Happy 2016

2015 was a great year, and 2016 will be even better

My modest goals as a writer: Write and sell two novels and two short stories every year. I started that practice in 1982, and I completed two novels and ten short stories that year while working a full-time job as a hotel manager. I also served thirty days on active duty as a Chief Warrant Officer with the U. S. Army Reserve. I sold one of those two novels the following year, and the other novel sold in 1985. Four of the ten stories saw print by 1984, and the other six were gobbled up by small press magazines before 1990.

I continued writing two novels and ten short stories each year through 1994. I sold eight novels and fifty-six short stories during that twelve-year period. All eventually appeared in print.

Most went out of print before the start of the new Millennium, although several of my short stories continued to be reprinted in anthologies from Pinnacle or in translations appearing from foreign publishers in various European and Asian languages.

When I returned to writing fiction in 2012, I had the same goal: write two new novels and two new short stories each and every year. I completed Abandoned and Deviants in 2012, Winds and Darkness in 2013, Light, Icepick, and Spilled Milk in 2014,and Meat Cleaver, Axes to Grind, Running Out of Time, and Pinking Shears in 2015. I sold Abandoned and Deviants both in 2014 (Eldritch Press published Abandoned in March 2015 and Damnation Books still hasn’t set a definite pub date for Deviants). Crossroad Press brought out new digital editions of The Devil Made Me Do It, Claw Hammer, and Daddy’s Home in 2014, and they published Pickaxe, Icepick, Pinking Shears, Axes to Grind, Meat Cleaver, and Running Out of Time in 2015.

Three of my short stories appeared in print in 2015. “Dolls” was published in Weirdbook 31 in September, “After the Fall” was published in the Fall 2015 issue of The Horror Zine, and “Who Knows What Evil Lurks” was revised for the August 2015 issue of Pulp Adventures 18.

2015 was very good year.

2016 promises to be even better.

The Devil Mad Me Do It Again and Again, a new short fiction collection containing twenty stories previously-published in anthologies and magazines,  should be out by March.

I’m putting final revisions on Sledgehammer, the latest novel in my Instruments of Death series. Impossible is an sf thriller, part of my Under the Gun series. I’m working on sequels to Spilled Milk, Winds, and Daddy’s Home. Come Hell and High Water is a supernatural thriller about the End of Times. And Final Exam is an exciting forensic science novel with an aging female pathologist who is teamed with a retired detective to teach criminology at a State University. When faculty members become targeted by a serial killer, two over-the-hill sleuths and a handful of students must track down the killer before they become victims themselves.

I’m also experimenting with first-person present tense in short fiction.

2015 was a busy year for public appearances and autographing, and 2016 promises to be even busier. I’m already committed to attending MidAmericon II in KC, Thrillerfest in NYC, Bouchercon in New Orleans, Stokercon in Vegas, and Wiscon, World Fantasy Con, and Windycon in the Midwest.

I wish all of my friends and fans the world over a very Happy New Year. I look forward to seeing you in person in 2016.

Buy My Books

My passion is reading and writing. I love to read more than anything else in the world, and I love to write just as much. I love to read my own stories as much as—often more than—I love to read stories written by other writers. That’s incredibly helpful when I revise a story for publication. I read the story over and over again, revising as I read, until the whole story feels right to me.

 I always purchase copies of my own books to hold in my hand, sniff the paper and ink, and treasure the words. I’m always amazed at what emerges from my imagination. Did I really write that? Is the writing as good as other works I’ve read? Does it hold my attention from page one to the final “The End”? Am I as passionate about the story on the last page as I was on the first? Will I do as well or even better with the next novel I write?

            If you’re a writer, you know what I mean. When one of my stories brings tears to my eyes and a satisfaction to my heart, I know how a genii feels when he grants three wishes to someone.

            What makes passion meaningful is the combination of suffering and ecstasy inherent in all worthwhile human endeavor. You’ve got to be willing to endure the bad along with the good. We learn by doing. We grow by choosing. We live by gaining and losing. We evolve by being involved. There is great risk to life. The greater the risk, the greater the reward. Passion means giving it all or nothing with no holds barred. Grab onto the golden ring and never let go. Follow your dreams through hell and back. Love every minute of the struggle. Persevere. Go for the gold. Dive right in and become immersed. Emerge scarred but exhilarated. Be willing and eager to do it again.

            Imagination is so wonderful and powerful that it carries us away to other worlds. It enables us to be many different people at the same time. It allows us to enter the hearts and minds of beings so completely different than us that we can barely comprehend their alien reasons for acting as they do until we realize that a part of them is a part of us and vice versa, and maybe they aren’t so different after all.

            Reading and writing are my passions. Telling stories is my purpose in life. Some of my stories satisfy one type of reader and have no salience for other types of readers. My Winds series (Abandoned, Winds, Darkness, Light, Time, Mysterious Ways) offers novels of supernatural suspense to readers who wonder about the meaning of life and death, who peek at the past to understand the future, and who seek truth in fiction. My Instruments of Death series (Claw Hammer, Daddy’s Home, Pickaxe, Icepick, Meat Cleaver) offers fast-paced pulp-style murder mysteries with dedicated detectives and modern forensic scientists to readers who worry about the here and now. My stand-alone novels and short stories are hard looks at flawed characters. There’s something for everyone in what I write, but not all of my novels and stories will please everyone. Pick and choose what you like.

 Buy my books and share the passion. Claw Hammer is on sale for Kindle this week. Only 99 cents for a good read.

           

           

Many of my novels have ensemble casts of characters. I group the twenty-some novels of the Instruments of Death series together because Carl Erickson, Tom Wesley, Troy Nolan, Andy Sinnott, Sally Brightson Nolan, Marsha Wade, Danny Wesley, Rat, George, Connie Kelly, Linda Davis, and a host of others are recurring characters. Both author and reader know and love those characters. We care about what happens to them. Our lives are intertwined.

            As I edited page proofs for Darkness and Winds, I fell in love with some of my favorite characters all over again. The Ranger is my ideal of a perfect action hero, plagued by guilt and seeking redemption for his own actions that resulted in myriad deaths over millennia. Biegolmai Daavvi and Lokesvara Sailendravarman are my ideals of supernatural forces for good. Udug Hull is the perfect mysterious stranger, part fallen-angel and part demon, who is bound by unbreakable laws established by the elder gods. He has little sympathy for the foibles of humanity for he has never been human.

            I first introduced Lokesvara and the Ranger in Abandoned, and Lokesvara also makes important appearances in Winds, Darkness, Light, Time, and Mysterious Ways. He is a driving force for good who usually acts behind the scenes. Yet Lokesvara Sailendravarman, too, is a fierce warrior. He is one of the Eight Great Bodhisattvas.

            Biegolmai is a shaman, part of an ancient tradition that heralds back to the beginning of time. What ties many of my characters together is that they are all wounded warriors who have made horrible mistakes in the past and often suffered and died because of their actions. It is said by shamans that before the physician can heal others, he must first heal himself. Karmic burden can be a real bitch. In Darnkness, the bitch’s lapdogs are the Erinyes, the daughters of Nyx. Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone are also recurring characters in my Winds series which marries shamanic tradition with traditional mythologies from the north, east, west, and south.

            This is the kind of epic fantasy I love to read and write. I hope you like Winds and Darkness as much as I do.

 

     

Pickaxe is my newest novel from Macabre Ink

           Macabre Ink and Crossroad Press published Pickaxe on February 26, 2015. Pickaxe introduces four new continuing characters in my Instruments of Death series: Sewer Rat, Troy Nolan, Sally Brightson, and Harvey Fredriks.  

Macabre Ink and Crossroad Press published a new digital edition of the revised Claw Hammer in 2014. Claw Hammer was the start of the series, followed by Daddy's Home and then Pickaxe. Icepick should be out shortly from the same publisher. Meat Cleaver will be out mid-year, followed by Sledge Hammer, Box Cutter, and Pinking Shears.           

Claw Hammer was my first published horror novel, and since its original publication in 1989 I have written nine additional novels set in imaginary Riverdale, Illinois, which is a combination of my native Rockford and Aurora and Oak Park, northern Illinois cities where I’ve lived and written novels. Carl Erickson, the homicide detective from Claw Hammer, also appears in Pickaxe, Icepick, Sledgehammer, Box Cutter, and Pinking Shears. After Carl retires, Troy Nolan and Andy Sinnott take over his roles, both appearing in Meat Cleaver.