New Review of SALPSAN

My modern gothic novella SALPSAN was reviewed over at Confessions of a Reviewer recently. They gave the book three out of five stars. Though it's not the most positive review, it's an honest one, and I can appreciate that. It's so difficult to get a book reviewed these days with the glut of material out there (especially a self published book like SALPSAN!), so I am grateful that Confessions of a Reviewer took the time to read my work and review. Though the book didn't fulfill the reviewer, he did make some positive comments concerning the prose and atmosphere I created. This review is definitely worth a read, so please follow the link and see what they have to say. And then, if you feel so inclined, head on over to Amazon and buy a copy. If you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited you can borrow it for free.

Here's the review. Here's the Amazon link.

Roscoe the Clown

It's the month of October, which means one thing...Halloween. This year things got a little...funny. Or maybe not so funny. A lot of people have been clowning around, as we all know from what we've seen on the news. Creepy clowns walking the streets, attacking people, scaring children, making threats on social media, and even doing an interview on one of my local news stations. It's crazy! (That's the tagline for Killer Clowns From Outer Space, by the way.)

To celebrate the madness, I thought I would make my own contribution in the form of a free story. It's a short one. You can read it in less time that it takes to check your twitter feed for the latest Killa Clown sighting. No really, it's that short, but it packs a punch...or maybe a squirt of hydrochloric acid from a fake flower?

Go ahead and play the music above if you are in the position to do so. It will accompany the story quite nicely.

ROSCOE THE CLOWN

Roscoe the clown was looking pale--well, beneath the white greasepaint, bright red painted lips and dark circles around his eyes, he was as pale as death.

His demeanor was lacking. The buoyancy of his gait had been reduced to something along the lines of a lethargic narcoleptic, always appearing to be one step away from collapsing on the ground, or perhaps falling and crushing a gleeful child.

The eyes were gruesome to behold, but the children didn’t seem to care, just the parents that would grab their child’s hand and hurriedly rush them away as if Roscoe would grab and violate them.

“Hey kids!” The voice came from Roscoe’s crooked mouth muffled and low.  “Do you want to see a trick?”

If it weren’t for the smile painted on his face, the kids would have been more aware of the slack jaw with the dried spittle and blood decorating the corners of his mouth.

The kids were uninterested as if they couldn’t hear the faint voice of Roscoe the clown.  They walked away in search of a livelier clown, or perhaps some cotton candy.

Roscoe retreated to his trailer, his steps stiff like a silver screen zombie.

Inside, he collapsed on the bed.  From the back of his colorfully striped clown suit there was movement, and then little hands began unbuttoning the large buttons.

Larry pulled the clown suit back and exited the hollowed out cavity of Roscoe’s body.  The interior had been lined with plush leather--well, as plush as a midget could afford on a carnival wage.  The legs were equipped with stilts that his feet strapped into, the arms with a series of grips fastened to Rosco’s tendons that allowed Larry to manipulate the dead clown’s hands. He was looking forward to showing the children the trick he learned to do with his crude manipulations, but they weren’t paying attention to him.

Roscoe’s body was beginning to rot and it was harder every day for Larry to mask the odor, but he wanted to do just one trick for the kiddies, just one balloon animal.

Larry grabbed a microphone and gutted his stereo system.  If the kids couldn’t hear his muffled voice within Roscoe’s body, damn-it, he would just have to wire the clown for sound.

 

So there you have it. I hope you enjoyed my little Halloween treat. If you did and you would like more, please check out my Amazon page, featuring my latest release, Salpsan.

"Robert Essig has crafted one creepy-as-hell tale of modern gothic horror that sets an ominous tone from the first few words and never lets up. Told from the POV of an unconventional narrator with secrets of her own, Salpsan is a dark, dark story that will prove you wrong several times when you think you know where it's going. I enjoyed it immensely, and can't wait to read more from this writer!" -- James Newman, author of Odd Man Out, Animosity, and Ugly As Sin

"With Salspan, Essig takes you on a twisted journey through the Spanish hillside; one full of intrigue, memorable characters and hellish encounters. This is a story that will stick with you, long after turning the last page. --K. Trap Jones, author of The Charm Hunter, The Sinner and The Harvester

Dark Moon Digest Celebrates Six Years!

It's almost Halloween, and that means a new issue of Dark Moon Digest,from the fine folks at Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing. Number 25, to be exact, and that also marks their six year anniversary. Congratulations to Max Booth III and Lori Michelle for continuing to publish this nifty horror magazine, and to Stan Swanson for starting it all back in 2010.

This issue also marks my first time being published in Dark Moon Digest, along with my cohort in evil, Jack Bantry. Our story "A Lesson in Renegade Filmmaking" follows the budding friendship between an odd video store clerk and a young kid who has a hankering for horror films. The clerk has a lot of knowledge to teach the young kid about the finer points of horror film history, but how much is too much?

I love this story. It's a cool little coming of age tale that incorporates some of my favorite horror movies, and it I feel that it winds the reader up for quite a wallop. This one is for all of you out there with a deep love for classic horror films.

Get your copy straight from the publisher, or from Amazon.

New Local Horror Anthology

There's a brand spanking new anthology from Grand Mal Press featuring some of San Diego's horror writers including myself, as well as David Agranoff, Ryan C. Thomas, Chad Stroup, Anthony Trevino, and Brian Killian.

My story "Starving Artist" examines with the horror of dealing with an uninvited house guest who will NOT go away.

This book is available in paperback right now, with the kindle version to follow soon.

Local Horror Author Panel Podcast

Last Saturday at the big downtown San Diego Central Library I took part in an event with a few of my fellow local horror authors where we discussed out favorite horror novels, short stories, movies and what it is about horror that gets our gears going. It was a fun and lively panel and Horror Imaginings Film Festival & Podcast brings the event to you this week in episode 147: Halloween Super Special with SoCal Horror Authors! Have a listen HERE. Pictured, from left to right: me, Ryan C. Thomas, David Agranoff, Bryan Killian, Scott Sigler, Miguel Rodriguez.

Books on Sale

My novel People of the Ethereal Realm is on sale for the month of October, along with many other Post Mortem Press titles. Just .99 cents for kindle download. This is the month everyone else celebrates horror. Join the club. I celebrate every damn day of the year. Read a good book and leave a review.

How I Got Into Horror--Origins of a Disciplined Madman

Some people think that horror authors are nestled at the bottom of the literary barrel with the discarded bones, residual muck and furry mold. People who don't "get it" often ask: "Why horror?" as if we have a choice. Like maybe we woke up one day and said to ourselves, "You know, maybe I should write something. What genre should I choose? Hmmm... I know! I'll write horror."

Nope. Doesn't work that way. Not for me, and not for most authors in our field. It's a passion that, for many of us, started when we were youngins. Some authors dabble in many genres, but many of us who write horror have no choice. I've started so many dramatic stories with the intention to stay away from the gruesome stuff and every time, by the end of the story, someone died, blood was shed, or it became horrific in one way or the other. It's in my DNA.

So how does one get into horror? I blame Fangoria and my good friend Jon, both of which were catalysts for what became my passion for horror and the macabre. Also, good ol' video stores. I didn't get into reading until I read Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" in Jr. high, but I was a fan of horror long before that.

On the playground at school my buddy Jon would tell me about Freddy Kruger. He'd seen several of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies and he would tell me all about them. It would be a while before I saw A Nightmare on Elm Street, but I couldn't wait. Back in those days my mother would pick me up from after school day care and sometimes stop by the market on the way home. I hovered over the magazine rack while she shopped, face planted firmly in the latest issue of Fangoria. I went home with horrors in my head, bouncing around the ethers of my mind. Sometimes after dinner I would go out in the backyard and wander around, thinking about the gruesome stuff I'd seen in Fangoria, making up my own stories for Freddy and Leatherface.

Little did I know, that at that young age, I was creating. Yes, the stories in my mind were "fan fiction" based on characters of which I had never actually seen on screen, but they were stories nonetheless. My mind was something I used a lot, being an only child. I came up with all kinds of stories, some of which I have actually written all these years later.

As a young teen I pretty much rented every movie in the horror section at our several video stores along 2nd Street. Favorites included Hellraiser, Dead Alive, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Evil Dead, Halloween, The Toxic Avenger and many others. I watched all the sequels, the crappy direct to video releases and even the older cult classics, which eventually became my preference. I'm a sucker for sixties and seventies horror cinema.

Once I discovered the written word via Shirley Jackson, HP Lovecraft, Stephen King and Clive Barker, I was hooked. What once was a cinematic gorehound had quickly become a voracious reader. I only wish there had been someone there to lead me to some authors other than the bestsellers. I wish I'd been a more diverse reader back then. But that's another subject for another blog post.

Those are my horror origins condensed into a few paragraphs.

Free Story for Halloween

Well, it's the week before Halloween, so I decided to publish a flash fiction story I wrote a few weeks ago called Fitting In. Every year I have the desire to write Halloween stories this time of year, but I always have a difficult time rendering original ideas. For a holiday that celebrates the dark side you would think I'd be chock full of ideas, but that's not the case. I've always found Halloween a difficult subject matter for fiction. This year, however, I ended up writing two Halloween themed stories. One is an as yet unpublished story called The Beauty Mark and other is here for you to read for free. I hope you enjoy it. Happy Halloween!

Fitting In



By Robert Essig

 



It wasn't until my sixteenth birthday that I really fit in with my family.

Sounds crazy, I know, but, no matter how generous my mother, father and older siblings were, I couldn't help but wonder why I looked the way I did. Why did I look like the people outside walking on the sidewalk and those I saw on TV, yet the people who raised me and taught me kindness and trust were monsters?

 

***

I was born on Halloween night.

We all were.

So far as I know it has been some sort of ritual handed down over the years. Just don't ask me how that figures into the unpredictable nature of human conception.

We have a grand party every year on Halloween in celebration of all our birthdays as well as the holiday that celebrates the damned. Yes, I'm well aware of the Samhain roots (and yes, I know how to pronounce it!), but my family's origins came much later, and to us Halloween is a celebration of the damned.

"How'd your mask turn out?" my mother asked.

I gave her a cursory look and then a glance toward the hatbox on my nightstand in which the mask in question was concealed. I finished it weeks ago.

"It's perfect," I said.

My mother nodded. She was so beautiful with her beady eyes like the dark centers of olives in a face of dead green flesh. Her best attribute was her protruding nose, all crooked with the perfect wart on the tip, off centered just to the right.

There would be a lot of kids in witch costumes tonight. They would attempt to look half as good as my mother. As I look into those gleaming little spheres I see all the love she has given me and I hope that someday when I have kids I could be half the mother she is to me.

"I can't wait to see it," she said before patting my knee and walking out of the room.

***

Everyone crowded around the front door at the sound of the flat noted chimes that bellowed down the foyer.

It was midnight.

"I was afraid we wouldn't get even one trick 'r treater this year," said Uncle Rich. Bolts protruded from either side of his neck, one a half an inch lower than the other. His head was flat like someone had cut the top off with a guillotine. He'd never been all that creative.

"It's Julia's sixteenth birthday," said Aunt Patricia. "Of course there's going to be one. I never doubted it."

Aunt Patricia's face was smooth like a porcelain doll, half of it the perfect image of something like a Geisha, the other half cracked with chunks that had fallen out revealing the scaled flesh of the creature beneath.

I'd always admired Aunt Patricia's artistry.

The hatbox with my mask waited for me on a table at the front door.

"Go on," said my father, flashing me a fanged smile.

He and Mother had gone traditional, much like Uncle Rich, but with far more attention to detail.

My brother and sister stood like grinning sentinels, Jim with horns on a head of red flesh and she like a Disney villain of her own creation.

I opened the box. My hard work, blood, sweat and tears were inside. I'd spent almost a year working on the mask. There was a lot a of detail, after all, and I wanted to be sure that my destiny would be as pleasing to the eye as Aunt Patricia's masterwork.

I pulled the mask out of the box and held it up to my face. I didn't turn to face my family and show off my exquisite artistry for that wouldn't matter until the ritual was complete.

The doorbell rang again.

I opened the door, the fingers of my other hand firmly grasping the chin of the mask, holding it up to my face.

The kids were maybe fifteen. Both boys. One with a smeared skeleton face of white and black grease paint; the other with a deadpan Michael Myers mask.

They both took one look at me and dropped their hefty pillowcases of candy. Couldn't see Mike's face, but Mr. Smeary Skull looked like he might need a change of underwear.

Their fright caused my mask to tighten like someone was pulling plastic wrap over my face. I felt an instant of fear, even claustrophobia as the eye holes began to deepen and the mask seemed to want to swallow me up and lock me behind papier-mâché and latex. I let go of the chin. The mask remained fixed to my skin. Soon enough the hollows I had been peering through sank away and, after a feeling like someone had smeared clay across my cheeks, I felt comfortable in my new skin.

I turned from the lonely sacks of candy adorning the porch to face my family.

Aunt Patricia smiled and tilted her head to show the flawless half of her doll face, as if to praise me on my attention to detail. My mother and father smiled as well. My siblings grinned wider as if remembering their own sixteenth birthdays not so long ago.

The snakes that now roiled atop my head hissed their approval. My forked tongue darted over the elongated teeth that now racked my jaws. I put a hand to my cheek, running it down the fine layers of delicate, soft scales.

I have always been apart of this macabre family, but now, after my transformation, I truly fit in.

 

I hope you enjoyed that little Halloween tale. If you are interested, check out my novels Through the In Between, Hell Awaits, and People of the Ethereal Realm.