Writing What Hurts - March 2024

So, here’s what’s going on. I’m going to start breaking these newsletters into segments just to keep track, and to help me remember not to forget all the things that might require updating. There’s no sense in a newsletter with no news in it other than there is a new book or story coming up… at least not to me.

One of the things I believe, as a writer, is that it’s important to read. A lot. It’s important to read in and out of your comfort zone. It’s important to learn from other voices and cultures, and from history. Books are a gift, and it’s not possible for most of us to just create in a void. That said, here is what I’m reading.

I do the Goodreads challenge to myself every year now. I set a goal of 50 books last year and beat that by a couple. This year, I set that same goal. I’m four books ahead so far, and here’s some of what I’ve read, and what I’m reading now. The links below are to my Goodreads reviews. I review everything I read.

I’ve read some horror, some science fiction, some science, some history, and some colletions. I’ve read one big anthology, with more to come I’m sure. My favorite books this year, so far, would be Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu, Convergence Problems by Wole Talabi, The End of Everything by Katie Mack, and The Angel of Indian Lake by Stephen Graham Jones. I finished The Magic of Shirley Jackson, which I’ve been reading for a quite some time, a little bit here and there. Wole’s collection, along with a few recent stories by author Ai Jiang, have inspired what will end up being one of my next (I hope) more important works. More on that later. Shirley Jackson has a style, a way of describing situation, settings, and a razor sharp eye for the interactions no one talks about. I read a book called The Book Woman’s Daughter, which I enjoyed, but was not really a style of writing I enjoy – but I learned about the Blue People of Appalachia. It’s a fascinating story. The Angel of Indian Lake finalized the trilogy that began with My Heart is a Chainsaw, and I have no idea how that style, voice, level of pop-culture reference and crazy could be carried so firmly and perfectly through three volumes. Stephen is one of my favorite authors.  Three Body Problem (now a Netflix series) is a work of such complexity and scope I did not even know how to react. I reacted, in the end,  by reading Katie Mack’s very accessible and, actually, terrifying book about all the ways the universe might end, according to curren trends in Physics.

Right now I’m reading The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed (Just started) and listening to Pappyland, a fascinating history of the story and family behind Van Winkle bourbon, and KY bourbon in general. In case I’ve never mentioned it, I love bourbon. Good bourbon. I am opinionated, as are most lovers of whiskey. It’s fun to hear the theatrics, and the lore behind all of it.

The one thing I’m doing that I hope I can inspire other to do, is reading works by people writing now, and reviewing them. Promoting them, if I like them. Doing what I can to forge new relationships and keep abreast of what’s happening now. There are exciting new voices out there. There are diverse voices, and I’ll tell you, the reaction of too many of my contemporaries from decades past has been more “get off my lawn,” in some cases than supportive. Too many authors seem bewildered that writing books that might have come out in 1982 don’t resonate, and sales are not up on their last book which was written before many popular authors of today were born and never followed with anything new. It’s a changing world. It’s brand new every day, really. It’s so much more interesting that way.

I have been bad at writing down my impressions of things we watch, TV shows and movies, so I’m going to start keeping better track with some thoughts. Skipping that for this newsletter.

What I’m working on is a very long list. I just finished a novelette titled “The Feller in Yeller,” where my series character Cletus J. Diggs and his buddies down in Old Mill, NC meeting up with Hastur. Not just the Robert Chambers version, though. I dug a little deeper and mixed in the original story from Ambrose Bierce, Haita the Shepherd. This will appear in the anthology “Tales of Hastur” later this year. My novella When You Leave I Disappear, will be out in August from Short Wave Publishing. Cover art may be available as soon as this weekend. Here are pre-order details, and some of the blurbs that have come in so far, because I’m pretty proud of them:

PREORDER HERE – you get it for $10.99 in paperback if you preorder from the publisher’s site, along with their top-notch packaging. Normal price will be $12.99.

Here’s what advance readers are saying:

"A tale that will haunt you long after you’ve finished reading."

—Ray Garton, author of Live Girls

“…But this is also a novella focusing on discovering the love for and magic of writing, the meaning behind our words, the power of fiction and how there is a piece of the writer in every word, character, story. Wilson shows us what it truly means when fiction becomes reality and reality become stranger than fiction, when dead darlings—both real and fictitious—resurface.”

—Ai Jiang, author of I AM AI, and Linghun

In an impressive display of virtuoso writing, David Niall Wilson marshals stories within stories and doppelganger characterization to explore one writer's imposter syndrome. When You Leave I Disappear is quite simply a tour de force.

—Steve Rasnic Tem, Winner of the World Fantasy, British Fantasy and Bram Stoker Awards

There are more, but we’ll save those for marketing. If this interests you at all, please consider the pre-order. The more preorders, the more visibility on release day, and I want a lot of people to see and read this one. Very proud of it. (Also, I told the publisher I want to be his bestselling book to date – can’t do that without all of you).

I have two major novels in progress… one in outline form that will leverage my long years of experience with computers, virtual machines, and cybersecurity, and the other a horror novel. A haunted house novel but very different… inspired in part by Shirley Jackson and in part by Mary Shelley.

I will be publishing as many as four collections – some in my series work, another of short fiction, and possibly a book of poetry after all these years. It seems like if I have an award for it, I should do something… we’ll see.

I also still hope to complete the novel Tattered Remnants, but it’s sort of a headache-inducing mess in its current condition.

My short novel Closing Time at the Sunny-Side-Up is at a publisher who should be reading it in the May/June time period, so we’ll see. That is most of it for now.

I am still writing the book on writing, Writing What Hurts, when time allows. I will finish it in time to see if people like it, I promise.

I want to give a shoutout to my better half, as well. Trish (Patricia Lee Macomber for books) has a new novel due in August – Cannibal Jack. It is creepy and a lot of fun. Preorders will be available tomorrow, and I’ll be posting more about that on social media. I mostly post on Blue Sky and Facebook these days. Fauxny Stark (Elon) and his crapshow is too much stress to sacrifice time to.

Finally, the cats. There are currently twelve of them here… and there is the possibility we’ll be providing space for a thirteenth before long. I have a friend on Blue Sky, Bennie 8 cats. His theory is that five or more is a life choice – more animal husbandry than having pets. I feel like it’s just part of the family. Love the fuzzy little jokers.