Darkness is interpretive. It’s in our nature to explore the shadows. Through the 13 stories presented in Black Magick, compiled and edited by award-winning occult author Raven Digitalis, the reader is transported into mysterious settings that blur the line between fiction and reality.

Each story uniquely integrates occultism and magick, deepening the mysteries of the shadow. By acknowledging darkness through the written medium, we can better come to terms with the darkness within ourselves.

These haunting tales are finely crafted by a wide variety of writers, and each story is uniquely different from the other. When we bravely explore the darker aspects of life, we more accurately come to know what it means to be human.

Black Magick is dedicated to author Storm Constantine, whose story “Candle Magic” opens the anthology.

IT’S OKAY TO REVIVE AN OLD PROJECT

I can’t believe this book is finally printed. I was convinced for years that Black Magick would never see the light of day, but lo and behold, it’s alive! It turns out that, well, creative visions just sometimes need a bit of time to gestate.

I originally conceived of this short story anthology back in 2008, in between the releases of my first books, Goth Craft and Shadow Magick Compendium. Something like 30 publishers rejected the project back then. This was due to its content: sex, drugs, occult terror — things like that. Since, at that time, my mind was moving on to the next nonfiction Pagan guidebook I had in mind, I set the project aside and let it gather virtual dust.

It wasn’t until 2023 that I had a dream where the project was revived. So, I just went with it! Half of the original authors stayed on board, while the other half dropped their story for one reason or another (or were impossible to get in touch with). New authors jumped in fast, and, after a few more US publisher rejections, Moon Books picked it up. Moon Books is a Pagan, Wiccan, and metaphysical publisher in London, and are a branch of Collective Ink.

Hot damn; a British publisher wants to print it? Let’s get ‘er done! Thankfully, Brits tend to be a bit more lenient about controversial literary expression, trigger warnings and all.

EDITING AIN’T EASY WORK

When Black Magick was revived, I was lucky to be in between projects. At that point I had begun co-creating decks of divination cards! My Empath’s Oracle had recently been printed, and plans were in the works for my Gothic Witch’s Oracle deck, which also recently got published by Crossed Crow in Chicago.

Editing the short stories, as well as reworking my original tale, proved to be an exhaustively lengthy process, not least because I had to educate myself about editing fiction writing specifically. Fiction is an entirely different beast from the nonfiction I had become accustomed to penning.

Many of the stories required multiple revisions and meticulous editing. Everyone was great to work with, luckily, from the contributing authors to everyone at the publisher. Writers, artists, and creative visionaries like to get things just right — and that we did!

Thankfully, my oldest friend in the world, Miranda S. Hewlett, not only contributed a story to the anthology, but stepped in as the book’s Associate Editor. Being an English professor and a literary genius in general, her skills picked up where mine left off. Another longtime friend and fellow contributor, S.M. Lomas, also stepped in to perform valuable proofreading for selected stories. With all our powers combined, the final form of Black Magick became one damn fine, spooky, and gloriously unusual piece of work.

DIVERSITY IS A VIRTUE

When one of Black Magick’s contributing authors dropped out for personal reasons, I needed a quick replacement. After some meditation and reflection, I realized that there wasn’t a Black voice in the anthology. A quick internet search revealed the work of Tracy Cross and her first novel, Rootwork. I contacted Tracy, who lives in Washington, DC, and she was happy to write a brilliant, futuristic Hoodoo tale just for the occasion!

The only thread running through every short story is the concept of “black magick,” the term itself being a bit tongue-in-cheek and sensationalistic. Otherwise, I encouraged authors to let their creativity and imagination run wild! No homogenization found here.

I’m amazed at the anthology’s diverse scope of material; I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so diverse, and at one time thought it might be too all-over-the-place. I soon came to realize that this is part of the book’s charm. Some of the stories are written in first-person, and others in third. Some tales are straightforward, while others are creepily obscure and hellaciously abstract. The breadth of subgenres contained include dark fantasy, erotica, sci-fi, mystery, folk horror, queer storytelling, period pieces, and a whole bunch more. Still, all of the tales stay firmly grounded in the genre of occult horror. Mission accomplished!

NORMAL PEOPLE ARE EASILY FREAKED OUT

Like I mentioned, Black Magick was originally rejected by a wide array of publishers due to some of its shocking content. When Moon Books picked up the project, however, their art, design, and marketing departments were all on board for creating one delicious, eye-catching, spooky-ass cover. What’s more sinfully stereotypical of so-called “black magick” than a so-called Voodoo doll?!

It turns out that both the book’s cover artwork and title haven’t been entirely received with open arms, but my guess is that it’s because ordinary, everyday folk just aren’t the book’s demographic! It’s easy to forget that superstitious beliefs permeate every culture to one extent or another. This was especially surprising to a person like me, who is deeply involved with real-life Witchcraft and occult spirituality. Indeed, more than a few folks have found the very idea of the project to be off-putting and frightening; even heretical. Oh well… their loss!

OUTSOURCING IS SMART & EFFECTIVE

I had never given a thought to the prospect of outsourcing. At the same time, I’ve longed  for years for a secretary, an assistant — anything, anyone — to help with scheduling, promotion, advertising, and so on. I’m lucky enough to have all my books published traditionally; I don’t know how folks do it independently.

I just don’t have enough time in the day to promote myself properly. Between writing books and articles, a professional Tarot reading career, and keeping up with a handful of side jobs, it was a blessing to discover and employ an outsourced assistant! As it turns out, my online Pagan buddy Alex J. Coyne in South Africa not only performs writing and editing, but is also proficient in the arduous work of publicizing! Since asking him to become my official Publicity Assistant, I’ve been blown away by his ability to create succinct lists of new contacts and his skill at cold-pitching the book to reviewers whose content is published on numerous mediums; print, podcast, YouTube — you name it! Even my lovely overloaded Publicists are happy with his work, and are relieved that he can dig a bit deeper into forging new contacts and impressively think outside the box.

The exchange rate in this outsourcing has also been a pleasant surprise, and was a huge draw in my choosing to inquire about hiring his assistance. Just a handful of PayPalled bucks each month helps pay for his rent, food, and the expenses of life. It continues to be a result-yielding, mutually beneficial process.

In fact, Alex even wrote an article detailing his experience in becoming the Publicity Assistant for Black Magick, encouraging other writers to consider doing the same!  (Link: https://alexjcoyne.com/2025/02/03/assisting-the-raven-tales-of-darkness-horror-the-occult )

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Raven Digitalis is an award-winning author best known for his “empath’s trilogy,” consisting of The Empath’s Oracle, Esoteric Empathy, and The Everyday Empath, as well as the “shadow trilogy” of A Gothic Witch’s Oracle, A Witch’s Shadow Magick Compendium, and Goth Craft. Originally trained in Georgian Witchcraft, Raven has been an earth-based practitioner since 1999, a Priest since 2003, a Freemason since 2012, and an empath all of his life. He holds a degree in cultural anthropology from the University of Montana, jointly operated a nonprofit Pagan temple for sixteen years, and is also a professional Tarot reader, editor, Reiki practitioner, and animal rights advocate.

Raven Digitalis: Website

Black Magick: B&N | Amazon

Stories in Black Magic:

1. Candle Magic by Storm Constantine

2. Spanish Jones by Adele Cosgrove-Bray

3. 3:33 by Rhea Troutman

4. Entombed by Corvis Nocturnum

5. Fata Morgana by S.M. Lomas

6. Automatic Writing by Gabrielle Faust

7. The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe

8. Don’t Forget to Feed by Miranda S. Hewlett

9. The Night Everything Changed by Raven Digitalis

10. ReBound by Tracy Cross

11. Captured by Jaclyn M. Ciminelli

12. Red Gifts by Daniel Adam Rosser

13. The Iconoclasts by Mona Fitzgerald-King

 Step into the twisted mind of Del Howison with this unflinching collection of dark tales. What Fresh Hell Is This? brings together stories from across Howison’s prolific career, each one exploring the eerie and the macabre, examining humanity’s deepest fears and desires. Drawing on his rich life experiences—from being baptized in a river and attending a private Christian college to his ownership of the famed Horror bookstore Dark Delicacies—Howison crafts tales that delve into the darkest corners of the human soul.

These tales push boundaries, blending the supernatural with psychological terror, and invite readers into worlds where the unimaginable becomes real. From paranormal happenings to supernatural horrors, Howison’s storytelling prowess ensures that these stories will stay with you long after you turn the last page.

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Things appear different in a group. All the dark tales in What Fresh Hell Is This? were written at different times and even different years for anthologies, magazines, and e-books. They have never been compiled in one place before. My first viewing of these as a group opened my eyes to a cohesiveness in my tale-telling that I never realized. The way I end stories, the way I pace, the POVs I choose to reveal what is going on. I’ve found that I’m slightly askew. I think that’s a good thing.

Patience truly is a virtue, especially when it comes to publishing. The entire industry moves at glacial speed. To push it faster rarely results in a better product. Rewriting, reediting, reformatting, etc. only improves the product with each pass. Don’t be in a hurry. I might be antsy to get the story out there. But once it is out there, it is out there forever. The extra time you take might save an eternity.

There is no such thing as a perfect book. Every book contains a mistake, a misspelling that wasn’t caught or an editing error, possibly a formatting faux pas. It doesn’t matter how many times it is edited or rewritten, there is an error imp hiding amongst the lines of your tome. Upon receiving your book, he is usually discovered in the first place you open it to. It doesn’t matter how inconsequential the error is. It stands like Mount Everest on the page. Every author has a publishing disaster in their past that never leaves the back of their mind, clinging to their anxiety and fear with the release of every book.

You can write to any theme the editor gives you. The freedom to write your own novel or story is a wonderful thing. But many times, that is not where the money comes from. An editor tells you they need an article or piece of fiction about X. In your mind you say, “But I don’t write about X.” Yes, you do and Y and Z also. When you write it and turn it in for that sale there is confidence that you gain. You become a better writer for pushing yourself to the other side of your self-imposed barriers.

When doing research for your writing don’t look only at the item you are researching. If you pay attention you will find a mention or a hint of something connected to you research that you didn’t know, an idea you didn’t realize before beginning your search. Follow that thread and see where it leads. Many times it will take you through a doorway that opens up an entire room of possibilities. Don’t get tunnel vision. Don’t close yourself in.

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Del Howison is an author, journalist, SAG actor including the upcoming horror film Big Baby directed by Spider One. He is a Bram Stoker Award-winning editor of the anthology Dark Delicacies: Original Tales of Terror and the Macabre by the World’s Greatest Horror Writers. He has written articles for Fear.net, Gauntlet Magazine, and Writers Digest among others. Del’s short story Cul-de-Sac appeared in Weird Tales Magazine #369. His western short story The Lost Herd was turned into the premiere (and highest rated) episode, The Sacrifice, for the series Fear Itself. His dark western novel The Survival of Margaret Thomas was shortlisted for the Peacemaker Award given out by the Western Fictioneers. He has been shortlisted for over half a dozen awards including the Shirley Jackson Award and the Black Quill. Del’s retrospective short story compilation of dark tales, What Fresh Hell Is This? was released in early 2025. He is the cofounder and owner (with his wife, Sue) of Dark Delicacies, a book and gift store known as “The Home of Horror,” located in Burbank, California. The store won the “Il Posto Nero” award from Italy and has been inducted into the Rondo Hatton Hall of Fame.

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What Fresh Hell Is This: Dark Delicacies | Bookshop.org | B&N | Amazon

In the first Amazing Tale of Antifascist Action, New York Times bestselling author Lilith Saintcrow serves up science fiction pulp in a North America fractured by drones, bioweapons, and ideology, giving us a heroine practically made out of violent resistance.

THE RUNNER

Just behind the front lines of a war they call “civil,” the shifter called Coyote is tough, fast, ugly—and known for taking jobs nobody else will.

THE JOB

Marge’s sister is locked in a prison camp civilians shouldn’t know about, deep in enemy territory. Rescuing her will take a plan made of weapons-grade insanity.

THE TRICK

To get in, all Coyote has to do is get caught.

THE PAYOFF

None, unless the satisfaction of killing an old enemy counts. And maybe a few small bounties from murdering fascist clones…

RUN, COYOTE. RUN.

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Apparently I’ve read a lot of “pulp”.

When Kevin Hearne at Horned Lark first contacted me about writing a novella, one of the terms tossed around was pulp, which as a genre is almost impossibly fluid. To be pulp is like being porn—one knows it when one sees it, a gestalt of violence, unrestrained cover art, and over-the-top-ness. All of which I’m a great fan of! When I started thinking seriously about the story on a structural level, I was forced to think about what I love in things I personally consider “pulp.” I wanted a fast-moving, lean, incredibly unflinching story; I wanted Coyote to be just as quick, canny, and resourceful as her namesake. I drew from a wide variety of pulp-ish works, from Bugs Bunny to Weird Tales, from Action Comics to spinning paperback racks, from dime thrillers to thinly veiled 50s erotica.

Truth be told, I was kind of shocked by how many books, novellas, old magazines, short stories I considered “pulp” enough to influence what I wanted to do. I hadn’t thought it was so much a part of my personal aesthetic, but I guess one learns things about oneself with every work finished or even attempted. I mean, I already know I’m a midlist hack schlockster, but this just drove home how much I adore things many “serious” writers or “critics” find disposable, nasty, crude, over-the-top, et cetera, ad nauseum, ad infinitum.

Tropes exist to be flipped, reinvented, and put in whatever blender you can find.

Coyote is not a character for the male gaze, which is in itself an inversion of plenty of what’s considered “pulp”—especially given the history of the term. My feelings on tropes are like my feelings on grammar or punctuation; these things exist as rules so a writer can figure out how and why to break them for whatever effect is necessary. I have rarely met a trope I didn’t want to flip, dismantle, chop to pieces, or subvert, either subtly or overtly.

I admit it doesn’t get much more overt than Coyote.

Anyway, these tactics can’t be deployed without an understanding of why tropes exist, what they are, and how they are generally used. It’s like resistance training for physical muscles—performed improperly, it turns into an injury-prone mess. But if you know how a muscle works, you know how to stress it in a way that adds to strength or flexibility. One can even obey a trope in such a way that it adds to subversion, as in the figure of Doctor Deranian (incidentally, named after a millionaire Disney villain) whose fictional experiments are taken almost directly from gruesome real-life historical incidents. Pulp villains are not terribly complex, and yet Deranian is not merely two-dimensional because he is taken from actual people who behaved just as he does.

Using cartoonish, exaggerated broad strokes to highlight the banality of real-world evil is a highly satisfying way to use a trope. Sometimes evil is just that, and deserves to be met with its own nasty methods.

Art can (and does) come from spite and pettiness.

Quite some time ago, I wrote another book with an “ugly” (i.e., considered unattractive by the conventional male gaze) protagonist, and my one request of the publisher was not to put a bee-sting-lipped model on the cover.

Guess what happened.

Anyway, it’s been years and I’m still annoyed whenever I think about it, despite being in the game for a very long time and understanding the various pressures which lead to many, many unfortunate cover-art decisions in publishing. However, being handed the chance to write another stereotypically “ugly” character (don’t get me started on the term coyote ugly, which was a factor in the story’s genesis) and also have my request that an artist go absolutely apeshit with the cover honored was a pretty healing experience. (Please go take a look at Phineas X. Jones’s absolutely excellent work here, my friends!)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still spiteful and petty. That will likely never change. It’s a major source of fuel for any work, and leaning into it is not only instructive but provides a great deal of amusement for one personally as an artist.

Christ knows we need all the sardonic, spiteful chuckles we can find these days.

Biology is weirder than anything I could ever dream up.

Mother Nature is not only drunk but high, and has been on the bender for billions of years. The number of weird animal facts I dug up while researching to answer questions of imaginary shapeshifter physiology cannot be calculated. I started out with the well-documented instances of cooperation between coyotes and badgers, fell into a rabbit hole about conversion-of-mass in possible shapeshifter thermodynamics and metabolism, took a sideways journey through chemical cascades underlying certain physiological responses, learned more about snake hemi-penises than I thought possible (though truth be told writing shapeshifter romance is a thorough education in Different Animal Dicks almost by default), staggered into another research hole dealing with the maternal stress response of eating one’s own young, on and on—and that was just writing the initial draft of the damn story!

If I detailed every research hole I threw myself down while revising—or during copyedits—we’d be here forever. Just take my word for it, Ma Nature has been intoxicated to the point of incoherence for geologic aeons, and the results are diversely, stunningly hilarious. Especially on this tiny, rocky little planet of ours. So lean into the weird with your biology, my fellow writers.

You won’t be able to approach Ma Nature’s sheer bonkers bullshit, but it’s fun to try.

Any story about “the future” tells us more (most) about RIGHT NOW.

I was first forcibly shown this while writing the Danny Valentine series, where a major influence was my trying to imagine how a post-petroleum transport technology might affect social structures, especially the repression of those seen as “different”. The HOOD series was informed by the question of how FTL travel and generation ships might intersect with feudalistic, autocratic social structures. Afterwar also drew on a lot of thinking I’d done about post-petroleum. So does Coyote; the Lindyland clinging to petroleum in the presence of other, better energy sources is clearly a comment on today’s stupid, short-sighted “drill, baby, drill”.

I am reminded of a (possibly apocryphal) story about Gene Rodenberry being asked if replicator technology was what ushered in Star Trek’s post-scarcity society. Rodenberry was reportedly quite definite that post-scarcity had already been reached, otherwise replicator technology would have been kept as a plaything of the already-rich and powerful while the rest of humanity starved.

Technology aside, there’s a larger point: Imagining a future must necessarily start in the present, pushing against the boundaries of what exists in order to show what is possible (and in many cases, preferable). The futures we imagine as ways to solve present problems are built in reaction to the structures which make present problems, well, problems. This is why autocrats, dictators, fascists, and bigots come for the storytellers first, with book bans, blacklisting, starvation, and finally bullets. Exposing racism, sexism, oligarchy, greed, etc. as problems to be solved instead of how things will always be is incredibly powerful, and strikes at the root of the rotten house of lying cards.

Imagining a better, kinder, more free and equitable future cannot happen without taking stock of (and holding a mirror up to) what exists now, and is never more critical than when the present is a morass of lies, fascism, and violence.

And if you like pulp, well, you can also have some deliriously violent fun along the way. Heaven (and binge-drunk Mother Nature) knows I did.

Coyote Run is available now in print, ebook, and audio in all the places, including your library if you request it.

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Lilith Saintcrow is the New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty novels. She resides in the rainy Pacific Northwest with her children, dogs, cat, and library for wayward texts. 

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Lilith Saintcrow: Website

Coyote Run: Horned Lark | Bookshop.org | B&N | Libro.fm | Kobo | Apple

OH, HELLO THERE.

Who has four thumbs and another two books on the way? This guy. *points at self using two thumbs* Also hey do you know anybody looking to buy some thumbs? I seem to have two extra here in a little Ziploc baggy.

*shakes the baggy*

*the thumbs wetly bump together*

Anyway!

Announcing:

THE CALAMITIES & CHAOS REIGNS

Coming to Del Rey! By me!

From the announcement: “A horror-fantasy duology pitched as Leigh Bardugo meets Clive Barker, in which the rich and powerful who run our world are actually rival demon families who feed on souls, each of which has sent a hungry expendable to investigate the strange power of a mysterious church that has risen in the American Midwest, to Tricia Narwani at Del Rey, by Stacia Decker at Dunow, Carlson & Lerner (world English). Rights: decronin@prh.com Film/TV: Josie Freedman at CAA Fiction: Horror”

I’ll talk a little more about these in the future, but for now, to answer some quick questions —

a) I’m writing the first book now! I’m having a fucking blast with it. Rough size expectancy is around 150,000 words. But hey that could change.

b) I don’t have a release date, I’m hoping sometime 2026, right now I’m obviously eyes on Staircase in the Woods, which is, oh shit, soon

c) I thiiiiink the second book will come out more quickly on the heels of the first book, like, within that first year after.

d) I am needless to say excited to work with Tricia again, a person who is 100% the greatest editor I know, and should win all the editing awards every year, again and again, in perpetuity until time itself ceases to exist. Obviously excited to work with the whole Del Rey team, too! But my books simply would not exist as my books without her steady editorial hand. Thanks too to my agent for helping make this deal a reality in the first place.

e) while the pitch mentions Bardugo and Barker, please also add into the book’s DNA, Library at Mount Char, by Scott Hawkins, and maybe even a little bit of that TV show, Evil.

Anyway! I’m excited. To drizzle a little more information atop these cupcakes — for those who have noticed that in my last several books I’ve had hints of demons and demonic presences (looking at you, Eddie Naberius), please be assured this is a continuation, even a culmination, of that vibe. (And who knows, maybe Naberius will even show up…) Initially, the first book was called The Fiends, but then amazing author Alma Katsu was like, “Here’s my new book, Fiend!” and I was like, well, she got there first, that’s just Book Law, so an entirely new title hit me and I totally love it.

Anyway, no way to preorder these or anything yet — when that’s a thing, I’ll letcha know. In the meantime, ahem ahem ahem, Staircase awaits.

Is this book $1.99 now at your favorite ELECTRONIC BOOK-O-MATIC website? It sure is. It’s got haunted house vibes, creepy coal mines, a disappearing serial killer, magical owls, generational trauma, and a small family who is dealing with it all. I’d say this is the book where I get the most people coming up to me and telling me how much it means to them, if that’s worth anything to you? Maybe it’s worth a hundred-and-ninety-nine pennies, anyway. So, feel free to go find it —

Bookshop.org | Amazon.com | B&N | Kobo | Apple Books

Everything is perfectly normal and fine, and in that world of normal fine normalcy, one might want to read books. And once in a while, I get someone asking me, “Hey, what book of yours should I read first/next,” and I never exactly know how to answer that question succinctly, except for maybe blindfolding you and spinning you around and pushing you into a stack of my books and hoping one falls into your arms. I mean, I’ve now written *counts on fingers and toes and various clandestine appendages* 28 novels, with number 29 (Staircase in the Woods) arriving at the end of April. Plus three more secret books (two more adult novels, one middle grade) coming out, for 32 goddamn novels. That’s not even to mention the three writing books I’ve written, or the novellas, or, or, or.

It’s a lot of books! You’d be right to feel dizzy at the options! I didn’t even realize I’d written that many! What the hell is wrong with me?

Anyway. The question persists: where to begin with my books?

So, here I will attempt to answer this question! But I’ll answer it in a variety of ways, and you can do with it as you see fit. Ready? Let’s do it.

Reading Order

So, beyond chronological order, if I were to recommend a reading order based on… I dunno, vibes? Personal preference? I’d say this would be my reading order for you, if you were an adult person–>

Wanderers -> The Book of Accidents -> Wayward -> Black River Orchard -> The Miriam Black series (in order: Blackbirds, Mockingbird, The Cormorant, Thunderbird, The Raptor & The Wren, Vultures) -> Zer0es -> Invasive -> Atlanta Burns -> The Blue Blazes

Here you might be saying, “But that’s not all your books,” and you’d be right, it isn’t. But that’s for a reason! These are what I’d consider the… I dunno, core books of mine? The canon, so to speak?

But it’s not the only way to approach the work. Let’s keep going with —

My Best Book

If you wanted to know what I consider to be my best book —

It’s this one. Wanderers. This is a book that I’d had in mind for years but it didn’t really have a full story or characters with it — but once I sold it on pitch, and once I sat down to write it (without an outline, no less) it more or less just fell out of my skull. It garnered what was to me a very large amount of blurbs, a lot of starred reviews, and it just opened a lot of doors for me. So, I think that’s my best book. It’s certainly also my bestseller. And it’s a book that broke me. In the best way possible. I thought I knew how to write books? And this book told me I didn’t write them the way I thought I did.

(Buy it here: Bookshop.org print, e-book, audio at Libro.fm, or buy signed/personalized at Doylestown Bookshop)

The Book That Means The Most To Me

I’d tried to write this book two other times throughout my life and I just wasn’t ready for it. And then, one day, in my 40s? I was. I wanted to tell a story about generational trauma and family and how parents sometimes hold back the seawall of their own trauma but how that damages them too — and then, you know, there’s ghosts and a creepy coal mine and a missing serial killer and all sorts of other horror trappings. Plus some big twisty twists in there. But really the emotional core of it is important to me — it was then, and remains so, now. (Staircase in the Woods isn’t out yet, so it’s not included on al this stuff, but I pair it with Book of Accidents in terms of a personal book with something to say about myself and my view of the world emotionally more than sociologically or politically.)

Bookshop.com print, ebook, audio at Libro.fm, or buy signed/personalized at Doylestown.

My Actual Favorite Book

This one’s difficult! Honestly. It may seem strange that I like my own books but, for the most part, I do. I write them so that I like them! I write the kinds of books I want to read. The first time I really wrote a book that I was like, “Oh wait, fuck yeah,” it was probably the third Miriam Black book, The Cormorant. I just vibed really well with it, felt in-sync with it while writing it and after. Then the next one was Atlanta Burns, which started life as Bait Dog and then ended up a proper YA-ish YA-adjacent book, and you know, it’s hard not to enjoy that one, either, because — teen girl taking down small-town Nazis, especially these days, feels right.

But, at the end of the day, my current actual favorite book is —

You sort of had to guess, right? It felt like a stunt, “Oh, I’m going to write a horror novel about apples,” but then it actually happened, and I loved writing it, and it’s really been finding its audience since it hit paperback, which is nice. I think it’s a weird, neat, scary book about apples, and cults, and what happens when you lose your friends and family to bad ideas and social malignancies. It’s got social horror and body horror and probably way too much information about apples.

Bookshop.com print, ebook, audio at Libro.fm, or buy signed/personalized at Doylestown.

The Book I Wished More People Knew About

This might seem like a controversial one but —

If Wanderers is my biggest seller, then Wayward is my least successful book — financially — of my current crop of books. I’m saying that to be honest! It is nowhere near the first book in sales. Now, part of that is normal. You’re never going to get 100% uptake on a sequel; usually it’s about 50-60%, if things went right. And we’re just not there with this book. Most people didn’t even seem to know there was a sequel, and I don’t know how to scream it so loud that all the readers in all the land can hear it. But here’s the thing — I like this book more than I like the first one. It’s not that I think it’s better, per se, but I think it’s more interesting, and it concludes the story from the first one in ways that make me really happy. It contains some chapters that have legit made me weep like a baby. And other chapters where I wanna pump my first like it’s end of the Breakfast Club. I really love this book. There’s a golden retriever named Gumball, for fuck’s sake, and he’s a very, very good boy, perhaps even the best boy. So if any book of mine needs the proselytization, it is absolutely this one. I mean, for fuck’s sake it contains Dolly Parton as an apocryphal character and tells a story about how she deals with Nazis. C’mon.

Bookshop.com print, ebook, audio at Libro.fm, or buy signed/personalized at Doylestown.

That’s How You Get Ants / Elon Musk Sucks Moist Open Ass

Did you know that once upon a time, Wanderers was going to be a sort-of-sequel to this book, in the way that this book is a sort-of-not-really-sequel to Zer0es? It’s true! Hannah Stander, the futurist-daughter-of-doomsday-preppers, actually appeared in the first draft of Wanderers. Anyway. This is a thriller I had a blast writing, and it features both a) creepy freaky skincutter ants and b) a billionaire analog to Elon Musk who very definitely sucks and is evil, and I wrote this shit in like, 2014 or something. Fuck that guy. I hope he gets his skin eaten by ants. Anyway. I’d love to write more Hannah Stander, she’s a character I really like — there was almost a TV show about her, and then that TV show was almost an animated TV show about her, and things got really weird, and then they did not happen because it was bad.

Bookshop.com print, ebook isn’t available at Bookshop so here’s Amazon, audio at Libro.fm, or buy signed/personalized at Doylestown.

If You Want A Whole Damn Series That Tells A Complete Story

Miriam Black knows how you’re going to die, and that’s really fucked her up. Especially because she thinks she can’t do shit about it — until she realizes one day that she can interfere in someone’s death, but not easily, and not for free. There’s always a cost. She’s profane, unhinged, and is a character who is near and dear to my heart. These books were called urban fantasy, and then later on, supernatural suspense — but for me, they’re horror-crime.

(And note, there are also novellas that slot between the books!)

Start with the first book — Bookshop.com print, ebook through Amazon, audio at Libro.fm, or buy signed/personalized at Doylestown.

I’m A Writer Who Writes

There, I have two books for you — Damn Fine Story is about the mechanics of story, plot and character. Gentle Writing Advice is more about the life of a writer, what you can take, what you can leave, and most importantly, how you deal with being a writer in times of strife and stress.

I Have Kids Who I Want To Join The Cult I Mean Become Your Readers

I have two middle grade books out — Dust & Grim is a weird horror-fantasy-thingy that’s funny and strange about a girl who inherits a mortuary for monsters, and Monster Movie! is about a kid who is afraid of everything and ends up doing battle with a monster movie in the most literal sense of the term — the movie is the monster. The latter is a standalone; the former is technically a standalone but one I wanted to write sequels for, but the publisher wanted to stick to one-and-done, even though the book ended up selling well in paperback (enough that it became a NYT bestseller).

I’ve also written YA, and my Empyrean trilogy — which, to be upfront about, is a trilogy published by one of Amazon’s publishing arms — is about the poor dust-scrabble folks who work amongst the carnivorous corn while the richie-riches live in their sky-cities looking down. I think John Hornor Jacobs described it as Star Wars by way of John Steinbeck and I like that. These books tend to be pretty cheap in e-book, if you so desire.

But Chuck, What About Star Wars??

I mean, sure, if you like Star Wars, I wrote some of those. Three books, which I’m proud of, especially writing them under difficult conditions. I don’t get much for them if you buy them, and at the end of things, Star Wars did not treat me particularly well? I’m honestly still a little bitter about the whole affair, and that hasn’t faded much, so that’s on you if you wanna check ’em out. Again, I’m happy with them. But I don’t get squat. They put some of my characters in things and I don’t even seem to rate a thank you or a t-shirt, much less actual dollars in my pocket. *shrug*

Okay! So I think that’s a good primer on where to start with my books. So if you’re looking for some manner of escape from THE CURRENT CALAMITIES, look no further than this list. And of course in April, we have a new one from me if you need something oooh-shiny:

Pre-order signed, personalized copy here (with bonus stickers and unique book-specific specialization).

So lemme ask —

If you’ve read these, where would you tell people to start?