English: A Jack-o’-lantern glowing in the dark. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

October is here!  It’s my first fall in the woods after many years in the Sonoran desert.  This time of year has always charged me with weird energies.  It’s an in between time.  Summer’s over, but the true cold of Winter is still ahead.  The trees explode in a riot of color and the leaves fall, by the end of the month they’ll be bare and the woods will look like a completely different place.  Misty mornings and rainy days are common, but it’s just as common to see golden sunsets and harvest moons.  And it all leads up to the best holiday ever, Halloween!

So October is also a month when I’m looking for good scary movies and revisiting old favorites.  Same for my reading material.  This is when my Lovecraft collections get plenty of play.  This year I had the urge to get that spooky energy plugged into my writing as well.  My stuff usually tends toward the weird and/or uncanny already, but I wanted to get out some that was straight up macabre.  And I wanted to share it, so here’s what I’m gonna do.

I have three short stories in mind and I want to put them here on the blog starting next Friday.  That gives me a nice tight deadline to get them in shape.  In the meantime, I thought I’d kick the month off with everybody’s favorite–zombies.  From today, Tuesday the 2nd,  until midnight, Friday the 5th, West of Dead is free on Amazon.  Yay, free!

West of Dead is the debut story of my pulp hero, Nathaniel Caine.  Caine is a Civil War veteran trying to forget the war and see the West.  His trip turns deadly when he and his fellow travelers are attacked by a zombie horde.  It’s a quick read and I think it’s a fun one.  It’s the only zombie story I’ve done, and it was a helluva lot of fun to write.  If you haven’t read it, now is the time to pick it up.  If you’re not into zombie stories, I’m sure you know someone who is, so tell them to come and get it!

West of Dead a Nathaniel Caine Adventure

Grinder’s Keeper A Nathaniel Caine Adventure