If you’ve acquired the new issue #69 of Cemetery Dance magazine, you can preview the first few sections of my accidental novella, The Weight of the Dead. Which should be released in full late this year.

When the CD crew asked me to write something for their “End of the World” special issue, I really tried to keep it within the standard allotment of 5000 words. Lord, how I tried. But the idea thrashed and slipped its leash, and needed more than three times the room to run free.

The solution: We’ll excerpt it for the magazine, then publish the novella separately as part of our Signature Series.

To that end, here’s the pre-lettered cover art by Erin Wells, who’s also done a dozen atmospheric illustrations to accompany the text.

I’ve had to keep mum about this one awhile, but finally I can speak freely without worrying about bruisers showing up to break my fingers. Cemetery Dance Publications is putting out a big fat hardcover edition of my early post-apocalyptic epic, Dark Advent. Which should be out by late this year, with the e-book edition to follow within a few months.

One reason to go for the print edition: the gorgeous cover art wrought by artist Vinny Chong, who also did the cover for my 2011 collection, Picking The Bones. It’s a wraparound panorama that takes up the entire dust jacket.

And while I normally give early work a light polish before it goes back into print, this time I put in so much labor it amounts to a brand new draft. Not to worry — nobody behaves any differently. Mostly it was about getting out of my own way, and clearing up a couple of lapses in logic. An afterword about the novel’s origins, etc., rounds the whole package off. This is going to be a beautiful edition that, unlike the original, will no longer require an electron microscope to read.

Further information and pre-order here.

In a coincidence of timing, late last month, Dark Advent made the list of “22 Pandemic Books To Read Before The H7N9 Virus Kills Us All.” Good company, there. And good advice.

Click for bigger and better.

Back in March I wrapped up work on this heretofore unmentioned baby: Whom the Gods Would Destroy. Which is locked in for release this December from DarkFuse. How to describe it? Imagine a buffed-up H.P. Lovecraft mugging Carl Sagan in a dark alley, maybe, while Clive Barker paints a nightmarishly distorted portrait of Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Click to enlarge the lusciousness.

At nearly 32,000 words, it eclipses last year’s Without Purpose, Without Pity as the longest thing I’ve done shy of a full-length novel.

And here’s the cover already. I love it all the more because it doesn’t remotely look like any cover I’ve ever had.

As there’s ample lead time before publication, part of the plan for this one is for me to do an e.p.’s worth of dark space music as a kind of soundtrack to the text. I’m currently putting together a sound palette to work from this summer. Stay tooned.

My novel Deathgrip has taken almost as long to get into its e-book edition as it takes the average print edition to materialize, but it’s finally made the transition…

And as part of Amazon’s Kindle exclusive program, you can nab it for an introductory price of FREE. But that’s good only through today and tomorrow.

Even if you read the Dell Abyss original, you may want to revisit it just for the new, improved, smoother reading experience. As with all these early novels of mine, I’ve given Deathgrip a polish edit.

Way way back in the long ago, a writer-editor-publisher named David B. Silva became the first person on the planet to send me an acceptance letter for my work. I’d made a habit of winning or placing in academic-based contests, but this was something else. This meant more than all of those put together.

David B. Silva, 1950 – 2013. But his deeds live on.

It was for a short story called “Oasis,” which soon grew into my first novel of the same name.

Dave launched me. With his magazine, The Horror Show, Dave launched a lot of careers. An entire generation of writers and publishers is in his debt. It’s impossible to state, or even calculate, the full measure of his influence on my life.

Dave died in mid-March, gone far too soon.

So with understandably mixed feelings, I’m happy to have just inked the contract for one of the more meaningful stories I’ve ever written, finished in the bleary wee hours of yesterday morning. It’s called “Eternal, Ever Since Wednesday,” and it’s for an anthology being fast-tracked in Dave’s honor. Titled Better Weird, it couldn’t be in better hands: Dave’s editorial colleague Paul F. Olson, bringing it together for Cemetery Dance Publications.

How I always think of Dave: looking like a mountain man.

Why Better Weird? Dave’s old motto: “Better weird than plastic.”

I don’t yet know who else is in it, but I know who should be. We Horror Show alumni are legion. Look for an e-book edition soon, eventually followed by a hardcopy print edition.

I really hope to do Dave proud with this one.

I’ve recently inked contracts for a pair of entirely unrelated film options. Another one or two or three may be on the horizon, but let’s stick with the sure things for now.

Disclaimer: James Cameron actually has nothing to do with any of this. But I've got a great James Cameron story!

First, the art-house entry: My short story “Just Outside Our Windows, Deep Inside Our Walls” has been laid claim to by indie filmmaker Derrick Beasley. A dual-year’s-best anthology pick from 2010, it’s the story of the unlikely friendship that develops between two isolated children across the space between their top-floor bedrooms in adjacent houses. I would love to see this come to life.

Next, the multiplex feature: My first crime novel, Wild Horses, has been optioned by Del James. Del has one of the more interesting day jobs in the world: long-time tour manager for Guns N’ Roses. It was an early story of Del’s that was adapted for the video for the epic-length song “November Rain.”

But in Hollywood, Del is represented by Benderspink, a management and production company that currently has around three dozen titles in development. This could get interesting.

This autumn also brings the second volume in editor Stephen Jones’ trilogy-in-the-making about … well, the title kind of tips you off, doesn’t it? Now, what’s better than having a story in it? Having two stories in it.

The U.S. edition. Yes, the guy on the left sort of reminds me of Bruce Campbell too, circa Evil Dead 2.

Or maybe they should be called chapters. This isn’t exactly an anthology, but a mosaic novel: several authors, lots of perspectives, telling a multifaceted story through interconnected accounts via diaries, e-mails, text messages, reports, and the like. My contributions:

(1) “Fright Club” — A faux Rolling Stone article about the latest craze in combat sports. Yes, zombie cage fighting. With an offshoot idea for a reality show I’d really like to see.

The U.K. edition. Same zombies, different buildings.

(2) “Morphogenesis” — A shorter piece that opens a weird science window on the epidemiology of the dead. Which is the closest thing to an improv in a planned-out book as you can get. I pointed Steve toward a New York Times article about an excavation of a medieval plague pit in London, thinking he might find it useful for the third volume. Instead, he told me to run with it right away.

Amazon links below, or start your perusal on the book’s Facebook page.

Last Wednesday, my friend Gary Jonas pulled a tag-you’re-it on me, for a Q&A session called The Next Big Thing. It’s been spreading for the past several weeks, and the premise is simple: answer 10 questions involving your newest or next major project, then pass it on to 5 or so authors of your choosing. Kind of like transmitting a social disease through your own promiscuity, only nobody needs antibiotics.

(1) What is the working title of your next book?

Not counting a couple of upcoming standalone novellas, or new hardcover and e-book editions of earlier books, but the next full-blown novel … I’ve been calling it Leaves of Sherwood. All along, that’s what the title has felt like it should be. It not only IDs a specific, instantly recognizable setting, but it also has intimations of a family tree.

(2) Where did the idea come from for the book?

For a long time, I’ve been interested in doing a take on one of the two great foundational legends of England’s heritage, which have by extension woven their way into the American consciousness, as well. But the Arthurian mythos has been done to death. To be sure, it’s been explored from a lot of different angles, and some of it has been quite wonderful, but at the same time, there’s a certain rigidity to the strictures of its story elements.

The Robin Hood mythos, on the other hand, can be a lot more malleable. Whatever the historical basis there may be for the figure, what ended up in the archaic ballads and stories is much broader than what could reasonably be embodied by a single person: commoner, royal, freedom fighter, career criminal, murderous thug, social activist, etc.

So my notion was to look at the figure not as a single individual, but as a kind of legacy that would, in a series of novels, span about 250 years of history, and begin much earlier than when the story is normally placed. Some of the legend’s seeds actually seem to have come from the last diehard rebels who refused to make peace with the Normans after the Conquest of 1066.

It all begins with a sister and brother, the youngest children of an Anglo-Saxon thegn (local chieftain) who’s desperate to remain in good favor with the Normans just to hang onto what he has. But the brother sees that, at the rate the Normans are confiscating land, there’s going to be nothing left for him to inherit, while the sister is equally desperate to avoid being married off to one of them.

They’re fictional, of course, but they do rub shoulders with a few choice historical figures, primarily an English rebel named Hereward, who was a fascinating guy and has a great story in his own right. Fortunately, there also seems to be a gap of a few years in what’s known of him that fits right into the timeframe of this story.

(3) What genre does your book fall under?

It’s more a historical than anything, as it takes place in a definite time and place, against a backdrop of actual historical events. But it also falls at the intersection where history and folklore collide.

(4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

I have no idea. With a lot of past works, I’ve visualized various people (not always actors, necessarily) as particular characters, but for some reason, in this case, not a single person comes to mind. However I’ve been visualizing anyone has mostly come from inside.

(5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

In the first bloody years after the Norman Conquest of England, three Saxon rebels sow the seeds of the legend of Robin Hood.

(6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

It will go to my agent.

(7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

It’s not finished yet. I hate to even calculate how long this one has been in the works. I’ve gone at it in fits and starts, while alternating with other stuff. The greatest challenge has been the complete inability to rely on the modern world. While there may have been historical or cross-cultural interludes in a few of my earlier novels, they’ve all been set primarily in contemporary America. Set something a thousand years ago, and you have to throw all that out. The world was different, social structures were different, culture was different, people’s worldviews were different.

It’s really been a challenge to recalibrate for all of that. But it seems as though every writer has a novel like this at some point along the way: the one that feels like you’re trying to drag a truck by your teeth.

(8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

The closest I can think of is Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Tales series. He’s done a number of series as well as standalone novels, but these are my favorites. They’re set during the time that England began coming together as a unified country out of separate and sometimes warring kingdoms, primary during the lifetime of Alfred the Great. It’s all told from the point of view of a warrior named Uhtred, who’s English by birth but was raised by Danes, so he has these dual allegiances and familiarities. It really is an ingenious way of vacillating between both sides at a time when England kept absorbing wave after wave of Viking invaders.

(9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I can’t add anything here that wasn’t covered already in #2.

(10) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

No matter what kind of work I’ve done, I’ve always been most drawn to mining the story for as much of its potential human and emotional drama as I can dig into. This one isn’t any different. So I think it will appeal to anyone who’s ever felt compelled to refuse, resist, and reject an order that’s been imposed on them by someone or something else: family, community, church, outside forces, etc. Cultures and worldviews may change, but the human heart seems to be a constant through the ages.

*

And now to pass the baton in this relay. These five friends and fellow scribes will be answering the same questions on their own sites next Wednesday, December 5. Except for the one gonzo loon who just couldn’t wait.

• Sean Doolittle. My brother by another mother. Crime writer par excellence. Superb company on road trips across wintry post-storm landscapes. Probably post-apocalyptic, too.

• Carole Lanham. First got acquainted as a fellow contributor at the Storytellers Unplugged blog. Loved loved loved her debut book, a collection called The Whisper Jar. Still owe her a picture of myself in an apron. Don’t ask.

• Elizabeth Massie. One of my two most longtime wordslinging friends in the world, going way back to a life-changing week in Boston. Embodies epic wonderfulness, as a writer and a human being.

• Yvonne Navarro. Taught me how to behead an enemy with a Gurkha kukri knife. That’s Von all over. Love her books or take your chances.

• Clark Perry. My other most longtime wordslinger friend. Steadfast partner in many a decadent adventure. Where others just talk about cracking the world of TV writing, he’s done it. And appears to have been so overeager to give his own answers to The Next Big Thing, he’s already got them posted.

Like last year, this autumn has turned into anthology season, with a cluster of shorter works coming out at the same time. First up, there’s “For I Must Be About My Father’s Work,” a new piece I wrote for Nancy Kilpatrick’s Danse Macabre anthology.

It’s something I’d intended to write for ages, and is based on an incident in the life of Richard Kuklinski. If he’s not the most notorious killer in the history of organized crime, then he’s way way up there, and grew famous from a pair of HBO documentaries called The Iceman Tapes.

In the first one, Kuklinski relates an anecdote about pausing a murder to give a praying man time to wait for divine intervention. What I found fascinating was that it was the only murder that seemed to bother him; that in this endless litany of atrocities, what got to him was an episode of purely psychological torture, with possible religious overtones. I always wondered what went on during that time, and thought it would make for an interesting story — almost like a one-act, two-person play.

With, as it turns out, one more drop-in guest.

Quickie interview alert: Fellow scribe — and exceptionally sharp-dressed man — Kealan Patrick Burke has just strapped me into the interrogation chair over at his place, and hit me with his list of questions ominously known as The Seven. We cover the requisite backward glances, and the long, lingering looks ahead to upcoming works, and in the process let slip the heretofore undivulged earliest, ignominious roots of Without Purpose, Without Pity.

Fun stuff, at least until we get to the part about the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow.