How Royalties Saved My Ass

I moved from San Diego, California to Tennessee just over a year ago. It was a great move because I pretty well despise California and my family could finally buy a house and not just tread water getting nowhere fast. Moving sucks, and moving across the country is even more challenging. So much goes into the move from renting a storage container for all your stuff, selling off what you cannot bring with, settling in to the new place, getting a job, changing the address on credit cards and whatnot.

Changing credit unions.

I changed my phone number and credit union soon after settling in. I could have held onto both, but I don't have too many friends holding onto that old number, so I figured my chances of getting a job would improve with a local number. I could have continued to use my credit union, but it was a local San Diego credit union without any local business fronts here in Tennessee. Once I had the new account I had to start transferring my money. It took a few months since I could only transfer so much at a time (it's not like I was loaded or anything, but I made decent money in California, at least it would be considered decent in many other states--in California I made a enough to merely survive).

I thought I had my bases covered, had changed payment options on things like PayPal and whatnot. I drained nearly all the money from my San Diego account, but never got around to closing it. With this stimulus payment going out I realized that since I owed California a ridiculous amount of taxes from 2019 (thanks, Cali, go rot in Hell!), I hadn't ever changed the bank account I have on file with the IRS (I haven't gotten a refund in years, so they've had the old account on file going way back). I suppose the last stimulus payment had gone into my San Diego account and had to be transferred over to my Tennessee account. I couldn't remember if it had. Let's face it, that was early 2020, which feels like ten years ago at this point.

Well, I couldn't log onto my old account, so I had to call. No stimulus payment in the account, however I'm told I have a negative balance. The operator says there have been a string of PayPal transactions. Oh shit! I asked him to find out if it is fraud. After a moment he says nope, it's coming from your PayPal account. Double oh shit!

I look into it, and sure enough, PayPal has a stupid method of doing things. I'd changed my credit union on file, but not my debit card. As it turns out money deposited into my PayPal is funneled into my bank on file, and money I spend using PayPal is withdrawn from my debit card. Sigh. So all this time I had my old debit card on file pulling PayPal monies from Ebay purchases, my son's video game purchases and who knows what else. All coming out of a bank account with very little money in it. How bad was this negative balance going to be, and why didn't the old credit union put a stop to the negative transactions. Seems like a red flag to me.

When I got home I was scared to even check my old bank account. I kept thinking that maybe the stimulus money had gone through only to pay back a portion of the massive negative balance I was going to discover.

My negative balance? $81 and some change. What!?

I go back through the last several months on my San Diego account. There's a lot of red with some green here and there. Green? What the hell? I look a little further. All of the deposits highlighted in green are from Amazon. I sit back and think. Why would Amazon be giving me money? Duh, idiot! I forgot to change the bank on file with my Amazon publishing account. Those are my royalties. I'll be damned, but those royalties over the past six months have been paying for all of my PayPal purchases, right up until the end of the year. Only the last two PayPal transactions weren't covered. My old credit union covered overdrafts at a fee of $32 per overdraft.

Had it not been for those royalty payments, I wonder just how far in the red with overdraft fees I would have been. I don't even want to think about it.

That, folks, is how royalties saved my ass.

Oh, yeah, and still no stimulus payment. Go figure.

If you want to help pay off that negative balance, you could always buy one of my books. Check out my Amazon page HERE. And if you'd rather not read one of my books, go check out that new Wesley Southard book Cruel Summer. It just came out from Death's Head Press.

Recent Reads From Hell Pt. II

I've been toying with the idea of starting a YouTube channel where I talk about books I've read and maybe feature some of the books in my ever-growing collection. But like so many things, it's just a thought that dances through my brain. I actually tried recording a video and it looked terrible. One of the great hindrances for me concerning promoting my books is the fact that I know dick about technology. I can't create promo images, promo art, bookmarks, videos that look decent. So, for now, I'll have to come back to this neglected blog.

Here are a few books I've read over the past several months and a few words on each one. Not reviews, just thoughts.

The Manitou by Graham Masterton

Masterton's debut, and what a debut it is. Reading an author's first book is always a bit of a crap shoot. Even great authors sometimes have mediocre first novels. I won't name any here, but I know my first novel (first few novels!) was pretty shitty. Some authors come out of the gate with a masterpiece, like Melanie Tem's Prodigal or Kathe Koja's The Cipher. I wouldn't call The Manitou a masterpiece, but it sure is a hell of a good time. I imagine it was one of the earliest Native American curse type horror stories (there were a lot of them in the horror boom of the 80s). I know I've seen the movie adaptation, but it was many years ago and I don't really remember it. I have a feeling I liked it, but who knows. I used to watch all the horror I could get my hands on, and clearly it wasn't that memorable. The book, however, has stuck in my mind. I've read a few Masterton books this year, and he's rapidly becoming a favorite.

The Magpie Coffin by Wile E. Young

The first of the breakout series of Splatter Western books from the great Death's Head Press. Full disclosure: I'm a Death's Head author, but that has no reflection on my thoughts about this or any other DHP books I feature on my blog. This was, hands down, a fun, gripping read. Kind of like a Sergio Leone spaghetti western, only much darker. If Blondie, The Man with No Name, from the Fistful of Dollars trilogy were a real bad motherfucker (I mean, he is, but I'm talking sadistic here) you'd have the protagonist of this book. He's a fucking maniac, but that's okay. A worthy beginning of what has proven to be a great series of books. Keep 'em coming!

Spawn by Shaun Hutson

This book was kind of nuts, especially for its time. Imagine the guy who works at the hospital tossing refuse such as aborted babies into the incinerator. He's got some serious trauma from his past that causes him to save these aborted fetuses. If that's not crazy enough, imagine what happens when he buries them around the shack he lives in and then lightning strikes the ground! Look, what happens in this book is absolutely batshit crazy. Seriously. You have to take this stuff with a grain of salt. I took a break halfway through and read another book before returning to finish this one. That was mostly because Hutson was telling two stories that eventually merged in the end. The crazy fetus story was engrossing (emphasis on GROSS!), but the escaped mental patient serial killer story was kind of meh. The way they came together worked, and sort of made it all worth it, but it felt like half the book was all aces and the other half was a sleeper. I believe this was Hutson's second or third book after Slugs, and it shows that he improved his craft. Slugs is fun, but this one is even better, both the writing and the plot.

The Uninvited by John Farris

Of the books I've read recently, this one was by far the best. Farris is a brilliant author, a master at the craft, and a exquisite story teller. Interestingly, of all the books of his I've read the only one I didn't like was The Fury, and that's the one he's probably most known for. Oh well. The Uninvited follows a teenage girl who accidentally hits a guy with her and then becomes invested in his recovery after he comes down with amnesia. He has nowhere to go and her father, who's a famous artist, allows him to stay it their house. As she spends time with the guy trying to get him to remember his past, they develop a relationship, but he's...kinda weird. This is one of those books you find yourself deeply invested in and then shit just goes haywire. The greatest part is that I didn't see it coming, the IT being some of the big reveals. This is one of those books I've had on my shelf for years, but never bothered giving a read. Who am I kidding. My shelves are loaded with vintage paperbacks that, unfortunately, I won't get to. This one in particular has been hanging around for well over a decade. I'm glad I gave it a spin.

I hope to blog more about books I've read, but who knows. In the meantime, my latest anthology Chew on This! has been published by Blood Bound Books and is available in print and digital formats. See the blog post below for details.

Chew on This! OUT NOW!

 

 

Chew on This! has everything you need to satiate your appetite for the strange and macabre. 

Tonight’s menu is a fifteen-course meal of subtle and atmospheric tales all the way down to the grisly, blood-drenched extremes.

Creepy restaurants, treacherous take-out, forbidden feasts, and more!

We’ve got horror so good you can taste it!

Dig in!

Featuring: Kristopher Triana – K. Trap Jones – Nikki Noir - Mark C. Scioneaux – Vivian Kasley – Chad Stroup – John McNee – Victorya Chase – Armand Rosamilia – Sarah Johnson and Robert Bose – S.C. Mendes -– Shenoa Carroll-Bradd – Sylvia Anne Telfer – Tonia Brown – Ronald Kelly – Chad Lutzke

 

Purchase HERE in the US, and HERE in the UK. Available worldwide through Amazon.