Way back in the before times of 2014, when I was a relatively new author with three titles to my name, I had the crazy idea to start a series. I had learned a good deal from writing and publishing those first three books, and I didn’t want to repeat myself again and again without taking some kind of next step. Evolve, so to speak. So, I decided it was time to craft a larger world, one that couldn’t be contained within the pages of a single book. And I decided this new step would call for a Kickstarter campaign, that way I could afford better editing and a professionally made cover and all the things that come with evolution. In August of 2014, the first book in my first series was published.

That was not this book.

That was a book called Shallow Veins, book one of The Obscured. It spent a lot of time focused on its monster, as well as the nasty things it did. What it didn’t spend enough time on was establishing it’s main character, Franklin Butcher, or the larger world it promised to reveal as the series continued. It wasn’t a bad book, in my opinion, just more of a creature feature than it called for. And listen, I love a good creature feature, but they make for odd jumping-off points when you’re trying to build a dark urban fantasy world.

The main problem with Shallow Veins was that I published it. It was, looking back, a first draft of a much better book. I went on to write and publish the next two books in the series (City of Demons and Hot Dirt), which turned out to be much closer to the tone and structure of what was required of them, though in fairness they still had their share of flaws. Sales dropped with each book, and I was left scratching my head about the future of The Obscured. In the back of that head, though, was the knowledge of where I’d gone wrong. And it all started with Shallow Veins.

By 2016, I was at a crossroads: do I continue writing a series that no one is reading? Or do I abandon it completely, leaving these three, flawed books out on the curb for all the neighbors to see?

I took a third path, the one way, way less travelled. For better or worse, I decided to overhaul the entire series, starting with the very first one, the one with the most issues. I pulled Shallow Veins apart piece by piece, throwing the unnecessary bits in the trash and grafting newer, stronger parts in their place. The resulting book was rechristened Shallow Graves (a less confusing and more genre-appropriate name) and published it as the relaunch of a series now called The Unseen. It was a lot of work, and some would probably say a waste of time, but the truth is it was just as much for myself, for the library of work I want to leave behind, as it was for establishing some kind of readership for the series.

Then, I did it twice more. City of Demons was improved and expanded while keeping its title, and the same was done for Hot Dirt, though its title was changed to Dead as Dirt. The result? Still not best sellers, but books I can be proud of. And in the end, that’s the only thing I really have any control over.

All that is to say: enjoy.

He drinks too much. He can't hold a marriage together. And he's our only hope against the monster that just came to town.

Franklin Butcher is a young cop with a few rough years behind him. Freshly divorced, he decides to make a new start in the small town of Shallow Creek. What better place to coast until retirement than a town where nothing happens?

His plan doesn’t work. Soon people start disappearing, and Butcher is the only one who seems to want to solve the case. He believes a new couple in town are to blame for the vanishings, but the truth is even darker than he thinks. Before he knows it, Butcher is drawn into an unseen world of supernatural creatures that has existed in secret for centuries. It’s also a world he has more connection to than he ever imagined. Because, like Shallow Creek, Franklin Butcher has a few secrets of his own.

The Unseen is a bold new take on familiar myths, from doppelgangers to vampires, to demons, monsters and more. This is a series that can’t be missed. But be careful- once seen, this world can’t be unseen…

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The Body Farm is a story that took on a life of its own, if you’ll forgive the pun. Originally posted online as a one-part story, readers enjoyed it so much that I was inspired to expand it further and further, until it took on the ten-part form you see before you. You might remember that a similar thing happened with my book The Mountain and The City, though I believe The Body Farm spread further thanks to its creepypasta qualities. It’s made appearances on a handful of creepypasta sites, and even been adapted to audio by several narrators (once in Spanish!), most notably performed by Jason Hill, of Chilling Tales for Dark Nights. To date it’s one of my most popular stories, which is funny considering I’d never intended to write it. It just goes to show you, you never know what will die, and what will live.

Special thanks, by the way, go to Craig Groshek, creator and runner of the Simply Scary Podcasts Network, for taking a liking to my weird little story and broadcasting it much further than it ever would have gone otherwise. If you like listening to horror stories, you really owe it to yourself to check out his fantastic podcasts and Youtube channels.

This story has received all kinds of praises and criticisms, and it’s brought me particular joy to read some of the responses it elicits, whether on YouTube videos or people who have bought and read the book. One recent review began with the sentence: “Reading this was like dreaming,” a comment I took as the highest of compliments. With that in mind, I invite you to dream The Body Farm for yourself.

It was supposed to be easy money. A temp job as a night guard on some deserted island. But why wouldn't anyone tell me what I'd be guarding? Do you know what a Body Farm is? I didn't, either. Apparently it's a research facility where decomposition can be studied in a variety of settings. How, you ask? By letting a bunch of corpses lay out and rot. Yeah. Fun stuff. But that doesn't explain the voices I'm hearing over the radio. Or the strange lights I've been seeing outside. Or why some of the bodies have this funny habit of disappearing when I'm not looking. And it definitely doesn't explain what's happening to my mind...

The Body Farm is a popular creepypasta with more than 200,000 views on Youtube, as well as thousands more readers around the internet. See for yourself what has people saying:

"Absolute perfection. I was enthralled in the story." -ZoOoZ

"I am speechless..." -Claire_9207

"I can't believe how well the story is written. So many layers! 10 out of 10 from Hell." -Lucifer

"Wow I don't care how long that took me to read, I read it over and over." -Yelloguy

"Compellingly written and expertly executed. Very well done." -DrBliss

"Great story, didn't want it to end." -Catc8

"I love love love this! Will even be reading this again. 10 out of 10." -Jennyest

"This story was amazing, not at all what I was expecting! The story sucked me in. I couldn't stop reading!" -Kosher

"This is the best thing I've read in my entire life." -XxCutelolzxX

"I guess I won't be sleeping." -Chara666

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De-Partment, which I’m shocked to realize just celebrated its 10th anniversary, is as dark and dystopian as I get. It came about from a combination of three things.

First was a name: Tuxxel Tumbitt. It came to me completely at random one day, unprovoked. I didn’t know what it meant, just that it had a lyrical quality to it, and that it sounded like it belonged in a fantasy tale. But considering I don’t write fantasy—urban fantasy is as close as I’ve come, and even then as an excuse to write a different kind of horror—I decided to write it down and wait for a story that suited it.

Second was a writer, Ray Bradbury. He’d been a favorite of mine ever since I’d read Fahrenheit 451 with a chronically dry mouth, due to how much time I spent reading with my jaw dropped open. Then I went through a two month kick in which I read four or five Ray Bradbury books, including Death is a Lonely Business and The Martian Chronicles. It’s his use of language that does it for me, the way he makes prose feel like poetry. I came out the other end of those two months wanting to do the same, but knowing I lacked both his poetic heart and endless sense of wonder and nostalgia. I didn’t want to copy Ray, but I wanted to tap into some essence of it. Maybe, I thought, there was a way to do my own version of it, one that felt true to myself.

Finally, and most importantly, was a job. I’d begun working at a bank, which one isn’t important. What is important is how it made me feel, which was like a rusty gear in a giant, horrifying machine. __. When I sat down to write De-Partment, it was in the basement of that very bank, on my lunch breaks. The first cover for the book even used a picture I’d taken of the bank’s boiler room wall. As you can imagine, the story turned out fairly dark, darker than I’d originally planned. I thought at various times of lightening it up a bit, make the pill easier to go down, but I decided that wouldn’t be true to how I was feeling at the time, and to the story. I wanted people to feel that same sadness and anger that I did, to share in the carrying of it.

Cruel, I know.

“Welcome to the Parts Department of the great city of Smoke.”

These words greet Tuxxel on his first day at the warehouse, a building so massive the ceiling can’t be seen, yet what follows is anything but welcoming. An Exterminator in the city of Smoke, he finds himself leading a life of violence and subservience. Picked on and abused by his supervisor, he has little choice but to do the dirty work Smoke demands of him. As the days pass and he learns of his city’s horrific treatment of its citizens, he finds it more and more difficult to listen to the orders given to him. He must do what feels right. But disobedience has its consequences.

De-Partment is a dystopian novella about the struggle to maintain one’s sense of self, set in a world both recognizable and entirely foreign. Included here, “The Capsule”, a never-before published short story that fuses poetry with prose to create a unique literary experience.

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In my mind at least, in the rose-colored glow of memory, The Mountain and The City is one of my best books, and possibly the one I enjoyed writing the most. As I explain in a brief afterword near its end, TMATC didn’t begin as a novel at all, but as a short story for a website I can’t remember, and as far as I’m aware no longer exists. Even that came about from a brief Twitter interaction with the site’s owner that ended in me promising to write a story to be featured at some later date.

The feature came and went, giving me the brief excitement of seeing my name on their front page. Left with nothing else to do with the story, I published it on a whim to Kindle, free of charge, figuring it might get a few eyes on my other work. I was surprised to see it not only downloaded thousands of times, but well-reviewed to boot. Many of those reviewers asked what happened to its two main characters next, and I had to admit that, though I previously hadn’t given it any thought, I was curious to find out as well.

In that moment TMATC became a serial, six installments in all. It also became a game of intentionally painting myself into a corner at the end of each installment, just so I could figure out how to get myself out of it in the next. These became the serial’s cliffhangers, serving to not only entice people to keep reading, but to shock my writer’s brain into action. The result is a book I’m very proud of, unexpected in its turns, and satisfying the promise of its characters. I think you’ll enjoy it, too.

The virus wiped out mankind in a matter of days. Now the survivors are being hunted by what it left behind.

Years after global extinction, a young woman with no name hides in a mountain above a dead city. She lives her life with the door and windows taped shut, because survival comes down to two, simple rules: stay quiet, and protect the air. Anything less means death, or worse: becoming one of them.

But one day a curious, little monster comes up the mountain. It's a meeting that leads to a fateful decision, and a sacrifice that will change everything.

Collected here for the first time, The Mountain and The City is a post-apocalyptic serial that has kept its faithful readers on the edge of their seats time and time again.

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My second novel, Kissing You is Like Trying to Punch a Ghost, is a bit of an anomaly in my catalog. It was a NaNoWriMo entry, for starters, which means I wrote it entirely in the month of November, a feat I haven’t attempted again since. I think at the time I was burnt out on taking so long to finish my first book, A Chemical Fire, and wasn’t excited about heading back out into that war. So when National Novel Writing Month came around, I decided it would be a good exercise in speeding up my process, forcing me into daily rather than long-term goals. It worked, a little too much so, leaving my head spinning on a daily basis. Since then I’ve landed on a speed somewhere between the two and that seems to suit me.

It’s also an anomaly because it’s not a horror story, and barely science fiction. The truth is I hadn’t fully embraced my genre writer nametag at the time, and was still feeling my way around to find where I fit in. I do that to this day, but at least now I’ve written enough books to have an idea of where that might be. I had literary dreams, inspired by Chuck Palahniuk, Craig Clevenger and Denis Johnson. It took some time to stop trying to be the next them and instead be the first me, for better or worse.

KYILTTPAG is probably the book of mine that’s been read the least, yet the title people have commented on the most. I see it as my Snakes on a Plane, my When the Pawn Hits, half of its value in the title, the rest in trying to live up to it. If you find your head spinning by the time you reach the last page, know that I was right there with you.

Christopher is an odd-job man, making a living doing the chores no one else wants to. He doesn't drive and he just may have a crush on the sword-swallower girl who performs down on the boardwalk.

When he agrees to be the test subject for an experimental drug named ReQular, a transdermal patch with unknown effects, things begin to change. Between reporting to the three scientists who lead the research, he becomes wrapped up in the lives of various people- Eddie, a man who lives on the street, Jeanie, a spoiled rich daughter, even the Sword Girl, who regards him as a stalker as she draws him close then pushes him away. Most dangerously, he becomes obsessed with destroying the life of a random man he passes on the street, for reasons even he himself can't be sure of.

Through stranger and stranger turns, Christopher gets wrapped up in a world of questions: what is ReQular, who are the mysterious Murphy Group, and who can he trust?

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Welcome to the first novel for paid subscribers of Telegrams from Bloodstream City. It also happens to the very first book I published, my debut novel from all the way back in 2010.

It’s hard to believe this book came out so long ago, and yet it still holds such a special place in my heart. I had struggled for years to finish a full-length novel, filing away countless false starts in a folder of shame. As it turned out, I just needed a story I cared about enough to finish. While it may not be perfect, it crackles with the energy of a young writer not exactly knowing what he was doing, but enjoying the ride all the same. Hopefully the same is true for you.

His world ended. Then everyone else’s ended, too.

Meet John Cotard, science teacher and devoted husband. After a car accident turns him onto prescription painkillers, John drugs his life away. First his job, then his marriage crumbles as he does nothing to stop it, lost in a haze of chemicals. Then one night a mysterious fire sweeps through the land, wiping out human-kind and leaving behind zombie-like burn victims. John is left seemingly alone in the world, and he carries on by breaking into houses and stealing what he needs. For him the end of the world actually makes sense- it’s the next step in his self-destruction.

But one-by-one he meets the few remaining survivors, including a woman starving herself thin, a combat-obsessed survivalist and a dangerous face from his past. As they travel across the country they face not only the dangers of the world around them but of each other, discovering the fateful connection they share along the way.

A Chemical Fire is a minimalist, noir vision of the apocalypse, with twists and turns that can’t be missed.

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