I'm very happy to announce that, after a long and unplanned hiatus, space horror podcast The Vessel will be debuting new episodes in March. This has been a long time coming, and I'm grateful to everyone who patiently (and sometimes impatiently) waited for its return. All of your questions, whether posted online, in reviews, or emailed directly to me, kept the engines burning long enough to keep the ship going. For those who know the show, Jason Hill's dark and distinct voice was a major part of its character. Due to a number of factors, the primary one being his work schedule, Jason decided to bow out of narrating duties. I can assure you it was totally amicable, and him and I are still both friends and fans of each other's work. The good news is Jason, being as awesome as he is, handpicked the narrator he wanted to take over for him. To be honest I didn't even ask, but he had one guy and one guy only in mind to do the job. So I reached out, and as it turns out he's a great fit for the show. And so, I'm also happy to announce that author, voice actor, audio engineer, and musician Erik Peabody has assumed the role of narrator on The Vessel. Erik and I have been working hard on the new episodes and I have to say he's doing an excellent job of both honoring Jason Hill's work and putting his own stamp on the show. The official debut of The Vessel: Section Two is March 24th, with new episodes following each Wednesday. If you haven't listened to the show yet, I guess that gives you plenty of time to catch up: https://thevesselseries.podbean.com iTunes Spotify Pocket Casts Stitcher Tune In
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Yes, friends, The Unseen is back for thirds. My new book, Dead as Dirt, will release on September 1st. The ebook preorder is already up, with paperback soon to follow. This is the third and final redux/relaunch of the original Obscured books. Once again I've gutted and rebuilt the thing from the ground up, ending with what I hope to be a much stronger story. This series relaunch has been a long (and some say ill-advised) journey, but I'm happy knowing I have the best possible version of my books, and by extension myself, out in the world. From here the series heads into uncharted territory, so we'll have to wait and see where it goes. Wherever it is, I plan to get it right the first time. As long as you're here, take some free stories. "Eater" - A funeral home employee receives a nasty visitor. Text Audio "Bad Blood" - A ride on the subway turns into a fight to survive for one man. Text Audio "Transmission" - A mechanic becomes obsessed with a mysterious abandoned car. Text Audio A young woman named Susan had just started a new job that was giving her some trouble. Well, just one part of it, actually. Susan had told herself this one part of her job wouldn’t be a big deal. A piece of cake. A walk in the park. After all, they were just people, and she generally liked people. But from the moment she saw, from the very first peek she got from the hallway, she knew the truth she’d been avoiding all along. Susan didn’t like the dead bodies. Where in most jobs a fear of dead bodies wouldn’t be much of an issue, Susan had just gotten a job at the local funeral home. It was a desk job mostly, meeting with families to discuss how they wanted their dearly departed to be handled. The correct spellings of their names. Which flowers they liked. That sort of thing. The rest was up to the funeral director, Mister Jolston. Susan liked Mister Jolston. He was a soft-spoken man, who had hired her with no fuss and even less muss. He respected her opinion and left her to do her job without interference- a favor Susan was more than happy to return. Mister Jolston was slightly odd, of course, as she expected any funeral director to be, but it was a quiet sort of odd, charming in its harmless nature. He seemed to prefer solitude to conversation, usually choosing to eat his dinner alone. Susan on the other hand enjoyed a bit of conversation. So when there wasn’t much to do, or she needed to step away from her desk to give her eyes a rest, she sometimes looked in on Mister Jolston in his office- only in his office, never the preparation room- as she did one cold Thursday evening. “How’s it going tonight?” Susan asked Mister Jolston, who was hunched over a dog-eared medical journal he’d pulled down from his bookshelf. “Fine, fine. I think I’ll step out for dinner,” Mister Jolston replied. And that was the extent of their conversation. He did, however, as he grabbed his coat from the hook, add one small bit of instruction. “The preparation room is locked. I prefer you not go in there, but if you do, make sure to lock it again.” He pointed a well-groomed finger toward the room. “I doubt I’ll need to,” Susan replied, not intending to go anywhere near the room with the operating table and the freezer and all those instruments. Mister Jolston placed his hat on his head as he stepped past her. “I’m sure you won’t, but it’s important enough to bear mentioning.” He paused at the door, as if unsure whether or not to go into further detail. He added, “There’s only one client at the moment. Mister Sato. I’ll begin with him when I return.” She remembered the delivery a few hours earlier, as well as her conversation with the late Mister Sato’s wife of thirty-six years the day before. What Susan didn’t understand was the reason for Mister Jolston’s mentioning it. As if it made locking the door any more important. Mister Jolston seemed to notice her confusion, yet he did nothing to clear it up. Leaving well enough alone, he exited the funeral home, no doubt walking to the diner that served his favorite fish. Susan had always found their food to be a bit undercooked for her taste, though it didn’t seem to bother Mister Jolston, as he in fact preferred his food that way. Susan returned to her desk and got settled, looking to finish her paperwork before her shift was over. It wasn’t long, however, before her mind began to wander back to the late Mister Sato currently lying in a freezer in the next room. A corpse. A dead body on a slab. She told herself she was being silly, working herself up for nothing. Acting like a scared, little girl. And yet she couldn’t stop thinking about it. She’d been left all alone with it, just her and a slowly decaying dead body. Just one peek at a body had ruined her day, and there were so many days ahead. In that moment, Susan decided something. She decided she liked her job too much to let her fear get in the way. She decided to formally introduce herself to Mister Sato. If she studied a body, if she acquainted herself with death, so to speak, she could take its power away. Exposure therapy, as the psychiatrists called it. But she had to be quick, before Mister Jolston came back from his dinner. He was a nice man but he could still get angry in the right circumstances. There was always a chance he’d come back early from dinner, perhaps having forgotten his wallet, and find her- “No more procrastinating,” Susan told herself. She went to where the keys were kept, found the key to the preparation room, and let herself in, closing the door behind her. The room was pristine, as she expected it to be, its shelves perfectly lined and organized. The tile floor was spotless. The harsh smell of cleaning chemicals rising up stung at Susan’s nose, though it was a far better smell than the alternative. Bottles of Formaldehyde and other preservatives were at the ready on the long counter against the wall, next to them a glass embalming machine with rubber tubes. A quick peek into a few of the drawers revealed bottles of glue, wooden dowels of various sizes, strange, spiked cups the size and shape of eye patches, as well as a large variety of needles and flesh-toned thread. At the center of the room, above the operating table, a contraption had been mounted to the ceiling. It didn’t take too long a look at its four, long straps dangling above the table for Susan to understand she was looking at a body lift. She imagined a puppet show of dead bodies, their mouths sewn shut and their heads propped up with wooden dowels. Ignoring the shouts inside her head telling her not to, Susan crossed to the freezer’s large metal door and opened it. There it was. The top of the corpse’s head in front of her. Her heart pounded in her chest. Cold air crept across her skin. Susan shut her eyes, placed her hands on the cold, metal drawer, and slid it forward. A long, metallic squeak danced on her nerves. Then, Susan opened her eyes. The middle-aged Japanese man in front of her was dead for certain. She could smell him now. The smell of death. The look on his face was more than sleep, it was sunken, relaxed. Nothing inside. Yet she kept expecting his eyes to open, to look up at her from the slab and ask her what she was doing. She stared at his eyelids, as if the moment she looked away they would jolt open. But they didn’t. The late Mister Sato had been a handsome man once. Husband of thirty-six years to a loving wife. An accomplished businessman in the area, and a supporter of so many charities she’d lost count. Susan sighed as she realized how childish she’d been about the simple act of death. The man in front of her deserved her respect, not her fear. He was no monster. He was a good man who’d led a good life. The sound of a door opening perked up Susan’s ear. It was the funeral home’s back door , the one that led to the small parking lot. Susan’s heart dropped as she realized Mister Jolston had come back from dinner. If he caught her there, borrowed key in hand, with Mister Sato’s body taken out of the freezer, he would fire her for certain. Her attempt at saving her job would instead have cost it. As her mind raced, not knowing what to do, how to handle the situation, she began to notice the strangest noises coming from the direction of the funeral home’s back door. It sounded as if Mister Jolston was cursing and hitting himself. Violent words and even more violent hits. Susan began to grow worried as the cursing and hitting grew louder, until she made the most unsettling realization. Two of them, in fact. One, it wasn’t Mister Jolston. He always came through the front door. And two: whoever it was, they were coming her way. Susan didn’t have time to slide the drawer back and close the freezer, she only had time to hide. The stranger was already turning the handle on the preparation room’s door. Susan ran to the closest counter and opened the lower cabinet. There wasn’t enough room for her. Too many cutting and sawing instruments. The door was opening now. The violent stranger letting himself in. Susan’s heart was nearly in her throat as she tried the next cabinet over, under the sink, praying for escape. Other than a single pipe leading into the wall, the cabinet beneath the sink was empty. She jumped inside as quickly and as quietly as she could just as the stranger stepped into the room. She didn’t even have time to close the cabinet door all the way. The noise of it shutting would be heard. She held it open barely an inch to keep it from making a sound. As Susan huddled in the dark, damp cabinet, surrounded by the smell of mildew from the water pipe lodged in her back, she listened to the stranger creeping into the room. He was still cursing and spitting, though under his breath now. He sounded angry. Disgusted. Vile language spewing from his lips. Susan didn’t want to look at him, but she had to. The man crossing the room had been terribly injured, his skin covered in weeping blisters and open wounds. His clothes were little more than torn rags. Susan instantly felt terrible, realizing she’d been hiding from someone who’d been hurt badly, who had wandered into the funeral home confused and in a time of need. She nearly burst out of the cabinet to help the poor man. But then, as the stranger came closer, Susan took a second look. His head was misshapen. The hair growing from it was thin and wispy, like the cobwebs found in an abandoned place. His eyes were deranged, radiating so much anger and disgust. And his hands. Dirty hands that ended not in fingernails but claws, sharp claws caked with dirt and filth. “Don’t want it,” the man spit, his skin waxen like the mummies Susan had seen in museums. “Don’t want it, don’t want it, don’t do it, don’t want it.” Susan was frozen in place. Holding the cabinet door, open just a sliver, just enough to stare wide-eyed at his gaunt, narrow arms, his naked belly spilling out over his rags. He sniffed the air, his head craning atop a long, thin neck that barely supported it, searching for something even as he cursed himself for doing so. The vile stranger caught sight of Mister Sato. Susan saw a look in his eyes that shook her. Like a drug addict seeking a dealer. Like a ravenous animal spotting prey. The stranger’s eyes didn’t just light up, they actually glowed. With no other warning, the ragged stranger suddenly jolted across the room. He closed the distance between him and the late Mister Sato in seconds, repeating, “Don’t do it, don’t want it, don’t do it,” until he fell on the cold corpse. Susan didn’t know what to do. She didn’t make a sound. Didn’t move a muscle on her crouched body. No matter how much she told herself to, she couldn’t look away. As she watched, the ragged, misshapen man sank his filthy claws into Mister Sato’s stomach. The dead flesh tore open easily. Clotted blood and cold intestines spilled out. Susan stared horrified as the stranger continued to tear and rend the corpse, all the while cursing and spitting, scolding himself not to do it, that he didn’t want to do it, that he was disgusting, worthless, nothing. And then, the stranger began to eat. Chunks of Mister Sato were pushed into the stranger’s hungry, infected mouth, floppy pieces of liver and kidney sliding between his lips. His sharp, bloody teeth chewed stringy muscle and tendon. They ground on cartilage as his sore-pocked tongue struggled to choke back Mister Sato’s black hair. Susan screamed inside, begging herself to look away, but she found it impossible to do so. It was more than just fear. More than sick fascination. The horrific sight had transfixed her, refusing to let her so much as shut her eyes and listen to the chewing and slurping and spitting. So many times Susan felt the bile rise up in her throat, but each time she managed to force it back down. Piece-by-piece the stranger devoured the late Mister Sato, only pausing to fill his pockets with bits and pieces, until all that was left was a skeleton with a head. Then he started in on those, too. Finally, after what felt like hours of snapping and crunching, the monstrous stranger had had his fill. Without another bite or a self-loathing word, he left the way he came. When he was gone, Susan allowed herself a moment to cry and gather herself in the dark. Then she slowly emerged from the cabinet. Susan’s body was wracked with pain from huddling awkwardly for such a long time. She wiped a tear from her eye and took a look at what was left of Mister Sato. His body was gone, nothing there now but a freezer drawer that never should have been opened. All evidence of the former man had disappeared. Even the blood had been licked up. After thirty-six years of faithful devotion, Mrs. Sato had been left without so much as a finger to mourn. Susan turned away, unable to look at the sight any longer. The stranger’s face was an inch from her own. His red, watery eyes burned into hers. His lips were thick with scars, and the smell of him was awful, the worst thing Susan had ever smelled. Like rotten milk and black mold left in the sun. Susan whimpered, frozen again in place. “P-please,” she managed to stutter, begging for her life. The sick stranger twisted his long neck, studying the words that spilled from her trembling mouth. “Please don’t.” A thought seemed to form in the stranger’s inflamed brain, and he twitched. The sudden movement frightened Susan. She cried out, shutting her eyes tight. This was it. He was going to use the same sharp teeth on her she’d seen him use to devour Mister Sato one mouthful at a time. But the bite didn’t come. She opened her eyes again, hoping he’d be gone, like a bad dream, a nightmare fading in the morning sun. Instead she saw him pull something out of his pocket and hold it out to her. It was Mister Sato’s eyeball. The brown iris and black pupil stared up at her from the stranger’s dirt and blood-caked hand. Susan looked back up at the inhuman stranger in front of her. “Help me,” he whispered, his breath a wretched combination of old blood and putrid meat. It took Susan a moment to understand what he wanted. When she did, when the horrific realization filled her mind, she backed away, shaking her head as her back pressed up against the wall. “No. No, I can’t,” she said. He stalked forward and shoved his stinking hands in her face. “Help me,” he repeated, closer now, eyes bulging in his poorly-formed skull. Susan glanced down at the eyeball, tears streaming down her face. The eyeball was all that was left of Mister Sato, the rest filling up the stranger’s swollen belly. “Please don’t make me do this,” she begged. The stranger’s wound-covered face suddenly shifted. Angry in a heartbeat, he snapped his teeth at her face. The sharp needles missed her nose by an inch. She screamed, then began to cry again. She prayed he would show some compassion for her tears. Instead he placed Mister Sato’s eyeball in her hand. She was surprised to find it was still cold from the freezer. The stranger stared at her. His breathing was uneven, each breath a gasp, like a man sleeping through a flu. As he clacked his claws together, his naked toes drumming the tile floor, Susan understood she had exactly two options. One, to eat the late Mister Sato’s eyeball. And two: to be killed and eaten by the half-naked creature before her. With only a moment’s pause, Susan raised the cold eyeball to her mouth and popped it inside. The taste of the eyeball, the cold feel of it against her tongue, made Susan gag, but she didn’t dare spit it out. The wispy-haired stranger urged her on. His breaths were short, excited. She wasn’t sure what made him more happy, that she was eating the piece of Mister Sato, or that he didn’t have to do it himself. She thought back to the way he’d cursed at himself, trying to stop himself from doing what he was about to do. The eyeball was only growing warmer inside her mouth, the congealed blood mixing with her spit. Before it could get any worse she bore down and swallowed. It went down like a rock. A cold, gelatinous rock. She willed herself to swallow it all the way down, her eyes squeezed tight, her neck and throat quivering. When it was done, she opened her eyes and looked at the freakish stranger. He smiled at her, a great, big mouthful of needle-teeth with bits of flesh caught between. The teeth parted to let the tongue through. The Adam’s apple in his unusually long neck bobbed. He was forming words. “Give it back,” he whispered, and Susan blinked. “What?” His face shifted into a frown. An angry frown. “Give it back,” he repeated, this time more desperate. He clutched at her, pushing her back into the wall. His eyes began to glow again, the hunger reignited. He was either going to reach down her throat or straight through her stomach to get what was his. “Oh, God. No. Please, no. Please just-” A sound. A beautiful sound interrupted them. It was the funeral home’s front door opening. The stranger craned his neck until it nearly snapped, following the sound. Recognizing it. Understanding the danger there. Then he glanced back at her. Without a word the stranger let go of her and scampered away. Susan fell to the floor, hearing only the sound of his feet scurrying out the door and away. She paused a moment, thinking she might be alright. Then she threw up, eyeball and all. It was much warmer this time. When she was done, she realized Mister Jolston was standing in the preparation room’s doorway, watching her. “I tried to warn you,” Mister Jolston sighed, crossing his arms. “Those damned things. They just can’t resist Japanese.” This article first appeared on The Horror Complex, a series by Manor Entertainment, now available in podcast. “The Thing Is” by Brian Martinez I was assimilated as a child. Growing up in the suburbs of Long Island, there were pretty much two directions a person could drive once they crossed one of the bridges to the mainland. One was into the great city of Manhattan, the perpetually-beating heart of the United States, where dreams lived and died by the minute. The other was the rest of the world. Once, maybe twice a year, my family would choose the rest of the world. We would pack our bags and pile them into my father's van, so he could drive us away from our safe home and toward some adventure. Mostly that meant camping, either in the Catskills or on one of the smalls islands of Lake George, where we would sleep in a tent and eat by the fire. But in the winter months, when it was too cold for camping, it usually meant snowmobiling. Snowmobiling, for those who don't know, is the practice of leaving behind a perfectly good van on a perfectly good road to bounce up and down a snowy trail on a noisy, electric sled. One winter, to our confusion, my mother opted not to join in that relaxing endeavor, leaving my father, my older brother and I to take our first ever guy's trip. We would miss her, we knew, but we decided to make the best of it. She would have the house to herself, we could make all the jokes she didn't approve of, and coming home would be that much nicer. So we packed our bags, hitched the snowmobile trailer to the back of the van, and headed north. By the time we reached our destination it was dark out, and we were tired. My father pulled into the lot of a small motel, the trailer crunching over the packed snow we'd come seeking, and rented us a room. It was small, not much more than a water-stained bathroom and a pair of beds, but we became re-energized in its glow. It was bigger than the inside of a van, after all, and slightly warmer. We were three boys without supervision. My brother and I jumped from bed to bed as my father flipped through channels on the small tube television, looking for something to watch. On one of the five or six channels that got reception, a familiar face flickered to life. It was Kurt Russell, star of what I already knew to be the greatest action movie of all-time, Big Trouble in Little China. He had a beard and a serious look on his face, but it was still very much the Jack Burton I simultaneously idolized and laughed at on repeated VHS rewatches. Either my brother or I, and possibly both, asked my father if we could watch whatever movie he'd discovered. “It's a horror movie,” he warned us, meaning it was scary. But we were undeterred. We wanted to know what our old pal Jack Burton was up to. So my father said the magic words, those four words every kid prays to hear when the earth quakes, and the poison arrows fall from the sky and the pillars of Heaven shake: “Don't tell your mother.” For the next hour-and-a-half, with the scratchy motel sheets pulled up to my chin, I watched The Thing eat and copy and kill every feeling of safety I'd ever known. Mutated dogs howled in fire. Chest-mouths consumed limbs and defibrillators alike. Men turned on each other as an alien life form took them over one-by-one. And through it all, the punishing cold of Antarctica threatened to finish what The Thing from another world had started. Life was cruel, the movie seemed to be telling us. No one was ever safe. Nothing could be trusted. When I fell asleep that night, it was to the sound of the bitter wind howling against the thin motel window. Like transformed dogs in the dark, their newly-formed tentacles beating at the glass, my dreams were angry and malformed. The next morning we woke early, as we always did, to suit up and hit the trails before anyone else. But something was different. As we stepped through the motel door, in boots and one-piece snowsuits, the snowy land waiting for us felt alien. Hostile. It hid things from us. Ancient crafts were buried beneath the ice. Unseen men barricaded themselves inside shacks, planning their escape. Strangers nodded to us behind ski masks as our snowmobiles rumbled to life and slid off our trailer. Still too young to ride alone, I sat on the seat behind my father, holding the side-handles as we roared onto the trails, with my brother following close behind. The bare branches of snow-covered trees reached out to us from both sides, like elongated arms that ended in claws. The wind bit at our faces and fingers, heat draining rapidly from our bodies. Hidden in the woods, predators of all kinds watched us, possibly even sled dogs with secrets in their blood. But none of that scared me as much as one, nagging thought bouncing around my skull. As I clutched those handles, speeding through the woods further and further from town, further from the things of men, I couldn't shake a terrifying feeling. Though my sleep the night before had been short and fitful, I had slept. I'd closed my eyes for a few hours in the dark. It was plenty of time for something to slip inside our small motel room. Plenty of time for it to visit my sleeping father. Plenty of time for The Thing to replace him. I trusted my father with my life, as most kids do. But what if the man sitting in front of me wasn't my father? What if a perfect copy of him, indistinguishable to anything but a blood test with a heated wire, was driving me deeper into the snowy woods? It was a silly thought, of course, brought on by watching a scary movie. The Thing wasn't real. Monsters weren't real. I glanced back at my brother, following us up the trail on the second snowmobile, knowing he would appreciate the ridiculous idea I'd had. The cold, eyeless face of his helmet visor stared back at me from ten feet behind. He was good on a snowmobile, expertly handling each dip and turn. But without seeing his face, without being able to look him in the eye, he suddenly felt like a stranger to me. That was when I realized: if The Thing had had enough time to slip into our room, to replace my father, it could have done the same to my brother just as easily. I was a lone human, speeding toward the brink. *** The Thing had a painful birth in 1982. Audiences didn't turn out for the movie, preferring to see the slightly more optimistic E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Critics called it everything from sterile to moronic to gratuitous. John Carpenter, dubbed a pornographer of violence by some, lost the job directing Firestarter and was subsequently bought out of his multiple-film contract at Universal. Cinefantastique Magazine even ran a cover story on The Thing that asked, "Is this the most hated movie of all time?" The truth is, the world, and especially America, wasn't ready for The Thing, in part because they saw too much of themselves up on the screen. Post-Vietnam America looked very much like MacReady, Childs, and the rest of them: cynical about what lay under the skin. Untrusting of anyone who wanted to hold the gun. Happy endings were no longer a guarantee, and seeing that attitude reflected back to them didn't sit well with people. In the fictional story of an otherworldly threat, they'd found something a little too close to home. Thankfully, over time audiences and critics alike have thawed to the genius that is The Thing. The movie's practical effects are hailed as an industry benchmark by fans and professionals alike. It's appeared on top movie lists of everyone from The Boston Globe to Bloody Disgusting, to Empire, Time Out, Esquire, Filmsite.org, Film.com, Entertainment Weekly, The British Film Institute and countless others. Carpenter himself has said that it's likely his favorite film from his filmography. It's even listed in the pages of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die as “one of the most influential horror movies of the 1980s.” I would have to agree. Like many people, I consider The Thing to be one of the greatest horror movies ever made. I also look back at it as a defining moment in my own creative birth. So many artists and works of art have influenced me, as is the case for every maker of things, but when it comes to the pure horror experience, to the feeling I want to instill in the audience, I always find myself returning to The Thing. It's intelligent and relentless, with atmosphere to choke on. It explains enough of the story without giving away all its secrets, so much so that fans still debate its plot points to this day. It brilliantly solves every issue a horror story can run into, such as “Why don't they just leave?” (They can't) and “Why don't they call the police?” (Help is two-thousand miles away) The Thing isn't just one of the greatest horror movies of all time, it's also the most unflinchingly accurate film ever made about paranoia. It shows how when something doesn't feel right, when the threats come equally from outside and within, we turn on each other. We take up our axes, our handguns, our flamethrowers and our dynamite, and we throw out the rules of society. Strip away the friendly faces, pull down the walls and remove the warm clothes and you're left with living organisms with one impulse above all others: survive. Live through another night, no matter how cold it is. The Thing is timeless, because paranoia is timeless. Fear is timeless. Our fears will do anything necessary to continue unchecked. They'll lie and cheat and bury themselves deep in our psyches. After all- man is the warmest place to hide. *** Returning from that snowmobiling trip as a kid, the reunion was just as nice as we'd expected. Nicer, in fact, considering the imagined horrors we'd escaped to get there. At least that's how I saw it. Our house was warm and safe. My mother welcomed us home with open arms. But as she hugged me, as much as I was happy to see her, a small voice in the back of my head, just the tiniest grain of doubt, asked me one, simple question: Can you ever really be sure? And The Thing is, can she? For me, and I suspect for most writers, stories represent a kind of dark magic. They live, they die, they transform and live again, taking on new shapes as easily as smoke filling a jar. As the person responsible for bringing a story to life, it's amazing to simply stand back and watch it move through the world on its own wings. "Salt in the Dark River" is a ghost story I wrote five years ago, as a submission for a writing contest on Inkitt. It didn't win. In fact it didn't do much at all except fall and fall in the ranks. I didn't mind, though, especially since I was proud of the story. If I can walk away with something I didn't have before, something I think is pretty good, then I've already won. As an afterthought I posted the story online- I'm an unabashed Reddit addict- and got some good reactions from the readers. That was that, I thought. Time to let it die. But then an interesting thing happened. People started contacting me, asking if they could record audio versions of my story. First by Manor House, which recently had its own form of resurrection, then by the juggernaut that is the NoSleep Podcast. Time passed, and I figured it had had a good run. Cut to just four days ago, when CreepyPasta.com- curated by Craig Groshek, whom I've come to work regularly with on his Chilling Tales for Dark Nights show- featured the story on their incredibly popular site. Not even two days later, Dark Somnium reached out to me and asked if they could record their own version of the story, complete with original music. I said yes. Of course. I even helped with the song titles. Then Chilling Tales told me one of their narrators wanted to record the story as well, for a popular competition show they run called Evil Idol. I said yes, and I'm still waiting to hear that one. Then- and this one is really exciting- a listener on Dark Somnium asked if they could translate the story to their native language, Chinese, in fact, and record it. I said yes. Stories live. Stories die. Stories change shape and live again. Sometimes we have to give them little pushes. Other times we simply have to get the hell out of their way. Happy Halloween, boils and ghouls. For the past few weeks, I've been celebrating the unholiest of months by writing and posting short horror stories based on the prompts of #mabsdrawlloween, a popular hashtag for graphic artists. My challenge to myself was simple: each day at 6 a.m. I sat down and read the day's prompt. Then, from 6 until 7, I came up with a simple horror concept and wrote it out, start to finish, posting the results to Instagram by around 7:30. With the month's stories completed, I thought I would share them here. There are twelve stories in total, for the simple reason that I didn't start until October 20th. So enjoy the microhorrors, and have a good Halloween. *** 1. Moon We used to look up at the moon in wonder, that bright light in the night sky. Then, once we'd reached it, in triumph. Eventually we saw it as a place to live, a new start in a new home. But no one goes to that moon anymore. We gave up the things we built there, left them behind to the cold and the dust and the howling crush of space. Too many things stick around longer than they're supposed to on that moon. You see whatever dies there, it doesn't move on as it's meant to. What dies on that moon, it doesn't die. 2. Werewolf My wife Rebecca, once a month she has these girls nights. Get-togethers with her college friends. They go out for drinks or a movie, and Rebecca, she always comes home late and tired. I accused her of cheating on me once, but she laughed it off as she always does. So tonight I followed her, followed her all the way to a farmhouse an hour out of town. It was easy enough to watch her sneak inside the barn under the light of the full moon. When I got closer, I was surprised to see her college friends in there with her, all of them removing their clothes. Confused, embarrassed, I watched as they hunched over in the dirt. Watched as they moaned and cried. Watched as their skin and bones shifted and cracked, their naked skin growing thick, black hair. Watched as they threw their heads back, and caught my scent. 3. Siren It's been six years since I heard it. Six long years since the trawling run that changed everything, killing all twenty-eight of my fellow fishermen and washing me up half-dead on shore. Six years since my life fell apart. How simply it all started, with a rainy morning and a good catch. But then one of the men heard it, and soon the others. Sweet music, carried on the wind. A lullaby like drugs drifting in the blood. Like drunk fools we followed the song, steered into a storm that swallowed us like bait and took us to the place where rocks jut up from the waves. Took us to the jagged shoreline of an unknown island. Beckoned forth by singing beauties that reached out for us, embraced and kissed us, we lost ourselves. The men, high on love and lust, forgot all earthly things for one, beautiful moment. That was, until the first scream. Until the flashes of teeth, with eyes like the lifeless stares of frenzied sharks. I barely escaped that place. Barely avoided drowning in the blood-stained waters that took those men. But not all of me made it to that shore. Only one thought has consumed me since, one desire that has ripped my thoughts apart until nothing is left. I need to go back, need to return to that unknown place in the waves, no matter what it means. I need to hear it one more time, to let its melody wrap me in honey and take away the ache I feel each day and night. Above all else, I need to hear it. The song that entangled my heart. 4. Kelpie Whenever I ask father what happened to mother, he always says the same thing. “She followed a man down to the river, and didn't come back.” His eyes say more, though. They glitter with sadness and fear and the years of raising a daughter alone. If I ask him if I can go to the river, to look for mother and bring her back, he punishes me. He locks me in my room and tells me it's for my own good. That I'm forbidden to go to that place, as all young girls should be. Today, though, I'm with a boy, and he wants to go swimming. He wants to go down to the river and splash and have fun. And so here I am, jumping into the cold waters of the river I was never meant to touch, my heart beating so fast from the fear my father put there. But then I'm shedding the fear and diving under, swimming down into the dark and cloudy water of the forbidden river, to be cooled by its kiss. And then, far below me, I see something stirring up the long seagrasses. And up from the depths it gallops, the body of a black-and-gray horse, eyes like green fire, the end a flowing mass of seaweed and fins. A mane of river eels. And on its back, the rider in its rotten saddle, what's left of my beautiful mother. Her skeleton tangled in its vines, bones green with lichen, her long hair flows like jellyfish in black water. Her eyes, long eaten away by fish, still see me somehow. And her teeth, smooth as river rocks, part to show me the things that live inside her mouth. To smile at me. To welcome me. Her daughter, who followed a man to the river. 5. La Llorona The curtains over Maria's bed blew softly in the night breeze, fine lace dancing in the window overhead. It was late, and Maria couldn't sleep. She couldn't sleep because, somewhere in her village, a woman was crying. The woman was far away, perhaps by the well, perhaps at the banks of the dried-up stream that ran past the village. It was the sound of heartbreak. A wail so mournful it tore the heart in two. Maria hoped that when she grew up, she would never know pain like the crying woman knew. As she listened to the woman's distant cries through the blowing curtains, she thought, for some reason, of the woman her mama always warned her about. The woman she spoke of whenever she wanted Maria to rush home before it grew dark. The Cryer. The Weeping Woman, who wandered at night in a white gown, a long veil over her face. Looking for her children. The children she'd drowned. “Remember, Maria,” mama always said. “If she sounds near, she is actually far away. But if she sounds far away, she is actually very near.” It was then, as Maria thought of her mama's words, that she remembered helping her mama with the laundry earlier that afternoon. After washing the clothes and the sheets, they had washed the curtains, including Maria's. But it had grown late, the sun already setting, and they hadn't dried in time to be put back up. There were no curtains above her bed. No curtains blowing softly in the breeze. As she sat up, slowly turning to face the open window, Maria stared at the long veil blowing through her open window. The lace was green at the edges, stained with years of mold. Behind the veil, in the darkness beyond the lace, two eyes stared back at her. The face streaked with blood. 6. Creature from the Black Lagoon It's my job to protect a door. Imagine that, nine years of service, two medals of honor and one purple heart later, my job is to protect a door. Not even an important door, like the oval office. Just a plain door with a keypad, in the middle of some beat-up, half-decommisioned laboratory no one knows about. “No one in, no one out,” are my orders, “not even you.” But I know a few things they don't, because I listen. I always listen. One, I know what they have in there. Some previously unknown species of fish, one that doesn't play nice on their evolutionary diagrams. And two, I know the code to the door. Like I said, I listen. Just after 3 a.m., when everyone else is asleep, I punch in the code and slip into the room. It's dark, lit up only by the screens and warning lights of more computers than it took to send a man to the moon. At the center of the room, the place where every damn wire in the place leads to, is the kind of fish tank sharks must have nightmares about. As I approach, I see it. It's not shaped like a fish at all, but more like a man. Dark green scales over sinewy muscle. Webbed hands and feet fitted with razor talons. Swimming in place, hovering in the floor-to-ceiling prison of water. Huge, blinking eyes that see me come closer, watch me with cold, alien indifference. Air bubbles dancing on its neck gills. Most surprising of all, it opens its red-lipped mouth and speaks to me. The words are captured by microphones and pumped into speakers overhead. But it's no language I know. None I've ever heard. As two soldiers I've never seen before pull me away, shouting something about classified information and military prison, my eyes catch sight of one of the computer monitors. A crude translation of the creature's words. I stare at the creature as I'm dragged backward out of that dark room, and he stares back at me with those ancient, uncaring eyes, the translated words washing over my frigid spine. “Sons and daughters. Children to Cthulhu. Awaken soon.” 7. Huli Jing (City of Demons excerpt) Miku's eyelids fluttered, dilated pupils rolling forward in her head. They were hit immediately with the harsh beam of a pen flashlight. She winced, but just barely. Peters checked the girl’s right eye for proper pupillary response, then the left. He had to make sure the tranquilizers were wearing off properly. Yori didn’t care much about the girl, but he treated what she carried like a shipment of precious diamonds. Something jumped at him from behind Miku’s eye. A flash of teeth and fire. Peters jumped back with a shout, nearly falling. "What’s wrong?" The suited guard asked him from behind. Peters turned away from Miku to look at the guard. "N-nothing," he said. "I…thought I saw something." When he turned back to Miku, she was calmly looking back at him. The tranquilizers seemed to have worn off completely in a matter of seconds. 8. Stranger Things James and Troy said they'd be waiting for me when I got out of school. Troy warned me he was going to break my arm if he caught me, so I didn't give him a chance. The minute the bell rang at three I ran out of school and took off on my bike so fast I probably left flames in the parking lot. I was halfway across town when the jerks spotted me. I'd just gotten past the train tracks near the junkyard when I heard Troy's stupid laugh behind me. I didn't even look back, I just ditched my bike on the side of the road and ran right into the woods. My feet pounded the fallen leaves like I was getting extra credit. I ran for so long. It was cold, I had no idea where I was, and I could hear James and Troy still following me through the woods, laughing and calling out my name. But then, just when I thought I was going to fall down from running so much, my luck finally changed. Because I found the best hiding spot ever. The half-dead tree had a huge hole in the middle of it, and it was filled with the nastiest cobwebs I'd ever seen. Lucky for me I've never been scared of a few spiders, and I knew James and Troy would never in a million years imagine I'd be hiding inside a tree full of them. Before the jerks could catch up to me, I got inside the half-dead tree. The webs were surprisingly strong, but I pushed hard and managed to get all the way through. For a second I thought I'd come out the other side of the tree. Some hiding spot. But then I realized something was very different. Everything had turned blue, bluer than winter, and there were strange snowflakes floating on the air that weren't cold. In fact I couldn't even touch them. The trees were dark and dead. Even stranger, the ground was covered in sticky cobwebs and vines. As red lightning flashed in the distance, I heard it. Not James. Not Troy. Not anyone or anything from the town I knew. It was a clicking sound, wet and growly, and right behind me. With pee running down my leg, I turned to look up at him. A gray man stood over me, with long legs, longer arms, and no face. As the place where his mouth should have been opened up, like a starfish covered in slimy teeth reaching out to me, I swore I could hear someone nearby. A kid my age. And he was singing. 9. Alien Gamblers, I think you'll find, take the worst jobs in all the galaxy. Even drunks and junkies, they have the good sense to either rot in their beds or crash their ships into space stations. But gamblers like me and Dodson? We'll take every disaster clean-up and smuggling mission we can get our hands on. So it's no surprise we ended up all the way out here, on LV-1201, where even the dumbest human hasn't lived since the early 2200s. But apparently, according to the guy Dodson took the job from, a few folks want to kick the tires on the abandoned base and restart their precious research project. And by kick the tires, I mean send in a couple of idiots to clear out the roaches and make sure the lights still work. The Primary Operations Complex is located out in the middle of the weirdest damn jungle I've ever seen, all red grass and bony trees, which almost makes me happy to see the complex's tall girders and observation pods. But a few steps inside its steel walls changes that real quick. The power is dead, and the wind and rain have hit the place hard. It's like an indoor jungle, with the insects to prove it. And on LV-1201 some of the bugs can get up to two foot long- even the flying kind. Dodson, he hands me an M240 Flamethrower he won off a marine and tells me to check out a storage room while he sets up some extra lights. Tells me to cook anything that moves. I can't say I want to listen, but the M240 has a way of giving a man some extra confidence. Ten feet inside the lightless storage room, the door shuts behind me and locks. Before I get a chance to shout about it, I spot something in one corner of the room. It's waist-high, kind of round, and more leathery than an old captain's jacket. Maybe it's the humidity from all this trapped rain, but it also looks wet to the touch. Not that I'd dare touch it. Dodson pops up at an observation window on the side of the room. There must be enough power to run the control panel, because a speaker crackles to life and spits his voice out at me. “Sorry, bud, but I sort of lied to you,” he says, like he's speaking at my funeral. The thing in the corner, an egg of some kind, trembles and quivers in the dark, almost like it knows I'm here. Then the top peels open like rotten fruit, and something peeks up from inside. What comes up looks like spider legs, except they have fingernails at the ends. As whatever the unholy thing is crawls up and perches on the lip of the egg, staring at me without any eyes I can see, I remember the M240 in my hands. I give the trigger a pull and find, to no one's surprise, the fuel tank is empty. “What kind of job is this?” I ask Dodson, tasting acid in my throat. And Dodson, that gambling son-of-a-bitch, smiles at me. “It's not an extermination job,” he says. “It's a transport mission.” 10. Pumpkin Guy Of all the calls I've responded to in my twenty-two years as sheriff, the call to Sunset Farms Bed and Breakfast is the one that haunts me. A little girl no one knew ran into the gas station on Shady Lane, crying and screaming so loud it took the poor kid who worked there nearly ten minutes to calm her down. Once she'd regained herself to the point she could speak, she spun a horrible tale about what had happened to her parents at the Bed and Breakfast they'd stayed at overnight. She'd just barely escaped with her own life. Eddie Thomas, the old man who ran the place on his own ever since his wife died, invited me in without a second thought. He showed me around the house and the farm, fully cooperating with the search. He seemed to be in a good mood, and I started to doubt the little girl's story. The barn was where we found them. Not just the little girl's parents, but damn near every guest Eddie Thomas had lodged in the previous weeks. No one knew why he'd done it, why he'd killed all those folks, just as they didn't know where the heads had ended up. Short of the little girl's parents, every damn corpse in that barn was missing its head. It wasn't until I checked the pumpkin patch, nearly two days later, that I found what he'd done with them. There was something off about the pumpkins. The shade. The shape. Like they were pregnant. A bit too full. It still bothers me, not knowing how he did it without cutting the damn things open. As I sliced the first bulging pumpkin open with my pocketknife, I remembered a conversation I'd had with Old Man Thomas a few months prior. We'd been talking about the Halloween season approaching, and I told him I'd never carved a jack-o-lantern in my life. He looked at me, smiling with that crooked, toothless mouth of his, and he said something that's stuck with me ever since. “Well, then, we'll have to change that, won't we?” 11. Creepy Candy In the entire neighborhood, there was only one house all the kids avoided on Halloween. It was the house with the red door. Three stories high, it loomed behind dead trees and a black, wrought-iron fence, its windows blocked up by thick curtains. A single car sat in the driveway, covered by a faded, gray tarp, though no one had ever seen the car in more than ten years. In fact, no one had seen the woman who supposedly lived there, either, though the lights inside the house did occasionally turn on and off. There was a rumor going around school, that the few kids brave enough to knock on the red door had been rewarded with armfuls of vintage comic books worth thousands of dollars. Remnants from the old woman's son, who had either died or moved away. Dennis, in his second year of middle school, decided to find out if the rumors were true. He was determined, in fact, that the night before Halloween, he got dressed up in his homemade mummy costume and walked to the house with the red door. Pushing open the iron gate, the rusted hinge giving out a long, painful moan, he crept past the car with the gray tarp and made his way up the longest ten stairs of his life. Dead tree branches rattled in the wind. With his heart pounding beneath his mummy wrappings, he rang the buzzer next to the red door and waited, empty candy bag in hand. With any luck, he thought, he'd be walking away with that bag filled to the brim with priceless comics. When the red door finally creaked open, Dennis was surprised to see a younger woman than he'd expected standing in the doorway. She was fifty or sixty at most, her face lean and tight. She wore a black dress, with a red shawl draped over her shoulders. She pulled it closer as she looked down at Dennis with an unreadable expression on her face. Her eyes were dark and cold as she studied him. Dennis tried to speak, but no words came out. “Is it Halloween already?” the woman asked. Dennis shook his head, hoping his plan hadn't backfired. “An enterprising young boy, you are. No one ever comes here, you know.” Dennis nodded and said, “I know,” his voice barely a squeak. As she leaned in closer, he felt his chest tighten under his costume. “Tell me, clever boy, do you have all your teeth yet?” Dennis nodded, having forgotten all about the comics. If all she was going to give him was candy, he was more than happy to take it and run away from that place as fast as possible. From seemingly nowhere she produced a black bowl, and began filling his bag up one handful at a time. He stared at her, unable to look away from her dark eyes. When she finally stopped filling his bag, heavy now in his hands, she slipped back inside the house. Before the red door shut, the woman glanced at Dennis once more. “Tell your friends there's plenty more where that came from,” she said, a vague smile on her face before the shadows took her back. Dennis walked away in a daze. Past the covered car, past the dead trees and through the gate of the wrought-iron fence, he went back the way he came, retreating toward home. When he finally thought to look in the bag, to see what kind of candy the woman had given him, his stomach tightened. His throat nearly closed up at the sight waiting for him inside. He was holding a bag of teeth. 12. Trick-or-Treat After a stressful day at the office, followed by a painfully long commute in bumper-to-bumper traffic, Richard was exhausted. So much so that he barely noticed the trick-or-treaters running up and down his street. He nearly hit one of them with his car, in fact. He cursed and honked at the lanky vampire running to catch up with his friends before driving on. “Way too old to be dressing up anyway,” Richard mumbled as he parked and got out of his car. At least he'd been lucky enough to find a spot right in front of his building. But as he leaned back in to retrieve his suitcase, he got the feeling someone was standing behind him. Like he was being watched. A group of kids had surrounded him, five in all. They wore identical costumes. Dirty sheets covering their faces, torn shrouds that ended below the knees in ragged strips. Their eyes peering at Richard through holes in the sheets, they all said, “Trick-or-treat,” in a practiced chorus. Richard shooed them away, telling them he didn't have anything for them. They watched him go, not moving as he made his way inside and shut the door. Later, after Richard had changed from his work clothes, he was just finally settling into his chair with a drink when his doorbell rang. Apparently the sign he'd taped up that read “No candy!” hadn't worked the way he'd hoped. Probably, he thought, because some kids don't know how to read. When he opened the door, he was annoyed to discover the same five kids from before, standing on his doorstep, still covered up in dirty rags. Again in unison they said, “Trick-or-treat.” “I told you I don't have anything,” he said, growing angry. They looked up at him through their eye slits, and once again said in harmony, “Trick-or-treat.” This time he didn't bother to argue with them. He slammed the door in their sheet-covered faces, returning to his drink and mumbling about how kids lacked respect,. That no one reads signs anymore. Later that night, long after Richard had fallen asleep in bed under the heaviness of a few drinks, he awoke from a deep sleep. His head was fuzzy. More than fuzzy, it felt like he was drowning in syrup. His arms wouldn't move, and he could barely feel his feet. When his eyes finally blinked open, he didn't believe what they were seeing. The five children surrounded his bed, arranged in a pentagram. Their eyes, staring down at Richard, glowed red through their eye slits. Richard couldn't move. His arms and legs were pinned to the bed by an unseen force, no matter how much he struggled. He could only watch in horror as the children removed their sheets to reveal the death underneath. Their bony arms reaching out to him as their broken lips once again uttered a chorus of, “Trick-or-treat.” Only able to move his eyes, Richard looked down at himself, lying in bed, and watched as they tore at him the way they must have torn their sheets. Watched helplessly as the children opened his belly up, reached inside, and took their treats. *** I'm a huge fan of Space Horror and Cosmic Horror in any form, as evidenced by my podcast The Vessel (currently on hiatus). It's not the easiest Horror subgenre to track down, however, and movies in particular can be a bit spread out. So, being that it's October, I figured I would round up a collection of Space Horror flicks and where to currently stream them without having to put down any additional money for a rental. Here's what I found, with a few favorites and new releases near the top. If I missed anything be sure to comment and I'll add it to the list. Event Horizon – Prime, Hulu Aniara – Hulu High Life – Prime The Thing – Amazon: Starz The Thing (2011) – SyFy Life – Fx Now Fire in the Sky – Amazon: Starz Another Life – Netflix Dead Space: Downfall – Prime Dead Space: Aftermath – Prime Doom – Starz Killer Klownz from Outer Space – Prime Europa Report – Hulu Apollo 18 – Netflix Pitch Black – Amazon: Starz Galaxy of Terror – MaxGo, Amazon: Cinemax Annihilation – Prime, Hulu The Endless – Netflix The Void – Shudder Absentia – Prime NightFlyers - SyFy City of Demons, the second, completely redone book of The Unseen, came out this past Saturday. I already considered City of Demons one of the better books I've written, and in my mind the new version has cemented that opinion. I don't say any of that to brag, it's just that- redo's like this one aside- there are usually two different versions of every book, the one a writer envisions, and the one he or she ends up writing. An Expectation versus Reality situation, based on everything from time restraints to personal skill level. City of Demons is probably the closest I've ever come to having Reality match up to Expectation, and so, to me at least, it's a success. What does this mean to you? Probably not a lot. But just know that I'm proud of this book. The third book is on the cutting board right now. That one needs a bit more work before I'm as happy with it. For all my effort, Hot Dirt was probably the furthest from Expectation of the three books. But there's a good story in there waiting to be freed from the muck, and if I can pull off that trick the series will be in a good position to continue onto the fourth book. That means one more main character introduction, one more big bad, and a bunch of rising tension that starts to move the chess pieces across the board and toward a coming war. If you're into that sort of thing. This past Tuesday I released a new book, which was also an old book. Shallow Graves is the completely improved and expanded take on a story originally titled Shallow Veins. I had a lot of hesitation going into this, mainly because I feared a backlash from those people (few as they might be) who had already read Shallow Veins. But starting with the first person I told- my wife, who continues to be the series' biggest supporter- through the public announcement and finally the launch this past week, I've been amazed by the overwhelmingly positive reaction this decision has been met with. To be honest, I expected to hear a few cries of, "I already read this, what else do you have?" Instead, I was greeted with, "Can't wait to dive back in and see what's new." To me, this response has meant everything. The writing life is full of doubt. It's essentially creative decision after creative decision, much of it made alone and in the dark, which are then presented to the public for review. As much as I try to stay self-motivated, I can't imagine making this thing work without a few encouraging words telling me I'm on the right track. To those of you who took the time to offer them, you can't even begin to understand how important they were to me. No one is an island. No one can operate in a bubble, not without eventually needing oxygen. The Obscured, a series that fizzled out after three books, was until very recently the biggest failure in my writing career. I aimed high and didn't hit the mark. But The Unseen is looking to fix that. Failure is the first step to learning, I think the saying goes. But failing with friends isn't failing at all. I'm already well into work on Book Two, which always stood out as my favorite of the three, and I'm happy to see it growing even stronger with the extra time and attention. Thanks again for the support you've all shown me. I intend to earn it. As is always my goal, I want to talk honestly with you about something. One of the biggest regrets in my writing career to date has been the failure of my Obscured series. I know 'failure' is a harsh word, but ultimately it's the right one. Exactly five years ago I announced Shallow Veins, 'the first book in an ambitious Urban Fantasy series.' I had big plans for a multi-character story that would grow and grow in scale as our world was beset with ancient creatures. Four months later Shallow Veins was released, followed by two more books in the series over the next two years. The problem was, nobody bought them. Okay, some people bought them, but not a lot, and fewer each title. By the time the third book came out with a sad thud, the future of the series looked grim. With my tail between my legs I moved onto other things, namely Bleeders and The Vessel, all the time wondering why the grand story I'd planned hadn't landed with readers. Why they didn't see what I saw. Then something interesting happened. Recently, after avoiding it as long as possible, I sat down and watched the first seven seasons of Game of Thrones. As you can imagine, I fell in love. Not just with the scale of the story it told, but with how simultaneously invested I felt with the characters. As usually happens to writers when they love something, I started thinking about writing a story like it myself. Then I realized, I very nearly had. The Obscured had been my attempt to write on a larger scale, yet readers hadn't reacted as they had with Game of Thrones. So I went back and read Shallow Veins, and what I found kind of shocked me: it wasn't at all the book I thought it was. Five years of distance (and hopefully improvement) made me realize I'd been blaming the wrong person. I thought it was the readers not seeing the potential of what I saw, when in reality I had failed to show it to them. Shallow Veins felt like a horror book with vague implications of continuing. It had scene after scene of grisly details, yet very little mention of the larger universe. The focus was all wrong. The world blurry. The characters thin. All those ideas I had in my head for a grander story had stayed in my head, where they did no good to anyone but myself. For that, I apologize. The great thing about realizing you're to blame is you can do something about it. It's oddly empowering to know you're at fault, because now the control is back in your hands. All this is to say, I'm not letting this story die without a good fight. Regardless of the outcome, this is a story I want to tell. Over the last month or so, I stopped everything else I was doing and took apart Shallow Veins word-by-word. I put it back together bigger and stronger. I took out the unnecessary bits and added a lot more necessary ones, placing the focus where it belonged while expanding the world. The result is a much better book, I think, as well as a stronger start to a series. I'll be doing the same for the second and third books before I even think about moving on to writing new ones. This is more than an update, it's a complete do-over. In fact, even the name is changing to reflect this newly refocused start. The Obscured may have failed, but only so that The Unseen could be born. If you own a copy of any of those original three books, consider them unique collector's items. A rare peek at a false start. And if you happen to be one of those wonderful people who backed Shallow Veins on Kickstarter in the beginning, check your email in the coming weeks. You won't be left behind. Thanks for hearing me out. I hope you join me. |
Brian MartinezHorror and Science Fiction writer. Thinker of things. Archives
February 2021
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