Matthew Tansek's Blog

Well, I’m happy to report that my last two story submissions have been picked up for publication by the Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers. It’s been a minute since I was included in one of their anthologies, and am very happy to have my work back in one of their books.

The first story will be part of the Recurring Nightmare series, which if I were to write an elevator pitch for it would go something like this:

The Dreams of Pan

Jessica couldn’t help but be excited to start her new job.  The fact that it was in such a small out of the way town seemed strange at first, but the chance to put together a new library was such an opportunity.  However when she comes across a unique book that should have never been included in the collection it sets her on a course to collide with powerful forces both tangable and cosmic.

The second story that the GLAHW group picked up was one that I submitted to their flagship anthology series Erie Tales.  This particular collection was one that was themed for classic movie monsters.  While I did briefly consider doing a mummy attack on an airplane, I landed on doing my take on the The Blob, which is such a fun monster. 

Here is my elevator pitch for this story:

No Country for Old Blobs

While monitoring the extraction data for one of the new mobile fracking installations chemists Moxy and Buck discover something strange floating in the wastewater.  Could this strange living substance have something to do with the death at the nearby farm?  Could the nearby town be in danger?

If you enjoy my work or are interested in reading these two fun pieces of short fiction, that I must say I am proud of, please pick up a copy of the books when they become available.  I’ll be sure to have updated information posted when it is known to me and link to the titles on the homepage, so keep your eyes peeled.

Cheers,
Matthew

I’ve gone through and edited a new short story for you all to enjoy. This one came out of a writing prompt that asked for the perspective of a bystander to an event that involved an extraterrestrial.  Freed from the need to explain all that is witnessed I was able to focus more on the experience of the characters and the chaotic panic that ensues. 

Like so many moments throughout the course of our lives we dont’ know all of the answers, and will never know.  What the characters experience in this story is both incredible and terrifying , and explores what it would be like to be thrown in such a bizzarre situation.

Additionally the feeling of familiarity and alienness that the main character struggles with is both in line wiht the story and one that I can speak to with personal experience. 

Hopefully you all enjoy this one, it was fun to write. 

Click Here For More Info

I’ve got a new short story coming out next month called Ancient Grains.  Believe it or not this story came bout from a writing contest that I entered a while back that was calling for supernatural horror shorts that had bread as the subject matter.  I thought that the premise was so strange and challenging that I gave it a shot, and what was eventually written was a version of this story!

The inspiration for this story came from a bit of ghoulsish trivia that I read about how people in the middle ages would consume ground up mummy (and perhaps other human remains) because they believed that they contained revitalizing and/or magical powers.  Go ahead, google it and you’ll see what I mean.  Add to this the fact that I’ve become quite the avid sourdough baker this past year and you’ll agree that this story was kinda inevitable. 

Full of fun imagery edging toward the gross out I hope you find this short story as much fun to read as it was to write.

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I discovered this little gem while scouring old pulp magazines for the next Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers book club item.  I thought it had some great use of language and was a fun little tribute to the grandfather of horror himself.  Enjoy!

There are different kinds of writers out there.  Some sit down and hammer out a story, one at a time, while others like myself dabble across a ton of different stories seemingly simultaneously.  I tend to think that if you are rating these styles in terms of efficiency the former would end up producing things on a more regular basis, while the latter will see intermittant flurries of activity.

I’ve written quite a bit lately, and while some stories are going out to calls for submissions, many were just written for fun.  Most of the time when this happens I squrril them away into my Google Drive, and await for a call for a submission that matches the content that I’ve created, or for some distant day when I’ve written enough stores along the same theme or world to bundle them together and release an anthology.

But several of the authors that I follow release their shorts as stand along products on Amazon, and I thought that was a cool idea.  Releasing stories for a couple of bucks allows them to see the light of day, instead of just languishing in my digital folder.

So bare with me as I dust off some old gems and throw them out there for you all to enjoy.

-Matt

Here is the link to my Amazon page if you wanted to check out any of the short fiction I’ve released so far.Featured image by Matti Johnson on Unsplash

Often times when I publish anything on my obscure little blog here I feel as though all I am really doing is talking to nobody. My grey cells composing sentences for the ether of the Internet, and nothing else. And sometimes that is a comfort just as much as it is a punch to the gut. But here we are in 2022, and I’m at it again.

There are just certain things that I can’t help but gravitate toward in my life.  My fascination with bugs, my love for windy days, and writing fun little works of fiction. With this new year I hope to find the time to enjoy all of these things.

My Kindle Vella series is a good start. I’m five episodes in, and having fun flying by the seat of my pants. Taking a page from Stephen King’s book, I’m setting the stage and letting the characters really fight in my mind. It’s been fun seeing how they can find their way out of the jams I put them in.

Here is a link to that Vella series of mine:  https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B09GH5J1SY

But I’m addition to this I want to continue to build up the number of publications I have to my name. So finding a monthly submission, and writing to those specs will be a goal of mine. If I do 9 in a year I’ll be happy.

Then there is editing my novel. Yes that’s right, my novel. Did you know I wrote one? No one did. It’s sat finished in my Google drive for years now. Waiting to be edited and cleaned up. This year is going to be the year, and if I have to Sept publish it, so be it.

And that’s it. There you go. Put that in your pipe and smoke it Jack. May we all have a great 2022!

Office Monster

There once was a monster from under the sea,
Who decided to live a life like you or like me.

So he got a job at an office right quick,
as a Junior Sales Associate under Sales Manager Rick.

But selling software turned out to be a contemptuous map,
of needless policy meetings and jargon-laced crap.

The break room could hardly store the sea monsters lunch,
and when he tried to make friends they all ran in a bunch.

The VOIP phone they told him to use,
required fingers and thumbs, not fins, suckers, and hooves.

And while he found the smell of gull droppings quite charming,
it seemed that the others only found it alarming.

They weren’t happy at all that he brought them all snails,
they flat out refused to taste the brown glossy trails.

The keyboard and mouse were too hard to find,
once he covered his desk with seaweed and slime.

and don’t get them started when his skin got too crusty,
and he set off the sprinklers, man, humans were fussy.

His Outlook messages were also a mess,
with most of them written in old Norse at best.

But HR assured all that he should just be,
and noted the poster on diversity.

But after a week under those flickering lights,
the sea monster decided to give up the fight.

So when Rick asked him to come in on his precious free day,
to fill out reports that weren’t due anyway.

The monster puffed up, grunted, and then lifted his tail,
and sent something unpleasant by in-office mail.

The monster just couldn’t be human, this was a fact.
So he turned in his notice, and never looked back.

November Sonnet 

With waxen features, its head jerked around
and lock eyes with me who stared down at it.
That dim well of ancient air underground
hid it from those who abided the writ.
Not I who had passed the posted warning,
and pulled free the iron disc that sealed.
To see what horror had caused the burning
to see if the horror of old was real.

I tried to move, and block the passage fast,
to stop the eagre staggering approach
it was too quick, and I too weak, alas!
It rose above me terrible and spoke:
“The sons of Adam hoped to keep me penned,
but all things hidden will return again.”

sonnet
son·​net | \ ˈsä-nət  \

Definition of sonnet

: a fixed verse form of Italian origin consisting of 14 lines that are typically 5-foot iambics rhyming according to a prescribed schemealso : a poem in this pattern

So I came across this thing when reading my kindle the other day, called Kindle Vella.  Perhaps you have heard of it, I’m willing to wager most people are more informed than me about such things (especially savvy readers such as yourself).  But to me, this was wholly new and so I went looking into it.  A serial platform supported by Amazon?  I thought that this had potential.  I’m not the biggest Amazon fan, but I know that they have the resources to make a nice product.

I’ve always been interested in the short story format, particularly the pulps, and while this is not exactly like publishing to those magazines of yester-year it seemed to have a bit of the spirit of them.  Deliverable ongoing stories right to people’s phones I think has a lot of potential.

And so I got to work drafting an exciting adventure/horror story about surviving a haunted mansion.  Today I published the first installment of my little foray into the Vella-verse!

I’m hoping to make it a regular thing, I think it’s a fun platform to try out.  I hope you all enjoy it.

The link to all of my Vella series can be found on my homepage.

-MT

This fun little fragment was done as a write up to give some flavor to a fantasy game I was invited to participate in. The banter between the two scoundrels was a lot of fun, and although there is a lot of terms and jargon I feel like the thread is never lost as to what they are going on about.

Anyway, I thought I would give it a post here. Enjoy.

The Last of the bearded lady

      “You can’t get it anymore, not here, not anywhere so far as I know.  Not sold for gold, isn’t that what they say?” Birksham said from his comfortable crook behind the bar, “you could pay one of them stuffed shirts to zonk you out with the arcane, but believe me I know it ain’t the same.”

     “C’mon Birky, you must have some idea where a guy can find some Yellocaps these nights?” Said the sailor with a drunken insistence, “I’ve just come back from Hillcrest and I’ve got a stack of ore that’s just dying to jump out of me pockets.  You ain’t seen a gally come back that low since ol’ Azabasha was suppin’ on folk.”  

     Birksham looked at the yellowing teeth of the sailor and pitied him, he knew what it was like to long for the escape the Ragfall druids could provide.  He had been an addict himself once, and not that long ago, although he had always had the blessing of a lean purse to keep him from indulging too much.  

     “Look friend,” Birksham said pouring our a half a glass of Bearded Lady, the lowest shelf dwarven bourbon there is, for himself and the sailor, “the last time I seen Yellocaps was from a dealer that we all called the Vorpal Dreamer.  Used to frequent the Scaled Queen, that Dragonborn brothel down on Clapper street. Strange bloke, but I guess all them druid types are. Gave me a deal of a lifetime he did, a goin’ out of business sale he said it was”

      “Andross bless ‘em,” the sailor said taking a big gulp of the bourbon, “I don’t care how many rabbits they’re diddlin’ or what kinds o’ leaves they be rubbin’ round their privates, so long as they’re growing those sweet little shrooms.  I’ll tell ye, the last time I had ‘em I ended up with my breeches ‘round my ankles trying to climb onta’ tha’ statue o’ the-”

     Birksham cleared his throat to silence the man whose story was likely endless and headed into murky waters.  “Anyway, like I was saying, a queer man he was, tall sort, all dressed in black; and not tailored linnens or that dyed leather all the rogues ‘round here be wearing.  Always decked out in black wolf’s pelts and interlaced jet stones. Gave him an air of some lowly lord it did. The prince of devils dances in black, as they say.  

     About a year ago I comes to ‘im looking just like you sailor, walkin’ with a limp from all the gold I was carrying and he tells me he’ll give me the whole lot of his stock if I listen to his story.  Well, I reckoned that the ol’ tree molester is just hard up for a friendly ear, and if more than two dozen Yellocaps are in it for a patient man, I was more than agreeable.  

     “Two dozen!” the sailor interjected tapping his glass on the bar top for a fillup, “Gods almighty, you could fly twice ‘round Geisel with that lot of shroom.” 

     “Hm, so he takes me ‘bout a hundred yards back from ol’ Hammy’s Butchery into that stand of red pines that grows back yonder and shows me a standing stone type thing.”

     “What do you mean, standing stone type thing?”

     “I means what I says, you old barnacle.  Like a big ol’ rock the size of ‘alf a dragon stood on end with all sorta queer gibberish carved on it.  The dreamer says he made it as a sort of commemoration to a fallen friend.”

     “Wha’ like a giant’s tombstone or sommat?  By Andross’s bearded balls, who needs a marker like that?”

     “Apparently back when the Ragfall druids were at their peak, back when we were lads and the smell of long-pork was a waftin’ outa folks chimneys, those old men in the woods had a few run-ins with the ol’ gobblers.  With a twinkle in his eye the Vorpal Dreamer told me hows they done it too.” 

     “What’s that then?  Survive the knifey forkey?”

     “Nah, hows they killed ‘em.  How they kept the wood clean, or cleanerer.”

     “Well go on,” said the sailor, “and top me off here, don’ be stingy.”

     “Apparently all the moose fondlers from all over Dravahl would meet and draw stones outta some sacred log or something.  And if you were the unlucky sod that drew the black stone you were made to sacrifice yourself for the greater good, stuffed to the brim with the most potent herbs, drugs, and poison those deer groping bastards ever devised.  

     Ya see, the cannibals didn’t know the wood that well.  Hells, no one does except them that be out there. And so when the radin’ parties would come in they’d always be traveling on the main roads in big groups, and whatcha’ suppose they find then eh?  Some poor bloke slumped against a tree with his mind bouncing like a hot frog through the elemental chaos.

     Well you know how those ol’ cultists were, egre as anythin’ to taste a bit o’ blood and make oaths to that hump-back’d fiend they’d sold their souls to.  So there’d they go a carvin’ the poor sucker up, chantin’ their blasphemies and toastin’ to the gore to come. Then the shakes would come, and the visions, and the vertigo, they’d be carryin’ on tea parties with sea elves or waltzin’ with the burnin’ ‘ead himself in no time.  All the while those crafty shroomers would be stalkin’ in and layin’ waste to ‘em all.”

     “That’s a loada twonk! You expect me to believe that a bunch of old dirty owlbear wankers went toe to toe with Azabasha’s nibblers? I’ll eat my ‘at sir.” said the sailor stumbling backward off of the stool.  

     “Well that’s what the Vorpal Dreamer told me,” Birksham said with a shrug.

     “And the point of that yarn was that you don’t have any Yellocaps?”

     “And Bearded Lady,” said Birksham draining the last of the bottle. 

     And so, with a disgruntled snort the sailor left the bar and Birksham went back to serving the other thirsty scoundrels.