News, Notes, Class and Coaching Opportunities, etc. (April edition)

(Plus a note on subscribing)

The Best of Horror Hat Trick

Lots of great stuff to report from these past few weeks, but especially this:

I have had three different stories selected for the current/forthcoming annual Best Of anthologies. “Black Leg”, originally on Tor.com and still readable for free there, has been picked by Ellen Datlow for Best Horror of the Year 14, due out later in 2022.

Paula Guran, meanwhile, has chosen “Jetty Sara”, originally in Curious Blue Press’s excellent December Tales, for The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, Volume 3, also due out in 2022.

And as previously noted, “Slough”, which originally appeared in Space & Time magazine, has been snapped up by Stephen Jones for the 31st (and, sadly, final) edition of Best New Horror.

Several new ghostly stories also due out later this year, and then my next collection, Tell Me When I Disappear, in 2023. Full details on all of those as I have them.

The New Hirshberg Audiobooks

The consistently excellent Encyclopocalypse Publications has contracted to do audiobook versions of a substantial portion of my back catalogue. First up and already in process are Infinity Dreams and, at long last, The Two Sams. Details and pre-order links coming soon.

In-Person Class and Zoom Manuscript Coaching Opportunities

If you’re in the Bellingham area, I will be teaching a two-week, four-session class, Key Ingredients in Crafting Horror and Speculative Fiction, at Whatcom Community College. The class is open to the public. Fee and registration details here.

Meanwhile, having just completed several longterm manuscript coaching projects, I have slots available for now and for this summer. If you have a project in any stage of development that you’d like help with, drop me a line at dronesclubwest@outlook.com, or through the contact system here, and let’s get busy!

A Brief Note on the Future of Free-to-Everyone Posts Here

Been experimenting these last few months with leaving all posts free to everyone, and at this point, I feel like you’ve hopefully got a pretty good idea of what I am offering on this site. There will be more music round-ups, more articles on teaching and writing and teaching writing, more of my less genre-directed literary fiction, more creative non-fiction. More opportunities for subscribers to interact.

I will be leaving the past free-to-everyone posts free, but will be returning to a paid subscriber model for many of my future posts. I hope you’ll consider it worth the investment. Please remember that subscribing even for one month gives you access to everything, past and current, on the site for that time, as well as the opportunity to comment or interact directly, if you like. You can dip in and out, the way you presumably do with your streaming channels, etc. I don’t need Brandon Sanderson e-earnings (which is good, because more power to him, but how does that even…). But the jury remains out about whether this is the best way for me to get my life’s work into the hands of the people who seem genuinely to want it.

Thanks for reading, and for anything you can do to support.

A Couple Recs

Best horror novel I’ve read in the last year or so? Pretty sure that’s Calvin Kasulke’s Several People Are Typing. Not a horror novel, you say? Let’s see, a guy gets sucked into a Slack program, the Slackbot gets out and possesses his body, another character keeps hearing howling no one else does, and the office comes for everyone’s humanity, metaphorically and literally. Funny, humane, eerie, appalling…sounds like horror to me. The kind I love best, in fact.

As with most books in the (Your City Here) Noir, series, the St. Petersburg edition is hit and miss. But the lead story, Andrei Kirinov’s “Training Day”, may be my favorite crime-adjacent short story I’ve read anywhere in the last couple years. Equal parts Dostoevsky, Wodehouse, “Bringing Out the Dead”, and “Shaun of the Dead”.

“Undine” (movie): Lyrical, eerie, spectral, romantic, elusive. Exquisitely shot. Like all my most cherished spectral films, it’s at its most beautiful at its most wrenching or alarming moments. It’s also not much like any other movie I’ve seen, spectral or otherwise.