It’s Valentine’s Day, and I’m here to woo my beloved mailing list with two new anthologies featuring never-before-seen short stories of mine, which you can get right now (for yourself, or for your sweetheart, guaranteeing you a passionate and sexy V-Day).
First up is MY EVIL FUCKING NEIGHBOR, from the lunatics at Sinister Smile/Crystal Lake. In my story “There Goes the Neighborhood,” anxious, mild-mannered Doug Renner begins to suspect his next door neighbor Randall is a serial killer. But the joke’s on him, because ALL of his neighbors are serial killers. Here’s a little taste:
Less than twenty-four hours after witnessing Randall’s nocturnal excavation, Doug became convinced he was surrounded by a cadre of bloodthirsty sociopaths.
He was not wrong.
The McGills, for example, had a crawlspace stuffed with the mummified remains ofhitchhikers and runaways. Mr. Rooker did in fact use his birthday clown guise to ingratiate himself to families with young children and then, months later, sneak back into their houses to murder everyone with a device of his own invention he called the “Whack-a-Doodler” (taking a page from The Walking Dead’s playbook, said Whack-a-Doodler was not a baseball bat but an oversized clown mallet wrapped in barbed wire). Nurse Nancy, the severe and alliterative neighbor to his left, really was an Angel of Death, fiddling with doses of crucial medications tensure her geriatric patients checked into Our Lady of Aldergrove but did not check out. The blonde woman--Phaedra Wayne Curtis--had killed more husbands and fiances than she could count, and the man with the primer grey van was currently standing before a full-length mirror in his bedroom, wearing the face of a youth pastor he’d met in a truck stop bathroom.
In fact, the only person on Fairvale Lane who was NOT an active serial killer was Doug.
How did a bunch of serial killers all come to live on the same street? What’s their plan for Doug? And how the heck is he going to get out of this one? Find out in MY EVIL FUCKING NEIGHBOR, which also includes stories from folks like Nick Roberts, Candace Nola, Rebecca Rowland, and Mike Salt, available now!
Next up, we have THE CLUB HOUSE, featuring my video game horror story “Super Whopper Bopper,” which asks the question, “What if someone made a real-life version of a Mario-style game?” Like most people my age, I played a shitload of Nintendo as a kid, and I always wondered what it would be like to stomp on a Koopa trooper. How gross is their blood? What would it smell like?
Weird, right?
Well, now you can share my bizarre fascination. “SWB” is about an executive at a Dave & Busters-esque chain who’s looking for some new and exciting games for his adult patrons. And what’s better than a life-size version of the video game they loved as kids?
Something moved at the end of the corridor.
Definitely not my reflections because I’d been standing still. I gripped the mallet in both paws and advanced. A little shadow separated itself from the dark pools at the end of the hallway, moving quickly but with a tottering gait.
The thing moved into the light. Rabbit-sized, except it walked on two legs and wore navy blue coveralls. A wrinkly little face peered up at me with glassy eyes, its apple-sized skull covered in wrinkles and topped with a dollop of wiry red hair.
“Bop,” it said.
I screamed. The thing approached on unsteady legs, white-gloved hands outstretched. The mirrors lining the passage compounded the bizarre little creature into an army.
“Bop bop bop.”
Find out what happens next in THE CLUB HOUSE, on sale now!
And finally, my horror love story OUR BLACK HEARTS BEAT AS ONE is on sale in ebook right now! I wrote this book in the wake of a bad breakup. It’s about a rising musician who turns to the occult to salve his broken heart and the horrible things that happen when you fuck with black magic. This is quite different than anything else I’ve published. If you’re looking for a dark and creepy story about the horror of falling in love, this is it!