Faces in Weeds: Short Story Announcement, Cover Reveal + Release & Links!

Surprise, I just put out a new short story! I'd like to say I'm craftier than I really am and that I've had this up my sleeve for a while now, but the truth is, I wasn't really planning this at all. I drafted this story a few days ago after a stroke of inspiration hit while I was playing video games. I wanted to build a story around a sense of rising dread and it was essentially structured around the opening and closing lines that came to me before anything else did. Before I knew it I had a draft and a cover! I listened to a lot of southern gothic music during this one, and I was flying high on some Stephen King bullshit, so those two vibes combined to inspire the atmosphere and tone.

The story, in case you were wondering at all, is called Faces in Weeds and you can get it here on Amazon US, or here on Amazon Canada if you'd like to read it. You can also hit me up on the comments of this blog or comment on my Goodreads review if you'd like a free ebook copy in exchange for an honest review on Amazon or Goodreads.

Here's the super pretty cover...

Soooo dark and mysterious and perfect. Neither a snake or pink flowers appear in the story, but it does kind of fit with the themes/who the narrator is and how she's perceived vs. who she actually is. It was such a fun, twisted project for me to work on and I really hope I can put out a lot more short stories this year, but in the meantime, please enjoy this crazy little slice of horror, if that's your kind of thing!

Why Fangs Matter

A lot of people like to talk about how annoying it was that Stephanie Meyer made her vampire sparkle, but I never minded that. The affront, to me, was that she took away their fangs. Fangs have to be the most important part of the vampire anatomy, even more so than pallor, ugly capes, bad accents, and red eyes. Fangs are my bread and butter.

In all honesty I just love the aesthetic. Something about a pair of vampire fangs with some blood dripping or biting into a throat, that's picturesque. I think that's why vampires will never go out of style; they manage to be sexy and really, really fucking scary and disgusting, all at once, there aren't many other paranormal creatures who manage to be both alluring and grotesque in the same way.

Werewolves come close, but most of the time its no dice. It takes a special author to really do werewolves right, at least for me.

Vampires are another story. That's not to say that I haven't read my fair share of vampire stories, because I have. I've read and reread them.

Twilight, obviously, was the Big One, back when I was thirteen I had that whole Twilight phase, yes. Dark times.

But also, My Blood Approves, The Vampire Diaries, I Am Legend, to a lesser extent the Mortal Instruments, among countless other traditionally- and self-published books. And there are so many popular vampire series; House of Night and Vampire Academy both blew up in the YA genre, so there's even room for vampire stories that prey on some of the same tropes.

To some extent Blood of Midnight (which is free today and tomorrow!) was an inevitable book for me to write. But I also know its not the last vampire book I'm gonna write.

Every once in awhile, you just need to shove a Dracula insert into a high school romance, you know?

And I think there's still a market for it. Despite how saturated it is, yes. How many people rewatch The Lost Boys once a year? How many people still troll Twilight forums or tune in to watch Vampire Diaries every week? Quite a few.

So that's me: secretly rooting for the vampire genre from my post in the doorway of your bedroom closet or the swath of shadows in the space beneath your desk, every night from twelve to four am. I kid.

Maybe.

***

If you like what I have to say you can find more from me on Twitter, or buy my books here! I also have a YA parody twitter.

Frenzy & Rage (Free Books!)

So. I wrote some things. Some things I would like to get more exposure and mainly, more feedback on. So I thought I would offer up some freebies! As you do, right?

Rage & Frenzy are both paranormal novellas. They're set in the same universe, and while they can each be read as standalones, they work best when read together, and are available in a single collection, as well as individually;

 

They feature racially and sexually diverse characters, as well as action, romance, comedy, and horror elements. And I want you to read them for free.

So, if you're a book blogger, or if you rate books on Amazon or goodreads, comment on the blog with your email - or shoot me an email at ApolloBlake@mail.com with the subject line 'rage and frenzy' and I'll send you a free epub!

I would love to see more reviews and ratings - it's always fun to hear feedback - and I'd love to share Myra and Evelyn's stories with more readers.

(Note: I know the blog has been slightly dead in the last few weeks - that's because I'm working on editing Shadows of Ourselves for publication, and getting ready to interview some fellow indie authors here on the blog! I'll be posting updates about those soon! And, if you're an indie interested in being interviews, feel free to email me!)

Things we saw in red. . .

So. Remember how I said I was working on a revised edition of Things We Saw at Midnight a few days ago? And then again earlier today? And remember how I said it was killing me? Well it isn't anymore BECAUSE IT'S DONE AND I PUBLISHED IT!

It might take a while to go through on Amazon, and I'm not updating the Wattpad edition until tomorrow, it's ready to read immediately on Smashwords for free: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/584827

And it's also got a new cover:

Like it? This is going to be the cover for the paperback edition, too, which is coming soon! I'll be having a few giveaways of it eventually, too, so keep your eyes peeled. In the meantime you can grab a free copy for your ereader and enjoy the scares!

Revise and Revise and Revise and Revise

2016 is about editing, clearly. Because it seems like that's all I do now: wake up, coffee, edit book, coffee, edit book, coffee, edit book, sleep, coffee, edit book.

Because I'm actually editing two books. Okay, okay, I know, I said one at a time the other day. And I'm still sticking to that rule, and that book is still Sosas, and everything is on track. But I'm also doing a bit of editing on Things We Saw at Midnight every day for this revised edition, which is actually moving along.

I was right about it being mostly copy-editing, but one fun thing I did is get a new cover. It's not too different. In fact, it uses the same stock image and font - but it's definitely my favourite over the old design.

I won't be sharing until I've already hit published on the revised book (which should be sometime within the next five days, I'll post about it when it's done!) but I can't wait to share it, because it's like candy for the eyes.

I'm going to stop blogging right now and get back to writing, but since I said I would blog more this year I'm trying to, you know, do that.

I'll leave you this time with a song AND some male model eye-candy!

And:

Steven Chevrin

So there you have it. As always, I'm more active on Tumblr at In The Violet Hour, as in dozens of posts a day active, so follow me there for more frequent updates! (And a lot of pictures of half-naked male models.)

Surprise!

I put out a new book today - and it's free! The new book is called Things We Saw At Midnight, and it's a collection of thirteen short horror stories and vignettes set in a fictional Nevada town called Midnight City. It's got griffins and doppelgängers, phantoms and visions. It's even got a personification of nostalgia.

In Midnight City, things are a bit odd. Old Lady Ellen knows when you're going to die, the man with a swarm of bees where his face should be always sits in the same booth at Winston's Pies, and the local gas station attendant is a leftover deity from another dimension. But in the dark heart of this desert city, fear lives like a sentient creature, waiting to claim anyone it can. Will you survive?

Things We Saw At Midnight is diverse, humorous, and hopefully pretty damn scary. I wrote this book as an early Halloween gift to all my readers and online friends, as a way to say thank you for embracing me and my work and encouraging me to keep creating.

you can grab an ebook on Smashwords here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/584827
Or read it on Wattpad here: https://www.wattpad.com/story/51850761-things-we-saw-at-midnight
And, add it on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27181294-things-we-saw-at-midnight

The Scariest Thing is a Double

A few weeks back I had the scariest dream of my life. I regularly dream about serial killers and monsters coming after me, cruise ships sinking while I'm on them, and snakes strangling me - but this dream was scarier than any of them, because the monster was human.

I don't know if I'm the only human this afraid of doppelgängers, but I am. I don't mind clones - use science to explain my exact double and I'm cool with it. I don't mind long lost twins, clones, people who look similair, et cet. But doppelgängers? Spooky exact copies of people that turn up without explanation?

I wasn't the one with a doppelgänger in this dream, though. It was a random guy I've never met before.

The dream started out line any random one: I was at the movies with my dad, and we were seeing a Superman movie. Well, in this movie Superman had a male love interest, and on the way home my dad kept complaining about it. We got in a fight, as you do over gay superheroes, and he kicked me out of the car to make me walk home. He's only done that in real life once, late at night, over 2 miles from home. I won't say I deserved it, but I do understand why he did it, since I was in a bad mood and taking it out on him for no fair reason. He wouldn't do it for something as stupid as an argument over a movie in real life, but in my dream we were really passionate about this movie. So while I was walking home after he drove off, I walked by a really hot black boy, a few years older than me - so maybe 21, 22? And that was it. For me. I kept walking after checking him out as I went by and went on with my day and my walk home.

But the dream didn't care about me anymore - after that it followed this young black guy. And I had been reading a lot about police brutality before I went to sleep, so it seeped into my dreams, all these stories of racist cops and brutality and conspiracies. Because the police do get away with a lot. Dirty cops get away with a lot. And cops need to stop killing black kids, teens, and adult. Cops need to stop killing black people. Tamir Rice was 12 and was shot instantly and remorselessly, all for playing with an obviously fake toy gun. So I was outraged by this, and it bled into my dreams, as things tend to do with me.

So this guy walked past me without noticing me, he was focused on getting home - but when he got there the door was open, and his mother had been shot in the living room, and there was a gun there, and a cop had done it, and he knew it - in the way you just know things in dreams - that a cop had done it, and in that same way he knew they were going to frame him. So he closed the door, called his aunt and grandma to help him clean it out, and set out to prove the cop who had done it (the police chief, as it were) and things went from bad to worse.

Because that's when the dream turned scary. And I mean, I was shaken for the rest of the day when I woke up scary. The boy followed the cops to the woods to check out what they were up to, and long story short they were killing people and ditching the bodies in the woods, there was a pile of corpses in a short ravine and a pipe/slide/chute thing they pushed them down, and it was disgusting, and scary - but the scariest part came when the copy showed up.

The scene flashed to this boy walking through a dirt road in the woods, and something rustled in the trees - and when he turned to look he saw himself coming out of the trees.

And in knowing things just because you know them, as dreams work, I knew without having to wonder that this clone was a normal human. He wasn't a scientific clone or a magic monster or a demon. He was just a person who looked a lot like another person. He had the skills to easily kill the main character, and he was going to do that and take over his life, and no one would ever know or be able to stop him or know what had really happened to the main character. He would vanish and be replaced and no one would know and this stranger who looked like him would take over his life until it was time for him to take the fall for the death of the mother. And it wasn't a big deal to the copy - he would feel no remorse and he wouldn't hesitate. It was no big deal to him.

And that was horrifying to me. The idea of someone killing you where no one will ever find you and taking over your life, it was so fucking awful, so scary to me, that I woke up frozen in the dark. I couldn't breathe for a minute. I was shaken for the entire day, looking over my shoulder.

So that's what scares me: cops, and random doppelgängers. Just, all doppelgänger in general. It's scary, and weird, and it creeps me out. I have a lot of issues with mirrors, too, and I have dreams about my reflection moving without me or turning on me, too, which always fuck me up for days on end afterwards.

I don't know why I'm writing about this here. Food for thought, maybe? Or maybe I just like talking about dreams. Or the things that scare me. Or both.

All I know is, doppelgängers are creepy, cops both scare and enrage me, and I should stop focusing on stuff I hate before I go to sleep, or I'll be doomed to have nightmares for all time. And now, I'm gonna get back to work.