Over on LitReactor I wrote up a pretty detailed essay about Stephen King’s pseudonymous history. I think it turned out really well. I cover every book he released under Bachman’s name and even speculate over a possible future work, something he mentioned back in Dance Macabre about the Patty Hearst kidnapping. Check it out.
Also, a few months back Lori and I did an episode about Bachman for Castle Rock Radio. You can listen to that here.
Also I really want to get a new dog and name him Bachman.
This has been in the works for almost a year now, but last week I finally opened my latest anthology project for public submissions. Lost Films is my follow-up to 2016’s Lost Signals. This time, instead of audio, we’re branching out into visual themes. Think Videodrome. Pay’s $0.02 per word and the deadline is this Halloween.
View the full details over on Dark Moon Digest.
I’m trying to respond to everything as fast as I can. The longer it takes to hear from me, the better you probably are as a writer. Please don’t send me any trunk stories with a video theme awkwardly forced in. I’ll be able to tell, trust me.
Good luck and I look forward to reading a bunch of groovy horror stories.
New from Gutter Books, edited by the very talented Joe Clifford: Just to Watch Them Die: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Johnny Cash.
This anthology includes my own short story “Understand Your Man” inspired by the song—you guessed it—”Understand Your Man.”
Other authors you’ll find in Just to Watch Them Die:
Rob Hart — “Like the 309”
Jen Conley — “God’s Gonna Cut You Down”
David James Keaton — “One Piece at a Time”
Lynne Barrett — “A Boy Named Zoe”
David Corbett — “Rusty Cage”
Tom Hazuka — “The Ballad of Forty Dollars”
Mike Creeden — “Sunday Morning, Coming Down”
Nik Korpon — “Rose of my Heart”
Sarah M. Chen — “Missouri Waltz”
Terrence McCauley — “Hurt”
S.W. Lauden — “25 Minutes to Go”
Gabino Iglesias — “Want to Go Home”
Danny Gardner — “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town”
James Grady — “Rings of Fire”
Renee Asher Pickup — “Thirteen”
Hector Duarte Jr. — “Ain’t Gonna Work Tomorrow”
Ryan Leone — “Folsom Prison Blues”
James R. Tuck — “Walk the Line”
Angel Luis Colon — “Jackson”
Jennifer Maritza McCauley — “I Don’t Know Where I’m Bound”
Steven Ostrowski — “I Still Miss Someone”
Terri Lynn Coop — “Man in Black”
Heath Lowrance — “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?”
My hotel novel, The Nightly Disease, is currently out of print. Here’s an article I wrote about it for LitReactor. It sounds like I’m more sad than I actually am. I’m okay. It’s cool.
Anyway, I’m currently in the process of adding bonus content for a reissue, which will include an essay-length introduction titled “A History of Hotels,” bonus chapters, and a series of fake hotel reviews at the end of the novel. The reviews are where I need your help.
Only continue reading if you’ve already read the novel, because I am about to spoil the ending.
Here is my idea: after the book ends, I want a couple pages consisting of a series of fake reviews. The reviews will be written by guests who were staying at The Goddamn Hotel during Isaac’s last night there. So, these guests have experienced not only a fire, but owls had also invaded the building, there was a shoot-out in the lobby, little league coaches and parents partied like rockstars, and an employee turned a giant dildo into a torch. It was…an eventful night.
I would like you to write up a brief review from the POV of a guest who stayed at The Goddamn Hotel that night. Get as weird with it as you want. Nothing too long, keep them below 300 words. Feel free to use your real name for the guest or come up with something else, and don’t forget to give the star a rating (5-star system).
Send them to maxboothiii@gmail.com by August 5th. If I like what you come up with and decide to use it in the book, I’ll send you a signed copy of the new edition whenever it comes out.
Hard Sentences, an anthology consisting of crime fiction inspired by Alcatraz, is now available from Broken River Books. Edited by David James Keaton and Joe Clifford, this anthology includes short stories by folks like Nick Mamatas, Jedidiah Ayres, Matthew McBride, Nik Korpon, Gabino Iglesias, and many others. It also includes my story “Roller Canary”, which is about the infamous Birdman of Alcatraz.
Read Keaton’s hilarious introduction to the anthology over at LitReactor, then go pick yourself up a copy on Amazon.
It is my birthday and also Lori’s birthday and also America’s birthday and my chest is on fire and I am a coughing machine and we are watching War on Everyone on Netflix and less than one minute in we are already laughing and today I am twenty-four years old, which is not much different than twenty-three or twenty-five.
Here are where some things stand:
I wrote a novella of around 18k words titled “Everywhere You’ve Bled and Everywhere You Will”. It’s about a bleeding penis, spiders, and witchcraft. You can read it in the newly released Garden of Fiends anthology published through Wicked Run Press. There’s a bunch of other addiction horror novellas and short stories collected in it that I’m sure are also dope. Maybe that was a bad word choice, given the anthology’s subject matter. Maybe it was a perfect word choice. I don’t know. You should go buy this thing. I’m pretty stoked about it.
Check out this cover:
The latest Facebook list game going around involves naming your favorite film from each year you’ve been alive. I have never participated in one of these games before because I am a loser. But I finished a few editing projects earlier and I haven’t updated this blog like I’d like to, so here you go. It’s super short because I am an actual baby.
1993 – True Romance
1994 – Leon: The Professional
1995 – Seven
1996 – From Dusk ’til Dawn
1997 – Boogie Nights
1998 – Dark City
1999 – Fight Club
2000 – Snatch
2001 – Frailty
2002 – 28 Days Later
2003 – Oldboy
2004 – Shaun of the Dead
2005 – Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
2006 – Children of Men
2007 – No Country for Old Men / Zodiac (I can’t pick only one)
2008 – Let the Right One In
2009 – Moon
2010 – Four Lions
2011 – Drive
2012 – The Perks of Being a Wallflower
2013 – Only God Forgives
2014 – Whiplash
2015 – Mad Max: Fury Road
2016 – The Nice Guys
As for 2017, who knows? I’m willing to bet it’ll be one of the following: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Get Out, The Void, The Dark Tower, or A Dark Song. There’s a shit-ton of great movies coming out this year.
I’m excited to announce my new novella “Everywhere You’ve Bled and Everywhere You Will” will be published this April in Wicked Run Press’s Garden of Fiends anthology. My novella is about a recovering heroin addict who one day begins bleeding out of his penis and finds himself infested with spiders and weird hallucinations. It’s super gross and fucked up and y’all are gonna love it.
Also involved in this anthology: Jack Ketchum, Kealan Patrick Burke, Jessica McHugh, John FD Taff, Johann Thorsson, Glen Krisch, and Mark Matthews. Holy crap! What a lineup!
Also, since Wicked Run is such a cool press, they’re currently holding a special: the first 25 people to pre-order the eBook of Garden of Fiends and email a confirmation receipt to wickedrunpress@gmail.com will receive a FREE kindle book of their choosing by any of the authors in the anthology.
Last I heard, there were only SIX spots left, so hurry!
Here are your choices for free books:
Jack Ketchum
The Girl Next Door
Off Season
Offspring
Peaceable Kingdom
The Woman
Red
Kealan Patrick Burke
Kin
Sour Candy
Secret Faces
The Turtle Boy
Jessica McHugh
The Train Derails in Boston
The Green Kangaroos
Pins
Rabbits in the Garden
Glen Krisch
Where Darkness Dwells
The Hollowed Land
The Nightmare Within
Loss
–
Mark Matthews
Milk-Blood
All Smoke Rises
Lilly’s Tale: The Milk-Blood Trilogy
On the Lips of Children
STRAY
I realized something on Saturday: I was only 600 words into a story I’m pretty sure is going to end up clocking in at the 7k mark, and I only had the rest of the day to finish it if I wanted to maintain the one-story-per week challenge. So I decided to hold off on it and wrote up a quick 500 word flash fiction titled “RomanticHandsHolding.gif”, which I’m pretty sure will be disregarded as spam whenever I email it out for publication consideration. This story is written entirely through cell phone notifications, and I had a lot of fun trying to piece it all together. I guess now that the new week has started, I’ll return to the longer story, currently titled “Scraps”. Pretty sure I can knock out a decent first draft by the next Saturday. If not, feel free to execute me. I know you want to. You’re practically drooling just at the thought of it.