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Tis the Season for Horror (and Humor) at Dead Park

Dead Park: The Series available on Kindle

I love the Dead Park series. I love these stories so much. Over the past few years, the books, first inspired by my late father, have become a bit of a sandbox. Ideas, fragments of stories, and unfinished projects from the last twenty years have all found released within this series. At least two more books are coming.

In Dead Park, anything creepy, strange, or gory can happen. This eerie community counts everything from vampires to killer puppets to Mothman to a doll with teeth to Bigfoot himself as residents. Heck, even Mad Man Pondo, the real life deathmatch legend, makes a cameo.

Right now, you can get all four books on Kindle with one click for $11.96. Three of the four books – one about an office building, one about a mall, and one about a suburb – are story compilations, all based in one location. Book three, aka Dead Park Records, is a stand-alone novella with connections to the notorious office building that started it all, Dead Park Plaza.

If you like short stories; if you like humor with your horror; if you like relentless chaos, unexpected twists, and a splatter of insanity – and blood – give the series a try.

Order now on Kindle.

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Goldilocks: Little Girl Lost or Mad Stalker?

An evil Goldi Locks stalks the three bears in The Big Bad Goodnight by John Cosper.

I’ve always loved fairy tales. I love playing around with fairy tales even more. I once wrote a play that surmised that the Prince Charming in all fairy tales was the same guy. The various princesses put two and two together and sought out a hit squad of little girls – including that little burglar Goldilocks and the homicidal Red Riding Hood – to get some revenge.

As much as I love fairy tales, I also love film noir. For me, it doesn’t get much better than the sinister vibes of Double Indemnity, Key Largo, or Cape Fear. Not the remake, mind you. Nolte and DeNiro were fine. But Robert Mitchum’s portrayal in the original is a villain without peer. Insidious. Relentless. And always smiling.

The Big Bad Goodnight, my homage to both fairy tales and film noir, began with just one, simple story about a down on his luck wolf trying to make one last score and get out of town. It grew to be more when the notion came to me to combine Robert Mitchum’s Max Cady into one sinister character.

What if Goldilocks went to the Bears’ house on purpose? What if there was a history between Goldilocks and one of the bears? And what if Goldilocks was just a little unhinged?

As much fun as it was to write the story, seeing my dark, monstrous Goldi brought to life by the wonderful Meredith Lee Ann Keller was even better. Meredith is one of the sweetest ladies you’ll ever meet, and a terrific actress. And boy, did she bring out the crazy in the teaser film created to promote The Big Bad Goodnight.

If you like a good fairy tale, and a good film noir, check out the video above. Then order your signed copy of The Big Bad Goodnight. Because not every tale ends happily ever after, know what I’m sayin’?

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How Baby Kills-A-Lot Arrived in Dead Park

Baby Kills-A-Lot from Dead Park Estates.

My father didn’t care for dolls. Blame it on Rod Serling, whose Twilight Zone episode “Talking Tina” left a lasting impression on him. Dad thought they were creepy, and if there was one thing worse than a doll, it was a doll with teeth.

Baby Kills-A-Lot from Dead Park Estates. After hearing a rant about dolls with teeth, my sister Dawn drew one. She called her Baby Kills-A-Lot. She had sinister eyes, raggedy hair, and teeth. Nasty teeth. Scary teeth. She was everything my father hated about a doll.

Still, my father kept the art work, and in the coming years, he used it to haunt my sister. She received Baby Kills-A-Lot items every Christmas. Mugs. Christmas ornaments. My dad even made wrapping paper with the frightening doll on it. It was funny. It was one of a few gags the two of them had, the other being a dickie, inspired by Christmas Vacation and Designing Women.

Then, my sister had children.

It was her second child, Alex, who suffered the most. He was terrified of the doll, and rather than discourage him, my dad doubled down on springing Baby Kills-A-Lot on his daughter and her dear, sweet babies.

Readers of my books and this blog know my dad was posthumously the impetus behind the creation of the Dead Park series and Dead Park Books in general. So it’s only fitting that, with my sister’s permission, Baby Kills-A-Lot joins the franchise. You’ll find her in book four, Dead Park Estates, in a creepy yet funny take I believe my dad would have enjoyed.

You can purchase signed copies of all the Dead Park books right here, or click here to buy the whole series on Amazon Kindle for less than $12.

Dead Park: The Series available on Kindle

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And Now There Are Four!

Great news for Dead Park fans: Dead Park Estates is now in print!

Greater news for Kindle fans: Amazon lets you buy all four books on Kindle for just under twelve bucks.

The link below will take you to a page where you can buy the bundle. For those who prefer paperback, there are links for those editions as well – and a few are even on sale!

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For My Dad

 

Several summers ago, I attended Fright Night Film Festival in Louisville. The inside of the hotel was almost as sweltering hot as the exterior, but that didn’t stop a few hundred of us from jamming into a ballroom to listen to horror master John Carpenter answer questions about his career.

One exchange really stuck with me. A very goth-looking young woman asked Mr. Carpenter what advice he would give to someone who wanted to follow in his footsteps and become a horror director in Hollywood.

“Well, I went to Hollywood to make Westerns,” said Carpenter. “So I wouldn’t know what to tell you.”

I can relate to that statement more today than ever. I never set out to write books about pro wrestling, but I’ve written more than twenty. And if you told 8 year old me I would one day write HORROR? I never would have believed you. I loved science fiction. Specifically, I loved STAR WARS. So how did I, an aspiring screenwriter and author of science fiction flights of fancy, turn to horror?

It’s my Dad’s fault.

Dead Park Plaza and its growing list of sequels would not have happened without my dad. My dad loved horror. Not all horror, mind you, but a good chunk. He liked a good scare, but he also liked horror-comedy. He’s the one who introduced me to William Castle, Ed Wood, Army of Darkness, and many of my favorites.

My dad had a direct influence on one of the stories in Dead Park Plaza. One morning in mid-February of 2021, I heard my phone buzz. I was still in bed, but my Dad was already up and texting me. He had dreamed something he thought would make a great horror story, a story that took place in an office setting, and he wanted to share it with me. It was a clever idea, and I think (I hope) I replied back and said so. I wasn’t working on any fiction at that time, so I kind of put it out of my mind.

It was one of the last texts my Dad ever sent me. It might have been the very last. A few days later my mother rushed him to the hospital. Nine days later, after transferring to rehab and then back to the hospital, he was diagnosed with cancer on his birthday February 28.

A week after that diagnosis, he was gone.

Four months later, Dad’s story idea drifted back into my mind. I didn’t see potential for a full novel, but it felt like a great short story. That’s when I started connecting the dots, from Dad’s story to a few others I’d been mulling over – stories that took place in an office.

Today, I have a job for a virtual company that allows me to work from home, the coffee shop, the library, or wherever I feel like. I work with incredible people and two amazing bosses who actually believe in me. For the first time in my life, I look forward to starting work each day.

But in 2021?

In 2021 I was still getting up every morning and driving to an office that, at the time, was refusing to acknowledge that I’d been given a promotion, dragging their feet backfilling my old role.

I spent most of my adult life, more than 20 years, driving to an office, working in cubicle,  being forced to make new “friends” on a recurring basis as people left or were let go (including me, a few times), working with good and not-so-good people, working for great and TERRIBLE bosses left a mark.

All that “work experience” fostered story ideas. Little fragments taking up real estate in my imagination, just waiting for their moment. “What if,” I thought, “These stories all took place in the same office building? You know, like Sideways Stories from Wayside School?”

One story became a group of three, then five, then seven.

The first book literally came together in a month. A scattered group of half-cooked stories all came together in the most remarkable way. I recently published book four in the series, and books five, six, and seven are in the works.

And all because my my Dad’s crazy idea about a man starting a new job and discovering a message warning him he’s in grave danger.

Without that text, there would be no Dead Park Plaza and no Dead Park Books. The whole identity of my fiction publishing would not exist without that germ of an idea he sent me.

I was still in denial about my Dad’s passing when the first book was published, and as I write this (revised) blog post, I’m still pretty much in the denial stage about my Dad’s passing, by the way. Wondering if I’ll ever move on from that, but grateful that he gave me the gift of a story, a book, and much more.

Click here to order your signed copy of Dead Park Plaza.

Kindle Reader? Click here to get the full Dead Park series at a special price!

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Coming in 2023

Three new fiction books are in the works for 2023, with one ready to launch.

Dead Park Records will be book three in the Dead Park series. Unlike the first two volumes, this is not a short story collection but a full novella about one of the many businesses located in Dead Park Plaza. An aspiring musician receives the offer of a lifetime when an artist repped by Dead Park Records comes to town for a concert. He will get the recording contract of his dreams, no questions asked, no audition required. There’s just one catch: he must murder a woman he’s never met in cold blood.

Not far behind will be Dead Park Estates, the inevitable third story collection in the series that dives into evil residing in the premiere subdivision built in Dead Park. Murder, mayhem, monsters, cryptids, new mysteries, and a surprising crossover with another Dead Park novel (anyone read Die Alan Die?) reside within the pages of Dead Park, book four.

There’s also a sequel to my romantic thriller Girl Most Likely to Kill You on the way. Currently titled Girl Most Likely to Get You Killed, the new story begins with a woman named Andrea looking for a new life having the wrong person’s belongings delivered to her new home. It turns out the ugly clothes and furniture belong to an international assassin, and as soon as they get delivered, a host of rivals seeking revenge show up, thinking Andrea is their long-sought target.

Finally, I have a new short film project that will be released in January. Back in 2020 my son and I collaborated on The World’s Shortest Horror Films, a series that depicted people in horror movie situations acting with… extreme self-control and common sense and thus avoiding terror. The new series, The World’s Shortest Noir Films, takes the same approach with the world of gumshoes, thugs, nogoodnicks, secret Nazis, and femme fatales. It stars some of my favorite past collaborators including Sonny Burnette, George Robert Bailey, Cory Burdette, the lovely Christina Cannon, and the always delightful Roni Jonah.

Thanks to everyone who has made this first official year of Dead Park Books a hit. Happy New Year, and Happy Reading in 2023!

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From Script to Text: A Tale of Two Stories

A year ago, these two stories were sitting in mothballs. Virtual mothballs, but mothballs nonetheless.

I began writing Girl Most Likely to Kill You around 2004. It was originally titled High School Sweetheart, and it went through multiple drafts. It once made the finals in a screenplay competition. I got a very nice consolation call from the contest runner when it fell short of winning.

Zombies of Oz isn’t quite as old, but it passed through many creative hands on the local indie film scene. It started with me simply sharing an idea as a Facebook post, and it went further when one of those local filmmakers suggested I write it.

A year ago, I decided to turn both of these scripts into novels. They’re short novels, but they received raves from the beta readers who gave them a look. Now both are in print and in my hands, which is just amazing to me.

Right now, I’m offering a special on the website. Order direct, and you can save 20% on your entire order. If you’re a buy local/ buy direct person, you know that’s the best way to support me and other creative artists you like. We get more money, and a major website owner takes less. Plus, I’ll sign them for you, something that big web store can’t offer.

One final note to the story: there’s a third screenplay that will soon be in print as a novel. Not just a novel, but the third part of the Dead Park series. Look for it in November!

Click here to shop now, and don’t forget the coupon code fall.

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Scary Movies I Made With My Kid

During the 2020 Summer of Covid, my son Sam and I started a weekly tradition. We’d go out every Saturday morning to have breakfast and play tennis. We still have breakfast every Saturday, but in deference to our being artsy types and not athletes, we no longer play tennis. The rackets are still in my car should we ever get the urge, but it’s been a good while. And it’s winter now, so…

Sorry, I digress.

One morning over a round of badly played tennis, we started spitballing ideas for short horror films. Not the kind you normally see at film fest, mind you, but the kind you’d see if people on horror films had something called Common Sense. You know. Common Sense  tells you not to open doors that say, “Keep out.” Common Sense says, “Don’t hunt vampires during the day.” Common Sense says, “Run out the front door, not upstairs where there’s no escape.”

We had six or seven ideas by the time we left the courts that day. In the coming weeks, we ended up with fifteen. I started reaching out to actors on Facebook, asking folks to film themselves and send us footage. (Covid, remember?) We cut them together on my trusty ol’ MacBook, the one with iMovie HD because I still to this day refuse to learn the newer versions. (It’s just easier, okay?) And we released them one at a time on YouTube.

The World’s Shortest Horror Films is a fifteen part series featuring the talents of many old friends and new. I made a lot of short films in my day, but few make me prouder. I mean, I made them with my kid. We wrote them. We cut them together. We even appear in one. Well, I appear in it; you can hear his voice. (Spoiler alert, I am not opening that door!)

Sam and I went our separate ways creatively after Covid. I’m back to writing, and he’s in a killer school of rock band called Abstract Agenda. He plays keyboard, bass, guitar, and saxophone. As a matter of fact, I was in quarantine with Covid the day he brought home a saxophone for the first time in July. He went from the usual beginner squeaks and squawks to accurately playing the opening solo from “Careless Whisper” in less than two hours. Kinda makes you sick!

Maybe one day we’ll collaborate on another short. Until then, I’m proud of the one series we assembled together.

You can watch the whole series, all 15 short films, in the video below. It’s only an eight minute commitment, so give it a whirl, will you?