Hi!

Yes, I changed the count. This is (or should have been) the second story of my current series of weekly freebies. But it’s also the 19th thing I’ve posted this way…so I decided it’d be slightly more reasonable to just continue the count from where I left off last time.

But it’s not a story. It’s more like Chapter One of something much longer. I didn’t know that was going to happen–and I let it mess me up. See, I’m already working on two novels. So this one wanted to get brain-time too. And I knew I wouldn’t finish it in time to post it on Wednesday, so I kind of gave up on it. Then I decided to post it anyway.

Don’t get me wrong: I like it. I want to write more. But I think I need to spend the next couple of nights writing a few paragraphs of several potential stories, instead of just trying to do a single story from scratch each week. Maybe that way I can try to identify the ones that want to run longer than I need for a weekly-story gig? I ran into the same sort of issue before, too, with “stories” about Marvin and Destiny. They wanted to grow into something larger, and didn’t really fit the weekly-release format.

Which is okay, I guess. Sort of. I mean, I’m writing the Destiny novel now. Finally.

Anyway, this week’s freebie is the first part of something called “The Neighbor” and you can check it out here. Just don’t expect it to be complete! It’s looking like it might turn into something fun, if I get around to finishing it. Which I hope I’ll do.

Or…would it be okay to post chapters as I go? Sort of a serial-novel thing? The problem is, people who missed the earlier chapters would have trouble figuring out the storyline. So maybe that won’t really work.

Next week, I’ll have an actual story. One way or another. I promise.

Have fun out there!

I was an early adopter of ebooks. Sometime I’ll have to tell you the story of the night I tried to con my wife into skinny-dipping with me in what would have been a public place except it was dark. Also there were javelinas, and deer, and strange noises, and she says I danced on an armadillo but the critter’s species wasn’t actually clear to me. It seemed scarier than that, and she’s only saying “armadillo” to embarrass me.

These thoughts are too related. See, that night the only illumination we had–and no, we weren’t lost, though Herself tells the story differently–was my little handheld computing device running Windows CE. On that device, among other things, were some books by Jeff Strand.

See?

Anyway, I’m a fan. His fiction is clever, often disgusting, frequently disturbing, and sometimes even a bit scary. Strictly speaking, I guess this particular book may not count as “indie published.” But I strongly suspect, after my Google-Fu came up short, that it was at least published by a small press. And however this book came to be? I’m glad it happened.

Here’s the description from Amazon:

A man who finds a severed nose on a plate on his dining room table. A bell that can summon Satan (maybe). Casual Fridays at work that get out of control. A cheery outlook on the post-apocalyptic landscape. The final thoughts of a doomed skydiver. A girl punished by having to share a bed with her grandmother’s corpse. Revenge via baking a tarantula into a cake. A romance between two carnivorous genetically enhanced plants. And the lost tale of Fangboy.

These are only a few of the demented stories in DEAD CLOWN BARBECUE, a collection of twenty-nine gleefully macabre tales, seven of which were written just for this collection. There’s even a brand new one about a ventriloquist dummy. Those things creep you out, right? You’ll laugh. You’ll scream. Okay…you probably won’t actually scream, unless you already had issues before you started reading, but you might cringe and get a little spooked.

I’m not going to try to describe the stories, because it’s clearly pointless. I’m not even going to say this is the author’s best work, because my opinion on that varies. Sometimes with the lunar cycles, but sometimes according to…uh…well, something that varies in an eldritch way. There are things like that. Or there should be.

So, if the above sounds cool to you? Go buy a copy. Or buy something else of his. Which suddenly reminded me of another book, and another author, and I have an idea for my next review. Which, right now? Doesn’t help you.

Jeff Strand is damn good at what he does. Also, nobody else does that. Enjoy.

And have fun out there!

(New-fiction word count: 2305. Project I is getting interesting.)

I know. It doesn’t seem as if it should be hard to qualify for this. After all, how many books do I read in a week? (Probably 10 or so, if you’re actually curious and not just criticizing my post’s title for fun.) But I’m actually pretty damn picky about which books those are. I don’t keep reading if I’m bored…

Regardless, this one was truly exceptionally cool. I don’t want to spoil it for you…but it surprised me. Several times.

Disclaimer: I’ve been a Lawrence Block fan for years. Decades, even. I went to a book signing of his about 20 years back, and I can report that his self-deprecating humor was exactly what you’d expect…

More than that? I’ve benefited enormously from his books on writing. I’ve even used his “Write for Your Life” affirmations…meaning, yes, I had them playing over and over while I wrote and slept. (I’d probably do that still, but I lost the copies I downloaded. Might invest ten bucks in re-acquiring them at some point.)

So, all that said? I hate to say this next bit…but I’m a much bigger fan of his more recent work. By “more recent” I generally mean the books he’s published in the last…oh, I don’t know…30 years or so. Ariel is older than that.

But it’s amazing, in spite of my probably-stupid generalization above. Ariel is…well, it doesn’t easily fit into any sort of genre boundaries. In fact accurately fitting it into a genre would ruin much of the suspense. Occult? Crime? Coming of age? Maybe!

It doesn’t hurt, given my own recent interest in foster parenting, that the story involves an adopted child…but maybe that won’t matter much to most of you who read this. It’s astoundingly (why am I so surprised, again?) well-written. It kept me up late. I’d like to share it with you.

Want something different? I don’t care what you’ve been reading; this one’s different.

Truly a wonderful book. Go buy it if you’ve a mind (heh), or get it via Kindle Unlimited. Since it is in Kindle Unlimited, you’ll have to get the ebook from Amazon. Print versions are likely more generally available.

I thought about posting a review on Amazon. But, as an author myself, I have to be at least slightly careful about that. The ‘Zon’s review policy is, at best, a confusing mess. So I’ll just post this here, and maybe I’ll do a bit more of this reviewing-stuff in the future while I’m at it.

Hey, do you folks have favorite books you think I might want to read? I’d love to hear about them. In spite of all the fiction available, my Kindle still runs dry…

We’ll see how it goes. Meanwhile, have fun out there!