Strange Days Are Here

A high school football star whose drinking problems require drastic intervention. A scarred soldier returning from war and an assassin with an unknown agenda on a collision course with each other. A spurned love seeking revenge. A man who stares death in the face, and loses. A new town sheriff consoling his mourning daughter. Three friends who dare trespass where they shouldn't be, and a tired warrior fighting to survive, though he wants nothing more than peace and rest. All this and a collection of essays on horror and writing in general. Spend a short season in the odd town of Clifton Heights, New York, and in the odd mind of Kevin Lucia. - Strange Days

"Kevin Lucia's writing is both scary and smart, a lethal cocktail that makes for mesmerizing storytelling." -- Tosca Lee, New York Times Bestselling Author of Demon: A Memoir 

"Lucia is a true craftsman of the horror story, with a fine sense of the genre's best traditions." --Norman Prentiss, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Invisible Fences and The Fleshless Man

From the Introduction:


The reasons behind this small collection are twofold: First, several of my short stories didn’t fit into the framing narrative of my first short fiction collection, Things Slip Through . I felt they were good enough for an audience, so I decided to assemble them – along with a few poems – into a small collection.
Secondly, over the years many folks have mentioned how much they’ve enjoyed reading my blogs, especially those who have followed me from the very beginning. Good friend and excellent author Richard Wright once told me he liked reading my blogs because they’ve charted my development as a writer, that through them you could see a progression in my thoughts about writing and the horror genre. I decided to gather several of the essays I’ve written for different webzines over the past two years along with some of my more popular blogs to create a nonfiction section to Strange Days .
Rounding out this collection are two projects that unfortunately fell by the wayside, my desire to create several standalone graphic eBooks, and a graphic novel serial, Asphalt Oceans by Midnight. I offer them as curiosities, and hopefully you’ll find them interesting.
These aren’t “trunk stories.” They’re stories I enjoyed writing, stories I sold along with my other stories. I feel comfortable in their quality, though several of them represent my earliest stages of writing. And these essays don’t offer “writing advice” trying to tell everyone how to write. They’re me trying to figure out how I want to write, trying to figure out what horror fiction means to me, with a healthy dose of real-life stuff thrown in.
As always, thanks to those who’ve supported my work, offered me a guiding hand, or even cheered me on from the sidelines. Thanks also, as always, to my wife Abby, for all your unfailing love, support and patience.
Enjoy, and thanks again.