A VERY Surprising Summer

As usual, when publications are concerned, when it rains it pours. After a bit of literary drought, I'm proud to announce that not one, not two, but THREE of my stories have come out in the last month. So, in no particular order:

The Fangs of Rustwood: It all started when I heard that Games Workshop was about to release an Age of Sigmar Battletome for the Gloomspite Gitz (goblins, in ye olde tongue). The folks at Black Library asked me to pitch some short story ideas for the Summer of Reading event, and you can bet they were ALL ABOUT GOBLINS. Fortunately, the editors weren't put off at all by my mad cackles, and were willing to work with me on a couple of grot tales.

Starting with my viewing of Arachnophobia at the tender age of eight, I've always had an unhealthy fear of spiders. So I was excited to pass a little bit of that sweaty-palmed terror onto you. "The Fangs of Rustwood" is part murder mystery, part survival horror, with a mess of giant arachnids thrown into the mix.

The Lies that Bind: Anyone who knows me knows that I'm an enormous fan of the Banner Saga franchise. With art reminiscent of the old Rankin Bass and Ralph Bakshi flights of fancy, deep characterization, choices that affect gameplay, and an engrossing world based on Scandinavian myths and eddas. As you can imagine, I was keen to sneak into the figurative mead hall and try my hand at writing some tie-in fiction, and the fine folks at Stoic were incredibly receptive. The story expands on the history and origins of Rugga, one of Banner Saga II's prime villains (or heroes, if you're a fan of ambitious social climbers).

Second to Last Stop: I wrote this little horror story back in 2010. My intent was to dissect the role of liminal space in the context of horror, really digging into that specific point in a movie/story/game where the protagonists stop existing in the "real" world and fall into shadow. I thought it would be fun to examine this idea through a lot of different tropes and subgenres to create a sort of meta-commentary on genre as a whole. Honestly, I was pretty damn proud of how it turned out.

Then Cabin in the Woods hit theatres and horror editors wouldn't touch my story with a ten-foot pole. Fortunately, the story seems to have legs…lots of them, in fact. The fine folks at The NoSleep Podcast have (as usual) outdone themselves, especially Graham Rowat, who not only give an amazing performance, but effortlessly tackles the narrator's dialectic gymnastics, switching from Appalachian drawl, to Spanish, to a New England twang without batting an eye.