Werewolf Update & a Cover Reveal
It’s been over a week, and Ah-ooh, our newly acquired animatronic werewolf, is now our daughter’s best friend. How do we know this? She’s told us over and over, the way three-year-olds do. She’s also gotten into the habit of showing photos of Ah-ooh to all of her little friends whenever Jean or I are around with our phones. Her peers are not as warm to the seven-foot lycanthrope as she is. One little boy, upon glimpsing the image of our newest family member, told our daughter, “I don’t want to go to your house.” His face was a wide-eyed mask of fear. Poor guy.
At long last, I am super excited to share the cover of my next book with you. Haunted Hearts is a coming-of-age Halloween novella, coming out via Ghoulish Books on October 29, 2024, with a cover by the super-talented Betty Rocksteady. I love everything about this cover, from the color scheme to the look of the characters to the presence of the masks from Halloween III: Season of the Witch (that’s one of my favorite movies, so I was delighted to see Betty included these masks as an Easter egg).
Here’s the back cover description:
For Moon Boy, adulthood is coming no matter what. Even if he spends most nights drinking forties in the cemetery with his band, even if he drops out of community college to pursue multiple women for different reasons, and even if he can still see the ghost house rise from the quarry at midnight, he can’t stop the inevitable. When his sister goes missing on opening night at Kip Creeker’s Trail of Terror, Moon Boy’s already overcomplicated life takes a frightening turn, and his grasp on reality starts to slip.
Haunted Hearts is a coming-of-age horror tale about those who fight growing up and the ghosts that haunt them.
I wrote Haunted Hearts in the middle of the pandemic. I’d just listened to the audiobook of Richard Laymon’s Traveling Vampire Show and decided I wanted to try writing something coming-of-age, full of lore and longing, but still easily digestible and quick to read like most of my stuff. While it isn’t taboo-breaking in the way Saint Sadist is, it has a lot of stylistic similarities to that book. Namely, it has an unreliable narrator whose sense of reality and self has fractured.
It’s also gone through numerous edits in the four years since I finished the first draft. Some were self-imposed, while others were suggested by a friend. Now I’m going through the publisher’s round of edits, and I’ll most likely finish those during the next writing retreat (9/12-9/15).
Haunted Hearts is a book that means a lot to me. All of my books are important to me, of course, but this one is deeply personal in ways that my others are not. To put a finer point on it: If nineteen-year-old me knew how to write a book, this is the book he would’ve written. If that sounds like something you would enjoy, go ahead and pre-order a signed copy over at the Ghoulish Books webstore.
Just a reminder, I’ve got some upcoming appearances in the next couple of months.
On 9/12/24 at 4pm, I’ll be signing books alongside Wrath James White, Shane McKenzie, Aron Beauregard, Daniel Volpe, Judith Sonnet, and Kristopher Triana at VORTEX BOOKS AND COMICS located at 477 Locust St, Columbia, PA 17512. That’ll be an all-star lineup of modern splatterpunk authors in the store owned by legends Brian Keene and Mary SanGiovanni. What?! How does this even happen?
Seriously, if you’re in the area and love horror, you do NOT want to miss it.
On 10/19/24 at 4pm, Wrath, Shane and I will be signing books at 11 BELOW BREWING, located at 2606 Spring Cypress Rd Spring, TX 77388. We’ll be joined by Jae Mazer, Lisa Vasquez, CL Conolly, and many more Texas horror authors. There will also be tattoos, tarot readings, music, and beer!
Central TX horror people, we hope to see you there!