About Time, Angels, Nightmares and Other Stories

Hello everyone! 👋 I trust this post finds you all doing well. I wanted to take a moment to provide you with some updates on what I am up to.

I am currently working on a short story anthology with a working title of, About Time, Angels, Nightmares and Other Stories. This will be a short story anthology of stories focusing on, you guessed it, Time, Angels, Nightmares and more. Currently, I have four short stories completed in first draft format.

The time stories were originally written as screenplays and were born out of a collaborative project that my friend Michael DeCiccio and I worked on. These stories are more like Twilight Zone stories, pitting characters against supernatural manifestations of their fear of time. I don’t want to give anything away, but he and I are very passionate about these stories and really feel that we have something special here. I have provided two of the three stories to Michael for review and the feedback has been great. I completed the last one around 1:45 a.m. today and emailed it over to Michael for review. From there I am going to read them to my wife, Dana, for her feedback. She always provides me with great critical and honest feedback.

After that, I have another story in screen play format to convert to a story and then I have four very small, flash short stories that I am going to include in the book. I am hoping that when all is said and done, it clock in around 60,000 to 70,000 words. I am at 44,000 now and I believe the total story count will be about ten stories of varying lengths.

The Angel story is about 22,000 words and will be the longest story in the book, while the time trilogy of stories are clocking in at about 18,000 words. I am also including some notes to the reader and introductions to the stories where it makes sense. Michael and I may collaborate on a story together too if it makes sense. When all of this is done, I have one publisher waiting on the first draft who is eager to work with me on this anthology. I have to get a contract with them too in order to see if they are the right publisher to go with. They already read and loved the angels story, so I believe they will love the other ones. This project is my sole focus for writing right now, so all my other projects are on hold so I can finish this one, which if all goes well, the first draft should be done by the end of September. More to come on that.

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Now Reading

I haven’t had a ton of time to do reading between family, work and writing, but I am still making my way though Charlie Huston’s Every Last Drop (Joe Pitt #4) and that book is very much enjoyable, but I also just revisited the comic series Colder, by Paul Tobin with art by Juan Ferreyra. The two have crafter a modern day Lovecratian tale with some amazing and visceral imagery. It’s very original and engaging. I highly recommend it and I am looking forward to reading the second series, Colder: The Bad Seed. Take a look at this cover.

The other comics on my list are The Unicorn and the Fox written by Nick Bain with art by Nick Acuna. I stumbled on this on over on Instagram and ComiXology describes the series as follows:

The Unicorn and the Fox is the project, which he has found himself most passionate about. In a flash, the story came to him. The first draft of the story was completed in two days and Nick Acuna would be the only illustrator interviewed for the project. To the author, the pace by which the story and illustrator came to him demanded that the project be produced.

Inspired by dark fairy tales. Nick fashioned the story as the story he would have most liked to have heard as a child, but that was never told to him. The Unicorn and the Fox is a layered story, told in a fairly simple way. The undertones are complex, current, yet timeless. However, its the story itself, which he found himself so engaged with.

This is the story of a once peaceful planet, which is taken over by an infinite darkness. The only hope becomes Buddy, the “broken” unicorn.

ComiXology

Here is the cover:

Last up is the comic, Crawl To Me, by Alan Robert (Wire Hangers, Killogy) who both writes and does the art for the story. ComiXology describes the story as follows:

Wire Hangers creator/hard-rock musician, Alan Robert, is back for blood with this all-new horror tale, Crawl to Me. The story centers on Ryan, as he struggles to protect his family from what appears to be an evil entity living within their basement’s crawl space. It is only after a series of violent events occur, that Ryan realizes he must set aside all he believes to be true in order to face his shocking and inevitable reality. This intense thriller will keep you guessing every step of the way.

ComiXology

Here is the cover for Crawl To Me.

I am very excited to read these when time allows.

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Well, that’s it for now! Thank you for taking the time to read this post and I for all of your continued interest and support. Take care and I will write to you all again soon. 😁