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Welcome Back

Hello, and welcome to my collection of weird tales and horror fiction for your enjoyment and criticism. I’ve always found that feedback from people not obligated to say nice things has been the best tool for continuing to hone my writing. Here are four of the newest stories for your consideration.

  • Axis Mundi – Loops and whorls of the dead sketching glyphs and geometric shapes drift around the ghost ship, held close by the Yggdrasil’s gentle gravity. 
    • A horror-sci fi story about advanced humans making first contact with an isolated group of humans who’ve been trapped aboard an ancient generation ship.
  • The Crisis Somewhere, swimming in the night above, there are eyes. There are eyes like black stars, and they see me.
  • Digger’s Lament – The voice in the dark laughed, a throaty whisper of mirth. “You are Palta Qynes, and you are no man of the Emperor. You are a digger, and a criminal, and a betrayer.”
    • A fantasy novella following two miscreant archeologists sifting through the ruins of the kingdoms of dead gods.
  • Mapping the Crooked Places  – The blooming corpse-flower smell surged, hotter and brighter than ever, and if I could have scaled the air itself to ascend to the roof above me, I would have clawed through, ground my fingers to the bone.
    • A new version of my story about addiction, architecture, and urban obsession. If you’re familiar with the original version, I think this new take is greatly improved.

Beyond that, look around in the Library on sidebar, and you’ll find a variety of older short horror stories for your enjoyment. As always, I am very grateful for your interest, and would be happy to hear any comments or criticism you have. 

If you have any questions or want to reach me for any reason, don’t hesitate to contact me, and you’ll find other various ways to keep up with like Twitter and Facebook.

If you’re looking to inquire about freelance writing for games, or of any sort, head on over to my professional website for my business contact details.

Thank you again for your interest, and enjoy.

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Metapost: Hello Again

Hello all.

It’s been too long. Since last I posted, I haven’t had the chance to write much fiction, the notable exceptions being Axis Mundi and First Souls in FLAPPERHOUSE, as well as The Crisis in Shadows on Main Street. I spent most of my creative time on Rise of the Tomb Raider, and while I miss writing for myself, I am immensely fond of my contributions to that game. If you played it, you may have seen a few very short horror stories of mine in the games collectible documents, but now that I have transitioned over to being a freelance writer, my hope is that I’ll be able to spin up the prose engine again

Over the next few months, I will be posting some stories that first appeared in print, but I now will be able to share with you, including my fantasy novella “Digger’s Lament” and others, so please keep an eye out for those updates, and some other news as I am allowed to share it.

As always, thank you for reading.

Metapost: Welcome Redux, New Stories, and Thank You, Kris.

I woke up to a particularly loud telephone yesterday morning, alerting me to some sort of twitter goings-on. As it happens, an artist and writer I greatly admire, Kris Straub, had posted a new installment of his “Scared Yet” web-series, and this episode was focused on my stories. I’m flattered by what Kris had to say, and if you’ve found your way here through him, I’m grateful for the exposure. “Candle Cove” is one of the handful of stories in this new-internet-horror-genre that was instrumental in getting me to write creepypastas in the first place, so I’m giddy that the mutual admiration goes both ways.

Kris is currently in the second book of Broodhollow, his blend of classic cartooning and magnificently realized horror. Broodhollow has been hitting on all cylinders since the first strip, and has only grown more tangled, dense, and horrific. The plotting, the use of the format and art styles, the delicate blend of gallows humor and grim dread, and interior and exterior threats, all work hand in hand. The seemingly disparate elements support and enhance one another like complimentary flavors. It’s one of only two webcomics on my RSS feed, and without a doubt the best horror comic I’ve yet read. If you haven’t read it, start at the beginning…

If you’ve come here thanks to Kris, the stories he suggested, North, East, Sick (or, the Algorithm), Thaw, and Barricade can be found at the right, or clicking here. Please poke around, and if you have any feedback, criticism or questions, I am always grateful. The fantastic film version he mentioned of “Sick, or The Algorithm”, by Tom Festo can be found here. As for the pen name, Kris was correct, that came from my old 4chan days. I picked that pen name as a bit of a joke, acknowledging the pastiche and outright theft I was engaged in at the time. I’m more confident in my voice now, so I’ve dropped the pseudonym, but it continues to be the name I’m most known by.

For new and old visitors, if you’re looking for news or more conent, click through for a couple of updates for what I’ve been engaged in or otherwise up to.

Continue reading “Metapost: Welcome Redux, New Stories, and Thank You, Kris.”

Axis Mundi

“Axis Mundi” is deeper into the sci-fi spectrum than most of my stories and much longer, but what started as a fairly straightforward space-cannibal story turned into something very different… This story was originally published in the esteemed FLAPPERHOUSE.

 

CAPTAIN ELISHA DRIFTS BACK TO HER BODY. Sedative fog curls around her edges for a long, liquid minute before she remembers she has eyes to open. Lids slide across her sclera, a syrupy-sweet motion that tingles her spine like some small secret pleasure. Her forearms feel hot and then cold, as catheters spit the next layer of the wakeup cocktail into her blood. Already, the induced euphoria’s fading, shepherding the last of the delirium and confusion away to be replaced by a conscious, knowing glee. They’ve arrived.

Her new stateroom smells of wood and leather, warm aromas painted in crimson and deep oak hues. The armchair creaks as she moves, and smartbands retreat into its folds like startled snakes. The catheters slip from her flesh, spraying a thin mist of skinbond to cover their tracks, and constrict away into the arms of the chair.

Her vision drifts to a far wall, her eyes looping on a pleasing swirl in the burlwood, where Mithradates projects her feeds in layers of soft amber light. The most important detail rises to the surface in pulsing cobalt: No one has followed. Right up until their unscheduled departure, no alarms were even raised.

Now the slip is over, only a few hours passed, and the slick ebon needle of her new ship, the Mithra, drifts above the ecliptic of Gliese 667C. Mithradates maps the bewildering orbits of the neighboring stars and the six rocky planets around 667C, adjusting for any local eccentricities since the stellar event. The third star, a dull red coal, squats at the center of a tangle of scorched planets. Elisha waits for Mithradates to find any sign of their quarry, but so far she only sees the purples and oranges of worlds and moons.

Continue reading “Axis Mundi”

Black Stars Rise: New Fiction in FLAPPERHOUSE and True Detective Ramblings

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Firstly, this week marks the release of the first issue of FLAPPERHOUSE, a new magazine from editor Joe O’Brien. Joe is a long time visitor to the site, and I was honored that he asked me to submit. My story, “Axis Mundi”, (sample here!) is a sci-fi/horror story about derelict spaceships and divinity, is one of several new stories and poems to grace the pages of the first issue. It’s a terrific collection of varied voices, and the more I read, the more proud I am to be a part of it.

Secondly, I just finished True Detective last week. I wanted to hold off on the last episode for several years, just to inhabit the liminal space forever, but my wife demanded that we finish it. I’ve been enormously taken by the show, from the deliberate reference to the philosophy of Thomas Ligotti and other antinatalists in the first 15 minutes, to the series-wide use of weird fiction in general and Robert Chambers’ “The King in Yellow”in specific, the show was not only expertly written, shot and acted, it was also directly created to please me. Or, that’s how it felt across most of the 8 episodes. I’m fairly certain that this is, and will remain for some time, my favorite series on television, ever.

Since the show ended, I’ve been chewing on some things. One thing I’m maybe mildly disappointed with is that a lot of the intricacy of symbolism in set and costume design turned out to be coincidental more than intentional, but the show still has the feel of a puzzle box. And I adore puzzle boxes. With the writer mentioning that he’s a fan of some of my weird fiction authors (Ligotti, Barron, and Langan among them), and that he’s drawn direct inspiration from the genre (beyond the overarching King in Yellow references within the story), it had me on high alert for references, metaphors and symbolism. So, this is me pulling on threads and seeing what tumbles out.

Spoilers, obviously.

Right fucking

I’ll try, Rust. Here’s my thoughts on one of the repeating images and concepts from the show: Black Stars…

Continue reading “Black Stars Rise: New Fiction in FLAPPERHOUSE and True Detective Ramblings”

Metapost: Updates, Future Plans, and Releases

Hello and welcome. It’s been a while since I had a formal update, but a lot of good things have happened. I’ve recently started a new job, as a narrative designer with Crystal Dynamics, which means that I now basically write and make things up for a full time living, and will be helping to tell stories in a franchise that I’ve loved for over a decade, Tomb Raider. I’m still a little starry-eyed about the whole affair.  Additionally, I’ve completed a couple of longer pieces I’m quite proud of, one of which should see publication very soon. Here are some of the recent and upcoming releases I have planned in the next few months.

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Miseria’s Chorale, a new horror anthology edited by David Nell, is now available from Amazon. Miseria’s Chorale contains my story “One”, as well as many many more stories from authors I have previously been honored to share pages with.

Click through for more recent releases and announcements.

Continue reading “Metapost: Updates, Future Plans, and Releases”

“The Blues” is up on Pseudopod! (plus my location photos from the story…)

After a bit of an unforeseen delay, the incredible Pseudopod podcast has just posted a reading of my story “The Blues”, read for you by Gabe Diani, writer and star of the fantastic horror-comedy “The Selling”.

Gabe, along with his partner-in-crime, Etta Devine, are the masterminds behind The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: The Robotic Edition, and are currently producing and gearing up for their next feature, Diani and Devine Meet the Apocalypse, a comedy road movie about two comedians caught unaware by the end of the world, or as they put it: “Like ‘The Road’…but funnier!”… which is perhaps the best tagline for a piece of art, ever.  Check out their page, and when the Kickstarter is up, I’ll let you know.

Gabe and Etta are both old friends of mine, and I was honored that they volunteered to step in and read “The Blues” after the first reading suffered some issues. Their read turned out better than I could have hoped for, and I’m incredibly grateful to Shawn Garret, the editor of Psuedopod for all his help.

Having a story on Pseudopod is an enormous honor for me, as it was one of the reasons I started writing horror (4chan’s /x/ being my other big inspiration). I’m thrilled to have followed, at last in numerological sense, the incredible Thomas Ligotti, with episode 351 “The Bungalow House”, which was fantastic.

I am deeply appreciative to you all for your readership and support over the years, and thank you for being here with me. It would mean a great deal to me if you downloaded the show, left me feedback here, or at the Psuedopod Forums, and I would be especially grateful if you would share this episode with a friend if you liked it, or an enemy, if you didn’t.

Hit “Continue Reading” for some photographs of the locations in “The Blues”
Continue reading ““The Blues” is up on Pseudopod! (plus my location photos from the story…)”

Tom Festo’s “The Algorithm”

It is my sincere pleasure to share with you Tom Festo’s film adaptation of “The Algorithm.”

My huge thanks to Tom, Luis Filgueira, Mike Randazzo, Zach Heyde, and everyone else involved for letting me share this with you all.

For me, one of the many wonderful surprises was Zach Heyde’s creepy score. It reminds me in the best way of the “Session 9” score. The original soundtrack is available on Zach’s bandcamp page, name your price. I’m listening to it, right now.

New Release Monday – “Shifters” and “Another 100 Horrors” now available.

The latest anthology from Hazardous press is now available on Kindle or in Paperback. “Shifters: A Charity Anthology”  includes a reworked version of my story “Collision”, which among other things, adresses the problem of conservation of mass among skinwalkers in the Arizona desert. Among other things. Shifters includes stories from  Chris Larsen, Doug MuranoRose BlackthornJay Wilburn, and D. Alexander Ward, as well as David Wellington, Aaron Gudmunson, Dane Hatchell, Mandy DeGeit, Kris Freestone, Adam Millard, Brent Nichols, Terry Alexander, Steve Voelker, Max Booth III, Matthew Wilson, Beryl Knight, Lisamarie Lamb, Chantal Boudreau, Dana Wright, Lori Michelle, Rie Sheridan Rose, Dawn Napier, Jen White, Cameron Johnston, E.L. Kemper, Amanda Pillar, Jonah Buck, Emma Whitehall, Christine Morgan, Susannah Carlson, Robin Deffendall, Tracie McBride, and Erzabet Bishop. Cover art by Glenn Chadbourne, back cover art by Diana Whiley, interior illustrations by Kris Freestone and Leia Napier.

All proceeds from the sales of this anthology will go to the American Humane Association’s Red Star Rescue Team, providing disaster response services for pets and domestic animals.
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Also newly released, “Another 100 Horrors” from Cruentus Libri Press. 100 stories from 100 writers, all exactly 100 words. My new (short) story “Shipwreck” is a part of this collection, and it’s available for both Kindle and paperback.

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In future news, I am completing work on a historical horror story about the Siege of Constantinople and have completed a first draft of a very odd “Fields of Ur”. It’s still very very rough, but if you’re interested in seeing a completely unrevised initial draft, and would like to offer feedback, please send me an email and I would be happy to share it with you.

This autumn should see at least two more exciting releases: “The Blues” will be featured on the Psuedopod Podcast, and a version of “Before” will appear in Nightfall Magazine’s inaugural issue.

As always, if you’re so inclined to share your feedback, positive or negative, all us contributors would greatly appreciate it, either on Amazon or Goodreads.