Monday, April 14, 2025

An Exactly 500 Word Flash Piece called "Five" in the Ghosts Issue of Weird Fiction Quarterly

That's right! The new issue of Weird Fiction Quarterly, featuring over 50 stories dealing with Ghosts, is out now. And, if you noticed as you glance below at the TOC, there's a tale called "Five" by yours truly that will leave you a twitchy mess. 

I'm not kidding! 

A little history: I wrote a previous incarnation of this story idea perhaps 25 years ago, give or take a few. I remember saying to my girlfriend at the time, "Hey, I want to read this one out loud to you," because I thought it would be...fun. But the story has an OCD element that, while reading it to her, took over my body (and the previous version was five hundred words longer, completely different foundation except for that element which multiplied the twitchiness), and led me to becoming a twitching mess on par with any dancing insect you could imagine...and set her on edge as well. When I was done, I was exhausted! And she thought I was crazy, I'm sure. 



Here's the TOC: 

  1. The Haunting of Weird Fiction Quarterly (Shayne K. Keen)
  2. The Ghost Summer (Sonya Taaffe)
  3. The Backing Track (Garrett Cook)
  4. The Companion Volume (Geoffrey Reiter)
  5. Down at the Globe (Jill Hand)
  6. Defending Brother Tom (J. Edward Zuleger)
  7. The Baptistry (Andrew Moore)
  8. Pray Harder (Natasha Liora)
  9. Hollow (Glynn Owen Barrass)
  10. The Haunted Jazz Mag (Andy Joynes)
  11. The Price of Vinyls (Mala Jay Suess)
  12. Jikoshi (An Accidental Death) (Brandon Barrows)
  13. Visitation (Denise Dumars)
  14. Graveyard Walk (Frank Coffman)
  15. A Polish Ghost (Frank Floyd)
  16. The Limen (Chelsea Arrington)
  17. Spook Light (John H. Howard)
  18. Swipe Rite (Sal Ciano)
  19. His Arm, My Ring (Pixie Bruner)
  20. The Transient (Manuel Arenas)
  21. Bunicuţă is a Ghost (Robert J. Sodaro)
  22. That Lonesome Cry (David Barker)
  23. Live...Mostly (John M. F. Colton)
  24. Hollow Children (Rebecca Buchanan)
  25. When Ghosts Haunted Oblivion (Maxwell I. Gold)
  26. Diagnosis: Haunted Personality Disorder (Christopher Ropes)
  27. Five (John Claude Smith)
  28. Subject 42 (Lisa Morton)
  29. Root to Rope (Jayaprakash Satyamurthy)
  30. The Unfinished Letter (Hayley Arrington)
  31. "Do Not Whistle and It Will Not Come to You, oh Lad" (Daniel Braum)
  32. The Book of Ghovat (Can Wiggins)
  33. The Last Ghost Story (Mark McLaughlin)
  34. The Fields of Asphodel (Ashley Dioses)
  35. The Deadly Ace (J.C. Maçek III)
  36. Skeleton Fingers (Lamont A. Turner)
  37. A Gale of a Time (Kasey Hill)
  38. Mean Ghouls (Duane Pesice)
  39. The Smudged Man (John Paul Fitch)
  40. Whited Sepulchres (Joanna Roye)
  41. Hengist’s Toll (Erin Banks)
  42. End the Beguine (Richard Leis)
  43. A Darkening of Shadows (Simon Bleaken)
  44. Above, and Beyond (Erica Ruppert)
  45. ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas (Elisa M. Gray)
  46. Picture Perfect (Ngo Binh Anh Khoa)
  47. Death, My Belov‘ed (K. A. Opperman)
  48. Ghost Stories (Peter Rawlik)
  49. Thirteen Counts (Scott J. Couturier)
  50. Wasted on the Living (M Ennenbach)
  51. Make It Go Away (Robert Jeschonek)
  52. Shell Shocked (Roger Keel)
  53. What the Computer Booted (Don Webb)
  54. Twins (Sarah Walker)
  55. Field Trip (Michael Thomas Ford)
  56. The Piper Calls at 820 Livermere Lane: The Sin-Eater’s Lament (Melanie Crew)
  57. Grim King of Ghosts (Adam Bolivar)
  58. Mater Nostra (Russ Parkhurst)
  59. About the Authors


Yes, what an amazing list of writers. 
Are you ready for this?

Here's the link --> GHOSTS <--

Check it out! 



Monday, April 7, 2025

The Reissue of My Bram Stoker Award Finalist Debut Novel, Riding the Centipede, is Out Now!

 What more do I need to say? 


Macabre Ink/Crossroad Press has put together this stellar reissue of my Bram Stoker Award finalist debut novel, Riding the Centipede, that includes fabulous new cover art--I love the original, I love this one as well; I've been lucky with covers, I tell ya--as well as an afterward that features the origins of the story, including the actual page or two seed idea snippet that mutated into the novel. 


Here's what others said about the novel upon release: 


"A master storyteller who infuses his work with a poet's vision and a madman's eerie gaze at horrible things."—Joe Pulver, Shirley Jackson award winning editor and author of A House of Hollow Wounds & Blood Will Have Its Season

 

 

"Even if you set aside the rich beauty of John Claude Smith's descriptions and the dense atmosphere he builds into this tale of horror both cosmic and man made, it's a joy to observe how he brings all of his marvelous and monstrous creatures together. A poetic sensibility and the cynicism of a classic California private eye meld with the spirit of William Burroughs informing/infecting countless details. And over all, Smith extends the deep shadow of something incomprehensible threatening to overtake the boundaries of detective fiction and its implied logic. Beautiful, crazy, poetic, and strange..." --S.P. Miskowski, author of The Worst is Yet to Come & The Skillute Cycle

 

 

“The breadth of his references— from Frida Kahlo to Celtic Frost (Are You Morbid?), Johnny Cash to Lena Olin, from “The Wounded Table” to Marilyn Monroe—sloshes together to concoct a hallucinogenic broth that’s equal parts surreal, horrific, and compelling. This isn’t a brew to be sipped by the easily offended—the folks within Smith’s debut novel are hardscrabble, amoral, desperate druggies (Burroughs’ preferred term over “junkies”) willing to drag themselves through Hubert Selby-esque levels of depravity to attain their mind altering sustenance. The novel immerses the reader in a world where a P.I. hunts down an elusive target, we experience tragic Hollywood scandals, wallow in deep dark secrets, and witness a villain whose reign of chilling brutality brings to mind a mutant cousin of Anton Chigurh. Smith’s prose is gruff noir, never tumbling over into camp, shot through with veins of luminous poetry.”    

Christopher Slatsky, Alectryomancer and Other Weird Tales & The Immeasurable Corpse of Nature

 

 

“Riding the Centipede by John Claude Smith is an impressive, hallucinatory and dynamically written novel that entertains, and provokes depth of thought with visceral prose and poetic hum. More than an ode to the Beat generation, this mythical, psychedelic drug trip mirrors the complexity of unorthodox language, uncommon perspective and nonconforming communicative style made famous by Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, and Charles Bukowski, yet stands on its own with the very heavyweights it pays homage to. Smith masterfully anchors his story in lush description, cleverly crafted analogy and metaphor, and a twisted and darkly imaginative narrative. Highly recommended.” --Taylor Grant, Bram Stoker Award (R) Nominated Author, The Dark at the End of the Tunnel


"Fans of Burroughs and PK Dick will find a lot to like in John Claude Smith. _Riding the Centipede_ is an intense trip into Bizarro Land." --Laird Barron, author of Swift to Chase, The Croning & Not A Speck of Light: Stories

 

 

“RIDING THE CENTIPEDE effects the reader in an almost synesthesia-like fashion. You feel the madness of Marlon Teargarden as you delve into the pages, deeper into the dark frontier. Smith writes in a style that makes the vile seem beautiful. It’s that illusion of beauty, of intimacy, that allows the horrors to flow so easily. And make no mistake, this IS a horror novel – the sights shown within are not for a weak stomach or delicate sensibilities. Burroughs and the beat writers are not the only influences at play here, along with a healthy dose of H.P. Lovecraft and Clive Barker. RIDING THE CENTIPEDE is something unique, insane, and terrifying… something worth seeking out.” --Brian Fatah Steele, author of Hungry Rain & Bleed Away the Sky

 

“RIDING THE CENTIPEDE is an intense, crazy, brilliant and inspired work of imagination. Totally-gonzo-Beat-horror-experimental-noir-bizarro insanity. I give extra credit to artists who capable of doing something nobody else could do, and this is definitely that.” --Michael Griffin, author of The Lure of Devouring Light & The Human Alchemy


Pick up your copy --> HERE <-- today! It's a ride you won't forget! 



Thursday, November 21, 2024

A Weird Fiction Treat That Hurts: Everything Will Be Okay

 "Everything Will Be Okay" was originally published in the now sadly defunct Vastarien magazine. I cannot recall the inspiration, but it goes to a really weird place before a sliver of body horror brings it home. 

As Des Lewis notes here in his real-time review of the issue the tale was in: 

***

"All of this and none of this. Some of this." 


I am sure this must have the most shudderingly excruciation of an ending I have ever read, with genuine physical cringes induced. An ending that cruelly insists on perfecting this word-textured exercise in losing your own identity as well as that of the human woman you may have lived with so very very long (is there any other sort of woman than human?) -- a sort of extreme Senile Dementia transliterated into a memory of your younger self suffering it. Or even younger than that, when your mother told you the title of it. And now, you are old enough to understand that you no longer understand anything and memories lie...lie where? 


"Not within. But on. On the inside of your eyelids." 

***

Yes, this review made me smile. 

Without further ado or a-don't, er...here ya go. 

*** 


Everything Will Be Okay


     A smudge, a blotch. But not. A silhouette etched in light. A negative impression, flashpoint ghost—something moving as celluloid through a stuttering projector. Silent film. But not. All of this and none of this. Some of this. A silhouette, blurred edges. Uncertain allegiance.

     “You’re sleeping.” The voice slips in with the stealth of a cat burglar. Jimmied back door, shoes silent on carpeted floors. But there’s that moment, no matter the cautions undertaken, when something is bumped, something is jostled. You jolt upright.

     “I’m not.” Eyes open to a different light than the dim view you’d witnessed within. The television glare is accompanied by static sound, voices slowly gaining clarity. Words as daggers in your ears, twisting to help them take shape.

     “You are.” She says this then proceeds to suck orange soda through a red and white pin-striped straw. Bubbles battle ice cubes in the glass she holds in her hand.

     “No. I’m not.” But where were you? Not asleep, but not here. Not out here. Not conscious of what you think of as the outside world, which creases the unease that folds thoughts into tiny undefined origami.

     There’s the slight hiss of water as if through a hole before the barrier is compromised, the aural onslaught cacophonous: sound pours over you with the sudden force of a ruptured dam. The hairs on your arms stand at attention. Voices and music, the quirky, eerie soundtrack to the movie you are watching. Were watching. With her. She pulls the straw from her thin lips as if she’s about to say something, but no words follow. Nonetheless, you are compelled to reiterate your status as awake.

     “I’m not asleep. I wasn’t sleeping” But what were you doing? Where were you? And what were you watching? What was that smudge, that blotch, the undefined silhouette?

     “All right, all right. Point made.” She grumbles; you can sense the gurgling sound deep within her chest, perhaps winding through the esophagus, rising to corrode the windpipe. “You picked the movie. You should watch it.” A potato chip crunches between her teeth, somehow amplified in your ears. A crackling assault. You remember a video of a small beetle’s carapace being crushed by the pincers of a larger insect. You remember thinking, no, this cannot be what it sounds like, but whoever did the sound design for this video really captured the all-around sensation that, yes, this is the sound of a beetle’s carapace being crushed by the pincers of a larger insect, before the insect picks the innards out and eats them with twitching efficiency. You pull away from the memory and narrow your focus toward the figures on the television screen. You know these characters, know the movie, yet cannot place any of it within the same bin of memory recollection occupied by the dead beetle.

     “You okay?” The woman seated next to you is also familiar—your wife, perhaps a girlfriend; the closeness of your bodies as well as her casual manner while scratching an itch beneath her left breast signifies as much, but you cannot place her name right now. At this minute, she’s no more substantial than a stranger passing by on the sidewalk. But you can tell by the tilt of her head and the steady gaze from her eyes her focus has also narrowed and sharpened. You know what she is focused on and what you are focused on are not even within the same orbit. Usually, one would be worried about such memory lapses, perhaps victim to a stroke, but you sense nothing negative, only curiosity. The characters on the screen meld with memory, congealing as toffee, something to chew on. A caramel cube. Session 9. The movie is Session 9. One of your favorites, or at least one you have often thought of in that way before, but right now—who knows for sure?

     “Everything will be okay.” You’re not sure why you say this. You’ve never liked the expression. Everything will be okay—the sentence portends catastrophe, tragedy. Everything will be okay is always a lie. Soothing a restless child before turning out the lights and leaving said child in the hands of the creatures that live in the closet, under the bed. The last vestiges of a phone call about a loved one after a car accident, the one reporting the news to you stating, “Everything will be okay,” when okay is not even in the running any longer. A whisper before violence. A wink before murder. An undefined silhouette that draws you back to it, its formation, its purpose.

     “What’s that supposed to mean, ‘Everything will be okay?’” Apparently, the woman who might be your wife or girlfriend—no, not a wife, there is no wedding band—is not convinced. She places her hand on your wrist. Her concern trembles through you. A passing sensation of nausea rises in you, then slides back down into the churning acid within your stomach. “Are you okay, baby?”

     “I’m…I’m fine.” You smile and nod toward the television and the movie, though already you know you need to look inside for answers that might make sense of whatever it is you are experiencing right now. You’re quite sure none of this convinces her that you are okay.

     You realize you’ve been sitting up and forward, as if an impaling post has filled the space where your spine should be. You consciously make the effort to settle back into your place on the sofa you are sharing with the woman. (Is her name Carly? Maybe Candy? Maybe…) You still wear the smile, a theater mask, to put her at ease. As if whatever is unraveling will ever allow her to experience the sense of being “at ease” with you again. It does not matter as you close your eyes.

     The silhouette is back, still distorted around the edges, but at least you define edges because there is movement. It is moving in its stuttering manner; there’s no sense made in the movement. There is sound accompanying the figure, though. Figure? Yes, figure. Muffled sound emanates from the figure. You cannot make it out, but you are sure it’s something vocal, perhaps language. Not just grunts or gargling in the throat. It is with a purpose. You also note you can no longer hear the movie playing on the other side of your eyelids. Your hearing is directed within. You sense as you concentrate you can almost make out what the figure is saying, be it based in language or something equally as expressive yet lacking normal verbal function.

     “Hey!” The woman shakes you from your research. It is as if she’s slipped a burning wire into your ear, prodding the brain, pushing you out of sync with what you need to do. What you need to know.

     Though you’ve opened your eyes again, and your face is adorned in a smile, as before, it’s not you that is smiling. It is the flesh husk you occupy. The flesh husk you’d rather discard so you can continue to investigate without interference. The soundtrack from the movie, though the scene is mostly quiet, screams at you. Screams.

     “Perhaps we should just go to bed.” The woman’s presence has grown irritating. Her constant interruptions are unacceptable. She fondles a potato chip within the bag of potato chips, stops, and pulls her fingers past the crinkled opening. You hear this and the mostly quiet scene and it’s as if all sound from out there, from the outside, is being piped directly into your ears. Your tympanic membranes quiver and you know if you shove your fingers in your ears, it will do you no good. Worse yet, the woman will react in a way that will only stall what you really need to be doing right now. Yet, along with the sounds, the crystal clarity of your vision as you take this all in, the brusque intrusion of light and images from the outside appalls you. It is as if your eyes and ears are being dipped in flames and the process singes with the intent of challenging your focus and aspirations, at the very core. What matters is what lurks within. What matters is what lives within. You battle the inception of peripheral stimulation and ignore the woman as you close your eyes again.

     That’s when you understand that it’s technically not “within” where the figure and sounds originate. The welcomed figure and sounds, not like what surrounds you from the outside like a straitjacket. Your focus is keen. The sounds dissipate and you are back to your eyelids, the inside of your eyelids, where the image of the figure and the sounds that accompany it reside. Not within. But on. On the inside of your eyelids. The figure resides on the inside of your eyelids, where it is struggling to communicate to you. Struggling to gain its own clarity, crispness of lines. Relay to you its message. You are laser focused on the inside of your eyelids, pulling the left eyelid away from the eye, watching the figure move, a little more distinction displayed, a little less static in the vocal message—yes, now you know, it is vocal; it is talking to you—but it is not enough. The action of pulling on the eyelid, pulling it away from the eye, has brought more clarity, but not enough. Yet.

     When her voice once again interferes with what is now your life’s goal, the purpose of the life you’ve drifted through until the gift of intention without question has been revealed to you—not quite revealed to you, but close; so close--you watch from above, out of your body, as you reach over to the scissors she’d used to cut open the bag of potato chips. You observe as you take them in your hand, grip them with intent, only to pull back into yourself as the woman says something you cannot make out and scoots away from you, arms drawn up and shielding herself, before pushing herself up and off the sofa. You smile, oh, you smile, form without function beyond casting illusions of normalcy when normalcy is quite out of the question now. You laugh, further heightening the lie, and she bleats at you, barks at you, and you set the scissors down. You stare at them momentarily. Within this brief sequence of events away from where you need to be, you have aligned a manner and method to achieve your life’s goal, the purpose unclear until you understand the message from the figure on the inside of your eyelids. But now…now you understand how to go about attaining the knowledge you need. The knowledge it wishes to divulge to you and you alone.

     You rise from the sofa and head down the hallway toward the bathroom. As you do this, there’s another blunt bark from the woman; or, at least, from something behind you. All that matters is what is in front of you. What is behind you is the past, and dead. Your future is taking shape just as the figure and its message will take shape shortly. You know what you need to do.

     You enter the bathroom and close the door; lock the door. You see yourself in the mirror but there’s nothing there you can relate to anymore. The face, the features, a dull façade with no substantial standing in your life as you move forward to reveal your life’s true purpose. You open the medicine cabinet, inspect the contents, and close it. You open the drawer to your left and run your fingers over cotton balls and Q-tips, before shutting it. You open the drawer to the right and immediately, your prize is revealed.

     The woman whose vague existence filled the life you lived beyond the inside of your eyelids, had filled the drawers with whatever necessities a woman of her kind—human? Is there any other kind of woman? She is a blank slate now, nothing more—might deem necessary. Within the collection of nonsense items, there is one item that stands out. One item that will assist you in your quest to know what you need to know in order to successfully attain your life’s goals and purpose.

     Tiny scissors.

     For whatever she needed them for—trimming fingernails or stray hairs or who really knows and, with that thought, does it really matter now?

     There is no hesitation.

     You take the tiny scissors into your fingers, slide the tip of your thumb and up to the first knuckle of your pointer finger into the metal loops and open and close the scissors.

     You close your eyes and watch the figure move and think to yourself, it seems more desperate, this movement. The figure seems more desperate.

     There is no hesitation.

     You raise the tiny scissors up toward your eyelids as you pull the eyelid away from your left eye first, still watching the figure, seeing a little bit more, making out a wee bit more sense out of its movements and the sounds that accompany it, yet not enough. Yet. You think about how the slight curvature of the scissors should perfectly accentuate the shape of your eyelid. You think about how the scissors look so dainty, almost polite—the polite scissors, you think, and laugh lightly, only acknowledged by a hitching of your shoulders and a rumble in your chest because you do not hear anything besides the mumbled sounds from the inside of your eyelid. You think, polite scissors wouldn’t really hurt, but you know this is a lie. Just like “Everything Will Be Okay,” which you repeat in your head, because you do not hear anything from outside any longer.

     Everything will be okay, but not during this stage of discovery. Everything will be okay, but right now, this is going to hurt. But you must do what you must do.

     You open the blades as you pull the eyelid away from your left eye and watch as one of the blades slides in front of your vision, blurry silver and set in place. You are confident that in mere seconds, you will be able to hold the severed eyelid away from the eye at just the proper distance to reveal all that the figure and its message have to reveal to you: your life’s goals, your life’s purpose.

     You hold your breath and squeeze, closing the blades…


*** 


Does that hurt? I...I hope so. ;-)


Here's some creepy eye art by the Junji Ito because, well, creepy eye stuff is everywhere in this post. 





Tuesday, October 22, 2024

Trick or...Treat? Definitely an Audio Treat with Halloween Story Time at the Weird Wide Web...

...featuring my Halloween horror tale, "The Perfect Pumpkin," as well as three other creepy tales for your listening pleasure.

An early Halloween treat for all!

Lindsey B. Goddard's entertaining Weird Wide Web brings you four tales given the audio treatment, set to raise the hackles on your neck and make you look over your shoulder, peering into the dark corners behind you, where it might not just be shadows lurking there... 

Here's the line-up: 

Halloween Story Time ~ Table of Contents:

"With Her" by Rebecca Cuthbert

"The Perfect Pumpkin" by John Claude Smith

"Invitation Only" by Lindsey B. Goddard

"The Tale of Pumpkin Little" by Nora B. Peevy


I'm listening to the broadcast now and digging it a lot. Lindsey has done a marvelous job in presenting these Halloween short stories. 

Here's the link: Weird Wide Web

Enjoy!






Thursday, October 10, 2024

Swans Concert Review/Poem. Really!

 Been a while, I know. But I've decided to kick the wheels on this blog and be consistent with posting. There's a lot going on that I need to report on, new novels and all that or perhaps old, uncollected stories to post, poetry, thoughts, desires, madness--whatever. 

And, yes, I expect there will be a Substack at some point, other means of communication, but for this moment, right now, I have this. 

Anyway, shall we? 

I saw the band Swans at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco (in a really dodgy neighborhood, let me tell you), May 2 of this year, and the day after scribbled this "poem." Tweaked it a bit here and there, but it's good to go. Perfection? My writing is always a work in progress, much as myself. Growing, changing, mutating...

The performance was astonishing, mind-blowing. The poem captures some of what I witnessed. 

Enjoy!


Gira: Swans May 2, 2024, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, California

 

The shaman stands in the desert of burgeoning sound

The first primordial morning or final night falling

Scatological jazz harvested from Hell’s fiery lips

Speaking in tongues disentangled from ages long dead

The creature called Gira finds its way

To the first discernable lyric after thirty minutes

That also includes abrupt hollers, hoots, and howls

Only the creatures of the moon can decipher

While his followers scramble as newborn turtles seeking sea

The ebb and flow of noise as conducted

By a madman as sonic psychotherapy

--He’ll weep like a baby, crest as if orgasmic

Laugh as a lunatic, self-flagellate as the guilty--

Or the survivor of whatever humble beginning

Brought him to this sacred place tonight

Confessional murmurs in front of mesmeric minions

For almost three hours that lay waste

To whatever ragged soul he has left

As well as the disciples willing to go along

For a ride both ecstatic and harrowing

Swans swim through murky waters

While the creature called Gira

A whirling dervish adorned in the guise of human

Leads them to the oceans of magic and despair

A mystical, mythical, mysterious place

Where we gather as one

The pulsing rhythm of the strummed guitar

Eagerly lapped as we drown, we float

We hover, then soar

To the heavens of our own imagination

Trance-like and fully immersed

In the wonder of true unity

 

I would expect nothing less from the amalgamation

As clouds scud in front of stars

Dimensions unfold releasing lizard brain orgies

Only such miraculous experiences can unleash. 


There ya go! A taste of my experience. 

Here's Micheal Gira in his natural state, on stage, conducting the sonic maelstrom. 







Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Ring Finger: A Horror Tale of Survival.

Winter's Bone. I'd seen the movie and really liked the atmosphere. Followed up by purchasing the book and while I was reading the book, I knew I'd have to touch base with a character and similar atmosphere, but from a weird, horror-infused point of view. 

Hence, "Ring Finger." 

Looks like this was originally published at least a decade ago. I think it holds up quite well. 

Here's a taste of the opening sequence. The whole tale is less than 2000 words, so give yourself a break and spend some time with Cammie and what she needs to do to survive. There's the link to the SQ Mag page where it was originally published HERE

But first, your teaser: 

***

     Cammie sucked hard on the rolled cigarette, the smoke threatening to warm her frigid innards, but failing. 

     The sky was bright and white and vast—infinite—though charcoal curled the distant edges.  

     Winter came and owned their souls.  Took root in the marrow.  Froze their dreams like Arctic lakes that never thawed. 

     Ragged threads scratched spider-like at her fingertips, the home-made fingerless gloves meant to deter calluses on the palms, but the grip of flesh, of strong fingers, was deemed necessary to swing the axe. 

     White smoke plumed past chapped lips.  Blood filled the creases, polished her cheeks, threatening to warm her again but, as always, failing.

     Warmth was an illusion.  An empty belly grown walnut-tight made that clear.  Life here was all about survival, nothing more.  Happiness, hope…all part of another’s existence.  Not those who existed here.  Claiming they were alive was an insult to the word.   

     Cammie sucked until the bead grew brilliant red, then dead black.  She flicked the corpse to the snow.

     She had work to do.

     Setting her hand on the axe handle, it vibrated at the intrusion as the man in the colorful skins made of strange materiel—Cammie could not imagine the animal that had once worn them--made a noise akin to a punctured tire or, more so, a tire trying to re-inflate itself.

***

That's all you get here, just click on the link HERE to continue.

BONUS: at the bottom of the page, after the story, I noticed the link for the other tale I had published in that magazine, "It's Only Going To End Badly." Fun stuff, completely different. Rather psychologically messed up, when you get to the end. Here's the LINK for that one. 


And remember, you can purchase my Weird Horror Collection, Autumn in the Abyss Redux by clicking on the highlighted title. It is a massive reissue collection, 25 tales, 135,000 words, give or take a few. 


Aaaaand here's a photo to kind of go with the mood of "Ring Finger." Yes, an ax, blood, pertinent stuff within the tale. 






Monday, October 2, 2023

"American Ghost": Jim Morrison, the John Dee's Necronomicon, and Poetry...

 It starts with a window in Messenger popping up, and it's the late, great writer, Joseph S. Pulver Sr. It's late August or early September of 2014 or 2015. I'm in Rome, where I spend my summers with my girlfriend, Alessandra (it's where she lives). He gives me the info about an anthology he's going to edit dealing with the origins and history of the John Dee's version of the Necronomicon, H.P. Lovecraft's diabolical tome. He asks me if I want in. 

It's Joe Pulver in the editing chair--damn straight I want in! 

[from this point onward, everything highlighted in yellow leads to a link, just click on them.]

As we go back and forth, he details how the anthology--The Leaves of a Necronomicon (the TOC is stellar, and the book deserves your attention!) --is to be staged by decades. The 1970's are still available, so I nab it. He mentions something about poetry (this was around the time of my book, Autumn in the Abyss, the title story of which deals with one man's obsessive search for a missing poet whose words wield apocalyptic power via a poem of which the title is the title of the book; you can read it in the expanded reissue of the collection, Autumn in the Abyss Redux), asks if I could maybe add "Soul Francisco" to the tale. I laugh to myself and respond, Sure, though I am uncertain of where it will fit. Yet. We end our chat and I mention the details to Alessandra. She immediately responds, you should add Jim Morrison to the tale. 

What? 

I think she's crazy. 

Twenty minutes later, I've got it all mapped out. 

In order to get the tale right, to get a special something within the tale right, I buy Morrison's books of poetry. Why, pray tell, did you buy his books of poetry? Because within the tale there would be a poem, one used as the title of the story: "American Ghost." I had to study his lines, get the tone right, the use of specific words, think of him reciting the words as I wrote the poem at the heart of the tale. 

The original version ended with a snippet from "Break on Through to the Other Side" by The Doors, of course, though during the editing process, it was decided rights might be an issue--even as I barely used anything, but I understood completely--so I whipped together the final stanza for the poem, which made for a more appropriate, stronger finale. After too many years--seven or eight--the anthology was finally published and as noted above, is a worthy venture. 

Anyway, it's all here as presented by the intriguing Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, a site that includes a lot of compelling fiction as well as authors such as John Shirley (!!!), Vince Daemon, and the work of the person running the show over there, Shaun Lawton, and many more!  

(I've had a few other tales published there: "Not Breathing" a blending of drug addiction and a living dead aesthetic; "Blood Echo Symphonies," a slightly futuristic SF story that features shape shifting, music--yes, music is a favorite playground for me--and love...kind of; and "The Perfect Pumpkin," for all the Halloween Horror enthusiasts. Check them out, too!) 

For your pleasure, I present for you "American Ghost," one of my personal favorite short stories I've ever written. 

Here's the art Shaun put together for the piece. 

Dig it!