ON A MIDNIGHT BLACK CHESSIE and Using YouTube For More Than Watching Robot Chicken Episodes

First up, For the Night is Dark, featuring my story ON A MIDNIGHT BLACK CHESSIE went live today on Amazon in paperback and Kindle. I'm especially happy with this story for two reasons: 1. I've wanted to write a story involving model railroading for about a year, and made several abortive attempts until I finally got it right this past summer; 2. This story marks what I HOPE is a significant development in my short prose. 

See, I have a feeling my novels will always be a bit like Hiram Grange & The Chosen One: loud, noisy, brash action-filled fun with some substance behind them (with the exception of a coming-of-age story I want to write, tentatively titled When We Were Young). However, ever since discovering Charles Grant, T. M. Wright and Ramsey Campbell, while watching Norman Prentiss' career blossom, I've yearned to take my short fiction along more meaningful, quieter avenues. ON A MIDNIGHT CHESSIE is an attempt to do that, along with another short story, ALMOST HOME, which is due out soon in Horror Library, Volume Five.

Here's the synopsis and TOC:

The Dark is coming! Call your friends over. You don't want to go through this alone.

You will be taken back into the past, down to the depths of the ocean and across the borderline between our world and the next. You will see snapshots from the lives of small children, old-time cockney gangsters and aimless stoners. You will journey into the darkest house on the darkest street, wander hospital basements and take a flight in the comfort of first class. You will meet Mr Stix.

This tome includes stories by some of the best horror writers around: G. N. Braun, Carole Johnstone, Armand Rosamilia, Daniel I. Russell, Scott Nicholson, Gary McMahon, Joe Mynhardt, Kevin Lucia, Tracie McBride, Stephen Bacon, Benedict J. Jones, Blaze McRob, John Claude Smith, Tonia Brown, Mark West, Robert W. Walker, Jeremy C. Shipp, Jasper Bark, William Meikle and Ray Cluley.

Also very happy to have my name listed with writers I've read, for a change. That's a switch, a definite step up, for sure.

Secondly, I'm going to start utilizing my YouTube Profile for more than just watching Robot Chicken episodes (as worthy a pursuit as that is). With permission from Tales to Terrify, I'm slowly going to start posting older episodes of Horror 101 there - just the segments alone. I'll soon be posting reviews of the latest in Samhain Horror there, also.

So if you ever get bored of watching Robot Chicken (and who does, really?), you know where to go....