This is, possibly, the wildest update I will ever post on this site. Not that many people will read it here, but rest assured, I’ll be sharing this information in other places where it will be seen. As widely as possible, in fact.

For starters, the biggest news in my career since my story “The Button Bin” made the Nebula Award shortlist: I’ve signed a two-novel deal with Ruadán Books, a newcomer to the horror and dark fantasy publishing scene that’s set to be a big player in the upcoming year. I didn’t start 2024 with any notion that something like this would happen, and it gets even wilder in the details: Ruadán intends to republish my short novel of “magic, music, and violence,” The Black Fire Concerto, and follow it up with the completed but never-published sequel, The Ghoulmaker’s Aria.

Though the fact that The Black Fire Concerto even made it to print in the first place was something of a freakish miracle, I’ve always felt that Olyssa, Erzelle, Reneer, and their friends and foes never got a fair chance to find their audience. Opportunities for super-charged do-overs are rare in publishing, and I sure as hell never expected I’d have such a chance. I wasn’t even looking for one! My heartfelt thanks to R. B. Wood with Ruadán for opening the unexpected door.

Because of him, I finally have incredible news to share with stalwart few who through the years have kept asking me when the The Black Fire Concerto sequel will come out.

Lasse Paldanius has produced truly stunning cover art for this new edition. Hopefully I’ll get to show and brag soon!

And now the really off the chain part — this two-novel deal is only one (though the biggest) of several announcements.

I’m also thrilled to announce that my new novelette, “Lewisburg,” will appear in December in Ruadán Books’ Winter in the City anthology, which is available for preorder now. (In fact, it was while Anita and I were visiting Lewisburg, West Virginia, on a research trip for this very story, that R. B. first reached out to me with a query that led directly to our two-novel deal! Talk about serendipity.

Winter in the City, which will serve as Ruadán’s christening launch, holds tales of wintry horror and dark fantasy set in cities all over the world. My contribution, a novelette of alternate dimensions and homicidal ghosts, is named “Lewisburg” after the city where it happens.

I wrote the first version of this story, original title “Last Legs,” soon after my knee surgery last year. I submitted that version to a themed anthology that bounced it with a form rejection (and I get it, it wasn’t ready yet, though I was too pain killer-addled to notice). But as sometimes happens when luck breaks in a writer’s favor, after R. B. asked me to contribute to WITC, I saw ways to use his book’s theme to shape the draft I had on hand into something bigger, better, and stranger. I’m so, so thrilled the results worked for R. B.!

“Lewisburg” also expands the “MikeCU,” tying into stories found in my collection Aftermath of an Industrial Accident — specifically, the character of Kori, first encountered fighting a phantasmagorical shape-shifting monster in my novelette “Follow the Wounded One,” reappearing for a cameo in “The Cruelest Team Will Win.”

And speaking of forthcoming things I can’t wait to share:

Newly revamped podcast series The Weird Library will record an audio adaptation of my newest published horror tale, “Machine Learning,” available in the June issue of Cosmic Horror Monthly and in my latest collection of horror tales, Slow Burn.

I’ve previously described the elevator pitch for “Machine Learning” as “What if Nyarlathotep controlled SkyNet?” and I’ll stick by those guns. It’s another “MikeCU” story, featuring the Virginia town of Grandy Springs and the character of Vanissa Carter, who made her first public appearance last year in my short story “Slow Burn.”

I’m super-grateful to Bridgette Brenmark for raising this possibility when we met in person at Necronomicon 2024!

Right now you can (and should!) listen to the Weird Library adaptation of Samantha Henderson’s “Maybe the Stars.”

And also:

Fred Coppersmith, editor of Kaleidotrope, has let me know that my horror tale “Service Sector” will appear in the next issue, scheduled for October. Again, so excited that I’ll at last get to share! This is a tale rooted in real-life horrible on-the-job experiences, though names, and locations, and many other significant details have been changed. It’s also a story that, I’m proud to say, is spectacularly gross. Surely all of you will love it.

And also:

Yes, there’s even more, but now we’re in the territory of things that I’m not yet cleared to publicize. How refreshing it is, though, to be filled to bursting with good news.

More soon.

Posted in Fiction, Novels, Short stories, Signal boosts, Slow Burn, The Black Fire Concerto, The Ghoulmaker's Aria, Writing