Bookangel Reviews Horn Lake

 

I haven't been able to mail out any review copies for Horn Lake, so imagine my surprise to discover Bookangel just put up a review for it.

Link to review

They give it four out of five stars, and my favorite comment from the review was, "It has the rarest accolade I can offer: No one in this book is stupid." I like that they caught that because seeing stupid characters get used to make horror scenarios work is a pet peeve of mine.

Anyway, it was a relief to know they enjoyed it, and this was a nice surprise to end October on.

HORN LAKE Now Available on Kindle!

Horn Lake is now available on the Kindle HERE.

 

 Jackie Harmon has her hands full.

Her business executive husband is a driven overachiever. Her two teenage stepsons each come with their own form of trouble, and her recently returned sixteen-year-old daughter from a previous marriage simply despises her. As if all this wasn’t enough, she’s been forced to move.
In a bid to keep the older boy out of jail, her husband has uprooted them all from their home in Chicago to Horn Lake, a vacant rural property in southeast Texas. It will be lonelier than life in the city, although the accommodations are grand and Jackie is resolved to adapt.
But the house on Horn Lake is not as empty as it appears. Their new home was once the setting for an atrocity that left six people dead in a blood-soaked tale of betrayal and vengeance…
…and a drama that has scenes yet to play.
For the past still lingers at Horn Lake. It will slowly start to creep out from the shadows, and close in around them. Once it does, terror and tragedy will strike, and Death will stalk the grounds once more.

 

I hope everybody enjoys it, and if you did please leave a review. They help so much.

Horn Lake is Coming

 

I know it’s been a long time, but the wait is almost over.

At 210,000 words, the rough draft of Horn Lake is finished and the editing process is well underway. I am shooting for an early September release.

This is far and away the most difficult project I’ve ever undertaken… not only due to its size, or the complication of the growing paralysis in my hands, but the challenge of presenting a big story with a complex series of character arcs in a way that doesn’t lose the reader. There were times I despaired of being able to do it. Yet finally here we are, and the feedback from my proofreaders has been positive, so I’m hopeful I’ve pulled it off.

After writing of zombies, giant spiders, and monster-infested suburban neighborhoods, Horn Lake is my stab at a haunted house novel… although there is a little more to it than that. Now to get it through the polishing stages so it can be the best version of itself possible.

I thank all of you for waiting.

So What's Going On?

Q: Are you still writing?

A: Yes. Very slowly. I tried voice recognition software, but dictating uses a different part of the brain, and changes my “writing voice.” That means I’ll have to finish my current project by hand. But if I continue writing past this project, it will be with the speech recognition software.

Q: Is that project still Horn Lake?

A: Yes. I’m currently at 140,000 words, but this novel will be around the size of Spiderstalk. That means there is a long way to go, and I’m reduced to two fingered typing these days.

Q: I saw Grandma Lilah mentioned in that snippet earlier. Is Horn Lake a sequel to Spiderstalk?

A: No. Horn Lake actually takes place a couple of years before the events in Spiderstalk. It is its own story and no knowledge of Spiderstalk is necessary to enjoy it. But it also takes place in Cole County, and therefore shares a couple of supporting characters with Spiderstalk…and one from a few of my short stories as well. In Horn Lake, Grandma Lilah makes a couple of appearances, but it’s from the POV of an  outsider while she’s playing her role as “witch woman.” She does make an important contribution to the story.

Q. Who are these other supporting characters from Spiderstalk?

A. Samual Hitch and Sheriff Wiley Prescott also make appearances, and MAYBE a younger Maggie. But the bigger role will actually belong to a character from several of my short stories; Sheriff Les Patterson.

Q: Fine, but it’s a monster novel like Spiderstalk, right?

A: No. It’s actually a haunted house/ghost story, more than anything else.

Q: So, more like The Shining?

A: Sort of, yet not exactly. Both are horror novels with big buildings and ghosts, but the similarities start to fade after that. The nature of the growing threat is different, the nature of the characters and their conflicts are different, the underlying themes are different, and the structure of the entire novel is different.  But if it is ever considered to be even a tenth as good as a masterpiece like The Shining, I’ll be happy.

Q: So you are going to finish this, right?

A: I intend ro. I know it’s taken forever, but I haven’t given up. I’m still pecking away at the keys. My original goal was to write at least ten books, and this one would be number eight. Wish me luck.

Q: Good luck. Are either of those last two books going to be Nightwalk 3?

A: I have no idea. Same rules as always apply… I will only write a sequel if I come up with a story worthy of the original.

Q: Horn Lake will add ghosts to the zombies, giant spiders, and Lovecraftian creatures you’ve already written about so far. If you continue writing, what’s next?

A: I have several projects I’ve started in the past that had to be set aside as the ones that eventually got published took over. An Aztec demon, a karmic type of succubus, a vengeful maimed vampire, and a couple of unique critters can be found among them. Some of them actually have book covers already made. But I’m not even imagining that far ahead.

Q: So your plan is to two-finger type another forty or fofty thousand words to finish this novel, and that’s before editing and revision. Seriously?

A: That’s how I did the past fifty thousand words, so it CAN be done. It just takes patience. I have two kids and a whole zoo of pets, so I simply ooze patience. Hang in there.

Snippet from Work in Progress: Horn Lake

(This particular scene takes place in 1956 at a county fair. The setting is the rear of the fairgrounds, past the local artisans tents, where Deputy Les Patterson is going to interview a witness he had never met and would rather just avoid)

Les studied the scene as he drew near. With his approach being so direct and obvious, the few fairgoers here had drawn into a group to the side in order to see what he was coming to do. They had been standing a bit back from the tent in the first place, and when he arrived it became obvious why.

Grandma Lilah obviously had an odd sense of décor.

The tent itself was unremarkable; a large, olive-drab affair that had probably been surplus from the Korean War. Somebody had taken a square sheet of white cloth and carefully painted the words…

“GRANDMA LILAH

PALMS READ: 50 CENTS

EVERYTHING ELSE NEGOTIABLE”

…in red letters and then pinned the cloth to the canvas on the left of the door flap. But it was what surrounded the tent that had people’s attention.

Approximately five feet away from the tent walls, somebody had driven thin metal posts in three foot intervals all the way around the structure, only leaving an eight foot wide gap in the front. The top half of the posts had each been bent to form a large hoop about four feet above the ground, sized where the side of one hoop almost touched the hoop of the adjoining post.

And each of those hoops contained a large corn spider.

They had leg spans between three to four inches, making them about the biggest examples of this breed of spider that could be found. Since the posts had only been driven recently, some were still in the process of building their web in the hoops, while others already hung in the center. Les couldn’t help but wonder how the spiders had been transported here.in the first place.

He remembered hearing that Grandma Lilah was partial to spiders, and it was rumored her shack deep in the woods was practically shrouded in webs. There were tales that she talked to the them like they could understand her.. Some whispered they were her familiars, while others suggested they acted as guardians she could command at will. It all just added to her dark notoriety.

At the same time, Les knew that despite their size and fearsome appearance, corn spiders were not dangerous. His cynical side smiled at the implications of that. It made them a perfect part of the old woman’s act. She could put on displays such as this, unsettling the customers and enhancing her already intimidating reputation, yet not have to worry about any true danger being involved. He had to admire her creativity. She might be a “local yokel”, but the old witch definitely knew her stagecraft.

At the moment though, it was her “stagehands” that interested him.

Two teenage boys sat on the ground behind the spider fence at the corner of the tent. One looked about sixteen and the other thirteen, and to Les’s experienced eye they were definitely from the Weyrich corner of the county. “More rural than most,” had been Deputy Cooper’s description, and it wasn’t a bad way to put it. Both wore patched overalls with faded railroad shirts that had the sleeves cut off, and both sets of clothes fit about the way one would expect from hand-me-downs. They also had a recently washed look that suggested to Les these were probably what passed as their Sunday best.  Neither wore shoes, although from the calloused look on their feet Les suspected they could walk through a sticker patch and barely notice. The callouses on their hands looked just as thick.

No, these weren’t just rural youth. They were far backwoods products who had been working and hunting since they could walk.  They had the hard, weathered look one usually found in much older men, while at the same time still obviously being kids. 

The younger one had been reading a Wyatt Earp comic book he must have picked up at one of the booths, while the older had been peering around through a collapsible tin telescope that looked an awful lot like the one the sharpshooting booth gave away for the super bullseye prize. Now they both watched him approach with open curiosity

The sight of the pair gave Les an idea, and a small bit of hope that he might be able to fix things without having to bother with the old witch.

“Howdy, boys,” he greeted, and slightly changed course to approach them instead of the tent entrance. He stopped a couple of feet short of the spider fence.

“Afternoon, sir,” both replied, climbing to their feet. The “sirs” in this case weren’t the awkward formality displayed by Cooper, but the common politeness one often found in rural people, and almost always encountered with the Weyrich folk…on the rare occasion one encountered any of the Weyrich folk.

Les glanced at the tin telescope in the older boy’s hand, then up at the kid himself.

“Just curious,” he asked with a smile, “how many shots did it take you?”

“Three,” the teen grinned back. “I guess I got lucky.”

Lucky, my ass, Les thought to himself. One shot to realize the sights were off. A second to judge by how much. And then a third to make a shot the carny running that booth probably thought was nearly impossible even with an unaltered gun. He didn’t know what he was dealing with. Either one of you kids could probably sleep your way through the rifle training I took back in the army.

“Nice shooting,” Les extended his hand over the strange fence in greeting. “By the way, I’m Deputy Les Patterson.”

“Samuel,” the teen replied, shaking his hand.

“Ronald,” the younger said, shaking his hand in turn.

So this was the kid Cooper had been talking about. If he played this right, he might be able to solve the witness problem on the spot without Lilah being brought into it. It was certainly worth a try.

“Ah, so you’re Ronald Weston? The young man who reported Charlie Orville to Deputy Gillis?”

“Yes, sir.”

Good. Now to take the shot in the dark that might clear everything up.

“So, Ronald, just for the record, where were you standing when you saw Charlie Orville steal the owl?”

But it wasn’t to be.

“Sir?” The boy tilted his head with a puzzled expression. “I never said I saw the owl get swiped. Me and Samuel were workin’ on the spider poles when Grandma Lilah called me and sent me to tell the deputy who stole it. So I did.”

Dammit.

“So Grandma Lilah saw it?” Les asked with a growing sense of gloom.

“I guess so. He had it, didn’t he?”

“Yes, he did,” Les sighed.

“Well,” the kid shrugged, “there you go then.”

 So much for hoping Ronald Weston had seen the crime, and tricking him into admitting it. Might as well go straight to the issue Charlie Orville’s lawyer was sure to zero in on.

“But Ronald, isn’t Grandma Lilah blind? Or have I heard wrong?”

The two youngsters shared an indecipherable look, then turned back to him.

“Um,” the boy now appeared decidedly uncomfortable. “I suppose that depends on who you ask. I’m pretty sure she don’t see it that way.”

Regarding Maggie...

While going through some old papers, I stumbled across something interesting. I used to be a dungeon master back in my youth... so when I later started writing, it seemed only natural to make a form of character sheet for the different characters in my novels. I later got away from the practice and forgot about them. But I recently came across one of those old sheets, made sometime way back in 2009, and since it was for the character that I'm probably most often asked about, I thought I would share.

Maggie Weston

Book: Spiderstalk

Height: 6’1”

Weight: 425 lbs (due to tremendous muscle density)

Age: 20

Hair: Blonde (originally in long braid, later chopped short by knife

Eyes: Blue

Appearance: Maggie is a tall girl who appears muscular in a lanky way, much like a  professional beach volleyball player. She dresses in rural fashions, usually boots, jeans, with flannel shirts or black tee shirts, although she sometimes wears army surplus camouflage pants as well. Her face is angular, a bit harsh, and she has a slightly weathered look due to a great deal of time outdoors.

Her clothes conceal the fact that her torso is covered with a short fuzz similar to that found on the abdomen of some spiders. It covers an area similar to that of a one piece bathing suit. It  is mostly black and yellow on her back, featuring the same pattern as a corn spider, and almost completely black on front with the exception of two short diagonal orange stripes at the bottom of her ribcage,

  

Abilites: As one of only two known living third-generation talents of the Spider Tribe, she is far stronger (both physically and psionically) than the other talents of her people. This is because she has more of the Great Mothers DNA in her genome, meaning she is more spider and less human than the others.

The downside to this (in her case) is the spider fuzz covering her torso, and the fact she is a dedicated carnivore who requires a diet almost exclusively of meat. Her weight, due to her muscle density, also means she has serious negative buoyancy and can’t swim. Also, when greatly upset or preparing to fight, her eyes wills sometimes change to become more like those of a spider.

On the other hand, her physical strength is well into the superhuman range. Her bones are mostly composed of the same carbon nanotubes forming the great mother’s exoskeleton, and her skin is meshed with them as well. This makes her very resistant to damage. It would take a high powered rifle at close range to completely penetrate her skin, or some other projectile at extremely high velocity. The majority of firearms would bruise her at most. Since nobody actually put this to the test, neither she  nor her people ever had a precise understanding of her durability.

Psionically, she is also the most powerful of her tribe, although she does not possess the wide range of psionic abilities of Grandma Lilah (the other third generation talent). Under perfect circumstance (having veneno in her bloodstream, her companion nearby, and in an open but isolated area) she can detect a normal person's presence at almost a quarter of a mile, and actually read them at near a  hundred yards. Many factors can diminish this, including closer peoples thoughts drowning out more distant, having a large number of people around, physical barriers such as walls of different construction, etc…

Her psionic defenses are second to none, and when she has them fully up she becomes completely psionically undetectable, even to the best of her own people. Not even the rogue or the Great Mother can pierce Maggie’s defensive barriers when she has them at full.

She also has a latent healing ability, although not on a par with Grandma Lilah’s. It has not yet been explored or developed due to her difficulty with control, and that difficulty forcing the tribe’s elders to focus on training her to control her other, more immediate, attributes. So that ability only manifests itself as her having an incredibly strong constitution, and her being able to survive illnesses that should otherwise kill her.

Personality: Maggie has a complex, and often misunderstood, personality. Her mother died during the pregnancy, because Maggie started causing damage as she developed and became more active before birth. After a severe episode resulting in her mother's death by internal  hemorrage, Grandma Lilah performed a rough operation and managed to save the baby.

 Due to her tremendous strength and abilities, Maggie was completely isolated from other children until the age of seven. At that time she was finally allowed to visit Billy Clayton, who was two years her junior, but being a second generation talent, was more rugged and able to withstand an accidental lapse of control. It was still dicey at first, although they eventually became friends.

(In the book Billy will be officially sixteen, but is actually eighteen due to the tribes reluctance to make any newborn spirit singers “official” until they’ve survived a couple of years)  

So Maggie is only close with her father, her companion Molly, and Billy... and also carries a certain level of guilt over the death of her mother. The result of this will be her emotional stability being badly rocked when her father dies due to circumstances she created by saving the main character’s nephew.

Her training started at a very young age and focused on two areas. Warfare, and learning to control her strength. This has resulted in a serious, and somewhat repressed girl, who is often at war with her own emotions. She has had certain concepts of honor and responsibility deeply drilled into her, but those will be shaken as she starts to realize how her people’s adherence to the past, and its antiquated laws, was just as much responsible for her father’s death as her.

This will leave her faith in everything she believed in shaken, and utterly isolated with the limited exception of Billy.

So on the surface, Maggie normally comes across as forceful, stern, and sometimes harsh. But underneath there is confusion over her own identity, fear of losing loved ones, and an uneasy relationship with her own emotions.

Current Project

So this is my current project.

I'm about sixty thousand words into it, so I feel there is a good enough chance of completion to risk a cover reveal. Or at least one of the possible covers.

I've written a zombie novel, a giant spider novel, and a Lovecraftian novel with a sequel, so I decided it was time to change gears again. This time I decided to write my version of a haunted house book. While I have released an anthology of ghost stories, I hadn't dedicated a true novel to them yet.

There's still a long way to go, but I'm hoping for the best.

And since my hands have actually stabilized a little, it looks like I might get at least one more novel out of them. Awesome. It just goes to show that sometimes there is good news too.

I know it's not much, but that's pretty much all for now.

Crossroads

It has happened.

I have finally arrived at a crossroads that I always knew was coming, but never really allowed myself to think about. My neuropathy has progressed to the point that I am being forced into making life changes, and making decisions on what I can and can't do from this point forward. I have finally reached that stage where I'm that guy at Walmart driving the little electric shopping cart. Even with a rolling walker, I can only gp short distances before my legs get unsteady and I have to sit down to avoid the risk of falling.

And now it appears that time has run out on my hands as well.

I have been having trouble with my hands for a long time, yet up until now I've managed to keep adapting my typing style to account for it. But lately, as the neuropathy has further encroached into my fingers and weakened them, it has started affecting my proprioception as well. I cannot tell exactly where they are on the keyboard without looking at them. Combine that with the fact they don't even move in certain directions anymore, and I have come at last to that  point where more drastic changes must be made.

If I am going to continue my career as an author, I am going to have to attempt to learn how to write a novel with speech recognition software. I simply have no choice. I have been researching the topic, and will soon be buying a copy of Dragon Premium 13 and a microphone. It's a bit of an investment (for me, at least) and I truly hope I don't end up wasting my money… mainly because I have no idea if I can teach myself to write this way.

I'm a painfully old and decrepit dog, and I despise new tricks.

But I have to try.

Unfortunately, this means my schedule and timelines have been shot to pieces (not that I was accomplishing much with these hands lately, anyway). But maybe the time spent educating myself will let me get a fresh perspective on my current projects and make them all the better for it. I hope so. A silver lining here and there is always appreciated.

So wish me luck as I sojourn forward to try to keep this thing going, and maybe that luck will translate into another book or two down the road. If not, at least I can console myself that I tried, and that my final body of work didn’t include anything I'm ashamed of. But for now, I'm still seeing what can be done. 

Internet Toxicity

I was afraid this would happen. To my dismay, it appears I have developed a case of Internet Toxicity. I know I'm naturally vulnerable to it, and I try to avoid it, but it seems this recent elections and the effects i has had on some people have made it unavoidable.

It's no coincidence that I wrote my first novel when the cable company dropped the ball and left me without internet for six weeks. Not wasting hours in constant web surfing certainly helped, but that wasn't the whole story. After a week or two without the non-stop drama of Facebook, forum arguments, and political discussions occupying my thoughts, my focus changed and made it easier for me to concentrate on other things. My creativity improved dramatically. My mind (especially when I was in "idle mode" while driving or doing other automatic tasks) now spent it's time musing on story concepts and situations as opposed to politics or other internet driven drama. It made being productive a whole lot more possible.

When I got my internet back, I learned I had to self limit. I needed to avoid the trap of wasting time continuously clicking that next link. It was destroying my attention span, and starting to eat up that "idle mode" I had started using for plot and character development purposes. So, after some experimentation, I found a happy medium that allowed me my internet fix without undue damage to my creativity and attention span.

Unfortunately, I have recently been forced to confront the fact that recent events, and the reactions to those events, have undone the balance I strove for. Despite efforts to avoid it, I have been poisoned by the current state of the internet, and I need to focus on recovery.

So that only leaves one solution.

I will have to drastically cut back on my internet usage, especially at Facebook (I will likely budget fifteen minutes at the end of the day for that so my friends don't think I hate them), and will have to confine my online activities to research and business. Also, I will especially need to curtail the amount of time I spend online in general. Time spent clicking that unending chain of links can be better used reading the works of other authors, or maybe even spent outdoors. Things that will help the old brain get used to focusing on things for longer than a few minutes at a time again. And things that will help me mentally detoxify.

I'm going to hate this, but my previous experience with kicking a twenty-year smoking habit means I know an addiction when I see one...and that means it needs to be done.

Time to go read a book.

Then maybe I can start writing one.

Crazy Nate's Big Giveaway!

Well, maybe not so much “crazy” as “intellectually sketchy”, but we won’t go there. The important thing is that it felt like a good time to have one of those free ebook thingies that authors do from time to time. Therefore I decided I would make all of my ebooks on Amazon free, but not all at the same time. Gotta mix it up a little.  Can’t make it too simple, right?

So below is the list of dates each ebook will be free…

The Ways of Khrem Jan 16-20

Nightwalk Jan 23-25

Ghosts, Monsters and Madmen Jan 25-27

Spiderstalk Jan 30 – Feb 1

Shades Feb 1-3

Dead Stop Feb 6-8

Nightwalk 2 Feb 8-10

I hope all of you enjoy them and read them in good health. Have a Happy 2017!

Nightwalk 2 is here!

Mark Garrett is about to go home again...

Two years have passed since the disaster at Coventry Woods, and Mark has made a good effort at recovering from the ordeal. He has published a new novel, replaced his lost belongings, and bought a new house in New Mexico. Life is finally moving on. He's hidden the few scars that remain, and with Casey having left for college he looks forward to a comfortable future with his wife.

But the past is not done with Mark Garrett.

The enigmatic man in white has returned and announced the world is doomed. Another survivor of Coventry Woods has sealed it's fate. The future's only hope is for Mark to go back to that terrible night and once again navigate his way through a death infested hell. Only this time he won't be trying to escape. His mission is to intercept and kill a man he's never met.

Now the clock is ticking as Mark races against a nuclear deadline. He must save the future, while at the same time trying to minimize his impact on a past that will not hesitate to eat him alive. And as he soon discovers, any change he makes can cause unexpected complications...

...especially when he gets stuck with the last travelling companion he would have ever wanted.

Nightwalk Movie!

Yes, this is actually happening

An indie film company is trying to make a movie based on my novel, Nightwalk. It will be called, "Coventry Woods" They have already secured a location, and will soon start casting.

Words cannot express how grateful and excited I am for this opportunity to arise.There is still a long way to go, and a lot of hurdles to be crossed for this to make it to the screen, but things are moving. At this time I can't go into it more than that.

Rough Draft Achieved

I saved the file "Nightwalk2 Rough Draft.docx" to Dropbox last night. I have a whole laundry list of fixes that need to be incorporated, and a good bit of polishing before its even ready for proofreaders, but I now have a story.

Work proceeds.

Tentatively Quarter Four, 2016

So this is my current project.

That's just a placeholder cover until something better occurs.

I have never written a sequel before, but I have had sequel requests for each novel I have written. Since the world of Nightwalk was freshest in my mind, I thought I would do some writing on ideas for that while I outlined another original novel project and prepared to get serious on that.

But a funny thing happened during the outlining. The writing on the sequel started to take off and get more of my attention each day. And since I had been fighting a season long case of writer's block all autumn, instinct told me to start going with where the action was happening.

So it appears we may all be going back to Coventry Woods.

I'm still early in the project, but the proofreaders are liking what they see so far and I put a lot of stock in their opinions. I've had a late start on it, so the odds of having a rough draft by the time the kids get out of school for the summer are minimal. Then there is the fact the CMT in my hands has gotten more pronounced so I'm typing slower than ever. That's why I'm predicting a winter release this time. I prefer early autumn, but I just don't see it.

Still, I have settled on a project and getting on with it.

Wish me luck!

Things That Worry Me as a Writer

Is this project too different from my other works for the people who read me to accept?

Is this project so much like my other works that people who read me will think I’m being formulaic?

Am I wandering too far into another genre?

Would my readers accept me wandering into another genre?

Are people going to get that I’m subverting this cliché, or think I’m just writing in clichés?

Is it okay to use an honest to god cliché now and then?

Is this prose too prosey?

What kind of stupid name is that for a character?

How many two part sentences with “and” as a conjunction do I intend to use in this paragraph?

Is this paragraph too big?

Is this scary, or just stupid?

Is this funny, or just stupid?

The plural of apparatus is apparatus? That just don’t look right.

Is this chapter dragging?

This isn’t funny OR scary. Just shoot me.

If that character does that, is he still likeable enough?

Is this piece of setting to obviously symbolic?

Oh my god, what is the timeline in this book again?

Does anybody talk like that?

Am I taking too long to do this?

Why didn’t I become a plumber?

A Few Thoughts On My First Four Novels

After spending the autumn promoting Nightwalk, and dithering between different future stories, I have finally settled on a project and have started writing it. The process of choosing inevitibly led to me taking stock of what I’ve written so far. Having done that, I thought I would pass along a few thoughts and observations on my previous novels for those who care.

1.      The Ways of Khrem was my first foray into writing. It is arguable whether it counts as a true novel since it consists of three intertwining parts that each stand on their own. The publisher chose to list it as an anthology, but I was never really comfortable with that. It’s intended as one piece and only has full impact that way. It was  my one novel ever done through a publisher, and the things I learned from that helped me become an indie. It’s also my only fantasy novel. Even as a fantasy it already shows the elements that made me realize I would be more comfortable as a horror writer instead. Yet the things I learned about world building, scene crafting, and character interaction have stayed with me from that project.

2.      Dead Stop was my first true novel, and my second indie project. (Shades was my first). I had been having trouble writing Spiderstalk, and despaired over my lack of progress. I needed something finished to get the old confidence up. I decided the best thing to do would be to shelve Spiderstalk and create a novel project with a straightforward scenario and ideas so that I would have a greater chance of finishing it. So Dead Stop was created on the premise of “Write the B-movie that you always wanted to see.” It evolved into more than that as I wrote, but that premise helped me formulate the ideas, character, and structures that became Dead Stop. I wanted zombies that actually made sense, so I researched like crazy until I came up with a model I liked. I wanted the creepy Night of the Living Dead feel instead of the action movie feel so many zombie projects devolve into these days. The important thing was I knew what I wanted to write, thus never doubted the project would get finished. The characters were based on real people I had met hanging out at truck stops over the years, so it felt like I already knew them.

3.      Spiderstalk is sort of my grand opus, at least so far. It was conceived to contain a number of genre elements, but to also deal with a lot of issues and themes that resonated with me. For instance, I wear the exact same braces Adam Sellars wore in the novel, and many of his tribulations with carpets, slanted surfaces, and uneven ground are based on my own experiences. Other personal trivia about Spiderstalk include the fact that Karen Sellars childhood encounter with a corn spider is based on a childhood experience of my own. I know they are allegedly harmless but since then I’ve had many meetings with them in my nightmares. So you might say I was also trying to exorcise an old ghost writing that novel. Spiderstalk is also my first novel to take place in Cole County, where many of my short stories are set. Cole County is part of a larger universe I intend to visit again from time to time.

4.      Nightwalk came about in a similar way as Dead Stop. After Spiderstalk, I was exhausted and used the opportunity afforded to me by getting the rights back to a bunch of my short stories to take a break while I compiled Ghosts, Monsters and Madmen from them. Once I was done with that, I still didn’t feel up to tackling another Spiderstalk sized project. Instead, I went back to my plan with Dead Stop and chose to develop a project based on my confidence in being able to finish it. This time the idea was to write a Lovecraft style novel that could be enjoyed by people who had never read him. There would be clues and creatures to alert attentive fans of HP Lovecraft what kind of book it really was, yet to the average reader it would be accessible as a straightforward monster story with the characters trying to escape. Followers of Lovecraft should recognize a shoggoth, a flying polyp, ghouls, a Man of Leng, and of course, Nyarlathotep himself. There are also Cats of Saturn but since Lovecraft never described those I did my best to flesh them into something he would appreciate. The rest of the monsters were completely of my own manufacture.  Like Dead Stop, Nightwalk evolved as I wrote it and became more than its original premise.

5.      A last note… I have not written any sequels yet mainly because none of the above novels were written with sequels specifically in mind. Some are open ended to a degree, but all were intended to stand as stories of their own. That doesn’t mean there won’t be a sequel to any of them, but I have a firm rule about not writing a sequel until I have a story worthy of its predecessor. To do less would be to sell that story and its characters short.

The World Has Changed

One of the ways I try to improve myself as both a writer and a horror writer is to read the works of the greats. Poe, Lovecraft, and Machen can be found in my kindle along with King, Straub, Bradbury, and Crichton. Throw in some Raymond Chandler and Ernest Hemingway and you get an idea how my writing is influenced.

But reading all the great old horror stories has become an exercise of looking back into a different world. It was a world where humans were more alone, and operated far more as independent actors. If separated from the crowd, they were more vulnerable in many ways…although in others I fear they may have been more resourceful.

But the event that truly led from that world to this one, was the introduction of the cell phone.

And believe me when I say it was only when I started writing horror that I discovered how fundamentally the cell phone changed things. The eighties are over and almost any kid running from the killer at Camp Bloodbath can now have the cavalry on the way in short order. This means the potential victim of the 21st century comes with a link to the rest of humanity that has to be believably and reasonably accounted for in every scenario.  And it behooves the writer to be careful and not keep using the same plot devices to neutralize the device.

As a matter of fact in some scenarios it may be better to find some way to use the phone to the plots advantage. But this is not always easy without being repetitive. And as cell phones become more sophisticated it’s the writer’s job to keep up with its capabilities, for they are out there and the reader is not going to be forgiving if the writer dispatches a victim who could have easily resolved the situation with the device on his belt. Not to mention, many phones can be tracked by authorities and used to located the person, meaning many of your 20th century slasher types would be leading the cops right to their lair.

So in that way alone, if you are attempting to write a hack’n’slash novel in the style of Friday the 13th, you are going to need a more sophisticated killer if you want the results to be believable.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. If you are writing a monster story and your monster does not have human intelligence and understands these things the problem is even worse. In today’s world his pic could be on Facebook before he knows what happened. Which brings us to the other game changer.

The internet.

Go back and look at many of the great horror novels of the past forty years, and then imagine them with cell phones and internet. How many would be radically altered? How many would have their protagonists and victims acting in entirely different ways?

It’s a different world. And it's the writer's job to meet the challenge of writing for that world.

Big October Giveaway Schedule

This year I've decided to make October fun, so I'm going to have free giveaways on all my kindle books at Amazon. To make it easy, here is a schedule of those giveaways so people will know when they can pick up the book they want for free.

Shades: Eight Tales of Terror is free Oct 10 thru Oct 16
Dead Stop is free Oct 14 thru Oct 16
Ways of Khrem is free Oct 19 thru Oct 23
Spiderstalk is free Oct 21 thru Oct 23
Ghosts, Monsters and Madmen is free Oct 26 thru Oct 30
Nighwalk is free October 29 and Oct 30

Oh, and check Goodreads for a couple of signed paperback versions of Nightwalk I'll be giving away free too.

I hope everybody has an awesome October and a Happy Halloween!

Nightwalk

Welcome to Coventry Woods...

...a tranquil, middle class neighborhood where trees turn the streets into shady tunnels, soccer moms jog on secluded paths, and backyard barbecues are weekend staples. It's a quiet, urban example of the American dream. Here businessmen are neighbors with radio DJs, young doctors buy their first houses, and author Mark Garrett has been settling in with his lovely new wife and stepdaughter.

But tonight Mark's new neighborhood is going to come with something he never bargained on.

The pits of Hell have yawned wide and poured their contents into the midnight streets and homes of Coventry Woods. Everything has gone insane. Shots and screams ring out in the night, while death stalks the darkness in forms this earth has never before seen. Even worse, the only hope of escape is by foot.

Now Mark, along with his stepdaughter and his back-fence neighbor, must flee the neighborhood while attempting to help anybody they meet. And it won't be easy. They will be walking a gauntlet of unearthly predators, as they strive toward a goal they aren't even sure still exists...

...the outside world

Available on Amazon.com on September 1st.

Why Nate Doesn't Do Politics (a rant from Facebook)

(this was a minor rant of mine from Facebook but I figured it deserved a post here)

A long time ago, when the internet was young, I was a true political junkie. I spent hours on The Drudge Report, CNN, BBC, Gaurdian, Free Republic, etc. That’s not counting the time spent in front of the new 24 hour news channels. Over time it became a world of its own. I cursed at politicians I hated, followed debates with obsessive zeal, stayed up to date on the latest breaking news, and had in depth knowledge on all the latest outrages. And not just from one political point of view.

I’ve spent different parts of my life on both ends of the political spectrum. I have bemoaned the existence of Neanderthals and Dirty Hippies alike.

And then one day I started to realize how much it was taking over my life. First of all, it seemed like I was always angry about something “going on out there” or whatever the outrage de jour was. I would catch myself clenching my jaw to the point it hurt while watching TV or reading the internet. And then it finally hit me.

There are people who make money on that. Very intelligent, very driven people who understood that keeping me in a perpetual state of outrage is what kept me coming back.

And it worked.

The news no longer informs…it peddles emotion. It addicts. There are political/economic/social factions out there whose very survival depends on keeping a certain amount of people at various levels of angst and anger over their issues. Furthermore, they have absolutely no concern over the consequences that might have for the people they do that to. It’s not their problem. And it took me a long time to truly appreciate the effect it had on me.

First of all, I was always angry about something. Wasting emotion on things that had absolutely nothing to do with my day to day life. My mind was not on where I was, or where I was going…it was on those dirty Neanderthals/Hippies and what they were doing now. It was on people I would never meet. And worse...it was stealing my stories.

I’ve always been something of a story teller. Even when not telling them, I was living them in my head…drawn from my interactions with the world, people, animals, and events. But now I found myself thinking in other stories…stories that read like news reports, and wasted emotion in fruitless ways. It spoke with the voice of commentators and radio personalities, and sometimes I swear I could see the TV style scan lines in my mental pictures of the actors. I was losing who I was in agenda driven stories from people who saw me as nothing more than a number to add to their ratings/click count/followers list.

It had to stop. It still has to stop.

I stopped watching TV. No more CNN/FOX/MSNBC. (my TV is now exclusively used for watching important stuff like football, cartoons and documentaries for the kids) Even more importantly, I stopped hanging out at political forums. No FreeRepublic, DailyKos, Eschaton, or Red State. No more correcting somebody who was wrong on the internet. And then even harder, I steered clear when those topics would follow me to gaming forums, sports forums, and worst of all…Facebook.

I’ve watched friendships crumble over issues that will never affect either of the friends arguing over them. Seriously! If you’re going to throw away a friend, at least do it over something he or she did to YOU. It should at least be over something that happened in YOUR STORY. And I realized in many of those situations it could just as easily have been me.

And just as scary, some friends over time seem to only post on those things instead of anything to do with themselves. If you were going by their Facebook timeline, you would think that’s who they’ve become…an advertisement for a cause/position/party. They’ve flattened into a two dimensional agenda, where there used to be a living person.

I may be an introvert and a bit of a hermit, but I prefer people.

(switches to 3rd person perspective for the big finish)

So Nate’s opinions on the big debates are exclusively his business. He does not come to Facebook to validate or deny your opinion on abortion/gun control/religion or lack thereof/Obama/climate change/ or…God help us all…the Kardashians. He is not here to take sides. He values all his friends, from all parts of the political/social spectrum. On the other hand, he does pay attention to YOUR stories…pictures of your vacations, tales of your kids, reports of your triumphs, sagas of your failures, and photos of your projects.

These matter. Life is a personal thing.

Carry on.