Joel Sutherland author

The following interview is with Joel A. Sutherland, author of Beached in The Beast Within.

Hi, Joel. Could you start us off with a little info about yourself? We here on the forums are so used to seeing text and avatars that it can be easy to forget there are human beings behind the words. What’s a day-in-the-life-of-Joel Sutherland like?

A: Hi, Matt. I used to haunt this forum all the time, but lately time has been scarce. Other than my job and personal life, I’ve been finishing my first novel, FROZEN BLOOD, which is scheduled for release on December 28, 2008, by Lachesis Publishing. Devout Graveside Tales fans might know me as one half of the editing team behind FRIED! FAST FOOD, SLOW DEATHS (with my wife, Colleen Morris). A day in the life of me? I’m a librarian, a husband, a current Masters student, a new homeowner, a lover of walking the dog, and obviously a writer and editor. It’s a quiet life, but that suits me just fine.

As a writer, what do you find is the most challenging part about crafting fiction, and how do you overcome it?

A: Writer’s block. The easiest way to overcome it is simple: BIC. Butt In Chair. Whenever I get stuck or find the thought of writing to be less than tantalizing, I sit down and force some words out. They’re often crap, but they also often lead to something decent. And it doesn’t count if you’re checking your emails every five minutes, playing Solitaire or surfing the Internet for funny Youtube videos. BIC.

You were the co-editor of Graveside’s first anthology FRIED! Fast Food, Slow Deaths. Has having been in the editor’s chair changed the way you submit fiction to new markets?

A: I appreciate rejections much more now. It made me realize that the editor on the other end isn’t against me in any way, and that sending me the rejection is probably not a terribly pleasing process for them (maybe better than receiving them, but still). I hated sending them out myself, but it’s a natural part of the process, and receiving them doesn’t faze me nearly as much anymore.

Are there any upcoming projects that you’re working on, editing or otherwise?

A: Now that FROZEN BLOOD is about to be released, I’ve turned my attention to my second novel. FROZEN BLOOD is set primarily in one house, with three characters, over the course of only a couple of days. So naturally, the next book is going to take place across the world, with dozens of characters, over a couple of years. I need to shake things up.

Where can we see more of your work?

A: People reading this are probably werewolf fans, right? Perfect! One of my only free online stories is a werewolf story. Here’s the link:

http://afterburnsf.com/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=23b64ed0-f92e-4d09-97da-a3200ca4501b

I have stories currently available or forthcoming in many anthologies and magazines, including, The Undead: Skin and Bones, Robots Beyond, Read By Dawn (Volumes 3 & 4), and Tales of Moreauvia. For all the info please check out my website:

www.joelasutherland.com

When the submission call went out for Beast Within, what was the first idea that came to mind? What made you choose the were-creatures in your story?

A: Well, I thought aquatic animals would make for a unique angle, so I left that idea to percolate in my mind. I was surprised by the story that grew around that thought. It’s unlike anything else I’ve ever written: somber, introspective and (gasp!) a love story. In a twisted kind of way, that is.

Could you give us a non-spoiler synopsis of your story Beached?

A: A fisherman’s wife, stricken with grief but unable to let go, waits on the beach day and night for her lost husband to return. What returns to her is far from what she expected.

Thanks, Joel!

My pleasure!

And now, here’s an excerpt of Beached from The Beast Within:

BEACHED, BY JOEL A. SUTHERLAND

The moon was full the night my husband disappeared. I won’t say ‘died,’ because he’s not dead. He was gone?for twenty-nine days, without a trace?but he came back. Not how I pictured he would, but that’s okay. I’m not particular. He came back.
Those twenty-nine days changed me, of that I have no doubt. The townsfolk, they thought I lost it, thought my mind was set to wandering, never to come back. They didn’t tell me outright, but I knew. I heard the whispering. But I wasn’t crazy. Just patient, is all. There’s a difference. And loyal. Not like the other wives at all.
My husband, his name is Eddie, and perhaps you’ve heard of him. He was a fisherman. He had his own boat and hauled the cod and lobster in day after day and night after night, until one morning he didn’t come back. The news had been warning of the storm for days before it hit, and I begged Eddie not to go out. He turned to me and said, “Babe, I gotta fish,” then kissed me hard and walked out the door. He always kissed me hard?never those light, insignificant kisses on the cheek. He kissed me like he meant it, and I loved him for it. The rescue workers never found his boat, Happy Tidings, or the other three fishermen who worked with Eddie. Their names were Jack, Charlie, and Robert. I was told their names were in the local paper, too, but all the articles focused on my Eddie. That probably irked the other wives, maybe made them a mite jealous. But he was the man running the show, and the most important, plain and simple.
I was in bed, not sleeping really, just lying, resting my eyes, listening to the storm. The wind was howling like a goddamn wolf out there, Aaaa-rooo!, and I heard hail clattering all over the roof, sounding like nothing less than a horde of demons scampering about. Tree branches clawed at the sides of our little home, raking and scratching the aluminum siding. I couldn’t take it anymore. I had been dreaming of Happy Tidings capsizing on a wave and tossing Eddie out of the wheelhouse like a child’s toy. I dreamt of him drowning. I dreamt of throwing myself in after him. I didn’t want to dream anymore. I awoke with a shout, my bedclothes drenched in sweat. It gleamed on my skin in the wan light coming from the window and tasted salty on my lips, like seawater. I washed then stood before the window. I couldn’t see much?the rain-slicked glass obstructed my view?but the light from the full moon was so bright that I could see a little. Trash and broken branches whipped through the air and along the sand, while frothy white waves crashed on the shore. The rhythmic pounding of the Atlantic was always so soothing to me, but not that night. That night I had visions of body parts being spewed from the water, of blood-red waves rolling towards me. I stood there silently until the sun replaced the moon.
Once the storm had died down, I stepped outside and onto the beach, feeling the sand squish through my toes. The strong smell of saltwater filled my nose, and I remarked to myself that the air smelled clean and fresh. There were tables and chairs strewn around the beach, and a thick line of greenish seaweed where the waves had reached. A crab picked at a decomposing fish. People milled about, picking up and straightening out and keeping themselves busy. I scanned the horizon. It was perfectly flat. No boats broke the ruler-straight line that separated water and sky.
My heart stopped beating.
“Any sign of Eddie, Sheila?”
I jumped. It was Gracie, my neighbour. She held gardening shears in one gloved hand, a few jagged sticks in the other. Any sign of Eddie? Of course there wasn’t. Why the hell was I standing out there so early in the morning, gazing at the ocean? “No, no sign,” I said.
I waited. The sun hit its zenith then arced down to the west. I breathed, but did little else. I tried not to think. Not thinking was impossible. If I was hungry, I didn’t feel it. Friends saw me and brought me water, soda and lemonade, the glasses wet with condensation. No one said a word to me but Gracie. She asked me to come inside, asked me if I’d go to her place to eat dinner, asked me if I was all right, asked me all the questions anyone could ask a person in my position. Eventually I stopped answering. When she brought me a ham and cheese sandwich on a paper plate it sat on the sand beside me until she came back out and took it away, muttering about bugs. I scratched my shoulders, my forearms, and my calves until my skin was covered in red spider webs where my nails had passed. I guess I was itchy, but I didn’t feel it at the time. All I knew was that I had to wait for Happy Tidings. I had to wait for Eddie.

Choate Road is now live on blog talk radio! Everything you love from horror’s favorite playground will be coming at you in audio 3-D. Interviews, genre news, original stories all smothered in dark delicious humor. So go ahead. Pet the Werepig. We dare ya…

Michael Stone - author

The following interview is with Michael Stone, author of Like Cat and Dog in The Beast Within.

Hi, Michael. Could you start us off with a little info about yourself? We here on the forums are so used to seeing text and avatars that it can be easy to forget there are human beings behind the words. What’s a day-in-the-life-of-Michael Stone like?

A: Most people, when meeting me for the first time, lean back and say, “My, aren’t you tall!” (I’m over 6′ 5″), but I think when it comes to physical properties my eyes are the biggest factor in my day-to-day life. I have a degenerative eye condition called Retinitis Pigmentosa, and I am in fact registered blind. My right eye is useless while — on a good day at least — my left eye has about 30% of normal vision. In early 2006 I lost my job of 22 years and, after several disheartening interviews with employment officers, decided to stop at home and focus on my writing. Since then I’ve written numerous short stories, a collection of novellas called Fourtold and, most recently, an unpublished children’s novel.

As a writer, what do you find is the most challenging part about crafting fiction, and how do you overcome it?

A: I don’t write anywhere near as much as I’d like: I’m undisciplined and have an addictive personality. When I’m in the mood I can write all day. But if I’m not in the mood, I can quite easily spend all day surfing the net, emailing, gaming, reading, gardening ? I can easily go weeks without writing any fiction. And although that displeases me, I’ve come to accept it’s just part of the creative process.

On your web site, www.Mylefteye.net, there’s an impressive list of short story sales over the last few years. How many short stories have you sold, and what advice would you give someone who’s new to submitting writing to anthologies or online markets?

A: The current tally is around 45 stories sold, with reprints nudging the figure up to 60. I’m not sure I’m qualified to give writing advice, but I wouldn’t hesitate to point a budding writer in the direction of a writers’ workshop. There are some excellent online ones. I was a member of Critters.org for many years and every single story I subbed was improved by my peers. Sure, you’ll get some poor, ill-advised and plain daft comments, but digging for and recognizing the nuggets of wisdom is all part of the learning experience. And you never, ever, stop learning.

Oh, and read read read, not just in the genre you write in, either, but anything and everything. Get acquainted with your local library, and don’t just read when you have plenty of time to spare. You’ve got five minutes? Pick up a book and read!

Writer’s block strikes sooner or later; are there any home remedies or writing exercises you use to stave off the dreaded curse?

A: For me, writer’s block is just another term for procrastination. There are times when you have to sit down at the computer and accept that not everything you write is going to be good. To get to the good stuff, you gotta dig. I tend to use those spells when I’m not writing to do my digging. I endlessly ponder story ideas, character traits and plot developments etc.

Any personal experiences where you might’ve felt like a character in a horror novel?

A: I occasionally suffer from something called sleep paralysis. It’s a condition where you wake up but can’t move a muscle ? not even to open your eyes — and the sleep befuddled mind creates a whole host of frightening scenarios. You sometimes get the overriding impression that someone is standing over you, and this, coupled with difficulty in breathing, gave rise to the succubus myth. In my novella Lemon Man, I not only gave my protagonist sleep paralysis, I also cursed him with narcolepsy. Which was pretty darned cruel of me, now I come to think of it.

When the submission call went out for Beast Within, what was the first idea that came to mind? What made you choose the were-creatures in your story?

A: I was up to my armpits in my novel at the time so I cheated and sent in a previously published 2000-word story called No Dogs Allowed. This made it through to the second reading, but the editor wondered if I would elaborate on the story’s rather sudden ending. Otherwise…  By this time I’d finished the novel and relished the challenge. I stripped the original story down to about a 600 words and wrote 3500 new ones to create Like Cat and Dog. This the editor approved of and I was in. I’m very proud of it too.

Could you give us a non-spoiler synopsis of your story Like Cat and Dog?

A: It’s set in a near-future London where werecats and werewolves live unmolested among humans. However, it takes an enormous amount of will-power for the changelings to live as mundanes, and when Sophie and Owen — a snow leopard and timber wolf respectively — get the scent of blood in their nostrils, folks had better watch out!

Thanks, Michael!

A: My pleasure, Matt.

And now, here’s an excerpt of Like Cat and Dog from The Beast Within:

LIKE CAT AND DOG, BY MICHAEL STONE

Jade was coming on to Graham like a porn queen. Her seduction was just so artless; from the false yawn that displayed her canine extensions to the stretch that nearly toppled her breasts out of her low-cut dress.
But so long as Graham was in on the joke, what harm could it do? Sophie cast a proprietary glance over the dimly-lit bar and, seeing no one dying of thirst, settled for giving the counter a wipe with a beer towel. Kilworth’s tended to be quiet until much later in the evening, when most Cats became active.
She fought to suppress a giggle as Jade groaned in ecstasy and pressed her lips to Graham’s ear. He pushed her away, tiring of the charade.
“Come on, lover boy, let’s raise the ante.” Jade removed a brooch from her dress and pricked her thumb with the pin. A bead of blood trembled on her skin.
Sophie’s heart began to race.
“Plenty more where this came from,” Jade said, “if you’ll make me your queen pussy.”
“Bitch,” Graham hissed. His stool clattered to the floor as he stood.
Sophie shouted, “Graham, why don’t?”

He wasn’t listening. He spun out of Kilworth’s elegant glass frontage in a whirl of leather and lace to be devoured by the night.
Sophie watched him go with a mixture of envy and pride. Panthers did everything with style. They even ran away from girls with panache.
She didn’t know how and when Kilworth’s had become a place where mundane humans and Cats rubbed shoulders, but she did know it was the promise of keeping company with her own kind that brought her here; that and eight quid an hour plus tips, which wasn’t bad for this side of the river. Unfortunately, having Cats as clientele also brought in gawkers like Jade.
Jade lit a cigarette and giggled. “Some guys don’t know what they’re missing.”
Sophie pitched her voice low. “You’re a regular here, surely you know better than to do something that stupid?”
“Obviously I don’t. I thought you Cats went crazy over a drop of blood.”
“It’s not a good kind of crazy, you?” Stupid mundane! Sophie’s annoyance increased as Jade tipped her head back and aimed a thin stream of smoke at the ceiling.
“Ahem.”
“What now?”
She pointed to one of two signs hanging over the bar. Beneath the one that read “No Dogs Allowed” was one that forbade smoking.
“God, what is with you, tonight?” Jade sighed and ground the cigarette out. “Another bottle of red wine please, Sofes, my little kitten. Make it a Beaujolais.”
Sophie set down a full bottle in front of the girl and then lifted the hinged portion of the counter. She walked through to pick up Graham’s fallen stool. His glass lay on its side, the remnants of the grape juice soaking into the carpet. Non-alcoholic grape juice because Cats didn’t have a head for the strong stuff.
Jade tipped half a glass back and swallowed. “A good-looking guy like Graham going to waste, it’s criminal.” She drained the glass in a titanic second gulp and poured another.
Sophie mused that the only thing wasted around here was quality red wine. She had often considered ordering in cheap rubbish for Jade.
“The thing is, Jade, the lust for blood is like ? oh, I don’t know, sex and love. You can live without sex?”
“Speak for yourself!”
“but you can’t live without love. Love is something much deeper, a vital energy that binds; it’s a state of being. I’m probably not explaining this very well, but to us the hunger for blood is as much spiritual as physical. There are medications, but they only go so far to suppress the physical longing. The rest is down to willpower. And then you come along and try to get Graham sampling your blood ?” She shook her head. “Would you blow smoke in the face of someone trying to quit the weed, or offer a recovering alcoholic a whisky? You were mocking him, Jade. We suffer the pain of abstinence so that we can dwell among you without fear of persecution. You just asked Graham to throw that away for ? for nothing.”
Jade wriggled her hips and looked down at herself. “I’d hardly call this nothing, Sofes.”
Sophie tried to relax her neck muscles. It had been three years and two months since she adopted her true-form of a snow leopard and hunted down her own food; over three years of constantly warring against her instincts, going domestic and shopping for carrion in supermarkets.
“It’s a dangerous game you’re playing,” she said.
“So the predator has become the prey. Big deal.”
“Graham was right, you really are a bitch.” Sophie didn’t need to make an excuse to leave Jade alone for a moment; an occasional visitor to Kilworth’s named Owen, a large guy with a puckered scar that ran from his top lip up to his forehead, swaggered up to the bar and ordered a pint of warm milk sweetened with honey.
Sophie served him in silence, not speaking even as she took his money and returned his change. His eyes crinkled with amusement.
Jade banged her empty glass on the counter and beckoned Sophie over. “Hey,” she whispered. “What’s that one? Lion? Cougar?”
Sophie hesitated before muttering, “Timber wolf.”
“A Dog? What’s he doing in here?”
“Keep your voice down.” Sophie’s cheeks reddened with shame. “He’s provoking us. It’d take a determined lion to face down a timber wolf the size of Owen, and he likes to rub our noses in it.” The arrogant bastard, she thought. One day ?
Sophie saw the gleam in Jade’s eyes. “Don’t even think about it.”
“Oh, come on. I’ll bet he’ll play with me.”
“Stop it. Let him drink his milk and go.”
“What’s with the scar?” Jade gestured clumsily at her face.
“It’s a duelling scar. He’s a pack leader, the alpha.”
Jade slurred. “A pack leader. Whoa! One or all, bring ‘em on!”
“You can’t possibly mean that.”
“Oh no? Just watch me.” Jade slid the bottle of wine along the bar. “Hi, big guy. Where are all your friends tonight?”

Owen curled his fingers around the bottle and grinned. Then stiffened. He raised a finger to his nose and sniffed, his mouth slightly open, his tongue pressed behind his incisors. “Something tells me you’d better watch your step, young lady.” He sloped away to a dark corner to nurse his milk.
“Condescending git. What’s with everyone tonight?”
Sophie ground her teeth. “For God’s sake, Jade, take a hint. I’m telling you now, another peep out of you tonight and you’re barred for life.”
Jade rolled her eyes and made an uncoordinated grab for the bottle.
Sophie swept the bottle up and placed it down behind the counter. “I think you’ve had enough.” She frowned as something tacky on the label transferred itself to her palm. She brought it to her nose, and smelt Jade’s blood; fresh, sweet and heady.
Just one taste, where’s the harm? She closed her eyes and touched the tip of her tongue to her hand?
Juices flooded her mouth. A pounding heat started in her temples. It flowed down over her breasts and belly. She became aware of the sharpness of her teeth, the rending power in her jaws. She could pad over treacherous rocky slopes for mile after mile, day after day, without missing a beat. Tracking the prey, experiencing cold satisfaction in the kill. Hot blood staining her muzzle, spraying over virgin snow.
Gorging.
Sophie surfaced from the racial memory. Her eyes fell on Owen. His yellow eyes bored through her stupor. Did he feel this way after tasting Jade’s blood?
A sardonic smile appeared on his lips. He rose from his seat and reached inside his leather greatcoat.
“Jade.” Sophie raised the hinged portion of the counter. “Jade, come through.”
“What’s wrong?”
Sophie grabbed Jade’s hand and half-dragged her through the counter, through the stockroom and out the loading bay door. The night air wrapped frigid arms around them.
“Jade, listen to me, this is no time for questions. These are the keys to my car, a green Mondeo. It’s in the next block.” She hefted a steel dustbin full of refuse and sidled behind the door. “Turn right at the end of this alley, left and then left again to Battersea Bridge Road. Now run!”
“But Sophie, I can’t see. It’s too dark!”
Sophie swore. Bloody useless mundane senses. She swung the dustbin just as Owen’s head appeared through the open door. He crashed to the ground with a curse. His body humped over as he began to adopt a more powerful shape.
Sophie considered letting her body slide into her Cat form, but to stand and fight a changed alpha wolf would be foolhardy. She heaved Jade over her shoulder and padded down the alleyway.
She would never be able to show her face in this part of town again without getting it torn off. Males?whether Cat or Dog?would cut the females of either species a lot of slack, but braining a pack leader with a dustbin crossed all the boundaries of forgiveness. And pissed on them for good measure.
A howl rose behind them, traversed the streets and soared above the rooftops. It was a sound so hardwired into the human psyche that all over the neighbourhood, from Clapham to Lambeth, doors would be slammed and bolted against the night. Owen was calling his pack together.
Sophie quickened her pace, not even slowing when they reached the well-lit carriageway. A busy thoroughfare would be no protection against Owen and his pack now. It didn’t matter where they found her; they would take her down. Any passersby would quickly move on or fade into the shadows.
Three male Dogs spilled out of a pub less than a hundred yards away. Yellow eyes glowed from under bony foreheads. Sophie spun to see a female Dog approaching from behind. Trapped! Owen leapt into the road. He stretched his neck and howled again.
Jade whimpered, “Oh my God I’m gonna?” and was sick down Sophie’s back.
Sophie wrinkled her nose in disgust. “That does it.” She dropped her mantle of humanness. The skin on her palms and soles thickened into pads of hard leather. Claws hissed from her fingertips. Hair follicles all over her body sprouted dense white-gold fur with dark rings. Muscle and tendon relaxed and flowed before hardening in compact knots. But super-nature could not ignore the law of physics. Sophie’s mass could not be increased, only shifted and modified.
Her strapless bra dropped around her waist. A snow leopard had no use for breasts.
She tore away the soiled clothing and screwed shut her eyes. “Aw, I hate this?” her eyeballs made a viscous pop as the pupils sprang into slits “?bit.” She blinked rapidly to clear the noisome sensation.
The change had taken only a few heartbeats, but that had been long enough for the five Dogs to close in. Owen stood alongside the female. Made confident by their numbers, and by the presence of their alpha, they hadn’t changed. No doubt they were expecting her to drop Jade and surrender. Arrogant Dogs. Sophie sprang at a male and?claws extended?slashed his head before bounding to a first-floor window ledge. She hissed at the scattered pack and held aloft a tattered scalp. Her victim lay motionless in a pool of blood. Adrenaline dissolved any regret she might have felt.

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Old Time Radio Dramas

Radio drama is a form of audio storytelling broadcast on radio. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the story.

Radio drama achieved widespread popularity within a decade of its initial development in the 1920s. By the 1940s, it was a leading international popular entertainment. With the advent of television in the 1950s, however, radio drama lost some of its popularity, and in some countries, has never regained large audiences.

However, recordings of OTR (old-time radio) survive today in the audio archives of collectors and museums.

Listen to such favorites as Inner Sanctum, The Creaking Door, Lights Out, Quiet Please, and many more.

All shows are available under Public Domain

Steve Wedel Author

The following interview is with Steven E. Wedel, author of Okie Werewolf Seeks Love in The Beast Within.

Hi, Steven. Could you start us off with a little info about yourself? We here on the forums are so used to seeing text and avatars that it can be easy to forget there are human beings behind the words. What’s a day-in-the-life-of-Steven Wedel like?

A: A day in my life? hahaha Yeah. My alarm goes off at 5:30 a.m. and I’m generally conscious and moving by 6:20. I drive about 20 miles to the inner city high school where I teach English, tell jokes, play therapist, fundraiser, grade papers, etc. Then I generally come home and piss off my 14-year-old daughter because of a cell phone or boyfriend issue. The 16-year-old boy is fairly self sufficient these days, but the 8-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son have homework, want food, need booboos bandages, etc. I make dinner, my wife comes home, I stare at the TV while she talks about her day. Put the kids to bed. Shower. Then maybe I get to write for a little bit. I can’t sleep without reading for a while, so I do that until around 12:30 a.m. Five hours later the alarm goes off. Rinse and repeat.

That may sound like I’m not happy, but that isn’t the case. I’ve had a lot of jobs and three careers since graduating high school in 1984, but I can honestly say I’ve never had a job I liked as much as being a teacher.

The only thing I’d change about the above is my older daughter. I miss her being Daddy’s little girl.

As a writer, what do you find is the most challenging part about crafting fiction, and how do you overcome it?

A: Finding the time is my only real problem. Once I’m sitting down and in writing mode I don’t have too much of a problem. Because it sometimes takes me a while to actually get to the keyboard, I get to mull the story over in my head a lot, so when I sit down I know what I want to do and it flows pretty fast and smooth.

Then my wife reads it and tells me where I screwed up.

What initiated your interest in the horror genre?

A: Halloween II. That’s 2, not 11, or whatever the franchise is up to now. I hadn’t seen the first one, but me and some friends went to the second one and I was impressed with Michael Myers’ body count. Then my high school sophomore composition teacher assigned us a short story, so I wrote a piece that’d get a student arrested these days. It was called “Insanity” and was about a kid who was picked on and how he offed his enemies in cool, gory ways.

Eventually I matured and realized that horror fiction is the only place you can really explore supernatural and violent themes.

Any personal experiences where you might’ve felt like a character in a horror novel?

A: There was that time I was feeding my daughter’s ex-boyfriend through a meat grinder ?

Actually, I have a bird phobia. Send a werewolf after me. Throw me in the vampires lair or drop me into a horde of zombies. Just please don’t make me walk through the Wal-Mart parking lot when those big black birds are hopping between cars and wheeling around looking for roosts or scraps or fresh eyeballs.

You’ve explored the werewolf mythos in your novels, even been typecast as a werewolf writer, yet your fiction isn’t always limited to the werewolf sub-genre. Could you tell any potential new fans out there what other types of horror fiction you’ve written?

I have a new novelette that will be out about the same time as The Beast Within. It’s called Little Graveyard on the Prairie and I really think it’s my best story to date. It has a maturity I don’t think I’ve explored before. It’s a ghost story, but not all the ghosts are dead people. Bad Moon Books is publishing it as a limited edition.

Another published novella is Seven Days in Benevolence. This was my foray into extreme horror. It’s another ghost story, this time about a newly single mother and her two daughters who move into a new house in a small town. There are some ghosts residing there, too, and they’re kind of at war with each other. The ending is very graphic and has turned off some readers.

In 2010 Bad Moon Books will publish The Prometheus Syndrome, a novel with deranged hillbillies, a mad scientist, a zombie, a ghost, and rock-n-roll. I have a few other non-werewolf things I’m still shopping around, too.

Writer’s block strikes sooner or later; are there any home remedies or writing exercises you use to stave off the dreaded curse?

A: I used to work for a daily newspaper. For the two years I was there I consistently led the newsroom in number of bylines per month. I don’t believe in writer’s block. You don’t write, you don’t get paid. You don’t get paid, you don’t eat.

That’s not to say I don’t procrastinate. I do. Big time. The thing to do is put your butt in the seat and write something, anything, just start writing and once you hack away for a while the good stuff will start flowing again.

Could you give us a non-spoiler synopsis of your story Okie Werewolf Seeks Love?

A: I suppose I should mention that I step outside the rules that apply to most of my werewolf fiction for this one. Still, I’m sure someone will write to me and say, “In Shara you say werewolves can only do _________ when they ________, but in this story it’s different.” That’s cool. They’re paying attention. Stepping out of my mythos was a conscious decision, and now I can point to this interview as proof that I knew what I was doing.

I wrote this story specifically for conventions. I have this Okie twang that I can’t mask, so I try to come up with some redneck humor/horror stories I can read at the conventions I go to. This one was originally written as a telephone call-in dating message, but I changed it to a letter to the editor. Basically, Randy Bragg is a good ol’ boy living on welfare and whatever odd job money he can get when he’s bitten by a werewolf. That means he’s gotta bathe a little more often, and use flea shampoo, but he gets to lick himself in places he couldn’t reach before, so he feels it’s a pretty fair trade. His ex-girlfriend, however, wasn’t so happy about it, so he wrote this letter looking for a new woman. He’s willing to share his gift, and he might even share his next six-pack if the babe is really smokin’.

Thanks, Steven!

(ps: if you want to read a REAL interview with Steven, check out this link: http://www.fearzone.com/blog/interview-wedel)

And now, here’s an excerpt of Okie Werewolf Seeks Love from The Beast Within:

OKIE WEREWOLF SEEKS LOVE, BY STEVEN E. WEDEL

Dear Beasts & Babes Magazine,

First, I sure want to thank you for the service you provide. I love the articles and pictures. I had no idea this here kind of magazine existed. Thank God for Google!! Anyhoo, after reading about those hot babes what liked German shepherd love, I thought maybe if you printed up this letter for me it would help me find a woman that likes furry loving.

My name is Randall William Bragg. I’m a single white male living in Moore, Oklahoma. I ain’t got a lot in the way of income. Just what I make with my old Chevy pickup, hauling firewood, trash, moving furniture ? that kind of stuff. I do some lawn work in the summers and sometimes go all the way up to Edmond for odd jobs. I get some government money, too, on account of my grandma being a Cherokee Indian. And ’cause I keep losing regular jobs.
I had a girl, see, but I lost her. She left me. It’s OK, though. I’m over her. You’re not getting a guy on the rebound. Nope. Chelsea Bryson is history. Water under the bridge.

Bitch!

Anyways, yeah, I’m about six-one, with some extra baggage. I like my beer, you know, and don’t get no regular exercise. I’m forty-one years old, with most of my teeth and in pretty good health. I almost graduated high school. I would of, but I got kicked out of the vo-tech when me and Ronnie Crawford was lighting farts in the bathroom. The fire wasn’t as bad as they said it was. After that, I figured I didn’t need no more schooling. They’d already learned me how to repair farm machinery, so that’s what I did for a while. But, after Old Man Henry’s tractor blew up and kilt him, nobody’d hire me to do that shit no more. Weren’t my fault.

Anyhow, see, I guess there is something you probably should know about me, besides my income and health and stuff. About nine months ago I got myself bit by a werewolf.
I swear it’s true. Swear it on a stack of Bibles!!
I was clearing some brush out of Emily Drummond’s back pasture last summer. She’s a good-looking woman, though a little older than me. Her husband’s in the National Guard and got sent off to Iraq, so she ain’t got nobody to help her. She don’t pay much, but she looks good in her tight shorts and T-shirt. Woman never wears no bra, neither. But, like I was saying, she’d hired me to clear some brush off her spread out by Newcastle because of the fire danger. I chopped and bundled all morning, then sometime after noon I knocked off for lunch. I had me a peanut butter sandwich and a beer. Maybe two beers. I don’t know. It was a hot day and the work was hard. I fell asleep in the shade of my pickup.

When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was the smell. Something nasty was blowing in my face. It smelled like somebody’d put a fan behind a freezer full of meat that had gone bad. It was all warm, too. I opened my eyes and it was night, a real dark night under the cloudy sky. There was something real close to my face. It was so close I couldn’t see nothing. I kinda crab-crawled away from it a bit. That got me away from the meat smell, but then I could smell something like wet dog.

I tried to get up, but when I done that, the thing grabbed my ankles and jerked them out from under me. I fell on my face, and then the thing was on my back. I thought maybe it was a Bigfoot. It pinned me there for a while, then started shifting around all strange-like. That worried me. Cuz the last thing I wanted was to get rear-humped by a Bigfoot, even if it would get me on the front page of one of them funny-papers they sell up near the registers at the grocery store. That’s when it bit me. Right in the meaty part of my left thigh. Hurt like hell! Well, I looked down, and saw it was a wolf what had bit me.

I swear, it wasn’t a wolf before. It was huge. Man-size or more. Like a Bigfoot, ya know? Standing on two legs. Wasn’t no wolf.
Well, then this wolf just ran away, and I was all alone. I hauled my ass back to my truck and got home. I poured some whiskey?good Jack Daniels?on the bite to clean it. Course, had the bottle open, so I drank some of it, too. Why not? Didn’t go to the doctor on account I ain’t got no insurance. If you answer this letter, I’m hoping you do have insurance, by the way.

Also, I heard the rabies shots really hurt. That wolf wasn’t foaming or nothing. I knew it didn’t have no rabies. So, you see, wasn’t no real need to go to the doctor, anyway.

Bret Jordan - Author & Freelance Artist

Instead of a Christmas Giveaway this year we have decided to do something a little different.   We wanted to give back to the writing community.  After a lot of thinking we decided to select one member from our community who will receive the following:

A mentorship from an HWA member for a completed novel
The mentor will help this person polish their manuscript before submitting it to Graveside Tales.

After stepping back and taking a long look at all our family here at Graveside Tales we have chosen Bret Jordan to be this years receipent.  Bret has done so much for Graveside Tales and without him I have no idea where we would be.  Bret dedicated a lot time doing artwork and several other projects.  He was the first person to take us up on writing an online eSerial with his novel Plague.  Bret’s outstanding attitude, drive, dedication and determination is exactly what we look for.

His mentor will be HWA member and community member Rio Youers author of Everdead and Endtimes.

Plague by Bret Jordan

Story Synopsis

Renier is a port city that stands as a glorious gem on the edge of the kingdom.  The people are justly ruled by their beloved Duke with the assistance of a benevolent wizard and a self-involved priest.  Within twenty-four hours everything changes as a small group of strange lepers enter the port and cause a mysterious and deadly illness to rage through the city, killing most of the residents.  Violent illness and gruesome death isn’t the end of the horror for the residents of Renier.  Not by a long shot, as thousands of dead bodies rise from the cobblestone streets in search of living prey.  Sword and sorcery battle against an unstoppable hunger as the few living residents try and escape the walls of an undead nightmare.

“Bret Jordan’s Plague blends dark fantasy and zombie horror with genuinely chilling results. You won’t be disappointed – get hooked on this serial!”
~David Dunwoody, author of Empire

“Bret Jordan has created an intriguing medieval world where blood & guts zombie mayhem is delivered with the brutal edge of a sword, not the barrel of a .45. Read it – you’ll dig it!”

~Vince Churchill author of The Dead Shall Inherit the Earth & The Blackest Heart

Steven Shrewsbury Author

Event: Blog Talk Radio Show – The Odd Mind with Angel Lesa
Guest: Author Steven Shrewsbury
Date: 12/6/2008
Time: 9 a.m. central time
Length: 1 hour
Call In Number: (347)945-7025

Steven Shrewsbury is from the mid-west.  He is the author of HAWG, GODFORSAKEN, THOROUGHBRED, NOCTURNAL VACATIONS, BULLETPROOF SOUL and DEPTHS OF SAVAGERY

Forthcoming books: TORMENTOR May 2009 Lachesis Publishing
KING OF THE BASTARDS (with Brian Keene) sometime in the future

You can also email your questions to angellesa @ hotmail.com

2 lucky callers will win an autographed copy of HAWG.

Please call and show your support.

Originally aired 12/06/2008

Richard Farnsworth - Author

The following interview is with Richard Farnsworth, author of Gift of the Bouda in The Beast Within.

Hi, Rick. Could you start us off with a little info about yourself? We here on the forums are so used to seeing text and avatars that it can be easy to forget there are human beings behind the words. What’s a day-in-the-life-of-Rick Farnsworth like?

A: I’m tempted to say which day and which life.  Like most people that write fiction, I have a resume that looks rather like the result one would get from trying to make one picture out of the jigsaw puzzle pieces from two (or three) different puzzles. (It’s hard for me to talk about who I am without talking about my resume, because it’s all about metrics, right?)  I live in Central Virginia and I’m happily married, with four wonderful children.  I have a PhD in cell and molecular biology and have evolved from lab-rat to project manager. In parallel to my science career I have also been in the Army, Reserve and National Guard (twenty-four years and counting). The high-point of my military career was to serve as an Apache- helicopter-flying troop commander in a Cavalry Squadron. Ah, those were the days of ascots and hard drinking.  My days start early with farm chores and exercise, progress to work and then home to play with the kids, and end with my trying to put a few hundred words down after the kids have nodded off, but before I have.

As a writer, what do you find is the most challenging part about crafting fiction, and how do you overcome it?

A: I’ve only been at this a short time, so most aspects are challenging.  But I do have two areas I struggle with more than the others, the polish and capturing ‘feelings’.
I once read that there are no great writers, only great rewriters.  So the one part of crafting a piece of fiction is that I struggle with is that polish; the plot, first drafts, characters, they all come out in a rush, but taking a story or scene from first draft to something presentable takes some doing.
Feelings?  When asked by a journalist what he ‘felt’ when he shot a man, the Marine Corps sniper thought a minute and replied, “Recoil.” My ‘feelings’ exactly.

Your military background clearly lends tremendous authenticity to your characters and locations in Bouda. Are any of them based off real life people/places?

A: Yes and No.  (You probably want more of an answer than just that right?)
The story is set during US operations in Somalia, supporting UNITAF.  Though I have never been to East Africa I have had the good fortune of spending some time in Iraq, and this was the ‘vibe’ I was going for.  The soldiers in the story are special ops types. Again I have worked with Army special ops but only in a peripheral, supporting capacity.  I am a rated army aviator and have flown Cobras and Apaches (gunships) so I have spent time with competent warriors that think a lot of themselves, and it’s this same ‘vibe’ I tried to channel with Roger’s team. So the characters are a montage of people I have worked with before, but no one person specifically.  The Veteran’s Affairs Psychologist is a stand-in for the entire ’support system’ for soldiers that have returned from war.  I was mobilized as an Army Reserve pilot for a little over a year in support of Iraqi Freedom and then had the good fortune to return to my civilian life.  There are a lot of good-meaning people that try to help with that, but I often found myself wanting to do to them as John did to Capon.

Any personal experiences where you might’ve felt like a character in a horror novel?

A: No, not really horror.  But in the military I have for several brief times felt like a character in a thriller/action novel, this interspersed with long, long periods of filling out TPS reports in a dry-hot tent (think Office Space).

I’ve heard rumors that there’s a novel in the works based off your story in The Beast Within. What’s the official scoop?

A: Matt, who told you such nonsense?  It’s no work at all.
Yes, I am novelizing TBW.  When I had originally written the story I was still a little too close to my own experiences in the War on Terror to feel comfortable placing a character in contemporary time and space.  A good twelve year separation felt about right.  But I have a little bit better perspective now, so I decided to take John Rogers out of Operation Restore Hope and place him beside me in the current GWOT.  The story follows John as he returns home, struggles with the changes the war has wrought upon him, and builds a new life in a world he no longer fits into.  Allegory?  Maybe a little. Except for the strippers, I don’t know anything about that.

Writer’s block strikes sooner or later; are there any home remedies or writing exercises you use to stave off the dreaded curse?

A: I have never really had writers block per se, I have so many valid excuses among my current and future obligations for not writing, that any sort of ‘block’ would be lost in the shuffle.  I plot, but not exhaustively, so I usually have an idea of what my next scene will look like.  In those rare instances when I struggle to put something down I start writing a note to myself, or a note from my character to me, about what message I want the scene to convey.  I have never finished an entire page before the muse kicks in and takes over.

Where can we see more of your work?

A: In addition to this anthology, I have a short story in the anthology Abominations, by Shroud publications (BEKs. special forces team plus DEA agents plus urban legend=fun).  I also have pubs in Nossa Morte (my heroin-addicted fallen angel), Atomjack and Thuglit.

When the submission call went out for Beast Within, what was the first idea that came to mind? What made you choose the were-creature in your story?

A: I had actually written GTB prior to TBW being announced, so the first idea that came to mind was ‘I have the perfect story for these guys!’.
(I think it was Dale that was discussing GST and the TBW effort, describing what they would like to see; action-horror with military themes.)
As far as the motivation for the choice of using the Bouda (were-hyena), I knew I wanted to write a story about a soldier transformed by his experiences in war. I can’t think of a better metaphor for this than a were-creature. I also knew I wanted the monster to be culturally relevant to the area of operations and didn’t want to go with a werewolf, as that seems a pretty western trope, to me.  So I engaged in a little research, found the Bouda legends and ta-da; Black Hawk Down meets werewolf by night, with a post-traumatic stress disorder after taste.

Could you give us a non-spoiler synopsis of your story Gift of the Bouda?

A: How about: John Rogers led a Special Forces team into war-torn Somalia expecting the simple take-down of ruthless tribal warlord.  Ruthless was the only fulfilled expectation he received.

Thanks, Rick!

You’re absolutely welcome, Matt.

And now, here’s an excerpt of Gift of the Bouda, from The Beast Within

GIFT OF THE BOUDA, BY RICHARD FARNSWORTH

I sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair looking across an industrial steel desk at my new doctor. The black plastic nameplate read: Mark Capon, MD, FAPA, FACP, and below that, Staff Psychiatrist, Veterans Administration Hospital. Before this impromptu appointment we had never met. His thin neck held up a too-round head. The thick titanium-rimmed lenses and a beak of a nose accentuated his bird-like appearance.

“Good afternoon, Captain Rogers.”
I hated being addressed by my old rank. That had been an entire lifetime ago.
An old clock on the bookshelf audibly ticked the seconds away.
“May I call you ?” He looked down at his notes. “John?”
I nodded. He could call me Bucky the Wonder-horse for all I cared. I had been denied my prescriptions as I tried to fill them at the VA pharmacy and was told I needed to see this little man first.
“Well, John, I am Dr. Capon, and I have been assigned your case.” He affected a serious expression and said carefully, “I am not sure if you heard, but Dr. Roman passed away.”

He looked at me for a response.
I suppose I should have had one, but I didn’t.
“Dr. Roman died in a car accident last month,” he said slowly, as if to press the point.
Everyone dies. Having only met my previously appointed Staff Psychiatrist once before, his loss made no impact.
“I’ve been reviewing all of Dr. Roman’s case files.” He glanced down at my folder. “You have a diagnosis of chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with Obsessive Compulsive manifestations.”
The clock ticked off a few more seconds. He looked at me expectantly.
“I’m just here to refill my prescription. The pharmacy was closed yesterday and I’m out.”
“Yes. Well, I just thought it would be a good idea if we met first.”
The low angle of the sun cast long shadows across the small office.
“Will this take long? I’d like to be home before it gets too late.”
“No, it shouldn’t. I just need to go over some things with you before I feel comfortable with the current treatment modality.” He smiled primly.

I nodded and he looked back down. The small room contained new VA-issued furniture and boxes of medical texts on the floor. He hadn’t been there long. The Medical diploma on the wall behind him was just four years old. This was probably his first real job. He even smelled new.
“Alright, so Dr. Roman had pursued a primarily pharmacological approach. I have you here for Fluvoxamine at three-hundred milligrams with a recommendation that you attend a VA sponsored PTSD support group.” He looked up at me and then down. “But I can’t find any evidence of your attendance, John.” He leaned back in his chair and looked up at me, fidgeting with a gold-plated cross-pen.
“Is that a question?”
“Not really. Should I be more direct?” He paused. “You’ve been treated here for seven years and not once have you participated in any sort of therapy. Why is that, John?”

I shrugged. A gusting wind keened against the window, warning of a change in the weather.
“I’ve found that in treating PTSD, presenting with anxiety disorders, exposure and response prevention therapy, combined with appropriate medications, is the most efficacious treatment. We teach ERP in several of our support groups.”
“Great,” I said, trying not to show too much enthusiasm. “Listen, I’m not good with psychobabble.”
“In my residency at Cambridge hospital I actually co-authored a paper on anxiety disorders. It covered various treatments for PTSD,” he said authoritatively.
“Your mother must be proud.” I suppose my tone lacked sincerity.
He looked at me. After three full ticks of the clock he looked back down at my file. “From the answers on your initial Yale-Brown, I question if the diagnosis was appropriate.” He paused expectantly again. “Listen, John, I am going to need your help here if I am going to be able to provide you effective treatment.”
I could easily snap that thin neck. But that would be wrong, I suppose.
“We’re on the same team here,” he said.

Hardly. My team was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. I sighed and squeezed out a curt, “Okay.”
“Great. Let’s talk about your obsessions and compulsions.” He waved his pen like a baton.
I nodded. The faint smell of metal hinted at his enthusiastic perspiration.
“So, would you say that you engage in compulsive acts that take up, say, an hour a day?” he asked.
“No.”
He wrote that down.
“Well, that’s good. How about the obsessions? Do you feel that you spend a significant amount of time dealing with unwanted or unpleasant ideations?” He twisted the body of the pen to drive the point in and then back out.
“Yes. Images.” There, I could be forthcoming.
He wrote that down, too.
“That’s good, John,” Capon encouraged.
“The meds help me keep the lid on.”
He nodded at my progress.
“And how would you best characterize your obsessions?”
“I try to avoid thinking about them. As I said, the medication keeps the lid on.”
“It’s okay; we’re going to work through this.” I didn’t respond, so he continued, “What do you feel will happen if you give in to the obsessive thoughts?”

Again, I didn’t respond. The clock ticked. Ticked again. I heard squeaks on the tile as someone walked down the hall beyond the door. Probably going home for the day, it was after five.
Finally I said, “I may become unpleasant and hurt someone. Badly.”
He didn’t have an answer for that. The frail little man could see from my records that I was capable. But my records didn’t reveal everything.
“I see you were injured in Somalia?”
I nodded.
“Operation Restore Hope,” he continued.
“Continue Hope.” He looked at me blankly. While I was undergoing my trial by fire he was probably still having his lunch money taken away by the big kids.
“Continue Hope, then. That was where this all started?”
I nodded.
“Why don’t you tell me about it?” He folded his hands expectantly.
Through the window I could see the branches of a leafless elm whip with the gusts of wind. The clock ticks almost echoed in the austere little room.
“Well, in a nutshell, I was deployed to Somalia, injured, fixed and left with some problems,” I said. “Medically discharged with one hundred percent disability. PTSD with OCD. Don’t you have that in the file?”
“I need you to cooperate, John.”

Left hand to his right mandible, right hand to his temple, and twist. His long thin neck would break at the fissure between the first and second cervical vertebrae like a dry piece of wood. It would be so easy. I tried to think of something else.
“It’s a long story.”
“I have time.” He smiled that prim little smile again and fidgeted with his pen. His fingers were long and slim. He probably played piano well. “Listen, John, I don’t want to just go through the motions. I really would like to get to the bottom of your troubles and see if we can’t make some progress.”
“Cure me?”
“I have helped others with your condition.”
“I doubt you’ve ever helped anyone with my condition.”
“Well, how will I know exactly if you don’t share with me?” he countered.
“My current treatment modality seems to work. Wouldn’t it be easier to just let me have the pills?”
“No. If you don’t cooperate I will not authorize any medications,” he said.
“Holding them hostage?”
He shrugged assent. Though it would make me feel better, snapping him in half wouldn’t get my prescription filled.
“Okay then. I was a team leader with the Thirteenth Special Forces, Operational Detachment-Echo. We deployed to Somalia to help keep the militias from interfering with international aid.” It came out easier than I had thought it would.
“I saw Black Hawk Down,” Capon offered.
“Perhaps then you should explain to me what it was like?” I let the clock tick away a few seconds. He got the point.
“That was Task Force Ranger’s story, mine is different. In August of ninety-three my Special Forces team and I executed a number of small operations to help keep the peace.”
“Is that when you were injured?” Capon asked.
“Yes, on my team’s last mission.”
“Why don’t you tell me about it, John?”
And so I did. The telling wasn’t quite the same as seeing it in my minds eye though. It was so vivid, and the words just weren’t adequate.

***
I saw the Somali guide, Ahmed Ghedi, and five members of my team crouched low with me in a dry, brush-choked streambed. We had crept up beside the compound of a clan leader named Samantar Afrah. The walled compound had an open central courtyard, with a large, whitewashed cinder block building in the front flanked by a cluster of smaller mud-brick and tin sheds?all covered in the ubiquitous ochre dust of East Africa.
During the intelligence summary that morning, Afrah was described as an arms broker. He was a businessman with a large cache of weapons that he rented out to the various clan chiefs. They would, in turn, employ them against his other customers. Business was good.
Getting the intelligence was easy. The locals didn’t like him. He extorted, bullied, and stole. He didn’t have his own territory, but picked at the fringes of the stronger clans. We thought that he had earned his nickname, Waraabe, which means hyena, because of the tactics he employed. I found out later that there was a different reason.

The shambles stood a few dozen meters from the road that led from Moge. We watched unseen as Afrah’s mercenaries loaded the trucks and prepared to leave. Attack helicopters would destroy them later. Afrah would remain behind with a smaller force that we would neutralize. Simple snatch and grab.
Ahmed, fidgeting as the black flies sucked at the corners of his mouth, looked furtively up and down the loose line of mismatched soldiers. Desert cammo bottoms, tan aviator survival vests jammed with ammo, and gear over black Kevlar vests. Black plastic Pro-tec hockey helmets and matching kneepads, earpieces and voice activated flex mikes. No two soldiers were armed the same.

My CAR-15 carbine had a silencer that looked like a soda can. A new .45 caliber Heckler and Koch M23 was in my shoulder holster. A cold steel Bowie knife and grenades completed my personal armamentarium for healing the enemy’s ailments.
On the other side of our guide knelt the team ops NCO, ‘Granddad.’ He carried an old 7.62 mm M14 rifle that he called Chechov, with a 9mm Beretta on his hip. I always thought it funny he carried the bigger bore rifle for its stopping power and then kept a plincker like the Baretta.
“Ahmed, we’ll go in after the vehicles leave,” I said. The short dry grass trembled in the slight breeze.
Ahmed didn’t look reassured. “Waraabe is of the Bouda,” the thin young man said earnestly. He clutched his Maadi, an Egyptian-made AK-style rifle, to his chest like it was a stuffed animal.
“Tribe?” I asked. Bouda didn’t mean anything to me then. It would later, but then it was just another name. Isaaq, Hawiye, Habr Gidr. Men with more similarities than differences that each found excuses to kill one another.
“No. Reer Bouda. Gelid of the Waraabe to Afrah,” he said. He was trying to make a point but I didn’t get it. “When no longer the sun shines, he will be most danger.”
I was looking forward to the sun no longer shining. We all had our night vision devices, called NODs, ready. Special Forces owned the night.

Rio Youers Author

Rio Youers was born after The Beatles broke up and before Jim Morrison died, a time when there was sufficient psychedelia in the air to impact his imagination. He has been described by the bestselling novelist Peter Straub as “… one of the most vital, most exciting young talents to come along in this decade.”

Rio’s first novella Ellie’s Boy was published in 1999, and he has since had stories published in dozens of magazines and ezines. His debut novel, End Times, was published in 2007 to outstanding reviews (“Powerful and disturbing … a tightly woven story told in lyrical prose.” -June Pulliam, Necropsy: The Review of Horror Fiction; “Youers is a word magician … Not since I had read Jonathan Livingston Seagull all those decades ago was I so astounded by the resolution of a story.” -Chris Perridas, The Horror Library). Rio has followed the success of End Times with his second novel, Everdead, an intense vampire story set in the vacation hotspot of Ibiza. Published by Graveside Tales, Everdead has received praise from some of the most noteworthy names in the genre (“After all this time, I would never have imagined that I’d be open to yet another vampire novel, but I read this one in a state of absolute pleasure.” -Peter Straub, New York Times Bestselling Author of Ghost Story and Shadowland; “Everdead is filled with vivid descriptions and locations that come to life on the page. A skillfully-crafted and evocative novel … I loved it.” -Derek Gunn, author of Vampire Apocalypse). Rio is currently working on a new novella, and a new novel, which he hopes will see life some time in 2009.

Rio has several projects forthcoming from various publishers. Early 2009 will see the release of his novella Mama Fish, through Shroud Publishing. He also has short stories appearing in Northern Haunts, Ten Nails, Harvest Hill, and the multiple-award winning magazine Postscripts. In fall of 2009, PS Publishing will release Rio’s novella Old Man Scratch, and they will follow this in 2010 with a special limited edition of his novel End Times.

Rio is a proud member of the Horror Writers’ Association. He lives in Canada with his wife Emily. Find out more about Rio and his work on his website: www.rioyouers.com.