KILLER KAIJU has been unleashed! Available now on Amazon!
Nine earth-shattering tales of colossal abominations and the havoc they wreak! Get yourself a copy today!
The bigger they are …
I am thrilled to announce that my latest story acceptance will see a tale entitled “Where Monsters Make Their Lairs” published in the Killer Kaiju anthology, coming soon from Ps and Qs Publishing. This is the fourth short story of mine that Ps and Qs has chosen for an anthology; they are a fairly small and new outfit but they have been coming out blazing with anthologies that really mesh well with the kinds of stories I like to write! Weird west, haunted workplaces, rock-and-roll high fantasy, and now … giant monster action!
Of course, far be it from me to spin a bog-standard kaiju yarn. “Where Monsters Make Their Lairs” is not about the armed soldiers sent to try to subdue a colossal abomination, the scientists attempting to understand the creature, or even the ordinary people fleeing from a rampage of destruction. It is about larger-than-life icons hunting kaiju as the ultimate challenge of thrill-seeking and point-proving, knowing full well the kaiju are ready and waiting for them for the same reasons. In other words …
… okay, it’s not literally Batman versus Godzilla, primarily because I have no desire to get sued by Warner Bros. Discovery or Toho Co., Ltd., let along both of them at once. But secondarily, I’d also rather go even weirder with it! To find out exactly how weird, you’ll have to pick up a copy of Killer Kaiju for yourself!
Nice to be noticed
I write because I love the creative process, and getting an idea out of my head and into some independent external form is rewarding in and of itself. I publish what I write because I also enjoy sharing those stories with others, even though it often feels like anything from a one-way street to a plummet into a bottomless void.
Awards and accolades don’t even enter my mind, reviews are hard to come by and even feedback is rare, which is just the way it goes for everyone who indulges in self-expression. I say all of that not to throw a pity party for myself, but just to contextualize how genuinely surprising and delightful it is when I do get some kind of positive response to something I’ve written. Especially when said response comes from someone I don’t know, someone I didn’t shove my work at (which inherently creates a social pressure for the shovee to offer praise and compliments in response), someone who apparently hangs out somewhere in that bottomless void and caught one of my stories as it went whooshing by.
The online magazine Reactor published a listicle last week which, unbeknownst to me until I got a Google alert about it, contains an entry on one of my short stories. You can read the article here: https://reactormag.com/6-seriously-funny-speculative-short-stories/
I tend to characterize myself as a horror/pulp writer but I have always had a strong interest in comedy as well. I think making people laugh is even harder than scaring them or exciting them, and I have the utmost respect for people who fully commit to the funny. There are a lot of humor-related projects in my past, especially my younger days before I started getting published-for-pay, but every once in a while I still like to dip my toes into goofery. So the nod in this listicle is a double delight in that way, an unexpected bit of spontaneous applause for an approach I don’t consider my strongest. You never know when an idea from outside your comfort zone is really going to resonate with someone!
A decade and change later …
If you had told me, ten-plus years ago when I started this website as a way to keep tabs on all the places my writings were showing up in the publishing world (plus my random thoughts about creative endeavors and such), that there would come a point where getting individual stories accepted into anthologies was a common enough occurrence that updating the website would entirely slip my mind, I would have said that sounds kind of nice, probably! Especially if you had mentioned that part of the reason would be the availability of my single author collection Assorted Malignancies and my novel The Blight on the Deep Woods, and other similarly larger projects like those in the works, making the one-off short stories a bit less definitional to my writing hobby.
This year has been a bit chaotic (aren’t they all?) and as a result I never quite got around to announcing the publication of Spirits and Spreadsheets, which includes my story “Wasted on the Dead and Dreaming”. The theme of the anthology is horror stories set in workplaces, and my tale concerns the late-night happenings in a cubicle farm for data entry drones, a soulless place … with some extra lost souls. The book came out back in August of this year, but of course you can still get your own copy now!
I was prompted to make this post, belatedly announcing Spirits and Spreadsheets, because today saw the publication of yet another anthology from the same publisher, Elven Rock of Ages, which features yet another story by me, “Strings and Silks”!
I don’t believe I’ve ever contributed to an anthology exactly like this one before. All of the stories within are united by the central characters, a four-man (or more accurately four-elf) rock band touring through a magical kingdom and getting into adventures. Every writer was given free rein to interpret the characters as they saw fit, and the result is an interesting mix of approaches. Check it out for yourself!
I will return in the new year with more project announcements!
My hero’s journey, ever on and on
THE BLIGHT ON THE DEEP WOODS, my first Kellan Oakes novel, is now available for pre-order from Lycan Valley Press!
This is, in fact, my first published novel, period. It should come as no suprise that my initial success in wrestling a unified book into shape should come as a long-form adventure of everyone’s favorite druid private eye. It’s a heck of a yarn if I do say so myself, revealing quite a lot about Kellan’s origins (and those of his mysterious, nature-mystic mother Foltchain) that none of his previous short story appearances have disclosed.
Go to LVP’s web site to get in on the pre-order special package which includes the paperback, ebook and audiobook! Order now for the special discounts which go away when The Blight on the Deep Woods hits wide release on April 8, 2025. Thanks!
Time is a flat circle
My latest short story, “Death’s Horns, Doom’s Hooves”, appears in the anthology Weird Wytch West, available now!
Click here to get yourself a copy in Kindle or paperback format.
If you have been following my self-mythologizing for any amount of time, you probably know that I made the leap from amateur hobbyist writer to published hobbyist writer when I was introduced to a friend of a friend who was editing anthologies of weird west fiction. My story “The Demon Wrestler” appeared in How the West Was Weird vol. 2 a little less than 14(!!!) years ago. I haven’t returned to the genre very often, but it was inevitable that I would, given how these things tend to go.
(“These things” = genre writing, genre publishing, themed anthologies, the cyclical nature of life, the universe, and everything.)
Man vs. Lore
Like the trees and wildflowers themselves, which must spend time dormant only to return to vibrant life once again in an endless cycle, the adventures of Kellan Oakes, druid-raised private investigator, go on and on and on. The most recent installment in the saga of the man with roots in both the modern world and the Deep Woods is entitled “Abandonment and Possession” and is included in the anthology Sidearm & Sorcery, Volume Three – available now!
There is more exciting Kellan Oakes news yet to come, so be sure to check in regularly here at the blog for future announcements!
A bit of recognition
ASSORTED MALIGNANCIES is just a shade over 13 months old by now, and today I was alerted to a review for the book which appeared in Cemetery Dance Online earlier this month.
Click on the banner above (or right here) to see what reviewer Joshua Gage had to say about my debut collection. Spoiler: mainly pretty complimentary stuff, for which I am truly grateful!
Of course if you want to get your own copy of the book, you can still do so! ASSORTED MALIGNANCIES is available at most major retailers, including this one!
New tricks
As promised earlier, I am happy to announce that Horror Over the Handlebars is now available, and you can get your own copy right here!
You would think as I verge on a decade-plus of publishing stories that I would be running out of firsts, but apparently not! A couple of new experiences (for me, at least) go along with this particular release. For starters, this is the first time I’ve ever received word from a publisher that a book I was associated with made some kind of Amazon top-sellers list.
I will take a number three spot any time!
Additionally, the publisher conducted promotional interviews with all the authors in the anthology, and while I’ve both been there and done that, the new variation this time was that each contributor was assigned a story by a different author and asked to say a few words about it in their own interview. Given how thirsty all authors are for a responsive audience, this struck me as a tremendous idea that more publishers should adopt. In any case, you can find my author interview for Horror Over the handlebars right here.
Nostalgia is a hell of a drug
I’m happy to announce that my short story “P.E.T.E.” has been accepted to appear in the Horror Over the Handlebars anthology, coming this summer from Transformations by Obsidian Butterfly LLC!
The theme of the anthology is 80’s and 90’s nostalgia horror, specifically hearkening back to the “kids on bikes” coming-of-age genre immortalized in such classics as E.T., The Goonies, and more. Weirdly enough, I had written “P.E.T.E.” in response to a similarly-themed anthology call at a completely different publisher, but never heard back on it. I’m very glad a second chance came along and that the story found a home.
If the title of the story doesn’t make it obvious, my tale is a pastiche of D.A.R.Y.L., a movie from my misspent youth about government experiments with lifelike robots, and also little league. Of course my take on the source material goes a bit darker, but to find out how much, you’ll have to pick up your own copy of the anthology. Release details will be shared when available!
Dale W. Glaser 