Swallow the Evil - Free Download!
Years ago, I wrote a story called "Deep Dark" for the creative writing class I was taking at a junior college. My two previous science fiction stories had bombed with my classmates. They were more of the artist type, and I was more of a mercenary who liked seeing my name in print and having checks to cash. They would congregate at some pretentious coffee house and moan about how no one got their art, and I would stay up until the wee hours of the morning cranking out story after story, trying to get better. They preferred dirges about drug addicts and people dying from AIDS, and I liked rocket ships, magic, and the undead. We weren't exactly a happy marriage. Nevertheless, I was an attention whore and wanted very much to impress them. I figured if I could tell one of my kinds of stories and still get them to applaud, I was doing something right.
"Deep Dark" was that story. It was my first real attempt at horror. I've never been a huge fan of the genre, and when I do read it, my tastes list toward the extreme. So, I tried to distill those tastes and put them into a story. It was a huge success. The big sticking point with them was that it was a slasher story set on a theatre stage. I remember someone even compared it to the play within a play scene in Hamlet, which I thought was laying it on a little thick, but I took the compliment because of the aforementioned whorishness. The story wound up winning 1st place in our yearly fiction competition and subsequently was published in our lit journal. I was also paid $25 in prize money for it, which was more pleasing to me than my classmates' adulation.
Since then, I've written more horror. Some of it is really good, like "An Incident in Cain's Mark", which appeared in an all-horror edition of Stupefying Stories, and others have been not-so-good. What frightens me tends to not frighten others, and vice versa. The scene in Monkey Shines when the paralyzed guy has the monkey with the straight razor in his lap terrifies the shit out of me. The girl coming out of the TV in The Ring left me with a feeling of, "Man, she really needs to use conditioner." Ask someone about Monkey Shines, and they'll stare at you with cow eyes. Mention the TV thing, and they'll become spontaneously incontinent. I don't get it.
Because I don't exactly have my finger on the pulse of what frightens people, I rarely write straight horror. Most of my fiction tends to be dark, however, falling into the category of "horrific without being scary". That's fine. Dark fiction is hot nowadays, anyway, and so why not gather my rosebuds while I may?
In a few weeks, my science fiction novella, Operational Costs, is going to hit the virtual shelves at Smashwords. It was to be my first foray into self-publishing. I haven't been too keen on the idea, but one can starve to death waiting for publishers to release one's work on their own. I'm prolific, and so self-pubbing the occasional novella or story collection is about making a few extra bucks and keeping the creative p.s.i. out of the red.
I didn't want to go through the experience cold, though, so I started looking around for something I could publish through Smashwords as a sort of dry run to see how things worked. It turns out I have about four collections worth of science fiction, fantasy, and horror to which I currently hold rights. I decided to take a few of those shorts and make a fiction sampler out of it to use as a sort of business card to hand out to people who haven't read my work, want to, but don't want to commit the cash. The result is Swallow the Evil. It's about 21,000 words and contains nine of my horror/dark fantasy shorts, including "Deep Dark", which last saw print over fifteen years ago. Swallow the Evil is currently available in a variety of formats, including .mobi and .epub, and it's free to download. If you like your stories dark, or if you just like the occasional bit of evil in your mouth, I'd appreciate it if you'd check it out.
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/...
Oh, and if you read it, don't forget to review it on Goodreads. You're a daisy if you don't.
"Deep Dark" was that story. It was my first real attempt at horror. I've never been a huge fan of the genre, and when I do read it, my tastes list toward the extreme. So, I tried to distill those tastes and put them into a story. It was a huge success. The big sticking point with them was that it was a slasher story set on a theatre stage. I remember someone even compared it to the play within a play scene in Hamlet, which I thought was laying it on a little thick, but I took the compliment because of the aforementioned whorishness. The story wound up winning 1st place in our yearly fiction competition and subsequently was published in our lit journal. I was also paid $25 in prize money for it, which was more pleasing to me than my classmates' adulation.
Since then, I've written more horror. Some of it is really good, like "An Incident in Cain's Mark", which appeared in an all-horror edition of Stupefying Stories, and others have been not-so-good. What frightens me tends to not frighten others, and vice versa. The scene in Monkey Shines when the paralyzed guy has the monkey with the straight razor in his lap terrifies the shit out of me. The girl coming out of the TV in The Ring left me with a feeling of, "Man, she really needs to use conditioner." Ask someone about Monkey Shines, and they'll stare at you with cow eyes. Mention the TV thing, and they'll become spontaneously incontinent. I don't get it.
Because I don't exactly have my finger on the pulse of what frightens people, I rarely write straight horror. Most of my fiction tends to be dark, however, falling into the category of "horrific without being scary". That's fine. Dark fiction is hot nowadays, anyway, and so why not gather my rosebuds while I may?
In a few weeks, my science fiction novella, Operational Costs, is going to hit the virtual shelves at Smashwords. It was to be my first foray into self-publishing. I haven't been too keen on the idea, but one can starve to death waiting for publishers to release one's work on their own. I'm prolific, and so self-pubbing the occasional novella or story collection is about making a few extra bucks and keeping the creative p.s.i. out of the red.
I didn't want to go through the experience cold, though, so I started looking around for something I could publish through Smashwords as a sort of dry run to see how things worked. It turns out I have about four collections worth of science fiction, fantasy, and horror to which I currently hold rights. I decided to take a few of those shorts and make a fiction sampler out of it to use as a sort of business card to hand out to people who haven't read my work, want to, but don't want to commit the cash. The result is Swallow the Evil. It's about 21,000 words and contains nine of my horror/dark fantasy shorts, including "Deep Dark", which last saw print over fifteen years ago. Swallow the Evil is currently available in a variety of formats, including .mobi and .epub, and it's free to download. If you like your stories dark, or if you just like the occasional bit of evil in your mouth, I'd appreciate it if you'd check it out.
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/...
Oh, and if you read it, don't forget to review it on Goodreads. You're a daisy if you don't.
No comments have been added yet.
