ARM OF DARKNESS is out now!

ARM OF DARKNESS. A mysterious demonic stranger intrudes upon the lives of unsuspecting people, forcing them to make choices with horrific consequences. Six short stories.

* * *

His hand is fashioned from the night sky.

It is powerful, dark, deadly.

He dwells in the world’s oldest mountains and always comes bearing gifts.

Truth is, he cares nothing for you. He is a trickster, a prankster, a demonic being who desires only to wreak casual violence on every human he meets.

He’s about to offer you a bargain.

Piece of advice? Don’t trust him.

* * *

ARM OF DARKNESS contains six short stories—Skullworm, Roadhouse, Glow, Kin, Sunshine Lady and the origin story, Arm of Darkness—for a total of 30,000 words. Three novel excerpts are also included in this e-book.

Available:

Kindle (US)

Kindle (UK)

Nook

iPad

Kobo

Smashwords

Paperback

Writer? Don't go anywhere.

It’s funny. We got a call today from our local bookstore. Would we stop by to sign two of our books? A customer had bought them, asked for them to be signed by us, and said she’d stop by later to pick them up and mail them to her relatives in California for Christmas.

We encourage this. We have longstanding agreement with all the stores in driving distance that we’ll do this. We even mention it on our websites so people will order from them. 

So this was a rush. Time was of the essence.

We both had some business to take care of. Conference calls on Denise’s end. More couch-moping on mine. But we packed ourselves into the car and drove downtown.

As we were driving around looking for parking, it hit me: If I had to park my car in the local garage, I’d instantly nullify my profit on these two books. I don’t know I make it any clearer to people who keep telling me that they want to have a book published by a “real” publisher.

Parking = your royalty.

Luckily, we were able to park for free in a loading zone.

Now if the car had been towed…

First ever appearance in Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine

Returned home from our trip with a nasty head cold, so I’ll be working from the couch today and perhaps tomorrow. But I had to share this image of the new issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (AHMM). The hard copy issue hits stands tomorrow, but digital versions are already out, which is how I spotted this.

Needless to say, I was blown away by the cover mention. The inside note from the editor is also pretty nice, and my piece (“Button Man”) is the lead story. All pretty cool, unexpected and humbling for my first outing in this publication, to say the least.

Links to the digital editions are: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple iPad, Zinio, Magzter, and Sony.

Coming Soon: THE ARM OF DARKNESS

Here’s the cover of one of my next books. Hope to get it out in the next few weeks.

It’s your basic short story horror collection—with a touch of crime fiction, sci-fi, ghosts and cryptozoology. As always, if anyone would like to review the book, contact me and I’ll send you a free copy when I’m ready to release it. I don’t ask for anything more than an honest review.

I talked more about the book in this post.

Here’s the pitch:

***

His hand is fashioned from the night sky.

It is powerful, dark, deadly.

He dwells in the world’s oldest mountains and always comes bearing gifts.

Truth is, he cares nothing for you. He is a trickster, a prankster, a demonic being who desires only to wreak casual violence on every human he meets.

He’s about to offer you a bargain.

Don’t trust him.

* * *

ARM OF DARKNESS contains six short stories from the author of The Mesmerist, for a total of 30,000 words.

* Skullworm

* Roadhouse

* Glow

* Kin

* Sunshine lady

And the origin story:

* Arm of Darkness

Cover by Jeroen ten Berge

How to listen in on my interview Friday

Denise and I will be visiting the radio show Charlotte Talks on Friday, November 30, to talk about Stuff Every American Should Know. 

WFAE is an NPR station in the Charlotte, NC, area. The show, hosted by Mike Collins, is on at 9:00 AM every morning. You can grab the live-streaming radio link here (at the top of the page), or simply tune in later to grab the mp3 file (at the right of the page) to listen at your leisure.

This is the third time we’ll be on the program, but I’m still a little nervous about this appearance. Stuff is a little book, but it’s packed with lots of stories, anecdotes, history that I haven’t thought about in months. It’ll be interesting to see what comes out of my head.

Afterward, we’ll be heading north for some meetings and to visit relatives. Hope to fill you in from the road.

Cover reveal: The Marshal of the Borgo

Here’s the cover of one of my next books. Hope to get it out before the end of the year. It will feature a character that will first appear in a short story of mine next year in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

The book’s an urban fantasy. (Some would even call it a paranormal whodunnit — a mash-up of a straight mystery with elements of witchcraft and ghosts.)

As always if anyone would like to review the book, contact me and I’ll send you a free copy when I’m ready to release it. I don’t ask for anything more than an honest review.

Here’s the pitch:

***

In an ancient chapel in an ancient land, an old woman screeches a warning:

“Beware the touch of Job—he’s cursed!”

Matteo Scarpone is a man more sinned against than sinning.

Once a cool-headed logician and the pride of Rome’s carabinieri, he’s devastated when disaster rocks his world.

He is a lost man. Beaten. Shaken.

HAUNTED.

Shunned as an embarrassment, he is exiled to a tiny village in the sticks—a hamlet, a burg, a borgo.

But in this land of vineyards and olive groves, life is far from idyllic. Murder, witchcraft and hate taint the soil once tread by the Etruscans.

Now the young captain must unravel a series of murders that pit him against a cynical evil and force him to use a power

—A GIFT

— A CURSE

that he has long denied.

* * *

THE MARSHAL OF THE BORGO

A full-length urban fantasy by the author of The Mesmerist.

Cover by Jeroen ten Berge

When Brando met Truman

When I was in college, my journalism professors urged us to read the work of writers such as Gay Talese or Tom Wolfe who wrote nonfiction using the techniques of fiction. In the 1960s and 70s, they called this New Journalism. Today I think you’d call it writing interestingly.

Fiction writers of the period also dabbled in this style of writing. Norman Mailer is primarily known as a novelist, but when he wrote his “nonfiction novel,” The Executioner’s Song, he basically reported the shit out of murderer Gary Gilmore’s life and wrote the story like a novel. Closer to our time, David Eggers did something similar with Zeitoun. The novelist who first showed everyone how it could be done was Truman Capote, who wrote In Cold Blood. 

Earlier this year, I came across this fascinating 1957 profile Capote did of Marlon Brando for The New Yorker. It’s a fun read and far lighter than throwing yourself into a book about a family that was annihilated in Kansas. But just this week I came across this article in the Columbia Journalism Review about the writing of Capote’s Brando piece, and why it was so groundbreaking for its time. I’m posting the links here because I want to be able to track them down when I need them again. 

The more I distance myself from journalism, the more I become a junkie for this kind of writing.

The Next Big Thing

Just a week ago, Robert Swartwood “tagged” me in his “The Next Big Thing” blog post. I’d describe TNBG as a writerly chain letter where one writer answers some questions about his next book, and then passes the ball/baton/cannoli to another five writers he/she knows. (See below for my author picks.) Those five will answer these same questions next week, and so on and so on. So…I’ll be answering these questions about a short story collection I’ll be putting up later this month, as Zeus is my witness.

1) What is the title of your next book?

Arm of Darkness.

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?

About twenty-five years ago I wrote a short story about a petty crook who wanders into a roadhouse to get out of a snowstorm and has a horrifying encounter with a mysterious stranger. I always liked the story but never did anything with it. Then, over the years, every time I found myself procrastinating on a work-for-money project, I’d bang out another one of these short stories to waste time. I never did anything with these stories either. I’ve never been good about selling my fiction work. But I started revising the pieces last year and was surprised to find that they formed a pretty coherent collection because every story has, at its heart, one character who kicks the action into motion: A man with an arm fashioned from the night sky.

3) What genre does your book fall under?

Horror. Definitely horror. With elements of crime, sci-fi, ghosts, and, uh, cryptozoology.

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

You know, it’s not a great question because it would be a very disjointed, episodic movie. But I figure people like Sam Elliott or Jackie Earle Haley or even a heavily disfigured Ryan Gosling could play the man with the arm of darkness.

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

A mysterious demonic stranger intrudes upon the lives of unsuspecting people from all walks of life, good and bad, and forces them to make choices with horrific consequences.

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Self-pubbed, baby, all the way. I calculate that my wife and I have sold more than 300,000 copies of books that we’ve written separately or together. But they’re all nonfiction. I have no track record in traditional publishing as a fiction writer. Right now, I kind of like that. Short story collections are hard sells to traditional publishers, anyway. I just like pretending that I’m an old-time pulp writer for now. I have a hat I can wear that fits the bill.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

In real time, the whole book probably took five months to write the first draft. Just keep in mind that that time was spread out over a period of about 20 years. Then a burst of writing at the end pulled them into a unit. Mostly, that later work recast and grounded the stories in a specific place—the American southeast where I now live.

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Honestly, I think it has more in common with those old Weird Tales stories you used to see back in the day. Or TV anthologies such as Twilight Zone or Tales From the Crypt.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I’ve been a journalist most of my life. From time to time, I’d come across some weird real-life stories that obsessed me and made me want to cast them as fiction. But practically speaking, each of these stores was written as a way to procrastinate from other work I was doing. They entertained me. After a while, I started liking the character at the center of the stories.

10) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

Two of the stories at the end—the most recent ones—were based on real-life cases I encountered in the course of other work. One involves an early 20th-Century woman who insisted on being buried in a glass-topped tomb when she died. Why? So that the sun would always shine on her face.

By the way, if anyone reading this would like a free copy in exchange for an honest review when the book comes out, let me know and I’ll get you a copy as soon as I’m ready to publish.

Okay. I’m done. Now, I’d like to introduce these five writers. Please check out their blogs next Wednesday to see what they’ve been working on. I hope you’ll be moved to buy some of their work along the way!

Denise Kiernan

Stuart Connelly

Neal Thompson

W. Bradford Swift

Hunter F. Goss

A late review of THE INDIANA JONES HANDBOOK

Denise and I wrote The Indiana Jones Handbook for Quirk a few years ago, just as the fourth Indy movie was released. It’s an official movie tie-in book. It’s one of these books everyone seems to love. Geeks love it. Kids love it. Parents love it. And I’m always surprised when I come across a new review of it. Here’s one that appeared this week on the blog We Wear Pink on Wednesdays. In part, reviewer Kristin Hackett said:

Whether you’re looking for a guide on how to run on top of a moving train, how to fend off a gang of swordsman, or how to break a zombie curse, look no further because this is your one-stop reference guide for everything you could possibly imagine.

Thanks, guys!

If anyone’s interested, this book’s still available on Amazon, B&N, Indiebound, etc.