Category: I Wrote That

Happy Publication Day

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Happy Publication Day to The Island of Small Misfortunes. This book was a journey for sure. I wrote the bulk of it pre-pandemic, then finished it in the early months of 2020. The manuscript was a total mess until the very end, when suddenly everything fell into place like a game of Tetris.

I’ve discovered with time that every book I write is a reply to the previous one. A Season of Whispers, for example, resulted after I became burned out (temporarily) by Smedley and nonfiction in general, which led to a period where I mixed history and fiction. Likewise, with Island I wanted to lean more heavily into the metaphors and language of Season while chasing the ambiguity of history, both personal and otherwise. One friend said she caught Raymond Chandler vibes off protagonist Sequoia Owen, which I now see is the bleed-through from that emphasis on description by metaphor.

Many thanks to my publisher Regal House Publishing for believing in the book and to my publicist Layne Mandros at Books Forward PR for a great campaign. And how about that cover? I could not believe the artist created it in Starry Night Post-Impressionism, my absolute favorite painting style. My jaw dropped when I first saw it and still does.

All of my books are messages in bottles thrown into the ocean. May the scribbled note inside The Island of Small Misfortunes bring you some enjoyment.

The Island of Small Misfortunes is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and bookstores everywhere. Please consider purchasing it directly from Regal House or support your local indie bookstore through Bookshop.

I will be touring to promote Island this spring. Stay tuned for dates.

Cover Reveal!

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In the summer of 1898, Sequoia Owen accepts an invitation from his estranged uncle to visit his family’s summer home on Todeket, a private island off the Connecticut coast.

Yet the house, constructed by Sequoia’s unstable grandfather and the site of his cousin’s mysterious death, is a strange place. None of his odd relatives, who seem to have sinister agendas of their own, can agree upon the origin of the house, nor do they all believe the sightings of a ghost that haunts its halls, said to appear before tragedy strikes.

Trapped on the island by a storm, Sequoia must unravel the enigma of Todeket before the next life lost is his own.

The Island of Small Misfortunes will be published March 25, 2025. Pre-order is available now from Regal House.

The Electrical Amnesia Machine

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Tenebrous Antiquities: An Anthology of Historical Horror

Editor and publisher CM Muller has announced the table of contents for his latest collection, Tenebrous Antiquities: An Anthology of Historical Horror. This handsome volume includes my story, “The Electrical Amnesia Machine of Doctor Fallow.”

Cold steel encircled Everly’s head and for some moments Fallow fiddled with various adjustments and straps. Finally he said: “Now, Mr. Everly, we are alone. No one can eavesdrop. Please tell me about the thoughts you wish swept away. Different ideas and introspections exist in different parts of the brain and I must know where to focus our efforts.”

“Do I have to say? Can’t your machine determine it on its own?”

“I promise you that as a doctor whatever secret you feel is too onerous is no secret to me. Do not be ashamed.”

Everly shifted in his seat. The helmet or whatever he now wore was heavy and uncomfortable. “The sign outside said something about ‘terrible dreams eradicated.’”

“Ah — you have nightmares.” Fallow flipped and toggled switches on the machine’s trunk.

“I have a nightmare. Just one.”

“The Electrical Amnesia Machine” is set in 1909 during New York’s Hudson-Fulton celebration, which marked the 300th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s exploration of the Hudson River and the centennial of Robert Fulton’s demonstration of a commercial steamboat along the same body of water. Fortunately my local historical society possesses a copy of the committee report about the celebration (800+ pages!), which bursts with all sorts of details and data. Because a theme of the story is isolation within the enormity of a big city like New York, those same details were perfect to convey the overwhelming grandiosity of the event.

Tenebrous Antiquities will be published in June 2024. You can preorder the paperback or hardcover at the publisher’s website or preorder the e-book on Amazon.

The Book of Pangloss

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A Darkness Visible

The premiere anthology from Onotology Books, A Darkness Visible, has hit virtual shelves just in time for Halloween.

The anthology is a collection of postmodern horror. Sounds heavy, you say. What is “postmodern horror?”

Put simply, the fiction of A Darkness Visible plays with or overturns the conventions of both fiction itself — how it’s presented or by using nontraditional methods to communicate the narrative — as well as those of the horror genre.

A Darkness Visible includes my contribution, “The Book of Pangloss,” which is a piece of interactive fiction — what’s otherwise known as a choose-your-own-adventure story, complete with numbered passages that end in a decision to be made by the reader.

In the story, YOU are the defense attorney for an accused murderer. But is your client actually guilty? And what do the murders of three women have to do with a mysterious occult volume known as the Book of Pangloss?

Writing “Pangloss” checked off a box that’s long sat on my to-do list. Like other Gen Xers, I grew up on a heavy diet of CYOA paperbacks sourced from B. Dalton and Waldenbooks, with Fighting Fantasy being an absolute obsession that lasts to this day. I’d always wanted to write interactive fiction but could never find an appropriate market for it until the call for A Darkness Visible came around.

To write “Pangloss,” I used a freeware app called Twine and designed the story so that it stretched about 3,000 words long no matter which path the reader took. It was challenging but a blast to create, and the experience whet my appetite to write more CYOA.

A Darkness Visible is available now in paperback or as an e-book.

The Island of Small Misfortunes

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My latest gothic novel, The Island of Small Misfortunes, has been accepted for publication by Regal House Publishing.

In the summer of 1898, Sequoia Owen accepts an invitation from his estranged uncle to visit the family summer house on Todeket, a private island off the Connecticut coast. Yet his unwell aunt Geneve believes he is accompanied by the shadowy ghost of her dead son Jacob, and over the course of a weekend Sequoia must contend with menacing relatives, threats against his life, and conflicting stories about the house’s history to unravel Todeket’s strange secret.

The Island of Small Misfortunes will be published in 2025.