Jeff Strand's Blog, page 15

September 20th

Look at that! It’s the Halloween issue of The Southwest Review. My work doesn’t appear very often in literary journals that were established in 1915, so I’m honored that “Mouthy” was included in this issue’s lineup. It was guest edited by the mighty Andy Davidson, and features all kinds of cool people, so check out the table of contents and order your copy HERE.

September 15

Dammit. Events are starting to disappear again.

Fandemic Dead would’ve been this coming weekend, but it got pushed back to March 2022. The Merrimack Valley Halloween Book Festival has been cancelled. And I just got notice that the Scary Fireside Stories event has been cancelled. It was a huge success in 2018. In 2019, it got cancelled at the last minute because of weather, which seemed like the biggest bummer imaginable until the global pandemic came along.

As of now, Multiverse, The Haunted Majestic, and the Atlanta Writers Conference are still on.

September 14

Ooooh, look at this! It’s an advance reading copy of Deathless!

Hardcover copies should start shipping very soon. A few are left at http://earthlingpub.com/js_deathless.html

The e-book and paperbacks will be available no sooner than a month after that, but aren’t officially scheduled yet.

September 4th

Finished up a short story today called “Dump Truck.” With that complete, I’m now 28 days away from my next short story deadline……..but when that arrives, I’ll owe five different short stories within the next ten days. So, uh, yeah, I probably shouldn’t procrastinate.

Nom Nom Nom!

If you’ve got a hankering to hear me talk about cannibalism (but not just ANY cannibalism–a special kind of cannibalism!), I’m on the latest episode of Staring Into The Abyss discussing Stephen King’s “Survivor Type.”

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/staring-into-the-abyss-a-podcast/id1482564231?ls=1

Welcome to September!

Wow, it’s September, huh? That was quick.

I don’t typically feel old, but I definitely do the whole “How is it September already? Where did the year go?” thing. When I was a kid, the summers felt so long that it was hard to remember that I’d even been in school! And then the school year most definitely did not fly by!

But while I’m unpleasantly surprised by the haste with which September arrived, today has been the first day I can sit outside and work without becoming a sticky sweat-drenched abomination. Soon this will transition into “Waaaahhhh, it’s too cold!” but for now the weather is delightful.

August 30

Last week was crazy busy. I’m edging ever-closer to being able to share my big news, which, yes, is movie-related. Meanwhile, I had a couple of other movie-related meetings, both of which went much better than I’d expected, since I’d expected them to end with a casual, “Okay, well, nice talking to you! We’ll keep in touch….maybe.”

And, we’re moving to Chattanooga, Tennessee! My wife and I had been floating various ideas over the past couple years. Stay in Atlanta but move to the outskirts? Move back to Florida? Try North Carolina? On Saturday we drove to Chattanooga and spent the day (along with our tour guide, author Jessica Ann York) driving around the city looking at neighborhoods. Barring some word of weird curve ball, like a deranged billionaire offering me $5,000,000 to move to Traverse City to ghostwrite his memoir about the many women he has loved, we’re moving to Chattanooga at the end of the year. Beware, Chattanooga!!!

Non-Mass Exodus

I kind of figured that including the gross-out story in yesterday’s newsletter would cost me some subscribers, but I only lost two , and only one reported it for inappropriate content. Not bad!!!

Latest Newsletter!

I just sent out the latest issue of my newsletter, where I talk about KillerCon and unwisely share one of my old entries in the Gross-Out Contest. There’s also a poem. If you’re not a subscriber, you can check out the issue right here:

https://mailchi.mp/974e3156d5b5/killercon-gross-out-and-poetry

KillerCon Continues

Day One of KillerCon was gobs o’ fun. Today I have a reading and Q&A, plus I’m on a panel about collaboration and I’m a judge of the gross-out contest. It’s virtual, and if you’ve suddenly decided that you desperately want to attend…it’s not too late!