Recommended Read: “What It Feels Like To Die” by Warren Benedetto
“What It Feels Like To Die” by Warren Benedetto
I’m usually against drabble[1]; I’m not against this. Go read it now.
[1] short version: the constraint is uninterestingly arbitrary, and very few authors are up to the limitation; much as “five-minute horror film” almost always translates to “one dumb jump scare,” “drabble” almost always translates to “squandered half-an-idea.”
“Read an Ebook Week 2023” Ends Tomorrow! Don’t miss cheap (and FREE) ebooks!
This sale ends tomorrow—but until then all of my books on Smashwords are still steeply discounted (some down to the low-low price of FREE!) Go check it out, snatch up some deals, and spread the word while you still can!!!
- WEIRDEST BOOK: “Tucker Teaches the Clockies to Copulate” (steampunk with a smattering of kinky robots)
- MOST POPULAR BOOK: “There Was a Crooked Man, He Flipped a Crooked House” (haunted house/cosmic horror novel)
- FREE BOOK!!! “The New Guys Always Work Overtime” (award-winning time-portal/“take-this-job-and-shove-it” story)
“Read an Ebook Week 2023” Starts Today! Cheap ebooks! Free ebooks!
Starting today all of my books on Smashwords are discounted (some down to the low-low price of FREE!). Go check it out, snatch up some deals, and spread the word!!!
- WEIRDEST BOOK: “Tucker Teaches the Clockies to Copulate” (steampunk with a smattering of kinky robots)
- MOST POPULAR BOOK: “There Was a Crooked Man, He Flipped a Crooked House” (haunted house/cosmic horror novel)
- FREE BOOK!!! “The New Guys Always Work Overtime” (award-winning time-portal/“take-this-job-and-shove-it” story)
Recommended Listening: Mayfair Watchers Society
I often bounce from a fiction Podcast because I’m a “monster-of-the-week” guy (in the X-Files sense of “Monster-of-the-week” vs “Mythology”), and far too many “serial drama”-style podcasts 1) fall in love with their Mythology arc and 2) the writers (in my humble) just cannot sustain those long, heavy arcs. Listening becomes a chore and strain; I have enough chores, and if I wanted homework I’d go to grad school.
Thus far, Mayfair Watchers Society is delivering the thing I desperately wanted: a monster-a-week, no cast of 1000s to keep track of over years-long lightly scripted arcs. You can pick it up anywhere; Autopsy happened to have been the episode where I resoundingly felt “This is for me!“
Also, love the art!
Enjoy!
Mayfair Watchers Society: “The Autopsy” (Season 1, Ep. 3)
NSFW (but I did learn that Danish pig farmers have remarkably clean boots)
I generically hate TED Talks (because they are, on average, garbage), but I’m sharing this because:
- It is hilariously NSFW
- There’s something about Mary Roach’s delivery that gives the distinct vibe that she maybe lost a bet and was thus obliged to give this talk
- I have a middle-schooler’s mentality, at best
- The excerpt of the instructional DVD from the Danish National Committee for Pig Production is truly superb
“Pinball’s Symphony: A Whole New World”
I just love every damned bleep, bloop, reverberant clang, and lady robot sigh in this thing.🤖
“The idea of using the short grunts and groans came to me when I watched people playing the game, the way that people expressed their frustrations or their involvement with the game.”
Suzanne Ciani
ON SALE NOW: This Place Is Best Shunned (A Tor.com Original)
Macmillan has finally released the ebook edition of my story This Place Is Best Shunned (A Tor.com Original) on all platforms. Enjoy!
SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION: “This Place is Best Shunned” made the 2022 Locus Recommended Reading List/Ballot
My novelette “This Place is Best Shunned” made the 2022 Locus Recommended Reading List/Ballot. (Story is free-to-read online, linked from the list.)
Voting on the Locus Award is open to all. Ballot deadline is April 15, and you may come back and add to or change your votes anytime until then.
RECOMMENDED READ “Mister Ice Cold” by Gahan Wilson
RECOMMENDED READ “Mister Ice Cold” by Gahan Wilson
I first read this when I was 12—already an avid reader of OMNI, the 100% perfect magazine for my adolescent Mysteries of the Unknown pre-X-Files brain—and it changed my world:
The chant-like repetition!
The onomatopoeia!
The unheimlich at its core, the disconcerting flesh it shows peeking through the drowsy mundane skin of the midwestern suburbs (where I myself lived)–stumbling across this story was like like bitting into an orange that turns out to be full of blood-moist teeth and a Chinese fortune.
The goddamned art!!!
The second person?!
In many ways it was exactly the sort of story I’d always want to write forever after. “In the Sharing Place” is warped by the enormous gravity of this story–and especially its art–forever looming large just below the horizon of my brain.
(Incidentally, if you wanna read “In the Sharing Place” right now, $3 Patreon Patrons get instant access to the story, audiobook, and 40-minute analog horror film versions.)
And, predictably, it was Ellen Datlow (esteemed editor of the Best Horror of the Year anthologies) who commissioned “Mister Ice Cold” and put it in OMNI—and thus into the hands of a 12-year-old kid outside Detroit who really should have been practicing his Torah portion, not up late reading a slick from the drugstore.