Interview at Blood Bound Books

There's a short interview at the Blood Bound Books forum for those who are interested.  The interview deals with my summer story "Nature is a Cruel Beast", which won 2nd place in the Seasons in the Abyss contest.

The book is separated into four seasons of horror flash fiction.  I was fortunate to get a story in three of the seasons: summer, winter and spring.  Here's a link if you're interested in the book.  Currently there are two reviews on Amazon.

One Day Left for Submissions!

I will be closing to submissions for Through the Eyes of the Undead II as of May 31st, 11:59 Pacific time. 

I have been slammed with submissions over the past few days and I hope to get even more from those of you who like to wait until the eleventh hour.  Keep 'em coming!

I will be reading through the pile in the coming weeks, sending rejections and short listing the stories I like and then I will go through the said short list and determine which tales will make the final TOC.  It will be another several weeks, maybe a month before I make final decisions.  Stay tuned.

Rock is Dead: Tales Inspired by Music

The latest release from Blood Bound Books has arrived.  Rock is Dead: Tales Inspired by Music contains 24 horror stories inspired by rock 'n roll songs.  At the beginning of each story it says which song the story was inspired by.  Pretty cool concept.

My story, "Window to the Soul",  was inspired by Billy Idol's "Eyes Without a Face".  A blind woman returns to the mean underground of Freemont Street, Las Vegas when a string of murders begin again leaving victims without eyes.  She finally has the chance to heal a wound in her mind that has been festering for years, but can she go through with it?

Novella to be Published in Double Feature by Blood Bound Books

Blood Bound Books has recently accepted my novella "The Madness" to be published as an old school double feature with another novella by Craig Saunders called "Scarecrow".

More details to follow as well as a proper synopsis of my story and eventually for the book as a whole.  I've come across the old Ace double features from the 60's in used book stores and thrift stores.  I always liked the idea of a double feature like that of a drive-in movie theater, so I think Blood Bound Books is onto something.  I'm proud to be a part of this project.

Stay tuned!

Watched Two Post-Apocalyptic Movies Recently

Recently I watched both The Book of Eli and The Road.  Both movies took place in the years after the Apocalypse and both were rather well done.

The Book of Eli deals with a one-man wrecking machine heading west where he needs to deliver an important book, the last of its kind.  During his travels he arrives at a town where a devious man acting as mayor or general ruler of said town is in search of said book, and when he finds that the extraordinary man who has recently entered his town and caused quite a ruckus has it, he will go to any extreme in acquiring it.

I liked everything about this film.  It was fast paced, action packed (and I'm no action fan), and thought provoking.  Essentially this was, like any post-apocalyptic film, a portrayal of what happens and how people survive and rebuild after world-wide devastation.  In this case things seem to have regressed into the wild west.  I would almost go as far as calling this film a post-apocalyptic western.  Yes, I think that label is about right, as far as labels go.

I give it 5/5 stars.

The second move, which I watched last night, was The Road.  This one will rip your heart out.  My wife was crying through much of the move and swore the next one we watch will be a comedy.  This film follows a man and his young son as they survive along the main highways, "the road" as they refer to it, in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where those who survive have began to turn inward after so many years of scavenging and are becoming cannibalistic.  The man is teaching his son how to survive after he dies, and as he becomes sick, he trusts no one, which has a detrimental affect on the boy who has a heart of gold.

This film is depressing, sad, and very well done.  Several of the sequences were so captivating that I felt nervous and terrified for the man and his son.  As I said from the get go, this one will rip your heart out, so don't watch it if you are depressed.  That's probably not a good idea.

I give it 5/5 stars

(Side note.  I don't give everything 5 stars, I just happened to see two great films back to back.  It is rare that a modern film captivates me as much as these did.  There's a lot of shit out there.  I think I got lucky with these two.)

People of the Ethereal Realm to be published by Library of Horror

I am pleased to announce that my debut novel People of the Ethereal Realm is going to be published by Library of the Living Dead's imprint Library of Horror.  It has been a long time in coming and I couldn't be more excited.  I will post updates here as I get them.

Barbara comes to Adam at night while his wife is working the graveyard shift at the hospital.  She is but a dream in the mind of a frustrated man whose life is on the verge of collapse, but Adam has something she wants and she will go to any extreme in acquiring her desires.

Gerald lives a lonely life in the Boulevard, a ghetto on the wrong side of the tracks.  He's blind, but where his sense of vision is obsolete, his ability to communicate with the souls of the dead is acute.  He fears nothing, having grown up on the mean streets, but on the night Barbara visits him that is about to change.

Who is this mysterious woman and what does she want so badly that she'll destroy anyone and anything that gets in her way?  Can she bring two men from different backgrounds together for her bidding?  How many people will have to die, and how many will wish death was the end?

Coming soon from Library of Horror:

People of the Ethereal Realm by Robert Essig

Life and death isn't what you think it is.

Take That, Website!

I just shut down my website.  It had been a long time since I had made any updates and in trying to do so I found it to be extremely frustrating, which made me realize that was the reason I hadn't made updates.  yola.com is too difficult to work with and it freezes up too much and I've had enough already. 

I realized that all of the information that was on my website is here on this blog, and it's a hell of a lot easier for me to update, so what was I doing trying to manage two sites?  No more of that shit.  This is the only site I have and I hope to gather more followers and plan to make even more updates than I had been, along with more posts.

Goodbye website -- rot in Hell!

Necrotic Tissue #14

The latest (and unfortunately the last) issue of Necrotic Tissue is out, featuring my story "Back for More," which details an extraordinary man's death at the hands of a lunatic sadist. 

I've been an avid fan of Necrotic Tissue from the beginning and I am sad to see the zine go.  NT was easily at the top of my list of favorite magazines.

I'm looking forward to digging into this issue!  And check out that vicious rabbit on the cover.  Yowza!

If you are interested in purchasing a copy, it can be found at amazon and the Necrotic Tissue website.

Horrorology -- OUT NOW!

The latest release from the Library of Horror is an anthology called Horrorology, edited by Jodi Lee.

Life as you know it is about to get ..... icky.

Could you survive a zombie attack ... if you were blind?
Have you watched the blood dance at the end of a blade?
Have you gone fishing in a forbidden pond?
Do the voices tell you to get tattooed?

This book is dedicated to Jamie Eyberg.

Available at Createspace now and amazon very soon.

Interesting Albert Fish Documentary

Last night I watched the documentary Albert Fish about one of the most notorious child killers in American history.  For those in the horror community, I have to assume that many of you already know about Mr. Fish and his deviance, but I didn't know all that much aside from the fact that he killed children and was a psychotic masochist who had pins and needles inserted into his body at the time of his arrest.  After watching this documentary I found out that he was even worse a deviant than I had known, but I won't get into that.  If you're interested you should watch the film for yourself.

I do have to say that I thought the documentary (what netflix call a "docudrama," which is bullshit because it's really nothing more than a documentary, which isn't what I expected) was a bit too long and spent too much time discussing his religious inspired motives as if he was just a troubled man who went wrong.  It's important to find out what's in the mind of a killer, but I think some of the commentary in this documentary, particularly that of Joe Coleman who seemed to me to have an unhealthy obsession with the child killing bastard, attempted to give Fish an out because of his horrible upbringing and the words of the bible as interpreted literally.  Clearly these things were seeds in Fish's self destruction, but he was really nothing more than a vicious man with a vicious appetite who, in my opinion, used the Bible as a means to justify his maniacal impulsions.  (As a side note, Joe Coleman has done amazing paintings of serial killers including Fish that, in themselves, are quite disturbing and graphic.)

In the end, I enjoyed the documentary in that I learned about a sick fuck that I knew little about, and though parts of the film were done very well, I think it could have been a bit shorter, which would have made a more poignant impact.  I give it 3 out of 5 stars.

My Review of 'The Infinite' by Douglas Clegg

I finished reading Douglas Clegg's The Infinite last week and I thought I would share my thoughts on the book.  First off, it was the Leisure mass market paperback edition.  Whether or not it is still available, I do not know.  I have been holding on to this copy for quite some time and just got around to reading it.  My TBR pile is astonishing to say the least.

That being said, I give the book 4 out of 5 stars.

The Infinite is from the Harrow series, of which I have only read Nightmare House, though you don't have to have read the previous Harrow books to be able to understand this one.  It stands alone quite nicely filling the reader in on the happenings of Harrow enough for one to get the bigger picture.  In The Infinite three strangers with special abilities are brought to a haunted house for a sum of money in hopes of eliciting the secrets of the house.  Sounds familiar, right?  Well, it's the interaction between the characters and how very real they are that makes this a great read.  The base idea has been done before, bringing strangers into a haunted house, but the depth of the characters and the history of Harrow carries the story to a crescendo of an ending with some very memorable scenes that are still lingering in my mind.

I felt that the beginning was a little slow, a series of character profiles, which is something that usually loses my interest in a novel, however Clegg is a gifted author and he has the ability to lock my eyes on the pages.  I imagine he could write about a sterile white bathroom and I would read to the end.  Yes, I've read several of his other books and found them even better than this one, but that shouldn't take away from what The Infinite has to offer.  If you're looking for gut-busting violence and bloodshed, look elsewhere.  If you're looking for a thought provoking tale of real people dealing with the supernatural, give this one a shot.  And, if you haven't yet read Douglas Clegg...what the hell are you waiting for!