Here's a Free Preview of Black Hearts and Bloodied Lips

The night was eerily quiet.

Dead leaves skittered across the pavement in a small gust of freezing air.

Maple trees lined the broken driveway; we were using them for cover as we waited for signs of activity.

The street lights were all busted out. Even if they were intact, they wouldn’t have been running. Electricity had been cut off to this suburb last year during reclamation efforts. No use sending power to an area completely infested with vampires.

The old mansion sat atop of a hill. It had been converted into a funeral home, and was used right up until the blood suckers took over.

There was something about it that was just, wrong.

The building was desolate and empty, yet something still stirred within its musty halls.

I felt as though we were being watched from its dirty windows. But by what, I couldn’t tell.

It was just creepy the way it stood at the top of the hill, a massive white hulk looming in the dark, watching, waiting for the right moment to strike, as though the house itself were alive.

If our Intel was correct, we were about to go and steal something very valuable from a rookery of vampires. If not…well, we just might find ourselves going up against something that two people couldn’t handle on their own. And if that was the case, we were screwed.

You can find Black Hearts and Bloodied Lips on Amazon!

Cancer’s Requiem: A Free Story from WE ARE ALL MONSTERS

CANCER'S REQUIEM is one of the stories that can be found in my collection WE ARE ALL MONSTERS. You can read it in it's entirety here. 

They lived in that place for years and it, like his life, just went up in flames.

He wanted to cry. But he just stood there with an odd little smile on his face, like the kid in elementary school who got caught shooting spitballs at the teacher.

It had squealed. That hideous creature. It screamed as it burned to ash.

His wife Maria had said it was cancer. But he knew better.

It wasn’t cancer that killed her.

It was that thing, that demon. Its foreboding presence lingered, hovering over them the whole ride back from their ill-fated trip.

It was supposed to be a vacation, a nice week long excursion to the city that ended in catastrophe.

It had started as a sore on her neck. An angry, red, swollen lump just below hairline.

“Don’t scratch it. You’ll make it worse.”

They went to all sorts of shops that day. Later, he’d revisit them in his mind, retreading the places where they were last, just as he always did when he had lost something important, trying to find where she had lost her life.

He re-walked the phantom streets in his mind, night after night lying next to her ever-fading frame, trying to find the exact moment when that damned thing bit her and devoured her from the inside out like an invisible lamprey eel.

They spent her last winter putting things in order. First the furniture. Then her clothes. Then the pots and pans, the books, the cluttered pile of things that was their life together.

He couldn’t sleep.

Not with that thing hovering over her.

Maria clung to her life until her strength ran out. Until that damned thing drained her dry.

Then, it was six weeks of pure hell, of morphine drips and dirty sheets and people telling him it's OK to grieve. But he couldn’t. She was his life. And now she was gone.

Family and friends came, a blur of faces and condolences. The funeral was over all too fast.

All that was left was John. He drank the next three days straight. The love of his life, his anchor, was gone.

Devoured. Chewed up and spat out.

Three nights to the hour after she passed, It came back, for him.

He had fallen asleep on the couch in front of the fireplace, his only companions a half bottle of gin and a knitted comforter.

He woke up, unaware of ever falling asleep.

The only light came from the fading embers in the fireplace. He saw Maria standing behind the couch, her reflection on the TV screen.

“Time for bed John.”

“Sure.”

He yawned and paused.

Her reflection wasn’t right.

She was never that tall and lanky, never that pale.

The floorboards behind him creaked and he whirled, dropping his bottle of gin on the floor.

They stood staring at one another like startled deer in headlights; him standing there, clutching Maria's knitted comforter to him like armor. It stood just feet away. Both of them waiting for the other to make the first move.

It stood on backward bending legs. It had hands with three hideous, rusted, hypodermic needle fingers. He could see its ribs and collar bone, even hip bones. A long neck craned up and back like a question mark. Bald head, milky albino pink eyes stared at him. It didn’t have a nose, just a pair of slits where it should be. Long spindly arms hung down to its feet. The needle fingers lightly scraping the wood floor as it waited for him to move.

John's heart pounded in his ears. His body felt like ice. He was right. All along. It wasn't cancer.

It was a demon.

The TV screeched to life and the picture burst into snow.

The sound made him jump.

Then it was gone, leaving no sign of its presence, as though it had never even been there.

He scratched the back of his neck, telling himself that it was just paranoia that made it itch. It had to be. The thing didn’t get close enough to touch him. It couldn’t have. He checked the back of his neck every morning after that, waiting for the red lump to rise up and signal his imminent death.

It came back three days later.

He was in the front room, tending the fire.

The back screen door whined as it opened and slammed shut.

The floorboards creaked behind him.

He tightened his grip on the heavy metal poker and spun around.

It was closer than he thought. He swung the poker and it batted it away. He tried to push past the thing but it was too fast. It grabbed him, slammed him down and pinned him to the floor.

Its needle fingers wrapped around his throat. The sharp pointed ends were about to push into the back of his neck when Maria rose up over them, wielding the fire poker like the sword of an avenging angel.

She skewered the damn thing through the head. The poker barely missed hitting him. He stared at her as she wrangled the beast away and shoved into the fireplace.

It squealed an unearthly scream as it started to burn.

“I missed you.”

“I never left,” she said and helped him up. She was cold to the touch. He could see through her, even though her hands were in his. “Hurry. You must go.”

“But-”

She ushered him to the front door.

“I love you. We’ll see each other again. I promise.”

He tried to take her with him but the minute he stepped foot outside the demon sprang out of the fireplace, sending a spray of red hot embers everywhere.

“Run!” she yelled.

He backed off the porch not once taking his eyes off them. His dead wife and her demon, cancer, fought once more in the living room. The very room she had died in.

The house went up in flames as the embers devoured everything around them.

The demon tried to run after him and she tackled it and held it down.

It writhed and screeched in her arms.

Maria looked up at him and smiled the ceiling collapsed, and they disappeared in a wall of flame.

He hand went up to his lips.

Maria had saved his life.

“We’ll be together soon. I promise.”

John smiled and walked away.

Cancer had killed her.

But their love, in return, had changed it to naught but ash.

Her Rotten Embrace: A Free Horror Story from My WE ARE ALL MONSTERS Story Collection!

HER ROTTEN EMBRACE is one of the stories that can be found in my collection WE ARE ALL MONSTERS. You can read it in it's entirety here. 

You thought you could get away with it. You thought that I would forget. You thought wrong.

The waters of the swamp, her waters, never forget. Nor does she forgive. Nor would she let me pass on. She kept me in her rotten embrace for years; long after my body decayed and my bones were picked clean by the animals that crawled through her muddy bottom.

She kept me warm and safe. And she talked to me, told me things. About how we were going to wait, patiently, until the man who murdered me returned.

"Revenge," she whispered.

"Revenge," she cried.

Her voice could be heard in the songs of the frogs, the chorus of the crickets, the plaintive cries of the birds.

She pulled my bones up out of the muck and the mire. From the center of her hot, muddy heart, where all dead things are welcomed into her bosom. And sometimes, sometimes, she pushed them back out.

She said my time had come. She woke me up. She stitched my bones back together. Wrapped her roots and vines around them, raw vegetation serving as sinew and muscle. Mud and algae, worms, beetles, rodents; covered me, formed my new flesh. Let me move again.

I walked through the water, slowly rising from the center of the swamp. Strings of algae and rotten leaves pull up with me, trailing behind me as I go. It pained me to leave her. But, I knew that I would return to her bosom soon.

I could see again. Blurry shapes, sometimes in focus, sometimes not, as I slugged myself through the shallows of the swamp. It was night. I could catch glimpses of stars overhead, flashes of lightning bugs here and there as they slowly called out for mates. Clouds of mosquitoes buzzed around me, attracted by the warmth of my swampy flesh.

She lovingly caressed my feet as I stepped out onto land, I could feel her love in the things that squirmed in the mud that held together my new body.

"There. Look. The headlights." 

Yellow lights streamed through the trees.

I remembered those lights. Filtering through the trees as he dragged my dying body to its grave in the swamp.

A trunk of a car opened. The hinges squealed.

It was the same car. The same one that drove me here. The same one I rode in, as I was taken to my final resting place.

Someone whimpered. The sound told me that he had another victim to offer to the swamp.

I hid behind a tree, waiting, watching.

He stood at the back of the car, finishing smoking a cigarette. Tossed the butt to the ground, looked around, as if he could feel someone's eyes on him, before he turned to face his latest victim.

He was older now. Thinner, balding, dark circles under his eyes. His leather jacket worn in places. The car, rusted near the wheel wells, had seen better days.

The swamp murmured, sending out vines and tree roots to greet him.

He didn't notice. He was too busy leering over the girl in the trunk. She was tied up, duct tape over her mouth, hog tied with it, wrapped around her wrists and ankles. The swamp grew over the car tires, wrapped around the door handles, cementing the car shut with her sticky, rotting vegetation.

"It's time. Move now."

The swamp urged me forward. She knew it pained me, seeing him again. He broke my heart, poisoned me, and dumped me here to die a slow, agonizing death.

My pain became her pain when I sunk into her murky depths.

The swamp no longer wished to feel my pain. She selfishly wanted me to get my revenge so that neither of us had to feel that way ever again.

I stepped up behind him.

Tried to speak, but there was no sound, just a squishing of mud and squirming insects.

The girl's eyes widened. She screamed; it was muffled behind the duct tape.

She saw me.

I reached out, and he turned to see who was behind him.

He froze. I could see my silhouette in his eyes. Lumpy vegetation in the shape of a woman. Long tendril tree roots for hair. Burning white pinpoints of lights in my eye sockets. The jaw bone showed a bit beneath the rotting leaves that made up my face.

"You?"

I made a sound; a low, pained moan. I wanted to say it was me, and even though no words passed my muddy lips, he knew. He knew the moment his eyes met mine, who I was, and what he had done to me.

All color drained from his face, the way that I wanted to drain all his blood from his body. I wanted to crush him, I wanted to tear him apart, limb from limb.

"Yes. Do it," the swamp urged. "Destroy his flesh. Make him un-whole."

I smiled.

It had been so long since I had something to smile about.

His fear made me happy.

"No. No. You're not real! You're not! I killed you!"

He ran to grab his gun from the front seat. The car doors wouldn't budge. They were wrapped shut; the swamp wouldn't let him in.

He ran back to the trunk, pulled out the girl, dropped her and grabbed the tire iron. He hit my head- the tire iron sank into my new flesh. He tried to pull it out, but it was stuck fast.

I reached out, wrapped my green and brown slimy arms around his torso, and squeezed.

Steam rose from my new flesh. The heat from rotting leaves and animal bodies, rose up into the air.

And he screamed. 

He kicked and struggled and tried to pull free, but it was no use. Braced his feet on my shins, to push away from my vice grip, and they sunk into my legs with a schlupping sound. The more he struggled, the more he sank into me.

The swamp laughed--delighted in his panicked death throws. The birds, the animals, the insects, the wind, they all laughed.

The girl rolled away as her attacker sank into my body, his face smothered by my chest as he was pulled in further. His legs and arms buried into me, his hands and feet sticking out the other side of the body the swamp made for me.

His screams came faintly from inside of my body. The vibration tickled, it agitated the insects in my body, making it squirm and writh in time with his screams.

The girl rolled away. She couldn't break free from the duct tape binding her arms and legs.

My body was heavier now, weighed down by the man. I shuffled slowly to her. She shook her head no. I bent down to remove her bonds.

"No," the swamp whispered. "She comes too. She is dying. Poisoned, like you were. I can save her. Preserve her, like I preserved you."

I grabbed her by the feet, dragged her along behind us. Her struggles weakened with every step.

Soon, she grew quiet.

The swamp, she never lied.

I took them into her bosom, into the dark, warm, fetid depths of the swamp. Her bacteria and animals stripped the flesh off their bones. The man was placed between the girl and myself, and here we lay, to this day, whispering our hatred for him, for the man we both once loved.

The swamp's waters swelled with pride. She stopped my pain.

And now, we all torment him, eternally.

Check out an Exclusive Sneak Peek at my upcoming Novel The Caddis Initiative!

“I’m not going.”

“What?” Kiki turned off the hair dryer and stuck her head out the bathroom door. Her still wet blond hair clung to her neck, wrapping around it like stray seaweed that got a little too frisky. The hot pink push-up bra squeezed her perky tits so nicely. Never have I ever wanted to be a lacy pair of cups so badly as I did right then.

“What did you say?” she asked again.

I went over to her and ran my fingers along her lips. She shivered. Goosebumps raised on her arms.

“Oh, I see. This is what you wanted,” she smirked.

I brushed a stray lock of her hair out her eyes.

“Well, it wasn’t until I saw you in nothing but your bra and panties.”

“So what did you want to say then?” she asked and wrapped her silky arms around me. Her skin always felt so soft after she got out of a shower.

“Mm,” I said and kissed her. “Let’s stay here today.”

She made an annoyed sound.

“Becca. You’ve been waiting a month to see the specialist. If you cancel now, they’ll bill you for not showing up. Remember?”

I sighed and rested my head on her shoulder. She was skinny, but not too skinny. I couldn’t see her ribs or backbone. And she kept a little fat on her ass, gave her a nice bubble butt. So cute.

Her hair tickled the side of my face. I sneezed and she pulled away and laughed.

“Honestly. There’s nothing to be afraid of, I’m coming with you.”

“I know I just…what if he’s wrong?”

You can read Caddis Initiative Phase One Infection for free with Kindle Unlimited!

To Write Good Horror, One Must Practice

All right. It's been a while. But, today I came across something that got my mind running at 110 mph and I was like, fine. I'll write the thing, then I need to get back to work, this book isn't going to finish editing itself. Some of this applies to writing horror, some of it applies to life in general. I just need to get it off my chest so that I can focus on my job. lol

Anyways, since some of my buddies have shared this on the FB and I didn't want to hijack their posts so I'm ranting here. 

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2013/12/college_papers_students_hate_writing_them_professors_hate_grading_them_let.html

Basically, this Slate article is about why they need to stop writing essays in college, because it's HARRRRD and because everyone plagiarizes now so no one is really doing their work. Bawwww. Really? Really?!

Are there dumb, insipid, vapid kids in college? Sure. Are they all that dumb? No. I have a hard time believing that EVERYONE is that stupid. (Or are they? Dun dun duuun!) 

Can you engage them and get them to think outside the box and apply critical thinking skills to their favorite subjects and write about them in an essay? Yup. You sure can. I do it every time I write a horror review. No joke. And guess what? I ENJOY IT!

Oh yeah. Here's a hint: there's a super easy way to make sure that your paper is not plagiarized prior to sending it in. There's a good number of FREE websites that will check all of your text and point out when you have similar sentences to something else so that you can fix them. 

If it really is that much of a problem for you as a teacher, just have your students email the paper to you, no one hand writes anything anymore (not unless it's a final and you have to write essays in class). Run their text through the checker. If it flags something, send it back. If the entire text is copied, fail them and have them kicked out.

https://elearningindustry.com/top-10-free-plagiarism-detection-tools-for-teachers

https://noplag.com/

Honestly, I can't believe that she is whining about having to grade papers. That's her job. (We all have parts of our jobs we can't stand, but she's making it seem like what she is complaining about is the norm and not the exception here.) 

She should do what my college teachers did: Tell the students that your class is hard, you have expectations and if they do not learn properly, or seek out help when they are having trouble with the homework, that they will fail the class. 

You shouldn't be able to pass a class just because you have perfect attendance and spoke nicely to the teacher about what you are supposed to be learning. That's (to quote my dad) "some Mickey Mouse bullshit right there."

Hey, I edit posts on a regular basis over at BloodyWhisper.com. Is it a pain at times? Sure. (I love my writers! They're so awesome, and make the website great. Really, they do! But even I have to edit my own crap to make sure that it reads right. And if I hadn't learned how to write in college, I wouldn't be able to do that, now would I?)

If they stop teaching how to write essays, how will people learn how to write them? How will they learn how to write anything if they don't write?  

Having talent, even for writing horror, means practicing. A lot. 

You want to write good, scary horror? 

You must exercise your writing muscles. It's the same thing as learning how to play a musical instrument or how to do the parallel bars routine in the gym. Practice. Practice. Practice. More Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice. Etc. etc. Rinse, lather, repeat. Until you're sick of it. Then take a break and go right back to practicing.

Thanks Webster's Dictionary! 

Talent isn't innate. We aren't BORN with it. Most of us have natural inclinations towards being good at certain things, but all of the most talented people in the world get that way because they put in enough practice hours to become experts at their particular subject. Whether it is sports or writing haikus. Everyone gets good at it by doing it. Repeatedly. Over, and over and over and over again. They get frustrated. They get discouraged. They want to give up. Sometimes they do. But the truly "talented" people only reach their potential by getting back up, dusting themselves off and trying again. And again. And again. 

Good horror is born from learning how to write proficiently. 

The horrible, awful truth of it is that everyone starts somewhere. And we all suck at it when we first start out. All of us. 

(I should share the first horror story I ever typed up on my family's Apple II E some time. It's awesomely bad, and I was like 7 so it was printed out on dot-matrix paper with the chads and everything. lol) 

Learning how to be excellent at writing or any other skill requires a ton of practice time and determination. It requires studying the works of other people that are well-known as experts in that field.

Look, we don't live in a vacuum. I know certain SJW types want to make college that way, but that's not how to learn. In fact, by eliminating things that make us uncomfortable and that challenge us to step up to the plate and prove to ourselves that yes, this thing is super HARRRRRD, but I did it! I actually did it!, we discredit ourselves and don't give ourselves a chance to really attempt to do something that we never thought that we could do. 

The flip-side of the whole "my emotions are hurt because you told me I did this wrong" coin is doing something, learning how to do it right, and then proving to yourself that you can in fact, do the thing. You can do all the things if you put your mind to it. You just need to woman up and do it. (Heh. Woman up.)  Find your backbone, pep talk yourself into achievements. Watch "Rocky" for inspiration. Do whatever you need to do to give yourself the fortitude to carry on. Get your shit together and get it done. Get your shit done.

Nothing in life that is worth doing is easy. In fact, all the things that are really super awesome achievements were attained through tears, sweat, and sometimes, blood. o.0  Yes, I went there. Because it's true. Ever get a blister? Sometimes those puppies pop and it's not just that weird watery crap that comes out of them. It's blood. (My apologies to those that are trying to eat and read this at the same time.)

My point is, if the written essay is eliminated from college curriculum, students won't learn how to write properly, nor how to express themselves in a coherent manner. There's a reason essays have been taught for over a century in colleges. Because they help people form their thoughts in a way that allows them to communicate clearly to others. It helps them learn how to be understood. And isn't that important? Isn't that the goal of writing? To share ideas? To be understood? 

The post author's main complaint is that her students don't know how to write and can't grasp core concepts, so her idea is to just stop trying to teach it. Period. 

Sounds like she wants to give up on people. That's not cool, for one. And for two, teaching oration only works if the students understand how to compose their thoughts in an orderly fashion to present their point of view or an argument. 

She thinks that essays are too subjectively graded, so doing oration would be fairer to the students. 

Now hold on a second. 

Wouldn't doing oral narration in class be subjectively graded? I mean, that seems like even more of a chance to not live up to a teacher's expectations. Hint: speeches are for speech class. You want to grade people's speeches? Teach that. Oh..wait. They still have to write them down before they say them. Damn! That plan won't work either. 

So like, uhhh...this Hankie guy that was like in that one movie, did this thing after he got like deserted on an island in the specific ocean and junk, and ummm then like uhhhhh...he found a volleyball and named it um, Wilkins, I think? and like that's a metaphor for like going to the gym. or something. And that's why war is bad and junk. The end.

See what I did there? Did you see it? That's what would happen in an oration-only class that didn't teach how to write speeches- which in some circles are considered essays. BAM!  

But I worked really hard on this short horror story and no one likes it! 

You can't expect to be Hemingway or Hawthorne or King the minute you pick up a pencil or sit your butt down at a keyboard. You think they just automatically knew how to write masterpieces? Hell no! They practiced! They wrote a ton of crap that they never showed anyone, because they were learning how to compose the written word.

So, get back up on your horse/chair and start again. Look for what didn't work in the story and examine it. Why didn't it work? What didn't make sense? What is missing?

Through practice and study, you will learn how to do it right. How to make it scary. 

Don't know about you, but I was an English major in college. I have my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. And let me tell you something, if I had not had to write so many book reports, research papers and constructive criticism essays, I would never have learned how to properly order my thoughts or write persuasively. Or hell, I wouldn't even know about story structure so that I wouldn't be able to write movie reviews, let alone funny ones that make jokes based on my observations of cliches and stupid plot-lines.

My point is that some things in life are hard, some are difficult and challenging, but that doesn't mean that you can't learn how to do them. You just need to practice. And practice a lot. Learn how to form your thoughts, and how to put them in order so that people can follow them. The only way to do that is to write. Then write more. And write some more, and keep writing. Then study how other authors wrote your favorite horror books, and read about writing horror and grammar and story structure, and then write some more and so on and so on, ad infinitum. 

The only way to become excellent at written composition is to practice. And really, the only way to write awesome horror fiction or make posts that are super awesome movie reviews that entertain people. 

So, to sum up:

• Don't give up the thing because it's hard.
• Keep at it.
• Study it.
• Learn it.
• Practice it. 
• Keep practicing. 
• Give yourself pep talks when you feel like giving up and get back to work.
• Practice some more.
• Keep writing.
• Do it.
• Do the thing.
• You can do it. 
• I know you can.