David Neilsen's Blog

Happy 2024! How did you spend your New Year’s Eve? Were you celebrating by shaking bottles of champagne up and spraying them all over everybody within spitting distance while howling at the moon and dancing around naked? Me neither. Next year, I swear. I celebrated by taking another look at my career and realizing it … Continue reading "New Year, New Stuff to Bleat About!"

I just released my latest Middle Grade horror/comedy/adventure, Death is a Many-Splendored Thing. It is book one of The Chronicles of the Deadly Dead, and I am very excited to tell this story. Here’s the way-cool cover: Books two and three are already 95% written. Or rather, they are 100% written, but I’ll need to … Continue reading "A Good Story Never Dies"

My father bought a motor home for his mid-life crisis (and more than likely drove it while naked). Back when my mother had her mid-life crisis, she bought a convertible. She did not drive it naked. So as I approached the age when one of those mid-life things might sneak up on me, it stood … Continue reading "A Mid-Life Crisis"

I am very excited to announce the upcoming publication of my next work of MG/YA Horror/Comedy/Adventure, Lillian Lovecraft and the Harmless Horrors. This is a new series that features a exasperated teenager who gets stuck with an incredibly annoying horrific entity from beyond space and time named Frank. While Frank is more aggrevating than dangerous, … Continue reading "Something Harmless This Way Comes…"

This coming Friday, December 11, at 7PM, I will be in a Zoom production of William Shakespeare’s As You Like It. It’s going to be a very interesting performance. Shakespeare over Zoom. Wild. Here’s the link. This post is not about the performance. It is about the play itself, as written. I think Shakespeare got … Continue reading "When Shakespeare Gets Lazy"

When I was in the fourth grade, a man named Daraj Maxfield came to our school to immerse us into the world of theater. Valencia Elementary School didn’t have much of an arts program at the time, so we had no idea what to expect. When my class had its first session, Daraj (he was … Continue reading "In the beginning…"

It’s funny how things fall into place. A few months ago, I get the opportunity to read an advance copy of an upcoming ‘spooky’ Middle Grade novel and then submit a promotional blurb. It’s a fun book, called From Sunset to Sunrise by Jonathan Rosen and it’s all about kids and vampires and mad scientists … Continue reading "One of Us! One of Us!"

Happy Day-After-World-Read-Aloud Day! About a month ago I saw something on Twitter that talked about an upcoming World Read Aloud Day set for February 1. Interested, I followed the link which led to another link which led to another link which led to a few hours reading about crop circles. Then I went back a … Continue reading "World Read Aloud Day Inspires!"

Greetings and salutations one and all! In honor of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, Dr. Fell has chosen to give thanks that he has a better vocabulary than anyone! To prove it, he has created a dastardly, cruel, Wicked Word Search! Find glorious words such as rapscallions and whippersnappers hidden on the page! (Beware, as the … Continue reading "Can You Keep Up with Dr. Fell?"

Endings are hard to write. Sometimes I’ll find myself running in circles and drawing out the last chapter because nothing I write works as a final line. There was an urban legend that may or may not be true (hence: urban legend) saying the J.K. Rowling knew for many years that the last word of … Continue reading "The Mushy Middle"