The Birthright was the first novel I actually finished. I pitched an idea about a family of occultists to a now-defunct serial-subscription website called keepitcoming.net five or six years ago; I actually didn’t have anything written, but I figured that if my story was accepted, the site’s weekly deadlines would force me to keep moving [...]

New awesomeness: Florida-based indie electronic publisher Pandora Project has just issued a standalone e-book version of short story “The Terrible Twos.” It’s sort of an experiment, we’re going to find out together whether folks will pay around a buck for a single (*cough* great *cough*) short story of a few thousand words, so by all [...]

In celebration of “The Terrible Twos” coming out in digital form, here’s another story, this one all brand new and never seen before and all that stuff. It’s called “The Pest,” and it’s … well, it’s gross.

Other than the convoluted mythology and end-of-series missteps, I love pretty much everything about The X Files. There are even a bunch of Robert Patrick episodes I think are pretty cool.
But one of my favorite things about the series lately, now that it’s seven years gone, is watching episodes and realizing just how many now-famous [...]

So, Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly’s new movie, The Box, comes out November 6, and is currently the beneficiary of a crazy-expensive promo campaign. It looks a little more action-oriented than his previous stuff, but otherwise appropriately austere and slightly off-kilter and generally, erm, Kelly-esque. (Disclosure: I thought Donnie Darko was pretty OK, but I [...]

Um … erm … yeah. I don’t know. If good fiction is all about character and story alone, then it’s a non-starter – it’s just clever, Andrew Dice Clay’s bit about Jack & Jill and the two-fifty. After a contemplative shot of Firefly iced tea vodka (I still can’t make up my mind whether it’s [...]

Halloween is on a Saturday this month. That might not mean a lot to kids who are going to be done trick-or-treating by 8 p.m. or adults who define a holiday by its paid-day-off value.
But it means a lot to me. Halloween is my favorite holiday, and as a member of that cabal of adults [...]

I wrote this one in about a week as a going-away gift for our friends Porl & Lori’s kids, Loki and Lachlan. They’re kind of crazy, and smart, and a whole lot of fun to be around. They also share this wonderful personality quirk that allows them to be both mature and incredibly, crassly childish. [...]

Popcornfiction.com is a new-ish site dedicated to publishing short, pulpy stories from some of the new wave of horror/thriller screenwriters. Interesting idea, one that doesn’t seem to have an agenda other than getting some reads up.

Just finished it today. Wow. Such a crazy yet coherent mix of noir, psychological thriller, horror, wartime paranoia … before I picked it up, I was really excited about the Scorsese adaptation coming later this year. Now, I’m just not sure it’s even going to be possible to come close to the book’s multilayered quality.