I’d just like to announce that I am the artist for Issue #10 of Weird Horror Magazine. All 8 interior illustrations have been drawn by me.
Special thanks to Editor-in-chief Michael Kelly for this wonderful opportunity!
I’d just like to announce that I am the artist for Issue #10 of Weird Horror Magazine. All 8 interior illustrations have been drawn by me.
Special thanks to Editor-in-chief Michael Kelly for this wonderful opportunity!
Today I opened a package with four (4) wondrous contributor copies of the September 2024 issue of ParABnormal Magazine, with my story “Aveline’s Apartment” contained therein. Special thanks to magazine editor H. David Blalock and Hiraeth Publishing editor Tyree Campbell, for molding my lumpy ball of clay into a sleek, symmetrical rocketship 🚀 of a story (no, it’s not about a spaceship.)
ParABnormal Magazine is an all around entertaining magazine, filled with fiction, nonfiction, and art, and I recommend a subscription unreservedly.
I have short story news, as opposed to the boring illustration news:
1. My story “Disquiet” will go live in June, on Penumbric.com.
2. I have sold my story “Aveline’s Apartment” to ParABnormal Magazine.
After a long dry spell, three things are going right. The first two are mentioned above. The third is that I’ve finally gotten control over my novel. I have tamed the beast, and now that she is under my control, we will go to wonder-filled places, on an Earth just like this one…mostly. I will post a very short excerpt on Slip of the Pen in a few days. Until then, I will be writing my butt off, and you beautiful people will be performing your own kind of magic….
I would just like to mention the new Vortex Books & Comics, bricks n’ mortar brainchild of authors Brian Keene and Mary SanGiovanni. Opening roughly in the springtime of 2024, the store could use a donation, large, small, or mammoth, to help apply ignition and thrust sufficient to reach LEO, and beyond. If you would like to help Vortex reach Escape Velocity, you can donate here.
Here is my latest illustration for Penumbric.com:
I also have an illustration reproduced in the Best of Penumbric
The author, Donna Tartt, once wrote that sometimes, people fail, no matter how hard they work, no matter that they make all the right moves, and that this is a bitter pill to swallow.
I have been failing as a writer. During the last two months, I’ve been in and out of the hospital five times. I am 52 years on this Earth, and despite my very best efforts, I have been largely unable to sell my literary work.
During the past three or four years, I have decided to quit writing on four occasions, the very most recent one being yesterday. I’m far too thin-skinned, and I cannot find a reliable critique partner (except for Dave, of NC: you know who you are! And occasionally, Dean, of Canada). If I could let go of it, I could spare myself much heartbreak and focus solely on my illustration work…except I can’t.
To paraphrase William Burroughs, “[writing] is a virus from outer space.” For those of us unfortunate enough to be infected, quitting writing is on par with ceasing to breathe. So, I have basically been cursed to suffer, and KEEP suffering…except that, the act of writing, those times when I am so lost in the Realms of Story that I cannot hear the phone ring, are the limited hours that I get to spend time in heaven. Heaven is addictive, much like heroin, and falling in love, again and again….
I still draw (though during the interminable periods of my hospitalizations, I cannot touch the stuff), but I have failed, repeatedly, to exclude writing fiction, so that I must bounce back and forth like a ping pong ball, between visual and literary work. It only feels like a trap because I cannot manage to sell anything, which is an experience diametrically opposed to my writing experiences during the 90s. So I must fail, and keep failing, at something that I consider holy.
But life is tough all over, and I must stop whining about it.
My short story, “Disquiet,” has been provisionally accepted for publication on a future issue of Penumbric.
My latest illustration, “Behind the Door,” is up in the December 2022 issue of Penumbric. This drawing was inspired by author Mary SanGiovanni‘s novel of the same name, although the titular door, as described in the novel, bares little resemblance to my illustration.
My flash science fiction story, “The Last Goodbye,” is in the November 2022 issue of The Martian Wave. This is a story about how, in an era of interstellar space travel, two people can be separated, for all intents and purposes, forever. If you’ve read the story and come away with a heavy heart, this might perk you up: another story, featuring the same two characters, will find them reunited against impossible odds, in order to face a dire threat to the entire human presence in the Milky Way galaxy. I will post more about this once the story gets underway.