Coming Soon: Shock Totem #4

The fourth issue of Shock Totem is scheduled to come out next month, so how about an update? I am biased, of course, but I think we've put together another great issue. Hopefully you'll agree.


Please note that the artwork is a low-res version with font added by me and my decidedly unskilled Photoshopping. The final version will of course be much crisper.

The official Table of Contents is as follows:

Miracles Out of Nowhere: An Editorial, by Nick Contor
Beneath the Weeping Willow, by Lee Thompson
Full Dental, by Tom Bordonaro
Tragic and Gorgeous: A Conversation with Rennie Sparks, by Mercedes M. Yardley
Web of Gold, by Rennie Sparks
Weird Tales, by David Busboom
Playlist at the End, by Weston Ochse
Lobo, by Justin Paul Walters
Strange Goods and Other Oddities (Reviews)
Living Dead: A Personal Apocalypse: An Essay, by K. Allen Wood
Dead Baby Day, by Michael Penkas
Long Live the Word: A Conversation with Kathe Koja, by Nick Contor
Fade to Black, by Jaelithe Ingold (2010 Café Doom Competition Winner)
Bloodstains & Blue Suede Shoes, Part 2, by John Boden and Simon Marshall-Jones
The Many Ghosts of Annie Orens, by A.C. Wise
Howling Through the Keyhole (Authors' Notes)

Look for it in a week or so.

In the Minds of Sickos

One of the interesting things about Internet these days is the ability to see how people reach your website. If someone clicks a link from another site to get to yours, you can see that link; you can see what links, if any, on your site people click; you can also see how many views the pages of your website receive, which can be a help in determining what news items or updates are more interesting to readers. All these are good things.

Then there is the section that shows you how people got to your site through Google or Yahoo! searches. This can be a nice tool to see what people are looking for out there, when it pertains to whatever it is you do, whether writing fiction, music, or running some sort of business. It'll also show you just how sick and weird people are.

From the moment we reviewed Rigor Amortis, a zombie erotica anthology, over at the Shock Totem website, we've been getting daily visits from people searching for zombie porn. Every. Single. Day. Porn is one thing; I can understand that. But the whole zombie (i.e. dead, even if "living") angle is bizarre. Sounds a lot like necrophilia to me.

But how about things that at face value appear a bit more chilling. Those people who search things like "john skipp wife" or "dean koontz die homosexual" (those are real searches that somehow turned up our site). Maybe they're innocent web searches, but maybe not. But what about the two searches that prompted this post: "is chloe moretz a virgin" and "blog chloe moretz incest". How do you explain these?

For those who may not know who Chloë Moretz is, she's a 14-year-old actress who's had roles in Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Let Me In. A child. Why are people searching online to see if she's a virgin? Why the hell is anyone searching her name along with the word incest? Again, maybe there's an innocent reason for this, but maybe not. Probably not.

Both of those searches turn up Shock Totem links because we reviewed Let Me In, but these searches clearly weren't done in the hopes of finding movie reviews.

Seeing what people search for online, even if just a glimpse, is sort of like being in their heads. And sometimes, it would seem, there is something sick and disturbing going on inside a few of them.

Big Black Woman

Back when Sugar Ray kicked all kinds of ass!


Toshi Reagon is, in a word, amazing.


See what I did there?

When the Walls Came Tumbling Down

So I haven't been blogging lately. I'd be surprised if one person noticed this fact, but still...I would like to blog more. I'd like to write more, actually. When it comes to writing, I'm simply not disciplined. Not because I can't be, but because I've never had to be.

See, I've always written. I enjoy it immensely and I've always been driven to write. But I've never attempted to write fiction at a serious level. Not until a few years ago. I can knock out a poem or review or editorial in an hour or less; I can do phone interviews in the same amount of time, or spend a week or more going back and forth in e-mail. That always worked in the past. But fiction? Not a chance. I can do what I used to do and bang out a story synopsis or a flash piece, then go about my life again, but being a constant rough-draft writer doesn't cut it anymore. I need to be more disciplined, which is anything but easy when your daily routines—good and bad—take up nearly all your time.

I first got online in the early 90s. Since then, the Internet has become a permanent aspect of my life. But I've come to realize that I waste so much time farting around online, doing very little that has any positive impact on my life. I'm no longer benefiting like I once was because the culture of the Internet has changed drastically. So I've been slowly cutting back on my surfing, deleting forum accounts or consciously not visiting them a hundred times a day. And it's working, I have more time...only I hadn't realized it until yesterday.

I was sitting there at my desk, bored out of my mind, thinking, "Damn...I'm not getting any e-mails anymore." Just sitting there, doing nothing, waiting for contact.

And that illustrates my disease.

Those e-mails—those little things that have so often convinced me that I have no time because I've grown so accustomed to receiving them all day long and have made them a priority over more important things—are reply notifications from all the forums I used to post at. Now I'm no longer posting on those forums, so I'm not getting those notifications. And thus I have more time to write! Funny, though, that I didn't even realize this until yesterday! Maybe that's more sad than funny.

I've read a few interviews with different authors who have suggested that the best time for any writer to start their career is in his or her thirties. The argument being that we're more disciplined at that age, we understand ourselves better, have found our voice. But as the walking contradiction to that theory, I'm obligated to disagree.

Yes, I know myself better now than I did at 20, I've found my voice, but I am not disciplined. Not as a fiction writer. Not yet, anyway.

I have built walls—thick, towering walls—around my habits, even the bad ones. Tearing down those walls is complicated. But I'm getting there, brick by brick.

The Zombie Feed Now Available

The Zombie Feed is now available in print and digital formats. This anthology features my story "Goddamn Electric." I'd be very grateful if you ordered a copy.


[ click photo to enlarge ]

There are seventeen stories in total in this anthology. I've read about halfway through now, and it's been very good so far. Plus, The Zombie Feed Books is an Apex Publications imprint, so you can expect quality.

You can order copies of The Zombie Feed here. And if you do, thank you!