Welcome to my world

I am a horror writer.

It’s strange writing that.  Heck, its even more strange saying it.  While it has been a dream of mine to be a published author for well over half my life, its just now becoming a reality.  Which is pretty surreal.

My first novel, Comes the Dark is being released by Library of the Living Dead Press later this year.  I’ve written some short stories and so far (knock wood) I’ve had good luck in getting acceptances for a few of them.   So technically, I haven’t been published yet, but unless everything caves in, my name will be on several different stories in several different books within the next few months.

I am a horror writer, but I hope to extend that description to science fiction and fantasy writer as well as time goes on.  I guess technically, I am already a fantasy writer, though trying to count the novel I wrote back in high school when I was in the throws of a Dungeons and Dragons fetish probably doesn’t really count.  I have looked back on what I had banged out on the old typewriter (that will give you a hint as to how old I am, but just a hint) and I see something that would need to be totally reworked and revamped before I would ever consider trying to have it published.  Still, I was able to create a complex world with interesting politics, magic, and creatures.  There is something there that I definitely want to revisit some day…hopefully soon.

Now, back to Comes the Dark.  This is my submission to the world of zombie horror, my effort to humbly add something to a genre that has grown in popularity over the last decade, but which has remained popular since George Romero recreated the zombie into something different than those island dwelling automatons.  But don’t get me wrong, the origins of zombies are fascinating and one of the short stories I wrote deals with voodoo zombies.  They certainly can be just as terrifying as the Americanized version that Mr. Romero came up with, but I think most of us are a lot more intrigued by the flesh eaters rather than the soulless slaves of the Carribean.

Yep, I tend to ramble a bit.  Comes the Dark deals with one man’s journey through the zombie apocalypse and my focus was on character development.  My fascination with zombies has always been that the stories, or rather the really good ones, generally tend to focus more on the people rather than the monsters themselves.  Zombies are us and we are them-there is a sort of reflection going on, but its really how human beings struggle to avoid degenerating into something worse than zombies that has always intrigued me with the stories of Romero and many of the authors who have written some really terrific zombie sagas since he introduced us to the rotting buggers.

Well, that’s it for now.  I am working on trying to create this blog and also wrap a website around it.  Wish me luck in this endeavor, along with all the fun and challenging stuff that comes with trying to bring out your first novel!