Ketchup

I would be remiss if I didn't mention here to everyone and anyone in the San Francisco Bay Area that my friend Emerian Rich, the vampire herself, is having a book release party this Friday at 7pm at Bay Books in Concord. There will be prizes and people with long teeth. And food. In fact, some of us may become food for the people with the long teeth... But they'll be gentle, I'm sure.

Come! Come and participate in the madness!

The party is for the print debut of Emerian's righteously popular podionovel Night's Knights. If you say you don't like the cover art, well, dude, you lie like a Persian rug.

In other exciting news, Plague Zone is also in print. No, it's not available yet, not unless you're me and they sent you author's copies. Bwah ha ha ha ha! But I'm contractually prohibited from passing out the book until the official release date, which isn't until 11/24.

The exciting news is that the first print run of Zone puts me well over 100,000 books in print worldwide. With the German and Spanish editions of Year and War, I was already very close to the 100K mark. In fact, all of a sudden I'm much closer to 150K books in print, and there are other editions coming right on down the pipeline. Some of the European print-runs will be very small, of course. Romania just isn't a big country. But I hope to hit 200K next year. Maybe more.

It's true that I know any number of writers whose initial print runs for a single title is 100 or even 200K, so this would be small change to them, but I'm still getting my feet under me and I'm excited to hit six digits with just my third book. It's a milestone. So the ice cream is on me.

Labels: Emerian Rich, Nights Knights book release party

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