Another Christmas day has arrived. The presents have been unwrapped and my stepson is zoned out on a new video game; all in all, a good end to the year. I'll chalk it up as a win. Wins are hard to come by these days.

As I sit here in front of the laptop with the babble of electronic battle hooting and blatting in the background, I can't help but think back to a Christmas some twenty-odd years ago; to waking up alone in my tiny, one-bedroom apartment with a hangover and nothing in the cupboards. I can remember wrapping myself in a blanket and scraping away some of the ice on the inside of the window so that I could look out at the street. I was hoping that someone would be walking past so I could yell out, "You there! What day is this?" a la Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, but no such luck. The streets were empty, and the sidewalk was populated only by a single, curling twist of blowing snow that snaked past the window and disintegrated against a powdery dune of white that barred its path. The world outside the glass was cold and ice and desolation, just like the world within.

I hunched over the toilet and threw up the bitter remains of last night's booze, a bottle of Moody Blue (five bucks for a magnum, it couldn't be beat) and when I was finally done worshiping the porcelain god, I lay curled up on the faded tiles and I considered my options. It was Christmas Day, and everything was closed up tight. The rest of the world was nestled inside cozy houses, opening presents and sipping coffee, taking pictures and munching on goodies while they exclaimed over what a fine and wonderful Christmas it had been that year. I had fifteen bucks and change to my name, and that was it; what I might do tomorrow to stay alive was up for question, and the day after that would simply have to wait its turn to kick me in the teeth.

The nausea passed and hunger set in. I hadn't eaten anything in about eighteen hours, and my poor, sour little stomach was twisting and rumbling so hard it almost brought tears to my eyes. I could only think of one place that would be open on Christmas, a substandard Chinese buffet of infamously dubious quality - but still, dubious or not, it was a buffet, and with tax included, I just barely had enough cash to cover the cost of a plate. Ever the survivor, I quickly devised a plan; I would bring a plastic grocery bag in my coat pocket, and before I left, I'd dump a plateful of whatever offered the most nutritional value in there when no one was looking. Stuff myself, bring some home, eat again tomorrow, and the next day would take care of itself. It was foolproof.

The buses were only running once an hour, being a holiday, but seeing as how I couldn't spare even a thin dime for the fare, I set out on two feet and a heartbeat. The buffet was almost an hour away on foot, and the sidewalks were buried under snow. I struggled and sweated in the frigid cold, my head aching and my legs trembling from lack of blood sugar, and at one point I feared that I simply wouldn't make it: that I would falter in my next step and collapse into a snow drift, and that would be that. Everything hurt, and the entire world was bleak shades of grey beneath the unforgiving sky. I focused all my energy on moving one frozen foot in front of the other, an exhausting pattern of pick it up and put it down, pick it up and put it down.

And then I was stumbling through the doors of the buffet, and the warm air stung my cheeks like needles. I walked up to the counter and pulled my money from my pocket with fingers like icicles. The smell of the mediocre Chinese fare awaiting me in the dining area made me shake uncontrollably. I fished out the five, and the change ... but the ten wasn't there. I checked all my pockets with mounting horror, but the fucking thing simply wasn't fucking there. It had disappeared without a trace. Fallen, forgotten, gone. I didn't have enough money to eat.

I held out what I had left to the cashier in both hands, but he was shaking his head no before I could even speak. He crossed his arms and stared and waited. It took me a few seconds to realize that he was waiting for me to turn the fuck around and get my no-money-having pauper ass the fuck out.

There was nothing I could say. I turned around and walked out the door, back into the cold, back into the grey, swirling purgatory where no one saw me and no one cared. And I welcomed it. Because, at that moment, I didn't want to be seen by living eyes. I didn't want to exist. I wanted to slump out into the winter beyond those glass doors and melt into the icy air, to lose form and dissipate into a colorless haze that would be blown to the four corners of world.

But that didn't happen. What actually happened is this - I stopped at a gas station variety and bought a package of Mr. Noodles and some smokes. I went back to my tiny apartment and ate the noodles and smoked the cigarettes as I stared out that frosted window, sitting and smoking and hating a world that was cold and uncaring and devoid of mercy. I got hungry again very quickly, but there was nothing to be done about it. I smoked and watched and hated, and Christmas day eventually faded into night, and I fell unconscious from sheer exhaustion on my worn-out couch with my heart aching and my stomach begging for food.

And there is nothing more I can say about that, except that I woke up the next day, and the day after that, too. Because, even though I may very well be something of a piss-poor human being, I'm a survivor. And a survivor is the very best thing a person can be.

I sit here and look back on that day as my stepson hoots and rattles away on his Xbox, and I hope with all my being that his belly will never ache from hunger, and his soul will always be full of wonder. I think of all the others who will go without, on this day and on many others, and my joy at being surrounded by love is dampened by the memories of my sorrows, each one counted, quantified and filed away in the library of my heart. In the end, I suppose this is not necessarily a bad thing; after all, there is no daylight without darkness, no joy without pain, and the ghosts of Christmas past will always be restless. Listen to their mournful cries carefully, because the echoes of the past will illuminate your future.

Merry Christmas out there, folks. Love thy neighbor, do unto others as you'd have them do unto you, and draw those who are near to you even closer, always closer. Be grateful for the small victories, and live your life in a manner that will not shame you after you're gone.

Take care of yourselves, people, and take care of each other. Above all, be kind. Because kindness is free, and it's right, and it's pure. Stay pure, friends. Spread the kindness in your hearts, and make the world a better place.

Brace yourselves out there, people, because tonight, unruly hordes of kids will be descending upon your neighborhood in a delirious pagan frenzy of candy-fueled madness. Halloween is upon us once again!

I've been fascinated by all things uncanny and macabre since I was a little kid. Horror, dark sci-fi and fantasy, true crime stories, legends and mythology, I loved it all and I still do, several decades later. Even now, all these years later, I still experience the thrill of that primal fear response when I read a particularly good story or watch a well-made horror movie; I will always love that crawling, electric tingle you get in the back of your brain when you're getting freaked out by something that you can't rationalize away. It's a genetic holdover from an evolutionary period long in the past, when the cover of night brought out all manner of terrestrial terrors, and the slate sky above contained a million points of ghostly light, each one its own fathomless mystery. In modern times, we've learned that the dark is nothing more than an absence of light, and the ethereal objects that hang menacingly in the heavens above are not gods or demons, but merely super-dense clumps of dust and gas. Even still, knowing what we know today, humankind fears the dark, and we continue to gaze at our night sky with superstitious wonder in our hearts and minds.

Halloween is the watered down and commercialized evolution of several millennia of harvest rituals. In colder climates, harvest time signaled the decline of long days and gentle nights; winter was not just another season, it was a direct threat to life and limb. A successful harvest meant that most of the community would probably survive to see the green shoots of spring. An unsuccessful harvest meant certain death for many, and perhaps for all. The door-to-door panhandling for candy could arguably be symbolic of  the starving unfortunates of  yesteryear, wracked by hunger and the agonizing ailments of malnutrition, resembling specters as they shake in the cold and beg for whatever scraps that might be spared.

I'm just spitballing over here. I like to do that. Whether we are aware of it or not, all of our traditions are an evolutionary product of some ritual from the long-forgotten past. As the years become centuries, and then millennia, the original intention is lost in an ever-morphing series of interpretations, until it is lost forever. In this manner, begging for food in times of desperation eventually becomes a disorganized street masquerade for children. Jupiter becomes Yahweh and shamanistic magic becomes modern medicine. The never-ending battle between the sun and the moon becomes the rotation of the Earth. But the fear of the unknown and unknowable always remains. We have taken photographs of an atom, but we still experience that crawling tingle in the back of our minds when we step into a darkened room and the light switch doesn't work.

I find it very interesting. It's almost as if we, despite our large brains and scientific prowess, are still hardwired to fear the phantasms that haunt our imagination. What does this mean? Why hasn't evolution gotten rid of this strange little nervous tic of ours? I mean, we no longer required a prehensile tail, so we lost it. We know longer needed massive jaws to grind up raw vegetation, so we lost it. As far as I can see, it serves no purpose to be afraid of something when we know damn well that it doesn't exist. Doesn't it?

Or ... maybe there is a damn good reason to fear the dark. Maybe there is a reason the night sky makes us feel so small and vulnerable and uncomfortably exposed. Irrational fears may not be an evolutionary mistake, after all, nor may they actually be irrational at all. Who knows? Like I said, I'm just spitballing over here. It's a habit of mine.

Regardless, I hope you all have a great Halloween night. Be safe, and please, don't eat those stale Halloween caramels that come in the black-and-orange wrappers. You'll lose a filling in one of those things!

Happy Halloween!

Tonight, I sit here in front of my trusty old HP laptop for the very last time. It's finally going to be replaced by a newer model, and will make the final journey down the basement steps to join its predecessors in the Retired Computer Graveyard. I have to admit that, even though I've grown to despise this wheezing, noisy son of a bitch, I can still taste a hint of bittersweet nostalgia on my tongue. This godawful rum and tonic concoction can't seem to wash it away. I should be nothing but one hundred percent glad at this point, but I'm kind of not - in fact, I should have already swapped this thing out, like, yesterday, but I wasn't quite ready to do it. Not just yet. I had to pull my creaky little office chair up to the keyboard one last time and type out a eulogy.

Here's to you, ancient HP laptop with the missing battery. Here's to both of us.

This one's all about social media etiquette in terms of marketing yourself as an independent writer. In the end, it's just an opinion, so take it with a grain of salt. Opinions and assholes, we all have one.

So, I've been kicking around the (relatively dull and dreary) world of independent publishing for a few years now, and in that time, I've developed a healthy amount of distaste for some of the behaviors that are displayed by indie authors out there in Social Media Land. I know that it's tough out there, believe me - I'm probably the least commercially successful author you've never heard of. If you want to sell any books whatsoever, you need to promote yourself; for most of us, self-promotion is all we've got. But there's a point where self-promotion crosses the line into pestilence, and too many independent authors blithely cross that line on a daily basis.

I'm pretty sure that at least some of these people aren't aware that their actions put them somewhere between annoying and outright shitty - many of them are just following the advice offered by other independents, and/or the small army of smarmy-ass writing bloggers who clutter up the internet with their self-congratulatory bullshit. Most of these folks are doing what they think they're supposed to do in order to tread water out there in the depthless sea of self-published authors. You can't hate people for trying, that's for sure, but you can hate them for being an annoyance.

Anyhow, I wrote this out as a clickbait list, because that's how people communicate ideas these days:

1. Auto DMing New Followers on Twitter

Potential Follower: I will follow this person because they are also a writer, and perhaps we have common inter-

Auto DM: HI WELCOME TO MY TWITTER ACCOUNT I'M AN AUTHOR DID YOU KNOW I'M AN AUTHOR YEP I HAVE BOOKS ON AMAZON AND YOU HAVE TO GO BUY THEM NOW OKAY?

AUTHOR! AUTHOR! AWWWWWTHORRRRrrrrrrr...

No. You stop that right now! That's bad! Look, if someone follows you, chances are it's due to one of the following scenarios:

• they're also an independent creator of creative stuff that's related in some manner to your creative stuff
• they're just randomly clicking 'Like' or 'Follow' on their suggestions list
• it's an actual fan (holy shit!)

In all of these scenarios, it's irritating as fuck to receive a DM that's actually just an aggressive commercial for the whatever-the-fuck-it-is that you're trying to sell. Bugger off with this shit. Stop it. Personally, I started automatically unfollowing people who do this quite a while ago. I can go to your profile and click on your links on my own, I don't need you push that shit into my inbox. Bad!

2. Follow/Unfollow, Bots and Bullshit: Trying to Appear Popular When You're Not

This happens all the fucking time - people will follow me on Twitter, wait for me to return the favor, and then silently unfollow a few days later. This is to appear important and popular, when the perpetrator is actually a nobody like the rest of us. There's even a term for this; it's called churning, if you didn't already know. The idea is to follow a couple zillion users, wait for a bit, and then drop them all in one fell swoop - bango! Suddenly, it looks like you've got thousands of rabid fans who must love your work oh so much! The other route is to outright purchase page likes and followers, a practice known as "throwing money into a endless pit of dishonesty". Obviously, these tactics are lame as fuck, but I'll bet my right kidney that someone is reading this right now and sputtering, "But I have to! It will further my brand!"

It will not. No one believes that the no-name author of a craptastic Hunger Games ripoff series is, in fact, almost as popular on social media as Suzanne Collins herself. Also, if your profile has tens of thousands of likes/followers but almost no engagements, one could only come to the conclusion that your "fans" are either a) just not very into you, b) not real people or c) not actually your fans. Any way you slice it, it's not helping at all. You should be ashamed of how low you are willing to sink in order to push your undoubtedly generic dreck into the public eye. And so I shame thee! Shame! Shame! Shame!

3. Spam-a-Lam Damn You, Stop it!

I probably don't want your newsletter, so how about this; don't force it into my inbox. I definitely don't want to be added to a Facebook group against my will, and I can assure you that it will be a brisk day in hell before I become part of your "team", whatever the fuck such an obligation might entail. Straight up, I don't give a shit who you are, I don't want you up in my face 24-freakin'-7. There is no single human being in the history of the world that could captivate my attention in such a manner, and if there was, it would probably not be one of my fellow Amazon scribblers. Chill the fuck out, cool those jets, and think this through - do you, in fact, have enough of a following to warrant any of this shit? Are there thousands of people waiting breathlessly for your next Authorly Proclamation?

Probably not, right? I mean, I certainly don't - I get contacted a maximum of three, maybe four times a month by fans and well-wishers. At that rate, do I really need a newsletter and a fucking Facebook group? Hell, no. My advice? Don't overreach. I concede that being prepared for the possibility of an ever-widening sphere of success is a good thing, but I don't think most authors need, like, coffee mugs with their name on it, and shit like that. People get silly with that stuff, I'll tell ya ... shit, I've seen motherfuckers advertising merchandise for a book they haven't even written yet. That's just asinine, as far as I'm concerned. Talk about putting the cart before the horse ...

For real, though, if you feel that you do have an actual need for this sort of thing, don't automatically sign anyone up for any of it. That crosses the line from, "If you'd like to keep tabs on what I'm up to, check this out," to "I AM YOUR NEW FAVORITE AUTHOR. WORSHIP AT THE ALTAR I HAVE FORCED UPON THEE." Once again, if you do this to me, I will have no choice but to unleash my patented "UUBB" system: Unlike, Unfollow, Block, and Burn your fucking house down. Let's make this crystal clear: you're a bad person, and in due time, you will be punished harshly for your crimes against humanity. 

4. Expect Some Help? Be a Helper!

Time and time again, I've observed Authors of Great Self-Importance virtually demand that their peers support their endeavors with the liking and the sharing and the whatnot, only to never return the favor. Now, I don't know why you are like this, but you are, and it's stupid, and you should stop. If you don't wanna help anyone out, that's fine, don't - but don't expect anyone else to give one skinny, trembling little fuck about you, either. Even if you're the greatest writer in the history of scrawling symbolic characters upon a flat surface, no one likes a self-centered buttface. Be prideful, if you must. Be angry or dour, melancholy or cheerful, lecherous and vain and drunk as shit on a Tuesday morning, but don't be selfish.

There's more I could add to this rant-disguised-as-advice (the sneakiest kind of rant) but I think I've covered all the main no-nos that make me roll my eyes at my computer screen. I don't feel that it's difficult to promote your "brand" (I fucking hate that word in relation to writing, by the way; it makes the angry young punk rocker in me want to lash out in a blind rage) without being a douche canoe about the whole thing. Being the idealist that I am, I'd like to think that, in the end, the quality of your writing will make or break you, and no amount of marketing can change that outcome.

Unfortunately, this isn't actually true. But it should be, right? It should be. I'll open that can of worms some other time. For now, I'll sign off with this simple thought: don't be an ass. And if you must be an ass, make goddamned sure that you're a talented one.

Heya, how ya been doing out there?

Me, I've had my ups and downs. Maybe a little heavy on the 'down' side of the up/down ratio, although I've grown to suspect that the 'downs' are actually just the natural order of things. Life is, has been and always will be one big, long-ass DOWN, and it's only that faint promise of a brief reprieve in the form of some small, fleeting triumph that drives us to keep slogging on. But those little moments in the sun are nice, aren't they? It's not much, but it's enough to keep you going until the next time.

Six years ago, I self-published a novel that did okay out there in the world. It has a fairly high rating on Amazon (not so much on Goodreads, where the user base tends to have a more critical eye) despite the fact that I, personally, consider it to be a fluff piece that's riddled with flaws. I'm not even going to bother mentioning its name. Since then, I've published several books, novellas and short stories that I'm at least moderately proud to call my own. Unfortunately, I'm not a much of a self-promoter, nor am I very prolific; as a result, not many people know that these newer things exist. So, in the interest of becoming an unstoppable publicity hype machine, I compiled a short list of my recent (and not-so-recent) works below for your perusal.

Tripping Over Twilight

This is a collection of short stories and novellas I wrote in the two years that followed the publication of The Book That Shall Not be Named. Overall, it's a decent book; one of my personal favorites is in there, a novella called Snow Devils. It also includes my novella New Fish, a story-within-a-story-within-another-story about a creature who haunts a maximum-security penitentiary. There's also a poem about everyone's favorite Christmas ghoul, the Krampus, so you know that this one is a winner. Available in eBook or paperback.

Tripping Over Twilight

 When the Stars Fall

Much of 2016 through 2018 was spent writing this, a bleak novel about how we're all really shitty people beneath our carefully-constructed public facade. It's a morality play with a backdrop of monsters, snipers and paranoia. It's also the best thing I've ever written, hands down.

When the Stars Fall

The Promises We Make in December

This one's a stand-alone novella, and it's a bit different in that it's more of a coming-of-age story/thriller than a horror story. Promises examines the subject of grief and loss, and to be honest, it's kind of a downer. Read it if you feel like being sad.

The Promises We Make in December

And now for something a little different - a YouTube narration of a tale that remains unpublished, an apocalyptic horror story told from the perspective of a middle-aged suburban couple. I'll get around to publishing it in print form some day, but until then, you can listen to it here (the other two parts will be kicking around in the 'Up Next' links):

Chestnut Street, Part 1

So, if you've wondered where I've been and what I've been up to, there's the bulk of it (not counting pieces I've sold for use in other anthologies - I'll get around to talking about those some other time). I'm still producing new books and stories, and I've got a ton of stuff lined up in the not-so-distant future. I want to say thank you to the handful of people who've stuck with me over the years; keep hanging in there, because there's lots more to come!