Another submission accepted!

Serial Killers Tres Tria. Edited by James Ward Kirk and published by JWK

On the back of my short story Doing it for JRD (Justice, Revenge and Deliverance) being accepted for publication in Sex, Drugs & Horror, an anthology edited by the wonderful James Ward Kirk, I am pleased to announce that another of my short stories has been accepted for publication in another of James Ward Kirk’s anthologies; this time I am to be published in his third Serial Killers anthology, Serial Killers Tres Tria, available later this year. Check out the killer cover by William Cook! Isn’t it just awesome!

If you click on the cover image above, you’ll be taken to the submissions page for this particular anthology, and because submissions are still open, I suggest you all get writing and give it a go.

Better still, get on over to JWKfiction.com and see what other submissions are open, and while you’re at it, treat yourself to some wonderful books!

And before I forget — A huge thank you once more to the wonderful James Ward Kirk, and to all of you wonderful people who take the time to read my stories, especially the author and a good friend of mine, M.C. O’Neill, who does a great job beta-reading for me and pokes me with a huge barbed stick and tells me to submit my stuff. Thank you, Mark!

A huge thank you to Troy Blackford!

My printed, signed copy of For Those With Eyes To See by Troy Blackford

I try to be very loyal to the authors I read, and with Troy Blackford, I have all of his available books and I try to read all the short stories that he has had the fortune to have published online.

He was one of the main people to inspire me to take up writing, and for that I thank him. Reading his books led me to make the decision to finally do it and not just sit there reading other peoples’ books and thinking i wish i could do that. He, along with another truly inspirational author, Ksenia Anske spurred me into action.

I was scrolling through my writers and authors list on Twitter not long ago when suddenly up pops a mention from @TBlackford3, Troy Blackford informing me that I had been fortunate enough to be a runner-up in a prize draw that he had held, though the prize I had won remained a mystery to me at that time. I duly gave him my address via a Twitter DM, and lo and behold, a few weeks later I receive a package in the mail from the USA. Carefully opening it, I found it contained a lovely printed copy of Troy’s latest short story collection, For Those With Eyes To See, complete with a great inscription to myself.

For that wonderful prize and a great inscription, my reply to Troy is: No, Troy. You the man, bro’! *smiley face* And thank YOU so much!

Go and support both of these wonderful authors. You can find Troy at http://www.troyblackford.com/ and Ksenia at http://www.kseniaanske.com/.

The “Sex, Drugs & Horror” cover is awesome!

Not long to wait now until my short story that i mentioned in my previous post is published. I took a stroll on over to jwkfiction.com, the website of horror author and publisher James Ward Kirk to check out the cover for the Sex, Drugs & Horror anthology, and i must say that i love it!

Great artwork, and a font that takes me back to the science fiction paperbacks of the 1970s. I’ll show you a picture of it below, and clicking on it will take you to the submissions page for the anthology, which are still open until the 30th of June, by the way.

The cover for the Sex, Drugs & Horror anthology, edited by James Ward Kirk

And once again, a great big thank you to James Ward Kirk for including me in what i know will be a wonderful anthology and a truly great read. Roll on publication in the first week of July.

I wrote a story in honour of JRD

Time for celebration!

A few days ago, I had an idea burst free from my head and onto the virtual page. It was a short story in honour of James Roy Daley, an amazing author and the man behind BOOKSoftheDEADPRESS.

It featured mostly narration by a serial killer looking back on the first time he killed, and the circumstances surrounding it. It was nasty, graphic and featured very explicit sex and sexual swear words. I was very proud of it, and I sent it to JRD, who thought it was great. Incidentally, the story is entitled Doing it for JRD (Justice, Revenge and Deliverance).

Another friend of mine, author M.C. O’Neill read it too, thought it was awesome and suggested that I submit it to James Ward Kirk at http://jwkfiction.com/ to see if it would be accepted for his upcoming Serial Killers Tres Tria anthology. Following his advice, I submitted the story, taking care to read through all of the submission requirements, and then I left it at that, hoping that I might be lucky enough to be accepted, but quite content in the knowledge that even if it didn’t make the cut it wasn’t the end of the world, because there are thousands of places to submit to.

To cut a long story short: tonight I got a reply from James Ward Kirk who said he loved the story and that he wanted to use it in his Sex, Drugs & Horror anthology which is to be published during the first week of July. He actually said that if I preferred for it to feature instead in the Serial Killers Tres Tria anthology, he’d send over a different contract, but thinking about it now, there’s a lot of horror and a lot of sex in the story, and because it’s about a killer’s first kill, it would be more suited towards the Sex, Drugs & Horror anthology.

Needless to say, I’ve written a bio and the contract has been signed and returned to JWK by electronic carrier pigeon, so next month will see me as being a published author in at least one anthology, if not two, as i have another story coming out shortly in an anthology that has been written in collaboration with some of my friends and fellow writers from the Easter Bunny’s Apocalypse  collective.

Things are looking up for me, folks, and now i’ve got my foot on the first rung of the ladder there will be no stopping me!

It’s been so long…

Normal service has been resumed

…since i blogged anything at all. I checked the date, and it was May 5th. Things just seem to have slipped away for a while, plus i have had some family issues to deal with.

I had a bad case of writer’s block, and to those who say they don’t believe in it i say that you have never had it. I could not even write out a shopping list! This feels like deja-vu to me. i swear i’ve said it before!

You’ll be glad to know that i’ve managed to ride through it and am writing again. There’s an apocalyptic-themed story that i’ve completed for an anthology, Echoes of the Wasteland, entitled All Sunshine Makes the Desert which i am very pleased with and which hopefully will be released quite soon; i’ve submitted a short story to James Ward Kirk at his website http://jwkfiction.com/ about a serial killer’s first kill, entitled Doing it for JRD that i just might expand into a novel, and i’m still working on my fantasy piece The Magic of Music for the Neverland’s Library anthology, which i hope to finish and submit before the closing date for submissions on June 20th.

Oh, and of course, there’s the debut novel that i never seem to get time to do anything with because of all the short story ideas i keep having that need to be written down before my clunky old brain forgets about them!

I’ll keep plodding on in the hope that people are still interested in reading my stuff. I’m not sure they’re bothered about the blog though, because my traffic seems to have more or less dried up since i left WordPress.com to be a self-hosted WordPress site. It’s a fucking shame, because my stories are pretty good, even if i do say so myself! And I’m not the only one who has noticed that people just aren’t reading blogs any more. I have friends who are established authors who have also noticed a huge drop in their site traffic. Do them, me and yourselves a favour; go visit their blogs and their websites and read some quality writing. We all would benefit by it, and you would have our deepest gratitude.

Turn off your games consoles, get outside in the sun, go and play some real games with your children, have a little fun, leave off the TV, and go and read some books while you’re at it, too!

Rant over. It’s good to be back and writing. Show us writers some love and go read us. We all need some love!