Two Bits of Shameless Self Promotion

My new book, VERMIN:  Book One of the Stanley Cooper Chronicles, just hit Amazon, and I hope lots and lots of people buy it.  Stanley Cooper is an average guy, short, dumpy, with bad hair.  But an industrial accident left him dead for seven minutes.  When paramedics revived him, he discovered he had the ability to see dead people.  And not just ghosts, but the living energy that surrounds all things.  A telephone call from a panicked stranger sets events in motion that puts Stanley in the middle of a bizarre string of robberies and murders in Pittsburgh, and it's up to him, his best friend Maggie (who is a witch) and a skeptical cop named Taylor to find out what's going on and how to stop it before it's too late.  


Order it HERE!

Here are a couple of excerpts:

     It takes a lot of guts to come forward when something weird or frightening happens to a person. Most people feel like no one will believe them, or that people will blame them and laugh behind their backs. And most people are right. It leaves people with a sense of hopelessness, that there is nowhere left to turn. When people begin to feel that way, those dark forces win. I don‟t mean that metaphorically, I mean it literally. They win a victory, a conquest over a soul when a person loses hope. Someone experiencing what Shannon claimed to experience has to be at wit‟s end to come and find someone like me. Most of the time, they dummy up and don‟t tell anyone. When it first happened to me, and I thought I was losing my mind, sure, I mentioned it to a few people: a shrink here and there, a few friends, a bartender or two… My friends stopped hanging around with me, the bartenders cut me off, and the shrinks told me I was suffering from some sort of post-traumatic-stress-syndrome brought on by my “passing.” 

     They never say “death,” always “passing.” “Passing” sounds so much nicer, less final than “death.” “Passing” sounds like something a person might do walking between two rooms. It doesn‟t sound like what happens when a piece of safety equipment fails due to production cutbacks, dropping a person thirty feet onto the back of their head. It doesn‟t bring to mind waking up on a gurney with a sheet over one‟s head and a paper tag on a persons toe. That‟s not “passing,” that‟s “death” with a capital “D.” 

     Good things came out of it, though. I developed a new respect for people I might have thought were crazy before. I also quit drinking and smoking. I‟ve heard of so many people who‟ve had near-death-experiences who came away with the “live for the now” attitude and saying things like “I‟ve been dead, so nothing scares me.” 

     Frankly, the thought of dying and not coming back scares the ever-loving Hell out of me. People talk about seeing the long corridor with light at the end or seeing dead relatives. When I died, I saw nothing. I saw darkness. I didn‟t even get to float up above my own body or relive my life in fast forward. Just black. Just cold. 

And

     People say they don‟t believe in magic or ghosts. They call people like me and Maggie delusional or say that we‟re living in a fantasy world. Magic isn‟t real, they say, and there‟s no such thing as ghosts. They go along their happy daily routines, safe and secure in the knowledge that the unexplainable or things that go bump in the night aren‟t real. These same people are the ones who avoid shops like Maggie‟s, who watch me as if I might do something spooky, and are the first ones to scream and run if so much as an odd noise is heard in the old dark and creepy house. They say they don‟t believe, but it‟s a lie. The trouble is they do believe, but they don‟t take the time to try to understand. They believe, but they‟ll never admit it to each other because that would let the possibility in that there are things in the world that don‟t fit in with their neat little model of what life is supposed to be. In the light of day, it‟s easy to say there are no such things as ghosts, or possession, or haunted houses. In the dead of night, tucked in bed, hiding beneath the blankets while the sounds of footsteps cross the floor and the sounds of breathing come from under the bed, everyone believes. 

And Now, More Shameless Self Promotion

Okay, so it's not really self-promotion per se, but it is something I hope lots of folks check out.  My darling and talented wife, Tabatha, just opened up her own online store to sell jewelry, objects d'art, and other stuff that she hand-makes herself.  Seriously, look at Lurch over there and tell me that's not cool.  He's already sold, but there are lots of other zombie heads, necklaces (I have a "Hand of Glory" that I refuse to take off), earrings, book marks, and other stuff.  Oh, and where is her store?  Just go to Monsters Under Glass and help support artists like Tabby and myself.  I can't tell you how wonderful I think her artwork is.  So jump over there already!