New Book Announcement!
My next title will be...
Checking the records, the last book I published was 2024’s Bludgeoner, my short and messy homage to eighties teen slashers. It’s a novella about a group of high school kids in the fictional town of San Palmo, who sneak out to party and end up running face-first into the titular killer. And the Bludgeoner, he’s exactly as friendly as his name suggests. So while that book technically only came out six months ago, that was like all the way last year, right? Booooo. We need something new, am I right?
Funny you should say that.
You might have noticed that a number of stories I put out in the last year took place in the town of San Palmo, the same setting as Bludgeoner. Or that some of the character names seemed strangely familiar, as if they’d showed up in another story before. Well the good news is, you’re not losing your mind.
This Town is Sick is a book I’ve thought about writing for a long time, one in which every story is connected, whether it be by people, places, or objects, and often all by all three. I’ve always been drawn to directors like Quentin Tarantino, who plant clues in their movies that allude to a larger, shared world, so that people like me can daydream about how to fill in the spaces between. I’ve occasionally snuck Easter eggs into my work, but those were mostly for my own amusement. For the longest time I’ve wanted to write something for those people like me, the nerds who trade story connections like baseball cards. I was never quite sure how I would do that, but something about creating the town of San Palmo for Bludgeoner gave me the go-ahead. The result has been an occasionally confusing but always rewarding process, during which I’ve had to obsessively update an index of the people and places of San Palmo just to keep it all in order.
And you may ask, is it worth it? To which I reply, let me work it.
This Town is Sick is nineteen stories that make up one larger story, with plenty of space for the daydreamers to splash around in. But a special breed of daydreamers, the ones that dream about serial killers and hauntings, and who splash around in blood.
Listen, I’m not for everyone.
But make no mistake: this isn’t just me publishing a bunch of stories you’ve already read. In fact, if I had to estimate, I’d say previously published stories make up only about half of This Town is Sick’s total runtime.
Stay tuned in the coming weeks for updates on the release date and preorder. I can’t wait for you to come on down to San Palmo, where the water is most definitely not fine.