There are a few steps to getting a book out into the world. There's the actual writing, which is slow and uninteresting, but then there are fun parts. Bright shiny parts. Like thinking about possible covers. I remember making a cover myself, long ago, in an effort to help myself visualize the fact that one …
Continue reading 10 Book Covers That I Really Like (also, homework)
I am going to tell you something about the plan I have for the book I have coming out in September. But first... some background info. I've been working on a book for a few years, on and off. With work and kids and everything else it was a bit of a slog to complete. …
The Girl in the Video is a cyber-stalky horror thriller from This is Horror podcast host Michael David Wilson. I've listened to the This is Horror Podcast for a while and so I knew that the author and podcast host had good taste in horror. The book is about a teacher living in Japan who …
Continue reading The Girl in the Video – Michael David Wilson
This is the story of how I turned a flash fiction story written in an hour for a Flash Fiction thing on Chuck Wendig's blog into a week-long writing residency in Exeter in the U.K. Chuck Wendig is the author of numerous books (buy Wonderers and thank me later) but I first encountered him as …
I'm a massive Raymond Chandler fanboy, though I only started reading him recently. And here's an example that shows exactly why I'm a massive Chandler fanboy. Half an hour and three or four cigarettes later a door opened behind Miss Fromsett's desk and two men came out backwards laughing. A third man held the door …
I asked you about your favorite books on Twitter recently, and got more responses than I anticipated. About 955, as it turns out. https://twitter.com/johannthors/status/1161231619568676865?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Here are the books that were mentioned most often (including quite a few that surprised me.) The Phantom TollboothEast of Eden & Grapes of WrathTo Kill a MockingbirdHouse of LeavesA Tree …
I got to spend a week in Exeter this summer, as the International Writer-in-Residence at the Quay Words literary festival. Part of the deal was to give a talk on Icelandic crime writing and at the end of that talk (which I may post here later) I told the audience about the books that most …
It's Pirates of the Caribbean in Hell. It's the best horror story of the year for me so far, possibly one of my favorite horror stories ever. It has Hell-monks with iron boxes locked over their heads forever, pirate ships, cannibal cults and last and definitely not least, flying, ship-destroying angel-possessed giant squid. I am, …
Continue reading This is the Best Pirate-themed Horror Story You’ll Read All Year
FINCH is one of my favorite books. I can't understand why it hasn't been made into a series, or why there aren't more people running through the streets, thrusting a copy of FINCH upon random strangers exclaiming "You need to read this!" Ok. That last one was maybe a bit much. It's about a detective, …
Continue reading The Sublime Weirdness of Jeff Vandermeer’s FINCH
There's this friend you had in high school who you sometimes think about calling. You had some great times but drifted apart. You know the one? Well, in Max Booth III's Carnivorous Lunar Activities, Justin calls up his friend Ted, unknowingly stopping him from killing his wife in a murder-suicide. He tells Ted that he …
Continue reading There’s a Werewolf in the Basement, Asking me to Kill It.
