Your Questions, Answered

  • An author of literary horror fiction. A lifelong resident of Pennsylvania.

    More information here

  • Yes.

    In general, these are the distributors:

    • Ingram Spark: Paperback and hardback

    • PayHip: E-book & PDF

    Take a look at the detail page for each book. Availability may vary.

  • I would love to, but at present, the shipping options for U.S. customers are not viable.

    • Kurt Vonnegut

    • Ernest Hemingway

    • Joseph Heller

    • Edgar Allan Poe

    • Dashiell Hammett

    • Fredric Brown

    • Guy de Maupassant

    • Shirley Jackson

    • Jack Ketchum

    • Gillian Flynn

    • Cliver Barker

    • Ramsey Campbell

    • James Herbert

    • Cormac McCarthy

    • Peter Straub

    • Robert McCammon

    • Stephen King

    • Tana French

    • William F. Buckley Jr.

    • Donna Tartt

  • I’ve watched thousands of films, from mainstream to horror. My favorite director is Ingmar Bergman. My favorite all-time move is Exotica by director Atom Egoyan. My favorite period in horror is the 1970s.

  • I’m what you might call a “pantser,” though I prefer the term discovery writer. I discover the story the way an archeologist discovers bones—by digging in the dirt, unaware of what I might find. Planning happens but not before the writing begins.

    Planners, who outline things ahead of time, like to ask the question, “how do you write without a plan?” I like to counter with the question, “how can you plan chapter three when chapters one and two don’t exist?”

  • Yes.

    • e-book formatting: Attucus, followed by modifications in Sigil

    • print formatting: Adobe InDesign

    Are these tools difficult to learn? Atticus and Sigil are not difficult. InDesign, which feels like a wacky hybrid of Microsoft Word and Adobe’s own PhotoShop, has a steeper learning curve, but for novels, it’s not bad. InDesign was built to create complex magazine layouts, which is to say it’s somewhat overqualified for fiction-book formatting.

    1. Serif fonts for the title and author name on the cover.

    2. Adobe Garamond Pro for the body font. It’s both elegant and readable at smaller sizes.

    3. For horror covers, I prefer the artistic style of the 1970s—lots of original artwork—to the modern trend toward graphic design (stock images, photography, etc.), .

  • In general, the book number in the series doesn’t match the chronology. The Hour of Anguish is a prequel. The Case Against Theodor Townsend is a pre-pre-pre prequel.

    1. Tenebrous - May 2005

    2. Painted Souls - May through September 2006

    3. The Hour of Anguish - December 2004 through January 2005

    4. The Case Against Theodore Townsend - 1978 through 1981

    If you want to read them chronologically, the order would be 4, 3, 1, 2