Category Archives: Blog

SLURP MY BRAIN UP LIKE SPAGHETTI

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.

LIMBS BENDING BACK, REVERSE DOG-EAR-STYLE

Here is my dog Frank using my head as a pillow earlier this morning.

It’s Sunday afternoon and I’m at the bookshop. We’re typically closed Sundays and Mondays, but my desktop is here and I need to do some work, so I thought I’d just open everything and see if anybody stops by. Maybe we’ve been messing up all this time by now being open on Sundays, I don’t know. Outside of the summer, when Lori is back at work teaching dance, Sunday is our only mutual day off together, so that’s why we’ve scheduled the shop’s hours the way we have.

At the moment I only have a desktop, which I’ve been lugging back and forth from the shop to the house. My laptop screen imploded earlier this year and I can’t afford to replace it. I decided to keep the desktop at the shop this weekend, rather than bring it home for our days off, because our internet is currently down. Something to do with a wire outside, we’re told. Originally, nobody could come out to inspect the issue until next Thursday, but a few minutes ago Lori managed to get it rescheduled for Monday, tomorrow afternoon. So, fingers crossed it’s something simple.

It’s very hot in this shop. I just dumped the dehumidifier here and I’m desperate for it to do its magic. I get paranoid about the books curling up from the humidity. I wonder if I’d do the same, if it got humid enough. Curl up, I mean. My limbs bending back, reverse dog-ear-style. Wouldn’t that be something?

Last night we started going through the immense collection of physical media in our house, since we couldn’t stream anything. Something I’ve been wanting to do, anyway. All these discs. So much money. Feels weird how often I still just stream something, too lazy to get up and browse the spines on our shelves.

We watched the 4K uncut version of Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor. I watched the cut version when it first came out and I liked it a lot, but revisiting it last night cemented it as a body horror masterpiece. I wish I could possess a dog like they possess Christopher Abbott in it. I wouldn’t kill anybody, though. I don’t know what I’d do. I think I’d just like people to pat me on the head and tell me what a good dog I am. I think that would be nice.

This morning, on good-ol’ DEE VEE DEE, we rewatched Rian Johnson’s Looper, which is another masterpiece, as far as I’m concerned. A stone-cold goddamn classic, really. It should also go on the list of all-timer diner scenes, along with Heat and Thief.

Now I’m at the shop, and after I click PUBLISH on this quick blog post, I am going to devote the rest of my day to revising I Believe in Mister Bones, which is finished but needs to be tweaked in a few places before I finally send it in to the publisher. It’s only…a couple months late (yikes–sorry, Ben). But man. I think it’s pretty fucking good. I’ve kind of lost my mind a bit working on it. But I think it was worth it.

I also need to hurry up and send it in so I can resume the thousands of other Ghoulish-related projects I am behind on. I don’t know how I did any of this stuff back when I was working full-time at the hotel. Time-management is not my speciality. I’m pretty confident any doctor in the world would diagnose me with ADHD if I ever had the money to see one. Would medication help this shit? I don’t know. Everything continues piling up. There is only so much time and energy. I wish I could bottle it all and expand, multiply. What I would give for the ability to freeze time–just once–and finish every little thing I’ve committed to finishing. Just one, cosmic work marathon. No breaks. No naps. Is this why people do cocaine? Where do you even find cocaine in the year 2024?

I just remembered someone offered me cocaine a few years back, at the premiere party for We Need to Do Something in SoHo. They were like, hey we’re about to do some coke, wanna join? And I laughed and was like, uhhhh nah, that’s OK. So I guess if you ever wanted proof that I am a square, there ya go.

I turned down coke at my own movie premiere. I’m not made for Hollywood. Or, I guess…SoHo?

Anyway–back to Bones…

RETURN OF THE BLOG

I have not blogged since the day of my 28th birthday. I am now one month into my 31st year on this planet and have decided to return to blogging. Social media increasingly seems like a bad, toxic idea, and the more we can detach ourselves from it the healthier I imagine we will all start feeling. So maybe this is my attempt to do that. I don’t know. I’m always talking about how it’s unwise to spend so much time on social media, yet I continue to do it. If there’s Twitter in the afterlife, I’m going to be fucked.

I am going to quickly attempt to recap everything important that’s happened to me since my previous blog post back in 2021.

The movie I wrote, We Need to Do Something, came out to limited theaters before dropping on Hulu, where it continues to be available to this day. I still think it’s pretty cool. Nothing else to report on the screenwriting front. There’s been a few close calls, even a couple paid writing assignments, but nothing that ended up going anywhere. Especially lately, post-strike. Everything feels very doomed.

A drunk driver killed my mom and I lost my mind for a couple months.

We rebranded our small press “Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing” to “Ghoulish Books”. Can’t fucking believe I haven’t blogged here since launching Ghoulish. What have I been doing with my life? We also opened a bookstore in Texas with the same name. We’re in Selma, which is in the Greater San Antonio Area. Come check us out sometime.

I’ve written a bunch of books and have published many others.

We discontinued Dark Moon Digest and launched Ghoulish Tales.

I came out as non-binary.

I’ve launched two other podcasts with predictably infrequent release schedules (Decayed Tapes and Dog Ears).

I signed with a literary agent.

I married Lori.

We launched an annual book festival called the Ghoulish Book Festival. The next one is on March 14 and 15 next year in downtown San Antonio.

We adopted two new dogs named Frank and Conan O’Brien.

I launched a newsletter called The Ghoulish Times. First we were on Mailchimp, then Substack, and now we are on Buttondown. Technically this was launched before my last blog post, but I think the move from Mailchimp happened after July 2021. Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe I’m being inaccurate due to my poor memory. Who’s to say?

I neglected Patreon.

We changed website hosts and it looks like all of the images from the many, many years of old blog posts here have…vanished. So, if for some reason you’re creeping on my previous posts and are curious why everything looks like shit, that’s probably why.

I think those are the big things, anyway. There’s probably other things that I should mention, but again, let’s not forget my poor memory (like I did). What if I started blogging every day like some kind of maniac? Do I even post these blogs anywhere? Do I tell anyone? Or do I wait and see if anyone notices? Will comments be left enabled or disabled? If enabled, won’t spam bots flood the whole goddamn town?

So many questions. Will any of them be answered next time I do this?

Am I going to use this blog space to just type every stupid goddamn thing that comes into my head?

You betcha.

HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY KIDNAP STRANGERS

Cover by Betty Rocksteady
  • Publisher: Bizarro Pulp Press (1st Edition); Ghoulish Books (2nd Edition)
  • Publication Date: April 2015 (1st Edition); March 2024 (2nd Edition)

1. Do not respond to bad reviews.

2. If you must respond to bad reviews, please do not kidnap the reviewer.

3. If you must kidnap the reviewer, do not kidnap him in a public area.

4. If there are witnesses, do not also kidnap them.

5. If you also kidnap the witnesses, consider quitting crystal meth.

6. If you find yourself surrounded by hostages, purchase extra duct tape.

7. Do not let the hostages take their own hostages.

8. Invest in better coffee.

9. Don’t forget: dildo crucifixes have more than one use.

10. And, most importantly: do not engage the severed heads in conversation.


Purchase (paperbacks & ebooks):

Signed Copies | B&N | Bookshop.org | Amazon

28

Today I am 28 years old, which means I failed to maintain membership with the 27 Club. A sick, honest part of me is a little disappointed, as I’ve been promising my family since I was a teenager that I would die at 27. Although, in a way, I guess I sort of did die—if you’re a frequent listener of my podcast, GHOULISH, then you probably already know about the special 100th episode that went live late last night/early this morning titled “The Death of Max Booth III”.

From the episode description:

In the 100th episode of GHOULISH, Max Booth III is murdered with a poisoned egg—potentially by a previous guest of the podcast. Andrew Hilbert takes over hosting duties and investigates the crime by analyzing over 30 eulogies sent in following the news of Max’s death. Did one of these psychotic sons of bitches kill him? Listen and find out.

Featuring Jon Lovitz, Kelby Losack, Cynthia Pelayo, Todd Keisling, Miguel Villa, Zach Chapman, Josh Malerman, Jessica Leonard, Lucas Mangum, Joshua Chaplinsky, Jessica McHugh, Sarah Read, Stephen Graham Jones, Betty Rocksteady, W. P. Johnson, Alan Baxter, B.R. Yeager, John Baltisberger, John Wayne Comunale, Brian Asman, Danger Slater, Frank Edler, Zachary Ashford, Michael Allen Rose, Hailey Piper, David Leo Rice, Armand Rosamilia, Jay Wilburn, Tony McMillen, Jonathan Raab, Briana Morgan, Lisa Quigley, Bob Pastorella, Michael David Wilson, and Lori Michelle.

You can listen to it by clicking HERE.

Also, of recent interest for all you GHOULISH fans, the last couple episodes included interviews with Jeff VanderMeer and Chuck Tingle.

I am not sure what else to add here. I’ve been very busy with many different projects, hence the lack of updates lately. The movie I wrote, We Need to Do Something, recently premiered at the Tribeca Film Fest in New York. Lori and I flew out for the premiere. It was both of our first times visiting the state. I think the reaction to the movie has been mostly okay so far. Some people like it far more than others, but the same thing can be said about the book. IFC Midnight will be releasing the movie in the US on September 3rd, in theaters and VOD. There will also be a physical media release, although I don’t think it’s been officially announced yet, so don’t tell anybody I told you that.

I did finish a new crime novel at the end of December called Casanova Curbstomp, but the longer I sit on it the longer I’m convinced it’s actually not very good, so it might just be a trunk novel for the time being. Maybe in the future I’ll figure out a way to make it not suck, or maybe it’ll never see the light of day. Who knows!

I’m 65,000 words into another novel called Maggots Screaming, and I am far more confident with how that one’s going. I started it in July 2020, so my goal is to finish it before the end of the month. 12 months is already too long to spend on a first draft. It makes me paranoid I’ll never finish anything of worth again, which is a stupid trap to fall into. It’s also an easy trap to fall into.

I’m also incredibly busy with Perpetual Motion Machine projects. Lots of editing to do that I’m behind on thanks to how much traveling we’ve been doing lately (for the movie). I’m not complaining, just explaining what’s been going on in my life. Right now I’m playing a game of catch-up, which is a game I imagine I’ll be playing until I die for real and not just in a podcast.

Happy Fourth of July. I hope you shoot a bottle rocket out of your ass to celebrate. Trust me. It feels awesome.

Two New Interviews: CEMETERY DANCE and THE SAN ANTONIO CURRENT

Two new interviews featuring myself have been published recently.

The first one, over at Cemetery Dance, was conducted by Tyler Jones. It’s a lengthy conversation that took place over several months via Twitter direct messaging. I think it’s probably one of the most in-depth interviews I’ve been given, and I’m stoked it’s finally available. In it we talk about writing advice, my creative process, capital punishment, my ranking of the Mission: Impossible movies, and so much more. You can read that here.

I was also kind of interviewed for my local paper, The San Antonio Current, about We Need to Do Something’s recent acceptance into the Tribeca Film Festival. I say “kind of interviewed” since, yes, the editor and I did talk on the phone, but I only answered like two or three questions clarifying some things about the announcement, so I’m not sure if it officially counts as an interview. I also don’t know who keeps track of what is and what is not an interview, but I’m terrified of them getting mad at me. Anyway. Here’s the write-up.

Speaking of the We Need to Do Something movie, Tribeca recently made a page dedicated to it on their festival guide, and the description they’ve written for the listing filled me with an immense amount of joy. I am not sure if we’re allowed to consider it our first “review” but it feels like that, at least to me. So damn cool. The page also reveals the movie’s runtime, which hasn’t been announced until now: 97 minutes. Read the listing here.

WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING to make its world premiere at Tribeca Film Fest

Pretty much what the title of this post said, honestly. My movie, We Need to Do Something, which I wrote and served as an executive producer on, will make its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Fest in June. Sean King O’Grady directed it. Shane Patrick Ford edited it. The cast includes Vinessa Shaw, Sierra McCormick, Pat Healy, Lisette Alexis, and John James Cronin. Many other very talented people also worked on the film, but you can just go check out the IMDB page for the rest of the credits.

I will be traveling to NYC for the showing, which will be my first time ever visiting the state. Tribeca is a dream fest and I am truly honored for our little bathroom movie to premiere there. Here’s an official still from the movie with the fancy Tribeca selection stamp:

Here’s Deadline’s write-up about the complete 2021 lineup, and here’s Rue Morgue’s focus on Tribeca’s Midnight genre slot (which is the slot WNTDS is in).

More news when I’m allowed to talk about it. Until then, you can buy a signed copy of the novella directly through my webstore.

Works in progress (January 2021 update)

Last month I posted about current works in progress and where they stood, word count wise. Instead of copy/pasting every project I talked about in the previous installment, I am only going to spotlight the projects I actually worked on since last month.

First up is Casanova Curbstomp. In the last update, this project sat at 56,000 words. As of right now, the first draft is completed at 77,000 words. I actually finished it on New Year’s Eve. It’s currently being read by my manager and several beta readers, then I will go back through it and adjust as I deem necessary. After that…I am not sure. There’s a specific small press I’d like to send it to. But also maybe this is the book I should start sending to agents. It’s a comedy crime novel about Internet porn addiction. If you’re an agent and that sounds cool to you, hit me up.

With Casanova Curbstomp out of the way, I’ve been focusing most of my novel attention on Maggots Screaming! (The exclamation mark is part of the title.) Last month the word count sat at 25,000. Earlier tonight I hit 30,000. Last month I also anticipated the total word count would clock in at around 65,000, but after figuring a couple upcoming plot issues out, I now realize I’ve greatly underestimated the word count. It will probably be closer to 80,000 by the time it’s finished. My goal is to finish the first draft by the end of March. I’m really happy with how this one is coming. I wrote the first 15,000 words while in Detroit filming the adaptation for We Need to Do Something, and I think the immense happiness I was experiencing during that month has definitely continued into the rest of the manuscript. I’m just having a goddamn blast writing something that’s pure, unapologetic body horror.

Other things I’m working on right now, which I can’t get into very much detail on due to reasons: rewrites on a script for another one of my previously published novels; a proposal package for a book I recently pitched to an extremely cool audio company; a secret non-fiction book for Cemetery Dance; and several novelettes for Cemetery Dance for their “Be a Star” program.

Plus, ya know, a ton of freelance non-fiction. Speaking of which, here are my two most recent online publications…

On LitReactor I published an article about my recent plunge into being a full-time writer. I provided some context for why I made the decision to leave my terrible hotel job and also offered some (hopefully) handy advice for anybody considering doing the same thing. Read the article here.

Related to the previous article, I also wrote a lengthy essay for Film-14 about how I managed to get a film adaptation made for my novella, We Need to Do Something. If you were puzzled how some jerk like myself currently has a movie in post-production, then this article should help clear most of your confusion. Read the article here.

I think that pretty much covers everything. Unless you want to get into what I’ve been editing–in which case, the latest issue of my horror magazine, Dark Moon Digest, just dropped. Go treat yourself to some spooky horror fiction.

A love letter to long paragraphs

I love long paragraphs. I love getting lost in them. I love the investment. I love the payoff. I love the rhythm. I love that I remembered how to spell “rhythm” without having to look it up. That almost never happens. A lot of words don’t make a lot of sense in my brain and “rhythm” is usually at the top of the list. When I was a kid they taught you every paragraph was exactly four sentences long. No more. No less. If you broke this bizarre rule they’d mark points off your grade. Maybe not every teacher knows what the hell they’re talking about. Once, while attending English class in a drop-out adult high school, the teacher insisted on using the word “irregardless”, and I informed her it wasn’t a word. You looked at me like I was a piece of shit and told me that I was wrong. I corrected her again. It wasn’t a goddamn word. She said, “What do you know? You don’t know anything.” She told me she was the one with an English degree and she would know whether or not something was a word, and “irregardless” was definitely a word. “But it’s not!” I shouted, unable to shut up when it came to petty arguments. The rest of the class was ruined as we continued yelling at each other. I just googled “is irregardless a word” a second ago and apparently now it’s considered a word. Maybe it was always considered a word. Maybe I’m just a jackass. But still. I stick by my opinion that she was a terrible teacher who would have probably also told me every paragraph should be exactly four sentences long and I would have screamed until blood spilled from my mouth. Some authors never use long paragraphs. These authors are cowards. They think the key to writing suspense is short, one-sentence paragraphs, where every action deserves its own line. They confuse prose with screenwriting, which is something entirely different. A lot of writers are very bad at their jobs. You can tell by the size of their paragraphs. I want my paragraphs to last forever. I want them to blossom like lunatic flowers. I want readers to open one of my books and see the lack of paragraph breaks and think, “What the fuck am I looking at? I’m not reading this,” and then, maybe, they decide to try out a couple sentences, and suddenly they’re three pages in and the paragraph still hasn’t come to an end, and they sure as fuck can’t pause now, how would they ever remember where they stopped? Now they’re trapped. Now I have them. A long paragraph is magic. It is hypnotism. I love long paragraphs so much I would absolutely marry one if I could, but I don’t know how that would work. I love them so much that I’m afraid to end this blog post. This paragraph could be longer. It could always be longer. The trick is knowing the perfect place to stop. The trick is knowing the exact spot that will make the reader think, “Okay, I’ve about had enough of your bullshit.” That’s when you add in some quotation marks to fool them into thinking something exciting might be expressed through dialogue. I got you now, you son of a bitch.

I got you now.