Ketchup

More fun news today from Horror Addicts, which is gaining a nice audience and has now given out its first "Best In Blood" listeners' choice awards. I won for HA's inaugural season with their podcast of my short story "Monsters," a present-day urban suspense piece. Sweet!

Go give them a listen if you've got a taste for FEAR, boy! Emerian Rich and her evil cohorts are doing nice work in their corner of the Internet right here.

Labels: Best In Blood listener's choice award, Horror Addicts podcasting, Monsters

I've actually got a whole LIST of oh-it-hurts-my-brain Morons On Wheels stories like this, but, as seems to be the norm lately, I'm crazy for time. But here's another road story at last, sweet and short. This one's actually my favorite of all time.

The setting is Moscow, Idaho, way up in the panhandle where I lived for two years back in the mid-1990s when I was a single ramblin' man. The winters were cold. One winter evening I was driving somewhere and came to a red light. Naturally, I stopped. After I'd been sitting there for about a minute, a guy drove up and rear-ended me. Bang! He didn't hit me too hard, but it was a good jolt. So I got out and looked at him -- he was okay -- then looked at my dented bumper.

"What the hell, man?" I said.

He pointed at his windshield as if it was at fault. The glass was heavily iced on the outside, which he'd barely scraped, and had then frosted over on the inside with condensation. "I couldn't see!" he said. That was his excuse. He was driving but he couldn't see, so the windshield was at fault.

Seriously: Nobody can top that brilliant story, can they? :)

Labels: Morons on Wheels, The Road

Sometimes it's fun to be me! Another highlight this summer was taking part in the authors' booth at the California State Fair in Sacramento, where, on the first day, my table-mate was New York Times bestselling author Brenda Novak, who writes romantic suspense novels. What the heck does that mean, you ask? I gather that her books are murder mysteries in which people are also falling in love. Nice twist! Brenda -- I get to call her Brenda! -- was awesome good bright fun. We talked shop and talked kids and talked frosted cinnamon buns, which were being sold across the causeway from us, and generally a good time was had by all. Go check out her work here.

Alas, my favorite stalker did not appear, and, in fact, seems to have fallen off the face of the Earth, which is a sad day for a writer. It's nice to have a nice stalker. :)

Labels: Brenda Novak, California State Fair

Woof. It's been nuts! The good news is that I'm making solid progress on the new book. The bad news is that I've been wildly remiss in neglecting to mention my return to Horror Addicts, a freaky fun podcast hosted by the vampire herself, Emerian Rich. The short story featured in this episode is "Caninus," an early, urban suspense story of mine that originally ran in the fanzine The Vampire's Crypt #25 way back in Spring 2002.

There was a time when I thought this might be the direction I'd go with my career: unexpected, dark, horror pieces set in modern-day life.

I'd categorize "Caninus" with stories like "Monsters" and "Pattern Masters," but this is a "lost" piece of Carlson fiction. I don't even list it in my bibliography because it was published in such a tiny venue. Looking back, I'm really surprised it didn't crack the larger markets. There are a lot of good ideas, story-telling and surprises here.

The narrator is Rhonda Carpenter, who absolutely NAILS the tone and cadence of this piece. The shocking freaky sound effects don't hurt, either.

This podcast ranks among my all-time favorites, and I highly recommend it. In fact, I'm going to add it to the "Selected Podcasts" section on the Free Fiction page of my web site as being among the most representative of my short fiction.

Horror Addicts #27 can be found here. "Caninus" begins at the 45 minute mark.

Labels: Caninus podcast, Emerian Rich, Horror Addicts #27, Rhonda Carpenter