I am very happy to share with you the news that my baseball-themed horror story “Swing Batter Batter” is live over with the fine folks at PseudoPod! It’s a fun story and I’m very proud of it. Hope you enjoy it!
Category Archives: Writing
ECGC Talk Video Goes Live on YouTube
Earlier this year I was cajoled into giving a talk at East Coast Game Conference. I hadn’t given a talk at a game conference with a powerpoint in years – mostly I’ve been concentrating on narrative roundtables at GDC, as well as helping put together the content for the Game Narrative Summit and ECGC. But this time I went ahead and did it, talking about the differences between writing fiction and writing video games. Enjoy!
Ghost of a Marriage Releases Today
Today is the big day! GHOST OF A MARRIAGE print edition is now available on Amazon.com and at fine retailers everywhere. Big thanks to the wonderful folks at Crossroad Press for putting the book out!
As for the book itself, it has ghosts. It has a marriage. What more could you ask for?
Ghost of a Marriage Audiobook Is Live
Remember when I said that Ghost of a Marriage was coming out the first week of February? Well, it looks like Audible is ahead of the curve because the unabridged audiobook is available now! Narrated by Sam Rosenthal, it clocks in at seven and a half hours of spooky goodness. So if you’re the audiobook type, it just might be down your alley.
Time Is Ticking Down
A little over two weeks to go before the release of Ghost of a Marriage! There’s still time to pre-order here.
Happy New Year and Thank Yous
Wishing everyone out there a very happy new year! I’d like to take this moment to say thank you to some folks who have been instrumental in my writing this past year. So big thanks to:
- Robin Laws, who green lit the first Reb Palache story many years ago for The New Hero
- Josh Schlossberg, for publishing “On Seas of Blood and Salt” in The Jewish Book of Horror
- Alex Hofelich and the rest of the wonderful folks at PseudoPod for publishing me – I am honored to be among their roster of authors
- David Niall Wilson and the fine folks at Crossroad Press, for picking up Ghost of a Marriage and getting set to bring it to the world in February. (Hint – now would be a great time to pre-order!)
- Jeff Strand, Mikko Rautalahti, Jesse Scoble, Rachel Zane and Laura Hickman for reading the manuscript and providing invaluable help on it, some of which I was smart enough to take.
- Bridgett Nelson for reading and editing some of my short fiction and still speaking to me afterwards
- John McIlveen, for reasons that will have to remain mysterious for now
- James A. Moore, Mur Lafferty, Maurice Broaddus, Rhianna Pratchett, Anna Megill, Annie Reid and so many more for being shining examples of the craft
- Toiya K. Finley, Richard Rouse III and Alexander Bevier for collaborating in putting on an online gathering of game writers that was good for the soul
- Susan O’Connor and Tom Abernathy, my co-conspirators in curating the Game Narrative Summit at GDC
- Walter Rotenberry and company at East Coast Game Conference for allowing me to once again curate their narrative content
- Pauline Martyn, James Charles Leary, Tom Knights, and Justin Achilli for secret things
- All the writers who agreed to let me interrogate them in Five For Writing
- And all of you for reading this
So a giant thank you to everyone for all that you did in 2021. Here’s to 2022 and happier days!
Good News, Everybody!
I hope everyone out there had a wonderful winter holiday, and here’s wishing all of you a glorious new year filled with good news and happiness.
I do have some glad tidings of my own to share. It gives me great pleasure to say my story “Swing Batter Batter” has been accepted by the wonderful folks at PseudoPod and will be running some time next year. Yes, it’s a baseball-themed horror story, so let that fuel your wild speculation while we wait for it to come out.
Five For Writing – Bridgett Nelson
Bridgett Nelson is this week’s guest on Five For Writing. A rising star in the horror field, she made a splash with her debut reading at Scares That Care ’21. A former nurse, she’s got an ambitious slate of projects lined up, but she’s not so busy that she didn’t have a few minutes to spare to answer five questions. And so I give you Five For Writing with Bridgett Nelson:
1-Your first reading was the opening reading of a major horror convention, Scares That Care. What were you feeling going up to the podium?
I did, indeed, have my very first reading at my very first in-person horror convention, Scares That Care ‘21, and I guess you could say Todd Keisling and I “opened the show.” Shortly before our allotted time, I was standing at the lectern in the conference room, chatting with Todd, as more and more people wandered in and took a seat. And not just any people either. Oh, no. Long-time, fan-favorite horror authors like Jeff Strand, Bob Ford, and Stephen Kozeniewski (not to mention my Bram Stoker Award-nominated partner, Todd) were all there. I was definitely feeling my newbie status. Thankfully, Todd was an amazing partner, very sweetly introduced me, and paved the way for a successful reading. Even still, as I walked toward the podium, my heart was racing, my hands and knees were shaking, and my skin was clammy. I found myself leaning hard against the lectern for support. My voice trembled on and off through the entire fifteen-minute reading. Public speaking is not a strength of mine, and putting myself out there as a writer, for the very first time, certainly added another layer of vulnerability.
All this to say…
Drunk. I felt drunk.
2-Your reading featured a very memorable sequence involving cannibalism and some severely gnarly toes. What inspired that?
It’s a longstanding family tradition of mine…
Seriously, it wasn’t inspired by anything other than, “What would be a vaguely funny and disturbing body part to force a woman to eat at gunpoint?” Rotten toes, for the win!
That scene unexpectedly got a big audience response. Several people who attended my reading still tease and joke with me about it to this day. For those who weren’t at Scares That Care, the story is called “Reflections” and you’ll be able to read all about the gnarly toes very, very soon. You can also hear my trembling voice reading the story to you on the Necrocasticon podcast.
3-You were a nurse for many years. Have your experiences there informed your fiction?
I sure was! When I was a senior in high school, my two choices for a college majors included sports medicine (which I’d planned to turn into a physical therapy career), or creative writing. My parents pushed me toward sports medicine, knowing I’d be more likely to find, well, you know…paid work. After a few months, realizing I was bored to death wrapping college athletes’ ankles, I decided to switch to nursing.
Following graduation, I worked on a renal/urology/renal transplant floor, then on a cardiac step-down unit (where I primarily cared for open heart surgery patients), and finally in the operating room, where I felt most at home. (The stories I could tell after years as a nurse.)
Have my experiences in the medical field informed my fiction? Absolutely! It makes the physiology of torture and death scenes so much easier to write. (For clarification purposes, it’s important to note this is not me saying I tortured and killed my patients.) In fact, my very first short story, “Political Suicide,” is set primarily in a hospital. The main character is 40-something neurosurgeon hell bent on getting revenge for her son. Let’s just say she uses her medical knowledge in a very twisted way.
4-What made you decide to start writing?
I’ve always loved writing. I was the feature editor for our school paper and even wrote a weekly column for our county journal. But life happened. I began my nursing career, got married, had babies (okay, in all honesty, I had babies BEFORE I got married…but let’s pretend I’m all traditional and stuff), and writing became a distant memory.
Many years ago, I decided to start reviewing the hundreds of books I read each year. Through my reviews, I met the CEO of a new Indie publishing company, R.E. Sargent of Sinister Smile Press. He encouraged me to submit a story for their upcoming anthology, so I did. And it sold. Now I’m happily writing short stories and attempting to fake my way through my first novel.
Life is bizarre, but lovely. I’m happier than I’ve ever been – I feel like I’ve finally found my niche…and my people. Although I loved nursing, I now know I should have been writing all along.
5-You’re putting together a short fiction collection. What can we expect from that?
Yes! And I’m incredibly excited to announce the title here first! My debut short fiction collection, A BOUQUET OF VISCERA, will be available in spring 2022. You can expect dark, diabolical stories, often times involving revenge, and lots of fun twists.
I’d also like to give a HUGE thank you to Rich, who, within seconds of me telling him what I was looking for, came up with that brilliant title.
Big thanks to Bridgett for her thoughtful and patient answers. Up next is writer, editor and publisher David Niall Wilson, the brains and pen behind Crossroad Press! Until next week…
Ghost of a Marriage News and Cover Reveal
I am very happy to announce that my new novel, Ghost of a Marriage, will be released by the fine folks at Crossroad Press on February 8, 2022! And just to whet your appetite for it, here’s the cover!
Transgressive Horror
I’ve got an essay in the forthcoming book Transgressive Horror: Reflections on Scare Films That Broke the Rules. It’ll be out on Halloween if all goes well. My essay is on one of my personal favorite films, Night of the Demon, and it dives into some of the reasons I love it so.
Editor and Ghost Show Press maven Prof. Christopher McGlothlin, had this to say:
The Everyone’s Gone to the Movies series presents writers of diverse background and experience to share their knowledge, wit, smarts, fun, and passion about movies that stand out from the infinite digital choices; films that expand the boundaries of our minds and imagination. Cinema has an unmatched power to entertain and enlighten, and we invite our audience to join us: “Buy the ticket. Take the ride.”