Tag Archives: book news

Cover Reveal: How to Successfully Kidnap Strangers

My next book will be a short novel called How to Successfully Kidnap Strangers. It’s about a bizarro small press reacting badly to a blogger who constantly targets their books with negative reviews. It’s being released this April by Bizarro Pulp Press, the weird fiction imprint of Journalstone.

Mark it as “to-read” on Goodreads here.

Now take a look at Matthew Revert’s cover design:

strangers cover

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.

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.