Check out a spooky new season of short stories on The Shadow Storytellers website, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
We also have a merch store now!
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Check out a spooky new season of short stories on The Shadow Storytellers website, or wherever you listen to podcasts. We also have a merch store now!
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 Happy Holidays! All December, Matt and I have been telling Christmas ghost and ghost-adjacent stories on The Shadow Storytellers. Today's episode is the 4th and final one before we return to non-seasonal tales of terror in January, so it's a great time to binge the set if you want to fit in some last-minute festive chills. Ghost stories are an old Christmas Eve tradition, and they're typically best told around a warm fireplace, but of course you can also enjoy ours while wrapping presents, traveling, baking, or taking care of whatever last-minute tasks are on your list. They're completely free to listen to and currently ad-free as well. "Something Else Is Coming to Town" A young boy's attempts to catch Santa in the act inadvertently release a horrifying darkness into the world. "The Gingerbread's the Thing" An amateur baker/necromancer creates a haunted gingerbread house to get to the bottom of her sister’s untimely death. "Don't Ruin It" Specters reach across the ether to crash a Christmas Eve family dinner, but their powers to terrorize have nothing on That One Uncle. "'Til the Merry End" A recently deceased mall Santa arranges for a Christmas miracle. Click the titles to stream directly from The Shadow Storytellers website, or come find us on whatever podcast platform you like: Apple Podcasts Breaker Castbox Goodpods Google Podcasts iHeartRadio PlayerFM Pocketcasts Podbean Podcast Addict Reason Spotify Stitcher We hope these Christmas ghost stories bring some spice to your season, as they have to ours! Halloween is right around the corner, and what better way to celebrate than by dimming the lights and listening to some spooky new stories? Wait, did I say, "listening to"? Oh yes. Matt and I are trying something different this season. In a few weeks, we're going to be launching our very own speculative fiction anthology podcast, called The Shadow Storytellers. On this new weekly show, we'll be sharing some of our creepiest, most bizarre and fun short stories for your listening pleasure. All of the content is brand new or never-before-shared, and we've been having a whole lot of fun bringing it to life in audio form. As huge fans of horror and sci-fi anthologies like The Twilight Zone, Tales from the Crypt and Creepshow, we really could not be more excited to share this project with you. The Shadow Storytellers first episode will go live on Wednesday, October 6th, 2021, with new episodes airing weekly afterward. If you want to make sure not to miss any updates on the show, use the panel on the right to sign up for email notifications or update your preferences to specifically include The Shadow Storytellers as one of your interests. For more information, please check out The Shadow Storytellers website.  Stories carry with them great power, They can transport us into the light, and into the dark… And into a place in between, a land of shadows… It is in this land where the macabre and the strange reign, With tales of terror Tales of hope Tales of the whimsical And the weird These are stories told in the shadows And we are the Shadow Storytellers. See you in the shadows! I'm in a new anthology! When the World Stopped: A Collection of Infectious Stories is just what it sounds like. It's a multi-author anthology of short stories about viruses, real and fictional, compiled and edited by Emma Nelson and Hannah Smith of Owl Hollow Press, the same publisher that brought you Matt's Bennytown. It's freshly released, and my personal copy is still on its way, so I haven't gotten to look at the stories other than my own yet. However, I hear tell that this was one of Owl Hollow's most popular short story submission calls ever, and that it took a lot of tough choices to keep it down to a manageable size, so I have no doubt that the quality and range of different takes on the theme will be stellar. So, if, like me, you cope through fiction and have spent this year watching zombie movies along with Alien and Contagion and The Thing more times than you can count, consider joining me for some new, timely-on-purpose plague fiction.  From the back cover: Viruses are not new to life or literature, but the ways we experience them are always evolving. And stories are some of the best ways to heal, connect with others, process our own emotions, and remember the nuances of unique times and places, so join us as we explore love and loss, passion and betrayal, fear and panic, togetherness and separation, community and isolation within viruses of all varieties—real and imagined. Look for my story, "The Regrecode." In the year 3020, an idealistic young doctor and her randomly assigned quarantine partner, a jaded operations manager, race to save humanity from a bio-digital virus that can short out the human brain, circumventing all reason and compassion and leaving only childlike pettiness with a compulsion to spread. Click here to order (Paperback and Kindle editions available)  In honor of Matt's new horror release, Bennytown, I'm asking him a few questions. And with no false modesty, I think my insider knowledge of both this terrifying book and the psyche of its creator allowed me to coax forth some pretty interesting answers. See for yourself: FJRT: Tell us about Benny the Bunny himself, the icon and mascot of Bennytown. Within the world of the novel, he’s a fictional character whose likeness is all over the park. How was he created, and what is he like in his own doubly fictional world where he’s real? MC: Benny the Bunny… wow, he and I go back. He was the subject of a lot of my horror-based writing throughout a lot of my early attempts in the genre, an evil, malevolent Barney like figure back when Barney was a character who particularly annoyed me (can you tell I’m a 90s kid?), though for the record I hold no ill will towards now. Over time, Benny evolved more into an amalgam of famous cartoon characters and ubiquitous cultural icons as a satire of ever-present media creations, and has become a lot more fun to play with because of it. In the world of Bennytown… Benny the Bunny is the world’s most popular and recognizable cartoon character, the icon of the Dorian Studios media empire. He’s a green bunny rabbit who wears overalls and white gloves. Personality-wise he’s distinctly mellow and friendly, always with a kind word or a wise story, always welcoming you to sit on his front porch in Happy Hollow so he can play you a song about friendship on his banjo. Benny the Bunny wants to be everybody’s best friend, especially to those who have no friends. Benny believes in you. FJRT: You’ve written young adult horror in the past, and Noel, the protagonist of Bennytown, is a teenager, but you chose to write his story for a more general adult horror audience. What factors went into that decision, and how is the book different from what it might have been if you’d taken a more teen-focused approach? MC: From the start, I knew that I wanted Bennytown to be an adult oriented horror novel, because that is the type of horror that I’ve read for about as long as I can remember. Stephen King was very much a part of my coming into being as a horror fan, and I’ve wanted to walk in his footsteps for a very long time you could say. But why would I make Noel sixteen? Well, a lot of the decision-making on that front simply came from life experience. I wanted to write this story from the naïve perspective of a new hire at Bennytown, and having actually been a new hire at a theme park once upon a time back in the dark ages when I was sixteen, it was the kind of story-telling fit I knew that I could do some justice to. It gives Noel less life experience, less a frame of reference for him to be able to tell what is and isn’t normal in a job like this, and more for the sinister forces behind the park to play with in his psyche. If I was going to write this for a more teen based approach… I think I wouldn’t go quite as far as I went in some of the darker portions of this book, because I get pretty twisted at points. I know YA has grown a lot since I last read it, but I also know that I went to some dark and uncomfortable places in this book that I only stepped into here hesitantly. I also know that it would have affected how I wrote the ending, but without going into any spoilers I think I’m just going to leave that one where it is. FJRT: You’ve talked elsewhere about how especially long the process of developing Bennytown was. How much did the final version end up differing from your initial plans for the story? MC: Like almost everything I write, the first draft of Bennytown was rather long and meandering, and through various editing phases I wound up cutting close to 30-40,000 words to make it a tighter, more coherent story. A lot of things wound up getting cut in the process, a couple supporting characters (including Noel’s childhood best friend, who was quite important to the plot at first), some scene blocking that had to be adjusted, even a whole subplot about the horrible goings-on at Lost & Found. Once it got into my editors’ hands, it began to change even more, until it reached its current state, which I’m quite happy with. Things change from draft to draft, and sometimes that’s for the best. FJRT: Bennytown alternates between Noel’s narrative and vignettes from the park’s sixty-year history. Why did you decide to show us parts of Bennytown’s backstory directly, rather than through Noel’s eyes? MC: Part of this was simply because I wanted to weave a tapestry that was larger than just one character’s perspective would allow for. To get in a lot of the information I wanted about the park while strictly using Noel’s perspective would have required a lot of random information dumps, which would have felt inorganic in the limited, even naïve perspective I wanted to create with Noel. He can’t see everything, but the things he can’t see often have a way of affecting him. As well, by looking into these little vignettes from over the park’s 60-year history, I wanted to help breathe life into Bennytown itself. The park itself is almost the second main character of the book next to Noel, and by showing it throughout the years, we get a chance to see that it has existed even without Noel and didn’t just spring to life the moment he popped onto the scene as a character. And, from a simpler, geekier level, I am a huge fan of both history and worldbuilding, and getting to visit the park throughout the decades was a fun way of getting to put my worldbuilding designs for this story to use. FJRT: It’s me you’re talking to, so I have to ask, can you tell us a bit about the ladies of Bennytown and what it was like writing them? MC: While I can’t go into tremendous detail about my characters without giving away some spoilers, on the whole I’m quite proud of the women of Bennytown. Characters like fellow employee Garcia, restaurant manager Kathleen, park heiress Elle Dorian and Noel’s girlfriend Olivia are more than just supporting characters for Noel’s journey. These are people who have their own stakes in what happens in Bennytown, their own histories and issues with the park and their own goals. This being a horror story, I’m not going to go out and promise them all happy endings, but I like to think I managed to make them all fleshed out characters who are doing everything they can to make it through this torment. What it was like writing them… well, honestly it was like writing any other character in the story. I try not to differentiate too much between how I write my male and female characters, since everyone is a character first. I’m not saying that there are no differences, because different people with different backgrounds will have different life experiences that inform who they are as characters as well, I won’t deny that, but I want to try to give everyone the same level of developed backgrounds and agency within the story. FJRT: Would it be fair to say that you’re a feminist, but that your lead characters can’t always say the same? How would you characterize Noel’s morality, and how is it different from your own? How does it feel to write those differences? MC: I completely and utterly identify as a feminist, but that doesn’t mean the characters I write always are. A lot of stories I write are characters exploring their worlds and themselves, either confronting their personal demons or succumbing to them, and sometimes that doesn’t take characters to the greatest places in their minds or biases. I like to see characters succeed and get over their own issues, but it all depends on what works best for the story. Noel’s morality is limited by his experiences. He’s a sixteen-year-old kid raised in white bread suburbia, which has given him a very limited worldview. He’s childish in many ways, knowing that he has to grow up and somewhat looking forward to that change, but also wanting to hold onto his childish side. In a lot of ways, it was like looking back into my own teenage years when I was a much less happy person, and much more sheltered from the wider world. It was unsettling digging into my past for these elements of a character that I’ve done my best to grow out of, but in this story it felt right to revisit those demons to better have an understanding of a character dealing with similar demons. Noel and I are very different people, and he has a lot of rougher edges than I ever did, and he is manipulated into making some bad decisions I know I never would have, but I still have a lot of sympathy for a lot of what he is put through. FJRT: Would you say Bennytown itself has a “moral,” and how do you feel about morals in horror in general? MC: While I wouldn’t use the word “moral” per se when discussing Bennytown, one of its major themes is growing up. Noel is confronted by a world and a particularly bizarre set of circumstances that have him battling between the realities of growing up and what he thinks it means to “be a man” in the limited societal context that he has for that phrase, while still wanting to hold onto his childhood as a life preserver. It’s a battle we all must go through in life in one form or another, and some of us handle it better than others, and that is definitely a conflict that Noel himself has to deal with over the course of the story. As for morals in horror… I can go either way on the subject. The classic definitions of morality and morals popping up in horror as guides to tell people what to do and what not to do often come across as puritanical and misguided. It’s the subtle messages that we come to think of as clichés and tropes, the kinds of things you yell at characters for screwing up, those I find to often be the best morals to take out of horror. Stick together with friends in the face of evil. Don’t make fun of the unpopular kid. Or anyone, for that matter. Always be prepared. Turn on the damn lights. Don’t be an asshole. Of any kind. These are good morals to take out of horror, I’d say. FJRT: In literature and film, hauntings are often tied to characters being unable to escape or let go of the past. Are these important themes in Bennytown? MC: Oh, very much so. Bennytown is very much a patchwork of events that have happened and people who have passed through (and passed away in) the park. Bennytown’s past is inextricably tied to its present, a battle that is played out nightly in the park. As for Noel, his past with Bennytown might leave him particularly susceptible to the evil forces at play. After a childhood tragedy, he credits frequent visits to the park with restoring his mental health, and he has a skewed view of Bennytown because of it. He forces himself into a position of being willfully ignorant of anything bad happening there and… well, I might have said too much already. FJRT: In folklore, hauntings tend to revolve more around simple but striking images that only hint at a vague or changeable bigger story, like the Headless Horseman or Bloody Mary. Would any of Bennytown’s apparitions make good campfire legends in their own right? Which ones were the most fun to design visually? MC: Oh yes, very, very much so. There are quite a few distinct spirits wandering the grounds of Bennytown, and though most of them are benign, occasionally chaotic entities, the leftovers of people who’d died in the park but were never allowed to move on, there are some bad ones who have really left an ugly mark on the park and wander around as nightmarish revenants. Easily the one who gave me the most willies when writing the book is that of one of the park’s wandering costumed characters, Wilbur Walrus. Though seemingly a benign cartoon character, with soft purple skin and a loud Hawaiian shirt, the person behind the costume for Wilbur is an utter monster, a prolific child abductor and murderer who hid within Bennytown with the help of the park’s dark magics before his gruesome demise. Now he wanders the park as a grotesque, half-rotted beast, tormenting the story’s main characters and the ghosts of his victims that he keeps on a very short leash. He’s disgusting, unsettling, and was both fun and utterly repulsive to write for. FJRT: Finally, if you had the chance to visit Bennytown as a guest (in non-pandemic times), would you do it? Why or why not? MC: Dear god, no, lol. I mean, in the context that I created it for the story, Bennytown the theme park may well be “The Most Dangerous Place on Earth”, and I wouldn’t want to risk my health and soul just for a theme park experience, no matter how wonderful their attractions were. Now, even if it weren’t for the dark forces that run things behind the scenes, I still designed a lot of Bennytown to be a fairly obnoxious theme park, so I don’t imagine I’d be jumping into it anytime soon. Yeah, there are a few attractions I’d enjoy checking out… but at the end of the day I think the best way to visit Bennytown would be in the pages of this book, and not in person. Besides, this way I don’t have to wear sunscreen or wait in line, a combination which will always get my vote.  For nearly sixty years, Bennytown has been America’s most exciting family theme park destination. Under the watchful eye of cultural icon Benny the Bunny, the park has entertained generations of children with its friendly atmosphere and technologically innovative rides. Park founder Fletcher Dorian’s dream lives to this day, with Bennytown acting as a beacon of joy and wonder, where magic is real and dreams come true. Bennytown once saved sixteen-year-old Noel Hallstrom’s life, and to repay it, Noel has applied for a summer job. Though the work is messy and the hours are bad, Noel is happy to be a part of the Bennytown family, until he sees the darkness beneath the surface. Strange, mechanized mascots walk the park perimeter. Elegantly dressed cultists in wooden Benny masks lurk in the darkness. Spirits of the many who’ve died in the park roam freely, and every night the park transforms into a dark dimension where madness reigns and monsters prowl. Noel is about to find out more about Bennytown than he ever wanted to know, and that its darkness might have designs on him… Plan your visit today: Amazon Barnes & Noble IndieBound Kobo  Hey, everyone, I dearly hope, as you read this, you're in good health and hunkering down somewhere safe and warm if you can. If you or someone you know is sick, I wish you a speedy, uncomplicated recovery. If you're on the front lines providing healthcare, food, utilities, household essentials, shipping, sanitation, and other life-saving services, I thank you, and I hope from the bottom of my heart that you'll finally, miraculously receive the living wages and all-around consideration you've always deserved for the work you do. As a writer, editor, and voracious reader, I'm one of the lucky ones in all this. I'm used to working from home alongside my husband, and apart from worrying about other people, fending off existential dread about the world, and nursing some disappointment over a few specific events I was looking forward to, I actually enjoy the day-to-day of quarantine living. Like many purveyors of digital media, Matt and I are cutting prices and offering new freebies, in the hopes that everyone will have access to something fun to pass the time in isolation — preferably something that doesn't require going to a store or waiting on our overstretched physical shipping infrastructure. If this isn't the time to read an ebook, I don't know what is. If you've already read all of our indie books that you're interested in, or if Horror and dark Sci-Fi just aren't what you turn to in times like these (they are for me, but it's a totally personal thing), I recommend checking out the Smashwords Authors Give Back sale for tons of different indie options across genres. As for our catalogue, here are the details on discounts and freebies:  Obsessed monster hunter, Mina Todd, and easy-going skeptic, Ben Pastor, wage a secret resistance against the shape-shifting aliens infesting their small town of Prospero. The whole 4-book Prospero Chronicles series is marked down from $9.96 to $3.96 through the end of March. (Amazon doesn't allow individual non-KU books to be marked down any further than $0.99 on short notice). Amazon Smashwords Barnes & Noble: book 1, 2, 3, 4 Apple: book 1, 2, 3, 4 Kobo: book 1, 2, 3, 4 This YA Horror/Sci-Fi series is about neurotic, mismatched teens struggling to trust each other so they can deal with an alien invasion of shapeshifters. The fourth book involves their entire town being quarantined while they fight for the fate of the world, and it might be my favorite thing I've done so far.  Once upon a time, on a glamorous space station called Eris, there was a young woman who could spin base metals into gold… At least, that’s what she tells people to separate them from their money. The Acid Test of Naia Mills is going to be free on Kindle from March 30th through April 3rd (using my KU allowance of free days). Also, if you're a KU member, you can read it for free whenever you want. Amazon This one's a Sci-Fi retelling of "Rumpelstiltskin" set in the distant future, after humanity has survived the death of Earth and joined a wider bi-galactic community. Not without growing pains, of course. It's part of the Escape Velocity series of Sci-Fi folktales, but they can be read in any order. No cliffhangers, no reliance on previous installment info.  Once upon a time, on the second planet from Apocrytus, there was a monster whose face men trembled to behold… Or they would, if they knew who she was. Perhaps she should leave more survivors The Kryssitid Gaze will be free on Kindle from April 6th through April 10th (again, my limited allowance of free days from KU). It's also included with your KU subscription if you have one. Amazon It's another Sci-Fi folktale retelling in the Escape Velocity universe, this one based on the legend of Medusa. It's more R-rated and darkly comedic than Acid Test, revolving around an alien woman's efforts to survive when her planet is overtaken by a violent, dogmatic cult. Tonally, I'd describe it as Deadpool meets Ginger Snaps.  When an aspiring teenage actress is given the chance to participate in human trials for a revolutionary new beauty supplement, she sees her one chance for a camera-ready body and a real career. But what the treatment turns her into may be even more monstrous and cutthroat than her professional world. Some Side Effects May Occur will be marked down from $2.99 to $1.20, both as part of the Smashwords sale and on Amazon, from now through April 20th. Amazon Smashwords It's YA Horror/Sci-Fi set in the not-too-distant future, during a beauty arms race.  When the ghost of a handsome young man named Joshua Thorne appears to a lonely bookworm named Angela, begging her to help him solve his own murder, she follows him eagerly into the hidden world of jumbled memory and fantasy he calls the Pocket. The truth of his story is hidden there somewhere, but it might not be the story either of them is hoping for. Out of the Pocket is also going to be marked down from $2.99 to $1.20 from now through April 20th, both in the Smashwords sale and on Amazon. Amazon Smashwords This is the YA Fantasy that won me my Feminist Book of the Month author cred :) It's a satirical, trope-subverting take on Paranormal Romance, and it's intensely claustrophobic.  Fifteen-year-old Cassie Fremont and her tiny band of teenage survivors take a road trip across the zombie-infested U.S. to rescue their stranded friend, and no amount of blood and guts along the way will quell their sense of snark. Now, if only they knew how to drive. My first-ever published novel, Confessions of the Very First Zombie Slayer (That I Know Of), will be free on Smashwords only, from now until April 20th. Smashwords It's a YA Horror-Comedy that I don't usually do promotions on, because I'm quite frankly a little embarrassed. It's easily my roughest, most juvenile published work, but it's also been one of my more popular, and I figure, maybe some silly zombie-smashing action is exactly what's needed. So, I'm tossing it out there for all who could use it right now. That's all for now, although there's a chance I'll be announcing a new indie release as well before all this is even close to over. Stay safe, and happy reading.  Book Review: The Living (Warm Bodies #3) By Isaac Marion Zola Books, 2018 Grade: A+ See also my reviews for Warm Bodies (#1), The New Hunger (#1.5), and The Burning World (#2), and witness my whole concept of the zombie genre taking a one-eighty. The Basics: On the run from an undead mega-corporation bent on consuming the world, and a fire-worshipping cult that means to reduce it to ashes, R, Julie, and their friends take to the roads, crossing the burnt out-shell of a U.S that’s in the process of remaking itself. They’re not sure what it’s remaking itself into, or whether they themselves might have a say in the answer, but before they can stop to find out, there’s one enemy that must be faced, that cannot be outrun — the ghost of the person R used to be, the one who helped set in motion everything he and his new family are now fighting against. The Downside: There are multiple instances, enough to be mildly irritating, of R’s friends making jokes about him to the effect that he’s overly sensitive, ethically conscious, or effeminate. A realism-based argument can certainly be made for this choice; the characters are imperfect people from a hard post-apocalyptic world, and someone like R could not even exist in the present world without drawing similar comments. Yet it doesn’t feel like realism. It feels like the author second-guessing and apologizing for the otherwise fearless sentimentality of R’s voice, and that works against the book as a whole. Slightly. There’s also a scene, the only private scene between Julie and Nora this installment, in which they discuss the similarities between their respective love interests. Their conversation, while helpful for understanding both their trains of thought, draws unfortunately harsh attention to the book’s iffy Bechdel status and the series’ recurring, divided set of gender roles. Characters making the self-defining, heroic journey back from the Dead are mostly male. Living characters who wait, guide, incentivize, and judge are mostly female. As a pattern in a story with a varied and fascinating cast, I’m compelled to note it, but given the particulars of what’s expressed through those male characters’ journeys, The Living gets a full free pass on this front as far as I’m concerned. More on that shortly. The Upside: The Living is an utterly breathtaking read, a fitting conclusion, and worth every minute of the roller coaster of a wait that fans have endured. With the introductions done and the dominoes lined up, this is one of those chapters of pure payoff that only comes once a fandom, and rarely so satisfyingly. That’s not to say it’s overstuffed with non-stop action. As in the rest of the series, battles and explosions come only often enough to be heart-pounding in their importance each and every time, punctuating and adding an epic accent to the soulfully personal central story, which strikes every beat it’s been hurtling toward with the same weight and resonance as the fate of the world. The text is densely poetic, perhaps even more so than the previous books, so much so that I’m tempted to reread it in ebook form solely for the non-paper-defacing highlighter tool. Marion can craft words into a sledgehammer and then a scalpel within the course of a few paragraphs, and that balance of intensity and restraint scales from individual lines to the overall plot and every level in between. He knows not only how to explain a thing, but when not to. Buildings burn, skeletons menace, characters argue, and more often than not, the point of the scene sits quietly in plain view waiting to be noticed, patiently and powerfully unspoken. Yes, the perspective is thoroughly, conspicuously male (which is okay; men deserve their fair half of the stage too, after all), but it’s not just another echo of the same oversaturated male views of the world we see reflected over and over in vastly more than half of media every day. The social commentary hinted at in the first book and expanded upon in the second is further developed here into a finer-edged point. The Living is, in large part, a story about toxic masculinity; its myriad forms, its contradictory interpretations, its traps, its role in every other problem the story touches upon, and above all, the challenge of escaping from it. The female characters are written with respect. They’re smart and complex and do what suits their own interests and honor codes rather than what they’re told. Even when they’re called upon to give or withhold affection as required to drive the men’s plots, they’re given far more nuanced and considered motivations for doing so than the norm. But this is not their story. It’s not a story about women going up against a bigoted system that’s obviously, blatantly unfair to them and overcoming it. I can recommend shelves full of those stories, and I'm always happy to discover new ones, but The Living is something just as necessary and much rarer. It's a story about men staring down that same system — not personified by roving rapists or abusive fathers or anything so comfortingly external and easy to beat up, but in the much more threatening form of their own assumptions, habits, and the lessons they’ve been taught — and either successfully conquering it, or not. Like The Burning World, The Living isn’t always an easy read, in spite of its lyrical beauty and its page-turning pace. It treks through ugly places and jabs ruthlessly at parts of the mind already bruised by current events and daily life. But for all its incisiveness, it’s the fervent underlying optimism that makes it linger and stand out, and gives rise to its most haunting moments and quotes. “We climbed from deep pits. The lowest thought of the basest human is a staggering achievement. [...] It’s easier to fall than to climb, and yet against all logic, life keeps rising. The line wavers, but the trajectory is upward.” Want more Fiona J.R. Titchenell? Subscribe here for personalized updates on new books, discounts, giveaways, and more. You can also join me on Facebook and Twitter, or (best of all) become a patron to gain access to exclusive extras! 
I want to start off with a giant THANK YOU to Maia at Silver Dagger Blog Tours, and to everyone who's volunteered their time and blog space over the next month to celebrate The Prospero Chronicles' big finish! The full tour schedule is available here to anyone who wants to follow along. As you can see, we've got some reviews and some guest posts coming up, some of them on unusually interesting subjects. There's also a giveaway, which is already live at the very bottom of this page, if you scroll all the way down, but first, check out these tantalizing teasers Maia made! 
Under normal circumstances, Ben and Mina would never have had reason to speak to each other. He’s an easy-going people person with a healthy skepticism about the paranormal; she’s a dangerously obsessive monster-hunter with a crippling fear of betrayal. But the small Northern California town of Prospero, with its rich history of cryptid sightings, miracles, and mysterious disappearances, has no normal circumstances to offer. When Ben’s missing childhood friend, Haley Perkins, stumbles out of Prospero’s surrounding woods and right into her own funeral, Ben and Mina are forced to work together to uncover what happened to her. Different as they are, their unlikely friendship may be the only thing that can save the town, and possibly the world, from its insidious invaders. “A snapping, crackling, popping homage to classic horror.” —Kirkus Reviews. “Whip-smart dialogue... genuinely terrifying Splinters, the descriptions of which will have fans of monster films utterly enthralled... A promising series opener, this will satisfy those readers who like their scary stories to be as clever as they are chilling." —KQG, the Bulletin of The Center for Children's Books. “The stakes are high. The action is intense." —Washington Independent Review of Books. **only 99 cents!!** Add on Goodreads Amazon * Apple * B&N * Google * Kobo * Smashwords 
When autumn descends on Prospero, California, Ben hopes the normality of the new school year may offer a reprieve from the town’s paranormal horrors. Mina knows all too well that there are no reprieves and no normality to be had in Prospero, but even she can’t prepare for what the coming year holds. On top of the vivid hallucinations that have plagued Mina since the attack on the Warehouse, and the brewing Splinter civil war that threatens all of humanity, inside the walls of Prospero High, Ben, Mina, and their expanding Network face a vicious campaign to destroy their friendship, and a mysterious assassin picking off human rebels – an assassin with powers like no Splinter they’ve fought before. Ben and Mina’s one hope rests with a mysterious old man hiding in the woods outside of town; a living legend who may be able to teach them how to fight this dangerous new breed of Splinter. That is, assuming he doesn’t kill the pair of them himself. “Titchenell and Carter hold nothing back in this solid sequel that thrills and expands on its predecessor. Aided by swift writing, relatable characters and unexpected scares, Shards is a chill-inducing delight.” —David Powers King, co-author of Woven. “Maintaining the same level of popcorn-munching fun, Titchenell and Carter are taking The Prospero Chronicles in a promising direction.” —Joe Dell'Erb, Washington Independent Review of Books. Add on Goodreads Amazon * Apple * B&N * Google * Kobo * Smashwords 
Ben Growing up is hard, and growing up in Prospero is even harder, but I think we manage. I mean, yeah, my friends and I spend more of our time fighting a race of shapeshifting aliens than we do hanging out, but we have our fun. We go to parties, help each other with our classes, maybe even fall in love… I’ve no illusions that we live ordinary lives, but they’re our lives, and I’m going to make sure we make the most of them whether the Splinters want us to or not. Mina The truce is temporary. We will not humor the Splinters forever. It's only until the Slivers can be stopped, until the army of Shards being planted among our classmates can be disassembled, until we get our hands on the thing I'd almost given up believing in. The humanity test. For the chance to know, once and for all, who can be trusted, some dealings with monsters must be excusable. Inevitable. Just like this feeling between Ben and me. And that has to be temporary too. Add on Goodreads Amazon * Apple * B&N * Google * Kobo * Smashwords 
This is Prospero’s darkest hour. The few remaining humans trapped within the quarantine zone are all but defenseless against the multiplying forces of the Sliver Queen, Locusta. With Ben missing, Aldo among the enemy ranks, and more steel plates than bones left in her body, Mina’s passing the hours drowning in morphine and throwing heavy objects at her guards. Stripped of her weapons, her gadgets, and the Network itself, she has just one card left, hidden somewhere under her oft-sutured skin. It might be powerful enough to complete her life’s work once and for all… or to reach the one person who could make her life into more than a means to an end. But playing it will cost everything she has, or everything she believes in. The final chronicle of Prospero waits in these pages. Add on Goodreads Amazon * Apple * B&N * Google * Kobo * Smashwords Okay, okay, giveaway time! We've got a free ebook of my Horror/Sci-Fi standalone, Some Side Effects May Occur, and an Amazon giftcard up for grabs!  Okay, looking at that headline, you’re probably asking yourself at least one of a few very specific questions, so I’ll do my best to answer them with all due haste. Q: What are The Prospero Chronicles again? A: Ha, ha. I know it’s been a long, bumpy road of publishing, unpublishing, republishing, re-planning, hiatuses, and all other manner of business and creative drama that can befall a story, but you guys still remember Mina and Ben pitting their mismatched friendship against the forces of the ancient interdimensional monsters they call Splinters, right? Q: Oh, yeah. Wait… is there going to be a screen adaptation? A: Not so far, but ten points for optimism. Q: Is there finally a release date for book four?!?!?! A: No, not quite, but more on that shortly. Q: But the ending of Slivers… A: I know, I know. Q: You sadist! You can’t just bring this up again and keep us hanging on that ending! I have to know what happens to Ben, and Aldo, and… A: You will. Q: Sure, like I’ll someday find out the non-TV ending of A Song of Ice and Fire? A: Ouch. No, really, you will. Q: Is the series dead? Give it to me straight, doctor! A: No! In fact that's the opposite of what this announcement is about. Q: But no release date? A: Not yet. Q: Then what else could you possibly have to announce? A: Here goes. Matt is going to be withdrawing from The Prospero Chronicles, and I’ll be writing the final installment solo. Now some of you may be asking a different set of questions. Q: What? But don’t you guys write separate characters? How can the series go on without him? Why isn’t he coming back? Is he okay? Aren’t you still an adorably married writing duo?! A: Relax. Matt and I are fine, personally, professionally, medically, and in whatever other ways you might be thinking. In fact, we’ve got a superhero noir novel coming out in August from Talos Press, and a post-apocalyptic dieselpunk indie series we’ve been working on together for later in the year as well. It’s just The Prospero Chronicles specifically that Matt’s splitting away from. Q: Wait, is this why, at the end of Slivers, Ben is- A: Hush. No spoilers yet, in case anyone needs to catch up. And the answer is… not consciously? But it does make my job a little easier now. What luck! Q: But why isn’t he writing it with you? A: Matt’s been wanting to work on other projects for a long time. We’ve tried several times to schedule a period to work on the final Prospero book together, but it’s become clear that it’s not really a question of timing; it’s just not where his focus and passion are now. Matt and I have both grown and developed a lot as writers since we first started working on The Prospero Chronicles together. I’ve always had a fair bit of room to stretch within The Prospero Chronicles, but Matt’s generally been stuck playing the straight man. He’s proud of what he put into the series, especially the world building and creature design, which were almost entirely his baby. He’s also going to go on helping me in a consulting capacity, so that I don’t get lost in the territories of Prospero that have only been charted in his head. But in terms of putting words on the page, he can’t stay. The voices of his other characters in other worlds are calling. Q: Aren’t you going to feed us a line about how this is a good thing? A: Believe it or not, it really is. As awesome a writer as Matt is and as great a team as we make, no story is going to benefit from being churned out while its creator’s heart is elsewhere, no matter the reasons or the talent involved. We realized that either we could write a long-procrastinated final book with adequate skill but half the spark missing, or I could write a full-sparked final book in the course of a few months. I believe we made the right choice not just for us but for The Prospero Chronicles themselves. Q: Did you say a few months? A: Well, yeah. That’s what I’m working on right now, and in spite of the way the book’s been restructured to play to my solo strengths and wrap things up in one installment instead of two, I’ve had the essential beats of how this story has to end bottled up for so long that they’re spilling out at NaNoWriMo speed. Editing, cover art, and release day scheduling and planning will take a bit longer, of course, but it’s looking like a 2018 finale might still be within the realm of possibility. Q: Is that all we’re going to get now? A: No! Just to whet your appetite, and maybe a little bit to prove that I’m serious, you get a preview from chapter one of Stitches, book 4 of The Prospero Chronicles. Note of course that this is a draft in progress, subject to changes and corrections, and naturally filled with spoilers if you haven’t reached the end of Slivers yet. Enjoy! 1. The Drip Mina It was Haley who told me. There was a competitive cooking show playing on the TV that evening in my med center room, and one of the contestants was yelling about how the other team had ripped off his method for perfectly searing parsnips while I watched the Occupation guards out in the hallway pat her down for weapons. From the way she stood there with her arms spread, half impatient and half dreading the moment when she’d be allowed across the threshold to see me, I knew enough to make me dread it too. The drugs wouldn’t let me feel the full, visceral twisting of that dread, but no doubt it was occurring anyway, somewhere in my distant-feeling innards. One of the guards raised an eyebrow at the contents of Haley’s backpack but eventually returned it and waved her inside. She extended my brutal stay of enlightenment by treading the four feet to my bed as if they were a rickety balance beam. She wasn’t crying, but her eyes were bloodshot, and her voice came out raw. “There’s been an attack.” I waited, and finally the blow came, in an economical croaking of syllables. “Kevin’s dead, and Ben’s missing.” My breath quickened, and I found that her raw, blunt voice was more than I could match. Aldo replaced. Kevin dead. Ben missing. Responding with words was like trying to slay a dragon with a toothpick. Kevin. Kevin who never wanted to fight. Kevin who was going to Berkley and then into politics to save the world the other way. Kevin who forgave me for killing his brother, who’d saved my life at least twice over, who was there from the very beginning, even when I was too preoccupied to thank him, which was always. One little jab of the toothpick. “How?” I didn’t want to hear the words, and Haley didn’t want to say them, but somehow, inevitably, the ritual of exchanging them demanded to be observed. “Officially, hit-and-run.” This part came out in a sharp breath. “Unofficially, they beat him up and broke his neck.” Her breath retreated back in just as sharply, and then started the cycle over again. “And when his parents challenged the coroner’s report…” “Dead or replaced?” I asked. “Replaced, both of them. I mean, we didn’t capsaicin-test them or anything when they suddenly changed their minds two hours later, but-” “I’ll take your word.” “We found this next to him,” she reached into her backpack and pulled out a Ziploc full of stiff, bloodstained fabric, “but there was only one body.” I had to turn the plastic-sealed bundle over twice in my hands before I recognized the shredded remains of Ben’s ‘3 of a Kind’ baseball cap. Something had clawed straight through it. I grabbed my phone from the bedside table. “Don’t,” said Haley. I pushed send anyway. Ben’s number went straight to a voicemail message that wasn’t his. The sing-song recorded voice of Robbie York cut clean through the drug haze and squeezed my stomach up toward my throat. “You’ve reached Ben Pastor’s phone. He belongs to the Queen now. What’cha gonna do about it, huh Mina?” I hung up and threw the phone at the end of my bed, where Haley stopped it from falling off the end. “We don’t know that it’s the Shard who replaced Robbie last time,” Haley said without conviction. “They could have given his body to a new Sliver, or even made the real Robbie record the message, just to hurt you-” “It’s him,” I said. It was, without a doubt. The Shard who had tried to make me kill myself last winter wielded Robbie’s vocal cords with a smug venom all his own. Besides, now that the local Splinter Council was down for the count, and with them the agreement we’d made to keep that Shard out of our dimension, his mind-altering powers would make him one of the first weapons the Slivers would want to put back on the table. “I was going to warn you,” said Haley. “It was just-” “Too much,” I finished. Aldo replaced. Kevin dead. Ben missing. The nightmare Shard back in town. It was all the very definition of too much. “I kissed him,” said Haley. I’d already charged the dragon the moment I opened my mouth, and there was nothing to do now but keep stabbing at the smallest, loosest scales I could wedge the verbal toothpick under. This one looked as likely as any other. “You kissed Robbie?” I asked. Haley shook her head. “Kevin?” I guessed again, only half hoping. “Were you back together with him when-” “Not Kevin,” she said. “Oh,” I said. “Okay.” I pushed the morphine button. “At the going away party, I kissed Ben, and I’m so sorry, not for the kiss, exactly, it was stupidly innocent, but-” “I don’t care,” I lied, lowering my voice against the guards outside. “I just need to think. I need to make a plan.” Never mind the fact that I’d spent the last week trying to think and plan and getting nowhere. “I wanted it to be there,” she went on. “The spark, the magic, I wanted so much for it to be there, waiting to surprise us, but it just wasn’t.” “Maybe you should talk to someone else about this.” “It wasn’t there, and I think that might be why Ben and Kevin went off on their own afterward,” she persisted miserably. “I think it might be my fault they were alone when they were attacked.” I shook my head. “Ben was only there in the first place because I told him to go.” I felt like a dog snapping and yanking at scraps of culpability, but here in this bed, waiting for my bones to set around the new pins and plates, guilt was the only thing strong enough to drown out the helplessness. I couldn’t let Haley steal it all for herself. They might not have been ambushed if she hadn’t kissed him. And they might not have been ambushed if I’d kissed him instead. “How much blood?” I asked. “A lot, but not a certain death lot,” Haley answered readily. “I looked it up.” “No trail?” “No.” That probably meant Ben had been taken away in a vehicle or wrapped in Splinter matter, for what little help that was. “And it’s all Ben’s?” I asked. “We don’t exactly have a forensics lab on our side here,” said Haley. “But Kevin wasn’t bleeding.” And their attackers wouldn’t have bled real blood. “No sign of a Sliver-Ben walking around?” I asked. “Not yet,” said Haley. “Is that… good?” “It’s not anything,” I said. I wouldn’t have wished replication upon anyone, but if we could be sure it had happened to Ben, we’d at least know where he was. This hadn’t done much good for Aldo; we hadn’t been able to find his replication pod in our last invasion of the Sliver Warehouse, I’d landed myself here in the med center trying to take on the Queen, and now with so few of us left and the Occupation watching over everything, I didn’t know how we’d ever pull off another attempt, but it was almost worse, not knowing. Ben might be in mid-replication right now, or he might have escaped and gone to hide in the woods until he could find a safe moment to make contact. The Slivers might be holding him for some other purpose more horrible than we could imagine, or he might already be dead. I didn’t need to voice any of these possibilities to know that Haley had already gone over them all herself. Haley stepped closer, past the foot of the bed. Her hurt was contagious, and maybe mine was too, and I found I had to roll away onto my side to break the feedback loop. “Are you crying?” she asked. “No.” Her voice cracked. “May I join you?” I scooted forward to the edge of the bed, leaving room for her to curl up behind me. The sunflower and carnation bouquet on the table next to me was still as fresh and cheery as it had been when Ben had brought it to me in the morning on his way to Kevin’s party, when they had both been all right, and for a moment I hoped to see it grow fangs or tentacles or the faces of dead people, or some other surreal nightmare manifestation oozing with the Shard-Robbie’s personal style. Having him tampering with my thoughts again would be bad enough on its own, but I could almost have welcomed it if it meant hoping that the rest of this day, this week, and this news, might all just be part of another cruel illusion. The flowers, the room, and Haley’s weight on the mattress next to me remained mercilessly unembellished reality. On TV, a frantic man with a neck tattoo was grating a piece of ginger into a pan of simmering soy sauce. I pushed the morphine button again. # I should have said that Haley was the first one who told me. Before the night was out, Mom called to check on me, and refrained from saying “I told you so” about the fact that, after three years, I’d finally finished destroying the Brundle family. Then Julie texted, with a few hollow words about how none of the fallen would want us to give up. Then Courtney sent me the new password to a dropbox she’d set up for the undiscovered surveillance feeds she’d been able to salvage. Sometime around ten at night, after Haley had gone home, Patrick arrived and stood in the doorway for eight minutes before asking if there was anything he could do for me, and then for another three before going away. They all flickered by, like tides coming in and out over a pier, while I lay there watching the flowers. That night, I exceeded my drip’s programmed dosage limit for the first time since all my surgeries, no longer bothering to self-moderate for the sake of maintaining any mental clarity, and when I ran out of drugs, I took hits of guilt instead, running a fine-toothed comb over every move I’d ever made to bring us all to where we were. The tines always came away full, making me wonder why I’d bothered fighting Haley for a few traces. My guilt drip turned out to be unlimited, and yet my tolerance for it, already founded on a lifelong habit for the stuff, spiked even more sharply than my tolerance for the morphine, until even my newfound cocktail of the two became an inadequate masking agent for the absence of action. So when the morning came, I sat up, shoved the morphine button over the side of the bed, picked up the vase in the less broken of my two arms, and threw it at a guard’s head. Want more sneak previews? Titchenell & Carter patrons at the Telepath level get early access and behind-the-scenes peeks at all our upcoming indie projects, currently including the full first chapter of Stitches and a complete download of my upcoming YA Paranormal title: Out of the Pocket.  Book Review: Annihilation By Jeff VanderMeer 2014 C- The Basics: A volunteer team of specialists, made up of a biologist, a psychologist, an anthropologist, and a surveyor, have been sent to investigate the mysterious Area X, where all expeditions before them have either vanished or returned changed in some way. They soon discover an uncharted subterranean structure housing a strange ecosystem they’re grossly unprepared to study. The Upside: Some of the biologist’s flashbacks to her difficulties fitting into a professional hierarchy, a circle of friends, and even her marriage are nicely rendered in an understated way. And the defaulting of all the characters to female instead of male, as is so commonly considered the “normal” setting for characters in comparable sci-fi works who don’t exist for the purpose of sexual or romantic motivation of other characters, makes a welcome statement. The Downside: Much as I’d love to live in a world where all fictional characters, no matter how insignificant and unconsidered, default to female as often as male, it wouldn’t make those characters any less insignificant or unconsidered. Regardless of gender, the expedition members of Annihilation remain largely unremarkable, thinly drawn, generic puppets of a plot and world that the author finds more interesting, which arguably might not be so terrible, if that plot and world weren’t just about as unremarkable and generic as the characters entombed within. From a glance at the back cover, it’s clear that Area X is a place full of weird stuff that consumes people and is of interest to a less-than-forthcoming government agency. By journey’s end, we’ve learned that Area X is a place full of weird stuff that consumes people and is of interest to a less-than-forthcoming government agency. The space between is chiefly devoted to characters being staggeringly moved by just how weird the stuff in Area X is. Make no mistake, it’s quite weird, but not the sort of weird that provokes any questions with even the illusion of a possibility of meaningful answers. The entire novel reads much like an early episode of Lost, mysterious for the sake of mysterious with no grander plan (there’s even a wild boar attack, a noisy monster in the forest, and a mysterious underground structure that periodically shoots pillars of light into the air), but without the character drama that made Lost engaging in spite of its aimlessness. The one element of the Area X setup that could have worked, the ever classic story of change and madness working its way through a confined group in a strange place, is utterly sabotaged by the inability to know any of the characters well enough to be able to tell or care whether they’re changing from who they once were. In fact, the presentation of the group is willfully impersonal. We’re told almost immediately that two of the characters will die too quickly to be worth bothering with, and accordingly, they’re not bothered with. The characters are all referred to solely by job title, the habit of names crushed out of them during their specialized Area X training, a convention that’s clearly intended to be unsettling but instead produces such unintentional comedy gems as, “It’s just me, the biologist!” Dialogue in general appears to be included under protest, a chore interrupting the flowery descriptions of Area X’s weirdness and natural majesty. All of the main characters spend most of the duration of the story under the arguable influence of some level of posthypnotic suggestion, which calls into question the validity of what little they say or do as an indicator of who they are. Hypnosis is also used as a clumsy explanation for their adherence to the plot, and some of their other bad decisions, but there’s no Bioshock-esque “aha” moment when their actions suddenly make sense in a new context. Even the sudden absence of hypnosis doesn’t prevent our lead from trying to convince one of her colleagues that there’s a murderous traitor among the group, and then immediately trying to convince that same colleague to join her in walking into view of the sniper’s perch where said suspected murderous traitor is almost certainly waiting for them. The biologist is the only character who’s given any level of humanization, and while some of it is affecting, haunting even, it’s almost always too little too late, every reveal teased and stretched out to just beyond the point where it matters, after the opportunity for it to infuse her present storyline with significance has passed. Altogether a work of competent but uneven prose, with ambitions greatly exceeding its strengths. Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome (just keep it civil, folks)! 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