I am thrilled to finally announce that Lethe Press will publish Fear Itself, my collection of speculative-fiction stories, this summer. I am ecstatic that these ten horror, sci-fi and fantasy pieces will at last see print. Thank you kindly, Duke (aka Steve Berman), for taking on my tales, seizing the day and providing this cover art as a wonderful birthday present, just like with Town & Train ("I had a tradition to uphold," Berman told me.). Thank you, also, amazing Matthew Bright, for the layout.

It is now available for pre-order on the Lethe Press site. 

Getting solicited or asked to write some fiction

So a good friend asked about my following vague-posting about getting solicited.

Feeling kinda' chuffed - got solicited for the first time in years and didn't have to be walking down Somerset Ave. in our fine LGBTQ1+ village, wearing a tight black T and denim to get solicited. And it's the (marginally more) respectable kinda' solicit, involving writing fiction.

Here's what happened.

I am trying out an editing gig and decided to be clever. I joked that Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) rules say that 33 per cent of the anthology I am looking at should be Canuck content.

The person I am working with replied, 'Well, you did not write me a story."

I answered that I may have missed the submissions call. Or did they ask for the stories from the authors? This is a common practice for editors in the business to ensure they curate a collection of quality work.

"The call for submissions was on the website for a year!" they exclaimed.

The Internet shook.

Then they flipped the script on my joke and asked for a 2,000-word piece of fiction on a particular prompt, with a real deadline and everything, kiddies.

Not long after, I even got the call from the person I am working with, likely chewing on a cigar in their glassy skyscraper office in another city.

"Just write it, in get met the story by next week!" they exclaimed.

It was like J. Jonah Jameson had assigned me work.

So, I had no idea my sense of humor would land me in this position, which is rather interesting and arguably enviable.

And that, fair readers, is as specific I can get until the ink dries on the contract.

Notes on Revising Second Horror Novel

Spoiler Alert: This post is all about revising my second horror novel, Monstrous. For those who may not want to know the juicy details, you might want to skip those. But for those who an inside peek at the writer's craft, including struggles and revelations, it might be interesting and useful.

Haven't returned to revising my second horror novel quite yet, but I have been gifted several epiphanies about the antagonist's burden, inhering a multimillion-dollar estate from his grandfather who has a deadly design on my protagonist (let's call him John Newman for now). What I have finally realized is that William McMammon 5 has inherited not only the unwanted responsibility of an empire, but also a diorama of the inn that ol' granddad was retrofitting for five years, leaving William to decide how to get back at Newman for wronging him when they were teens. 

So, William gets a diorama and unlimited financial resources to get back at John. But there's more than that, of course. William was in line for some sort of weird transformative experience in the woods that ol' granddad set up near one of his Pfizer factories, but William failed to make the grade because John and his other pals interrupted young Billy (William) messing around with another boy. So, John and his buddies accidentally stumbled upon this tunnel in the woods that more or less changed them, using autumnal magic. John became a werewolf. His good friend became a genius guitarist. Another encountered a phantom train. Still another friend learned they could see ghosts, and physically manipulate them as if ghosts were corporeal. 

In the book, William (and John et al.) will learn this at the opening of the codicil, or a change to a last will and testament, in a videotaped testimony from Robert McMammon 3. Robert feels that William failed to pass his test as a kid and sort of prove himself to his grandfather, but he also blames John Newman and the others for taking what was supposed to be rightfully William's. William has turned out to be a single, queer, partying, trust-fund kid, while John et al. have either gifts or curses, depending on how you look at it. Robert aims to rectify this perceived unfairness, and leaves it to William to do whatever he sees fit to John and the others.