Old horror writer back from the dead…
So there I was last Tuesday morning, sitting at my kitchen table wolfing down bacon and eggs, watching the neighbor’s cat stalk a mockingbird, when it hit me: I hadn’t thought about deadlines, word counts, or monetization strategies in over an hour. I was just… daydreaming. Playing with words. Having fun with writing after retirement. … Read more
Time to Get Personal In my first two posts, I talked about the foundations of horror fiction and what the masters have taught us about the craft. Now it’s time to get personal–and to be completely honest about something I’m attempting that might be foolish, fascinating, or both: AI horror writing. At 77, after getting … Read more
Through the Masters’ Eyes In my first post, I talked about how Frankenstein and Dracula created the templates for modern horror fiction. Now let’s dig into the craft of horror writing and what the writers who’ve actually mastered the genre have to say about scaring readers. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately as … Read more
If you want to understand modern horror fiction–the kind that kept readers up at night in the paperback boom of the 1970s and 80s, the kind I spent decades writing–you need to go back to two novels that essentially invented the genre as we know it: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). … Read more
In the previous two posts I wrote about why most authors shouldn’t blog and when blogging actually works for the few who do it right. But there’s a third angle to this whole conversation that I’ve been wrestling with since I started this series: what are the hidden benefits of author blogging that have nothing … Read more
In the previous post, we had a dose of reality about author blogging–where I basically told most of you to skip it entirely–and if I allowed comments on these posts I suspect we would have seen a predictable mix of responses. Half the messages might have thanked for saying what needed to be said. The … Read more
Let me start with something that might sting a little: most of you reading this shouldn’t be blogging. I know, I know. That’s not what you expected to hear from a guy who’s about to spend three blog posts writing about author blogging. But here’s the thing–and this comes from someone who’s been at this … Read more
Why r/WritingWithAI is different: A 77-year-old AI author’s take You know how sometimes you walk into a room full of strangers and immediately know you’re home? That’s what happened when I discovered r/WritingWithAI. You see, I’ve been collaborating and creating documentary fiction books with Anthropic’s remarkable Claude AI for most of 2025. I’ve also been … Read more
Market Intelligence or Where Dreams Meet Spreadsheets? If r/writing is a support group for people who think they might want to be writers, then r/selfpublish is a business seminar for people who’ve decided to take the plunge. The difference hits you immediately when you scroll through the posts. Instead of “How do I know if … Read more
Or a Literary Circle Jerk? So here I am on an early Monday morning, scratching my old head while pondering a question: Is Reddit’s r/writing forum valuable? I’m not scratching because of writing. Heck, I’ve been pushing words around for fifty years, so that particular form of insanity is well-established. No, I’m wondering about my … Read more