A Christmas Gift for the Demented

It's that time of year when I gather my year's stories together into a collection for those who enjoy the dark side. I don't always write pure horror fiction, though I've indulged in it using the short form for about three years now. My real home is suspense, psychological suspense to be precise. In my new collection this year, SINISTER-TALES OF DREAD 2014, the thirteen stories are pretty even between suspense/noir and horror. If readers are like me (and I always think they are), they like both genres and don't mind a variety of stories in a collection. This will be ready to pre-order by December 5 and ready to buy by December 15, a real holiday release.

Here is the new Kindle cover for the collection. It is original from the cover artist, Jeffrey Kosh:

There will be a paperback edition, also, available from Amazon. Eventually I hope to have at least a trio of the Sinister collections.

Why do I write so many short stories? Because I have to. I have a million ideas and very few of them are ready for the prime time of the novel arena. Most of them don't have the "legs" for noveldom, but they are perfectly right for the short story form. I get to explore characters, situations, and locations that I'd never be able to explore if I stuck completely to writing novels. It's true, too, that I began my career writing stories. I've written and published them for over thirty years and the majority of them were published, hundreds of them. In the 80s and 90s I had so many contributions to paperback and hardback anthologies the copies filled up four shelves in my bookcase. Since the advent of digital ebooks, I've tried to gather some of the older stories into collections and now I've decided to make my yearly collections into the Sinister series.

I love to read short stories. In today's world we seem to have little time to devote to reading and the short story is the perfect solution. You can read one story at a time during a doctor's visit or when out camping, or when your mother-in-law is in the kitchen rearranging your spice cabinet. You know how that goes. In a collection or anthology a reader can skip around and not lose anything for doing it. Read the last story first, sample the one in the middle, or read right from the beginning, the way we read a novel.

I've been lucky to have my stories taken by editors and featured in various anthologies and magazines. I take nothing for granted. I expect hundreds of thousands of stories are written a year and the inclusion in print by an editor is quite a special event for writers. The competition is fierce, other writers are terrific and inventive, and stories proliferate. I'm always grateful for the impetus that keeps me writing short stories, for the way sometimes editors want to publish them, and for you, the reader, who come back for more when I do a new story or create a new collection of the year.

Writing is my love, my Muse is my helpmate, and the short story is my love letter (no matter how dark it might be.)

I hope you'll remember me in December when the Christmas lights are shining and the presents are stacked beneath the tree. Look for SINISTER-TALES OF DREAD 2014 on Amazon and see what you think. I promise to give only my best. I give you all I have.

If you absolutely need a novel fix, please look at THE GREY MATTER, my latest novel of suspense on Amazon from Post Mortem Press.