Keith Pyeatt's Horror with Heart blog

My flash fiction / contest / newsletter extravaganza!

2012-02-01T10:11:00.000-07:00

I had loads of fun writing my Horror with Heart Newsletter #10, the "Daeva's Turn" issue. I started by writing a flash fiction Valentine story, Horror with Heart style. Then I wrote four alternate endings, turned it into a poll, a challenge, and a contest to win one of my ebooks. I'm also sharing some exciting news about my next Horror with Heart novel.

So if you're in the mood for a little flash fiction and fun, and you don't already subscribe to my newsletter, I invite you to view "Daeva's Turn" online by CLICKING HERE.

If you want to enter the contest to win a free ebook, you need to be a Horror with Heart Newsletter subscriber. It's easy to become one and even easier to unsubscribe if you change your mind later (there's an unsubscribe link at the bottom of every newsletter). Find the gold box to the right under the "HWH Newsletter" heading, enter your email address and your name, and click submit.

Writing Flash Fiction

2012-01-30T10:09:00.002-07:00

If you place your tongue firmly in your cheek, you might call my novel Struck flash fiction. After all, it starts off like this:

But there really is such a thing as flash fiction. I wrote my first piece in a writing exercise/competition at one of the writers organizations I frequent. It was fun and challenging. I decided to write another piece to include in my upcoming Horror with Heart Newsletter (sample my last one HERE, subscribe using the gold box to the right). I'm having a blast with it. It now has four endings, and it's going to be a poll/challenge/contest combination for my newsletter subscribers. Yeah, I'm getting maximum use out of a 1000 word story, aren't I? Why not? I think it'll be fun.

As dumb luck and good timing would have it, talented author, editor, and publisher Anne Petty (Kitsune Books, check out their novels if you haven't before) posted some very helpful BLOG articles on writing flash fiction. If you're interested in writing flash fiction, here are the links to Anne's flash fiction posts. I'm sure you'll find them helpful too.

Part 1: http://annepetty.blogspot.com/2012/01/thoughts-on-flash-fiction.html

Part 2: http://annepetty.blogspot.com/2012/01/writing-flash-fiction-part-2.html

Part 3: http://annepetty.blogspot.com/2012/01/writing-flash-fiction-part-3.html

Above Haldis Notch, the ad

2012-01-27T17:56:00.000-07:00

Valerie Tibbs designed this ad that will be used to sell (I hope) some copies of Above Haldis Notch.

Readers love Above Haldis Notch

2012-01-14T09:34:00.001-07:00

At least that's my optimistic take-a-way from Preditors & Editors yearly Readers' Poll. But seriously, it was a thrill to be nominated for best horror novel published in 2011 (I still don't know who nominated it, but THANKS!). It was even a bigger thrill when Above Haldis Notch came in 3rd out of over 40 nominees in the horror novel category.

Huge thanks to everyone who voted for Above Haldis Notch or gave me encouragement. I felt like I needed a shot of enthusiasm, and it's readers' input that provides it for me. As luck would have it, I started getting great reader input on my novels Struck and Dark Knowledge as the P&E Poll was going on, so I actually got several shots of enthusiasm all at once. I ain't complaining. I'm enthused! (See dancing man above.)

If you missed the poll but are curious about the novel, the listing on Amazon has great ways to sample 3 or 4 chapters to get a good idea if you like it. If you have a Kindle, click the "try it for free" button on the right, and they'll send the free sample to your Kindle. If you don't have a Kindle or prefer to sample it online, click the cover image for the "look inside" feature, and you can read the chapters on your computer screen.

Nominated for Best Horror Novel, 2011

2012-01-05T09:56:00.004-07:00

1-7-12 Update: With 3 days left to vote, Above Haldis Notch is running 3rd.
1-9-12 Update: Tomorrow is the last day of voting, and I'm holding 3rd place. Thanks to all who've voted so far.

Great news! Last night I learned Above Haldis Notch was nominated for Best Horror Novel published in 2011 over at the Preditors & Editors yearly Readers' Poll. I'm still uncertain how that happened, but WooHoo!

To vote for Above Haldis Notch, visit the link below before the end of the day on January 10th. If you're not familiar with the novel, Amazon's "look inside" feature provides a nice size sample that I hope will hook you. Click here to see for yourself.

Here's the link to vote: http://critters.org/predpoll/novelh.shtml

You know you're a character-intensive writer when...

2011-12-20T13:28:00.000-07:00

My mother used to comment about how I studied people, even when I was a kid. I vaguely recall watching my parents' friends so closely that I sometimes made them uncomfortable or prompted them to ask what I was thinking about. My mother would quickly chime in that she suspected I was going to become a psychologist, and I was getting a head start studying human nature. I soon learned to people watch from the corner of my eye.

My sweet mother might have been surprised to learn I began writing instead of psychoanalyzing, creating woes for fictional characters instead of helping real people deal with theirs, but she wouldn't have been surprised that my novels are so character-focused.

We just returned from Mexican Riviera cruise. It was a great and relaxing trip, and time and time again I was reminded how I enjoy people- (and animal-) watching and speculating on motivations and lives beyond the sliver I get to witness. So:

You know you're a character-intensive writer when...

...you see a harem of seals lounging by the ocean and study them, wondering what kind of dynamics are going on.

...you wander off a cruise ship in Mexico to wade through streets lined with locals "in your face" about taking you fishing or sailing or to a beach and you look into their eyes as you say "no thanks" for the one hundredth time and wonder what their lives are like.

...you sit on the cruise ship and actively listen to conversations around you, noting what folks observe and comment on, what attracts their attention and why.

On the other hand, you know you're NOT an artist when you see incredibly beautiful or visually fascinating, colorful sights but don't want to paint or draw them, instead making mental notes of how you might describe them in words. I'm terrible about not taking pictures, but here are a few that make me wish I painted (or wanted to learn how). I'd describe them instead of posting pictures, but these shots save me 4000 words to use somewhere else. Enjoy.

I can be bought

2011-12-05T17:00:00.007-07:00

A few people have contacted me recently wondering where they can buy my novels or reporting problems with certain purchase sites. First of all, THANKS to anyone and everyone who wants to buy my novels, and make no mistake about it -- I can be bought, and I want to make it easy for you.

Below are some handy purchase links grouped by booksellers' websites. Available formats are listed under each site's logo. Below the logos are my novels that are available for purchase there. Click the novel cover to go to the purchase page.

Note that most purchase pages include novel summaries and excerpts, so you can try before you buy. If not, you can read summaries, reviews, and excerpts on my website.

Paperback (Struck) or Kindle eBook format

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Multiple eBook formats

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Paperback (Struck) or Nook eBook format

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Multiple eBook formats

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Multiple eBook formats

Interview with a villain's maker

2011-12-03T07:37:00.000-07:00

Jake Webb, clearly the bad boy of Above Haldis Notch, had his own interview a couple days ago on my publisher's BLOG. Now it's my turn. I chose the high road and didn't threaten Jake in return for his "stuff my mouth" comment.

I'm very happy to be Amaleen Ison's guest. She posts great interviews, and now I know how she pulls so much information out of writers.Check the interview out by clicking the image below.

I hope you'll stop by. There's a comment trail, and I'll stop by periodically today, so feel free to say hello or ask a question (like "Okay, just how does Amaleen pull so much information out of writers?").

Interview with a villain

2011-12-01T19:56:00.003-07:00

A character from Above Haldis Notch got his own interview over on Musa Publishing's BLOG. Unfortunately, it was Jake. He's not a nice man on a good day, and it seems he was in a particularly bad mood for the interview, even by his standards. I've never been threatened by one of my own characters before.

Was it something I said?

Check out Jake's interview at http://musapublishing.blogspot.com/2011/12/interview-with-jake-webb-from-above.html.

Lessons from a Newsletter

2011-11-29T09:48:00.001-07:00

I emailed subscribers of my Horror with Heart Newsletter a new issue yesterday, The Vermont Issue. I enjoy emailing out the newsletters for several reasons. For one thing, I like to be read, and the newsletters spread the word about my novels. I also like connecting with friends and readers, and the newsletters give folks a reason, or at least a prompt, to write back and say howdy. A couple dozen subscribers reply after each newsletter -- more if I specifically ask for input about something -- and I love that contact. It's the only direct connection I have with some friends.

This newsletter was especially fun to write because it was about the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, my former home and the setting of my new release. I included an "Insiders Info to Above Haldis Notch" section, and writing it led me to remember living in Vermont. Remembering led me to share some pictures. I set a limit of eight, so I wouldn't overwhelm anyone. I'm not much of a shutterbug, but after a decade in Vermont, surrounded by so much natural beauty, I have enough photos that selecting only eight was difficult.

I'm happy with the way the newsletter came out. If you don't subscribe, you can view it online by clicking this link: Horror with Heart Newsletter 9 - The Vermont Issue. Go ahead and take a look, see the pictures of Vermont I mentioned. I'll still be here when you get back.

Now that you've seen it, I'll tell you what I learned with this newsletter. Include enough beautiful photos of Vermont, and folks won't even notice there's no cover image for the new novel, the one the newsletter is supposed to be promoting. Yikes!

When I was readying the newsletter to send out, some glitch in the program I use made some pictures disappear, so I had to reload them. I didn't notice the cover image for Above Haldis Notch had gone missing, and I sent the newsletter out without it. I got my usual flurry of replies. All mentioned how great the photos of Vermont were. Several mentioned they purchased my new novel (yay!). NONE mentioned the lack of a cover. I finally asked a few people if they'd noticed. Nope. Ha. Just another way the beauty of Vermont continues to impress me.

Did you notice? Post a comment if you did.

I've posted pictures of Vermont and my cabin there before, so if you liked the pictures in the newsletter, here are links to earlier BLOG posts with more photos: Coincidences you couldn't get away with in fiction, Spot the dog, and Remembering Vermonters and Vermont.

Release day for Above Haldis Notch

2011-11-25T07:06:00.002-07:00

WooHoo! Release day is finally here, and it feels great to have a fresh novel on the market. It's been over two years since the original release of my second published novel, Dark Knowledge. But Now Above Haldis Notch joins the marketplace. And believe me, it lives up to the brand, Horror with Heart. There's a lot of heart in this novel, and it just might scare you too.

I've always loved this novel and the characters in it. It's kind of my tribute to the decade I lived in Vermont, a great time in my life. There's been a lot of work going into getting the novel all gussied up and ready for sale. Musa Publishing did a great job. As mentioned in an earlier blog, I was very pleased with the editing. I love the formatting, the way it looks on an e-reader (or in .pdf if you read on the computer screen), and the cover's fantastic.

It's available for $4.99 at Musa Publishing's website, where you can also read a summary and an excerpt. Same price at Amazon's site, where you can read a nice long excerpt using "look inside." You can read the prologue on my website, and today, my BLOG post, A Tale of Two Notches, is up on Musa Publishing's BLOG to give a little background and insight into the novel.

So there are plenty of opportunities to sample before you turn loose of that $4.99 to purchase. If it looks good to you and you read it, I'd love to hear your impressions.

I'll email a new issue of my Horror with Heart newsletter to subscribers in a few days, sharing some inside information behind and inside the novel. If you're not subscribed but want to be, look at the top right portion of this site and use that gold box to sign up. I'll also post a link to view the newsletter online once it's been emailed to subscribers.

Thanks for letting me crow. Release Day is a BIG DAY for us authors. WooHoo!

Above Haldis Notch available for pre-order

2011-10-25T16:24:00.007-07:00

Physical death is tragic, but the
death of a spirit is a life lost forever

The folks at Musa Publishing did a great job with my novel. I love my cover, and I'm thrilled with my editor and the way Above Haldis Notch has been groomed for publication.

I've been lucky with editors, and Bri, my editor for this novel, certainly continued my streak. It energizes me when my editor and I team up with the common goal to make my novel stronger and to get rid of every little (or big) thing we can find that might jolt a reader out of my story. It's even better when trust is developed between author and editor, and that trust was established early and did nothing but grow as the process continued.

So here's a big thank you kiss to great editors everywhere.

And now that my novel is in its final revisions and coming down the home stretch, exactly one month away from its official release day, I'm pleased to announce that it's now available for pre-order from the publisher for $4.99. Go to the Above Haldis Notch webpage at Musa Publishing by CLICKING HERE. Be sure to specify which eBook format you want. And a bonus tip: Look around at the other Musa titles while you're there.

Can we chat?

2011-10-10T09:22:00.002-07:00

Sure we can, and here's where and when...

Writer's Chatroom

Celebrity Sunday Chat
Horror Month

Sunday, October 23rd

from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM (EST)

http://writerschatroom.com

Writer's Chatroom is an award-winning website where writers interact. In addition to their workshops and classes, they have weekly chat sessions with selected guest authors. Readers or other writers ask questions about writing in general, the guest author's novels, or anything they'd like to know (and the guest author chooses to answer). I'm proud to be the guest author October 23rd as part of Writer's Chatroom's Horror Month.

There's no fee, no password needed, no subscription required. Just go to http://writerschatroom.com/Enter.htm when the chat opens or during the chat and enter a user's name for your visit. Ask me questions or sit back and take it in, it's up to you, but be sure to stay through the first hour. They give away prizes at the midpoint break.

Please note the time is EST, so make adjustments accordingly. There's a little clock on the entry page which shows what time it is in that time zone.

Hope to chat with you there.

Above Haldis Notch has cover

2011-10-06T09:02:00.002-07:00

The release date for my paranormal thriller/horror novel Above Haldis Notch is the day after Thanksgiving, just over 7 weeks away. Musa Publishing has been great to work with. My editor Brianna is wonderful. We've completed the first round of edits, and I'm happy with how we're tuning it up. We have a second round of content edits to go and then the copy edits, but we're making good progress.

And now I have a cover, designed by the very talented Kelly Shorten. I love it. It's gritty and creepy in just the right proportions, has a rural Vermont feel, and contains important elements from inside the pages. I'd write another thousand words describing the cover to you, but I'm sure we'd all rather I post a picture instead. So here it is. *drum roll please*

I hope you love it as much as I do.

Above Haldis Notch now has its own page on Musa Publishing's website. If you're interested in a few details of what happens inside the cover, CLICK HERE.

Musa Excitement

2011-09-30T07:52:00.004-07:00

I can't even imagine the work involved in starting up a publishing company, so it's been fascinating to witness a little bit of the activity. My publisher for Above Haldis Notch launches October 1st, tomorrow as I write this.

http://musapublishing.com

I'm a pretty careful guy, and normally, I might have steered clear of a start up publisher, but I'm thrilled to be on the ground floor of this one. There's a great depth of talent and experience at Musa Publishing, and I've been stunned (in a good way) at the amount of energy, enthusiasm, and just plain hard work going on by all these talented folks. They have quite a staff and already have a full schedule of novel and book releases through the first quarter of 2012.

I know it's been tremendously hard coordinating everything involved in this effort, but they've done a great job and should enjoy a spectacular launch tomorrow. They'll take off with three new books and the inaugural issue of their speculative fiction e-magazine, Penumbra.

As for me, things are moving along very well with my paranormal thriller, which is scheduled to be released the day after Thanksgiving, November 25th. I have a great editor, and I look forward to seeing -- and sharing with you -- the cover Musa is designing for my novel. I'll be mentioning Above Haldis Notch more as the release date nears. Until then, if you're looking for something good to read, click the Musa Publishing banner above to visit their website and share the Musa excitement.

Minions of Misery

2011-09-14T17:49:00.000-07:00

It's about time someone started handing out awards for being dark and disturbed, and I'm honored to have received the Minions of Misery Award. It was bestowed on me by Julia Kavan, talented author of dark and steamy fiction (BLOG HERE, my interview with Julia HERE). To fulfill my duties, I must divulge a shocking and dark secret, share a dark and disturbing novel, and recommend a dark and terrifying movie. Then I earn the right to nominate three new minions of misery.

A dark secret -

As a child, I was near-sighted to the point of being legally blind without corrective lenses, but nobody knew it. It wasn't discovered until the day I started first grade. My parents were shocked. They'd worried that I was so quiet and didn't interact much with others, but I was a happy and healthy child, so it wasn't a huge concern. I got glasses at once, of course, but for years I had to be forced to wear them. Everyone thought I resisted because they were so thick and heavy that they hurt. They did, but my secret is: I didn't wear them because...I saw dead people.

Okay, that last part is a lie, but the rest is true, and I didn't wear my glasses because I was very good at keeping myself entertained without the outside world. I enjoyed making everyone else disappear.

A dark and disturbing novel -

Stephen King's Pet Cemetery. I went way into my past for this one. It's one of the first horror novels I read after graduating college, and it kicked off my ongoing love affair with the genre. It remains one of the creepiest, most disturbing novels I've read, therefore I'll always love it.

A darkly terrifying movie -

I'm reaching back again, into the same time frame when I first read Pet Cemetery. I rented a dvd of a movie called Evil Dead II. It's a strange and memorable mix of fear, dread, gross-me-outness, and humor. I've watched it at least six times over the years, and I think I may be about ready for another Evil Dead II fix. There are good reasons this movie is a dark classic.

And now to nominate three Minions of Misery (in no particular order):

Cullan Hudson - author of nonfiction like Strange State and paranormal fiction like The Mound (newly released)
Nancy Holzner - author of nonfiction, crime novels, and the urban fantasy series Deadtown (3rd installment Bloodstone just about to be released)
Nerine Dorman - editor and author of dark fiction like Khepera Rising and The Namaqualand Book of the Dead

Horror Author's Got Posse

2011-08-31T11:04:00.001-07:00

Everyone needs buds to hang out with, even us horror authors. Meet my posse.

With me are (left to right)
Targ, Igor, Balthazar, and Emmett.

We watch.

Don't cross us!

Note how Targ resembles the cover of Dark Knowledge. Hey, even gargoyles have kismet.

Julia Kavan Interview

2011-08-30T06:18:00.001-07:00

Please welcome dark fiction author Julia Kavan. Julia recently interviewed me on her blog, and now it's my turn to ask the questions. Mmwhahaha. I'll lead off the interview by mentioning that I read Julia's short story, "Dreaming, not Sleeping," and I'm impressed. It's difficult to write a story from inside a dream, and she nailed it for this reader.

STORY DESCRIPTION:

A woman is tempted away from the safety of her husband’s arms by a skillful nighttime visitor, but they both find nothing is as it seems…A short story that will draw you into a nightmare. Would you want to stay or go home?

AUTHOR JULIA KAVAN:

Born in the University city of Cambridge, England, Julia has spent most of her life living in Cambridgeshire - atmospheric and the perfect inspiration for ghost stories.

She has taught creative writing classes for the last ten years, whilst writing screenplays, tackling a novel and experimenting with short stories.

A true Scorpio, her tastes definitely err towards the dark side. She devoured horror stories as a teenager, including James Herbert and Stephen King in her list of favorite authors, moving on to Clive Barker and Peter Straub. As a child she would watch anything that even vaguely looked as if it may be scary... so perhaps it is only natural that this is the area her writing tends to wander into - even if she doesn't always intend it to!

INTERVIEW:

Keith: What is the greatest appeal of writing fiction, especially dark fiction?

Julia: As a child I would often escape the real world by losing myself in books and inside my own imagination. I loved writing stories then– and gradually those stories got darker as I grew older. I enjoy exploring the darker side of life… and our minds. I love the challenge of trying to capture the sinister and unsettling thoughts we have and creating stories from them.

Keith: After reading your short story, I have to ask a few related questions: 1) Do you dream? 2) If so, how often and how vividly? and 3) Do you welcome your dreams or dread them?

Julia: I have very vivid dreams. There are dreams I remember from childhood, and I also have recurring dreams. I love my dreams – most of the time – even the dreadful ones.

Keith: I was intrigued with the mix of horror and erotic passion in your writing. Fear and passion are such "lose control," immediate emotions, either one able to dominate feelings, thoughts, and actions. Put them together and you get...well, "Dreaming, not Sleeping." My question: Would you describe yourself as a controlled and deliberate person or are you more spontaneous and free-spirited?

Julia: Both. I’m mostly controlled and deliberate, but certain circumstances and people can make me flip completely the other way.

Keith: I know you've always read lots of horror. Can you identify any authors that have influenced your writing? In what ways did they influence you?

Julia: The biggest influence, I think, was a short horror story called Dark Wings by Fritz Leiber. It was atmospheric and disconcerting with a twist. I also love the way Clive Barker writes – I find his style/voice very seductive. I would love to be able to write like that.

Keith: Is there a lesson in your story, something you planted for readers to find?

Julia: I don’t think there is a lesson in there as such – but I do like to try and get readers to question their own thoughts and ideas. I’ve been surprised by the differing opinions about the fate of the main character. Some readers are sympathetic towards her, others toward her husband…and I’ve had some who want to know more about the visitor who haunts her dreams…

Keith: What was the biggest challenge for you in writing this story?

Julia: Trying to get the balance right between eroticism and horror. I was worried about going too far in the horror direction. Also - trying to keep the sexual element erotic rather than graphic. I’ve read such a lot of badly written sex scenes recently. I wanted this to be subtle and sensual – seductive rather than in your face.

Keith: Which do you prefer to write, short stories or novels?

Julia: I enjoy writing both. They each require a different set of disciplines. I’m currently writing short stories, both as myself and under a pen name. I’m a very intense writer and having something too dark lurking in my mind for too long can take its toll, so it’s best I keep some of my stories short. I’ve written a novel and have an idea for another fermenting away at the back of my mind. I’m also drawn to writing novellas, so may give that a go.

Keith: What would you like your readers to know about you, something that doesn't get mentioned in a typical author's bio?

Julia: I’m a big believer in following your dreams and walking your own path, or at least wandering off the path other people think you should be on to see what you can find. You might get lost for a time – but you might just find a better path.

Keith: And I'll wrap up by telling you how I enjoyed your story. I'm impressed with how the style managed to be lean and atmospheric at the same time and how you put so many vivid senses into play yet still captured the vagueness of a dream. Anything else coming out soon?

Julia: I recently had the pleasure of editing a short story by fellow horror writer Steve Emmett. A new challenge for me, and one that I enjoyed very much. ‘Kid’ was released earlier this month. I also have a short story coming out with Etopia Press - I hope later this year. However that will be under a pen name. I’m also preparing to submit my novel. Not out and out horror this time, it’s a supernatural mystery. I’m also thinking of releasing a collection of my own short stories. So watch this space…

Thanks for having me, Keith. I’ve enjoyed answering your questions!

"Dreaming, Not Sleeping" is available from Etopia Press,
Amazon US, and Amazon UK.

"Kid" is available from Amazon US.

Find out more about Julia here:
Website: http://www.juliakavan.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/Seneca24
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/julia.kavan
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/juliakavan

New Horror with Heart Interview

2011-08-23T12:50:00.001-07:00

Excellent interviewer and fellow Etopia Press author Julia Kavan asked me questions about Dark Knowledge, writing in general, and me. Check out the interview on Julia's BLOG by clicking my face below. No really, click my face to read the interview.

go to Julia Kavan's interview w/Keith Pyeatt

Did you do it? Yeah, I know you did, and I need to point out that you were a little rough with my face, but never mind. I hope you enjoyed the interview. Let me know if you did.

I'll turn the tables on Julia in the next week or so, once I come up with some good questions to ask. I'll post the interview here. Until then, click the Etopia Press logo below (no, I'm not about to let you click Julia's face too hard the way you did mine) to sample her dark short story, "Dreaming, not Sleeping." I really enjoyed reading it.

go to "Dreaming, not Sleeping" at Etopia

My Excellent Month

2011-08-22T08:35:00.003-07:00

I've had a very good month. I issued an email newsletter last week announcing the release of Dark Knowledge and my news that I have a new novel scheduled for release around Thanksgiving. I pasted a section of the "Yippees Come in Threes" issue of my Horror with Heart Newsletter below. If you're not a subscriber and want to read the newsletter in its entirety (aren't you just a little curious about the insider info on Dark Knowledge?), you can view the online version by CLICKING HERE.

To get future issues delivered by email, enter your name and email address in the gold box near the top right of this BLOG and click "submit."

Hello subscribers. Since I visited your in-boxes two months ago with the "The Return of Wesley" issue, I've had lots of good news, and I'm here to share some of it. Also, as threatened, I'm including some insider info on Dark Knowledge. But first, I need to release the yippees.

Yippee from the Past

When lightning comes calling,
you're going to answer.

Struck came out in paperback two years ago. Now Regal Crest has made it available as an eBook too. Yippee!

If you've been waiting to read Struck and still have room in your Kindle for another novel, I hope you'll consider it. Struck is my award-winning paranormal thriller set in Albuquerque, a fictional pueblo, and the Anasazi ruins in Chaco Canyon. There are some great reviews on Amazon (where, by the way, you can also purchase a paperback or Kindle eBook).

Yippee for Now

When good and bad intertwine, taking one means accepting the other.

Dark Knowledge is available again! Yes, I cleverly timed this newsletter to the release day because I'm so thrilled to have this novel out as an eBook again. And just look its amazing new cover. A larger image is posted on my BLOG here. Yippee!

Thanks to Etopia Press for giving new life to this horror with heart novel. Adding extra yip to my yippee, there will be a paperback edition too. I'll keep you posted on that.

More info and some reviews are ON MY WEBSITE.

Yippee into the Future

My home for ten years in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.

Above Haldis Notch is under contract, which means more Horror with Heart is headed your way. Musa Publishing is working incredibly hard to make it available this year as an eBook, with the possibility of a paperback in the future. The tentative eBook release date is November 25, 2011. Yippee!

In Above Haldis Notch, two neighboring families--one loving and respected in the community, the other made dysfunctional by abuse and scandal--must join forces to save a small Vermont town from a threat that jeopardizes not only their lives but also their afterlives.

Tense, huh? Yeah, well just wait until you read it.

Dark Knowledge's New Cover

2011-08-18T08:18:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow is release day for the eBook version of Dark Knowledge. WooHoo! I'm grateful to Etopia Press for getting Wesley back on the job of protecting mankind from evil. I love this novel, and I love to be read, so you can imagine how happy I am to get Dark Knowledge back on the market.

Now the edits are done, and Etopia is extremely busy preparing everything for tomorrow's release. And just look at the cover they designed for Dark Knowledge. I'm ecstatic over it.

What a cover! Thanks, Etopia. And once you're inside the cover, here's a short summary of what you'll find.

A mentally challenged man named Wesley can't resist a gift of knowledge, but it comes with a dark destiny. Wesley is thrust into an evil contest, where he must fight to survive, piece together his heritage, and weigh the value of his soul against the fate of mankind.

When good and evil intertwine, taking one means accepting the other.

Cruising Alaska

2011-08-07T18:01:00.001-07:00

We returned home from a great Alaskan cruise a week ago. We've wanted to cruise Alaska for years, so this was a nice fulfillment for us. We sailed on Holland America's Oosterdam, and it was a wonderful experience. Impressive ship, fantastic staff, great ports, and happy passengers all made it a fun time. And then there's Alaska. Wow! We left from Seattle, cruised up Glacier Bay, and stopped in Juneau, Sitka, and Ketchikan. Our last night, we also stopped for a few hours in Victoria, BC.

It rained a lot. Okay, almost continuously, but we expected it, so it wasn't a problem. We were lucky with our excursions. We took a float plane in Juneau that flew over several glaciers. It was cloudy, but the cloud cover helped bring out the blue in the glaciers.

The cloud cover helped bring out the blue in the glaciers of Glacier Bay too. We saw -- and heard -- some impressive calving.

Ketchikan was charming with its totem poles and water and trees taking advantage of the short growing season. Reminded me of the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont somewhat.

Onboard, we had great meals, great shows, spas, talented musicians, new friendships, and the Filipino part of the crew (crew was either Filipino or Indonesian) even entertained us one day with a show.

It was a great time, definitely worth the wait.

STRUCK for Kindle

2011-08-06T12:16:00.003-07:00

My paranormal thriller STRUCK was published as a paperback in 2009, and it's been fun and satisfying. Now it's out as an eBook with a Kindle version available at Amazon, and I'm enjoying a nice surge of new energy, like a second release two years later.

I'm really pleased about this development, because lately I keep getting asked if it can be downloaded to a Kindle. Now it can. See for yourself. To go to the Amazon Kindle page for STRUCK, CLICK HERE.

STRUCK

When lightning comes calling,
you're going to answer.

Looking good from here

2011-07-18T11:08:00.001-07:00

Perspective is important. We learn and re-learn that as we grow older (or so I hear *smile*). Perspective helps control anxiousness. It's easier to let go of worries after stepping back and realizing that we're worked up over something that doesn't matter much in the bigger picture of our lives. Perspective is hugely important in being happy or staying happy. We can obsess of something that makes us sad or see how fortunate we are to have the good things we enjoy.

I love playing with perspective when I write. We writers call it "point of view." I've made multiple posts about pov over the years, because it's such a powerful writing tool. In addition to choosing what character's pov to write a scene from, we choose how a character sees things, how his mood affects his impressions, what his overall life perspective is. It's fun to keep those things in mind as a writer, and it's important, because perspective colors everything in fiction, just like it does in life.

This morning, I decided to go for a run. It was later than my usual summer runs. The sun was well up. It didn't cool much overnight, so it was already in the 80s, and after last night's monsoon, it was quite humid. But I felt energetic, so I took off. I knew at once it was a good decision. My stride and breathing were easy, it didn't feel all that hot, and I was enjoying myself and moving right along. I felt youthful and proud of my running pace despite the steamy morning.

About 2/3 through the run, I startled a young coyote out of a bush, and he took off down the wash I run beside, leaving me behind like I was running backward. I watched him dart ahead and, for a moment, hated him. I felt slow and labored and awkward and old. I was still running the same as before, but my perspective had changed. That change didn't last long. Seeing critters makes me happy, and we all know better than to compare our running speed to a coyote's. I mean...get real!

I reached the end of the run, shut off my watch's timer, and saw I'd run three miles at one of my faster paces, despite the steamy morning. Add "accomplished" to the list of things I felt. Cooling down on my walk home, I saw the coyote in the wash, resting in the shade of a bush, and I waved at him before I caught myself. Felt a bit silly, but that's okay. The coyote was my friend now.

So I took a run this morning--three miles and at least as many perspective changes. Can't wait to play with something similar with my characters. Or my life. The next time I feel down, I'm changing perspective.

And just because, here's a picture of one end of last night's rainbow. You can see the double rainbow if you look hard. The main rainbow was full and bright. The double only showed near each end. This picture has nothing to do with this post, other than I mentioned the monsoon last night, but there ya go.

The Return of Wesley

2011-06-27T10:04:00.003-07:00

I've been quietly working away on things lately, but I'm surprised it's been so long since I posted here on my BLOG. Sheesh! Where does the time go? But I have some great news to share. In fact, I sent out a newsletter this morning with the news. If you're not a subscriber and want to be, there's a little gold box to the right, near the top, where you can sign up. It's easy and just as easy to unsubscribe if you decide you don't like my newsletters. I send out maybe three or four a year.

This issue was fun to write because I announced that my previously published novel, Dark Knowledge, is under contract to be published again. Yay! There are more details in my newsletter, which I'm sharing online this time. CLICK HERE to read Horror With Heart Newsletter #7, The Return of Wesley Issue.

Try to be alive

2011-04-30T18:47:00.001-07:00

I stumbled on a great website for author inspiration today. It's http://advicetowriters.com. I've only given it a quick once over so far. A Mark Twain quote about caring for characters really spoke to me, like Mark Twain quotes tend to do, but my favorite quote so far is this one, by William Saroyan.

The most solid advice . . . for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell, and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.

--WILLIAM SAROYAN

Any other writers find favorites there?

A Dozen Dialogue Tips

2011-04-22T07:23:00.008-07:00

For Earth Day, I'm recycling one of my most popular writing tip posts, things to keep in mind when writing dialogue.

A Dozen Dialogue Tips

Writing effective dialogue isn't as easy as you'd think. When characters in your story or novel speak, their conversation must flow as easily and naturally as a conversation you hear on the street--only better. Here are a dozen dialogue tips.

1. Be natural. Most people use contractions and sentence fragments when they speak. If your characters don't, they may sound stiff.

2. Dialogue is more than words. A lifted eyebrow or forced smile can convey more meaning than a spoken sentence. Non-verbal responses can add nuance or completely change the meaning of spoken words.

a) "Sounds great." He slapped Jim's back and whistled on his way out the door.
b) "Sounds great," he said, but he frowned and looked at his feet.
c) "Sounds great." She rolled her eyes and snickered.

Gestures can also replace spoken words and make a scene feel more realistic. Picture a father and son building a fort. Here are some options for a line of dialogue:

a) "Would you hand me that hammer beside your knee, son?" Dad asked.
b) Dad nodded at the hammer beside Billy's knee. "Hand me that, would you?"
c) Dad extended his hand, palm up, like a surgeon awaiting an instrument. "Hammer."

3. Characters don't all sound alike. Dialogue can help make your characters unique and distinctive, but a little dialect goes a long way. The same goes for speech quirks. In real life, someone might stammer or say "uh" every other sentence, but
such frequency in written dialogue will annoy readers. Be subtle. Once you've introduced a dialect or speech quirk, ease off even further. A reminder every now and then is enough. And while word choice is an excellent way to make characters distinctive, don't force readers to stumble over strings of altered words like goin', arntcha, or coulda.

4. Speech styles should match the character. For instance, characters in positions of authority speak with authority. A Sergeant, CEO, or police chief won't typically use weak sentences or ramble in real life. More importantly, readers expect characters in authority to be decisive and direct. Sergeants bark orders and speak in clipped, confident sentences. It's fine to vary from that expectation. Maybe a CEO started in the mailroom and vowed never to talk down to employees. Great, but let readers know there's a reason or the mismatched speech style feels unreal and can knock a reader out of your story.

5. Dialogue in novels should be more pointed and interesting than in real life. Real people chitchat, ramble, and repeat, but readers don't want to wade through small talk and redundant chatter. Dialogue should add to the story or define a character. If two characters discuss their children or the weather, there should be a reason. Maybe the discussion defines one character as an over-protective mother. Maybe there's tension behind the dialogue as a character struggles to hide feelings or notices something odd about the other. Even with tension behind the words, keep mundane chatter to a minimum.

If two characters meet, and it just feels too unnatural for them not to say howdy-do before getting to the good stuff readers want to read about, summarize the howdy-do. They caught each other up on their kids' latest misadventures before talk turned to the murder that shocked the town. -Or- Marvin recited his usual litany of aches before his son could mention his reason for visiting.

Similarly, avoid having a character recap events your reader just witnessed. If a character needs to be brought up to speed but the reader doesn't, summarize the conversation.

6. Proper paragraphing helps identify who is speaking. Most writers know to break paragraphs every time a different character speaks. Doing so is traditional and readers expect it. But unnecessary paragraph breaks can also make dialogue difficult to follow.

      "Look at me," Jimmy said.
      He stretched his arms above his head and dove into the pool.
      "That's great," Mom said.
      She checked her watch and stood.
      "You've been in long enough," she said. "Dry off, and I'll make you lunch."

The paragraphing above suggests speaker changes that don't occur. Readers must adjust their expectations and search for dialogue tags to identify who is speaking. The following paragraphing allows the dialogue to flow better with fewer tags:

"Look at me." Jimmy stretched his arms above his head and dove into the pool.
"That's great," Mom said. She checked her watch and stood. "You've been in long enough. Dry off, and I'll make you lunch."

7. People don't repeat each other's names in conversation. A character may say a name in greeting, to get someone's attention, or to make a point, but it's not natural to keep addressing someone by name in a conversation. I think writers make this mistake because it's a convenient way to reduce dialogue tags, but repeating names makes dialogue ring false.

8. Character references can replace tags. If a name (or pronoun) follows or precedes a line of dialogue, readers assume that's the character speaking. Looking at my examples above, note how "Jimmy stretched his arms..." replaces "Jimmy said." It's smoother and there's no confusion without the tag.

9. Dialogue tags shouldn't stand out. "Said" and "asked" are nearly invisible to readers. Alternate tags like uttered, assured, observed, asserted, declared, responded, snapped, vented, and urged call attention to tags. Wouldn't you rather have readers focused on the dialogue itself or what the characters are doing? A tag like "whispered" can work, because whispering is not the same as speaking.

10. Effective dialogue rarely needs descriptive tags. "Go to your room" doesn't need "he ordered" to be an order. "Get out!" doesn't need "he exclaimed" to be an exclamation. "Oh gee, I don't know" doesn't need "she said indecisively" to be indecisive. If you do use a descriptive tag, make sure it makes sense. A character can't laugh a sentence, for example. An error I see with surprising regularity goes something like this: "Leave me alone," she hissed. There's not a sibilant in that statement. A character can't hiss without an "s."

11. Characters don't tell each other things they already know. Editors call this the "As you know, Bob" syndrome.

"As you know, Bob, my wife ran off with the pool boy ten years ago, and I've not heard from her since."

That information is directed at the reader, not Bob. Bob already knows. Some writers struggle with this, but it's completely natural to relay information to the reader outside of active dialogue. Here's a snippet from my novel, STRUCK, to demonstrate.

Alvin stared out the window, looking even more miserable than usual, and said one word, "Chaco." The pueblo ruins in Chaco Canyon had become Alvin's passion over the years. He spent a day meditating there any time he could convince someone to drive him.
"What about Chaco?" Walter asked.

See how that's more natural than, "As you know, Walter, the pueblo ruins in Chaco Canyon have become my passion over the years. I meditate there any time I can..."

12. Mix thoughts and dialogue. I mention this last, but it's important. A scene that's nothing but spoken dialogue can feel flat. Including physical movements help (a character sips water, drums her fingers, or even blinks or smiles), but to add real depth to a scene, mix in the point-of-view character's thoughts, expectations, and motivations.

I'll end with another snippet from STRUCK to illustrate several points I've mentioned above, but especially how internal thoughts can add depth to dialogue. This is from a scene in Manuel's point of view. He and Sebastian are making plans to drug another man. Manuel's thoughts are in this color to make them stand out. Notice how they reveal Manuel's feelings about Sebastian and shed light on the relationship between Sebastian and the waitress. Without the thoughts, the conversation would still work, but taking advantage of being in Manuel's point of view to show his inner thoughts adds layers of meaning.

      Manuel accepted a small vial of white powder from Sebastian. "This is enough to put him out?" He closed his fist over the vial when their waitress, a sturdy-looking woman in her fifties named Valerie, approached their booth in a back corner of the bar.
      Valerie always waited on Sebastian. Her eyes lit up every time he teased with her, but their interplay had subtly changed recently. Manuel suspected they'd passed the genuine flirting stage and now screwed regularly. The flirting that went on these days was an act, either because they liked the secrecy or to fulfill some old-fashioned need to protect Valerie's virtue.
      Valerie set down a bowl of pretzels and replaced Manuel's empty beer bottle with a full one. "Another whiskey?" she asked Sebastian in her raspy, smoker's voice.
      "You ever notice me stopping after two?" Sebastian's demeanor always warmed when he chatted up Valerie, making him seem almost human.
     She smiled and turned to Manuel. "Don't try keeping up with this one drink for drink." She jabbed a thumb at Sebastian. "Big men like him have big appetites."
      "True enough." Sebastian arched a bushy eyebrow and made a show of examining her body. "For lots of things."
      Her eyes twinkled, and she cleared her throat. "I'll get you that drink."

Mimic the Saguaro

2011-04-16T07:44:00.002-07:00

I took a day off from writing on the new novel yesterday to enjoy a beautiful morning hiking Ventana Canyon just outside of Tucson. Perfect day, incredible views, great hike. I figured, though away from the computer, I'd plot as I plod, but my mind even took the day off from the novel. Can you blame it with views like these?

But I did find inspiration...in a cactus. There are many, many saguaros in Ventana Canyon, and I love them all, but I did find two favorites.

The first picture is a saguaro that caught my eye because it had so many arms. I don't recall seeing one with so many before. Keep in mind saguaros grow slowly. They can take up to 75 years to develop their first arm. The second picture is another cactus that has really hung in there. Apparently the ledge it was growing on fell out from under it, but it had enough anchor remaining to stay in place. And grow. What determination and perseverance. I do believe these saguaros could make it as a writers.

Pitch & 250 novel contest at Ebysswriter BLOG

2011-04-12T12:52:00.003-07:00

Novelists, here's an interesting contest over at a fellow bloggers site. Ebyss is running a contest that's taking entries from now (actually yesterday) through Sunday, April 17th. All prizes feature critiques from Gina Panettieri, president of Talcott Notch Literary Agency. You can find out more about Gina and her interests in this recent interview with Ebyss. First Place wins a full novel critique from Gina and signed copies of novels by two of Gina's clients. Second through Fourth place prizes are critiques of progressively smaller writing samples from your novel.

Entering is quick and easy, providing you find coming up with a tweet-sized pitch of your full-sized novel easy. Sheesh. That's right, you have 140 characters to pitch your novel. And I mean CHARACTERS, not words. And remember, a space between words counts as a character. Here's what I came up with for my novel Daeva.

Sharon upsets a demon's plan to influence mankind
and becomes the key to its success. Her death will
either empower the demon or destroy it.

140 characters exactly.

Then you include the first 250 words of your novel. That part really is easy, just use the word counter on your word processing program to find the stopping point.

Here's the link to the site where you enter the contest ==> Ebyss's Pitch & 250 Contest. All the details you'll need to enter are there. Good luck to all who enter. Let me know if you do. We can root for each other.

Cracking the whip (in isolation) on the WIP

2011-04-06T18:47:00.000-07:00

The hardest time for me to blog is when I'm writing first draft. Go figure. It's all writing, right? I'm already cranking out words. Why not spend a few of them here? But when I sit down to type, guess what document I open? Yep, the work in progress (WIP).

Complicating matters, I'm one of those writers who won't discuss my WIP. Today proved how sincere I am about keeping it all in. I've written a decent sized chunk on the new novel. I remain excited about the story, I love the characters, and it's something I'm excited to pursue. But today I realized I have too much backstory (stuff that happened before my novel opens) to include without some drastic measure. This problem arose when writing STRUCK too. In that novel, I came up with a device to incorporate a huge chuck of backstory in a single section mid-novel. It worked very well for STRUCK, but that method ain't going to work twice, at least not on this novel.

So I've been scratching my head, and, for the first time, thinking about who I could turn to for input. I have wonderfully talented writer friends who are as generous as they are gifted, and I know they'd be willing to shell out the energy to help me through this if I asked. But then I'd have to reveal my story, my dilemma, all this stuff so safely tucked away in my mind and my computer. I clinched at the thought.

It's not that I think anyone's going to steal my idea or my story or my characters. New writers endure that paranoia openly, but we get over that phase sometime during our first novel, which we later "trunk" as trash before moving on to a novel that has some commercial promise. No, it's just that I don't want input. This novel is mine and mine alone until I'm ready to share it. I don't really know why that's important, but it is.

Isolation is one of the hard parts of writing a novel. Yeah, plotting is difficult; research is time-consuming; writing first draft takes great perseverance and dedication; editing requires concentrated effort, time, and attention to every detail.... But believe it or not, it's the isolation that's the most trying sometimes. It's like keeping a big secret that you're very excited about for a year or more. Every day provides at least one opportunity to share that secret, but somewhere inside you, you believe sharing it will diminish it. So you don't. And I didn't. And I'm glad.

I think I've found a new track for tomorrow, a solution to my latest problem. With luck, this solution will take me well into next week before I need to rethink things again, face renewed temptation to seek input, which I'll decide against, and find another solution to some big problem.

So having said all that, here's my detailed report on my WIP. It's going well.

Happy Vernal Equinox

2011-03-20T08:46:00.003-07:00

Vernal translates from Latin to Spring,
Equinox translates from the Latin words aequus, which means equal, and nox, which means night.

Welcome to spring and the day when the hours of daylight and nighttime are nearly equal. I love the equinoxes, which won't surprise anyone who has read Struck. In my novel, the earth was threatened from a ritual performed in Chaco Canyon on the vernal equinox, and whether or not Earth would survive was determined on the next autumnal equinox.

I enjoyed making multiple visits to the Anasazi ruins in Chaco Canyon as I geared up for, wrote, and refined Struck. Like many ancient civilizations, the ancestors of today's Pueblo Indians were very much in tune with the solar and lunar cycles. There are still big events at the ruins in Chaco Canyon to mark the summer solstice, the longest day here in the northern hemisphere and the start of summer. There may be celebrations for the winter solstice and equinoxes as well, but the summer solstice is the flashy one, as I've mentioned in a previous blog.

I still like the equinoxes, though, especially the vernal equinox, or as I like to call it for the rest of the day, today. Buds ready to burst forth with leaves or blossoms, warmer days coming, lots of sunlight. So happy vernal equinox, everyone, and enjoy the spring.

Unplanned Characters

2011-03-12T08:07:00.001-07:00

Writers, what do you do with an unplanned character who decides he wants a bigger role in your novel?

I'm only in chapter 2 of my work-in-progress, and I've already got one of those. This happens a lot to me, probably to many fiction writers, so I'm not surprised. Many times this situation has worked out well for the unplanned character (and me!). In fact, every one of my novels has at least one major or very strong minor character who started out as a one-page toss-away, but after they'd served their purpose, they came back with big ideas of sticking around. Other times a persistent toss-away character's efforts aren't rewarded with a significant, long-term presence, but they still end up with a bigger purpose.

Then there are the ones I end up resenting. Maybe they frustrate the crap out of me by popping up all the time without ever finding a purpose in the story, and I have to delete every trace of them and fill in the holes they left behind. One character I resent but still love stayed in the novel--a fairly significantly role for the section she was in--but she caused extra work because I had to continually cut back her character development. Still, she kept popping up, demanding more examination. So I killed her. What did she do? Half a novel later, here she came again, a "cold spirit" with a warning for the main characters, and she was just as relentlessly insistent to be heard by them as she'd been with me.

Once I got so caught up in an unplanned character, he derailed the entire novel. I had to slash something like 45,000 words out of the middle, because I couldn't steer it back to where it needed to go. I'd all but forgotten my main character in favor of developing this unplanned one. That ain't good. If you've read my published novel Struck, remember Manuel? That's the troublesome character. I do get some satisfaction by readers who tell me how much they enjoyed his character.

With several completed novels under my belt, I've come to realize a few tendencies. The characters who pop up and take over to the extent I end up cutting them back--or out--are my in-between or gray characters, those who are neither good nor bad. I'm not surprised. Those are definitely my favorite types to develop. I'm weird that way, but I find them interesting and can't help exploring their motivations. The unplanned characters who end up with a huge role in the novel that I don't ultimately have to cut back are generally admirable characters.

I've also come to realize I'm really tough on unplanned characters, whether they're admirable or some shade of gray. My paranormal novels all have big stakes, so the characters have big obstacles, and I make them earn any resolution. But I'm especially hard on the walk-ons. Well, most of them. I can think of one who came out pretty good, but he reminded me a little bit of myself, so I guess I cut him some slack. Being like me is torture enough.

Anyway, this unplanned character in chapter 2 of the w-i-p is a third grade kid with a swagger and a fading black eye. He really wants in. I'm thinking he doesn't know what he's in for, and he's just a kid. The last kid who tried this got put through physical and psychological hell by yours truly. He was a great guy, but sheesh, even I felt a little sorry for him at times. That novel covered a time frame that allowed me to wait until he was a man before I pulled out the big guns. My current novel won't cover that many years. This kid's black eye will be gone at the end, but he'll still be a kid. If he survives.

Well, for now, the kid stays. If for no other reason, it's because I'm curious. Now that I'm more self aware of my treatment of unplanned characters, what will I do? Words will tell.

Horror Novel Contest at JournalStone

2011-03-01T18:41:00.004-07:00

Have a horror novel you'd like to get published?

JournalStone Publishing is having a contest for horror novels that looks interesting. I'd never heard of JournalStone, but now I've done some research, traded emails with the owner, purchased one of their books for my Kindle, and read their standard contract (seems very author-friendly). They're a young small press but make no pretensions about themselves or their capabilities. I'm not qualified to endorse a contest, but I'm seriously considering entering this one. A few basics:

Horror novels only, at least 75,000 words
$2000 advance against future royalties with a publishing contract for 1st place
$500 advance and publishing contract for 2nd
$200 advance and publishing contract for 3rd
Submit full manuscript according to guidelines before 11 PM Pacific time, June 1, 2011
Novels that don't place are still considered for publication

Here's a link for full details on their website: http://journalstone.com/2000-in-2011-horror-contest

Let me know if you enter, and good luck to all who do.

**3-3-11 update: I entered. Please wish me good luck too.

Missing the Manipulation

2011-02-16T18:28:00.002-07:00

I'm such a dog person, always have been. I had a special bond with Nicky, a German Shepherd mix, who was my primary companion during my hermit years in Vermont. I've blogged about her several times over the years -- when she was alive (Dogs, Spot the Dog), after she died (A Year Later), and in my dreams (Detailed Dreams).Yesterday marked 3 years since I lost her, and I like to remember her with happy thoughts.

When I first got Nicky from a shelter (a corner of someone's barn) in very rural northeastern Vermont, she'd apparently been ripped off the teat a bit early. I could easily hold her in the palm of one hand. She was so tiny, despite my ongoing rule of no dogs on the furniture, I'd hold her in my lap in my easy chair while she slept. I couldn't resist. When she woke and started gnawing my fingers or climbing all over me, I'd set her on the floor. Nicky quickly learned to manipulate me.

She grew at the rate puppies who'll become large dogs grow, and in a few weeks, she demonstrated great cunning (and charm). She'd wait until I was comfortable in my easy chair, leap up into my lap, and immediately feign sleep. She'd learned I wouldn't put her down if she were asleep.

It was very funny. I could flip her over, hold her upside down, jiggle her little body, sing her name...Nicky would remain limp and "asleep." I recall laughing so hard my stomach hurt. She "slept" through that too. In the end, she established a tradition I loved, where every night, she'd curl up with me in my chair.

1995-ish

December 2005

Once she'd grown, I'd sit at my computer writing for hours and hours, while Nicky lay faithfully at my feet, waiting patiently. When her patience finally wore out, or her stomach growled, or her bladder filled, she knew how to get me out of that office chair. She'd circle behind me, jump up, put a paw on each shoulder from behind, and begin to clean my ears. A dog tongue in my ear is a certain way to get me on my feet. Then she could lure me outside with her energy, and we'd romp and play.

Nicky was a special part of my life for 13 years, and I still think of her often. I miss so much about her, even the way she manipulated me.

HWH Newsletter Issue #6 is out!

2011-02-08T15:56:00.001-07:00

All subscribers to my Horror With Heart Newsletter should now have a horror story and a half in their in-boxes. I hope you all enjoy "Finger Food" with the original and alternate Valentine endings.

I don't plan to post this issue online like I have other newsletters, but it's not too late to receive a copy. I'll forward Issue #6, Feeding the Spirit of Valentine, to everyone who subscribes to my newsletter through February 14th. To subscribe, enter your name and email address in the gold box to the right.

And to those of you who've questioned whether it'll be hard to fall asleep with "Finger Food" on your mind, just keep your hands under the covers and ignore any skritching sounds coming from behind your bed. You'll be fine.

Thanks again to my subscribers for the encouragement and support. Sure means a lot to me.

Feeding the Valentine's Day spirit

2011-02-03T09:06:00.003-07:00

I'm working on a seasonal surprise for the subscribers of my Horror with Heart Newsletter. It's a horror story, because if you're like me, nothing says Happy Valentine's Day like a horror story.

I think my story "Finger Food" is just about perfect for the season. It's about a compassionate loner who takes care of a strange and hungry pet. That's kind of touching, right? Warms the heart? That's what I thought. So early next week, to help get folks in the Valentine's Day spirit, I decided to send out a newsletter featuring "Finger Food".

Then I got to thinking. With the storms and snow and record cold temperatures lately, we all may have to work a little harder than usual to feel the Valentine glow this year. And because my newsletter subscribers are so special to me, I've decided to go one better than sharing "Finger Food." I'm including an alternate, Valentine's Day ending for those who like things really sweet.

If you already subscribe to my Horror with Heart Newsletter, I hope you'll enjoy my Valentine's Day offering, both the original and sweet versions. If you're not a subscriber and want to be, it takes about 10 seconds. Go to the gold box near the top right of this blog, fill in your email address and name, and click the submit button. That's it. I typically send out 3 or 4 newsletters a year, your email address isn't shared, and if you change your mind, unsubscribing is even simpler than subscribing. Each newsletter has an unsubscribe link at the bottom.

I look forward to visiting your inbox next week to tell you a story and a half.

Starting over doesn't mean giving up

2011-01-26T18:15:00.000-07:00

Starting over, two words that can make a novelist wince. But that's what I'm doing with my latest endeavor. It's not all bad news. I'm not scrapping the concept or outline. It'll remain the same dark plot with ample opportunity to be creative. I sense the same potential, there for me to unlock and exploit as the story unwinds from my mind. But to unwind this story, I need a fresh start.

I'm actually happy with my decision. Yes, deleting 6,500 words will probably cause a panicky moment when I consider reaching out into that cold, black space where deleted words go and try to snatch them back. I won't do it, though. I'm convinced what I have isn't salvageable, and I'm relieved to have a new plan. For some time, I knew there was a problem, but I couldn't understand why the pages I'd written, rough as they were, weren't bulging with promise. I'd look at my outline, feel the energy, turn back to the pages that followed the outline... and go take a nap. That's not good. But I couldn't quite see what would make it good.

The answer, as answers often do, hit me over the head when I wasn't expecting it.

My story's fine; my main character's a snoozer.

Part of his problem is by design. He's supposed to be dull in the beginning, until the circumstances in the pages ahead open him up and reshape him. I love characters that must change and find their best to save the day, and this poor guy is destined to face a new world, massive responsibilities, overwhelming challenges, and the love of his life. Mr. Tudball (remember the Carol Burnett Show skit with Tim Conway?) will find his inner Indiana Jones. But geeze, if the author can't hang in with Mr. Tudball long enough to meet Professor Jones, there's no way a reader could.

So I've been reinventing my main character this week. He'll still be a dull man in the opening, but with a life already in disarray, forcing him against his nature to be more interesting from page one. I came up with various options to roughen up his life. Each option would add its own distinctive flavor to the entire novel, and I felt like a kid in an ice cream parlor, sampling this flavor, then that one, then imagining what each would taste like with various combinations of sprinkles, candies, or nuts. Today, I made my selections. I don't reveal much as I'm writing, but I will say this: It ain't vanilla.

Struck Sighting

2011-01-14T07:53:00.001-07:00

It's fun being a simple man. Little things can make my day, like yesterday. A friend from Albuquerque emailed with a Struck sighting. She'd entered the Juan Tabo Library and was greeted by this:

Struck was perched to show off its striking cover on a shelf in the main foyer that the librarians use to display selected books. Yay!

I kept meaning to approach the libraries when I lived in Albuquerque but never did, so I didn't realize they even carried Struck. What a nice surprise for yesterday, and I'm just simple enough that I think the news is going to make my day again today.

Coincidences you couldn't get away with in fiction

2010-12-29T08:16:00.006-07:00

I had an ooh wee ooh moment yesterday. I received an electronic picture frame for Christmas, and after dinner yesterday, the frame was displaying this photo.

It's the log home (more pictures here) I built and lived in for a decade in northern Vermont. The photo was one of the ones on a webpage we'd used to sell the cabin over 7 years ago. We discussed how we loved that picture and wondered how Ted and Beth, our buyers from way back when, liked it there. I recalled how Ted told me that this was the picture that made Beth fall in love with the cabin in the first place.

No more than five minutes later, that cabin picture still displaying on the electronic frame, I got an email from a couple who identified themselves as Ted and Beth's daughter and son-in-law. The hair on the back of neck stood at attention. They were at the cabin, reading an early draft of a novel I'd left for Ted and Beth. They'd googled my name and found an email because they wanted to tell me how happy the cabin has made their entire family over the years AND how much they loved the novel I left behind.

I could never get away with such a coincidence in a novel. Ain't real life fun?

We had a nice exchange and had fun with the coincidence. Turns out, the daughter and son-in-law loved the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont so much, they bought an old house not far from the cabin I built. They're staying at the cabin while converting their house to a Bed & Breakfast, and they assured me I'd always have a place to stay if I come to visit the area.

A further bonus was their enthusiasm over the novel I'd left for their folks. I never let drafts out of my hands, but we'd really hit it off with Ted and Beth, so I'd made an exception. The current version of that novel is so much better and tighter than that draft, I cringed at first when I heard they were reading it. But I quit cringing when they gushed about how much they loved it.

It was a good evening, based on a major coincidence I wouldn't dare write as fiction.

Living in the light, wondering about the night

2010-12-26T18:50:00.002-07:00

I'm an early-to-bed, early-to-rise kind of guy. I've been this way since I was too young to be this way, but that's who I am, so that's who I've been. But while waiting up recently, staring out the windows in the wee hours waiting for Santa (he came but I missed him...again!), I got to wondering what all I miss in the night. What would it be like to sleep during the day and live during the night?


"Moonlight in Vermont"

With everyone else asleep, it'd feel like I had the world to myself. That thought has a certain appeal to an introvert like me. Granted, I love a bright day and the playfulness -- and predictability -- of sunlight. Could the reflected light of the moon, on nights when there's enough moon to matter, fill my needs? Or would my needs change? Would my vision adjust to seeing in the dark, my hearing become more acute to pick out softer night sounds? Would I start to think differently?

This isn't the first time I've speculated about what I'm missing as I sleep. A strong childhood memory is a sleepover with a friend when I was in elementary school. We snuck out in the middle of a warm summer night and rode our bikes through streets that were busy during the day but deserted at 2 AM, pretending we were being hunted and chased. I probably played similar games hundreds of times during the day, but I don't remember those, only this one time at night.

My strongest memory of my home in Dracut, Massachusetts, is a night near the end of my five years there. Normally one to sleep undisturbed all night, I couldn't drift off one warm summer night. My bedroom was on the second story, my windows wide open, and I sat and looked out on the calm night for hours, spotting owls and tiny movements in the brush, watching the moon and moon shadows, the beauty of nature in shades of blue and gray.

In Vermont, summer nights still occasionally pulled me to the windows or porch, but winter nights also drew me from bed. Moonlight reflected off the snow, and even the inside of the cabin would glow with it. I'd look out and spot deer and moose, sometimes rambling within a few yards of my cabin. I'd hear coyotes and sometimes the tiny sounds of mice stirring within the walls. Every sight and sound seemed so BIG in the night, even the smallest rustling or the slightest movement I barely noticed in the woods.

Then I'd return to bed and to sleep and wake in the bright light of a new day, a time I loved then and love now. But things had changed. Maybe it's only because it all looked familiar again, but nothing seemed quite as large. I'd begin my morning routines, start my day, and focus on what I always focused on in the light. But it felt like I'd lost a little magic.

So I wonder about the night. Maybe that's what I'm supposed to do. Shifting my life twelve hours might only make the night mundane and kill a fun and compelling curiosity. Or maybe I should take action and see what lurks in the dark?

Florida & Caribbean Cruise Vacation, part 2

2010-12-18T08:37:00.001-07:00

As promised, here are some pictures and words about the Caribbean cruise part of our recent vacation. We sailed on the Celebrity Solstice, which carries nearly 3000 passengers in addition to crew. It's a grand ship with some spectacular common areas.

Me in San Juan, posing with the ship

Looking down

The grand staircase

The upper deck has over 1/2 acre of real grass

We had a wonderful time, onboard and off. In St. Thomas, we put on what look like spaceman suit head bubbles filled with air and rode scooters 8' below the ocean surface. It was great fun and a good way to see a shipwreck below us and fish all around. In St. Maarten (or St. Martin, depending on which half of the island you're on), I went zip-lining in the rain forest. I can prove it, thanks to a hidden camera planted in the trees which took my photo. We also dressed up nice for formal night, another thing I can prove thanks to all the photographers stationed around the ship that night.

We like cruises. I toy with the idea of writing a novel set on a haunted cruise ship. I've begun outlining it more than once, but I've never been excited enough about the outline to begin writing. I'm getting closer though. My ulterior motive is that the novel will sell well enough that a major cruise line will put me up for multiple cruises while I give talks on the book or hold writing tip classes or whatever.

Sounds fun, right? I do wonder how big I'd get after eating fantastic cruise food for a month or two. Maybe those trees I zip-lined between have a weight limit. Or maybe the cable does. I'd hate to end my zip-lining days so soon.

Aw well, maybe I should hold off worrying about those type things until I come up with a haunted ship outline that juices me up enough to write the novel. Hmm, where did I file that outline?

Speculative fiction contest at ChiZine Publications

2010-12-14T16:25:00.002-07:00

ChiZine Publications, a Toronto based small press, is holding a contest for speculative fiction and speculative poetry. I don't have the expertise to endorse or discourage any particular contest, but this one looks interesting to me, interesting enough that I've selected an excerpt of about 7,000 words to use if I decide to enter. Click the CZP logo to the left to go to their website, where rules, details, and entry information are listed.

Let me know if you enter. Maybe that'll encourage me further.

Florida & Caribbean Cruise Vaction, part 1

2010-12-13T14:53:00.005-07:00

We returned last night from a wonderful vacation. We started off visiting good friends in Wilton Manors (Ft. Lauderdale), Florida.

Ed, Brad, and Sage always make us feel welcomed when we visit, and they show us a great time. This year, we went to The Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens. Wow. It was one photo op after another.

I don't know what we enjoyed more, the museum, the ponds, the various styles of gardens, the pagodas, the streams, the plants, or just the feel of the place.

It's safe to say all of it was enjoyable, proving to us yet again that Ft. Lauderdale is a great place to vacation, especially when you have wonderful friends there to share good times. I'll post some pictures from the Caribbean cruise part of our vacation in a few days.

"Segway" to a new age

2010-11-09T11:05:00.006-07:00

Yesterday we climbed aboard Segways and toured historic Tucson. It was a great and unexpected birthday treat and a wonderful way to get to know our new home town a bit better. I'm still trying to understand why standing on a machine that did all the work of moving me about built up my appetite so much, but the tour ended very conveniently at a restaurant with outdoor seating at lunchtime on a beautiful day. So we segued right into my birthday lunch.

Birthdays are still fun, as long as you have the right person planning them for you. I do.

Abbott & Costello, a Halloween treat

2010-10-28T17:39:00.008-07:00

I watched "Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein" when I was in grade school. I vaguely recall the details, but I remember loving it. I remember where I watched it, who I was with, and the general feeling of the day.

This Halloween, we're full-out busy with the moving/remodeling/refurnishing, but a week or two ago, we purchased tickets for us and another couple to see a matinee showing of this classic at a theater here in Tucson. I'm really looking forward to it.

Anyone else have fun plans for Halloween?

Edited to add: I had high expectations, and the movie exceeded them. Great way to spend a Halloween afternoon.

A backward step

2010-10-20T07:22:00.010-07:00

As I mentioned in the latest edition of my newsletter (if you're not subscribed, CLICK HERE to see a copy on Gather.com), I made a tough decision over the weekend and asked for the rights back to my novel Dark Knowledge. It was published as an ebook a year ago, but now it's no longer available for purchase.

Here's what happened. My publisher for that novel didn't have the success they hoped for when they expanded beyond romance and erotica novels, and they announced they will no longer publish several genres, including all the genres Dark Knowledge might be considered -- paranormal, thriller, and horror. This development meant my novel would never be printed on paper and I had no real future with this publisher. I asked if they would relinquish the rights to Dark Knowledge so I could try to get it published elsewhere, and my publisher graciously agreed.

I have no complaints with the publisher. They were always a pleasure to work with, and I agree with their decision to pull back, even though it impacts me negatively. They did a great job developing my novel, always treated me right, paid promptly, and released me when I asked. They could have held on to the rights for two more years.

So it's sad news and feels like a step backward in my writing career, but I'm glad for the experience. I got to be read, which I love, and I got to puff out my chest with reviews like THIS ONE, THIS ONE, THIS ONE, and others. And I remain hopeful that by taking this step back, I'll find a new path forward for Dark Knowledge and other novels.

The Tucson house takes shape

2010-10-13T18:18:00.018-07:00

Some pictures as the house we bought in Tucson is transformed into our home. Things are coming together nicely now. We had all the carpet replaced with tile and wood laminate, we had new lighting fixtures installed, all switches and outlets replaced, new ones installed. We had ceiling fans installed everywhere (not easy in a house with no attic or pre-wiring). Today Jack and I installed a cabinet in the kitchen and worked in that room until we can see what it will become. We're pleased. My office is coming together well. We dined for the first time at our new dining room table. We have a living room. We have all sorts of furniture. Appliances are on order. We whacked back at the overgrown back yard and are making maintenance strides on the pool. Whew, a busy 3 weeks.

Now some photos:

New living area (in progress) with new tiled floors

Old hall lighting/new hall lighting

Old stair landing lighting/new stair landing lighting

Old porch lighting/new porch lighting

Yard views at first light of day

New front door lighting

Newly tiled stairs, to lower landing and upper (ignore lighting variances. It is the same tile).

Same old dogs, same old me

How to celebrate a round day

2010-10-10T06:18:00.003-07:00

Happy 10-10-10 Day!

What will you be doing (or what were you doing, depending on when you read this) at 10:10 AM on 10-10-10? I'm thinking that since it's so many nice round numbers, I should celebrate by getting rounder. Maybe I'll munch down on chocolate eclairs with one of those high-end, ultra-high calorie coffee-ish specialty drinks. That ought to soften a few of my edges.

However you celebrate this round event, hope you enjoy. It won't come round (hehehe) again for quite some time.

Making it ours

2010-10-04T20:26:00.002-07:00

This has been an expensive week for us new Tucson residents, but soooo worth it. We bought this house with a joint vow to follow a 2-step plan. The plan: 1) Make all desired upgrades immediately, and then 2) Enjoy.

The desired upgrades included replacing all carpet with wood laminate and tile; repairing pool pump's motor (it was LOUD); having ceiling fans installed, modernizing lighting fixtures, electrical switches, and outlets; buying a whole housefull of furniture, kitchen appliances, tv's, etc.

Tomorrow evening, we'll have been Tucson residents 2 weeks, and we've come a long, long way toward meeting our goal. By week's end, we'll be close. We're so happy about all this. We're so tired from all this. We're so broke because of all this.

But happy. I did mention we're incredibly happy, didn't I? Yep, we are. This has already been ruled a "good move." The house feels like it's ours.

Live from Tucson

2010-09-26T07:10:00.007-07:00

We're here!

Our move from Albuquerque to Tucson was anything but smooth, but we made it. I'd have posted something sooner, but we had very limited internet access for the last month plus. The buyer of our Albuquerque home had ongoing problems with his loan that set things back 5 or 6 weeks. He had plenty of money, but his job isn't a typical kind of employment, and in these banking times... Anyway, when this problem surfaced, we had already sold all our furniture, cleared out our house, and we were all set to move. So it was a major complication for us, especially as it dragged on and on, but through it all, our buyer kept faith in us, we kept faith in him, and that mutual respect kept us all going until the deal was complete. We're so grateful he hung in there.

Huge thanks to our friend for letting us stay in his house with our dogs. What was supposed to be a two night stay turned into a month plus residence. If it's true house guests are like fish and get stinky after 3 days, you can imagine how rank we got as the weeks rolled on.

But now we're here. We're thankful we made it, and we feel incredibly lucky to have the friend and buyer we had to help us through it all. We love our new home, our new community, and Tucson. The frustration of the helpless, extended wait, always with the risk of everything falling through, is already fading into the place were bad memories go. There are way too many positive things to concentrate on to let past frustrations get us down.

After all, we're here, reporting live from Tucson.

Tucson: The next adventure

2010-07-30T19:26:00.000-07:00

We've loved our 7 years in Albuquerque, but we've decided it's time to love another place. We have a contract on our house in Albuquerque, and we just learned our contract to buy a house in Tucson was accepted. We're excited! I walk into this house, and I'm happy. Love the neighborhood and the general area too. WooHoo!

Now we're hoping all the inspections and the myriad of activities involved in selling and purchasing a house go well. With some luck, we'll be in our new home before August ends. If you have any to spare, wish us luck!

Happy Birthday Tripp & Tasia

2010-07-20T14:00:00.005-07:00

We don't know the birth dates of either of our rescued dogs, but today is the day we choose to celebrate their birthdays. They've already been on a neighborhood walk and then taken to the country where they could run.

Happy Birthday, Tripptasia!

I write like...

2010-07-14T11:38:00.003-07:00

I stumbled on an interesting site, especially for writers. You input writing samples, and it analyzes your style and tells you who you write like.

I put in the prologue from my unpublished novel, Above Haldis Notch, which is a paranormal thriller/magical realism novel. It told me I write like James Joyce.

Then I tried various other sections from Above Haldis Notch -- single chapters, multiple chapters, and multiple chapters that included the prologue. Using early chapters, I always got the same response:

I write like
Stephen King

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I did several runs using the last chapters and just as consistently got matched with Margaret Atwood.

For another unpublished novel, a literary horror/paranormal, psychological thriller I call Daeva, I tried various chapters and combinations of early chapters, and I always got this result:

I write like
Chuck Palahniuk

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Using chapters closer to the end of Daeva, it again told me I write like Stephen King every time I entered chapters.

CLICK HERE to visit the I Write Like website. Who do you write like?

T-shirt advertising

2010-06-16T16:28:00.002-07:00

Today I used my chest as a billboard for one of my novels. No one inquired.

Maybe if I had a bigger chest...

BookWenches review Dark Knowledge

2010-06-08T14:48:00.015-07:00

I had a great surprise today. BookWenches reviewed my paranormal thriller Dark Knowledge. Not only was the review glowing, it was detailed. The reviewer must have read carefully and put great thought into the review. Thank you BD Whitney of BookWenches for finding the horror and the heart in Dark Knowledge.

I included BD's review in its entirety below. Click the BookWenches logo above to visit their site and read the review firsthand. Be sure to look around. You're certain to find many other helpful reviews on their site.

Wesley has been a resident of Brookside Group Home for the Mentally Challenged ever since his mother abandoned him there nine years ago. He has been content with his life and his limitations, training for a job at Goodwill and interacting with his friend and attendant Bobby. Lately, though, he has found himself drawn into a world within his own mind, a world of colors and thoughts and memories that frightens him yet also beckons and promises. With each subsequent trip into his mind-world, Wesley emerges with increased mental capacity. He also has developed the ability to heal the sick and injured, a fact that would make him happy if he didn’t sense that all is not good in this landscape within his mind.

This newfound intelligence comes with a price. As Wesley plucks his thoughts out of his mind-world, the void is filled with a dark knowledge, an evil that is just waiting to take over him. He wants nothing to do with this darkness, but others lurk in the background of his mindscape who are desperate to embrace it. Now Wesley finds himself thrown into the middle of a life-or-death competition with brothers and sisters he never knew he had. This is a competition that Wesley is not even sure he wants to win, because the spoils of victory are so horrible that they may very well be worse than death.

********

Keith Pyeatt’s novel Dark Knowledge is the story about a good versus evil struggle, difficult choices, and sacrifice, as a man finds that some gifts come with unexpected consequences. While it is essentially a horror story, it is also a story of caring and friendship, and I found it to be a very interesting and involving read.

This novel is set in two worlds: physical reality and the world of the mind. We start off taking brief dips into the mind-world along with Wesley, and it is a somewhat surreal mix of colors, shapes, and textures in a bizarre landscape. As the story progresses and the conflict increases, the mind-world changes into something much more threatening, and what initially resembled a dream turns into a nightmare. I found this strange and distorted mindscape to be very well conceived, and while it is easy to get lost and confused while visiting, I believe this is exactly the impression we are supposed to receive.

Mr. Pyeatt has given us a memorable cast of main characters in Dark Knowledge, whether they be personable or not so much so. Regardless of his mental capacity, we connect with Wesley right away. He is one of those pure souls whom it is impossible not to love, and he broke my heart a little bit in this story. Although we celebrate his growing intellect, we also see the negative affect that it has on Wesley’s psyche. His sunny simplicity disappears as he realizes that with the good also comes bad, and he must struggle within himself against the seductive quality of the dark knowledge.

Another character we quickly become attached to is Bobby, Wesley’s attendant. He is almost too good to be true. Here is a man who can see beyond the surface of his charges to appreciate their spirits, regardless of their intellect. He sees Wesley as a friend in spite of his mental challenges, and it is that very caring and friendship that makes him step outside his boundaries to try to keep Wesley from harm.

Wesley’s mother, Lydia straddles the line between good and evil. Mr. Pyeatt has made her a wonderfully creepy character – in fact, she frequently made my skin crawl – and it is impossible to like her, yet we can’t hate her either. Even though she is truly not a nice person and seems hateful and thoughtless towards her son on the surface, she is in fact doing her best to ensure his survival. Her twisted sense of love manages to redeem her somewhat in the end.

There is plenty of violence in this novel both in the physical world and the mindscape, although in the mind-world it takes on a surreal quality. A number of scenes are gruesome and bloody as the conflict escalates, and it peaks for Wesley in a climax that combines physical combat with a desperate psychological struggle.

In all, I found Dark Knowledge to be a very unique reading experience. It is fantastical, fascinating, and well-written, and it touched me emotionally as well as providing a bit of a thrill. I don’t think I’ll be forgetting Wesley any time soon. I don’t think I want to.

--Bobby

Fun with Wordle

2010-06-04T14:04:00.007-07:00

I've been playing. I found this site called Wordle. You feed in a document, large or small, and it spits out a word cloud. The larger the word is in the word cloud, the more times it appeared in the document. I made a word cloud for my paranormal horror novel Daeva, and here's what I got.

Obviously, my characters' names are the most used words (other than words like "and," "the," "a,".... Wordle eliminates those for you).

I found it kind of interesting, so I fed in my paranormal suspense/thriller Struck.

Again, the names dominate. For my paranormal thriller Dark Knowledge, I didn't include the proper names. Here's the resulting word cloud.

Excluding proper names, I'm not surprised to see prominent words like eyes, time, something, or looked. I'm not surprised to see pueblo in Struck's cloud or demon and mind in Daeva's cloud. But I am surprised all three novel clouds show back as a prominent word. Odd.

Knowing myself the way I do, I'm sure I'll look into it further. I just can't help myself.

A literary agent's action contest

2010-06-02T07:22:00.007-07:00

Nathan Bransford, a literary agent, is holding a fun little contest he calls The ROCK PAPER TIGER Chase/Action Writing Contest Extravaganza!! Writers may submit a 500 word "chase and/or action and/or suspenseful sequence" to be judged by Nathan Bransford. Finalists are voted on by his blog readers.

If you're a writer, hurry. The deadline is Thursday at 4 PM Pacific Time. Click here to visit Nathan Bransford's blog, where you can enter if you're so inclined.

I entered an action/suspense sequence from my novel Daeva, a paranormal thriller. Because there are already so many entries on Nathan's blog, you'd probably never find mine if you went looking for it, so I posted it below. If you read it, let me know what you think. Suspenseful?

_______________________________________

The demon shadows nested in the far corner, twisting and churning in continual motion. Chris heard their movements clearly tonight: muffled ripping when a large shape tore itself in two, dry papers lightly rubbed together as shapes folded or stretched, wet smacking sounds as two or more shapes combined to form one larger shadow. Faces appeared in the black shadows and spoke to him between hisses.

"Chris," they said. "Don't you want to sssleep? Open the door in your mind. Then you can ressst."

Chris's head bobbed. Despite the hissing, he drifted near sleep.

The mattress compressed under new weight. Chris's eyelids sprang open. A demon shadow perched on the foot of his bed.

He jerked back. The shadow swayed side-to-side as if dancing. Its movements rocked the mattress. He stared at it, reevaluating the shadows. He'd never considered they might have mass. The dim light of the room shone through gaps in the shadow's blackness to outline eyes and a mouth full of jagged teeth, frozen in a sneer.

The shadow lunged. Chris scrambled back against the wall, but he wasn't quick enough. It caught his left earlobe in its jagged teeth then pulled back with a hiss.

"What the hell?" Chris yelled, clamping his hand to his burning ear. The shadows took up their chorus, sounding like high-pressure steam escaping a ruptured pipeline. Chris covered his ears, but it did him no good. Hands couldn't block sound that came from inside his head.

The fingers over his injured ear were sticky from blood, but the room was too dark to see how much flowed. There was just enough light to contrast against the total darkness of the demon shadows. There were maybe a dozen of them now, all moving in frenzied, undirected motion. Excited from the smell of my blood? He tried to follow their jerky motions. They blended into the darkness when he looked directly at them, but he could catch glimpses of them out of his peripheral vision.

Then they became quiet.

His mattress moved as a shadow leapt onto the foot of his bed. Another joined it. For just a moment, he saw their outlines. A third landed.

"What the hell?" Chris yelled again. He scooted back until he sat with his back pressed into the corner of the room. He banged his right elbow against the wall and listened to hear if he woke his neighbors. His bed creaked. He felt the shifting weight of their movement.

They were approaching.

He pulled his legs in close and pounded the wall with his elbow again.

"Chris," the shadows hissed in unison. "Open the door. Let Rothsirge back into your mind. Or deal with us. It's your choice."

Darkness was absolute. The shadows fell silent again, but the mattress continued to shift and creak. His skin tingled with anticipated contact. He was afraid to move. Further retreat might quicken their attack. Something cold brushed his ankle.

Chris opened his mouth to scream.

When reality flashes back to fiction

2010-05-21T17:16:00.004-07:00

We live in Albuquerque, in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains, and an arroyo abuts our back yard. For those not familiar, in this area, it doesn't rain often, but it can rain very hard. When that happens, a bunch of water needs a place to go. Fast. Arroyos channel water and prevent flooding. Our arroyo also acts as a corridor for wildlife coming down out of the mountains. Remember, these things are dry 99.99% of the time.

The other morning I looked outside and saw a huge and beautiful coyote across the arroyo. It jumped up on a concrete block fence and gracefully and alertly paced the length. I figure it was looking for rabbits. Rabbits are abundant here and have become too fat, lazy, and cavalier for their own good. I loved watching the coyote move as it searched the area from its elevated vantage point, and somehow the experience resonated with me for days. I told a friend, and he said, "Keith, that's a scene from your novel Struck."

By gum, he was right. Change that concrete block wall to the ruins of an Anasazi kiva in Chaco Canyon, and you're in the climatic scene of Struck. No wonder the sight resonated.

The coyote returned a couple days later for a repeat performance. Even knowing part of my infatuation was that it flashed me back to my fiction, something more captivated me. For a second time, I wouldn't risk going for a camera, afraid I'd miss an experience trying to capture an image on film. I guess I'm satisfied to have captured it in words. Before I saw it.

Nice ladies with phone cameras

2010-05-09T17:26:00.004-07:00

While I was setting up for the Authors Event at Bookworks, a nice lady used her phone to take my picture and then emailed it to me. Her attitude set the tone. Nice crowd at Bookworks. Note my smile.

A protagonist's mother

2010-05-03T08:47:00.020-07:00

I'm already looking forward to participating in the Mother's Day Local Author Fair at Bookworks this Sunday from 3:00 - 4:30 PM, and I hope to see some of my Albuquerque friends there. I'll be one of five authors participating. CLICK HERE for details on the books featured.

I'll be there with Struck, my paranormal thriller that's set in Albuquerque, a fictional pueblo, and the Anasazi ruins in Chaco Canyon. Since it's a Mother's Day event, I've been thinking about my protagonist's mother, Sally. Her life was drastically changed by a bolt of lightning years before the lightning strike featured in the first scene of the novel.

I love my character Sally and made her a huge positive influence on my novel's hero. Like so many of us sons, the more Barry grows as an adult, the more he realizes how incredible his mother was.

So in anticipation of my upcoming Mother's Day event, here's my favorite Sally chapter from Struck. I hope you love her too.

_____________________

Sally Andrews had delayed her lunch break to help a customer find a size ten yellow blouse when pain shot through her body, a vivid reminder of the lightning bolt that had struck her over twenty-three years ago. She grabbed her left shoulder, the lightning's point of entry, as it blazed pain. Shifting weight off her aching right foot, the exit point, she almost toppled over.

"Are you all right?" her customer asked.

Sally looked up at the woman. Afraid trying to speak would unleash the scream she barely contained, Sally shook her head.

The customer called for help and carefully gripped Sally's elbow. "Is it a heart attack?"

Sally shook her head again. The store manager rushed over.

"Let's get you off your feet." The woman guided Sally to a chair outside the changing room. A man who'd been sitting there while his wife tried on clothes stood and moved out of the way. "Did you strain something?"

Sally shook her head. The pain had eased slightly. "An old injury," she said, testing her voice.

"Just sit still." The customer lowered her into the chair. "I'm an RN," she told the store manager in an assuring voice. "Can you describe the pain?" she asked Sally.

What had felt like a hot spear through her shoulder and foot now throbbed. Pain remained, but it was only a shadow of when it first struck. More pronounced than her physical discomfort was a sensation in her head. Not quite like being light-headed, it felt more like a distraction, but she couldn't pinpoint the cause.

"I need to go home," Sally said, first to the customer then to her boss. "This will pass, but I need to go home."

###

That night Sally lay awake in bed, reliving the day she'd been struck by lightning. She rubbed her left shoulder but let her right foot throb untouched. It was too hard to reach, and besides, massaging didn't really make it feel better.

Why ache now? she wondered, but such questions couldn't be answered. The aftereffects of a lightning strike were unpredictable and unexplainable. Yes, the doctors had told her to expect changes in her sleeping patterns, tingling sensations, and short-term memory loss. And those things had occurred. But so many of the health problems she experienced were complete surprises, and the fact that she'd been pregnant with Barry made things even worse. Her body not only had to recover from a 300-kilovolt blast, it had to prepare itself to grow and deliver a new life. She and the doctors learned to take things as they came.

But that was then. She'd not had any effects from the strike since shortly after giving birth. Well, nothing but the dreams, so vivid she'd come to think of them as visions. She still had those regularly, and they were always about Barry. But that was all that remained of the strike--until now.

The first thing she'd done after her boss drove her home was to call Barry at work. He sounded fine and planned to go to a movie with friends after his shift. Once she told him her old strike wounds were causing pain, he'd wanted to come home instead, but she convinced him all she could do now was try to sleep through it. She could do that better if he wasn't there.

Now she wished he was here, not to take care of her but so she'd know he was all right.

The pain in her foot and shoulder sharpened. Sally winced, squeezed her shoulder, and shifted in bed so she could press her left foot against the aching sole of her right. The pain continued to build, reached its crescendo, and then finally backed off. A little.

The front door opened and closed. Sally noted the time--10:45--as she listened to Barry's footsteps cross the house and hesitate outside her door. He tapped softly.

"Come on in."

He opened the door. The hall light behind him cast his shadow across her bed. "You okay? How's the pain?"

"About the same. A good night's sleep should fix me up." She didn't mention how intense it could be. There was no need to worry him and nothing he could do. He fussed over her too much as it was. He was so empathetic she sometimes thought he could actually feel her pain. Four years ago, after breaking two toes on her right foot, she caught him favoring the same foot. She asked if he'd sprained an ankle or something. He said nothing was wrong, but later that day she'd caught him limping again.

"Jack helped me bring your car home."

"Oh. Thanks, honey. I'd forgotten I left it at the store."

Barry stood silently in the doorway. With the light at his back, she couldn't see his expression.

"You enjoy the movie with your buddies?"

"It was all right. Cornball stuff."

"That's what you like, isn't it? Those movies definitely inspired your sense of humor. Unfortunately," she added, keeping her tone playful.

"I thought I inherited my funny bone from you," he said.

"Then I beg your forgiveness."

Barry laughed. Sally started to, but the pain in her shoulder swelled, and she bit her lip instead.

"I'll let you sleep."

"Thanks," Sally said, pleased that she'd kept the pain from her voice.

Barry pulled the door almost closed, then hesitated. "If it doesn't truly improve by morning, I'm taking you to a doctor." He closed the door.

Sally rolled onto her back, feeling both exasperated and pleased with her son. The room seemed hot, and she tossed off the sheet and stretched out her limbs. The movement eased the pain in her shoulder and foot, but created an odd sensation, as if a current flowed between the two points. If she listened carefully, she could hear it humming, a soothing sound that drew her concentration. Soon she was asleep.

And dreaming.

She stood in a room with stone walls. It was dimly lit with no windows, but a slit in the roof let in a band of light that crept across the dirt floor. There was something purposeful in its movement. It reached a wall and climbed partway up, crawling toward something carved low on the wall.

Sally went to investigate, taking care not to let the light touch her. She wasn't sure why. Squatting, she studied the carving--a spiral with a tail sticking out to the top left. The band of light narrowed into a dagger. It would soon pass through the spiral's center, splitting it in half.

The realization made her stomach heavy. An ache built between her legs, dull at first, then hot and sharp. As the pain turned savage, she recognized the combination of joy and agony that coursed through her, each sensation strong enough to break her if not accompanied by the other. But coming together as they did, intertwined opposites, they loosed a primitive strength from somewhere deep insider her, a strength no man would ever know.

The dagger of light took its position. Sally's pain climaxed.

"Barry," she cried.

As her son's name echoed through the stone room, disturbed only by the sound of her panting breaths, her pain dissipated.

Sally wiped tears from her eyes, but more formed as memory of the pain kept it too alive to ignore. Waiting for the last vestiges to pass, still squatting with her feet planted wide, she carefully swept her fingers along the ground between her legs, expecting to find a new life there, finding only sand.

She stood and turned, scanning the stone room, searching through the dim light for her son. To her right, near the wall, lay a still form. Sally approached it, taking small silent steps until she stood beside something covered by a blanket. The shape was that of an adult curled into a fetal position. A slight rise and fall, barely discernable in the dark, might be breathing.

"Do you need help?" Sally asked.

Her voice echoed back strong and loud, giving her a flash of confidence. But then it echoed again. And again. With each repetition, her voice grew more distorted. The pitch warbled from hysterical highs to booming lows before settling into the voice that could have been a large man screaming for help from the bottom of a well. Then finally, mercifully, it faded away.

The form didn't stir, but it appeared to take a deeper breath.

Afraid even to whisper, Sally monitored the rise and falls and decided they weren't breaths after all. The movements were regular enough but too rapid.

Her hand reached for the blanket. She saw this happen as if watching a movie, as helpless to stop herself from pulling off the covering as if she were sitting in a darkened theater begging the heroine not to enter the room where the murderer hid. Time slowed. Details became vivid and pronounced--the dry coolness of the air she breathed in; the smoky, earthy smells of the damp stone room; the feel of her racing heart and the tightening knot of fear in her chest. But above all other stimuli she noticed the soft hum and tingle of energy that followed the path lightning once blazed through her body.

Sally's hand gripped the blanket. The deeply textured material was soft against her fingertips, thick cotton with a coarse weave. It was the same temperature as the air. Whatever lay beneath gave off no warmth. She whipped the blanket aside.

Her gasp echoed. The repetitions circled the room, distorting the sound into high-pitched shrieks and deep moans. They built into a tortured chorus that surrounded her. Pressing her hands against her ears, she stared at the ground, confused. There was nothing under the blanket to form the shape she'd seen. Only a small hole in the ground.

Pain overwhelmed her, and she cried out. Again, her cries circled the room, swelling and changing. Even with her ears covered, she heard them. The sounds she'd muttered in anguish formed words she hadn't spoken and couldn't understand, a different language, something guttural and primitive sounding, yet musical.

She lowered her hands when she realized the words had begun making sense. She thought she could see them circling her, repeating their message. The sound of each word remained foreign, but they created a resonance with the energy flowing from her shoulder to her foot, thrumming in a rhythm that spoke to her.

Whatever communicated with her shared her pain, the pain of childbirth, but its pain was greater. Its child was born of rape, a child never intended.

Sadness radiated from the lightning's path inside Sally. She sank to the ground and wept--not for the child that shouldn't be, but for the mother forced to give birth to a creature she knew would cause harm.

The sadness finally passed, yet the words still circled. There was more to understand. Sally listened with her body and learned. Her child would be reborn to make him what he was chosen to become, to allow him to fulfill his purpose.

"What is it?" she asked. "Tell me what he must face." She listened to the words and to her body, but whatever spoke to her either couldn't understand her plea or wouldn't answer it. The circuit of energy inside her diminished, but before it faded to nothing, she understood something else.

Sally closed her eyes and cried, not from physical pain this time but from a bittersweet ache in her heart. She had been chosen too. But now her job was complete.

When Sally opened her eyes, she recognized her darkened bedroom. She turned on the lights anyway, just to make sure she was where she was supposed to be. The dream had been so detailed, so real. She rose slowly, testing her body and trying to orient her mind. She still smelled smoke and stone and dirt. Shivering, she pulled on her robe.

The bedside alarm clock read 1:15 AM. She crossed the hall to Barry's bedroom and carefully opened the door. Moonlight entered through a window and slanted across the room, falling on his sleeping form. She approached, trying not to be swallowed in the déjà vu from her dream, but feeling her heartbeat race.

Like in her dream, her hand reached out to grasp the cover, but this time it was a thin sheet between her fingers, and she felt the warmth of her son. Instead of pulling the sheet off his body, she tugged it close to his neck. She straightened and watched him breathe, watched him sleep.

For the thousandth time she asked herself what lay ahead for her son. She'd always been certain something did, but now there was a sharpness to her certainty that pierced her heart.

How can I prepare you if I don't know what you'll face? How can I help you?

She knew the answer to her questions the moment they formed in her mind. Someone would prepare Barry. Someone would help him.

But it wouldn't be her.

Ready for Mother's Day?

2010-04-29T17:23:00.007-07:00

The high winds in Albuquerque today are playing havoc with our blooming irises. One with three large blooms was blown to the ground, so I clipped it and made it an indoor cut flower. It looked so nice I photographed it and posted it on Facebook. See?

My highly talented artist friend, Cullan Hudson, liked it, so I gave him the photograph. He added a great background and enhanced it to look like this:

He liked it so much, he turned it into a series of Mother's Day gifts here: Mother's Day Iris Gifts.

Bottom line: My rescued purple iris is now famous, all thanks to this annoying wind and my talented friend.

Moral: When Mother Nature slaps you (or your irises) around, take a picture.

5 Days in AZ

2010-04-27T14:15:00.010-07:00

We returned yesterday from a quick trip to Sedona and Tucson. Both places were having record cold weather, but we still managed to have a great time. In Sedona, we got in a nice hike up Mount Doe before a snowstorm hit. Beautiful. Lots of green this year.

It was a great hike. See how happy we were?

Then Jack and I pushed on to Tucson. One day we drove to the top of Mt. Lemmon. What views! Here's one from part way up.

At the top is a very small and picturesque ski resort. I tried unsuccessfully to befriend the local feline. She was either pregnant or old (I'm a terrible judge of cats), so I didn't push it, but she still added to the charm of the little resort.

Cover contest

2010-04-17T14:10:00.004-07:00

I've loved Dark Knowledge's cover since I first saw it. The artist, Renee Rocco, did a great job of capturing the feel of the novel.

The cover was recently selected as a finalist in a contest. Take a look and vote for your favorite cover over at Susan Whitfield's blog.

And while I'm on the subject of Susan's blog, here's a direct link to my interview with her: My Horror with Heart Interview.

Struck book signing in Old Town Albuquerque

2010-04-07T11:04:00.010-07:00

I haven't had a book signing since Halloween, so I'm already looking forward to the one this Saturday. It'll be at a favorite independent bookstore. Here are the details:

Saturday, April 10th
1 PM to 3 PM
Treasure House Books & Gifts
2012 South Plaza NW
Old Town Albuquerque
(opposite the church)

It's predicted to be sunny and mid-70's, so it'll be a great day to stroll around Old Town, sit under a tree or on a park bench, and read your freshly signed copy of Struck.

If you want a teaser, read a couple chapters by clicking here. Hope to see you Saturday.

Today's Hero of the Treadmill

2010-04-05T11:22:00.003-07:00

I missed most of my runs last week (I ran once instead of my usual 4 or 5 times), and I thought I might cut today's run short. Then this song came on. Love running to this beat.

Remodeling

2010-03-27T17:32:00.005-07:00

We've been remodeling. Jack's painting fences, door frames, assorted moldings, and any worn spots on eaves, trim, etc. We're doing lots of little things not worth highlighting with a photo, but here are some of our bigger projects.

New sunroom. We installed the floor a couple years ago, and hired a contractor to rebuild the outside walls and replace doors and windows this year.

Sunroom again.

They finished the stucco on the outside of the sunroom Thursday. There used to be 3 dilapidated aluminum sliders, cheap white siding, and no insulation in the walls.

Outside of sunroom again.

That window used to be a door. The sidewalk looked misplaced leading into a wall, so I made the curved concrete connector this week, joining sidewalk to patio.

New oven I installed yesterday.

Now that the sunroom is well insulated, we made it part of the main house. We yanked out two big OLD aluminum windows this week, trimmed the openings, and dubbed them pass-throughs. We also removed the door. We really like it this way. The kitchen cabinet top, sink, stove, & vent were last year's projects.

Good morning, spring '10

2010-03-20T07:33:00.002-07:00

Not exactly the way I imagine being greeted by the first day of spring, but for this year, it's not too surprising. I'm definitely ready for long runs of warm weather and bright sun, but trying to appreciate the snowy view in our backyard anyway.

My first live interview

2010-02-22T15:23:00.004-07:00

Page Readers interviewed me about my paranormal novels, Dark Knowledge and Struck. It's a blog talk radio event that aired live on February 23rd and is now recorded.

Listen to Page Readers on Blog Talk RadioClick that blogtalkradio link above to listen.

Speaking Engagements (updated)

2010-02-17T21:20:00.001-07:00

SouthWest Writers One-Day Conference
The Business of Being a Writer & Showcase of NM Novelists
Saturday, February 20th from 9:00 AM to 4:30 PM
National Hispanic Cultural Center
1701 4th Street SW, Albuquerque
$100 SWW members/$129 non-members

One day conference in Albuquerque on the business of being a writer with a showcase of New Mexico novelists (including me).

$100 for SouthWest Writers members
$129 for non-members (includes 6 month membership)

The morning concentrates on the business of writing and includes a panel of three literary agents. After a buffet lunch, several New Mexico Novelists will speak on various topics and answer questions.

My topic, from 4:30 to 5:00, is "Keeping the Normal in Paranormal."

Check out SouthWest Writers website for information and sign-up forms. http://southwestwriters.com/conferenceSchedule.php

Page Readers Interview
My Blog Talk Radio Interview
Tuesday, February 23rd from 10:30 AM to 11:00 AM
Blog Talk Radio Network

Nancy Arvizu interviews me about my paranormal horror novel, Dark Knowledge, and my paranormal suspense novel, Struck.

Albuquerque Old Town Book Signing
Treasure House Books and Gifts
Saturday, April 10th from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM
Old Town Albuquerque
2012 South Plaza Street, Albuquerque

I love having book signings at Treasure House. Come enjoy the atmosphere of Old Town and see why. Treasure House Books and Gifts is right across from the plaza, opposite the church.

Local Author Fair
Bookworks
Saturday, May 7th, starting at 3:00 PM
Bookworks
4022 Rio Grande Blvd NW, Albuquerque

Come join a few local authors (including me!) for an author fair at Bookworks near the Rio Grande.

A Horror Author's Valentine

2010-02-14T07:57:00.015-07:00

A traditional Valentine:

Be Mine!

My love.

_____________________________

A horror author's Valentine:

Be Mine!

Or else...

Why I love the omelet lady

2010-02-02T08:41:00.002-07:00

We just returned from a long weekend mini-vacation in another city, and our hotel there offered a buffet breakfast for a reasonable price. We decided to check it out. The pre-cooked food looked great and smelled better, but before we grabbed plates, we spotted a short line in a far corner. Since we've been conditioned to believe a line means there's something worth waiting for, we headed on over. It was a custom order omelet/eggs/huevos rancheros/waffle line, operated by one woman. Five people stood in line between us and the cook we came to know as the "omelet lady." Four others stood to the side waiting for their orders. We decided we'd stand there long enough to see how fast the line moved, and soon we were captivated.

The omelet lady was a one-person assembly line. She took orders, usually for custom omelets, then filled them. She always had four omelets going in various stages on four burners. She prepared the pans, sautéed and pre-heated ingredients, added the egg mixture, flipped, arranged, added other ingredients as ordered, folded, and slid the delicious product onto a plate. In her spare time, she operated two waffle makers or cooked other custom orders. The entire time she worked, she smiled and chatted without ever missing a beat or messing up an order. That high level of efficiency and cheerfulness is certainly enough to make me admire the omelet lady, but I didn't love her, not just yet.

We placed our orders and moved over to wait with other customers, still marveling over the omelet lady's skills. That's when I noticed that when it came time to hand over the perfectly made custom orders, she had no clue who had ordered what. She looked a bit embarrassed, needlessly apologized, and explained how she looked each customer in the face as they ordered, but she was always visualizing the ingredients they specified and whether there would be a waffle or pancake sitting beside the omelet or egg order. She never could remember the faces. For whatever reason, that small quirk turned high admiration into love.

We ate omelets every morning during our trip. Now we're home, and it's time for my oatmeal.

I have a feeling I'll be missing the omelet lady for quite some time.

Animals of routine

2010-01-25T10:10:00.005-07:00

About five months ago, I was cooling down from a run on the treadmill, trying to keep my energy up, and I began clapping to a song playing on my iPod. To my surprise and amusement, our Siberian Husky, Tripp, howled along with my clapping. I thought it might be a one-time thing, so I rushed into my office, used my computer's built-in camera to capture the video, and posted it as a blog entry.

Well, it wasn't a one-time thing, far from it. All I have to do is clap, and Tripp sings along. He can be camera shy about it, but my partner caught him on video yesterday.

I climb on the treadmill 4 or 5 times a week, and now Tripp lies right beside me for 20 minutes while I run, waiting for his cue. I wear earplugs, so he can't hear the music, but now I make a point to clap to the beat during cool-down.

As this video shows, Tasia sometimes joins in. Sweet Tasia only howls because Tripp does, but Tripp clearly interacts with me. He often stares right at me, and I can see his tongue doing different things as he tests new sounds. He matches the intensity of his singing to the intensity of my clapping.

After my treadmill dismount, Tripp comes for his reward: a full-body rubdown, starting at his head. He arches his back, tail curved over it, every time. Tripp and I are both animals of routine, and the cool-down and rubdown are by far the best part of my runs. I'm glad he enjoys them too.

Interviewed by a mystery writer

2010-01-14T07:52:00.000-07:00

Mystery writer Susan Whitfield interviewed me about my novels, what goes in them, and writing techniques. She asked some great questions. I'll let you judge my answers for yourself. Check out her blog for other great interviews too. CLICK HERE to read my interview.

Struck strikes with a Writer's Chatroom review

2010-01-08T07:57:00.002-07:00

A new Struck review is posted over at The Writer's Chatroom book review blog. It was written by staff member and talented author Lisa Hazelton.

Using descriptive and well-crafted prose, the author brings the reader back in time with an engaging look into the history of the Pueblo Indians. With touches of paranormal and the overall sense that this could actually happen, the reader is left without a choice but to turn the page and continue reading. The story contains elements of horror, romance, and mystery. The title is literal, but also a metaphoric theme woven through each character.

Read the full review at http://twcreviews.blogspot.com. Check out the other book reviews while you're there. It's a good resource for readers, just like The Writer's Chatroom (http://writerschatroom.com) is a good resource for writers.

Embossed

2010-01-07T20:02:00.002-07:00

I've been embossed.

It didn't hurt as much as I thought it would.

Running my way into a new decade

2009-12-31T12:55:00.000-07:00

My last run and the last Fresh Sweat Clap and Howl song for '09. See ya in 2010, treadmill.

More good things ahead

2009-12-30T10:23:00.006-07:00

2009 was a good year for my writing career. Part of me hates to see it end, but all of me knows it's going to. And there's no rule against having back-to-back good years. So I welcome 2010 and expect good things--for me and for you.

Best to everyone in 2010!

Heart and Soul of Dark Knowledge

2009-12-23T07:00:00.006-07:00

New review for Dark Knowledge, and I like it. From The Pen & Muse:

"Pyeatt truly put his heart and soul while writing this and it shows. A non-stop horror filled thriller from start to finish."

Click here to read the full review.

GIFT TIP: Giving a Kindle to someone this year? Why not spend $4.40 more at Amazon and preload Dark Knowledge? Whoever gets the Kindle can use it immediately to leap into paranormal thrills, and you'll show off your excellent taste!

BONUS TIP #1: You can download a sample of Dark Knowledge from Amazon for FREE. You'll still demonstrate your excellent taste, whoever gets the Kindle can still test it immediately by leaping into paranormal thrills, and you pay nothing.

BONUS TIP #2: The gift tip works for other eBook formats too, for $5.50. Still a bargain. CLICK HERE to purchase Dark Knowledge in other electronic formats.

Five Tombstone Review for Dark Knowledge

2009-12-17T08:46:00.008-07:00

Yahoo! My first professional review of Dark Knowledge is out, and it's wonderful. It's from the good folks at Bitten by Books, who focus on book reviews for all types of paranormal fiction, urban fantasy and horror (great review site, by the way).

Here's the last part of the review:

It is always a treat to discover a book that is so well written, original and captivating that you are haunted by the characters days, even weeks, after finishing the book. Keith Pyeatt has given us this with Dark Knowledge. The book features a taste of horror, fantasy and heart pounding suspense and makes us realize that maybe, just maybe, good and evil are not always black and white. There could be a gray area where ethical questions abound.

I love the characters in this book. They come alive and jump off the page, and the secondary characters are given just as much attention which gives the book a well rounded feel. I felt as if I became part of this world experiencing the pain, fear and ethical dilemmas facing each person.

I would recommend this to all who love horror and fantasy but also to those who enjoy a thought provoking look at good and evil. Dark Knowledge is guaranteed to satisfy.

Yes! CLICK HERE to read the full review on their site. If you like it, please click on the stars at the bottom to tell Bitten by Books you appreciate their reviews.

And remember, you can try before you buy. Click here to read the first 2 chapters of Dark Knowledge.

This just in...

2009-12-12T10:23:00.003-07:00

And from the "newly published author searching for any and all signs of public interest" department, my novels are #3 and #4 on Book Buzzr's "movers and shakers, mystery & thrillers" page for today (#14 & #15 for all novels!) ==> http://www.freado.com/book/category/24/Mystery-&-Thrillers.

And the winners are...

2009-12-11T09:00:00.001-07:00

My first Horror with Heart Contest ended Thursday at midnight, and it was fun. I ended up with new subscribers to my newsletter, some news friends, and now I get to give away a copy of Struck and a copy of Dark Knowledge.

To pick winners, I eliminated any repeat entries and made sure all remaining ones were subscribed to my newsletter. I numbered entries in the order they landed in my in-boxes and used this random number generator to pick the winners. And they are:

The winner of a paperback copy of Struck is Louise Dragon.

The winner of an electronic copy of Dark Knowledge is John Orman.

Thanks to everyone who entered and/or helped spread the word about my contest and newsletter. Congratulations to Louise and John. I'll email you with the good news and get your prizes sent off to you right away.

Songs from the treadmill

2009-12-10T11:49:00.005-07:00

Today's Fresh Sweat Clap and Howl favorite:

Last day to enter the Ho Ho Horror with Heart Contest

2009-12-10T08:37:00.000-07:00

My first contest is winding down. There's still time to enter if you have a mind to, but tonight at midnight (Mountain Time), I'll stop taking entries for the Ho Ho Horror with Heart Contest. Tomorrow I'll make a blog entry announcing the winner of Struck and the winner of Dark Knowledge.

Entry is easy. Subscribe to my newsletter, decide which novel you want to win, and send an email. Or send two emails for a chance to win both novels.

Curious? If you're reading this on my blog, look down at the previous entry to see links where you can preview my novels. Click here to view the latest newsletter and see what a subscription to it leads to. You're always welcome to subscribe (use the gold box near the top right of my blog), but do it today if you want a chance to win one of my novels in my first contest.

Now easier than ever to sample me

2009-12-07T19:20:00.002-07:00

Well, it's a way to sample my novels at least.

I can't help but think this is kinda cool. It's one link that lets you read a couple chapters of Dark Knowledge and Struck, formatted in a pleasant way. And you can read a bit of the story behind them, a bit about me, see covers, see dedications...

CLICK HERE to see what I'm babbling about or use the individual book links below. Let me know in comments if you think it's cool too. Or at least if you find it a good way to look at books.

Keith Pyeatt

Author

Struck

Read Now - http://bit.ly/82TvWT

Twitter - @keithpyeatt

Keith Pyeatt

Author

Dark Knowledge

Read Now - http://bit.ly/4RA8VF

Twitter - @keithpyeatt

HWH Newsletter #4 is Out, HWH Contest #1 has Begun

2009-12-03T08:24:00.004-07:00

My first contest began moments ago when I sent out the Ho Ho Horror with Heart Contest Issue of my newsletter. I'm giving away a signed copy of Struck and an electronic copy of Dark Knowledge. AND there's potentially two bonus prize winners.

The contest has begun and will end midnight December 10th. Missed out on my newsletter? CLICK HERE to see the Ho Ho Horror with Heart Contest Issue (posted at Author's Den). Use that little gold box near the top right of my blog to subscribe and you'll be eligible to enter the contest.

To everyone who enters, good luck!

Dark Knowledge at Flames Rising

2009-12-01T09:00:00.003-07:00

Curious about Dark Knowledge? Read Chapter 1 over at the Flames Rising website (www.flamesrising.com).

Flames Rising is an online resource for fans of Horror and Dark Fantasy entertainment. The site is loaded with articles, previews, interviews, news, contests, promotions, new releases, games, events,... It's a "must bookmark" site for fans of horror and dark fiction. Check it out. For a link directly to the Chapter 1 preview of Dark Knowledge, CLICK HERE.

Upcoming newsletter/upcoming contest

2009-11-30T11:51:00.000-07:00

My next HWH newsletter, the "Ho Ho Horror with Heart Contest" issue, is in the making. I plan to send it out later this week. True to its name, this issue will feature a contest. Prizes will be a paperback copy of Struck and an electronic copy of Dark Knowledge. The contest will be easy to enter (no purchase necessary), but you must be subscribed to my newsletter to win.

I know what you're asking yourself: How the heck do I subscribe to this newsletter?

It's easy. If you're not reading this from my blog, go there (http://keithpyeatt.blogspot.com). See that gold box near the top right? Enter your email address and your name. Click "submit," and that's it. A HWH newsletter will land in your inbox about every other month. There's no spam, I don't share your email address, and it's just as easy to be removed from list as it is to get on it.

A Thankful Thanksgiving

2009-11-27T13:18:00.001-07:00

Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday, because it reminds me how much I have to be thankful for. We celebrate in different ways. Some years we have a private meal. Other years we go across the street or invite neighbors or a close friend over for a small but wonderful dinner. We've joined loving families for dinner and have been made to feel like we were part of that family. This year, we gave thanks and celebrated with a large group of friends.

Here was the setting in Corrales, NM.

Our lovely hostess Eleanor.

The great group devouring a fantastic meal.

After-dinner wind down.

And when we returned home, something I'm always thankful for.

Tripp was ready to snuggle.

A great day from start to finish, and I remain aware of how much I have to be thankful for. Hope everyone enjoyed their holiday as much as we did. For anyone interested, I posted more pictures of our Corrales Thanksgiving in Facebook. Click here to view.

First DARK KNOWLEDGE review on Amazon is a 5 star doozy

2009-11-23T07:00:00.044-07:00

Jill Anderson in Pennsylvania gave my recently e-published paranormal thriller its first Amazon review--5 stars and the following comments:

I had the privilege of reading the first chapter of DARK KNOWLEDGE years ago when the author entered it in the first Gather writing contest. At that time, I thought the first chapter one of the best I ever read. Not just in the contest, but best EVER. With DARK KNOWLDEGE now published, I finally got to read the novel in its entirety, and am pleased to discover it more than lived up to the expectations I developed based on that first incredible chapter.

Wesley is a mentally-challenged man whose mother institutionalized and abandoned eight years ago. Bobby--an aide at the institution--has worked closely with Wesley throughout the years, taking him from an uncommunicative, nearly-incapacitated teenager to a loving, special-needs man training for his first job. Proud of Wesley, and pleased with his part in Wesley's development, Bobby is dismayed to learn Wesley's mother has returned. He worries the mother--who left a chilling impression on Bobby when he met her all those years ago--will undo all the good Bobby has done on Wesley's behalf. He becomes even more concerned when Wesley starts having trance-like episodes. Only when Bobby is diagnosed with an inoperable tumor and knows he was somehow healed by Wesley does Bobby begin to understand Wesley's episodes are much more than a trance. He is living in two worlds: his mind world and the physical world. With the return of Wesley's mother, the two worlds begin to collide, and along with Wesley's miraculous gift of healing comes a dark evil that threatens Wesley's existence at the same time it advances his intelligence. Aware for the first time, Wesley must determine if a life with more promise is worth holding onto if it comes packaged with dark knowledge.

A very absorbing novel, I read DARK KNOWLEDGE in two sittings, rooting for Wesley all the way. Being in his world is a bit like stepping inside a macabre rainbow of good and evil with twisting and turning colorful arcs; but there’s joy in taking the leap and meeting this heart-warming, good-soul hero.

Because Jill liked the first chapter so much and has anticipated the novel for two years, I was worried it wouldn't live up to her expectations. You can imagine how thrilled I am with her review.

Here's the link to the Amazon page where Jill's review is posted. Dark Knowledge is available in various electronic forms to fit e-readers, or you can download the .pdf version to read on your computer monitor or print out. It's available at a myriad of e-books internet site, but don't pay over $5.50. That's my publisher and Amazon's price. No need to pay more. Here's the link to my publisher's page for Dark Knowledge.

If you read Dark Knowledge or my other novel, Struck, I hope you'll let me know your impressions. Consider doing what Jill did and post a review on Amazon. Reviews can be long and detailed or very short and general. It doesn't matter. Any review is valuable to us newly published authors. I understand Amazon reviews help make novels stand out so other readers can discover them.

STRUCK wins New Mexico Book Award

2009-11-21T05:36:00.003-07:00

I'm thrilled to announce that last night, Struck won the 2009 New Mexico Book Award for Mystery/Suspense Novel. I'm excited and proud and happy and...

Well, if a picture is worth a thousand words...

Yep, that's me, smiling like I have no good sense after receiving the award. My category was sponsored by Anne Hillerman's Word Harvest, and she congratulated me afterward, but I was so wound up, I didn't think to say thank you for sponsoring the mystery/suspense category until seconds after I walked away. Too late then. I'm quite sure I was smiling though (see picture), so at least I came across as friendly, if not gracious and intelligent.

What a great night!

Not a Turkey

2009-11-14T10:08:00.001-07:00

One of my favorite writer forums is the Absolute Write Water Cooler, and when I stumbled on this graphic there, I laughed. Now I share.

eLoving my Kindle

2009-11-12T19:24:00.004-07:00

I've only had it a few days, but I already love my Kindle. I'm not surprised. I like reading paperbacks and hardbacks as much as the next guy, but I've never seen why enjoying print books would exclude enjoying eBooks too.

The "tactile experience" is an argument I often hear given as a reason to stick with books printed on paper--the feel of holding a book, turning a page. I like turning pages...sometimes. I've even fluttered them against my skin or near my face. I've run my fingers down a fresh page as I read. My main interest is to read the words on that page, but I understand enjoying the tactile experience.

Some folks say they like the smell of a printed book and couldn't give that up. I like the smell in a library, but I just don't find it a major factor when reading in my easy chair. Maybe I need to hold books closer to my face? Regardless, I don't miss a printed book's smell.

Bottom line for this reader: I like my Kindle because, like a printed book, it disappears. I read fiction to escape into the world a talented writer has created for me. It doesn't matter if a paperback, a hardback, or a Kindle disappears in the process, as long as the medium does indeed disappear and leave me in the world the words create.

My Kindle is light and thin. I find it easy to hold with a finger poised on one of the "next page" buttons. A simple flex of a finger gets me to more words. It's not all that tactile, but frankly, it's easier and less cumbersome than holding a book with one hand and needing a second to turn a single page, especially if I'm reading in bed with one arm behind my head. The Kindle disappears quickly and completely. I like that.

I like the cost of eBooks. I like downloading them without postage charges in less than a minute. I like that I can download a free sample before buying. I like that if I buy a dog of a book despite the preview, I'm out $5 and a minute to download it instead of $14.95 + $4.00 postage and 12 days of waiting for delivery or a trip to the bookstore and a $19.95 + tax price tag. I like that I can carry many, many books in my thin Kindle, and if I still find myself without something I want to read, I can shop and instantly buy and download almost anywhere.

As an author with a paperback and an eBook to hawk, I still don't really know how to market my eBook. I'll still want to buy signed copies of printed books sometimes. I'll still buy printed books because the eBook version isn't available. But I love my Kindle. I foresee saving enough in books to recapture the $260 price tag fairly quickly.

There's my take on the Kindle five days after getting one for my birthday. For what it's eWorth.

Rio Rancho Book & Craft Fair

2009-11-04T08:02:00.008-07:00

Appearing together for the first time...

There's a big book and craft fair this Saturday, November 7th, in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. I'll be there from 10 AM to 4 PM selling my paranormal thriller Struck, which is set in Albuquerque, a fictional pueblo, and the Anasazi ruins in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. Here's a link to Struck's page on my website if you'd like to know more.

I'll also have my Dark Knowledge bookmarks there to give away. Dark Knowledge is my paranormal thriller released in eBook format a couple weeks ago.
This event is held at The Inn at Rio Rancho, 1465 Rio Rancho Dr. SE., in a common area where authors aplenty will be waiting for readers aplenty to come by their tables, ask about their books, and maybe buy a copy. Will I look like a desperate author there? I hope not, but come by, see for yourself, and keep me company. No purchase required.

Here's a link to more information about the Rio Rancho Book & Craft Fair. It's sponsored by ReadWest, Hastings Rio Rancho, New Mexico Book Coop, LPD Press/Rio Grande Books, and Reading New Mexico.

Hunkering Down for November

2009-11-02T11:47:00.009-07:00

November is here. To me, it's the month that signals the most change. Halloween is over (barely), the costumes are packed away, and my lightning bolt pumpkin is withered and waiting for trash pickup. The leaves have finished turning, and now they lay on the ground, leaving bare branches sticking up into wintry-looking skies. We've "fallen back" and said goodbye to another daylight savings period. The sun is tracking south. Days are short, nights are long. We've entered the half of autumn that's adjacent to winter, and I can definitely feel the temperature change.

Come November, the year suddenly feels mostly used up. I may feel that way more than many because I complete another year of life in November. So why do I still like this month?

First, there are birthdays. I mentioned I have one coming up, and my partner Jack also has an early November birthday (tomorrow!). Our birthdays give us a good chance to privately celebrate the end of one wonderful year and the start of another. Endings aren't so bad as long as there's a beginning too. And November isn't all cold weather. There are some warm, sunny days, and knowing they're less common than in prior months, I tend to appreciate them more. Finally, November winds up with Thanksgiving, which marks the start of the holiday season.

November's a good month, proof we can enjoy ourselves even as we hunker down for the winter ahead. Hope you all have a wonderful November. I plan to.

Happy Halloween

2009-10-31T06:00:00.010-07:00

Here are a few pictures from my Halloween eve book signing last night. Huge thanks to everyone who came out. Your support provided an incredible lift and made what could have been a tedious four hours into a fun and memorable night. I'm so grateful.

I had such a good time!

Today I'm guest blogging over at the Lyrical Press blog. See why I think Halloween is like reading a good novel and say howdy. Click here to get kicked over to the Lyrical Press Blog.

Struck's Halloween Promo

2009-10-29T08:18:00.004-07:00

A poster to compliment my lightning bolt pumpkin at tomorrow's Halloween Eve book signing. Nice, huh?

Thanks again Cullan of Fresh Eire Designs. What would I do without you?

Halloween Eve Book Signing for STRUCK

2009-10-28T12:34:00.005-07:00

My pumpkin's ready.

Now I'm ready too. Feels right. This horror author has a Halloween eve book signing AND a lightning bolt pumpkin to help highlight my paranormal thriller Struck.

If you're local to Albuquerque, I hope you'll come by. This is my 2nd book signing ever. The first one was great fun and I sold many books, but I still worry I'm going to end up standing beside a pile of books all alone. So come say boo!

I'll be at the Hastings Book Store in the Monzano Center. That's the SE corner of Juan Tabo and Lomas in Albuquerque.

Friday, October 30th from 4 PM to 8 PM.

I'd love to see you there. And you can see how my lightning bolt pumpkin looks with a flickering light inside (battery version of a candle).

Nerine Dorman, Author of Dark Fiction and Wrangler of Penguins

2009-10-26T08:12:00.030-07:00

I met a talented woman during the editing process of Dark Knowledge, my editor, Nerine Dorman.

Nerine lives in Cape Town, South Africa. She edits for various publications and as a freelance editor, she's had short stories and travel articles published, and now she is under contract for two novels, the first of which comes out this year. Nerine's novels are supernatural horror, the darker side of horror.

I'm pleased to have Nerine here on my blog today, where I can ask her a few questions about her upcoming novel, her fiction, and her passions.
First of all, a little about Khepera Rising. It's scheduled for a December release, and it sounds fascinating. Here's a brief summary taken from the Lyrical Press website.

The wickedest man in Africa has problems, and they can't all be solved by magic.

Occult bookshop owner and black arts magician James Edward Guillaume reckons he has it all, and enjoys living up his reputation as South Africa's "wickedest man", a nice house, a business that's breaking even and the pick of all the pretty Goth girls and boys in Cape Town.

Little does he know, a group of violent Christo-militants are panting at his heels, ready to destroy his carefully constructed fantasy world. To add mischief to his misery, he's unwittingly unleashed a terrifying demonic entity, and he alone holds the key to The Burning One's secret. To bring order out of the chaos, all James has to do is conquer his personal demons, teach a rather nasty, self-righteous sod a lesson in humility and find out whether he can win back the trust of an old flame. Only, as James discovers, getting back on top is hell on earth.

Nerine, what planted the idea for this novel?

For this I must thank the lady with the lilac glasses. I was walking up Fish Hoek Main Road in a bit of a happy fugue state thinking about… well, writing and stories, when she interrupted me with a rather surprising “Jesus loves you.” For those who know me, I’m a bit of a coffin kid in her dotage so I do stand out in public.

This little incident got me thinking. What if I was the very thing she feared the most? That was when Jamie, my black magician who is delightfully morally ambiguous, jumped out and said, “Hey, howzit!” and I started writing his story in the summer of 2007.

How did you germinate this idea into a plot?

I’d known for a long time that I’d wanted to write a novel but I held myself back until the elements pulled together and slapped me through the face. I have a deep, abiding interest in esoteric matters and wanted to write about a magic practitioner in a sympathetic light sans the Hollywood slant of “If you mess with the unknown you’re going to come to a sticky end”. I just didn’t want to jump in unless I had a clear idea, as well as the possible conflict such a character would experience and how it could be resolved. Too many authors start with a good idea but they don’t think it through and the idea usually fizzles out after the first few chapters.
Khepera Rising involves drug abuse and religious intolerance. Were these themes you chose to address or did they work their way into the plot as you went along?

Drug abuse is sadly something that I’ve seen first-hand with people I care very much about. When they are in that dark pit, they often cannot see their situation as being problematic. In many cases it’s rampant drug use that clouds their judgment. This, in a moment of abandon, can tip them over the edge and prevent them from reaching their full potential. I decided that I’d like to show how a character finds the strength of will within himself to claw his way out of the bad space instead of relying on a crutch to attain the same end.

Religious intolerance is something that is very much evident in South African society. I have a soft spot for alternative teachings, mainly because I despise the groupthink associated with the major world religions, especially the Abrahamic faiths. People aren’t dough to be pressed into homogenous shapes in a cookie-cutter process. If you’re different in any way, this is often seen as bad.

These are two major themes that are dear to my heart. I guess what I’m trying to show with the story is that there are dangers in every path a person chooses, be it in a mass religion that results in hysterical suppression of that which is different, or the path of the individual who has to take sole responsibility for his demons, physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual.

It’s a case of live and let live. Everyone has a right to self individuation, no matter how strange or silly their ways are to those who disagree, so long as what you do doesn’t interfere with the rights of another.

I understand you run a writers' guild for speculative fiction writers in Cape Town. Tell me about that.

Cape Town has so much potential with its writers yet so often they don’t know where to begin or how to go about clawing their way to being published. More often than not, manuscripts are submitted to publishers and/or agents that are nowhere near ready. I started the Adamastor Writers’ Guild about three years ago in order to create a group where writers can meet others who are in the same situation and, through mutual critique, improve their writing. It’s been full of ups and downs but we’ve got a method that’s working well. I’m very proud to brag about two of the newish authors who’ve both seen their work-shopped stories sell in the past two months.

Although writing is a solitary craft, you can’t create in a vacuum, and having a friendly eye that isn’t your mom, brother or uncle, deliver solid constructive criticism, makes a world of difference.

If a writing group like this had been available when I was eighteen, I may have been published sooner.

What about horror and supernatural works appeal to you as a writer?

There’s always so much potential for things to go horribly wrong in ways you hadn’t previously imagined. With regular fiction sans supernatural elements, unless there’s something about the story that has captured my fancy, I tend to get bored pretty quickly. I’ve always had a preference for the worlds of fantasy and magic. A big turning point for me was reading Poppy Z. Brite’s Lost Souls at the tender age of fourteen. Neil Gaiman’s series of The Sandman graphic novels blew me away when I was about eighteen or so. Storm Constantine’s Stalking Tender Prey was another. Coupled with that, I used to roleplay a lot as a young adult, mostly the White Wolf systems and I had a preference for Werewolf and Vampire.

A common theme that appealed to me as a storyteller is that beneath the exterior of our world, there’s another world that is infinitely darker and filled with secrets. Consumed with boundless curiosity, I always want to peel back the layers to find the story beneath the story. Stories tell us a lot about ourselves, our culture and our past. I prefer to seek the mysteries that suggest that there is more to this life than shopping malls, reality shows on telly or big sporting events.

I have to ask about something I read on a bio of you. You're an experienced penguin wrangler? Enlighten me, would you?

I’m a bit of a fervent environmentalist. For a long time I worked as an assistant at my brother-in-law’s veterinary clinic on weekends, so I ended up living out some of my interest in nature that way, hand-rearing baby birds, rehabilitating chameleons and such, but also interacting with the people who love animals. In 2000 the Treasure oil-spill disaster in Table Bay threatened our highly endangered African penguins and my sister, a veterinary nurse, persuaded me to take time off work as a waitress to help with the care of these birds.

It was heart-rending. We arrived at the SANCCOB headquarters and were faced with 7000 oiled penguins. There were only about fifty volunteers at that point. I learnt to tube-feed the birds the charcoal and electrolyte solutions, which was very rewarding. Then we received a call that the army had started collecting birds from further afield and could they please send some volunteers to a warehouse near the docks.

It was horrific. By the end of the week, we were tubing, feeding and washing more than 17,000 birds. As a volunteer you learnt very quickly how to avoid having your eyes pecked out or being bitten more than necessary (the bruises on my arms were something else). It’s like wrestling a very muscular rugby ball with flippers and a razor-sharp beak. The best part was washing the birds and seeing the distinctive black-and-white plumage shine through. Another was seeing the birds accept the fish straight from your hands. It’s almost as if some of them knew we were trying to help them.

Watch for the release of Khepera Rising and the upcoming The Dead of Night at Nerine Dorman's page at Lyrical Press. You can also learn more about Nerine and her dark fiction at the following links.

Website: http://www.nerinedorman.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/nerine
LiveJournal: http://nerinedorman.livejournal.com/
Blogspot: http://nerinedorman.blogspot.com/
Red Room: http://www.redroom.com/member/nerinedorman

Oh the horror! Oh the seduction! Oh the newsletter!

2009-10-24T19:34:00.010-07:00

If you missed the Halloween issue of my Horror with Heart Newsletter, the first thing I must ask you is this: Why?

It's easy to subscribe. Just enter your email address and name in the gold box at the top right of my blog (http://keithpyeatt.blogspot.com). My newsletters will then arrive in your inbox about every other month. They're short. They're fun. They're informative. There's no spam. And there's always an unsubscribe link if you decide you don't want the next issue. There's just no negative. So if you haven't already, sign up today.

My next question is: Want to see what you missed? A little horror, a little seduction... What more could you ask for?

Okay, so you missed it, and now you're wondering--thanks to me (hehehe)--exactly what it is you missed. Maybe you're even feeling a little anxious about it. That's understandable, but here's what you do to feel better. First, relax. This can be fixed. Take a deep breath. Then...

CLICK HERE!

I'm ready. Are you?

2009-10-18T07:04:00.006-07:00

I've caught the Halloween spirit. Can you tell?

Many thanks to Cullan Hudson of Fresh Eire Designs for turning me into a vampire.

Now I know what you're probably wondering. Am I thanking Cullan for turning my picture into a vampire or did Cullan actually turn me into a vampire? Let me clear that up. No, Cullan did not turn me into a vampire.

Now I know what you're probably wondering. I wrote that Cullan didn't turn me into a vampire, but I didn't actually state I wasn't a vampire. So am I?

That question will be answered well enough in the upcoming issue of my Horror with Heart newsletter, due out tomorrow.

Something else is due out tomorrow. October 19 is the official release date for my paranormal thriller/horror novel Dark Knowledge. It will be available in all forms of e-book for your reader or computer. I'll have purchase links on my website.

Big day for me tomorrow with the release of my second novel. I'm ready. I hope you are too, because Dark Knowledge is ready for you.

Keith Pyeatt's Horror with Heart blog

My flash fiction / contest / newsletter extravaganza!

Writing Flash Fiction

Above Haldis Notch, the ad

Readers love Above Haldis Notch

Nominated for Best Horror Novel, 2011

You know you're a character-intensive writer when...

I can be bought

Interview with a villain's maker

Interview with a villain

Lessons from a Newsletter

Release day for Above Haldis Notch

Above Haldis Notch available for pre-order

Can we chat?

Above Haldis Notch has cover

Musa Excitement

Minions of Misery

Horror Author's Got Posse

Julia Kavan Interview

New Horror with Heart Interview

My Excellent Month

Dark Knowledge's New Cover

Cruising Alaska

STRUCK for Kindle

Looking good from here

The Return of Wesley

Try to be alive

A Dozen Dialogue Tips

Mimic the Saguaro

Pitch & 250 novel contest at Ebysswriter BLOG

Cracking the whip (in isolation) on the WIP

Happy Vernal Equinox

Unplanned Characters

Horror Novel Contest at JournalStone

Missing the Manipulation

HWH Newsletter Issue #6 is out!

Feeding the Valentine's Day spirit

Starting over doesn't mean giving up

Struck Sighting

Coincidences you couldn't get away with in fiction

Living in the light, wondering about the night

Florida & Caribbean Cruise Vacation, part 2

Speculative fiction contest at ChiZine Publications

Florida & Caribbean Cruise Vaction, part 1

"Segway" to a new age

Abbott & Costello, a Halloween treat

A backward step

The Tucson house takes shape

How to celebrate a round day

Making it ours

Live from Tucson

Tucson: The next adventure

Happy Birthday Tripp & Tasia

I write like...

T-shirt advertising

BookWenches review Dark Knowledge

Fun with Wordle

A literary agent's action contest

When reality flashes back to fiction

Nice ladies with phone cameras

A protagonist's mother

Ready for Mother's Day?

5 Days in AZ

Cover contest

Struck book signing in Old Town Albuquerque

Today's Hero of the Treadmill

Remodeling

Good morning, spring '10

My first *live* interview

Speaking Engagements (updated)

A Horror Author's Valentine

Why I love the omelet lady

Animals of routine

Interviewed by a mystery writer

Struck strikes with a Writer's Chatroom review

Embossed

Running my way into a new decade

More good things ahead

Heart and Soul of Dark Knowledge

Five Tombstone Review for Dark Knowledge

My first live interview