News this good doesn't arrive every day. My third collection of stories, Living the Dream, just got accepted by Terror House for publication in 2021. I will be updating my websites when I have more information. Thanks to everyone for following my writing. It matters. Michael
Category: Writing
What HP Lovecraft Can Teach Us About Programming the Reader
One of the many reasons I love pulp fiction from the early 20th century is that writers like HP Lovecraft can have a line like, "the moon was gleaming vividly over the primeval ruins" (from "The Nameless City") and actually get away with it. If I wrote something like "gleaming vividly," my teachers would have… Continue reading What HP Lovecraft Can Teach Us About Programming the Reader
One Cat at a Time
A story about volunteers. Of all the things I’d hoped to accomplish that fall, digging a six-foot-deep moat around the family house wasn’t one of them. But the governor decided to end all Covid restrictions in the middle of the pandemic, causing the state’s heavily armed population to take it as a sign and go… Continue reading One Cat at a Time
Magazine Rejections and Learning to Love the Hate
Read my new piece on Splice Today: https://www.splicetoday.com/writing/magazine-rejections-and-learning-to-love-the-hate
Two Women
A new story in Terror House Magazine. Click here and read it on their site: https://terrorhousemag.com/two-women/
Lesser Magic
A story about spiral dances. I threw the beer can. It was half-full, just like Dorian's head. So when it hit him, the damage was minimal. A brain in a half-full head is a self-parking mechanism. It floats—not in intelligent space, not in some New Age cogito-esque void full of purple smoke and glittery… Continue reading Lesser Magic
Animal Science
A story from my first collection, Gravity. It was hot. That was foremost in my thoughts. A sheer, raw, violating hotness that wobbled on the cement quad and in the still dry air above it. I focused on getting across without fainting. I fixed it in my mind. I didn’t have to ask why there weren’t… Continue reading Animal Science
Cleveland is Why You Fail
A short short about mistakes by lakes. Hockel knocked once, softly. Louis knew it was him, but Louis didn't get up. He stared at the rain on the window. It had been raining for eight days. After six, Louis found that he could almost believe it was going to rain forever, a cold, greasy,… Continue reading Cleveland is Why You Fail
October Plums
A story about pain. When I rolled into Missoula, Jim Donlon was waiting for me in dark glasses and a black cardigan with a white T-shirt underneath. He looked drunk. "Davis," he said, as if my return was the last in a long line of depressing accidents, "what the hell is this?" His way… Continue reading October Plums
Newsfeed
White men are horrible, straight men are horrible, white straight suburban women are especially horrible, oven cleaner is white adjacent, history is horrible, you are horrible, look at my dog. Racism, hillbilly violence, iconoclasm, the anarchy must be put down, but isn't it about time, anarchy is okay, anarchy in the UK, anarchy is not… Continue reading Newsfeed
The Writing Expedition 