WOLF HUNT 3 Limited Edition

At long last, the hardcover limited edition of Wolf Hunt 3 is up for pre-order! (It’ll ship in late April from Weird House Press.) Cover art by Frank Walls, who did the covers to the limited editions of Wolf Hunt 1 & 2.

Pre-order it HERE.

Early next week I’m heading up to Virginia for Scares That Care AuthorCon! Before that, I’ll be an instructor at the Scares That Care Writers Workshop, so if you come up to my table and I just stare at you with glazed eyes as I babble softly and incoherently, please forgive me.

March 15

Welcome to mid-March!

I had three short stories due at the end of this month, and I’m pleased to announce that I turned all of them in early. Granted, that’s because I’m very, very, very busy preparing for the Scares That Care Writers Workshop, where I’m an instructor and which is also at the end of this month, and so something had to get done early.

Still, “Torture Porn For Prudes,” “Snippy,” and “Avert Thine Eyes” are all done and off to the editors.

It’s just under a month until my novelization of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is widely available! (Copies ordered directly from the publisher shipped weeks ago.) This article about the rise, fall, and rebirth of novelizations has very kind things to say about it, so click HERE.

Splatterpunk Award Nominees Announced

The finalists for the Splatterpunk Awards have been announced! I am not among them, thanks to their weird bias against authors who didn’t publish any splatterpunk fiction in 2022. But here’s the list:

Congratulations to this year’s Splatterpunk Award nominees! Stay messy, my friends!

For Immediate Release

Wrath James White and Brian Keene are pleased to announce the final ballot for the 2023 Splatterpunk Awards, honoring superior achievement in the literary subgenres of Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror fiction published in 2022, as well as the sixth recipient of the J.F. Gonzalez Lifetime Achievement Award, and the recommendation process for the coming year.

The nominees are as follows:

BEST NOVEL*

— Playground by Aron Beauregard (Independently Published)

— The Television by Edward Lee (Madness Heart Press)

— Faces of Beth by Carver Pike (Independently Published)

— Last of the Ravagers by Bryan Smith (Thunderstorm Books / Death’s Head Press)

— Mastodon by Steve Stred (Black Void Publishing)

— Ex-Boogeyman (Slasher vs The Remake) by Kristopher Triana (Bad Dream Books / Thunderstorm Books)

BEST NOVELLA

— Charcoal by Garrett Cook (Clash Books)

— Grandpappy by Patrick C. Harrison III (Independently Published)

— Mr. Tilling’s Basement by Edward Lee (Deadite Press)

— #thighgap by Chandler Morrison (Cemetery Gates Media)

— Plastic Monsters by Daniel J. Volpe (Independently Published)

BEST SHORT STORY

— “Just Another Bloodbath at Camp Woe-Be-Gone” by R.J. Benetti (Independently Published)

— “Of The Worm” by Ryan Harding (from Splatterpunk Zine issue 13)

— “My Chopping List” by Stephen Kozeniewski (from Counting Bodies Like Sheep, The Evil Cookie Publishing)

— “Gutted” by Bracken MacLeod (from Splatterpunk Zine issue 13)

— “Jinx” by Bridgett Nelson (from A Bouquet of Viscera)

BEST COLLECTION

— Always Listen To Her Hurt: Collected Works by Kenzie Jennings (Blistered Siren Press)

— Mr. Tilling’s Basement and Other Stories by Edward Lee (Deadite Press)

— Horrorsmut by Christine Morgan (The Evil Cookie Publishing)

— A Bouquet of Viscera by Bridgett Nelson (Independently Published)

— Pornography For the End of the World by Brendan Vidito (Weirdpunk Books)

BEST ANTHOLOGY

— Human Monsters edited by Sadie Hartmann and Ashley Sawyers (Dark Matter Ink)

— Camp Slasher Lake, Volume 1 edited by D.W. Hitz and Candace Nola (Fedowar Press)

— Counting Bodies Like Sheep edited by K. Trap Jones (The Evil Cookie Publishing)

— Call Me Hoop edited by SC Mendes & Lucy Leitner, created by Drew Stepek (Blood Bound Books)

— Czech Extreme edited by Lisa Lee Tone (Madness Heart Press)

J. F. GONZALEZ LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD**

— Monica J. O’Rourke

The final ballot is composed of top recommendations from readers, critics, and the general public and then voted on by our panel of six judges. The sixth annual Splatterpunk Awards will take place at KillerCon in Austin, Texas August 12th. For more details, visit http://www.killerconaustin.com.

The recommendation process for next year’s ballot is now open to readers, critics, and the general public. Eligible works must be first published in 2023, and must meet the definitions of either Splatterpunk or Extreme Horror. Email recommendations to splatterpunkawards@gmail.com. The recommendation window will close at 11:50pm (EST) on December 31, 2023. THERE WILL BE NO EXTENSIONS.

Thank you,

Wrath James White and Brian Keene, Splatterpunk Award cofounders.

* Tie category

** The previous J. F. Gonzalez Lifetime Achievement Award recipients are David J. Schow, David G. Barnett, Edward Lee, John Skipp, and Clive Barker.

DEMONIC Available Now!

Hey, Demonic is available a couple of days sooner than I’d anticipated! When I clicked “Publish” on the paperback edition around midnight last night, I figured it would be up around Tuesday, but you can get it NOW NOW NOW!!!

Available in Kindle and paperback editions!

January 21

My team of beta readers (Tod Clark, Donna Fitzpatrick, Jamie La Chance, Jim Morey, Bridgett Nelson, and Paul Synuria II) got their Demonic feedback to me, and so the final version of the book is done! I was hoping for some embarrassing blunders I could report back for your entertainment, but they were standard-issue mistakes.

It’s now off to Lynne Hansen for formatting. So the book should be ready to go next week!

Here’s the (tentative) back cover copy:

From the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Pressure and Autumn Bleeds Into Winter, comes a new novel of unrelenting terror.

Corey is falling in love with his co-worker Quinn. This is a problem. Not only because Quinn is married, but because her husband is a serial killer known as the Toledo Trasher, who has been forcing her to participate in his savage crimes. 

With nothing but Quinn’s best interests in mind, Corey shows up at their home with a gun in his pocket and a knife in his hand.

Unfortunately, there are some very dark forces at work, and Corey makes Quinn’s situation worse than he could have ever imagined. And now things are about to get really, really bloody…

With his trademark frenetic pacing and pitch-black humor, Demonic is Jeff Strand at his devilish best. 

January 17

Here’s Lynne Hansen’s cover for my new novel, Demonic. The book should be out…well, not any day now, but within a couple of weeks, I’d guess. And it’s cray!

January 15

Yesterday was my beginning-to-end proofread of the new novel, which then went on to my crack team of test readers. I didn’t find that many embarrassing errors. Oh, there were embarrassing errors, mostly of the “character injuries that I simply forgot about” but they’d been caught already and just needed to be fixed. But I didn’t find many NEW embarrassing errors.

I’ll probably share the title, cover and book description on Tuesday.

January 12 (Part II)

And….the new book is finished!

The next step is to do a beginning-to-end read, tightening things up and searching for continuity errors. (I edit as I go, so this isn’t one of those “just get it done and worry about fixing everything later” rough drafts.) Then it’s off to the crack team of proofreaders.

Because this will be self-published, you won’t have to wait very long to read it…

January 12 (Part I)

Yesterday’s goal was not to finish my new novel, but to reach a point where it was unthinkable that I wouldn’t finish it today. I stayed up until 3:00 AM, like a college student frantically finishing up a term paper, and got there. The book should be done well before lunchtime. And then I’m taking a long-ass nap.

January 8

With my last update, I said that the new book should be done “in about a week” and that’s still the case. I’m guessing four to five days until it reaches its dramatic conclusion.

Meanwhile, I now owe six short stories so far in 2023. Fortunately, most of the deadlines are spaced apart: January 20, March 31, April 1, June 30, August 1, September 30. Of course, not only are the March 31/April 1 deadlines one day apart, but Borderlands Boot Camp is March 29-31, and it’s going to require a lot of prep time on my part…so, yeah, I’ll be a bit busy at the end of March.

(Or I could start much sooner. We’ll see how that works out.)

Registration for Borderlands Boot Camp (an intensive writing workshop) is open until January 31. The other instructors are Brian Keene, Mary San Giovanni, Norman Prentiss, Maurice Broaddus, and John Urbancik. More details HERE.