And the Title Is…

Hey gang! I hope the summer hasn’t left you burning so far. I know some places have been hot as Hell, but I think that will be a part of life from here on out. Try to stay cool and hydrate, my friends!

I’ve reached the end of prepping the new story collection. The book features eleven stories, some new and some old. It reprints my out of print novelette, Stone Cold Horror From the Stars, as well as some other harder to find stuff. There are four new stories including my bonkers novelette, The Story Started With Chainsaws and Hookers. I had a lot of fun writing about two friends trying to get to a King Diamond concert in a blizzard and have to stop an alien invasion at a truck stop with the help of two hookers and a Canadian chainsaw performance duo. Don’t ask, lol. I also explore life, death, and destiny in the other new tales.

This will be my last collection for a long while. I haven’t done much short story writing in the past few years, but I plan on returning to it. I enjoy the shorter format, but right now, my novel idea list is running pretty long. This is why I’ve been sunsetting and wrapping up some of my series work. The plan is to focus on individual novels with some White Creek and Death Inc. world material thrown in the mix from time to time.

Okay, the title. I went back and forth with multiple ideas and titles. Titles had words like horrific, hallways, and other such words. However, I was thinking about where these tales would be told. Would the living tell them to the dead? Would the dead whisper them in the ears of the living?

I took my title inspiration from the lead story in the book, “To Live and Die.” The story focuses on a man who thinks he suffered a heart attack and can’t figure out if he’s alive or if he died. The story is loosely based on an actual event and grew from there. Since death was on my mind with the title, I settled on…

Graveside Lullabies.

I don’t have an exact release date yet, but once the cover is done, I’ll get it out. I’m not doing a big pre-order roll out bullshit thing. It’ll be out there and you fine readers can get it when it drops. Overall, I love the tales in this book, and I consider them some of my best work. If you compare these to my past short stories, you can see how much I’ve learned and grown as a writer.

That’s what its all about, growth.

I hope you like these stories as much as I do. Once it drops, I’ll let you know. I didn’t do a story note section in the collection this time. I plan on either doing separate posts for them or dipping my toes into TikTok or something to talk about each story.

Lastly, I want to share that Dying Days: Apocalypse is at the 14k of 30-40k point. It’s progressing nicely, and I should be able to knock some big chunks out in the next two weeks. After that, I will be starting 12 Souls. On deck are the next White Creek and Death Inc. books. It’ll be a busy rest of the year.

And Small Town Terrors is finally back in print! Catch a paperback copy today (like click here).