All the Cons

I didn't get much writing done this last month, as I had two cons I was at as a guest, Salt Lake Comic Con and the first annual Snake River Comic Con.
Salt Lake is great as it is so big and has some phenomenal guests and I always enjoy being there and hanging with friends and meeting new people, but at Snake River I had one of the best times with friends in forever.

Me and the Space Balrogs (D.J. Butler, Jason King, James Wymore, Holli Anderson and Daniel Swenson - not pictured Bob Defendi and Craig Nybo) spent a whole lot of time together laughing and selling books and speaking on panels and then we even got a makeshift game of Dungeons and Dragons together for Holli's benefit - she had never played before and I gotta tell you I haven't laughed so hard in a very long time. It was a great con and we met some great people and I can't wait to go back next year.

So I'll throw in a swath of pics from both. Here ya go.

At The Highways of Madness

I've been remiss in keeping up with the blog, letting things slide as I try to accomplish the "real" writing.

In any case, besides BRUTAL - which has been receiving some great reviews - Thanks Keith and Fantasia Reviews! I also put out At the Highways of Madness along with a few semi-related bonus stories - (all previously released) in part I just thought the story was long enough at 22k to warrant its own book and I loved my own idea for the cover which I commissioned the indomitable Carter Reid to do.

So I'm pretty stoked, yet - it hasn't been selling too well. Though I did have a great review by the Injustice Gamer, so that was cool. Maybe enough people already bought Redneck Eldritch or perhaps my sense of humor isn't too pc these days.

The fun for me was working on what is essentially the Dude and Walter from Big Lebowski as truckers who meddle with something that crashes beside the highway in the remote desert and then find themselves pursued by a host of Lovecraftian monsters and also get a beautiful hitchhiker who just happens to be the daughter of Nyarlathotep.

I had a so much fun writing this one (ore than I initially believed I could writing rednecks) while not making fun of them so much as showing the situational humor and the difference in how salt of the earth types might react as opposed to be maddened and going insane like stuffy types from Miskatonic. Check it out!

On the horizon.
I will have another Porter Rockwell weird western short story "Under the Gun" in the forthcoming Storyhack #1


Whenever they get round to it I have a short S&S tale "Stygian Black"  about Abdul Alhazared in a forthcoming Skelos mag - I was told either issue 3 or 4.

A Beowulf retelling is coming in a mythology anthology (no idea on its status)

And "Garden of Legion" a popular Porter Rockwell short of mine is getting reprinted in Mirages and Speculations, later this month.

Oh and another fantasy noir novella "Jia of Luck" is coming in October part of the the Valcoria Awakenings anthology - stories set in the world of Jason King's Valcoria - that was a lot of fun. I took a lot from Dashiell Hammett for that one too!

And of course I'm still working at cranking out novel's via pulp speed as best I can - but I'll have to see how that goes - it can be hard to tell sometime.

How goes your guys pace?

LTUE Late Night Follow Up

I was so busy chatting with friends - new and old, that I didn't take very many pics, nor record too much of what went on for those three days last month.

It was a blast, I love talking and hanging with other writers.

I was on a bunch of panels on Thursday and on some I felt a little out of my element. Like the one about the Hottest Women Writers of Sci-Fi. Luckily Jana Brown more than made up for my ineptitude. I had tried to catch up on more women writers before hand - I did a lot of cramming thanks to Audible, but still felt I was the weak link on that panel.

I'm kinda irritated I didn't get to be on the Pulp panel, and I didn't see it - just heard about it afterward, sounds like I should have been there to tell some people that they don't know what they're talking about but cest la vie.

The Art of the Hook with Larry Correia and Andrea Pearson was great - always got to love Larry dropping his wisdom. In a nutshell - Larry says who cares about defining genre or anything so cerebral = write what people want! Make them come back for more and you'll get paid.

I'm working on that.

In the meantime I have been very pleased at Scavengers and Six-Gun Serenades sales numbers on Amazon. I'm not breaking the bank but it is nice to actually be making hundreds of dollars a month. I need to do better but its a hell of a good start.


My friends the Space Balrogs had a great Choose Your Own Apocalypse panel, and the mass book signing was very cool too.

Oh and it was a great feeling to be recognized by other literati - for the sake of an anthology that isn't even out yet - made me feel good just to know there are at least a few people paying attention to that kind of thing.

I did get a load of new books abut I still love grabbing old favorites from an ancient dealer that shows up to this every year.

All in all it was great seeing everybody, and now I gotta wait til FanX to do it all over again. - Granted That will be a little more hectic and won't deliver as much quality time - but then that's what makes LTUE so great.

"Scavengers" Chapter One on Audio!

Hey guys and gals!
Not only has Scavengers hit #1 bestseller, my good friends Jason King and  Zach Bjorge even went and surprised me with an audio reading of chapter one! Check it put!

and if your so inclined Scavengers is still on sale for .99 cents for the next 48 hours.

Listen Up: There was a Woman Dwelt by a Graveyard

Inspired by both M.R. James and Robert E. Howard, I wrote a collection of western themed ghost stories told in a bizarre mashup of those two writers titled Whispers Out of the Dust.

I loved James way of bringing you in to the English countryside and telling you about this very true story told by an old man or validated by this manuscript found in a musty library. As much as I loved those stories, there was an aspect I could never duplicate; I didn't grow up in 19th century England, I don't know that place as well as others for the sake of truly bringing you into that space, but I do know the American west and that ties me closer to my favorite writer Robert E.  Howard.

Howard was a Texan and wrote about what he knew (and so much more) and I could relate to that.
Jumping off from that I know the American west, so I found an intriguing place that was perfect for my backdrop. A real old west ghost town drowned beneath the waters of Lake Mead. - St. Thomas, Nevada. It was founded by Mormons (like me) and gave me a great place to start from because I know that history like James knew the Church of England, like Howard knew Texas boom towns.

So Whispers Out of the Dust has a score of shorts and among them was a piece inspired by James that was in turn inspired by Shakespeare - There Was a Woman Dwelt by a Graveyard.

My good friend Jason King shared it for a flash fiction Friday and then surprised me with a audio reading of it.

So one of the few audio formats of my work out there yet - here is "There Was A Woman Dwelt By A Graveyard." Enjoy



I plan on making sure more of my books become available in Audio this later year. I suspect that market is just going to keep growing, just like I listen to more audio books myself each year.

Books Read Lately: Friends Edition

This batch (which I'm forever behind on) is all by people I like to call friends and I've got a round two of books by friends I'll be trying to post by the end of the month too.

Cthulhu Armageddon, by C.T. Phipps
Phipps does an amazing job of weaving the Lovecraft mythos with some hard-knuckled action. While I love the mythos as we all first read it by Ech-Pi himself, I always felt more kinship to those larger than heroes born out of Robert E. Howard's imaginings that don't just go mad by the sight of the unspeakable horror.
And here is where Phipps shines with his narrator, Booth. As the head of his unit in this post-apocalyptic wasteland Booth gives us all we need to do to know about our familiar yet horribly different and shattered world after the rising of the Old Ones. Familiar names are doled out in a reasonable non-info dump manner, so that anyone familiar with the mythos can say Oh I know what that is before Phipps can surprise us with an imaginative twist. We get to meet the grooviest ghoul of them all for example.
I enjoyed the pacing and at one point, I actually wondered - How can they top this! And we're only halfway into the book - I was afraid it was going to wrap up too soon!

IF you like action, horror and some grimdark humor, you have got to check this one out! I look forward to reading more of Phipps work!


Dream Breaker, by Jason King

This is a short by my friend Jason. He does amazing world-building (as he should being an epic fantasy author) and he get's you right in the gut with this tale of Dareth and crosing over into the dream realms where all is not what he expected. Its free at least right now on kindle so you gotta check it out. Dareth battles another Arkyn (arcane-kind) across two planes of existence as he fights to protect his client - The High Priest of Faelon - from assassination.

Murrmann, by Michael Arnzen

I got to meet and chat with Michael Arnzen at this last World Horror Con, great guy, I've read a lot of his stuff on the craft of writing (brilliant work)  and finally snagged this short to read his actual fiction stories. Murrmann is a great little sequel to Dracula capturing the quirks of Van Helsing in his own hand along with a flair for wonderful locales and real local legends. Arnzen knows both the physical territory having been there and of course the horror landscape to grip us cold. The imagery herein is amazing. Do yourself a favor and don't miss this bloody disturbing tale reminiscent of Stokers "The Squaw" along with "Dracula" too of course.

Sands, by Kevin L. Nielsen

Kevin is setting us up in a brilliantly imagined new world populated with dessert clans and their own traditions and such and of course the dramatic struggle against the genesauri—giant, flying, serpentine monsters who hunt across the desert in enormous packs. This has a new take on the epic fantasy story in that this is more son the level of man vs. nature than a dark lord. Its a refreshing new spin.

There were of course some surprises on the human end too as the desert culture of the seventeen-year-old Lhaurel's clan forbids her from even wielding a weapon in her peoples defense. Exiled she begins a new adventure to save her people and herself. This is the beginning of a trilogy that is worth checking out.

Killing Trail, by Charles Gramlich

I love Charles work, from pulpy sword and sorcery to the chilling terror to sword and planet adventure and now the old west. Gramlich has a flair for poetic language with his salty action and then just wins me over everytime. Now of course these shorts are quick and to the point with white hats and black hats but there are clever surprises you don't see coming. Highly recommended.

Salt Lake Comic Con 2016 Recap

I had a good time hanging with friends and even got interviewed three separate times! I'll share those when I know they are up. Would have liked to have sold more books but on the bright side I did get a few new fans!

The Space Balrogs Choose your Own
Apocalypse game went over real well - we packed the house!

I did get several books from friends which will be making it into the review Que. Overall it was a good time. I even got a photo with the Utah state Governor who stopped by our book booth.


And here are a few more pics I thought were cool.

And of course connections were made more books are in the works!