Rounding things up for 2016

It's been a busy year. The highlight was the publication of my story "Rangel" in "Year's Best Weird Fiction, Volume 3", edited by Michael Kelly and Simon Strantzas.

Here's what one reviewer had to say: I have a gut-level dislike of weird/horror stories about Halloween (it's a little too on the nose), but man, did I love this one. Like Glenn Hirschberg in "Mr. Dark's Carnival," Bartlett successfully uses the holiday festivities to emphasize a strong sense of place and occult harvest ritual disguised and wrapped around the everyday. Thirty years ago, a young girl went missing around Halloween, and now her brother is returning to the autumnal gloaming of New England from the home he's made in LA. He's always been stuck in the past, and while the present-day majority of the story is written in standard past tense, the flashbacks are related in present. This all builds to a horribly beautiful moment of gnosis, just as the ineffable just starting to shine through the cracks of the world. Maybe I'm harping on this book because I'm trying to review it now too, but Bartlett shares with Gemma Files's "Experimental Film " the ability to convey something of the numinous, not just the horrific, as forces simultaneously mesmerizing and awful just start to come into view of their characters.

I self-published Gateways to Abomination in 2014 with no writing credits of which to speak, so to have a story in a book with stories by Robert Aickman, Ramsey Campbell, Reggie Oliver, and more...it's hard to reconcile it with my life before writing.

Here's the roundup, then, of 2016:
BOOKS
•Spettrini April 2016. Dunhams Manor Press, limited edition of 25 copies. To be reprinted in The Stay-Awake Men and Others.
•Creeping Waves April 2016. Muzzleland Press
•Dead Air - Early Broadcasts October 2016, self-published 

STORIES
•“If He Summons His Herd” Lost Signals (eds. Max Booth III and Lori Michelle) June 2016
•“Where Night Cowers” Lost Signals (eds. Max Booth III and Lori Michelle) June 2016
•“No Abiding Place on Earth” Nightscript Vol. 2; ed. C.M. Muller October 2016
•“Rangel” (reprint) Year's Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 3 (ed. Simon Strantzas, series ed. Michael Kelly) October 2016
•“The Terrible Old Friend” Ravenwood Quarterly #1 (ed. Travis Neisler) November 2016
•"The Dark Match" Three Moves of Doom, Orford Parish Books (ed. Tom Breen)

And here's a preview of what's forthcoming in 2017, so far:

BOOK
•The Stay Awake Men and Others. Dunhams Manor Press.
STORIES
•“We Pass From View” Darker Companions: Celebrating 50 Years of Ramsey Campbell (ed., Joe Pulver and Scott David Aniolowski)
•"The Long Lost Parent" Collaboration with Tom Breen. Strange Aeons (ed. Justin Steele)
•"The Rats on LePaul" Dunhams Destroys Lovecraft (ed. Jordan Krall)
•"Goat's Rue" Would But Time Await, Orford Parish Books, (ed. s.j. bagley)

ALSO:
Four additional stories written, including "Provisions for a Journey", "In the Van", and "Master of the House."

At least five more stories in progress, and several books in progress as well.

You want a card game based on the Leeds/WXXT mythos (so to speak)? Well, one is coming in 2017, thanks to the masterful Yves Tourigny.

What else? I reduced the price of The Witch-Cult in Western Massachusetts. It was $9.99; now it's $5.99. 

I'm grateful to have worked with Yves Tourigny and Nick Gucker, and I really look forward to future projects involving Michael Bukowski and Dave Felton. I'm grateful to anyone who has read my stuff, and to anyone who's reviewed it.

Well, this has all been a way to put off writing? Why? It's snowing outside. Time to get back to it.