherwise I’ll be bouncing around our vendor table and the bar.

One more update before I leave you: I have sold my sixth novel, Touch the Night, to Cemetery Dance. They will be publishing it as an ebook and limited edition hardback sometime in 2020. Stay tuned for further updates as they arise.

Every book I’ve written

Over on Facebook, writers are listing every single book they’ve written. There is no real reason for this other than it’s a neat form of procrastination. I enjoy distractions, too, so now I am also doing the thing. Does this mean I easily give in to peer pressure? Yes.

Here is a list of every book I have ever written:

Majestic [unpublished] — This is the first novel I ever finished. I was 13 and we were bouncing back and forth between hotels and my grandparents’ house. I had been interested in writing years before this, having knocked out various short stories and DIY comic books, but this was the first actual book I completed. It clocked in around the 100k mark and was pure fantasy, a genre I no longer care much about. I was big into The Hobbit at the time and it definitely showed in this book. Ditto for Chronicles of Narnia. The most I can remember about the plot is it involved a character the same age as myself traveling to a mystical land to save his niece from evil. The casino my mother frequented, the hellhole that ruined my childhood, is called the Majestic Star, if you’re wondering where the book’s title comes from.

Conspiracy [abandoned] — Between ages 12 and 16, I lived in a hotel. Sometimes we stayed at my grandmother’s house when we could no longer afford our room, and every couple weekends I’d stay the night at my brother’s trailer. This is where I first tried alcohol. Age 14, drunk off Jameson and watching a forgettable film, I got the greatest idea in the world: what if every conspiracy theory in the world was…true? I set off to handwrite the greatest book of all time. I filled one 70-page notebook and immediately lost interest.

Taking Lives with .45s [unpublished] — Also written during my hotel years. This one clocked in around the 40k mark, I think. It told the story of a kid my age with my same mannerisms who begins taking an interest in serial killing. I may have been reading way too many true crime books back then (now I just listen to true crime podcasts). Of everything I’ve ever written, this is probably the most embarrassing.

Zombie Punks [unpublished] — Sometimes I think about trying to rewrite this one. I wrote it when I was 16 for NaNoWriMo. It’s about a guy in a punk band who pays his rent by letting some weird scientist perform experiments on him. Somehow he finds himself impregnated with an alien creature. Also I think maybe a witch is involved?

True Stories Told By a Liar [published] — I was 19 and noticed some Australian small press asking for book submissions. Specifically, story collections. “I have written short stories!” I screamed to nobody, and immediately emailed a messy word doc compiling every story I had written in my teenage years. It was accepted the next day and published a month later. I was extremely proud and stupid. The press refused to publish the book as an eBook because “things get confusing when you live in Australia”. A year later I realized I had made a terrible mistake and requested they remove the book from print. They obliged and now we shall never speak of this collection again. Still, though, killer fucking title, right?

They Might Be Demons [published] — When I was 17, I joined the staff of Dark Moon Digest as a volunteer editor. I knew nothing about anything, and I will forever be grateful to Stan Swanson for introducing me to the horror lit scene. It changed my life for the better in so many ways, I couldn’t possibly list them all here. In addition to the magazine, Stan also published books via Dark Moon Books. He had this idea of releasing collections of flash fiction, each collection written by a different author. I loved this and came up with a concept that involved every story in the collection taking place in the same town, on the same day. Back then I thought of it strictly as a collection, but the more I think about it now, maybe it was more of a mosaic novel. Who knows? Anyway. The book was called They Might Be Demons and it remains one of my favorite titles I’ve ever come up with. Too bad the book was terrible! It was published in June 2013, one month shy of my 20th birthday. It is currently out of print and I aim to keep it that way. Nowadays, Lori Michelle and I control complete ownership over Dark Moon Digest, and editor Eric J. Guignard owns Dark Moon Books. Stan’s still writing, but he’s slowed down a bit to focus on his music aspirations.

Toxicity [published] — It’s hard to pinpoint when I wrote this book. I have clear memories of beginning the very first draft back when I was 12, before we’d abandoned our house completely but after it had lost power that final time. We’d stay in hotels then when we ran out of money, my father would drop my mother and myself off at the house and we’d bum around. There was no electricity, so we sat out on the porch a lot. I went through my mother’s collection of books over and over, finding titles I’d never noticed before. This is how I discovered Richard Price’s Clockers, which introduced me to crime fiction. I was already a huge fan of crime films but had never read a book in the genre and it made me hungry to try something myself, so I pulled out a notebook and began the opening pages of a novel titled Jericho. A family much like my own family wins the lotto, becomes spoiled slobs, then multiple criminals break in on the same day to rob them. Throughout the next several years, I would frequently return to the manuscript as my own writing abilities strengthened and rewrite it. At one point I changed the title from Jericho to Black Cadillacs, but whenever I told people about the book they would all act very confused about the title, so I changed it again, this time to Toxicity. It was eventually accepted by Post Mortem Press, a small publishing company based in Ohio. They released it in March 2014, four months before my 21st birthday. I don’t think this book holds up very well and sometimes I think about rewriting it, but what’s the point in stressing over it? I’d prefer to focus on new books and leave this one behind. It isn’t complete trash but it’s definitely cringeworthy.

The Mind is a Razorblade [published] — This was another NaNoWrimo book, written when I was 17. I’d originally titled it Oblivion but would later change the title after hearing “Heartbeats” by Jose Gonzalez (which itself is a cover of a song by The Knife). Like most of my published books, this one went through many rewrites. It was eventually published in 2014 by Kraken Press, only a couple months after Toxicity. I was 21 by then. Looking back, 2014 was a very good year for me.

Float On [abandoned] — I dedicated so much goddamn time to this book and it’s never going to work the way I want it to. I was 18 and living alone in my first apartment across the country from my entire family and working at Walmart and killing myself for shit wages. I was hungry to create and this is what I thought was worth my time.  It’s about a guy recently diagnosed with cancer who meets a traveling group of immortal monster hunters. There’s just not enough story here to make it worth the effort. I’ve probably written 100,000 words on this thing and it’s all a rambling mess. In five years I’ll probably try rewriting it again and give up six months afterward. It’s doomed.

How to Successfully Kidnap Strangers [published] — I wrote this in an insane two-week sprint. It’s about a small press author who kidnaps a book reviewer while high on meth. I still really like this one. Bizarro Pulp Press published it in 2015.

The Nightly Disease [published] — I have written far too much about this novel in previous blog posts. To quickly catch you up to speed: I wrote it while working the night shift at a hotel. DarkFuse published it in the last fucking week of 2016, then went bankrupt six months later and refused to pay me royalties. I then self-published it under my own indie press, Perpetual Motion Machine. This is the best book I’ve written that is currently published.

Carnivorous Lunar Activities [published] — This one comes out 02/22/19, just a couple weeks away now. Fangoria’s publishing it. It will be my fifth published novel (not counting They Might Be Demons). In July I will be 26. I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing.

Who Will Survive and What Will Be Left of Them [unpublished] — This is the latest book I finished. It clocks in at 113,000 words. It’s about missing children and demon cops. I like to describe it as “Stranger Things meets The Texas Chain Saw Massacre“. The title isn’t official yet, but it’s one I’ve been using with submissions. Two other possible titles: The Evocation of Mother and Touch the Night. I don’t know which of these three titles are best or if any of them are good at all. Right now I’m just submitting the book out to agents and small presses, seeing what kind of nibbles I might get. So far, it isn’t looking very good hahaha.

Casanova Curbstomp [work-in-progress] — One of three novels I’m currently dedicating my novel-writing time to. This is a crime comedy about a Little League umpire addicted to internet pornography. I’m about 16,000 words into the first draft.

I Believe in Mister Bones [work-in-progress] — The second novel I’m working on. I don’t want to say much about this one as the concept is too cool to spill so early. But I will say it’s very much in the horror genre.

Expect Radioactivity [work-in-progress] — This is a science fiction horror novel I’ve been working on for a while now. I haven’t made a lot of progress, writing-wise, but I’m deep into research and outlining. This one is kind of complex and requires me to be smarter than I realistically am, so I’m trying to educate myself a little bit more before I fully dedicate to the writing. It’s gonna be fucking rad, though, if I can pull it off.


 

NOTE: There are almost definitely other books I have abandoned that are not listed here. Thankfully, I have already forgotten they once existed, which is probably the way it’s meant to be.