Free Kindle Single!

It's Hanukkah, and to celebrate, I'm offering my Kindle Single Get the Greek: A Chrismukkah Tale free until Sunday!

A comic mashup of Christmas, Hanukkah, and the commercialization of the holiday season, it's the perfect tale to get you in the spirit of...of whatever winter holiday you celebrate!

Pick up your copy today, and tell a friend!

New Kindle Single Now Available!

My short story Get the Greek is now available as a Kindle Single in the Amazon bookstore!

To paraphrase the great Mark Twain, "Everyone talks about the commercialization of the holiday season, but nobody does anything about it!"

Had this story been written by populist television personality Bill O'Reilly, it would have been titled Killing Santa. My publisher wanted to title it When Judah Met Santa (though in her Boston accent it came out like "When Juder Met Santer"), but I nixed it because this isn't a love story. It's a short, comic tale about Hanukkah, Christmas, and the lengths one historical figure might go to end the commercialization of the holiday season.

Actually, it's got a few historical figures in there. Plus an angel. And Santa Claus. It all works, believe me.

Get your copy for $0.99 while they're still so cheap!

New Short Story Published!

Revised, expanded, updated, and more relevant than ever, my short story How to Fix a Broken World has been published by Liberty Island!

A blackly humorous tale of creeping insanity, of social media and obsession with current events, it's a short, punchy read.  And, best of all in these harsh economic times, it's absolutely free!  What are you waiting for?  Click over and get reading!

Hold On Is Live!

I'm pleased to announce that my short story Hold On has been published by Liberty Island.

It's a bit of a departure, as it doesn't involve the bizarre, horrific, or supernatural: Hold On is a human story about marriage, parenting, and loss in the not-too-distant future, when America's illegal immigration issues come to a head.

I teased Hold On a little here.  Go give it a read and tell me what you think.

Loss and Grief and Writing About It

This is a terrible story.  The Andrade family has my deepest condolences.

On the loss of his son Julian, San Antonio police officer Jose Andrade said, "It's very difficult; it's the hardest thing I think anyone can go through. I think it's the hardest thing in life. I don't think there's anything harder."

Before I became a parent, I could understand this in a detached, almost academic fashion. After all, I've been familiar with grief.  We've all lost somebody.

Now that I'm a dad, I don't think I could ever understand the breadth of the Andrade family's loss, and I pray that I never have to.

I've talked publicly about adoption before, here and elsewhere.  In those pieces, I've touched briefly on our failed adoption, where we took the baby home, cared for him for a night and a day, and got a call from the agency that the birth mother changed her mind and decided to parent instead.  The details of that experience are too personal to put in writing.  It was extremely difficult, even life-changing, and not entirely in a good way.

But it wasn't the same as the death of one's child.  I suspect it's not even close.

I did reference that experience in my novel The Blessed Man and the Witch.  To illustrate one of the symptoms of a strained marriage, I had my protagonist Hector deal with something similar.  It became a triggering event in his past, and the implications of it have stretched into the novel's sequel (which I'm still writing).  This is not to say that it is the defining moment for him; after all, he's as complicated a figure as any person, and as such is subject to many significant experiences.  But it did mark him and push him in a certain direction.

On Thursday, April 16, my short story Hold On will be published on Liberty Island.  Unlike my other material, it doesn't deal with the bizarre, horrific, or supernatural in any way, though it is set in the near future.  The story addresses themes of marriage, parenting, and loss within the context of America's current illegal immigration crisis.  As always, the intent is to tell a good story, not proselytize, and I believe I've done that with Hold On.

Sometimes, losing someone doesn't make you stronger.  The cracks don't always get repaired.  And the universe doesn't just stop when you're grieving, even though it should.

Get the Greek: A Chrismukkah Tale

My hybrid Christmas/Hanukkah story Get the Greek: A Chrismukkah Tale, was published by Liberty Island!

It's got comedy, pathos, excitement, and the most incisive social commentary you'll ever see outside of a gas station water cooler conversation.  If you've ever been interested in what Judah Maccabee really thinks about the holiday season, then this is the story for you.

There's a little bit of rough language, some implied intimacy, adult situations, mild violence, and angels.  Which reindeer takes a bullet?  What does Heaven's VFW post look like?  Where do cat souls come from?  These questions and more are answered in Get the Greek, free to read on Liberty Island!

Short Fiction: A Pennsylvania Haunting, Part Three

Part One available here.  Part Two available here.

Part Three

     The soft, bloated figure lay uncovered on the living room couch, clad in the loose shirt and trousers such pathetic excuses for men wore abed. His snores resembled a pig’s grunting, and the sight of him, vulnerable in his slumber, elicited nothing but revulsion. She had already primed the eldest daughter, filling her sleeping ears with entreaties to the filthiest acts an avenging angel like herself might envision. Now this…man had his part to play.
Lightly she touched him, gliding barely tangible fingertips along his belly to the pathetic twig and berries he was no doubt so proud of. It wasn’t long before he stirred, lengthening, and if she had been capable of it, she would have vomited the bile of her loathing across his disgusting form. Just a little more, and he would be ready—
“Oh…” he whispered. “Oh, Penelope.”
The ghost froze. How did he know—
Pain transfixed her, an excruciation she had not experienced since she had been numbered amongst the quick. Looking down, she found that she had been stabbed through the guts by a pitted, narrow blade of steel.
Grinning, still gripping the impaling bayonet, the man sat up. “Worth every penny, Penny,” he said. “Amazing what you can get on eBay.”
How could he see her?
Unable to scream, she merely writhed soundlessly, like a worm on a hook.
“This is gonna be good. I’ve been waiting months for this.” She could see nothing behind his eyes. They were as dead and empty as a spider’s.
With a massive, agonizing effort, she pulled herself off the blade. How he could see her and cause her such pain were questions to be asked another time. As she unclenched her will, letting herself return to the cellar where she’d died centuries ago, she saw him get to his feet, still aroused.
It was no matter. She would revenge herself—
A new burst of pain surprised a shriek out of her, an animal howl that shook the dust off the basement shelves.
No!
Wearing only an open red coat, the man’s wife had rammed a cavalry saber through the ghost’s chest, and with a malicious curve of her mouth, began to twist it. Moisture dewed the woman’s thighs.
“Naughty, naughty, touching my husband. Lucky for you we have an…open marriage.” She licked her lips. “Of a sort.”
All the ghost could do was clutch at the saber, slicing her insubstantial hands on the edge.
“Started already?” the man asked, walking down the stairs. Freed, his tumescence bobbed with each step.
“Would I do that?”
He laughed, a high-pitched, yipping sound. “I wouldn’t blame you.” With a grunt and a sigh, he slipped the bayonet back into the ghost’s guts, eliciting a soundless scream that stretched her mouth to inhuman proportions. “God, she’s tight.”
“Feel familiar?” the wife asked her. “We went to a lot of expense to find these blades, sweetheart. Went through a lot of collectors, a lot of fakes. Shame we could only find two. I think there were four who killed you. Or was it five?”
No, the ghost begged. No.
Shaking his head, the man said, “And after all you put us through. Our children. Months of waiting, planning. Still…” He dropped his body weight, the blade slicing from her stomach through her sex. Ectoplasm, thick and glutinous, gushed from the wound.
Over her renewed screams, he said, “We’d’ve done this anyway. It’s just how we get off.”

###

Short Fiction: A Pennsylvania Haunting, Part Two

Part One available here.

Part Two

     Like all of his sex, this new man was contemptible, barely worth her efforts.  Prosaic in his habits, insipid in his demeanor and repulsive in his appearance, he inspired disgust over loathing, amusement over anger.  Calling him something as repugnant as a man elevated him.  Nevertheless, he was an outlet.  An avenging angel like herself had a duty to perform, and in her imprisonment she could not afford to be selective.
At first she waited, allowing them to become comfortable in her home.  She was soon familiar with their proclivities and preferences, their routines and rituals.  The eldest daughter played softball, exchanging femininity for athleticism.  The youngest lived with her face bathed in the glow of electrical devices of varying shapes, sizes, and functions.  The wife, relegated to the servant’s role of cooking, cleaning, and maintaining the house, had no more ambition than the sparrows that lived in the woods nearby.
And what more could be said about the husband?  The ghost’s own father, as buffoonish as he had been, was at least capable of discussing the works of John Locke and Charles de Montesquieu, to say nothing of Martin Luther and Rene Descartes.  In tedious contrast, this new man conversed in nothing but trivialities, offering at the best of times only the blandest of rhetorical victuals.
When it came time to poison them against each other, she began with subtlety, or what passed for it.  She put a foul stink in the nostrils of his wife and daughters whenever he drew near, prompting frequent and vociferous complaints.  Capon that he was, he would remove himself to scrub his body in the bath, using a variety of soaps and unguents to no avail.  It wasn’t long before even his wife shunned him, forcing him to spend his nights sleeping upon the living room’s narrow couch.
The wife, so proud of her meager talents in the kitchen, soon drew groans at the dinner table from ruined meal after ruined meal.  It was an easy task to switch salt for sugar in cake batter, or to pour an injurious quantity of red pepper flake into an unguarded pot of stew.  The ghost's trick of luring insects into a dish was old, yes, but effective, especially when the youngest daughter, already chary of eating, was made the primary victim.  Even the expedient of bringing home meals prepared elsewhere was spoiled by frigid drafts that congealed flavored oils to cold grease and turned crisp coatings into flaccid paste.
A simple distorting of perception was all that was needed to drive the youngest daughter to neurosis.  Every mirror in the house showed her to be grossly obese, covered in rolls of acne-dotted fat.  Between her mother’s tainted cooking and her own creeping instability, the girl barely ate enough to stay conscious throughout the day.  On occasion the girl would bring home bags of sweetmeats and other such viands, and then gorge upon them until vomiting.  Her skin paled to taut whiteness, showing the warp and weft of the bones beneath.
Of all her mischief, the eldest daughter’s ruination was the ghost’s favorite, not least because the girl had been especially fond of the contemptible man of the house.  She endured his phantom stench the longest until, when they were alone, the ghost began to whisper obscene suggestions into her ear in an approximation of his voice.  He denied saying such things, but before long, she refused to subject herself to his presence.  When she bathed, the ghost would open the washroom door to give her the impression that he had been watching.  Pairs of her undergarments would be found between the cushions of the couch he slept upon, and his illusory footsteps could be heard pacing at her bedroom door.
As months passed, none of them could bear the sight of one another.  The excuse for a man meekly submitted to his ostracism, spending as little time at the house as he could.  Both daughters shut themselves away, eschewing food and company.  Bemoaning her helplessness, the wife wept into her hands.
It was glorious.
    And tiresome, eventually.  The game had lost its luster.
She would end it tonight with a caress of his manhood, and as he lay there, alone and aroused, she would call to him in his eldest daughter’s voice, begging for help.  He would go to her, rampant and foul-smelling, and her screams would wake the dead.

Short Fiction: A Pennsylvania Haunting, Part One

Part One

     They were all alike, so why should she hate them any differently? Men had defiled her, taken her life, and doomed her to an eternity of torment. She had been young and beautiful and raped and murdered, and for what? Because her cretinous buffoon of a father had chosen nebulous colonial liberty over solid English nobility? If Heaven had opened its gates to the likes of him, she preferred Hell in this house.
For years she prowled the halls, slamming doors and kicking cabinets as if such petty tantrums could scratch the surface of her fury. It was she who had overturned the lamp that burned the first manor to the ground. What did it matter if children lay abed upstairs, with their stupid cow of a mother choking on fumes mere feet from their door? Where were they when King George’s men ravished her first with their cocks and thence with their bayonets? ‘Twould have been better for the woman if she hadn’t married at all.
The very notion of cleaving oneself to a man forever chilled the ectoplasm in her veins. Innocents aside, she’d only killed a boy and his disgusting, oafish father. Hardly a settling of the account. So even with the house charred to ruin and her lonely corpse blackened to sticks in the cellar, she remained.
Oh, the fun she’d had with the foolish man who’d sought to rebuild, a German with dull blue eyes and fishbelly pale skin. He’d styled himself a mason, and while his family lived in Reading, he cleared the debris and dug a new foundation, tossing away her bones with the refuse. She watched him for days, getting to know his habits, and then slowly drove him mad with misplaced tools, spoiled mortar, and hours of whispered obscenities in his ear. She would caress him while he slept and punch his stones before he finished, making every night an agony. Finally, exhausted, he fell off the ladder one morning and broke his back on a heap of bricks. As he writhed and screamed and begged for help, she let herself be seen, flaunting the bloody horror King George’s men had made of her sex. It was his last sight on this Earth.
Eventually, though, the house was rebuilt.
Unwilling to endure years of boredom with nothing to feed her hatred but the recollection of past evils, she learned a form of subtlety. It would be foolish to destroy the house when she could simply ruin the men who lived inside it. Years passed, and she became expert at inflicting a thousand invisible cuts, licking the blood for nourishment. A twist of the faucet to make baby John’s bath a scalding cauldron here, a close of the flue during a snowstorm’s roaring fire there. Impotence was an easy thing to inflict: the smell of rotting flesh in bed, a terrible sobbing only he could hear, the sight of her furious, loathly face before his eyes at every stir of his manhood. Some of the men took their frustrations out on their wives, others on their children, but none felt a moment’s comfort.
The house went through a dozen owners, each determined to raise a family, make a home, live a dream. All failed. Breads never rose, milk always curdled. As the men wept and raged and finally fled from her invisible, endless mischief, she laughed, fulfilled. Why murder when she could torment?
The piano left with one family, its owner made elderly in his forties through a year’s worth of petty tortures. With the new family came a radio, which she made certain could emit only crackling hisses. They had been stubborn, and she wound up pushing their youngest boy down the stairs in a fit of rage at their stupid faith in a God who had never shown His face. When they’d brought in a priest to exorcize her, she cleverly hid, giving no indication of her presence.
Soon enough a new family arrived, replacing the radio with a large box that showed colorless images on an oval screen. That was when she learned how to draw out her tortures, allowing the men to experience occasional moments of pleasure rather than unremitting misery. He could watch his stupid baseball games, but never without frustrating moments of static. She allowed him to cook his meat on the outdoor grill during the summer months, but when his back was turned she fanned the flames to scorching.
She also discovered that men were quick to assign blame if an obvious culprit was offered. Thumbtacks in his shoes could be easily traced to his son, who endured beatings as a result. A roach in his food three dinners running could only be the malicious work of his wife. Drinking followed. Screaming fights. Infidelity. Divorce.
And now, what was this? After three years of emptiness, workmen had arrived with cans of paint and bundles of lumber. Another family to ruin? Though every fiber of her insubstantial body ached to push them off their ladders, she held off to let them finish their work.
It was worth the wait. The new man who’d come to live in her house was weak. A soft midsection and heavy glasses. Receding hairline. In tow, a fragile-looking wife and two teenage daughters with their faces stuck in looks of perpetual disapproval. Perfect.
By next winter she’d have them cutting his throat.