Dark, soulful tales that haunt long after the last page.
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…
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…
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…
Imagine being raised to believe in God and Satan, Heaven and Hell, and choosing to allow your baser nature to govern your actions. You’re mean, selfish, abusive to your wife, children, and animals. But you believe it’ll all be okay because you’ll confess or repent on your deathbed. But then you develop dementia and can’t…
“Drink from me and live forever.” Remember that? It’s the tag line from the film adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. I’ve been shopping for a poster from that movie to hang in my classroom and seeing that tag line again reminded me of why the vampire was so scary for so long.…