D. Alexander Ward's Blog

Happy to be on D. Alxander Ward’s blog. I appreciate him hosting me. There were many great writers that got their start on this blog. I believe Earnest Hemmingway guest blogged here once from Havana. Lovecraft guest blogged here many times until he offended too many people and was banned. Bukowski once wrote a blog post here that was just the F word repeated over and over in different fonts. I may have the facts wrong, but I’m still glad to be guest posting.

I’m also glad to be taking part in Scares That Care Weekend Convention this coming Friday, July 24th through Sunday, July 26th. It will be at the Doubletree in Williamsburg Viginia. All those facts I have correct.

I’ll be hosting the Hazardous Press table there and I appreciate that publisher making my appearance there possible. I look forward to sharing the table and the weekend with other great authors. In addition to the great authors will be D Alexander Ward, T Fox Dunham, Armand Rosamilia, and many more. We’ll all be pimping our books there.

I’ll have Dead Song book 1 and hard copies of the CD too. It will be interesting to see how well this unusual combination catches the eye in public.

D. Alexander Ward and I will be sharing a reading time Saturday, July 25th from 10:00 – 10:45 AM. Since no one there will be drinking Friday night, no one will be hung over and it will be well attended I’m sure. I am hoping Ward makes it.

I’ll also be on a panel Sunday, July 26th from 2:00 – 3:00 PM Paths to Publishing. I hope to be mildly interesting and somewhat mildly informative.

The important thing is that all payments for attending this convention go directly to helping families in need. It is a good and growing charity and the convention has become a valuable part of that effort.

Attend if you are anywhere in the area and come see us. If you aren’t able to attend, check out Scares That Care online.

I will be live tweeting and posting all weekend from the table and from events around the weekend. Watch for #ScaresThatCare on Twitter, follow me @AmongTheZombies on Twitter, and check out my author page on Facebook.

Check out the latest book and music from a new series by Jay Wilburn:

The Dead Song Legend Dodecology Book 1: January from Milwaukee to Muscle Shoals

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00YDZKXCI/jaywil0d-20

The Sound May Suffer – Songs from the Dead Song Legend Book 1: January

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/amazing-circle-of-suffering/id996569862?i=996569871&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

Jay Wilburn lives with his wife and two sons in Conway, South Carolina near the Atlantic coast of the southern United States. He taught public school for sixteen years before becoming a full time writer. He is the author of the Dead Song Legend Dodecology and the music of the five song soundtrack recorded as if by the characters within the world of the novel The Sound May Suffer. Follow his many dark thoughts on Twitter @AmongTheZombies, his Facebook author page, and at JayWilburn.com

It’s time again for the second annual Scares That Care convention in Williamsburg, VA. If you’re in the area, this is obviously the place to be for all things dark and horrific. There’s merchandise, costuming, makeup artists, authors, filmmakers, musicians…It’s just a really excellent convention AND it’s for a great cause. Click the icon below to go to their page and find out more about the good work that Scares That Care is doing!

I will be there. Arriving sometime mid-day on Friday. Unfortunately that means missing AN EVENING WITH BRIAN KEENE on Thursday. Which bums be out a great deal.

FRIDAY, at a minimum, I will be attending readings by KEVIN LUCIA and JACOB HADDON from 6:45-7:30.

SATURDAY, 10AM, I will be doing a reading along with JAY WILBURN. Who’s going first? No idea. I guess Jay and I will arm wrestle or have a thumb war for it. Anyway, please come! No matter how hungover from Friday night you are. I’ll be reading from my action-horror-redneck-superheroes novel, BLOOD SAVAGES, maybe a little something else, too, and Jay will be reading from God-knows-what. He’s got about a zillion awesome books and stories out. Seriously.

SUNDAY, 11-NOON, I will be on the panel, “Writers Groups in a Digital Age” along with TIM WAGGONER, RONALD MALFI, JACOB HADDON, PAMELA K. KINNEY and moderated by the HWA VA’s own chapter head, DELONA SOUTHERLAND. Hopefully me talk good that day.

I will be seeing other panels and hopefully meeting/chatting with folks like ARMAND ROSAMILIA, JEFF STRAND, F. PAUL WILSON, THOMAS MONTELEONE, KELLI OWEN, BRIAN KEENE, EDWARD LEE…I don’t know, man. It’s just silly the amount of great authors coming to the convention. It’s going to be great!

The rest of the time will be spent in the main vendor room, bouncing around between the Horror Writers Association – Virginia Chapter table and the Hazardous Press table. Vendor rooms are open from 5pm – 10pm Friday night, 10-am-8pm Saturday, and 10am-4pm Sunday. At both tables, I will have the following books available:

I’ll need to remember to bring my personal copy of SHADOWS OVER MAIN STREET so I can get KEVIN LUCIA to sign it, too.

Celebrity guests, vendors, shows, GWAR, films, makeup wars, scaryoke…it’s just…go check out the details at www.scaresthatcareweekend.com and then head on to the convention. It’s going to be incredible!

I very much hope to see you there!

The Visible Filth by Nathan Ballingrud


My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I thoroughly enjoyed this novella from Nathan Ballingrud. There was a lot to love here. For me, the best writing is the kind that can be, in turns, brutally simple and achingly eloquent. Ballingrud pulls it off very well. There were some parts here that really had me so engrossed that someone entering the room unexpectedly caused me to startle. That’s a rare thing.

If I could offer any criticism, it would be that I felt like there could have been more. The end kind of came rushing at me and I still had questions about other elements and events that happened earlier in the novella.

So, if it’s a criticism to say that Ballingrud left me wanting more, then so be it. I’m betting he would take that all day long.

If and when the author comes out with a full novel, it will go to the top of the to-read list.





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Time for an ebook giveaway of my action/superhero/horror novel, Blood Savages published by Necro Publications. To enter to win, you just have to tweet the message to your followers. So I guess this one is for you tweeters (twitterers, tweetsies?) alone. Available formats are .Mobi and .Epub. Giveaway begins July 11 and ends on July 15. Go!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Disintegration: A Windy City Dark Mystery by Richard Thomas


My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Richard Thomas’s novel, DISINTEGRATION, is a harrowing glimpse into a dark and desolate underworld that is threaded through our very own everyday lives and yet is always at the periphery of our vision. Set in Chicago and its environs, it is a study in how quickly and easily an average man can be stripped down and molded into a killer.

“Nobody leaves me, except for the earth. Got it, big man? You work for me forever.”

The unnamed protagonist in the novel is a deeply troubled man, but is our hero nonetheless. He is cold and ruthless and efficient, but in this dark storm of a narrative, the clouds part often enough to see his humanity. Thomas is a prolific storyteller, and skilled in many genres, but after reading DISINTEGRATION, it seems clear that the neo-noir genre, in his capable hands, is deadliest of all. Fans of Will Christopher Baer will find much to love in this novel, although there is a distinct difference between them, which is the often poetic way that DISINTEGRATION is written. An example:

“A flash of headlights, the squeal of tires on pavement, and the windshield of my car is filled with the sun. Metal screams and glass tinkles the air, I’m a feather drifting in a slow-moving current, I’m a fragile egg, cracked on the counter, shell splintering into tiny jagged pieces. The muted mass of the minivan in front of me is gone from my vision in the blink of an eye. Nothing remains. It’s all gone. A kaleidoscope of gray and white, slices of red and pinpoint pain scatters across my body.

‘Hey, guys,’ I mutter to the graves.”

If you’re into dark, gritty, character-driven crime novels, you need to add this one to your e-reader. If it ever becomes available in paperback, it should come with bourbon stains on the pages, cigarette burns on the cover, and smelling of gunpowder. That is the kind of book DISINTEGRATION is.

View all my reviews

It’s been a while since I posted to this blog. In my defense, I have been very busy. Which means I have a few things to touch on here. Included in this post: Shadows Over Main Street 2, World Horror Con and Stoker Awards, my new position with the HWA, Doug and I at work on a new anthology called GUTTED. Also, another novel coming out from me soon(ish) and a brief update on works in progress.

Shadows Over Main Street, Volume 2

We announced it at WHC to make it official. Hazardous Press will be releasing a second volume of Shadows Over Main Street. The theme will be the same as with the first volume. It is once again being edited by Doug Murano and myself. We are in the process of getting submission agreements from authors, reading submissions, and–this week–we are looking at story pitches. Of course, you never know if a story will work out just because of the author behind it, but I really hope they are all 100% because as far as the invited authors go, we have got one hell of a lineup. No details yet but we expect an early 2016 release for the book.

This is not the cover, but a piece of promo art:

WHC and the Stokers 2015 in ATL

It was my first time as WHC and what can I say? It was an amazing experience. It might discourage the rest of the world if they knew how truly wonderful and generous and considerate horror authors are. For a bunch of folks who spend hours thinking up chilling new ways to prey on our collective fears and inventing nasty ways for fictional people to die, we’re a pretty likeable group of folks. I met lots of new people and made lots of new friends, met some old ones for the first time (Doug) and had an all around blast. I even got to see Doug Murano receive the Richard Laymon award for service to the HWA. I sat at the table with his wife and new baby while he gave a touching acceptance speech, complete with almost losing it up there. It was beautiful.

To sum it up, it was so wonderful to be around creative types of similar mind set that coming back to my day job that following Monday truly sucked. But I am glad for the time we all got to share over that weekend and look forward to the next one!

Speaking of the HWA…

I have volunteered for the position of Verifier at the HWA. This means I help verify the eligibility of works submitted for consideration in certain Stoker categories. I am working with the ever-patient and wise C.W. LaSart and very thankful to have her!

GUTTED: Beautiful Horror Stories

This one has been in the works for a bit. Doug Murano and I will be editing an anthology for Crystal Lake Publishing. It is based on our theme of “beautiful horror stories.” That is, stories that may contain horrible characters or events but which, at the end, offer a glimpse of beauty and hope or at least the promise of it. For a shining example of such a story, I would direct you to Stephen Graham Jones’s story, “Father, Son, Holy Rabbit” in The New Black anthology from Dark House Press. There will be a kickstarter associated with this book and we are, right now, securing submission agreements from a number of authors. So stay tuned! We anticipate a 2016 release for this as well.

Until then, here’s the cover:

New Novel and Works in Progress

I’m happy to announce that I signed with Eldritch Press a few weeks ago to publish my novel, Beneath Ash and Bone. It’s a short novel and kind of an American version of gothic horror/ghost story novels from so many great British authors. It is a period work, set in pre-Civil War Virginia, where a down-to-earth lawman goes to find a missing boy in a winter storm and instead finds himself in the perilous vortex of one wealthy family’s madness and dark deeds.

As far as other things I am working on, I have two to three things going on at the moment. One is a novel with the working title of Nightjar, that I can’t even begin to explain yet.

Another that I will get back to when Nightjar is done is my novel, Obscura, a contemporary horror about cursed objects and cursed people.

And, just recently, I began the second Blackguards book, the sequel to Blood Savages, which will be titled, Dark the Light. I’m pleased with how it’s going so far. We had a bit of good fun on Facebook last week when I mentioned that 15 pages in and already some poor bastard’s face has been flayed, Dixon and Danny have a new car, and Anyika starts things off with a bang by dick-punching and otherwise beating up a neo-Nazi. Now, because of the hilarious input of my many creative friends, there will be a scene involving multiple neo-Nazis, people in dinosaur costumes and more dick-punching than has ever been included in any one book. I do so enjoy writing the Blackguards stuff. It can be a lot of fun.

That’s all for now.

– D.

At long last, this past week, my novel, Blood Savages, was released. (We even had a party for it at RavenCon) This action-horror offering is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, as well as other popular electronic formats.

Get the novel that Disintegration author Richard Thomas says is “a Southern Gothic road warrior tale that from the very first page has you gripping your seat, cheering, and even laughing now and then.”

Click here to get it on Amazon!

Tuesday through Thursday this week, you can pick up a Kindle copy of my story collection from a couple years back for only 99 cents! Probably not *quite* as much fun as a two-dollar hooker but it’s legal and a hell of a lot cleaner!

Click here to pick it up: A FEAST OF BUZZARDS

The website for my novel, Blood Savages, is now live at www.theblackguards.net. Not much going on over there right now, but go check it out…AFTER YOU READ BELOW.

I have 3 uncorrected advance copies of the book up for grabs at a giveaway on Goodreads. If campy dialog, anti-heroes, and beastly vampires that do not sparkle (unless you set them on fire) are your thing, then you should go and enter to win right now. The giveaway ends on March 19th, a full month before the book is available for purchase.

Giveaway ends March 19, 2015.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter to win

April is coming and with it the release of my novel, Blood Savages. Ahead of this release, I am sharing the cover art with you all. It’s a damn fine piece of work by the very talented Erik W. Wilson. I couldn’t have asked for a more appropriate cover.

Also, I would ask you to visit the book’s page over on Facebook for more information and updates. You can find that here: www.facebook.com/bloodsavages