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Read ‘Undertow’ for free on your Kindle this week

undertowHello everyone. Happy Easter week! To celebrate the alleged start of spring, I’m making my short story “Undertow” free on Amazon this week.

The promotion starts tomorrow, March 31, and ends Saturday, April 4.

What’s the story about? It’s a supernatural horror story about a young woman who falls in love with the ocean. But then the ocean loves her back, and that’s kind of a problem. There are mythological creatures in it, and it’s creepy. But then, most of my fiction is on the creepy side. It’s part of my charm.

If you like supernatural horror, please check it out. Here is the link.

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I’ve had a short story up on Amazon for a week and haven’t told anyone.

I call this “stealth marketing.”
(Pro tip: I just checked my metrics on Amazon. “Stealth marketing” doesn’t work.)

short story, fiction, horrorAnyhow, the story.

Final Statements is about a woman who is obsessed with reading the last words of executed prisoners online. (This is a real thing. Someone records the final words of death row inmates and then those words are posted on the Internet.) She has her reasons for this, but you’ll have to read the story to find out why she has such a creepy hobby.

Check it out here.

This is the second piece in my short story experiment over at Amazon. About a year ago I decided to post my previously-published stories as e-books on Amazon. My first story, Undertow, went up on the site in March and it’s been read a few times, which is cool, because as far as I know, no one’s read that since it was first published in 2003. (The first version of Final Statements was published more recently, in 2011.)

I never realized how much horror I’ve written until I started this project. I tend to write a lot of literary fiction on a day-to-day basis, but when I started combing through the stories I want to publish on Amazon, it turns out, they’re all horror.
Huh.
I’m too squeamish to watch a horror film, but I write horror stories. Go figure. This is probably what I get for being obsessed with Thomas Harris books in my 20s. (Clarice Starling, I still want to be you.)

Anyhow, that brings me to my next point. I have several unpublished genre (horror, of course) stories that I might include in this project. Rather than try to publish these pieces the old-fashioned way (send them to journals), I might just put them directly online. My reasoning: Amazon is where the horror readers are. Literary journals are where the lit-fic readers are.

Writers, what are your thoughts on this? I’d love to hear from you.

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Undertow: the first piece in my short story experiment.

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undertowSome things take me a while.

More than a year ago, I decided to release some of my previously-published short stories electronically on Amazon. So I waited for an evening when my husband was out, then climbed into the bathtub with a handful of seashells, a tube of red food coloring and a camera, because that’s what committed authors do.

Then I asked people to vote on the bloody seashell photos on my Facebook page. And then I started working on the short story itself, which was published in 2003 by a journal, but which I wanted to tweak.

I ended up tweaking it a lot. It took me a good year, and I didn’t post much about it, but I’m happy to announce that it’s done, the cover art is complete and the story itself is finally posted on Amazon.

Thank you to everyone who voted on the images last year. I look forward to my next project, which will probably involve me taking photos of rusty tools in a dark basement with just a flashlight as a light source.

 

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(Even more) Blood and seashells

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So the other day I posted about how I spent my Monday night up to my elbows in fake blood in our bathtub for the sake of my career.

I took several photos for the cover of my e-short story about a killer sea god. Now the fake blood stains are finally fading from my palms, but I have another problem: I don’t know which photo to choose for the cover.

So because you all rock and probably have exquisite taste, I want your help. I’ve put four of these photos up on Facebook.*  Head over there and tell me which one you like best.  I trust your input.

And while you’re there, please like me. When you have strange hobbies like I do, it’s good to know that you’re liked.

*It’s currently an untitled album because Facebook is freaking out and won’t let me edit the album, but bear with me.

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I’ll be at Books & Boos on Saturday, and I’m only reading the scary parts.

Reading, books and boos, beware the hawk

The Books and Boos ghost.

If you live in Connecticut and love to be frightened, you should probably take a drive up to Books & Boos in Colchester, a brand new bookstore, located in an old yellow house at a crossroads. The house is old enough to look as if it could be haunted, which would be appropriate, because the bookstore’s logo is a ghost and its stock-in-trade is horror.

I’m going to be there, reading the scariest parts of my book at 12 p.m. this Saturday.

Not that I write horror, but lucky for me and other local authors, Books & Boos supports and showcases the work of authors from across New England. A display in the front of the store is packed with local authors.  When I was there I saw a book about building outhouses, a children’s book, graphic novels and Bad Apple, a book by fellow VBP author Kristi Petersen Schoonover.

Also, something that tickled my geek streak? When I toured Books and Boos with co-owner Stacey Longo last month, I walked past a glass case containing pillows shaped like blood spatters and old-school Scully and Mulder X-Files action figures.

Beware the Hawk and I are in bloody good company. Come visit in Colchester. The fun starts at 12 p.m. I’ll make it as scary as possible.beware the hawk banner

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