Archive for the ‘short story’ Category

You sick of this book yet? You’re not? Good! Glad to hear it! Now, let’s get on to the meat of this post.

So yesterday, the first batch of author copies for Hannah and Other Stories arrived. These are my personal copies which I can order at a discount and which I can use at events, give away, or just keep. Whatever I feel like. In this case, the first batch of copies include what will be my personal copy, a couple going to a few people who, for one reason or another, I need to send them to, and the rest will go to libraries.

And, of course, I had to do an unboxing video of getting the copies and put it on YouTube. I mean, how could I not?!

If you didn’t watch the video, let me sum it up this way: the author copies came out beautifully! The cover looks amazing, and the interior just looks amazing. I’m just so happy with how they turned out. So happy, in fact, I hugged my personal copy, the copy I picked up, after I finished the video.

As many of you know, this is the second time this book has been released. It was first released by BSC Publishing Group in 2023, but a paperback edition wasn’t produced due to BSC’s policies at the time. After the rights reverted to me, I knew I was going to produce a paperback. And now, in just 19 days, on the two-year anniversary of the original release, the book will finally be available in paperback.

I hope many readers who couldn’t the first time around enjoy the book.

Speaking of which, if you would like to preorder a copy of this terrifying collection full of ghosts, budding serial killers, and carnivorous horses, I’ll include links below. (Just be aware that the paperback edition will only be available to preorder through Barnes & Noble, because Amazon is weird that way.) As I said, the book will be out on Tuesday, September 23rd, 2025, so it’s only a matter of time.

And if you get a copy and end up reading it, I hope you’ll leave a review online. Positive or negative, I love reader feedback, and doing so helps both me and other readers in the long run.

That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I will have another Hannah post out soon, and I hope to have something else out at some point in the coming week. Until next time, good night, pleasant nightmares, and 57 days till Halloween. And I’m only getting scarier and weirder as time goes on.

All of the author copies in the first batch. Aren’t they beautiful?

I did warn you that I would be getting annoying about this as we got closer.

So, if you haven’t heard by now, I have a collection, Hannah and Other Stories, is being re-released in three weeks, on September 23, 2025. It was originally published on that same date in September 2023 by BSC Publishing Group. After my contract with BSC Publishing Group ended and the book went out of print, I decided to re-release it at the two-year anniversary of its original publication. New edit, new cover, but still the same seven amazing stories of ghosts, budding serial killers, and carnivorous horses.

I’m happy to say that people are showing interest in the new edition. I was even asked to send a signed copy to a reader down in Florida, which is pretty cool. And I’m excited for people to read the new copy. I feel like this version is the closest to my original vision with this collection. Not only that, but it will be in paperback, something that didn’t happen the first time around (long story, don’t ask).

And who knows? If enough people get copies and leave reviews, an audio book isn’t out of the realm of possibility. I would love to see that happen.

Of course, we have three weeks to get through first. And if you’re at all interested in ordering a copy before it comes out, you can order one using the links below. (Paperback, by the way, is only available to preorder through Barnes & Noble). After all, it’s only three weeks away.

And, if you end up reading the book, I hope you’ll leave a review letting me know what you think. Positive or negative, I love reader reviews, and they help me and other readers in the long run.

That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I’ll be posting again soon. Maybe even before the two-week mark. Until then, however, good night, pleasant nightmares, and 59 days till Halloween. Is that a carnivorous horse behind you? It looks hungry!

It’s hard to believe we’re already at the tail end of August, but here we are. And with that, we’re at the one month mark till the release of my collection, Hannah and Other Stories.

Wait, did I say “release?” I meant “re-release.” And yes, I plan to get a lot more annoying with it as we get closer and closer.

So, if you’re unfamiliar, Hannah and Other Stories is a collection of mine that was originally released through BSC Publishing Group in September 2023. It contains seven original tales from yours truly, including tales of ghosts, budding serial killers, and carnivorous horses. Unfortunately, the book went out of print once my contract with BSC ended and we decided to go our separate ways. Unfortunate, but sometimes these things happen.

In any case, I’m now in the process of re-releasing the book. Not only that, but I’ve done another round of edits to improve the stories and ensure it’s as close to my vision as possible. And I added that awesome new cover you see at the top of the blog post!

I’m really excited to release this book again (and on the two-year anniversary of its original release)! I always liked this book, and when it was out the first time around, people who got copies really seemed to enjoy it. And with a paperback edition this time (don’t ask), I’m sure more people will read it and enjoy it this time around.

Who knows? We may even be able to justify producing an audio version in the future.

In the meantime, if you’re interested in preordering a copy of Hannah, I’ll leave links below. (If you want to preorder the paperback copy, it’s only available through Barnes & Noble). As I said, it comes out on September 23rd, so the book will be here before we know it. And if you end up reading it, I hope you’ll leave me a review letting me know what you think. Positive or negative, I love reader feedback, and it helps both me and other readers out in the long run.

That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I look forward to joining you when the book comes out next month. In the meantime, good night, pleasant nightmares, and 69 days till Halloween.

Nice.

Happy 100 days till Halloween! Now is the time to start getting serious for spooky season. Decide your costumes and lawn decorations, stock up on candy for the trick or treaters, and decide on movies and books to enjoy. I’ll have a separate blog post for the movies, but in this post, let me recommend something for your reading list:

Hannah and Other Stories is a collection coming out on September 23rd and features seven scary stories, ranging from ghost stories to serial killers to carnivorous horses. It was originally published in September 23, 2023, and then went out of print when the publisher and I parted ways. Now, it’s coming out again, two years to the day it was originally released.

And in this edition, not only is there a brand-new cover (I mean, look at that thing! It’s gorgeous!), but I’ve updated the stories. Not only are they cleared of some of the spelling/grammar/punctuation errors I found during the first release, but I added some things that were missing or taken out during the first run. So, while the stories are very much like what was published, the additions and changes I made have much improved them.

So, I’m very excited for people to read these updated stories. And there are a growing number of people who are preordering it, including a supervisor at work! (He thinks the story about the haunted bathroom sounds neat.) It helps that this time around, unlike the first round, there’s going to be a paperback edition. Believe me, I’m excited for the paperback edition!

And if you would like to preorder a copy, I’ll include links below. You can preorder the ebook from all four sites, and the paperback from Barnes & Noble (still not sure why Amazon has such a weird policy for preordering paperbacks from self-published authors, but whatever).

And if you do preorder and read Hannah, I hope you’ll leave a review. Positive or negative, I love reader feedback. And it helps me out as an author, as well as other readers when it comes to their reading choices.

That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. We’re about sixty days out till release day, and 100 days until Halloween. I hope you’re as excited for both of these as I am. And in the meantime, I hope to have more stuff, including lists of good movies for Halloween and haunted places to visit, very soon.

Until next time, my Followers of Fear, and pleasant nightmares.

It’s finally time.

Back in 2023, I released a collection of short stories called Hannah and Other Stories. It contained tales of ghosts, budding serial killers, and even carnivorous horses. Yes, you read that right. Carnivorous horses. And they were terrifying, as were the rest of the stories. In fact, the book was really well-received by most of the people who read the book.

Sadly, as of New Year’s, the book went out of print, due to Hannah‘s publisher, BSC Publishing Group, and I going our separate ways (don’t worry, it’s not because of bad blood). But the good news, the book’s rights were returned to me, so that meant I could re-publish the book whenever I wanted.

And I decided to do just that. Not immediately. After all, I had Symphony for Walpurgis to put out, so there was no way I was going to work on two collections at once! Instead, I decided to wait till after Symphony was released. Once that was done, I would go over the stories in Hannah one more time, and then proceed with releasing the book one more time.

I’m happy to say that I’ve finished going over the stories in Hannah, correcting any errors or missing pieces I missed from the first release, and making some additions or changes to the story to make them a bit closer to my original vision. I also went and got this unbelievable new cover, which is located…

…RIGHT UNDERNEATH THIS PARAGRAPH!

What do you think? Since the carnivorous horses were such a memorable part of the collection, I made sure they were on the front cover this time. And the cover artist, Carin, really brought out how terrifying they were. At least, that’s my humble opinion.

So, if you’re still with me right now, and you’re at all interested in reading Hannah, you’re probably wondering, where do I get this new edition? Well, it’s currently available for preorder, and will be releasing on September 23, 2025, two years to the day of the first release. You can preorder a copy using the links below.

And guess what else? This time, Hannah and Other Stories will be available in paperback as well as ebook! Yeah, for reasons I’m not going to get into, the first time around, Hannah was only available in an ebook format. But this time, a paperback is going to happen, and it’s currently available for preorder on Barnes & Noble. (Why Amazon doesn’t do preorders for paperbacks from self-published authors, I’ll never know.)

So, if you’re at all interested, go preorder a copy by clicking on any of the links below. And, after the book comes out in September, if you end up reading it, please let me know what you think! Positive or negative, I love reader feedback, and it helps me out in the long run. Plus, leaving reviews for books help other readers decide whether the book is for them or not.

I hope you’re as excited as I am for the re-release of Hannah and Other Stories. I’ve been planning this since around October last year, so I’m glad I can finally come out and say, “Hey, this book is on its way again.” And I have a feeling it’s going to do even better than it did last time!

Who knows? It may even get an audio book this time around. Wouldn’t that be cool.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I’ll be sure to remind you all periodically that Hannah is on its way again. And until next time, good night and pleasant nightmares!

If you read my blog post from earlier this month, you know that my short story collection Hannah and Other Stories will be going out of print on Wednesday, January 1st, 2025. That’s two days from today! So, if you’re interested in getting a copy, there’s a limited time to do so.

Honestly, I’m both sad about this. It sucks that BSC Publishing Group and I aren’t renewing the contract and keeping Hannah on the market. However, this does mean I can put it out again in the new year, and make a couple of changes so that some of the stories better reflect my original vision. And hell, I’ll even spring for a new cover. That should be a lot of fun.

But anyway, if you would like to check out Hannah before it goes temporarily out of print, you can get a copy using any of the links below. It’s a book filled with tales of ghosts, budding serial killers, and carnivorous horses, among other things, so it’s sure to thrill all of you horror fans out there.

And if you like what you read, please leave a review online wherever you purchased it. Positive or negative, I love reader feedback, and it helps me out in the long run. (Not to mention other readers.)

And with that, that’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. If I don’t post anything new before the New Year, I hope you have a fun and safe New Year celebration and that 2025 is nicer to us than 2024 was. Until next time, good night, pleasant nightmares, and Happy New Year!

So, I have an announcement regarding Hannah and Other Stories. If you’re unaware, Hannah and Other Stories is a collection I wrote that was published by BSC Publishing Group on September 23, 2023. The collection contains tales of ghosts, budding serial killers, and carnivorous horses, among other things.

The collection has been well-received, if the reviews I’ve gotten are anything to go by. Unfortunately, sales have not been as good as they might have been, despite my best efforts, and, with my contract ending earlier this year, BSC Publishing has decided to relinquish the rights to publish the book back to me on January 1st, 2025.

Which means on January 1st, 2025, Hannah and Other Stories will go out of print.

Honestly, I’m going through several emotions at the moment. But the major one is acceptance. It is what it is, and I’ll always be grateful for BSC helping me get Hannah to the level it was. Trust me, I have a feeling it wouldn’t be as well received as it was without their help on the later drafts. Having to go through this kind of sucks, but I know it could be a lot worse.

And I also feel hopeful and determined. You see, once the rights are back in my hands, I can publish the book again, either with another publisher or self-publish. And I think I’ll self-publish. Not immediately, but at some point in 2025. I’ll release Hannah and Other Stories again, and it’ll be the same great book as before.

Well, with some changes. BSC’s business model called for only selling paperbacks if there’s enough demand for the ebook. Now, I’ll be able to publish a paperback, which I’m sure plenty of people who haven’t converted to ebooks yet will appreciate.

I also plan to return the Lovecraftian elements to “What Errour Awoke,” one of the stories in the collection. BSC wasn’t a fan of the Lovecraftian and wanted me to take them out. In the end, we compromised and made it semi-cosmic, but it’s never sat right with me. Now, I have an opportunity to make that story the way it was supposed to be, rather than how it was. (I may make a few more changes, but that’s the big one.)

And I think I’ll shell out for a new cover. Something I think will not only attract readers, but symbolize the book’s rebirth to a tee.

2025 is going to be full of possibilities.

So yeah, Hannah and Other Stories is going away for a while. But it’ll come back sometime in 2025, better than ever and in paperback, too. And if it does well enough? Maybe an audiobook version as well. It could happen.

For now, though, if you haven’t read Hannah yet, you still have fourteen days and about five hours to get an ebook copy. Even if you don’t read ebooks, buying a copy will help me in the long run and show me that there is plenty of demand for this book. And if you do read ebooks, please read it. And then leave me a review so I know what you thought. Not only will I really appreciate it, but it’ll help when Hannah eventually returns.

Hmm…between Hannah and the collection I’ve been working on, 2025 is looking like the year for collections. Maybe I’ll do a third as well? Well, we’ll see. However many I release, I hope they all do well.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Links for the book are below. Until next time, my Followers of Fear, good night, pleasant nightmares, and thank you for always supporting me. It means the world to me.

Photo by Dzenina Lukac on Pexels.com

This past Thursday was Halloween, and I was lucky to have two stories release in audio. And since I know that not everyone was able to tune in for them (especially the second one), I’m including links in this post so you can check them out whenever you’re able.

First, on the Tales to Terrify podcast, we have my short story “White Leaves,” which follows the events that occur when an apartment complex wakes up to find a sea of white leaves on their front lawns. The story was narrated by an A+ narrator named Andrew Gibson, and can be found about 28 minutes into the podcast (though I highly encourage you to listen to the two stories preceding mine).

Second, we have the radio play based on my short story “Hannah,” which leads Hannah and Other Stories. The play was performed by the students at Christopher Ray’s Whetstone Academy of Performing Arts, which I’m given to understand is part of Whetstone High School here in Columbus, and produced by WCBE 90.5’s program The Craft by Doug Dangler. It was a really good performance, and the kids did an amazing job (special props to Evelyn Boreman, who played angry and entitled Dianne Shawcross. I could believe all the other actors were teens, but I was very surprised that wasn’t really a middle-aged woman!).

I’ve mentioned it before, but this is the first time my work has ever been adapted into another storytelling format, and I’m quite honored. So, if you can, please check this program out and give it a listen. It really was an amazing show and I’m so proud to have had my story be used for this show and for the teens to use as they work hard to make their careers blossom.

(Sounds like someone I know.)

And finally, if you’re interested in reading the original tale this radio play is based on, you can check out Hannah and Other Stories using any of the links below. And if you do, and you get a copy, I hope you’ll leave me a review so I know what you thought. Not to mention reviews help other readers decide whether or not to check out a story.

That’s all for now, my Followers. I’m off to work on the next collection of short stories. Hopefully I can tell you more about that at a later date. Until next time, good night and pleasant nightmares.

Surprise! The new episode of the Tales to Terrify podcast dropped today instead of tomorrow. Which means my new short story, “White Leaves,” is now live and available to be listened to. It tells the story of an apartment complex that wakes up one morning to find the entire place blanketed in strange white leaves.

Did I mention that this episode is not just the Halloween episode, but episode 666? That’s a devilishly awesome coincidence!

Anyway, if you’re at all interested in giving it a listen, the episode is available to stream now. “White Leaves” is the third and final story in the episode and comes about twenty-eight minutes in after some sponsor ads. It’s quite spooky, if I do say so myself. I’ll include a link below. And be sure to let me know what you think when you’re done! I love reader feedback, after all.

Happy Halloween, my Followers of Fear. I hope you’re having a wonderfully creepy day. And I hope you check out the “Hannah” radio play later today at 7 PM EST on WCBE 90.5’s website. Yeah, I can’t stop speaking about this, but can you blame me? It’s my very first story adaptation!

Until next time, good night and pleasant nightmares.

Happy Halloween, Followers of Fear! I hope you’ve left treats out for all the spirits crossing over from the other side and have dressed up appropriately for the holiday.

And, if you are at all interested, tonight airs the radio play version of “Hannah,” the lead story of my collection, Hannah and Other Stories! It’s my first adaptation, so I’m very excited. I really hope a lot of people tune in to check it out. Especially since it’s a ghost story involving a pair of ghost hunters checking out a haunted school and finding something unexpected in the girl’s bathroom.

Anyway, if you’d like to check out the radio play, it airs tonight at 7 PM EST on WCBE 90.5’s website, which I’ve linked in a button below. It’ll be one story dramatized among others as part of WCBE’s annual Halloween program (not sure what the order is or what the other stories are). And if you aren’t able to tune in live, it should be available to stream on The Craft, the show that interviews creatives I was on recently and which the Halloween show is part of. I’ll be sure to post a link for anyone interested once the stream is available.

I may also do a YouTube or Instagram Live broadcast, but I haven’t done either of those yet, so it’ll depend on interest and if I can figure out how it’s done.

So, if you’re looking forward to the show tonight, the link’s below. I look forward to listening to the show with you and hope it’s as amazing as I dream it will be. And that you’ll let me know what you think when it airs.

Until next time, my Followers of Fear, Happy Halloween and pleasant nightmares.