The end of the world has arrived.

A mysterious commuter train crash leaves no survivors, but that’s just the beginning.  Within 24 hours, most of Washington’s population has vanished, and chaos spreads like wildfire as murderous shadow creatures ruthlessly hunt down the scattered survivors.

Now a desperate band of refugees struggles to stay alive as they race across a deserted countryside in search of safety.  But there are two among them who are not what they seem.

One is the cause of all of the madness that surrounds them.  And another has been chosen to stop it.

Something evil is coming.  Something sinister.  Something black…

This 44,000 word novella is a stand-alone work of horror.  The Kindle edition of SOMETHING BLACK… will be $1.99 on Amazon.com.  Add it to your “To Read” list over on Goodreads!

Check out last week’s entry here for tracks 4-6 of the playlist.

Track 5

Mesh

Crash

Mesh is one of my favorite acts out of the UK, and I’ve enjoyed watching this dynamic group ever since the late 90s.  (In fact, I first bought one of their albums the day before my wedding.)  Combining elements of  synthpop with Indie rock, Mesh consistently produces music that is both melancholy and aggressive, with layers of distressing lyrics hidden beneath a fast tempo.  ”Crash” is a good example of the band at their best: a fast-paced dance-floor piece whose lyrics are filled with regret and despair.

Track 6

Nine Inch Nails

Only

In the highly unlikely event you’ve never heard of Nine Inch Nails, allow me to illuminate you: no one is more responsible for introducing Industrial music to the mainstream than Trent Reznor, a fact that he has been both praised and reviled for.  Regardless of how you feel about him, Reznor has impressively evolved with the times, and every release experiments and builds upon his core of aggro-industrial sound, sometimes veering towards death metal, other times towards dark acid jazz.  ”Only”, a track from the brilliant album With Teeth, is a fine piece of music: catchy, layered, angry, complex, and 100% pure Reznor.

Track 9

iamamiwhoami

O

The brainchild of singer Jonna Lee, iamamiwhoami is an unusual project in that every track released by the band was done so through the use of social technology (primarily Youtube) and viral video.  A mix of ambient, synthpop, and dissonant electronica, iamamiwhoami‘s work gained a popular following for their artistic vision and highly unusual music videos.  ”O”, their second major release, is a beautifully haunting song, and this is doubtlessly one of the strangest music videos I’ve ever seen.  (Don’t ask me why the tree has eyeballs. I just don’t know.)

What music inspires your writing?

I’ll highlight another excerpt from my upcoming horror novella, SOMETHING BLACK…

This week, we catch up with an ex-soldier named Rafe after he wakes up in a wrecked bus in the middle of a rain-drenched highway, with little knowledge of how he got there.  While a fellow survivor (a cop name Bishop) goes off to search for help, Rafe stays with a dying woman to protect her, as both he and Bishop know something stalks them from the graveyard of cars surrounding the bus.  Eventually, after Rafe is forced out of the bus on his own, he finds out what’s been hunting them…

He looked back the way he came, and he saw it…saw them. 

Massive lupine shapes, the size of lions, or bigger.  They amassed on the overpass, and moved towards the bus. 

There were several of the creatures, but it was difficult to see them through the pounding rain and due to their unstable forms.  They seemed to be little more than dark silhouettes, without true definition or detail. 

Their eyes opened, two pairs, then five, then six, icy white blades trained on his position.   

Thanks for stopping by!  Be sure to head on over to Six Sunday and check out the other participating authors!

Over the past several months I have been actively involved in supporting an IndieGoGo campaign called Indies Unite for Joshua. Through this amazing campaign, organized by the very talented and selfless Eden Baylee, people from around the world have united as a close-knit community to help a complete stranger. I have never met Joshua or his father Maxwell Cynn, and I never even knew who they were before Eden told me about them. So, why would I spend so much time and effort helping raise money for someone I don’t even know? After reading Max’s blog post and having lost my grandmother to cancer back in 2008, I didn’t have to think twice about doing whatever I could to help a fellow author’s son fight his battle against Leukemia. My reasons for joining Indies Unite for Joshua are simple: I have seen the effects of cancer first hand through family members and I simply felt that it was something I needed to do to try and make a difference.

So, for the past few months I have been actively participating in this worldwide campaign to help raise $10,000 in an effort to help defray some of the cost of Joshua’s treatment. With the rising cost of healthcare, even with insurance the treatment is still very expensive for the family. Every little bit helps. Many people have donated books and services as perks for those who can donate $10 or more.

As a campaign contributor, I have donated two e-book versions of my first book Pursuit of a Dream (Book 1 of Victory Lane: The Chronicles) and a couple of author spotlights at SharkbaitWrites.com. I am also donating 100% of all royalties generated from purchases of my book at Amazon, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords. If you like auto racing, you may enjoy reading this story about a boy pursuing his dream of becoming a professional stock car driver. The story is character driven and has a lot more to offer than just racing, so you don’t necessarily need to be a fan of racing to enjoy this novel. If it’s still not your cup of tea, but you still want to help Indies Unite for Joshua reach the $10,000 goal, I encourage you to visit the campaign site for more details on how you can help and consider giving any amount you can. Even $1 makes a difference!

Donations of $10 or more have various perks including eBooks, autographed print editions, and various services. The campaign has been very successful and it really amazes me on how people from all over the world have had a hand in making it such a success. I’ve never seen so many people pull together with such tremendous support for someone they don’t even know as I have seen while involved in this campaign. It has truly been a rewarding experience to be a part of!

Indies Unite for Joshua is about to cross the finish line, and we are so close to reaching that $10,000 goal to help Joshua. I would like to end this guest post with a message directly from Joshua’s father David Moore (a.ka. author Maxwell Cynn). In it he talks about Joshua’s diagnosis, explains the details of Acute T-Cell Lymphoblastic Leukemia, and he expresses his heartfelt gratitude for those who have shown their love and support over the past several months. I have to admit, I got a little teary-eyed when I first watched this video:

I want to thank Steven Montano for inviting me to be his guest at Bloodskies.com, and I also look forward to having him visit SharkbaitWrites.com very soon with a guest post of his own. A special thanks goes out to all of Steven’s fans who have taken the time to read this post, and I thank you in advance for those who decide to contribute to the Indies Unite for Joshua campaign.

Robert “Sharky” Pruneda is author of Pursuit of a Dream (Book 1 of Victory Lane: The Chronicles) published by AuthorHouse in 2004; the revised e-Book edition of “Pursuit of a Dream” was released for the Kindle on September 10, 2011 and is now available in other formats.

Robert (or “Sharky” as he has come to be known as by many of his friends) operates an administrative support business from home and has also worked as an obituaries coordinator and advertising sales consultant at the local newspaper in his home town.

He has recently taken up writing fiction again and is currently working on a horror/thriller tentatively titled The Devil’s Nightmare, which he plans to publish in October 2012. He is very active in social media, mainly via Twitter, and enjoys connecting with other writers and helping to promote their work.

You can follow Robert “Sharky” Pruneda on Twitter @SharkbaitWrites and follow his author site and blog at http://SharkbaitWrites.com.

“Pursue your dreams… and never look back!”

Check out last week’s entry here for tracks 1-3 of the playlist.

Track 4

I:Scintilla

Capsella (Toxin mix)

Capsella is one of those rare songs that not only has 3 very different and very distinct mixes, but each of those individual mixes is REALLY GOOD.  An Aggro-Industrial band based out of Chicago, I:Scintilla uses a combination of raw and edgy electronics and guitars, which combined with Brittany Bindham’s exquisite voice gives them a very unique flavor.  While my favorite mix of this tragic love song is the hard-to-find “Klutae” mix, the “Toxin” mix used for this video is good, too, and certainly the most radio friendly of the three mixes.

Track 5

Haujobb

Dead Market

Haujobb is the-bread-and-butter of EBM (Electronic Body Music) and Industrial, largely because Daniel Myer and Dejan Samardzic have experimented with almost every form of electronic music there is.  And while both of Haujobb’s members have numerous other side projects (Myer’s work as “Destroid”, in particular, is amazing), “Dead Market”, a track of their recent release New World March, quickly became one of my favorites due to its halting, haunting rhythms and layers of harsh sound.  And while I’m not sure what the video (Daniel and Dejan rebuilding an old car) has to do with a song about manipulating world markets, it still has just the right blend of energy and dissonant photography to make it work.

Track 6

Florence + The Machine

No Light, No Light

I fell in love with Florence + The Machine the moment I heard the album Lungs, and they’ve just gotten better since.  An experimental indie pop band out of the UK, Florence Welch and company incorporate heavy elements of soul and ethereal into their work to give their music an eerie, ethereal feel.  For me, what I like about Florence + The Machine is their resemblance to two of my favorite “dark” female acts from the 80s and 90s: Siouxsie and the Banshees and Concrete Blonde.  Like Siouxsie and Johnette, Florence’s style is both dark and whimsical, brooding and experimental, hopeful yet melancholy, and nowhere is that captured better than in the song “No Light, No Light”.

What music inspires your writing?

2. I create scenarios as to how my imaginary characters would kick other imaginary character’s asses.

3. I can’t go on a hike in the woods without imagining what it would be like to do it equipped with a sword.

4. I can’t walk on the beach without imagining the ocean is filled with pirate ships commanded by the undead.

5. I read less for enjoyment than I do to search for good metaphors and images to steal.

6. I eavesdrop, but not because I actually care what people have to say.  I’m looking for dialogue.

7. I write down things like “Why is his arm angry?”, “What kind of guns do the trolls use?” and “Do the ice women want to kill him or have sex with him…or both”? on little stickies.  I often forget what they’re for.

8. The notion of writing a novel doesn’t intimidate me in the least.  The notion of editing a novel fills me angst, pain, and a desire to start smoking again.

9. Every day, I am filled with bitter hate and rage until I get at least 1,000 words written.  After that, I’m mostly tolerable.

10. Caffeine is my crack.  Without it, I zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

11. I enjoy movie trailers and reading ad copy for novels more than I enjoy watching movies or reading novels.

12. My mind never stops going.  It’s always building worlds, laying plots, thinking of ways to have battles on the bellies of dragons that are dangling from the side of a cliff or trying to decide how hard it would be to survive a voyage through a shadow-filled wastelands.  I do this even when I’m in the shower, even when I’m working on spreadsheets at work, and even when I’m playing basketball.

13. Because everyday, I write.  It’s what I am, it’s who I am, and it’s what I’ve always wanted to be.

This post inspired by (and is an entry into) Jeff’s contest.  You should enter, too.  But you better hurry up, because the deadline is tomorrow!

I’ll highlight another excerpt from my upcoming horror novella, SOMETHING BLACK…

This week, we meet one version of the strange creatures invading our world.  In ancient times these giants, the Vorg, took control of primitive human tribes through force and intimidation, and dominated their subjects through the use of torture and fear.  Here’s a glimpse at what they looked like:

The beast’s head was large and round, and its arms were muscular and extraordinarily long.  Its fingers were misshapen and malformed, stubby and greased with shadow.  That was the way the Vorg looked all over: like a great sculpture of black clay.  It had a basic shape, but the finer features and details were all unclear.  Its eyes were pure white, moon white, cold and dead.  Its massive legs were too short for the enormous torso, which despite being grossly fat was also thick and powerful.

Thanks for stopping by!  Be sure to head on over to Six Sunday and check out the other participating authors!

I have a beautiful family.  Yes, my kids have some medical issues, but they’re still wonderful kids (and by “wonderful” I mean “only drive me crazy 80% of the time”).  I have a good job that (barely) pays the bills.  I have a loving, intelligent, diligent wife who has her hands full keeping us all in line.  I’m in terrific shape (save for my stupid calf muscles…I wonder if I can trade those in somewhere), we have a working car and can afford to pay our mortgage, and I get to write and share my books with the world.  Some of you even buy them. ;D

It’s easy to lose sight of what’s important.  My biggest flaw is jealousy.  Every time a fellow Indie author – my friends, mind you, people I interact with and promote and genuinely want to see do well – becomes suddenly successful where I still haven’t, I burn with envy.  I don’t mean to.  I really don’t.  But I start trying to figure out what they’re doing that I’m not; I get angry because sometimes they haven’t been at this as long as I have, or because they seem to be finding this success effortlessly, while I’m busting my ass.  I fume and I berate myself, and it makes my angry.  Not the lack of success, so much, as my jealousy.  Seriously, what is wrong with me?  If I can’t learn some patience and diligence and just be happy for others, should I even be doing this?  I work my ass off, often spending every hour outside of work writing, blogging, promoting, editing, and what do I have to show for it?  Why do I even bother?!

I’ve had this debate with myself more than once.  It happened again this weekend, and I spent more time in angst over what I could do to find the success I wanted than just doing the important things.

Like appreciating my family.

As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, my daughter has generalized epilepsy.  We’ve been trying to get her seizures under control for years through a combination of techniques, mostly different drug combinations.  There have been stretches where she’s been seizure-free for almost a year, and other times where she’s back to having a seizure every few weeks.

She’s been a trooper through it all.  She’s weathered the storm, dealt with the sleepiness and side-effects of her medication, dealt with limitations on her social life (she isn’t allowed to drive, for example) and her stymied growth, both emotionally and scholastically.  It’s been so long since she’s started having seizures I can barely remember the time before.

Lib is the one who deals with the reality more often than I do.  She’s on the phone with the neurologist, with the pharmaceutical companies, with the school.  She’s driving our daughter to doctor’s appointments, picking up prescriptions, trying to work with counselors to make sure our daughter gets a quality education with the assistance she needs.

I know it’s hard for my daughter.  I don’t tell her often enough how proud I am of her.

Last night, as she was putting her laundry away, she had another seizure.  Lib heard it happening, but I was closer, and I rushed to get to her, but just a second too late.  She’d already fallen straight back and landed, head first, on the linoleum.

With so much attention paid to concussions these days, I was scared what might have happened.  No, not scared…terrified.  I’ve only been this afraid a couple of times in my whole life.  Once was when I was in a car crash.  Another was when my Mom called to tell me Dad had been taken to the hospital after he’d stopped breathing, and she didn’t think he was going to make it (and, as it turned out, she was right).

I put a lot on myself.  I have a terrible habit of hoarding all the guilt.  All I could think, over and over again, was that I should have caught her, was that I needed to have been there just a few seconds earlier.  She’d fallen and hurt herself, and it was all my fault.

Of course it wasn’t – I see that now (after repeated smacks in the head from my wife).  But that didn’t alleviate the guilt, which was maybe a bit easier for me to deal with than the fear.  I just wanted my little girl (yes, I know she’s seventeen, she’s no longer a little girl, but she’s my little girl, and always will be) to be okay.

We got her to the ER once she’d recovered from the actual seizure…that always takes a while, and she’s quite groggy, sometimes even cute, as she tries to figure out what’s going on, what happened, and why we’re all staring at her.  Lib had to get her dressed (she was in a robe when the seizure took place), and I understand that my daughter tried to put a shirt on over her robe.  ;D

My hats off to our local hospital.  They were quick and efficient and polite.  The doctor looked like a body double for Patrick Dempsey in Gray’s Anatomy (my daughter wanted a picture of her catscan, so she asked the doctor “Could I get a picture?”, and he asked “Of me?”), and the guy who came to give her the catscan was a total country bumpkin (but in a very endearing sort of way).  She was comfortable while my son (up many, many, many hours past his bedtime) played Angry Birds and watched Game 4 of the Spurs-Jazz series on my Kindle Fire, asking repeatedly if it was time to go yet and helpfully informing every person we met that he was the patient’s brother, and that she “Lost her mind” because she hit her head.

The catscan came back negative.  She has nothing more to show for this ordeal than a bump on the noggin and a shortened night’s sleep (plus a day off, which we all felt was pretty warranted).

I took a lot more from it.

I obsess over stupid things.  I always have.  Sometimes I try to build them up and make them seem important so my obsession seems rational…but there are only a few things that are really, truly important.  I know that, and knew it already.   Sometimes I need a reminder.

So book sales be damned.  Countless hours working myself to death be damned.  I’ll do what I can do in the time I have, and I can say that from this point on I’m going to have a lot less time to work.  I’m going to be allocating those hours to appreciating what I have now…what I was afraid I’d almost lost.

Sorry to go on so long.  My point, for those brave few who might have made it this far, is this: don’t lose sight of what’s important.  It’s easy to do.  And, trust me, you don’t want it to take a near tragedy to bring those things back into focus.  Spend what time you must on your work, whatever that work may be.  Spend the rest appreciating what you have, and being thankful for it.