Regarding Dead Things on the Side of the Road is available in a smell-good paper version at amazon.com as well as a Kindle version. It's also available at Barnesandnoble.com, the Sony Reader Store and iTunes.
Some Thoughts:
I decided a while ago to never look back. It's not that I disagree with the axiom that states we learn from our mistakes or that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Rather, I disagree with the notion that I should be held accountable for things I have done or for mistakes that I have made or for bad writing that should have been thrown in the trash a long time ago. My history may have formed who I am, but it does not define me and a person should not be judged by their past if their present is so much different.
Case in point: the Great Pyramid was built on a foundation. At some point, some engineer had to say "let us dig a really big hole and start putting down big blocks of stuff. It'll look ugly . . . up until the point it does not look ugly anymore." In the first few years of construction, the Great Pyramid was likely an eyesore. Not only were there blocks being toted up wooden scaffolding, there were dead slaves everywhere. An onlooker might have said: "That's hideous." A more astute onlooker might have said something about beauty taking time or patience and all that sort of nonsense that doesn't make the first onlooker any less likely to think the big hole in the ground with the big blocks all around it and the dead slaves doesn't look hideous.
And then, one day, the Pyramid is done. The slaves are buried in mass graves or fed to crocodiles and the Pharaoh is placed inside the tomb, his brain removed through his nostrils, his body wrapped in cloth in the hopes he doesn't rot too much. The astute onlooker says "I told you so" while the first onlooker says he still thinks it looks ugly, but he's happy there are no dead bodies lying around. All that is progress—a fluid flow from idea to construction to finished product.
So it is with writers . . . or at least myself. In the first years of my writing experience, there were dead slaves and a big hole in the ground. As I evolved past the birth of an idea and learned all I could about grammar and style, about form and function, about sentence construction and paragraph deconstruction, I built upon those dead slaves and filled in that big hole with blocks. It's taken a few years, the crocodiles are fat with the bodies of slaves, and the pyramid of writing is not yet complete. In truth, it probably won't be complete until I'm ready to have my brain pulled out my nostrils and mummified with my written work.
But what of being judged for your history? Well, I wrote many short stories in years past, and I have collected a few of them in a volume for you to peruse. Regarding Dead Things on the Side of the Road contains fifteen short stories—some bizarre, some horrific, some soft and quiet like scissors through skin. Some of the stories have been published in magazines like The Horror Express, All Hallows, Horror Carousel and the Bare Bones anthology series, while others have never been published before. These stories represent blocks in my Great Pyramid of writing. Some are at the bottom, some near the middle.
I hope you enjoy . . . unless you don't and then that's okay, too.
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