Okay, I Dropped the Ball

I'll skip the overly detailed reasoning behind my nigh-yearlong absence from this site. Just know that things went sideways repeatedly, but I'm back now. Let's look at what's happening with the site first: Movie reviews will probably be starting again next month. Honestly, I've become so disenfranchised with American horror that I thought about killing the section. The last "super scary epic" I saw was the absolutely piss-poor "A Quiet Place" which was more boring, lazily written slop. So, I'm going to give it a go again and we'll see if people can make anything at least vaguely entertaining. The Batman vs Jason project is still ongoing, however I've had to cut my writing time back by over twenty hours a week. This resulted in my prioritizing certain projects over others--which we'll be coming to next. However...

Batman vs Jason won't be getting updated here for the time being. Because my writing time, and thus editing time, has been cut back I'm going to be starting a Patreon site and the new chapters will be one of the "prizes" or whatever they call the incentives there. I'll leave the rough cuts of the first four chapters on here. Going forward I'll be posting them through Patreon and then bringing those chapters here three months later. That being said, I have them plotted out on my outlines for three books worth. You'll want to subscribe, trust me.

Onto those special projects.

Firstly, I'm working on a pulp collection for Bona-Fide Outlaw Free Press and have been struggling with the last two stories in it for about nine months now. This has more to do with non-writing problems than issues with the stories. The series takes place in the 1920s and transverses a number of horror subgenres including one that pays homage to the gialli films of old, namely those of Dario Argento. There's also a werewolf, because lycanthropes are awesome. We're hoping to have it with the editor by January.

Secondly, I've decided to do a series that will be ongoing with one new book per year. I'm editing the first one now and doing some basic rewrites before shipping it off to a professional editor. The novel is called Horror Express and is a semi-novelization of the 1972 film of the same name. This series deals with a haunted drive-in theater in the Ozarks that plays public domain films. Most of the book is the movie that those people are going to see and I think both my fans and fans of classic cinema will love what I've done here. I'll have a whole post about it coming soon, including some beta reviews.

Next up we have my first Kindle Direct publication. It hasn't happened yet, but I'm looking to have it uploaded in time for Halloween. I've published quite a few short stories and have more forthcoming. Of the ones I've published already, I've gotten the rights back to about half of them. So, this October I'll be releasing the first two Mr. Scratch short stories as well as an unpublished tie-in story. As such, I'll be editing and expanding all of them to stretch it out to novella length and to explore some elements that I previously had to gloss over because of word counts. This will lead into the often talked about, but never worked on Mr. Scratch novel...or novella, I'm not making any promises on length. My biggest on-going project now is tentatively called Death Walks Behind You. I'm rapidly approaching the halfway point in the novel and I think you're all going to be blown away by this 80s-Slasher throwback piece. It's funny, it's gory, it's bleak, and it's inspired by actual events. This one has been my baby for a while and I'm stoked to see how its coming along. Lastly, I've been brainstorming a children's book. No, not some young adult shit show. This will be a horror themed learn-to-read book that will feature kids being monsters and the parents that love them. I'm hoping to have some samples up by...Halloween. What can I say, it's the most wonderful time of the year. There's not much to it really. It's going to be a dozen or so kids portraying a dozen or so monsters. So far we have a kaiju, a minotaur, and a slasher confirmed and I'm sitting down with the art in a couple of weeks to get some good prelims done. It'll be cute and sweet and have some bitchin' monsters.

In other news:

I've got a story coming out in Southern Fried Autopsies, an anthology from Burning Willow Press that's edited by the super talented L. Bachman. I don't know when to expect this, I sent in my edits a month ago and I haven't heard anything since. My understanding is that it'll be out some time next year and that it's going to be one of the most awesome things ever printed.

I'm also being featured in this years Fall into Fantasy collection from Cloaked Press with my story Serpent's Rock which also received an honorable mention in the L. Ron Hubbard Writer's of the Future contest last winter. It should be noted that this is my first fantasy story and it kicked that much ass. I'm enthralled by the culture I've created around the main character with this story and I'm dying to get back to his world for more skull-smashing adventures. You're going to want to buy this one. Also coming up is my second collaboration with Colors in Darkness Press. I'll be appearing with Dahlia De Winters, Kenya Moss-Dyme and ten other superstar horror writers in Deadly Bargain with my story Buzzards. This is simply the best story I've ever written. I don't know that I'll ever top it, in fact. I love everything about Buzzards and couldn't be happier with it. Expect to get an official release date in about five weeks. I'll be in an audiobook as part of Bona-Fide Outlaw's Book in a Bottle series. This story, Southern Hospitality, is one of my best to be sure. It's also my steamiest. You're going to love it and it comes with a bottle of wine. There's other writers involved, but I'm your favorite. Since this is an audiobook, the turn around time is a bitch to predict. When I hear something, you'll hear something and trust me when I say you're going to need a cold shower to go with this book. Possibly coming up is Rampage of the Raptortle. I sold this story years ago and the publisher never did anything with it. My emails go unanswered and I'm not the patient type. It's been accepted to a new collection coming in January, but now this publisher is being slow to respond to my inquiries. While I've grown a lot as a writer, this is still one that I love to revisit for the sheer fun of it. It's a great creature feature with a dinosaur-snapping turtle...what more could you want? Hopefully, I'll have more information next week.

That's all I've got for now. I haven't come up with a schedule yet, but moving forward there will be a specific day for these posts and some other fun stuff. In the meantime, you should check out the writing prompt section and get you some inspiration.

David