Following my Heart for Horror or How I Decided to Stop Worrying and Love to Write

I've been going through a rough patch concerning my own writing. I write daily (or as close to it as I can manage), but I've found myself with a shit-ton of unfinished projects. I have this problem, you see. I start something and then I get another idea that I feel a rush of excitement about and I stop what I'm writing to focus on the new project. Then, of course, I get another killer idea and I stop writing whatever I was currently tooling with and pursue the new idea. The major downfall of this is that some of these stories become stagnant and may never be able to be resurrected or may just sit in the Works in Progress folder on my computer for the unforeseeable future... Worse yet is the growing pile of these stories, these fragments and lost dreams. Sometimes they call to me, yearning to be complete.

So last night I woke up at three in the morning. My industrial fan was keeping me damn cold, which is the way I like to sleep, however it was playing games with my sinuses. After a half an hour of sneezing and blowing my nose, I turned the light on and busted out my laptop. I saw no less than five stories all open at one time. I cringed. I looked at each one trying to decide what to work on and I was wanting to go back to sleep so I didn't have to make that decision.

Man, I didn't like the way that felt. I love to write, so why would I want an excuse not to do so.

I realized then that there was a story I started a few months back that I had been secretly thinking about while working on stories for specific submission calls that sounded fun but were nothing of the sort. Yes, a story that had been percolating in my mind for years that I was finally ready to write. When I had started working on it I laid down six thousand words and moved onto something else. I read those words last night and decided to stick with the story until I finish the first draft. I work better that way. I may slip a short in here or there, but I seem to be able to only work on one long piece of fiction at a time. So be it.

Think I'll work on that story right now.

Cheers!

Splatterpunk # 5 - OUT NOW!

Fiction: Adam Cesare, Shane McKenzie, Monica J. O’Rourke, John Boden. Art: Dan Henk, Jim Agpalza, Daniele Serra, Frank Walls. Interview: Jeff Burk. Non-Fiction: Nathan Robinson, Shane McKenzie, Jack Bantry. Reviews: Gabino Iglesias, Robert Essig, Nathan Robinson, Jack Bantry.

In this issue I review Pus Junkies by Shane McKenzie and Animosity by James Newman. Wanna know what I think of those books? You better grab a copy of Splatterpunk #5 before they sell out, because they always sell out. Just look at the list of contributors and tell me you don't want this mag. I'll look you dead in the eyes and tell you you're lying. Trust me, you want this.

Order your copy HERE.

People of the Ethereal Realm Excerpt

My novel People of the Ethereal Realm has been out for a little while now. It has been some time since I did any promotion on this book, so I thought I would post the prologue and first chapter here on my blog. I appreciate those of you who take the time to read this. I hope it creates a spark of interested and, of course, I hope you purchase the book. It is available at all major online retailers, and I will provide links after the excerpt.

Enjoy!

 

 

Prologue

IT WAS A NIGHT OF DISTURBED SLEEP, covers sweaty and forlorn, thrashed and piled atop one another haphazardly. There seemed to be something stirring, drawing Gerald from his slumber. Usually, he slept very well—like the dead as some would say, though he was quite reluctant of using such an analogy.

His eyes opened into darkness, not to the pitch of night, but of blindness. He could remember nights when he still had sight, and the fears that the dark seemed to display in every shadowed corner, silhouettes that would appear perfectly harmless in the morning light. Now, those fears seemed silly to him.

As he woke in the middle of the night, sweating and disturbed, it was the sounds—or lack thereof—that could bring those childhood fears of the dark back to him. Though it wasn’t the dark, per se, that brought fear into the mind of a blind man.

Gerald could tell by the utter silence that it was about three in the morning. The city was always quiet during those wee hours in the middle of the night, long after last call. The only sound was that of an occasional car driving by.

Yet, there was something awry, something he could sense, though he was uncertain of what was wrong. Perhaps an intruder, but he would have heard a noise by now, his hearing having been amplified in the years since the onslaught of his blindness. Then something caught his eyes, something shadowed and still, standing at the foot of his bed. How could that be?

“You can see me, blind man?” said a soft female voice.

Gerald was too shocked for words. How could a woman be standing at the foot of his bed? How was it that he could see her?

 She’s no woman, thought Gerald. She’s a spirit.

“I can smell your fear, blind man . . . but you not need worry of me.”

“How?” Never before had one of them been able to talk so coherently. This woman was something of a spiritual miracle, or perhaps a demon. He wasn’t experienced with demons.

“You need not know how, blind man. I require your help.”

Gerald was very used to hearing the phrase “I need your help” from the living, but this woman—this shrouded figure standing before him—was no longer of the living, of that he was sure.

 

After a pregnant pause, filled with Gerald’s steady breathing, she made her request. “I need you to find my Arthur. I haven’t seen him in two hundred years.”

Chapter One

LIFE CAN BECOME SOMEWHAT OF A RITUAL, a routine that sneakily takes hold without notice, and before too long there seems to be no way to alleviate the monotony. For some, the simplistic ritual of everyday life is a means of stability and comfort. For others, it can act as a wedge that creates a divide—each monotonous ritual a swing of the mallet on that wedge, widening the divide and further separating what once was whole.

 

For Adam and Justine Kroger, there was such a wedge (probably made of steel, maybe even titanium) that had been driven between them. It happened so slowly that neither of them noticed it distinctly enough to confront one another. If neither truly recognized there was an issue, they would never know how to properly address it or seek counseling, now would they?

 

Their routine always included Justine heading off to the hospital at ten, while Adam was left home alone for the night—simple as that. Well, maybe it wasn’t quite that simple.

It had been that way for the past several years of their marriage—hell, for the whole five years of their marriage. When nine-thirty rolls around, Justine’s dressed in her scrubs. With a peck on the cheek, she’s off to the graveyard shift at the hospital.

Adam would smile, kiss her back, and tell her he’d see her in the morning before work. On those dreary mornings (he, foggy brained from sleep; she, worn out from work) they would have an hour together to eat. He would have breakfast, while she would have what served as dinner. It became a routine, a goddamned ritual. Yet, they were oblivious to the detrimental effects it was having on their relationship. 

 

They were used to sleeping solitarily—he at night, her in the afternoon. With such a schedule, sex was almost nonexistent. Seeing one another at odd times—each in different moods and stages of tiredness—made lovemaking a thing of the past. Yes, she had two days off every week when their schedules were normal, but on those days Justine only wanted to catch up on her sleep.

Adam thought about their predicament while sitting in his easy chair, sipping a beer and watching Sports Center. This was his little ritual every night. The one perk of not having his wife around was that he could watch whatever he damn well pleased on TV. Then there were the nights when he couldn’t stop thinking about what their lives had become. She was gone every night, while he sat at home alone, drinking into oblivion. He very much had begun to realize the throes of their daily routine. It was crazy.

 

For all he knew, she could be having a fling with one of the male nurses. What else did they have to do as they waited for the next car wreck victim or amputee to waltz into the ER? A lot of time was left getting to know one another, more time than Adam seemed to have with Justine lately.

It’s cryin’ time again.

Adam hated the thoughts that the beer brought on. His father had called drinking “cryin’ time”. Apparently, his old man had had a lot of “cryin’ time” in his life, too, for cirrhosis of the liver had taken him at fifty-six. 

 

What was it with alcohol anyway? It seemed to have an effect on him that rendered his mind to a basic paranoia between his wife and their failing marriage. It wasn’t as if she had done anything behind his back in the past. Nothing you know of, his mind interrupted.

He took another swig, trying to focus on the hockey scores, but he couldn’t. His mind was troubling him more than usual, pestering him with thoughts of infidelity—his wife with Derek, that male nurse she worked with, her back against the wall of a storage closet, his hands groping at the landscape of her body. In Adam’s mind, Derek gives her a kiss, one the French would be proud of, a kiss a thousand times more passionate than the little peck she gave Adam before she left the house. Then, he unzips the front of her uniform, and . . .

Shut the hell up!

It was the beer again, talking, whispering jealous thoughts into Adam’s ear. It’s cryin’ time again.

“I should write a cheesy romance novel thinking up things like that,” Adam said aloud, addressing an empty room.

“I don’t know what the hell I’m thinking.”

He took his empty into the kitchen and exchanged it for a fresh beer. He cracked the top and took a hefty guzzle. It was getting late, but what would one more hurt?

Back in the comfy confines of his easy chair, Adam finally extinguished his ridiculous fears about his wife’s loyalties. What was he so scared of anyway? The hospital could be busy at night, especially the ER. She was probably getting an IV set up for someone who’d come down with a terrible sickness, or drawing someone’s blood, or . . .

Nothin’ to worry about, Adam thought as he swallowed the last drops of his final beer for the night. It was after midnight: past Adam’s bedtime. Tomorrow would be like every other day. How dull does that sound? He would wake up at six in the morning. Justine would walk in the door around six-thirty, exhausted from a night of dealing with everything from bloody bodies to crazy night owls and drunkards. They would have a meal together, and then he would be off to the shop to build custom cabinets.

Then, she would do whatever it is she did during the day.

“Don’t even think about it,” he scolded himself. “She sleeps during the day, does housework. That’s it. Don’t start in on the cheating shit.”

After brushing his teeth, he crawled into the lonesome bed. It was the lack of intimacy that was frying his brain with thoughts of infidelity, thoughts of Justine and Derek in the storage room at the hospital. For all he knew, she was having the same questionable feelings toward him. She may be at the hospital this very minute, racking her troubled mind over the awful thought of Adam at home, in bed with a mystery woman.

Yeah right. That’ll never happen.

It was the last thought Adam had before he retired to the land of dreams. He didn’t sleep the whole night through, though. There came a disturbance in the middle of the night, both strange and enticing. It was about three in the morning when Adam was awoken by the feeling of someone beneath the sheets with him.

At first, his eyes opened wide at the lump beneath the covers, wondering what was going on. Instinct told him to kick and push the intruder away, but after gathering his thoughts together (feeling the unseen bedmate pulling his boxers off) he realized the person meant no harm. That didn’t make what was happening any better, but likewise, Adam’s body failed to reject the caressing of soft hands beneath the sheets. His heart raced as she caressed and stroked him.

 

Has to be a she, right? Could this obscene intruder be some crazed homosexual?

To him, it sure didn’t feel like it, but what did he know about crazed homosexuals? The hands were petite and soft, definitely a woman’s hands.

As his mind unglued from the epoxy of deep sleep, he realized what was going on. He felt ashamed for allowing some mysterious person to pleasure him, because at first he was willingly acknowledging the possibility that it was indeed a stranger. It wasn’t anyone unknown, though. The thoughts and feelings were something he was going to have to keep to himself.

It was Justine.

She had done this once before, after unexpectedly being allowed to leave the hospital early. That was several years ago (back when their bond had been still very tight, before that pesky wedge began splitting the seam), and it had scared the shit out of Adam. Though, it was a pleasant surprise.

He smiled and groaned, letting her know he was awake and enjoying her little surprise. It had been a long time since they’d been with one another sexually, maybe three months. He couldn’t have been happier.

And I was thinking she was hot for Derek.

As good as her mouth felt, he knew she wasn’t a big fan of giving oral sex. 

 

“Baby, come here,” he said, reaching for her beneath the covers. As he grabbed for her—wanting to pull her forward and kiss her the way he’d imagined she was kissing Derek in the storage closet—the shape beneath the covers disappeared. He gasped, groping air and empty sheets, searching the empty bed frantically for his wife.

 

Had she slipped away and was crouched on the floor playing some kind of trick?

“Honey, where are you? I can’t see . . . my eyes haven’t adjusted.”

There was no response.

“Where are you? Are you gonna try and sneak up on me again?”

Still no answer came. The night suddenly felt cold and dark, and just a little frightening. Had it been some lunatic, some mad-person getting their rocks off on giving unsuspecting strangers blowjobs in the middle of the night?

Oh my God!

 

Adam jumped out of the bed, nearly tripping because of the boxers around his ankles. He reached the light switch and flicked it on, ready for anything, but there was nothing. No deranged queer, no Justine. The room was empty.

He looked down at the boxers hanging around his ankles and pulled them up. If there was no one in the room, then how had his boxers been pulled down? He hadn’t pulled them down, he was sure of that. Besides, it felt so real. Disbelieving his own mind, Adam walked around the bed and looked under it for good measure. He found nothing.

It could have been a dream, but Adam didn’t believe it. He could separate a dream from the real thing, and what he had felt under those covers had been no dream. If it were a dream, when had he woken up? He had reached his hand out to his wife, and with his touch, the sheets had dropped over him as the shape disappeared. At no point had he felt as though he’d awakened from a dream. It was real, all of it.

I felt her hands on my flesh for crying out loud!

As he thought about it, he could pinpoint when he had woken up. He had awakened as he felt someone beneath the sheets pulling his boxers down. How could he not wake up? It was the kind of thing that didn’t happen every night.

It had to be real, he thought in disbelief. Hadn’t it?

Sitting on the bed, Adam knew sleep would be nonexistent for the rest of the night. If the experience had been merely a dream, that would have been one thing. However, he was adamant that what had happened, what he felt under those sheets, was real. Even as he thought about it, it seemed real, felt real. He knew the power of dreams and how life-like they could be, but never before was he convinced that a dream really happened.

The phone on the nightstand caught his eye. Perhaps he should call Justine, just to make sure.

I don’t need to call her. If that was her, she wouldn’t have snuck away like that. The gag would be over by now.

Against his own better judgment, he picked up the phone and dialed the number to the hospital. After several rings, the receptionist answered. “Kaiser Hospital, how may I direct your call?”

“May I speak to nurse Justine Kroger, please,” Adam said, disguising his voice to sound like that of an old decrepit man.

“Let me see.”

Oh God, she’s gonna’ tell me Justine went home early.

 

“Let me page her. One moment, please.”

“Thank you.” His old man voice was about as authentic as Pamela Anderson’s breasts.

After what seemed like a small eternity, a voice he knew very well said, “This is Justine Kroger.”

Adam abruptly hung the phone up, as if she would know it was him based on the pattern of his breathing. He looked at the phone resting in its cradle as if it were something evil. In some part of his mind, he thought she actually was at home, playing some elaborate prank on him. It was the only logical explanation.

“If not her, then who?”

Suddenly, the house felt eerie. Gooseflesh created a bumpy landscape on his arms, as the feeling of being watched took hold of his worried mind. The room seemed to swell—every crack and corner a place that eyes could be watching from, eyes of the stranger who’d snuck into his bed.

But you enjoyed it!

He felt sick because it was the truth. For a moment there, before he thought it was his wife, he had been ready to go along no matter who it was. It seemed like some sort of fantasy, where a mysterious woman wakes him out of a sweet slumber for a night of unadulterated sex, and it had felt good.

Once again he felt ashamed of himself, the idea of some crazy intruder watching him now fading like an old Polaroid. It was a dream, he told himself, nothing but the makings of a teenage sex dream. 

 

But you’re no teenager.

With that, Adam nestled back under the sheets and fell asleep, much quicker than he thought he would.

***

Praise for People of the Ethereal Realm:

"People of the Ethereal Realm is a wicked tale of possession and mayhem that is sure to unnerve the most seasoned horror fan! It's original, frightening, and very creepy! A ghost tale with razor sharp teeth! I loved it!"

--David Bernstein, author of Damaged Souls and Machines of the Dead


"Robert Essig's voice is a beautiful thing. He wields it like a handcrafted baseball bat, and People of the Ethereal Realm is Essig at his finest, with a story that hits hard but leaves pretty scars."

-- Craig Saunders, author of Deadlift and The Estate


"People of the Ethereal Realm starts off slow, allowing us to get comfortable with the characters, but then picks up so rapidly that you find yourself turning pages for hours. I finished this book in two sittings. Well done!"

-- Michael S. Gardner, author of Betrayal


People of the Ethereal Realm is available at Amazon, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.

We Are What We Are

I have a hard time finding decent horror movies these days. It gets discouraging, having to go through so many terrible films with horrid acting, bad cinematography, and cliched plots. Even the ones that are done right tend to be predictable.

Take the movie my wife and I watched the other night, We Are What We Are, the 2013 remake of a Mexican horror film released in America under the same name in 2010. The micro synopsis on Netflix said it was a film about a cannibal family struggling to hold onto their bizarre traditions. Right there they gave the first three quarters of the movie away. Before we started watching, we knew they were cannibals, yet the plot was designed to keep that important point a mystery, as if the viewer would be shocked when they discovered the family were indeed cannibals.

That bugged me. A lot. This film is a slow burn. The actors were great, particularly Bill Sage, who played the father, and his two daughters, played by Julia Garner and Ambyr Childers. I was drawn into the film by the performances. Mediocre acting would have been this film's demise, that's for sure. I mean they gave away a huge element of the plot before the damn thing started.

So, after slogging through a film that went exactly where I thought it was going to go, we were rewarded with a tense and brilliant ending. All of the elements of the first three quarters of the film came together, and it suddenly didn't matter that you began to feel that maybe you wasted an hour of your life watching a movie go nowhere. Oh, it went somewhere, and I was left thinking to myself, "What the fuck just happened?" The movie began with a match to a fuse that slowly inched its way toward what would prove to be a hell of an explosive end.

If you have Netflix, give We Are What We Are a shot. If you feel like the film is dragging, well, it is, but stick with it. The end is worth the wait.

Happy nightmares, fiends!

Brain Damage (Dark Side of the Tomb)

Sit back, drink some mushroom tea, put that Pink Floyd record on the turntable. You know the one. Dark Side of the Moon. Embrace the popping and hiss as the time-worn needle abuses old vinyl. Your mind wanders. The familiar tunes you've heard on you local classic rock station over and over and over begin to change. Subtle at first, and then the song Brain Damage seeps into your cranium and you realize that this is not the Pink Floyd you grew up on. This is something else altogether:

The Zombie walks upon the grass
The zombie walks upon the grass
Remembering brains and blood and guts and laughs
Got to keep the zombies on the path

The zombie creeps within the hall
The Zombies creep within my hall
Dead hands rip the flesh as brains fall to the floor
And everyday they moan for more

And if the crypt breaks open many years too soon
And if there's no more room in Hell
And when your head explodes we'll feast upon the goo
I'll eat you on the dark side of the tomb

The zombies feat upon my brains
The zombies feast upon my brains
You bare your teeth, you make the change
You eat my flesh and I'm insane

Walk through the door
Zombies I can see
Someone eats my brain, but it's not me

And if your head bursts, blood comes out your ears
You shout and no one seems to hear
If the rotters start to kill beneath the moon
I'll eat you on the dark side of the tomb

The Price of a Smile or How I Negotiated my Way Through a Bad Pizza in Anaheim

My wife and I took our son to Disneyland's California Adventure for his fifth birthday. We weren't sure what to expect. We'd taken him to Disneyland when he was three and he pretty much hated it. Our saving grace was the It's a Small World ride. That was the only one he enjoyed. So, yes, we were apprehensive. On top of that, the cost to get into the park for a family of three is somewhere around three-hundred dollars. Let that sink in. It's just a theme park. You know, rides, parades, people dressed as Disney characters, hour-long waits, over priced food, a lot of walking, enough people to make you feel like a herd of cattle. Three-hundred bucks we paid for that.

But my son Noland loved it. He behaved himself better than usual and was eager to go on several rides (you really can't go on many considering the long waits, and I was astonished that he held it together in those lines). The best part was a parade that featured several characters from Pixar movies like Cars and Monsters, Inc. We were bushed and decided to sit on the sidewalk and wait for the parade. Noland was happier than I've ever seen him, and he got a lot of attention from the characters in the parade. That, my friends, was worth the exorbitant fee to get into the place.

But what about the pizza? Ah, the pizza.

We stayed at a motel called the Jolly Roger. We've stayed there before, back when the Disneyland entrance was on the other side of the park, where the California Adventure is now. You have to walk a few blocks to get to the entrance now, the consequence of which has caused the motel to lose business, which has resulted in a sub par experience for all. The stairs were all rusted, we were awakened at four in the morning by a beeping fire alarm with a low battery in the room next to ours, there was construction next door where the pools used to be, and the people in the room next to us insisted on slamming the door repeatedly from five AM until we left the place at nine-thirty. They were also kind enough to allow their children to run down the corridor, back and forth, as if they had declared themselves human alarm clocks, because no one in the place wanted to sleep past five anyway, right?

So, after we settled into our room, finished with our Disney excursion, we decided to order a pizza, something we have done after just about every Disneyland trip since my wife and I were dating. I went into the lobby and asked the desk clerk for suggestions. He gave me three menus and pointed out the one that was most popular with their guests.

Now, I have rules about ordering pizza. First off, I check the menu to see if they offer artichoke hearts as an additional topping. The first menu (the name escapes me), the one that was popular, indeed offered artichoke hearts. Good. Great. I set that one aside. The second menu, for a place called California Pizza Kitchen, looked like something from a themed joint you take your kids for their birthday. I reluctantly checked the toppings and discovered, not to my surprise, that they did not offer artichoke hearts.

I promptly threw the menu on the floor.

The third menu looked promising, but alas they too did not offer artichoke hearts. That one found its home on the floor as well.

It appeared that the popular vote won the battle of the three pizza joints, and so I embarked on making a call to order my family a pie. We decided on artichoke hearts and ham. So here's another pet peeve of mine. Ham is ham and Canadian bacon is what should be offered for your pizza. I mean who wants deli ham on their pizza? Not me. I said to my wife something along the lines of, "Maybe I should ask for Canadian Bacon. What if they actually put ham on our pizza. I'd be devastated." She told me that most pizza places use the word ham, but it's always Canadian bacon. I know this to be true and I'm against it one hundred percent.

I call the place and I'm told that they are out of artichoke hearts. WHAT? You must be kidding me! I just about lost my will to be. I scrambled for an adequate substitution, but my mind was all a flurry. How is it a reputable Italian restaurant runs out of artichoke hearts? My mind flashed words of doubt in red. I was speechless. Alas, my wife came to rescue and said we should get bell peppers. Okay. Fine. Bell peppers it is. Sit back, have a drink, take a deep breath, and wait for a knock at the door. It's gonna be all right. Really, it is.

Or was it?

About a half an hour later there was a knock on the door. I opened it to a grinning little man with a pizza box. I gave him a hundred dollar bill and he gave me my change, purposely giving seven dollars in ones when he could have given a five and two singles, you know, for the tip. I gave him a five. I tip good for good service. I close the door and promptly opened the lid...

Diced bell peppers.

Read that a few times. Let it sink in. Have you ever gotten even a decent pizza with diced bell peppers on it? Me neither. You wanna know why? Because fresh peppers are always cut into strips. That they were diced meant they came out of a bag in the freezer?

You know what's even worse than that? You guessed it. Ham meant ham. Deli ham. All over the pizza with all those nasty little mushy diced peppers that have no substance because they'd been frozen an hour ago. The dough tasted like it was maybe one of those quick rising jobs that comes out of a bag. No yeast, just add water. There was a lot of cheese, but no amount of cheese could have saved this sorry excuse for a pizza from such a shameful preparation. And all this from the place that so many Jolly Rogers guests claimed to enjoy.

I planted my palm firmly against my forehead.

To think I paid eighteen dollars for that shit.

But, in the end, my son had a wonderful time that day, so, even with a belly full of shitty pizza, it was well worth it.

Now, go give your kid a hug. And if you don't have children, give your dog or cat a hug.

Cheers!

Review Reward Month

March is Review Reward Month at Grand Mal Press. In a nutshell, that means you will receive a free ebook for every amazon review you leave for a Grand Mal title in the month of March. The details are here on the Grand Mal website. It's very easy to do, and well worth it. They have a number of titles to choose from, and who doesn't like something for FREE?

So, if you have read my Grand Mal title Through the In Between, Hell Awaits, leave a review and email the link to Grand Mal. They'll allow you to choose which ever title you like from their catalogue and send you the ebook file. Maybe you've read several Grand Mal titles and have yet to write reviews. Well, get reviewing and receive a free title for each one. Simple as pie.