NEVER NOW ALWAYS, my novella forthcoming from Broken Eye Books

Exciting news! I’ve written a novella called Never Now Always, and Broken Eye Books will be publishing it this winter. Broken Eye Books did a fantastic job with the recent anthology Tomorrow’s Cthulhu — which included my story “The Great Dying of the Holocene” — and I am very happy they’ll be publishing this novella.

Never Now Always is a weird, slipstreamy kind of story that’s a little bit sci-fi, a little bit fantasy, a little bit horror. It touches on many of my obsessions: vast megastructures and creepy aliens, the tyranny of the past and the desperate attachment between siblings who have no one else. It also grapples with something that’s horrified me ever since I was a young child and read C. S. Lewis’ book The Silver Chair: remembering only to forget again, understanding that you’ve been here before and will be again.

More details about the story here in Broken Eye Books’ announcement of the novella:

“To their alien Caretakers, the children are nothing more than lab rats: keys to a mystery about memory far larger than they could understand. As they undergo their captors’ experiments, a few children begin to excavate fragments of their lost past. These stories might be the key to survival. Or they might just be another form of subterfuge.”

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Never Now Always will be available in paperback and e-book and you can even pre-order both formats here.

What the #@&% Is That? The Saga Anthology of the Monstrous and the Macabre

Ranging from irreverent humor to straight out horror, What the @#&% Is That? grew from a meme on Twitter when iconic comic book artist Mike Mignola painted a monster. Nobody knew what the F it was, but they loved it. 

What the @#&% Is That?, edited by John Joseph Adams and Douglas Cohen,  is forthcoming from Saga Press in August 2016 and includes my story “Down in The Deep and the Dark.”

“Construction Project” at Nightmare Magazine

My short story “Construction Project” is live at Nightmare Magazine, the new horror publication edited by John Joseph Adams. I’m excited and humbled to appear in this issue alongside such luminaries as Ramsey Campbell, Joe Haldeman and Poppy Z. Brite.

Also check out the author spotlight, which may shed some light on the more ambiguous aspects of the story. Nightmare Magazine’s Editorial Assistant Seamus Bayne asked me some great, thought-provoking questions — fun to answer and hopefully fun to read!

 

Strange Survival in Jerome Bixby’s “It’s A Good Life”

At Weird Fiction Review, I discuss science fiction author Jerome Bixby’s 1953 short story, “It’s a Good Life.” Read the story (it’s utterly haunting), then check out my review:

 

But “It’s a Good Life” – the story that elevated Bixby from forgettable pulp scribbler to science fiction grand master – well, it’s different. If Bixby’s other stories began as tales told around the campfire, this one began with a cold sweat in the middle of the night. “It’s a Good Life” is a slowly building nightmare; each layer is a new realization of powerlessness and despair.

The story centers on Anthony, a psychic three-year-old who possesses the power to change the world with his thoughts. Anthony’s unfortunate family and neighbors do all they can to avoid attracting his notice. Mostly, this means living in a constant state of bland cheer, not just in word, but also in mind.