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“Q: What’s the key to suspense? A: I’ll tell you later.” Thrill Me by Benjamin Percy My first exposure to Benjamin Percy came through Iowa State University. I wasn’t a student of his. I left Ames a few years prior to his arrival. I kept up with the English department news and saw an article…

They say that my Grandpa Dale won’t be around much longer. Hospice has been called, and he’s ready to go home to my Grandma, who passed on 21 years ago. As I’ve worked to process that, I’ve been thinking about his influence upon my life, searching for the parts of me that may have come…

I once wrote a poem titled “Crow, Why Do You Cry.” It appeared in Illumen magazine a few years ago. The original title had been “Memorial Day,” and the crow kawed to bring attention to the graveyard, to ancestors and loved ones who are forgotten on all but a single day in the year. The poem…

Some of you may know that I have spent the last year and a half taking writing classes through the University of California at Berkeley. I didn’t write horror in those classes, at least for the most part. The final story that I wrote during the program was titled “The Next Step.” You can read…

As many of you know, new speculative fiction has taken a backseat over the last year in favor of more writing training. I’ve been taking online classes through the University of California at Berkeley toward a certificate in writing. As a few of you know, I just accidentally posted part of a project for my…

MidAmeriCon II is coming up sooner than you would think. The full programming schedule has been released on the MidAmeriCon website. You can find it HERE. I’ll have a reading on Thursday morning at 10:30. My plan is to read “Bottoms Up” which recently appeared in 9 Tales at the World’s End and will be part of…

I bought my first screenwriting books (written by the legendary Syd Field) at Hastings. This began my foray in to creative writing. Prior to that, I was a visual and performance artist. The drum set and guitar sit dusty in the basement, and I haven’t picked up a paintbrush in years. My keyboard, on the…

My collection, All Manner of Dark Things is still on sale for 99 cents on Kindle through Monday. You can check it out here. ConQuest is over. I’m tired, but I had a good time. There are a lot of people that I only see at ConQuest, although with WorldCon in Kansas City, 2016 might be…

  A while back, I took part in a story contest at LitReactor, a literary website that I frequent. The contest required us to produce an original monster and use our hometown as a setting. While my hometown area has always been a source of inspiration for me, “Patchwork” is the first story that I…