S.K. Epperson's Blog, page 13
April 25, 2012
The Vision And Other Tales a free download until April 30, 2012
In honor of my late brother’s birthday, I’m offering my collection of short stories free at
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/155501 until April 30th.
Happy Birthday, Bro.
The Vision And Other Tales
A collection of supernatural–and a few just plain psychotic–short stories by the author of Brother Lowdown, Borderland, The Moons of Summer, The Neighborhood and Green Lake. Join in for the mysterious happening in The Vision and stick around until the final gasp of The Last Secret
The Vision – Three neighbors find themselves sharing a vision of something shockingly grotesque hanging from the fence of the fourth home on the block.
They’re Closer Than You Think – A tale with a definite warning for boys that shoot arrows at targets in the woods and miss, only to get the bloody broken parts of the arrow back the next day, on the front porch of the family home.
Battle’s Panther – A local family and a disparate group of people find themselves in a struggle to survive the afternoon when a private plane’s crash landing disturbs what has lived in the woods of the hollow for eons.
Others – A teacher writes a sentence on a board and triggers something in a young athlete chosen to defend our realm against beings that can enter only when it rains, and only when certain human females from Hungary happen to be around.
Op Donja – A drug cartel pirates a yacht and mistakenly leaves one little girl alive in the water. She is found by three bumbling surfers and a Brit on the lam who hates dogs and postal carriers but has a weakness for maimed orphans.
Phelan Keegan and the Blue Man – With two PhD’s Phelan Keegan may be the most intelligent drunk ever to come to town, bringing his three children to live in a house recently vacated by a suicide. The cemetery right outside their door is something they didn’t count on, or the graves that get filled and then sink again because they’re suddenly empty.
Unleaded – Combine the oldest living bacteria on the planet with several barrels of a banned pesticide stored in a salt mine and surviving high school suddenly comes down to which teacher has the best skills with a pen or the sharp end of a compass.
The Last Secret – A devastating earthquake destroys Savannah and causes graveyards to spill forth their contents. One man sees it as the apocalypse and determines that he and his sons have been chosen by God to remain behind and complete His work. They waste no time in setting off to capture others to help rebuild…and reseed… the earth.
Promotional price: $0.00
Coupon Code: CU33X
Expires: April 30, 2012
March 20, 2012
Vernal Equinox and Frog DNA
(Insert music and lyrics of The Guess Who here: “There’s a new mother nature taking over. There’s a new splendid lady come to call…”)
On this first day of Spring I awakened to the strangest conversation going on in my head. Someone was telling me to study the DNA of a frog because that is how our DNA is going to change. My grousing response was to ask why I would care, and the answer was “Because you’ll be here after that, but in another form.”
Talk about a way to open your eyes at four in the morning (now insert cartoon character with goggling orbs the size of dinner plates.)
“…study the DNA of a frog because that is how your DNA is going to change.”
My first thought was a full second of brain-stammering Huh? and then a prompt to repeat it to myself so I would remember what was said after I was fully awake.
“”Because you’ll be here after that, but in another form.”
My second thought was “Dammit, you mean I have to come back again?”
I have got to get better at doing things right the first time. And I’ll get right on that frog thing. Promise.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/328/5978/555.short
PS: There was a movie from the 70′s called Frogs with a Sam Elliott like you’ve never seen him. Anyone else see it?
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March 12, 2012
Rolling in Clover
Ready for a green beer yet, anyone? Green eggs? Ham? Anyone?
in clover"> From YourDictionary (the dictionary you can understand) we get: <in clover">a in clover">href=”http://idioms.yourdictionary.com/in-c... clover
What does “in clover” mean?
(Apparently “in clover” now means “in shit”, but it didn’t always. See below.)
Prosperous, living well. For example, After we make our first million, we’ll be in clover. This expression alludes to cattle happily feeding on clover. Slightly different versions are like pigs in clover and rolling in clover. [c. 1700]
Four-Leaf Clovers
The superstition of the four-leaf clover is thought to originate with the Druids. Apparently they believed the shamrock helped them to see evil spirits, thereby allowing them time to get away or find a safe hide-out. The four-leaf clover was also used to ward off evil as it provided a magical repellent that would turn away bad luck. The bearer of the clover was also able to see fairies and this became a very popular past-time with children in the middle ages. Young adventurers would go out each day to find four-leaf clovers and once they found them, would then proceed to look for fairies among the flowers and fields.
The three-leaf clover is also associated with good luck as it is believed to be a symbol for the Holy Trinity. By wearing a three- or a four-leaf clover, good luck is brought to the bearer.
The above is from The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry http://www.csicop.org/superstition/library/four-leaf_clovers/
Some of those ‘evil spirits’ mentioned were confused no doubt with these mischief makers. You can read stories of encounters at the link below.
http://paranormal.about.com/od/fairieslittlepeople/a/Encounters-With-Little-People.htm?nl=1
My favorite Little People story comes not from Ireland, but from Argentina:
In the Muncipality of Merlo a one hundred year old eucalyptus tree near a library
was said to be obscuring the visibility of motorists and causing problems with
telephone lines so the tree was scheduled for a trimming operation. Traffic halted
for a time while the work progressed and when traffic resumed, several motorists claimed to see strange figures illuminated by their headlights. They saw what appeared to be little men coming single file out of the tree and walking toward the library, wearing what one woman described as clothing of a “brownish hue”.
For years there were stories of “imp” sightings in the district, hidden among the
branches and leaves of the old tree and once the trimming operation was complete some claim because of the red wood of the eucalyptus it appeared as if the tree was bleeding.
UPDATE: Check out this video.
And this one:
March 3, 2012
10 Inexplicable Crimes and Disappearances
At various times, and from various parts of the world, there have been convincing reports of crimes and of assaults on people – and sometimes on animals – for which there is no generally acceptable solution. The cases described in the following list are in no particular order, as they are all just as intriguing and incredulous as each other. Many of these have no definable perpetrators, but these are all crimes that have been carried out in the most curious and perplexing of circumstances that truly defy all sense of logic and meaning.
The story of the 'Cave Children' is impossible to resist, it conjures up so many questions.
February 22, 2012
John Steinbeck said a writer should be read and not seen.
At four this morning I was restless and turned on the telly to find a black and white film featuring five stories by O. Henry (a.k.a. William Sydney Porter) being introduced by author John Steinbeck http://www.americanwriters.org/writers/steinbeck.asp. The first thing I heard him say was that he always believed a writer should be read and not seen.
I am of the same mind.
The first time I saw a portrait of Shakespeare I was mildly disappointed. How could someone of such genius be so ordinary looking? I’ve felt the same about other writers many times since, and though I’m aware of how shallow and ridiculous this makes me seem, I’m pathetically human and I still feel it.
When I try to examine what it is that makes me so disappointed I realize it all comes down to perception. When I examine Shakespeare’s works I perceive a golden mind behind the tale and am deflated to find only flesh and blood, and very routine flesh and blood at that. It makes me wonder if this is why some choose not to believe he actually wrote the plays and poems he is so famous for having written (as in the film Anonymous http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1521197/.) Are they looking for a golden being to go with the golden mind?
I surmise that I too disappoint.
At signings I was frequently greeted with: “Did something terrible happen to you as a child?” Inwardly I wanted to howl, clutch my breast and respond in a voice like Vincent Price: “Yes! My God, yes and how is it that you alone have recognized this?”
I cannot imitate Vincent Price. If I could I might have been so snotty, but instinctively I knew what prompted the question. I was a disappointment. They expected someone dark and scary and perhaps scarred or tattooed. Instead they got me, a person they couldn’t reconcile with dark fiction.
My first agent begged me to become another Mary Higgins Clark. I told her one existed already. She then asked me to become like Anne Rice and appear somehow quirky or exotic, to have something that made me unusual. Again, I knew what prompted this: I was ordinary. There was nothing dark or deviant about my appearance. I couldn’t blame my first agent for scrabbling for a hook. My reluctance was no doubt a part of our agreement to part ways. Like Steinbeck, I couldn’t understand why anyone should want to see me. My work should speak for itself.
Until my third novel most people believed I was a man. Then some reviewer made a comment about me writing as well as any male horror author and the jig was up. Believe it or not, sales immediately fell off, as if no one believed a woman could write horror as well as a man. Well they believed it until they knew otherwise, which sucks for me, and for all the other female authors out there who are subtly, insanely discriminated against by book buyers. The funny thing is, I do it too, because of the built-in erroneous perception that the really gritty, dark psychological stuff is not the same when written by a woman. It’s more like, well, like Mary Higgins Clark. Which is not who I am.
Dammit.
February 21, 2012
February 19, 2012
Betsy Klausmeyer's Cellar
Reblogged from Author S.K. Epperson:
A story about a bad place.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006MNG1V6
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/114870
During his son’s baseball game a tax attorney catches a glimpse of a birthmark on a man’s leg and his blood runs cold with the memories that come. When he was five years old he saw something he shouldn’t have, went somewhere he never should have gone and paid harsh consequences. His eighteen year old son knows something is up with his dad and confides in his quiet girlfriend, who suffered early trauma of her own and begins to suspect that her boyfriend’s father knows exactly what she went through as a child, may in fact have made the acquaintance of her family’s killer long ago, and now both are determined to go back and find the truth about what lies in Betsy Klausmeyer’s cellar.
February 15, 2012
Reblogged from Sci-Fi Talk Official Blog:
Along the ...
Reblogged from Sci-Fi Talk Official Blog:
Along the same lines as yesterday's post, another tale of time travel. Hope you can see the video.
