Dark, soulful tales that haunt long after the last page.
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Some Content is Going Paid
Welcome to 2026! As part of my Project: Assault on 2026, I’ve revived my dormant Patreon account. That is the only place I will be openly discussing my pen names and the books related to them. I’ve set my membership tiers at low prices. You’ll be able to get pretty much everything for $1 a…
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Fighting Seasonal Depression with Hate
I entered the workforce at the age of 16. That was in 1982. I worked for the only McDonald’s Enid, Oklahoma, had at that time. I lasted three weeks, then moved on to another job. That’s 43 years of answering to someone else in order to make the money needed to survive. I’m tired of…
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What if everything is holy, and we simply forgot how to see it?
I’ve been playing around with a couple of artificial intelligence tools lately. I know they’re not popular with writers, but they’re not going away, so I’m going to follow the lead of Joanna Penn and find an ethical way to use them. Mostly I’ve been using them for marketing when it comes to books. I’ve…
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Why I Write Horror — And Why You May Need It
Why I Write Horror—And Why You Might Need It People ask me sometimes—why horror? They ask it like I’ve made a strange, almost impolite choice. Like I could have written something nice. A romance. A cozy mystery. Something where the dog doesn’t die and everyone learns a heartwarming lesson by the end. I’ve written books…
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The Story Behind the Story: What Inspired The Dead of the Day
Sometimes, a story grows out of a nightmare. Other times, it starts with something quiet. This one started on a dairy farm in Ripley, Oklahoma. I loved my grandfathers. Mom’s dad encouraged my love of Westerns, teaching me to make a lasso and giving me a stack of ancient Old West magazines. Dad’s dad ran…
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When Memory Fails, Do the Sins Stay?
What happens to a man’s soul when his mind is gone? It’s a question that haunted me long before I ever wrote The Dead of the Day. I’ve seen people I cared about fade slowly into the fog of dementia—forgetting names, faces, entire chapters of their lives. The body stays, the eyes still open, but…
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The Scariest Characters Aren’t Monsters—They’re Old Men
We’ve all read stories about monsters. The ones that crawl out of the woods with too many teeth. The ones that live under the bed. The ones with claws, wings, fangs, or fire. They make for great entertainment. They’re scary, sure. But they’re also easy to spot. You know what really scares me? An old…
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Writing the Unlikeable Protagonist—and Making Readers Care
There’s a certain pressure in fiction to make your protagonist likable. Relatable. Sympathetic. You’re supposed to give readers someone they want to root for—someone they’d grab a beer with or follow into battle. But sometimes, the story demands someone worse. Someone angry. Someone broken. Someone who’s said and done things you can’t defend. Someone like…
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Cursed Bloodlines: Why Horror Loves Generational Sin
Some ghosts don’t come from outside the house.They come from your last name. One of the oldest horror tropes—maybe even older than the vampire or the haunted house—is the cursed bloodline. From Greek tragedies to Southern Gothic, horror keeps coming back to the same chilling idea: You can’t escape your family. You can try. You…
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Oklahoma Gothic: Horror in Flyover Country
Oklahoma Gothic: Horror in Flyover Country When most people think of Gothic horror, they imagine crumbling castles, fog-drenched moors, or Spanish moss hanging off antebellum mansions. But Gothic doesn’t belong exclusively to Europe or the American South. There’s a different kind of Gothic hiding in the plains and hills of Oklahoma. Maybe we don’t have…
Steven E. Wedel 