Sever, The Perfume All At Once and Mary Monster. And The Witch.

There are days when I think Sever is the best thing I've ever published. It's a novella about a tiny college town that's inexplicably set upon by four ax murderers. Sever is a long and extremely bloody metaphor for growing up. For saying goodbye to the consequence-free days of college and accepting adulthood.

The novella is narrated by one of its only survivors, a Finny-like character named Leo. His perspective is extremely limited. He's just a 21-year-old guy, mostly decent but kind of self-involved in the way college kids usually are.

A year later, I wrote an unsettling short story about three teenage witches. The powerful Rapathia, the devious Josephine, and the unreliable narrator Camille, who is possibly a homicidal lunatic. This story obviously existed in the Sever universe. (Leo actually makes a cameo.) But there was a problem. In Sever, the witches meet an inglorious and abrupt end. For the two pieces to coexist, there had to be more to the story.

Something Leo couldn't see.

So, with my short story as my first chapter, I started writing. How did the witches get to Epshire? How do they interact with the various ax murders? And what really happened the night of the final ritual?

At some point, I decided my witches existed in the same universe as Robert Eggers' brilliant film The Witch, which makes this new novella fan fiction, in a way. But instead of Black Phillip, the devil deer from Mary Monster showed up. And like that, everything became connected.

This new novella is neither a sequel or a prequel to Sever. It's the same series of events told from the reverse perspective. It'll probably take me a few months to get it edited and published. But right now, I'm just high on finishing a rough draft.

Sever will be free from April 2 to April 6. So if you haven't read it, now's the time.

Sever, Writer's Digest and new short stories

Sever did not win the 24th Annual Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Awards, but it did get a very kind review from the judges. Writer's Digest allows you to publish their commentary, as long as you cite “Judge, 24th Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards” and don't cherrypick it to make it sound better than it is. I figured I'd just publish the whole darn thing.

Structure, Organization, and Pacing: 4
Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar: 5
Production Quality and Cover Design: 5
Plot and Story Appeal: 4
Character Appeal and Development: 4
Voice and Writing Style: 5

Aimed at a young adult or even teen audience, Sever pulls in the shadows around the characters quickly, suggesting that life can all go terribly wrong even before one gets out of college.

Narrator Leo Thomas tells us that in the town of Epshire where “Sophie” is going to graduate, four axe murderers (two of them serial killers) have nestled in. I wish the author had been a little more specific when introducing his characters. Nonetheless, I appreciated the growing parallel I felt the author suggested: to wit, that once college ends, it cuts off everything, just like death does. As this horror thriller progresses, I felt awful for Leo when he saw the mutilated female. I liked the way Leo goes about investigating and I liked his relationship with Becky. I became convinced, while I read the book, that Epshire was the center of all evil in the universe. The author did a good job convincing me.

I liked the front cover art. The back blurb is well worded. The author does not give away “Sever,” which is as it should be. I liked his voice, both telling the tale in that random college guy way, narrating all the dumb things college students do, and in hindsight, sounding spooked, looking into lakes and imagining monsters. The story was well told, though a bit choppy at the beginning.

I am a little disturbed that Sever is so consistently identified as YA. But I love, love, love the identification of the parallels between the end of college and the end of life. And the idea you have to kill the person you were to live in the waiting world.

Sever has won a different award which'll be announced sometime next month. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, I have been writing short stories about the various killers that inhabit Epshire. I always send my short stories free to my email list, so if you want the next one, sign up in the sidebar of this blog.

#poweredbyindie: No one can take this away from me

Want to know a secret? I never tried to find a publisher. I never even considered it. I was DIY from Jump Street because I didn't want to tell marketable stories.

I wanted to publish whatever the hell I wanted.

My first novella, The Single Staircase, was plotted over years but written in just a couple months. It's 18,000 words of gritty, depressing, determined cop talk, mashed up with an Agatha Christie-style locked room puzzle. No publisher in the world would have touched it. But why would I have needed them to? It was exactly the story I wanted to tell.

So I got on to CreateSpace and KDP and figured out the process. And today the Owl and Raccoon series has fans all over the world.

Now, Sin Walks Into The Desert? That book, I could've found a publisher for. Desert noir isn't really a thing, but sexy tattooed loner kids with guns and grudges are pretty fucking marketable. But by the time I finished writing it, I was rolling. I loved my book. I wanted to make it real. Even more, I wanted ultimate responsibility for its success or failure.

Sin went on to sell thousands of copies, get picked up by the Thrilling 13 anthology, and win Shelf Unbound's award for Best Independent Novel of 2015.

At this point, any sane publisher would have been hounding me for more Sin books. But I wanted to jump genres. Sever is a melancholy memoir about college in the '90's, but with four rampaging ax murderers running around. Should it be marketed as YA horror or Gen X time capsule? I don't know. It's not my problem.

The most important thing is this. Every day I get to look myself in the mirror and say, "I did this. Maybe it sucks and maybe it's brilliant. Maybe it'll find an audience and maybe it won't. But I did this. And no one can take that away from me."

All because one day I decided to jump. To upload the file. To hit the publish button. To be #poweredbyindie.

[Ed. - This post is part of Amazon's #poweredbyindie month. I hear a lot of griping about how Amazon is a giant juggernaut that uses authors. But if Amazon didn't provide free publishing tools and a free sales platform, I might not be an author to begin with. The Single Staircase would still be a 122-page Word doc in a folder somewhere. So thanks, Amazon.]

Presenting a novella about how four ax murderers can really jack up your summer

Publishing is like pregnancy. The first few months are all mysterious and wonderful. But the last couple are frustrating and gross, and you mostly just want the whole thing over. So it is with pride and no small amount of relief that I finally hit the publish button on my first horror novella, Sever.

It's not just horror, of course. Sever's also a coming-of-age story. And a love letter to college. And a memoir of the '90s. And a melancholy reflection on how to raise kids in a scary world. But there's a whole lot of slasher mayhem going on.

If that sounds fun, the Kindle version is on Amazon. As is a print version.

Take the poll: What should I publish next?

Cover art for upcoming books. Which should I publish first?

“Writing is easy. You just open a vein and bleed.”

I always assumed Sylvia Plath wrote those words. But even the Internet isn't sure. It's true, though. Writing isn't difficult. It's something you're just sort of compelled to do.

But rewriting, editing, publishing - that shit is hard. It takes money, dedication and time. End result being I have three (count ‘em) novellas finished. And zero energy to brush them up and get them out the door. I need to pick one and focus. So what do you want to read next?

To Guns is the third book in the Sin and Nicki series. It’s a full-tilt, neo-Western shootout, putting the two in a Mexican standoff with meth dealers and Italian assassins in the middle of the Colorado Rockies. Tonally, it's close to Sin Walks Into The Desert. While it makes sense on its own, Nicki's storyline is based on her actions in Regret Things.

The Last Child Missing is the third Owl and Raccoon novella. Like the others, it begins with the detectives showing up on the scene of a seemingly impossible kidnapping. The entire timeline takes place in one six-hour period, as they race to uncover how a five-year-old vanished from a crowded bus on the first day of school. It can stand on its own, but the climax will hit you harder if you’ve read the other two novellas, starting with The Single Staircase.

The third book is named Sever. It’s a new genre for me. The story is about a college campus that’s simultaneously set upon by four axe murderers, two of them serial killers. It’s a horror story, gory as hell. And it’s also a first-person love letter to those four magic years when you feel invincible, like you can drink and have sex and sleep late and lie in the sun and never die.

My marketing brain says there's no rush to publish any of this stuff. I have some good opportunities coming up for Regret Things, and it makes sense to ensure it gets traction before moving on to another book. But fuck it. What are you most excited about reading? Let me know in the poll at the top of my righthand sidebar.