So.  That was that.

My expression, at all celebrations.  Also, John Cusack, my spirit animal

I vacuumed my living room floor when the ball dropped.  I don’t think I’ve actually watched the ball drop since Y2K, if I’m being fully honest; nothing against those who do, but I really don’t need to be watching any program covering the event that professes itself to be “rockin'”.  Also, Dick Clark and, now, Ryan Seacrest.

(Yes, I know.  There are other programs, but those programs involve Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffith, two personalities that always remind me of that one Simpson Treehouse of Horror where Bart and Homer discover they are on a rocket ship full of D-list celebrities barreling for the sun.  Hell would be if that ship stalled out and just…drifted.)

Anyway, 2015 was kinda…quiet.  A lot of behind-the scenes stuff that will, in the new year, begin to bear fruit.  I had two pieces of fiction published:

“To Touch the Dead” came out first, in Death’s Realm, published by Grey Matter Press and edited by Anthony Rivera & Sharon Lawson.  It’s a weird science-fiction-horror-fantasy bit, inspired by my first novel, a fun-loving thing called Bitter.  The second piece, “Crawling Back to You”, appeared in Savage Beasts, again published by Grey Matter Press and again edited–superbly–by Rivera and Lawson.  That one was a more straightforward story about vampires, splatterpunk, the 1980s, and Tom Petty.  No, you figure it out.

It was a quiet fiction year, but I couldn’t be happier with the results.  Grey Matter Press is a house I’m proud to be a part of, and Anthony and Sharon are two wonderful, professional people.  That’s not bullshit because they bought my stories–the checks were cashed long ago–because, as it’s fairly well-known, I will call you on your shit (loudly and publicly, if so pushed) if you’re fucking off and screwing me over (if everything’s above the board, I’m a babe, but if something’s off, you tend to hear about it).  Lawson and Rivera are not fucking off and it’s been fun watching their house grow.  They’re getting into novels, by the way.  Mister White, by John Foster, will be out in the spring.

Two firsts, with this cover: It’s not Jacob Haddon’s name in the corner, and there’s a figure in the image.

In editing, I jumped back into the saddle after the less-than-stellar ending to Jamais Vu to guest-edit the fall issue of LampLight, published by Apokrupha and edited, up until that point, by Jacob Haddon.  That was fun, probably the most fun I’ve had editing since my first anthology, Torn Realities.  I got to work with old friends, meet new ones, and read fucking reams of fiction.  The resulting issue was a thing of beauty.  I know everyone reads digitally now, and you’re less-than-inclined to believe the guy who had in creating the product, but the physical digest was a beautiful piece of work.  Jacob Haddon is the goddamned man.  I hear he’ll be having other guest editors step in, and it’s something to keep a weather-eye on.

Anyway, yeah–slow year, probably the slowest since 2010.  Everything I wrote and submitted–not much; editing takes up all your time and mental energy (would-be writer/editors take note)–will be showing up next year, or is in consideration for next year, or is due for next year (including a Lovecraftian period piece that I love but apparently doesn’t love my wordcount and wants to trounce it).  Still, I made contacts and friendships with agents and publishers, networked with writers (it was this year that I didn’t miss Duotrope or The Grinder at all).  I have a novel out to market, stories out to market, messages to people, and party hats for everyone.  Oh, and Michael Bailey called me out–but in a good way.

So what does 2016 have in store?

In fiction, there are 5 pieces (so far), apparently to spite the lack of me-ness in 2015:

In January, one of my few forays into flash fiction will be appearing in the long-gestating 44 Lies by 22 Liars, put out by Post Mortem Press: “Lead into Gold” and “Passive.”  (Seriously, the only other flash from me appears on The Wicked Library.)

Around that time, Chiral Mad 3 will be unleashed, with a story  by me (“The Agonizing Guilt of Relief (Last Days of a Ready-Made Victim)”), Stephen King, Damien Angelica Walters, Mercedes Yardley, Richard Thomas, Max Booth III, and oodles more I’m forgetting because it’s ridiculously late.  Glenn Chadbourne illustrated everything and it’s goddamned beautiful.

Mid-2016 will see Lost Signals showing up, which will have my story “All That You Leave Behind”, which makes everyone cry for some reason.

I break my streak of selling long-titled stories to only Michael Bailey by having my weird call-out to the movies of my youth, “How I Became a Cryptid Straight Out of a 1980s Horror Movie”, appear in an issue of the legendary Space & Time.  The issue’s to be determined, but that story’s probably the most “fun” because it’s so goddamned ludicrous right up until the very end, when it goes for the throat (I think it does, anyway).

I’ll also have some essays appeared on, eventually (whenever Richard Chizmar gets to those books), Stephen King Revisited

In editing, nothing yet, but that’s fine.  If 2016 is a “writing” year, that’s cool with me.

In the oven are three short stories (one still being written, whoops), the aforementioned novel, and my super-duper-secret-project I can’t tell anyone yet because contracts haven’t changed hands as of yet.

Still…2016 is not shaping up to be too bad.  I can live with this.

Cheers, folks.  Happy new year.  Go hug someone (but warn them first; no creep-tendencies, please).

I think so, anyway.

I’ve known about this for a few weeks, but I’ve been cleared to announce that my novelette “All That You Leave Behind” will be appearing in the anthology Lost Signals, edited by Max Booth III and his partner-in-crime Lori Michelle and published by Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing.  Here’s the cover, by the stunning Matthew Revert:

This will be the second time I’ve worked with PMMP and Max (they published my standalone story “Survivor’s Debt” as an ebook a few years back, as part of their One Night Stands series that is, sadly, no more), and the third time I’ve worked with Max (I edited his first novel, Toxicity).  Sounds nepotism-tastic (nepotastic?), but isn’t; I’ve been cruising the Facebooks and seeing writers who didn’t make the final cut who have even deeper relationships with PMMP (my connection kinda ends with my and Max’s love of Modest Mouse).  Sign of a good editor – someone who might be a friend but will still tell you to fuck off–nicely, maybe–if you don’t unfortunately have the goods that time.

The story’s a fun and cheery tale of recovering, emotionally, from a miscarriage; the story sparked from a throwaway line in Lauren Beukes’ Broken Monsters about ghost heartbeats and mixed with something that’s attributed to Ernest Hemingway but isn’t really his, as much as historians can tell: “For sale: Baby shoes.  Never used.”  I buried all the fears my wife and I when she was pregnant with the bug, and it apparently paid off; Max messaged me right after reading the story with just the statement, “Goddamn, son.”

This is the second publicly-acknowledged pieces appearing in 2016 (the antho is scheduled for May/June); the other is “The Agonizing Guilt of Relief (Last Days of a Ready-Made Victim)” in Chiral Mad 3 by Written Backwards–which also took the time recently to say very nice and very unnecessary things about me.   I’m still waiting on contracts for a third piece, and this doesn’t count my essays about Stephen King’s The Talisman and Insomnia that will be popping up over at StephenKingRevisited.com, or my Super-Duper Secret Project that has me doing little happy-dances when my mind happens upon the subject.

So, you know, there’s that.  2016’s looking like it might not suck.  Fingers-crossed, gang.

This is Nemo:

He’s about the size of a quarter–that’s not hyperbole–and the Bug found him (or her, whatever) while playing in the dirt in the old front garden. We thought he was dead at first, actually.

As we settle into our 2nd year in this house since purchasing it, my wife and I have been slowing piling up the Epic-and-Everlasting-To-Do List of things we want to do outside the house, inside the house and, basically, end up like a less wealthy version of Barbara and Oliver Rose.

Except without the divorce and murder-suicide, but definitely with a monster truck, because that’s how we roll.

One of the things to go is the front garden, which had railroad ties older than many of my students and, from previous tenants (we bought the home we rented), was completely ignored.  So, out goes that shit, with the intention of making the garden bigger.

Now, we live at the edge of the forest, and our yard is crawling with life, including box turtles.  My wife had seen them around our garden in the spring, forgot about them, and then, tonight, remembered them when our four-year-old, poking through the old garden, said, “Hey, look!  A turtle!”

It’s a hatchling and, based on the Google, it’s fairly young (it hasn’t fully absorbed the yolk of its egg yet, resulting in this weird mass akin to that crinkle of skin newborns have after the umbilical cord is snipped), so we agonized over whether to leave it or bring it in, knowing that, if it lived (most hatchlings don’t)–hey, look another pet.  But, it’s getting cold and we couldn’t find its original nest.

…

Well, you saw how that turned out.

My daughter named the turtle because of course she did, but what the hell–it’s a pretty decent name.

Hey.  You.

*nudge-nudge*

Yeah, you.

*taps your computer screen*

*you overreact and activate your antivirus software*

*I’m attacked by scanners until…

*stops impersonating Chuck Wendig’s blog-writing style*

Ahem.

In any event, the latest issue of LampLight is out–volume 4, Issue 1.  In digital and Kindle right now, but I’m told the print shall be along soon enough.  Pretty spiffy, with stories from Tim Waggoner, PD Cacek, Chris Shearer, Jamie Lackey, and Charles Paseur, a classic piece by M.R. James, with a column by Kevin Lucia and an afterword from me (which is a truncated version, cutting to “hey, this was fun”; I may post the full essay here at some point).  This is my second time working with Tim, third working with Jamie, so it has that sense of familiarity to it.  The cover, above, is a first, which Jacob Haddon pointed out to me–LampLight has never had a figure on the cover, which is pretty sweet.

If you forgot my birthday–back on the 14th of September–you could make it up to me by picking up a copy.  Also, review it.  Rack up them Amazon hits, and all that.

Cheers!

Hey, gang – Be right back; in the midst of drafting, rewriting, teaching, husbanding, fathering.  You know–the standard.  There are things I want to talk about–the new lovely issue of Lamplight that I guest-edited, why bad reviews are okay, why your instincts suck, but there’s also a stack of student notebooks eyeballing me and, when I’m not typing this, I’m eyeballing it right back.  So, go check out my special super-duper guest edit, or read this review of Savage Beasts that I’m currently loving, or read on. 

My daughter is going to have music tastes that I’m going to hate.  It’s just the natural state of things.  I’m getting older and popular music is paying zero attention to the demographic I’m now in.  Being a teacher, I see/hear what’s popular and, yes, I’m becoming one of those old bastards who recalls the glory days.  Of course, my glory days were the mid-to-late 1990s, so how glorious could they be?

So, so glorious. Apparently.

But, for the past two weeks, my daughter, the Bug, has been demanding the “1,2,3, come back to me” song.  No goddamn clue what she was talking about.  My wife and I had narrowed it down to a female singer–but none of the female groups in my car–Garbage, theSTART!.  It wasn’t until I had the radio on one day that I discovered it was this:

And, after briefly being horrified that my four-year-old is belting out lyrics about, at some points, coming…I actually kinda dug the song.  As well as the album, when I heard it later.

Maybe I’m not too old.  Or I’m going senile.  One of the two.

Still, a catchy song.

Enjoy.

So Jacob Haddon, the publisher over at Lamplight, posted this to social media recently:

…which means that will soon be out soon..  My birthday–September 14th–if all the stars align.  All the stories have been accepted, everything is almost in-place (I have a little afterword due, but that’s it), so it’s lookin’ good. Spare me your gifts, go get this issue.  (Actually, go subscribe to the magazine.  Haddon & Co. are, to put it eloquently, amazeballs, and they didn’t need me to help them get the good stuff.)

On the writing end, this came out two weeks ago, complete with my ode to Tom Petty and Near Dark, “Crawling Back to You”:

I hear-tell that Rue Morgue did a special spotlight on it, but haven’t made it out to the local news-shoppe (imagine me saying that and enunciating all the syllables, ‘kay?) to pick up it up yet.  It looks good, reads better, and seems to be doing well.  Print and ebooks can be found here (and, say-hey-and-by-the-way, Grey Matter Press is running a 40%-off Labor Day/2nd Anniversary sale, so, y’know, there’s that (I speak aloofly, but Anthony Rivera and Sharon Lawson have been a dream to work for and have a solid body of work behind them; they’ve recently moved into novels and I hope they do as well with that as they’re doing with anthologies)).

Currently working on three stories, so–on top of teaching, fathering, and husbanding–I’ve been a little busy.  Working on one that, when I showed the editor the opening to feel him out if this was what he wanted (y’know, like a good drug dealer), the dude said, “I’m ready to cry,” which I guess is a good thing (he could be crying at the awful-ness; you never fuckin’ know).  Another story, based off a pitch I did that seemed well-received, needs to be written, but has the farthest deadline.  A third story, based on another pitch, needs to be rewritten.   Usually I’m in the trenches, sending things out and hoping they hit their mark and never really knowing for sure one way or another (my instincts in that matter are horrible, but that’s another post for another day). This is a new place for me–people saying, “Yes, send me that“; new, and weird, but good.  I’ll take it.

So, this image is appropriate:

Final thing (and, if I’m being honest, the real reason for posting this tonight):

I have a nice long yard, front and back, that ends at the forest and railroad tracks.  Lovely.  Beautiful.  Also, all hill.  My lawnmower, something I picked up for seventy-dollars eight years ago, is finally on its way out, so I borrowed my neighbor’s lawnmower, after using my old war horse on the particularly hilly parts (thank Christ I landscaped in college or I would’ve died).

Why is this worth mentioning?

Because, while riding this:

I had a chance to break out this:

Yes!  A Discman!  A working Discman!  My friend Josh gave me it when he went all-digital, essentially saying, “Look, I know you’re hopelessly stuck in the 20th Century, so, here.”

Yep.  I mowed my goddamn lawn while listening to a Discman.  I want to make a joke about how I listened to Nine Inch Nails so I wouldn’t notice all the skipping due to the vibrations of the mower, but actually it didn’t skip and, actually, I listened to this, another hopelessly 20th Century artifact:

This album is 20 years old, by the way.

Huh.  It’s funny, but that editor being all about to cry I mentioned?  I think he’s crying now, but for a wholly different reason.

Cheers.

Long story-short: My day job is as an English teacher/journalism adviser, and the start of the school year is always hectic as hell for obvious and not-so obvious reasons (you’d be amazed how important general class atmosphere is to getting anything done).

SO, in between teaching, parenting, husbanding, editing, and writing, some things have taken a backseat…namely reading for pleasure and this trifle of a website.

Things will change.  Soon.  In a good way.

Cheers.

A bit musical, today.

First, though–guys, guys, GUYS.  I have a theme song.  It’s only seventeen seconds long and sounds like something from a 1970s sitcom, but it’s mine, goddammit.  All mine!

Annnd I would totally share it with you if WordPress allowed mp3s.  I just spent 5 minutes learning that little tidbit.  Yeah.  A little anticlimactic, huh?  Hmm.  The song was written by friend and fellow writer Nelson W. Pyles, author of Demons, Dolls & Milkshakes, former host/current exec-producer on Story Time at the Wicked Library (which did some of my stuff, hey!  I’ll link to those at the bottom), and vocalist for the band Novus.  He also has a new collection of short stories coming out, which I wrote the foreword for.  I…I cannot plug anymore!  I’ve done all the plugging I can to make up for the lack of my theme song!  But the pain!  The pain is just too great!

Ouch.

Ahem.

Anyway, sorry.  I might edit this later if someone knows how to do all that new-fangled technological stuff.  I own a flip-phone.  I have a working Discman.  This is how 21st Century I am.

Now, the new story.

This is pretty.

So, in the new Grey Matter Press anthology Savage Beasts, I have a story called “Crawling Back to You”, inspired by the song of the same name by Tom Petty, off the 1994 album Wildflowers.  I love the cover, absolutely goddamn adore it, but I find it amusing when juxtaposed in relation to my story.  Tom Petty and flaming demonic guitars.  Here’s the song:

On top of that, my story’s about vampires, because, when you think Tom Petty, you of course think vampires.

Oh, the vampires.

Joking aside, I’m happy with the story and love what Anthony Rivera and Sharon Lawson have been doing (you might recall they published my story “To Touch the Dead” earlier this year in the anthology Death’s Realm).  You can read more about Savage Beasts here.

Interest piqued?  Here’s the first line:

Patty pulled the .38 from the glove compartment when the radio, even jacked to maximum volume, failed to block out the waitress’s screams.

The book’s due out officially tomorrow, August 11th, but the Kindle’s available now here.  In the next week or two, I’ll be speaking with contributor Shawn Macomber here–and me on his slice o’Internet–about our stories, so look out for that.

Now, before we go, here’s Nelson W. Pyle’s giving his sweet, sweet vocals to some of my shorter works, all of which I love but none of which, I feel, is his best work–my theme song (he also does a wicked Christopher Walken impression, saying, “I can’t stop jerking off at work”, but I doubt you’ll ever hear that).

These are compilation episodes, taking from the Christmas and Holiday specials, respectively.  He also did two standalones of my work: “Baby Grows a Conscience” (originally published in Necrotic Tissue)–which, for one chilling moment, featured his tween daughter as “Baby,” the titular protagonist–and “Love Song for the Rejected” (originally published in The New Bedlam Project); unfortunately, those don’t seem to be online, anymore.

The Wicked Library – “Halloween Special III”

The Wicked Library – “Christmassacre II”

Cheers!

Sort-of.

A friend of mine, since my daughter was born, has given us a little statuette marking her age and growth.  It’s a Hallmark thing, I think.

Me being…well, me…I gave the bug a Pop bobblehead of Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy–called “The Groot Movie” by said bug–on her 4th birthday because she loves the tree alien.

While ridding up her room this morning–summer’s turn me into Mr. Mom–I noticed that this had happened:

This wasn’t intentional, I swear.

So, that’s been my Monday.

I had every intention of going to Scares That Care this past weekend and finally meet up with colleagues I hadn’t seen in two years or had only ever exchanged emails/contracts with, but things did not work out and I’m partly jealous to have missed out–particularly at Jonathan Janz, who apparently photographed every inch of that convention and has been posting them in social media (he’s a right bastard).  Anyhoo…

So, first thing:

As of now, I’m fully in Maybe and This-Is-Interesting-Maybe mode when it comes to the Lamplight submissions.  This means that, if you subbed between July 1st and July 15th, when the cut-off for the September issue was, you are in my This-Is-Interesting-Maybe pile.  You got past the first page with me, so I downloaded and will peruse more closely.

If you subbed before July 1st and haven’t heard from me–congrats!  You’re in the Maybe pile.  It’s kinda like the semi-finals.

What this means: I’ll be making decisions in the next week and a half.  The first will be the TIIM submissions.  I’ll winnow those down, then move on to the Maybes.

I’ll be honest, this is hard.  As hard as any other anthology.  The amount of submissions for this one issue–and only for four spots!–and the quality of the submissions is making this ridiculous.  Most editors–even us lowly guest editors–say this, but that doesn’t take away the truth.  Here are some quick numbers.  Based on the number of submissions, and the number of spots, my acceptance percentage is going to be less than half a percent.

So, submitters…

As for the second thing:

This is Lucy Batgirl Anderson.  She’s a shelter dog, dumped six days ago and adopted by my family two days.  Going to the Humane Society–to check out another dog that, it turned out, really hates cats (and, well, we have two of those)–my daughter, the bug, started singing to Lucy through the kennel.  So, there’s that.

She’s already stolen my pillow and my side of the bed.

Cheers.