Matt Roberts's Blog

Updates And A New Contest

Hey y’all! I’ve been hard at work writing up a new(ish) story to turn into a book. There is interest in it already, but it has to go from the short story it is to a novel or novella. So that’s what I’ve been doing as of late. It’s turning out so well.

Also, I know the domain here expired. I’ll get around to fixing it soon.

Last and most importantly, I have taken one of my short stories Watching Them Change, polished it up, and submitted it to a short story contest over at Inkitt. It can no longer be viewed here on this site. Go give it a read (or a re-read) and click on the heart at the bottom of the page to give me a vote! The more votes I get, the better my chances are at winning the world! Pass the story around and help me out! I really do appreciate it!!!

Thanks for your support and I’ll post more updates when I can!

Book Review: Sinless Within

I finally got around to reading Sinless Within, the follow-up book of poems by the amazing Shay Leigh. The first, Sins Within, was a book full of darkness and pain, fueling poetry that moved me. It didn’t take long to read, as it is a very short book, but it wore me out. When I was done with it, I had to take a nap.

Sinless Within did the same thing to me. I think it’s a bit shorter than the aforementioned, but it focuses more on the good in the author’s life. Even still, periods of darkness shine through, making her trip of happiness still not so happy. She shows that even though things can be dark, a light can be seen from somewhere if you look hard enough. When I was done reading this book, I was wore out once again.

It takes powerful words to do the things her two poetry books have done to me, and both books are full of them.

While “Art” was one that touched me as I’m sure it could touch any artist, the one that really stuck with me was “Cage.” Wow, such an awesome piece. Together, with the rest of the poems in the book, Sinless Within did in so few pages what novels I’ve read have failed to do, and that was move me while sticking with me for the long haul.

Having read much of Shay’s works, including poetry and fiction, I can’t wait to see what she produces next.

I gave the book 5 stars on Goodreads. Whether you like poetry or not, check it out. It’s a great and emotional read.

Sometimes You Just Need to Start Writing

Matt Roberts:

I’m with you 100% on this Rob, and if I wasn’t going to bed in a few minutes I’d be all over this right now. I’ll get it when I wake up. Hopefully. Great advice!

Originally posted on Today's Author:

I have no free time.  I get up at 4:37am every day and I’m running all the way until I collapse into bed sometime after 10pm.  Between the day job, kids’ events, yard work, house work and any other multitude of things, my “free” time is that which I spend at the gym in the morning, running or lifting and making myself miserable for some reason I haven’t yet defined.

What that leaves me with is no time to write.

And that’s okay.  I mean, I have a day job that pays the bills, writing is a hobby at this point because I can’t make that leap to where I’m ready to try to make a living at it.  So I know the world isn’t going to end just because I can’t find an hour to write today.  Not very many people will lose sleep over the fact that I…

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You’re Going To Fail NaNoWriMo

It’s that time of year again! The end of National Novel Writing Month! You did everything you needed to do before November started. You planned, detailed, timelined, researched, noted… everything you had to do to prepare for the coming month. November came and BAM! You were off, writing your little fool heart out!

And then life happened and you ran out of gas just before the finish line. Or perhaps right out of the starting gate. I know, it happens to the best of us. It happened to me, just now. The month isn’t over yet, but I can already see my demise just ahead, on the left.

This is my third NaNo. The first two I did, I wrote my 50K by the sixteenth day of the month. Had I continued at that pace, I would have hit 100K words before the end of the month, but I wrote what I had to to win, and left it at that. I even wrapped my stories up in 50K instead of just writing until I could write no more. As much as I was ready for those, I wasn’t.

You see, I went into them trying to win NaNo. That was my goal. If I got something good out of them, awesome. If not, whatever. I won NaNo. I didn’t completely get the message just right. Yes, I know it’s all about quantity over quality. Yes, I know it’s all about writing without stopping to edit or smell the roses. But I missed one huge important lesson.

It’s not about winning NaNo.



It really isn’t. It’s about training yourself to get a novel out of your system in little time. It’s about training yourself to just write, let the words flow, and in the end, go back to it and do your editing. You can’t tell a story if you stop to change it before it’s told.

The story I decided to write this year, Suburban Legend, was my moment of doing it the right way. The first two years I did little planning. That’s how I write (if you couldn’t tell by my stories!). I guess I’m a blogger that way, and I need to learn to not be. If I get a story idea in my head, I work out the details there and when the time comes, I just open the flood gates and let it pour out onto the paper.

This year, however, I actually planned a beginning and end to my story, my characters, trivial points in the middle of the story, and even the subplot. I planned ahead. On top of that, I realized what I’m telling you now. I was going to write my story until it was completely told. If that took me past November, so be it. The only thing I hadn’t expected was, that my story would be told before November was over, and before I hit 50K.

I thought for sure I would have enough to fill out 50,000 words. I even wrote parts to the story that I hadn’t originally planned, because you know, that happens. I even fluffed it up a bit. But truth be told, I’m not great at fluffing a story. And right now, I can’t imagine coming up with 12,000 words of fluff to hit the 50K mark. It just isn’t going to happen.

What you have to realize now, Mister or Misses Author, is that your story shouldn’t suffer because you didn’t finish NaNo. NaNoWriMo is there to teach you, to help you train yourself to be a better writer. To motivate you. To get those untold stories out of you and onto paper. It’s not there to be a competition to win. If that’s the case, you’re playing the game for the wrong reasons.

Sure, I lost NaNo this year, but that’s okay. Because it’s the story that matters, not NaNo. Sometimes stories aren’t told in 50K words. Maybe your story wasn’t meant to be a novel. Maybe it was meant to be a short story. Or a pamphlet. Whatever.

The point here is, I could write 12,000 crappy fluff words just to hit 50K, but why? So I can put a little jpg on my site saying I won? As soon as December rolls around I’m just going to delete all of that crappy fluff before editing my story. That’s not writing 50K in November, that’s cheating. Hell, I could copy my entire MS and paste it to get 76,000 words for that matter, and then “HEY LOOK! I WON!” No, I cheated.

Don’t cheat yourself, but more importantly, don’t cheat your story. Finish it. Don’t be depressed that you lost NaNo. You only lose NaNo if you don’t finish that story, no matter what month it is. Go write it, finish it, and let the world see what you wrote.

Grey Matter Press: Open Call for Submissions

Now Accepting Short Story Submissions

There are real-live monsters all around us.

All you have to do to find them is open your eyes.

For our next anthology of horror, MONSTERS (this is the working title and is likely to change), we’re looking for your best original horror fiction that investigates the evil that lives among us—the monster that is man.

MONSTERS will include a selection of dark fiction focusing on ‘man as monster.’ We are looking for your most horrifying, most dreadful, most frightening tales that highlight the creatures that haunt your nightmares, or even those who may live down the block. For this anthology we want your dark, chilling, character-driven tales portraying the deadliest monsters of all—mankind.

For more on this and the submission guidelines, click here!

NaNoWriMo 2014 Excerpt

It looks like for the first time in 3 attempts I’ll be losing NaNo. I really like the story I’ve written and I can’t wait to get it all trimmed up and ready to be read. But, there wasn’t enough story there to fill 50,000 words, and I’m not going to keep a bunch of junk in it. I might write a bunch of junk just to hit the 50K, but it will of course all be removed before publishing the story. Even still, it’s a fun read and it has been fun to write.

When I had planned out the story before November, I had a beginning planned that I liked. Beginnings and ends are hard to do for me, so having a beginning already planned was nice and made me look forward to writing the story that much more. Recently, however, I wrote something else just to help fill space, a separate part of the story that doesn’t include any of the main characters in the story, and it turns out that it would make a better beginning than the one I had.

With that said, here is that beginning. It hasn’t been edited yet, but it is the official beginning to the story that I’ll be calling Suburban Legend.



Along the banks of the Little Miami River through Loveland and surrounding areas is a scenic bike trail which many use daily for exercise, whether by bike or for a brisk jog. The seventy-mile-long trail goes along an old railway line, and in King’s Mills past an historic munitions factory called The Peters Cartridge Company. The building, while closed and condemned, is an awesome site, and travelers along the trail as well as the passing roads love to gaze at its presence. Jennifer Crawford was one who particularly enjoyed it, often stopping at the landmark to snap pictures before continuing on her morning bike rides.

She was normally able to head out early, just before dawn, so that when she got to the old munitions plant she could see it as the sun was coming up. The surrounding woods all around the building kept the area dark even as the sun was lighting everything else up around it, which made for amazing pictures.

It was a Wednesday morning, and once again Jennifer was at it, cruising along on her bike, enjoying the brisk morning air. She arrived at the building and decided to get some pictures of an area that she normally didn’t get pictures of. It was at the far end of the building, up the road away from the trail. There was a gravel parking lot just across the street from it with a couple of cars there. Some of the owners of the cars were most likely also on the trail, while the others were probably employees at the only business to still operate inside the vast series of buildings in the only section that was fit for occupancy.

Jennifer rode her bike slowly up the road and parked her bike in the parking lot. She dug through her backpack and found her camera, set the lens on it, and made her way across the street to the long, dark section of building she normally didn’t shoot.

It wasn’t that the building there wasn’t worth taking pictures of, it just didn’t offer as much to see as the rest of the complex. There was, however, an old entry way that was fenced off from the public, but inside the area was viewable from the rusty chain link fence. Chunks of concrete and wild plant life littered the ground in what was probably once an employee entrance.

Jennifer began snapping photos of the area, catching on film glimpses into a past that was littered with explosions, non-existent labor laws, and death, dating all the way back to World War II.

She finished up her time there by crossing the street again and getting wider shots of that wing of the building. Three stories tall and full of windows, the outside structure of the building appeared to still be in amazing shape. Even the windows, which many had been broken out, were still mostly intact. The old building was so far set back from the rest of society that not even vandals had much of a care to damage the grounds. Jennifer hadn’t even seen much spray paint anywhere, which made that location that much more photogenic.

Jennifer finished up just as the morning light was beginning to brighten the sky above the building and surrounding trees, placed her camera back in her backpack, and rode her bike back to the trail to finish her morning route.

Curiously, there weren’t many others out that morning. Then again, she had left earlier than normal, but even at this point she figured she would see more people than she had been.

A man passed her with a wave, jogging along and quietly singing along to whatever song was playing through his ear buds. She giggled to herself at his music choice. It sounded like that Patrick Swayze song from Dirty Dancing. Whatever motivates him, she thought to herself, knowing all too well that workout music could be anything to anybody, including stuff they might not normally listen to.

She rode on slowly, enjoying the morning and the solitude. To her right was the river, flowing along as it always did, with the gurgling water helping the rest of the natural soundtrack set the mood. This was why she made that daily route.

She cruised around a bend and saw something move up ahead in the trees. It was dark here on the path, despite the sun lighting up the day everywhere else. The trees were so thick that it took a good half hour after sunrise to get any light there, even in the Fall. Even still, she had seen something move, and it concerned her. She was, after all, a young female by herself on a trail in the dark. Never mind the area being a good one, anything could happen to anybody, and she saw in the news all the time how women were stalked in places just like this.

Jennifer slowed her bike and kept an eye on that spot. She reached with one hand to her side, where her fanny pack was, and pulled a canister of pepper spray that she always had on her when she went out for her morning trail rides.

Unfortunately she hadn’t seen anything more than a shadow, if she had seen anything at all. But if she had seen something move, it was smaller. Maybe a person, maybe an animal. It could be a deer, which there were plenty of in the area, and if it had been a deer it would have been a young one, judging by the size. She saw them all the time, whether on her bike rides or driving around town.

The other option, which she was hoping against, would be a coyote. They were all over the area, too, and they got big.

Naturally she didn’t want it to be anything that would harm her. If it were a lunatic, he might kill her for fun, or to have a trophy. Or he might do any number of nasty things to her, which she didn’t want to happen. If it were a coyote, it would kill her too, but it would do so for survival. Quite possibly to eat, or maybe even just to protect its young.

Either way, the pepper spray she had would work against both. She gripped the can tighter as she drew closer to the spot where she had seen the shadow move.

Jennifer decided that she would go as fast as she could past that spot. She didn’t want to slow down and give the attacker more opportunity to attack. Normally she kept herself at a nice slow pace, not so much for safety, which was definitely a priority considering all of the other travelers on the trail, but to enjoy herself and the scenery. That was why she made those daily trips. To wake up, clear her mind, and start her day off in a positive way.

But if she were to be attacked, that wouldn’t be a good way to start her day. She pedaled harder, pushing herself faster as that spot got close. As she went by she looked around through the trees but saw nothing.

Looking ahead again, she continued to push herself down the trail, interested in only getting out of that immediate area as fast as she could. She knew she was letting her imagination get the best of her, but as she went by she felt as if something were behind her, watching her. A chill ran through her body and she shook it off.

The area was behind her, and she was thankful, but she would have been more thankful if there had been another person on the trail with her at that moment. She would have also been thankful for a little more sun light streaming through the thickness of trees. Instead, she was still alone, even though the hairs standing up on the back of her neck told her otherwise.

Jennifer tried to brush that feeling off, thinking she was quite clearly far enough ahead from that spot to be safe from whatever she had seen move, which was most likely just a deer running off to catch up to its mother. And that’s when she felt a sharp pain in her butt cheek and she was yanked from her bike.

Her bike rode along another couple of yards before crashing into a tree and skidding on its side to a stop on the trail. The can of pepper spray bounced along the trail, trying to catch up to the bike but failing.

Jennifer landed with a thud on her ass, her back pack stopping her from landing fully on her back. Whatever had bit or grabbed her, released from her as she hit the ground. She immediately screamed for help, and then rolled over to see what had attacked her from behind.

Never mind being in good physical shape or the adrenaline that was now pumping through her blood, she felt weak laying on the ground. The spot on her butt that hurt was now numb and her muscles felt drained, like they did when she finished the Flying Pig Marathon earlier that year.

Up ahead of her on the trail, in the dim morning light, she could see a shape. A dark figure stood there, not very big, but it was definitely what she originally saw. And it was moving closer.

Jennifer tried to scream again, but her voice was weak, and her vision was going blurry. She panicked, but it did no good. Her muscles weren’t doing what she was telling them to, and she was having a hard time moving anything at all.

The last thing she was able to see was something coming at her fast, right at her face. She felt another sharp pain there, like she had on her rear, and then everything went dark.

Book Review: Skin

My dad and I trade books every now and then. For the most part, we have the same tastes and we introduce each other to interesting stuff. Only once has he read something I suggested and not liked it, and that was Hawkes Harbor by S.E. Hinton. Recently my dad recommended Skin, by Ted Dekker.

I tried giving it a read and made it about 30 or 40 pages in before I started getting sick of it. I pushed forward though, because the story was interesting enough and I wanted to see where it went, but by page 90 I had to call it quits. The writing was terrible and the editing, if there was any done at all, was horrendous.

This is the first time I’ve read a book my dad recommended and didn’t like it. I only gave it one star on Goodreads. I also read an interesting review there by someone who pointed out other stuff I didn’t, that was equally as bad.

In it, Jenn says:

Took this book home hoping I’d found another Stephen King, or at least a poor man’s Dean Koontz.

Koontz he is not. King he definitely ain’t.

The characters are not likeable; their backstories are cookie-cutter and very little time is devoted to their development. “I escaped a cult and now I’m afraid to touch men” “She used to be a child model” “He dabbled in the occult for a while” “His mom thought he was ugly” Very vague and doesn’t generate any emotional connection or intrigue.

I kept hoping this book would get better, but after the first line, it just kept getting worse. In case you’re curious, the first line is: “When the rain isn’t so much falling–be it in bucket loads or like cats and dogs–but rather slamming into the car like an avalanche of stone, you know it’s time to pull over.” Even that’s not thrilling, but it generates the expectation that we’re going to have a first-person narrator who is at least maybe a little sarcastic. This did not happen. It’s all third-person, sometimes to a confusing degree (Which “she” are you talking about, Dekker? Quit making us guess!).

I kept hoping we’d find out that these characters had some deep dark secret that connected them all, but the way in which they are really connected was pretty stupid (and also predictable). The “science” used to explain their experiences is pretty much a deus ex machina and was not believable at all. Maybe Dekker was trying to be tricky, but there are so many ridiculous hints dropped that I’m guessing most intelligent readers will be like me and guess who the “killer” is the second he is introduced, then dismiss him because surely no author of a so-called thriller would make it so moronically obvious, then find out, nope, you were right in the first place and Dekker is just a hack after all.

The killer has some kind of obsession with “ugliness” that the book never really explains, although it spouts some inane, vague, generic drivel that Dekker apparently THINKS is explaining. I can tell that Dekker thinks the book’s “message” is really mind-blowing, but it’s really not. In fairness, I didn’t realize Dekker was known for “Christian thrillers” until after I read the book, so perhaps he feels obligated to shove some sort of message in, but honestly it was not necessary for the plot and in fact may have irrevocably ruined an otherwise potentially salvageable story.

I have no idea what the hell is up with the ending. Maybe it’s supposed to be a cliffhanger. On the other hand, the characters seem to know what happens next and “what they have to do,” but I sure as hell didn’t get it, so maybe there is a convoluted explanation that can be found only in the brain of Ted Dekker. All I know is that it made me angry and I wish there was a way to demand a refund of the hours I spent reading this book.

One thing I hate is reading a review of a book only to find out the absolute complete opposite. Jenn points out King and Koontz. The reason for this is one of the reviews on the inside flap of the cover for another book, “Showdown is a well-written and suspenseful novel that can and will give Stephen King and Dean Koontz a run for their money.” That review, by the way, was written by http://www.1340mag.com. Good thing to know, so later I can not believe any review by them ever again. I went to their site to see what else they had reviewed and the site redirected me to Colossal Pop: Reviews And More, which gave me this message when I got there. “COLOSSAL POP IS NOW CLOSED. THANK YOU FOR THE MANY GREAT YEARS.” I wonder why they’re closed.

Another thing I found interesting is the quote on the cover, “Dekker is a master of suspense.” The only suspense I found was wondering whether or not the writing was going to get better.

To me it seemed like Dekker was writing down ideas for the story while writing the book, and then he just included his notes into the book and had it published that way. There were so many times in the book where he seemed to not have any idea what he wanted to say, and that is ultimately why I stopped reading. Jenn mentioned, “Which “she” are you talking about, Dekker? Quit making us guess!” Twice in 90 pages he said “she” and I had no idea who he was talking about.

One of the instances where he was lost in telling me what was going on is on page 37:

A terrible gust of wind moaned outside, but the building showed no sign of strain. The power feeding the library failed, though, throwing the huge space into darkness.

No, not throwing; it wasn’t that sudden. The lights faded to black over five seconds or so.

Which one is it Dekker? Was it immediately thrown, or did it fade to black? Make up your mind.

Then, the characters leave the library and move to the house next door which was “a stone’s throw away” from the library. That stone’s throw turned out to be “100 yards” away. A short while later the distance of these two immovable buildings is cut to “70 yards” away from one another. Which one is it Dekker?

While in the house, one of the characters is looking for some sort of medicine for a sick character. Dekker writes:

“There’s got to be something here,” Carey said. “Medicine. She’s going to die, man!”

Colt hesitated, then headed into the house, perhaps to look for a medicine cabinet.

PERHAPS to look for a medicine cabinet? WHAT IS YOUR CHARACTER DOING DEKKER?! TELL ME!

Look, as an author it is your job to tell the readers a story. We’re going along with whatever you say. If you don’t know what’s going on, how are we supposed to? That “perhaps” was one of quite a few instances in the first 90 pages where it seemed Dekker had no idea what his own characters were doing.

And the semicolons! He used more semicolons in 90 pages of this story than all of the semicolons I’ve seen in all of the books I’ve ever read, combined. So much so that it stuck out.

I just couldn’t do it. He seemed so confused when trying to stumble through the telling of this story, and I wasn’t willing to wait it out to see if he ever found his way to the end.

While reading reviews for this book I discovered Dekker is an author of Christian Fiction, which explained to me why a couple of times in the book his characters “cursed” but never actually said any bad words. I also accidentally read the surprise twist ending which didn’t entice me at all. I’m glad I gave up early.

The one star rating still sticks, and really it should have been less than that. I won’t be reading anything else by Ted Dekker.

Book Reviews: Joyland & Promise Not To Tell

Here’s a twofer. Buy one, get one free. BOGO.

Recently I’ve been racking up the books in my “read” column, which is great, because for a long time I felt like I had no time to read. It appears I’ve found that time, and I’m glad to have it back. The reason I’m reviewing both of these books together is, they’re both written in the first person and they’re both right around the same length.

First up was Stephen King’s Joyland.

I read some great reviews about this book at Horror Novel Reviews, and I can’t put it any better than they did. So if you want a great breakdown of the book, check those out.

As for me, I found the book to be perfect. What’s fascinating to me is how great of a storyteller Stephen King is, and how he’s not just a one trick pony. Sure, horror is his bread and butter, but when he goes off of that and into other areas, he seems truly at his best. Both of his Hard Case Crime books, this one and The Colorado Kid are amazing. The Eyes of the Dragon is another amazing story. All three are books I will read again, and I will get lost in again. All three have stuck with me, long after having finished them. More so than any of his other works.

Joyland, in particular, delivered on every level. When I absolutely had to put the book down, I was pissed. When it was over, I was pissed. This was something that ruled my day to day life while I was reading it. This is exactly how a first person story should be written. King took something as bland as a normal person’s day to day life and made it not only interesting, but riveting. It was like sitting with an old dude who had lived through it all and listening to him tell a story about his life. I still don’t want to believe this was fiction, it was told so well that SOMEBODY had to have actually lived it.

Do yourself a favor and pick this one up. There’s very little horror involved, as this is true to Hard Case Crime’s status quo. It’s a murder mystery. Even that is placed on the back-burner through much of the story, which is just about a college kid and his summer working at an amusement park, and the people he meets and how he lives his day to day life. And it’s so amazing.

I give this one an easy 5 out of 5 stars.



Immediately after reading Joyland I was given Promise Not To Tell by Jennifer McMahon. I do believe this was her first book, but since then she has written quite a few. If the rest are as good as this one, I’m interested to read them all.

The only issue I had with this book is how it was written. The very first and last chapters are in third person, but the rest of the story is in first. Why she chose to write it like that is beyond me, and it’s confusing. Going from third to first in the beginning wasn’t so bad, but after reading the entire rest of the book in first and then going to third at the end was like hitting a speed bump on the highway. It kind of ruined the flow.

Other than that, the story is excellent, and the first person storytelling is just like Joyland, although much more creepy and horror based. Like Joyland, it tells a coming of age story, while incorporating a couple of murders, ghosts, possession, and a few other mysteries woven all around.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and was hooked on it until the very end, which had me wanting more. After Promise Not To Tell, I’ll be checking out more by Jennifer McMahon.

I give this book 4 out of 5 stars.

“Fear Today, Gone Tomorrow” Now Available!

My story for this year’s 13 Stories Til Halloween has posted! Get your Halloween week started off right! Check it out now!

Pearls – Austin Malone

Matt Roberts:

13 Stories Til Halloween got kicked off right with a fantastic tale by the fantastic Austin Malone, who apparently has vanished without a trace. Details at 11.

Originally posted on 13 Stories 'Til Halloween:

“I need you to stay late tonight,” Denton said before Bill was even halfway through the door into the office.

“No way,” Bill said. “I’ve got plans tonight.”

“And I’ve got an inspector coming to look at a vacant unit tomorrow morning. Your plans just changed.”

“Which unit?”

“923,” Denton replied.

“Shit,” Bill muttered. That had been Ms. Shapiro’s apartment, until she’d died several days ago. “Forget it. I’ll fix dishwashers, haul furniture. I’ve even climbed a tree to catch a tenant’s cat before, but you don’t pay me enough to be mopping up an old lady’s blood. What if she had AIDS or something?”

Denton pulled open his filing cabinet and withdrew a pair of yellow, elbow-length rubber gloves.

“The hell I don’t pay you enough,” he said, slapping the gloves onto the desk. “You walk out that door without taking these with you, and you won’t be coming…

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