Horror fiction

Do The Dead Dream? (Image by Jan C J Jones, Freelancer Ink, © July 1, 2016)

I am working toward the completion and release of my short story collection, but timelines have shifted to the right a bit. When I first envisioned releasing this collection, I’d thought maybe Valentine’s Day might make a good release date…then as things didn’t progress as quickly as expected, and I’d attended my first Comic Con, I thought having it to release the end of June at the 2017 Denver Comic Con would also be a really cool release date. But other issues came up and I’m now realistically looking at a Hallowe’en release date.

I also have a new editor, Joyce Combs. She did my Psychic novel. She’s a retired editor, among other things. I thank my previous editor/proofer for all she’d done–she’d done a great job!–but we just had scheduling issues. I wish her well!

But while I’ve been working along on this project, I have written a couple new short stories! I’ve written “A Beautiful Summer’s Day” (takes place in the Wild West) and “Behind Things” (takes place in a gym). And while reworking some of these stories I found myself getting unexpectedly emotional. “Dark Was The Hour” was one where I just couldn’t keep from getting emotional as I reread it.

Anyway, this will be my last book for a couple years as I work on writing my next novel, so I want to do this as “right” as possible. As I get most of the stories into the manuscript from Joyce’s efforts, I will offer free copies to any who want to review it. I’ve never done this before, but want to try it. I will let y’all know closer I get to that stage….

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.

Please, Let Me Show You A Few Of My Favorite Things.... (Nosferatu Photo credit: Wikipedia) — Please, Let Me Show You A Few Of My Favorite Things…. (Nosferatu Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Since I listed my favorite horror films, I decided, why not list my favorite horror novels? I don’t consider myself any kind of “well read”; Most of my recent reading has been for my own novel research, and since I no longer write a lot of strict “horror,” I don’t read a lot of it. I will state this, however: I love [most of] Stephen King’s horror/supernatural work.

Now, having said that, there was one book of his I’d started and never finished, because I found it to be so mean-spirited I just didn’t want to read any further. That book was Full Dark, No Stars. Loved the title, but didn’t want to be subjected to what I was reading. It was too real. Too nasty. Mean. It surprised me that he’d written such a novel. It was about revenge and the nastiness that can reside inside people. As one Amazon reviewer said, it was “just gratuitous nastiness.” And that so many people loved this book is kinda unnerving. Really, people love reading about that kind of stuff? Granted, this question can be levied at horror fiction, in general, but holy shit. At least to me, reading horror (and supernatural) fiction is about a release from the real world, of entering a fantastic world of The Weird…about experiencing something that engages the fright mode in each of us—but in a comfortable way. Full Dark, No Stars, however, was like reading real accounts of Mankind’s Inhumanity To Mankind. Or getting inside the heads of these people who commit crimes, and that simply doesn’t interest me. I don’t read true crime and have no interest in getting inside any mean-minded individual’s heads. I don’t enjoy that kind of material…it’s not a release, not cathartic, and certainly not entertainment for me. Sometimes fiction can be too real, and while I applaud King’s ability to write like no other (and incite these feeling in me with his work), that doesn’t mean that I have to like everything he writes (same goes with any writer’s efforts—including mine).

So I returned the book, unfinished.

On to more fun reading!

Below is a list of those novels (no anthologies) I’ve read over the years and really enjoyed. Most I have not read again since the first read, sometimes, years and years ago, but, again, like the movies I’d written about, they stuck with me for some reason. In once case, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, I’d read it four times, and still love it. There are also several books out there from King and some others, like Anne Rice and Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black, I have yet to get to, so they may yet be included in future editions of this list….

And given my one extreme, with Full Dark, No Stars, I can honestly say that my other extreme, my most favorite horror read of all time (so far), was Pet Sematary. When I read it, it was the scariest horror novel I’d ever read, and everything I’ve read since, I measure against it! Nothing has come close…but again, I don’t consider myself “well read.” But, the feeling of utter creepiness was and still has stuck with me as the best all-time creepiness I’ve ever read. Dracula would tally in as the most atmospheric novel.

So, feel free to check out any of these great reads—and suggest some of your own favorites—maybe I’ve read them and simply forgotten about them, as I did with The Ring, in my favorite horror movies (I have a saying that “I’ve forgotten more than I ever knew…”)!

Now…enter my library…if you dare….

If You Could See Me Now

Interview With A Vampire