Just finished up a 10 page comic script for an undead story of love and loss. I’m really happy with how it turned out.

I’ve always had sort of a morbid fascination with death. Not the gross, dead body, kind of death, but the iconography and subtext of death. In college, my second video project was a pseudo-documentary shot with real footage of behind the scenes mortuary action. I have skeleton tattoos. Like I said, iconography.

My new comic script let me play with that, just a little. Not sure who the artist will be yet but am super excited to see who it might be.

Working on three separate writing gigs this week.

Just finished a major re-write of the story I did for my short in Cliffhanger Books‘ anthology Gods of Justice. Have I mentioned how much I love the name of that company? There was a TV series back in 1979 called Cliffhangers that I absolutely loved as a kid. It was three different shows in one, and each episode ended on, you guessed it, a cliffhanger. I wasn’t so enthralled with the international conspiracy story Stop Susan Williams, but the Gene Autry Phantom Empire knock off The Secret Empire and The Curse of Dracula had me glued to the TV. I managed to get the series on a bootleg DVD. Looks like crap, but it’s fun re-living the show.

I also got sign off on treatments for two unannounced but in the works comic stories. One I will loosely describe as a zombie western, the other is straight up high fantasy. Will be finishing scripts for both. This week…Yikes.

But it is so much fun to be writing so much.

Hot on the heals of being accepted into Gods of Justice, I was asked today if I would like to contribute to a western horror anthology.

Do spaghetti westerns come with cheese?

Hell yeah I want to contribute! Two of my favorite genres = horror + western!

Already have an idea for a story. Two actually. But I only get 10 pages…choices.

Anyway, having a great week as far as writing goes. It won’t make me rich, or pay my bar bill, but between the super hero story and spooky western, I am sure as shit having fun.

Few months ago I submitted a short story to Cliffhanger Books for inclusion in their upcoming superhero anthology book Gods of Justice.

I am very happy to say that my short story, “The Hero of the City,” has been accepted for inclusion in the book.

Cliffhanger did a neat, paranormal romance anthology with the clever title Paramourtal last year. I submitted a zombie love story to it, but, honestly, it wasn’t a good fit and was rightly rejected. I read through it and was pretty impressed by the quality of the prose. If Gods of Justice is as good, I’m in great company.

The thing I like about Cliffhanger Books is they are bucking the trend. So many other small publishers are going all digital, or just going out of business. But Cliffhanger seems to have found a nice formula for publishing new writers and genre stories.

If you support independent publishers and writers in general, you owe it to yourself to check them out.

It feels good to be accepted. Much better than not being accepted. Ask anyone.

This weekend I got some nice accepting news. A story I submitted to an anthology publication has been accepted. I was a runner up, and only got the crown because someone else bowed out, but I’ll take the acceptance any way I can.

More later when it is made official by the acceptors.