Mr. Slithers
Carter cursed as his keys fell out of his hand and smacked the tile. His hands were full, he was exhausted, and in desperate need of a shower. A planned two-week vacation to Thailand had somehow morphed into five weeks of zipping around South Asia in a rickety jeep with an enchanting woman named Buppha. He never would’ve left, but someone had stolen his identity back in his home area in upstate New York and run up crazy charges on his credit cards. He planned to get that all...
It’s release day and I couldn’t be more excited about it. Endless Christmas: And Other Short Tales combines all of my favorite things in one place: Christmas, absurdity, madness, monsters, action, comedy, and a few weird twists to keep things interesting. Some of my favorite writing I’ve ever done (and read) are when my brother and I used to do holiday fiction at our old publishing company. Getting back to that spirit and anchoring an entire novel-length collection in and around Christmas and...
George Washington
“Becky, I told you we should’ve stopped coming,” Elise said, gesturing to the snack table. “This selection is GRIM.”
As much as Becky wanted to argue, she frowned as she inspected the goods. Stale cookies, out-of-date chips, and room-temperature generic sports hydration drinks were all that were on offer at tonight’s meeting. It was a far cry from the fully catered snack table at the first two meetings.
“Everyone find your seats,” Rise, the leader of the group, said. “Let’...
The Scout
Jake lagged behind his teammates as they jogged back onto the field for the second half of the football game. Usually dogmatic about sticking to his pre-game routines, Jake had given in the night before at the badgering of his teammates and attended a party. Good times were had, but not without consequence. He bent over, feeling queasy and weak.
“You good, Mullens?”
Shooting upright, Jake forced confidence onto his face.
“All good, coach.”
His coach smacked his shoulder pads.
“...
Annie Eighteen-eyes
Luis bent over the kitchen sink and spat toothpaste. He started to place his toothbrush in the holder by the sink, but stopped when a voice spoke from the bedroom.
“That was only one minute and fifty-six seconds. Dentists recommend two minutes.”
It felt to him like two minutes, but he knew better than to argue. He squeezed a dab of toothpaste onto his toothbrush, then spent four more seconds brushing.
“Great job, honey,” the voice called.
After wiping his mouth, Luis...
GRAVY CHEF
Julie quickly shoved her vape into her pocket as headlights lit up the dark street. Trying to look nonchalant, she started walking, swinging her arms as if she didn’t have a care in the world. A stab of fear shot through her chest as the car slowed to a stop beside her. Picking up her pace, she intentionally didn’t look over at it, even when she heard the window rolling down.
“Julie? What are you doing out so late?”
Turning, Julie was surprised to see her sister Cathey staring...
SURGI-DOC
The Surgi-Doc beeped and whirred, then the drill at the end of one of its fingers started to spin.
"You have a 5.83 percent chance of reaching your quota before the end of your allotted work time," it said, its voice monotone and mechanical.
Alvin wasted precious seconds glancing up at it, searching the filament in its glass tube eyes for any hint of humanity.
"Demerit. You have purposefully remained unproductive for a period of ten sustained seconds. Your pay for this shift has...
My new book, Creepazoids: And Other Short Tales, released a little over two weeks ago. My goal for the year 2025 was to publish three books, and it feels awesome to be well on the way to hitting that goal. In its first two weeks of release, Creepazoids has sold a little bit slower than my first book, but has been doing really well on Kindle Unlimited, which is nice. When I add up all the pages read on Kindle Unlimited, Creepazoids is actually ahead of the first book in sales + pages read, so...
We are just one week away from the release of my latest book, Creepazoids: And Other Short Tales. Book releases are equal parts exciting and strange for me. Exciting because writing a book is hard, and editing is hard, and getting a good cover made is hard, and doing the layout is hard, and marketing is hard, and at the end of that very difficult journey, you finally get to share this labor of love with the world. You inhabit those words and that particular book for so long that it feels like...
As you may have read in my previous blog post, I am pretty far ahead of schedule with my writing plans this year. That’s a good thing, but it does mean that here in the month of March, I find myself writing Christmas fiction. Now, I consider myself something of a Christmas fanatic, but I’m generally not feeling very Christmasy in the month of March. But, a book of Christmas themed short stories is up next on my production schedule, and so I’m doing what I have to to bring the holiday season...
I find myself facing a strange dilemma. I finished my next book early. That's a good thing, but it's also driving me crazy. Late last year I mapped out my 2025 release schedule and my upcoming book was scheduled for mid-May. That was before I hit early March and had the thing written, edited, and about 94% ready for full publication. The dilemma is if I should push the release up by a month or not. I'd love to release in mid-April, but my next release is Christmas themed, which means it can't...
As I've moved into full editing mode on my next book I wanted to spend a little time talking about some editing tips and tricks I use. And yes, before you ask, this is a way for me to procrastinate from doing more editing. If I'm writing a blog about editing, it's sort of the same thing as editing, right?
FIRST TIP: MOVE SLOWLY
In my youth I was a terrible editor. The reason for this was speed. I got so excited when I'd finish the rough draft of a project that I'd race through the editing...
I'm very excited to share with you that at some point around 3 am this morning I completed the rough draft of my next novel-length short story collection. My goal for 2025 was to write two books but I didn't exactly expect to finish the first one just a little over two months into the year! Maybe I should expand the goal to three books? We'll see, but for now I just want to enjoy being done with the rough draft of this one, lol. It turned out to be longer than expected, coming in at 85,000...
Welcome, friends! 2025 has started out as such an exciting year for me as I released my first new book in over 8 years. I've had a great time starting out this writing journey again and it was time to get a new website rolling to compliment the new book release. I'll be using this website as a place to keep you informed about my progress on new books as well as posting up some short fiction from my past and brand new stories too! If you sign up for the mailing list I will be sending out...