New Supernatural Thriller Now Available at Amazon.com!
In this duo of supernatural thrillers, Calvin Bricker deals with desperate spirits right in his own neighborhood.
In “The Vacant Lot,” a supernatural presence beckons from the empty neighborhood lot. Calvin’s curiosity leads him to an aged portrait painter with a terrible secret about a dead undertaker and his missing wife, who seeks eternal release.
In “How I Was Cured of Naïveté,” a seemingly innocent spirit appears in the foyer of Calvin’s home. When he discovers her fate, he sets her free—only to find that little girls aren’t always made of sugar and spice. Snick, snick!
If you like crime and mystery with a supernatural bent, succumb to the call of DESPERATE SPIRITS!
Get DESPERATE SPIRITS from Amazon now!
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New Dark Thriller by Lee Allen Howard Now Available at Amazon.com!
On his thirteenth birthday, Buddy gets shipped up north by his religious mother, who can’t cope with his sister’s teenage pregnancy.
Just as he resigns himself to spending the entire summer at Gram’s farm caring for kittens and cows, his bitter sister Brinda arrives, ending his peace and solitude.
When her boyfriend Jackie shows up and turns his attentions to Buddy from his bride-to-be, Buddy must do what Mama said—or take matters into his own hands.
Download “Mama Said” now for the chilling conclusion. Only 99 cents!
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I’m seeking beta readers for my current work in progress—DEATH PERCEPTION—a supernatural crime story infected with horror yet preserved by a sprinkling of black humor:
Nineteen-year-old Kennet Singleton lives with his invalid mother in a personal care home, but he wants out. He operates the crematory at the local funeral home, where he discovers he has a gift for discerning the cause of death of those he cremates—by toasting marshmallows over their ashes.
He thinks his ability is no big deal since his customers are already dead. However, when what he discerns differs from what’s on the death certificate, he finds himself in the midst of murderers. To save the residents and avenge the dead, he must bring the killers to justice.
Take a peek at chapter 1 of DEATH PERCEPTION in PDF. If you’re interested in reading and providing comments on the entire manuscript (70K words), send me an email. Feel free to share this page! Thanks.
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Fractal Despondency by Trent Zelazny
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Gimping through his grief over a lost love, lost in a way that can only damage, Blake Gladstone has much to recover from: choices she made, choices he made. As he struggles to go on with life in Santa Fe, he meets Denise, who introduces him to 24/7 spiced rum. And danger.
Has Denise come to rescue him, or finish him off? Blake must deal with more choices: choices she made, choices he made. She disappears and reappears, and when she does, Zelazny portrays it with an electrifying sense of doom. The characters are disturbing, their pain is palpable, the suspense is taut. Recommended.
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Disintegration by Scott Nicholson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
DISINTEGRATION could have been titled DISSOLUTION. The downward spiral of character may not be the most popular form, but it’s a valid one, and Nicholson handles it artfully. He pours on the misery thick and heavy — and never lets up. Blow by blow, he nails the pain of the past to the heartache of the present. Skillfully revealing events from yesterday and the motivations of the moment, he builds a juggernaut of suspense and doom that will keep you guessing until the very last line.
Who’s worst: Jacob, Joshua, or Renee? You decide. All the characters are deep, twisted, enigmatic. The Appalachian setting and the residential contractor trade ground the story in reality, and the description throughout is not just gritty and biting but at times excruciating. Nicholson is a master storyteller, and I can’t recommend his work enough.
Those who want happy characters should switch to mid-grade fiction. DISINTEGRATION is literary intensity.
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About two weeks ago, I got the idea to revise my Seton Hill University thesis novel, DEATH PERCEPTION. But that created a dilemma for me: revise an old project, or work on a new one? Here’s how I came to my final decision.
Since graduating from the Writing Popular Fiction masters program in 2006, I had made several rounds of revisions on the book, a supernatural crime story. I would go through it and make a lot of changes, then I’d bury it again. I never felt it was complete. Certainly not good enough to be published. And frankly I was so sick of it I couldn’t gain any perspective. Am I improving it, or am I making it worse? I could never tell. After its mouldering in the grave for a good three years, I unearthed the manuscript once more, scraped off the decay, and decided to take another look.
I was suprised. Sure, there were a couple chapters that were clinkers, churned out under the pressure of a term deadline nearly a decade ago. But most of it was good. Really good. At one point, I thought, I can’t believe I wrote this…
Perhaps my skills and judgment have matured. More so, I think I’ve gained confidence in my abilities. Somewhere during my continuing studies and coming out process, I gained that perspective I needed to be able to judge my own work with a more objective eye.
And I discovered something uncanny. Those frustrating holes in my manuscript that I didn’t know how to fill in past revisions were suddenly waiting like placeholders for knowledge I now possessed. Someday I plan to blog about the prescient and prophetic aspects of fiction writing, but for now I’ll say that not only with THE SIXTH SEED, but also with DEATH PERCEPTION, plot situations that I wrote about years ago have come to pass in my personal life. Let me explain.
DEATH PERCEPTION is about a young man who operates the crematory at the local funeral home. He discovers he has a gift for discerning the cause of death of those he cremates. Not a big deal since they’re already dead. However, when what he discerns differs from what’s on the death certificate, he finds himself in the midst of murderers.
Have I started to cremate the deceased in my spare time? No. (But the onsite research was fascinating!) Yet the abilities my protagonist Kennet Singleton develops—powers I wrote about from pure imagination a decade ago—I am now experiencing in my own life.
My study of spiritualism, mediumship, and healing through the Morris Pratt Institute is providing me with the knowledge I need to fill those holes in my manuscript. And having since experienced psychic phenomena for myself, I’m able to add realism to Kennet’s otherwordly perceptions. (For more about this, see “Visitation from the Summerland” at my other blog, Building the Bridge.)
So how did this create a dilemma for me?
I’ve been planning a new novel, DEAD CEMETERY, working on setting, plot, and characterization in my spare moments the past few months. I’m itching to spend more time on it, but am constrained by my spiritualism schoolwork. When I received the idea (actually, an intuitive prompting) to revise DEATH PERCEPTION, I felt it would only further postpone my work on the new book (which, of course, it is). But once I got into DEATH PERCEPTION, I realized that I might be able to finalize revisions and actually get it published.
So that’s what I decided to do: revise and publish DEATH PERCEPTION so that I will have something to market while I work on DEAD CEMETERY.
With the help of Spirit, I’m learning to spin plates like a real writer. I’ll let you know how it goes.
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Why am I a horror writer? Because I can’t be anything but.
Well, I can write dark fantasy, dark crime, dark suspense, and dark erotica. And technical manuals. All horrifying. You can see the general theme here…
Writing horror began for me at a young age: I wrote my first story on ruled tablet paper in second grade. My teacher passed it on to the elementary school principal. He read it at a meeting of the local Lions Club, of which my father was a member. As president of the chapter, Principal Sprunger fined my father a dime because the preacher’s son had written such a sordid tale full of skeletons, witches and blood.
What does horror do for me, that I’m so attracted to it as a genre? Steeping myself in horror may seem toxic for someone who has struggled with depression for most of his years. Yet when I read a dark book or watch a chilling movie, I get charged up. (Perhaps I’ve developed an addiction to my own adrenalin—there’s a story idea!) Or maybe it’s because, when I consider characters with such awful problems, my concerns seem piddling, and this brings me hope.
Somehow, a horrifying story—one that creeps me out, makes my mouth drop open or my hair stand on end—has always filled me, strangely enough, with life.
What I read, I write.
Reading and writing horror not only stimulates me, it makes me laugh. I don’t understand this, but often when something particularly horrible happens to a character, I’ll LOL it up. Among other horror writers, we share a good chuckle. But in the wrong crowd, busting a gut when a character bursts into flames in their hospital bed (à la Let Me In) does nothing for their already dubious opinion about my sanity. But I don’t take it too seriously. Horror is fun. If you don’t think so, go find the pliers and pull all your teeth. Hahaha! See?
I write horror because I have always seen things from a dark perspective. But I have a spiritual side, too, as revealed on my blog, Building the Bridge). A masters in biblical studies came in handy when I edited an anthology of dark crime and horror based on the Ten Commandments: THOU SHALT NOT… .
My latest dark novel is THE SIXTH SEED for Kindle, Nook, and PDF readers, a dark paranormal fantasy fraught with suburban Pittsburgh horror. And SEVERED RELATIONS, a duo of deadly stories featuring blood an cutlery is just released.
These aren’t the only reasons why I’m a horror writer. The best way to find out more is to read and discover. 🙂
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