Happ(il)y New Year

Happy New Year, everyone! And don't we all deserve a happy ending to one of the craziest years of the century?

Personally, I've been through a lot. I was on a stamp (!) thanks to my awesome friends over at the Bhutan ministry. I moved, deciding to relocate from the beautiful Himalayas to the even snowier, even more beautiful mountains of Kazakhstan.

And I've been steadily writing. My two story collections (We Are Bhutan and Scary Stories from Bhutan) are selling like hotcakes. And it's so cool to help my students become Amazon best-selling writers. How crazy is that?

But today, I wanted to highlight the book that started me on this journey, the one I originally wrote for the 3-Day Novel Contest. After being a finalist in that crazy, grueling event, I rewrote Happily Destroyed about a dozen times. Each time, it got longer and crazier. If you haven't checked it out yet, do so. That would be a nice New Years gift: reading a book about robot dragons, parallel dimensions, and singing villagers.

Magical Creatures... Take a Look!

Unicorns are beautiful creatures… until they disembowel you with that horn.

Mermaids are the gorgeous women of the sea… before they try to drown you, of course.

Leprechauns are charming little Irishmen… except when they rip out your gold teeth while you sleep.

Mythical creatures often have two sides, both enchanting and terrifying. I’m so stoked to be a part of a new anthology called Menagerie de Mythique. It’s a collection of short fiction about magical creatures, and it does a really cool job of straddling the line between wonder and danger.

My short, “Drains to the Ocean,” is definitely in the latter category. I did a creepy, little mix-and-match between Ewoks and CHUDs. (Don’t know what a CHUD is? That’s probably for the best.) Anyway, this anthology is lighting it up on Amazon right now, so check it out. How often do you feel enchanted and terrified at the same time?

Happily Destroyed: My Sci Fi Fairy Tale YA Mash-up

Welcome to THE HAPPILY, a paradise dimension where everyone is royalty… where every meal is a feast… where your loyal subjects burst into song at pre-scheduled intervals… where you can never, ever return.

Rose and her sisters live a life straight out of a fairy tale. Well, the crappy first-half of a fairy tale, anyway. They work and sweat and go about their days, always hoping that something terrible will happen. Maybe a troll will steal them away. Maybe a sorcerer will turn them to stone. Heck, maybe a beast will whisk them off to his dark, nasty castle. Wouldn’t that be great?

You see, if something bad happens, that means that someone will rescue them. And if someone rescues them, that means they just bought a one-way ticket to THE HAPPILY. Bing bang boom. Paradise.

Slowly, the sisters get into trouble. Slowly, they get rescued. Slowly, they achieve their happily ever after. That just leaves one sister: Rose. She’s too spunky and independent. She’ll never get rescued, which means she’ll never transition into THE HAPPILY. She’s stuck in the real world, with all the witches and ogres and dragons.

But what if she sneaks into THE HAPPILY? And what if she gets caught? Or worse, what if THE HAPPILY isn’t as great as everyone says? Well, there’s only one way to find out…

Happy Death Day!

Ready for some FREE flash fiction? Check out my new story "Hello, Death! It's a Pleasure!" It's short, morbid, and has a neat twist ending.

Art by Amanda Bergloff

This is my first collaboration with Fairy Tale Magazine, and they've been awesome! Check them out if you're ever in the mood for some revisionist fairy tales with modern sensibilities.

Hansel vs. Gretel: Grudge Match of the Stars

So The Asylum doesn't usually do sequels unless it's to one of their shark movies (the Sharknado franchise will outlive us all). No Snakes on a Train 2. No Age of the Hobbits 2. No freaking Avengers Grimm 2. But for some reason, they decided to sequelize Hansel and Gretel. No idea why. The first one had ET's mother as the human-eating witch. This one does not. Neither are masterpieces. Both are really fun.

Witches!

Once upon a nightmare.

Sleeping Beauty is one of my favorite Disney films. I think it's hands-down the prettiest movie in their vault. I could get lot in the twisting, angular backgrounds. And the Tchaikovsky music... dang. It's an all-around masterpiece.

The Asylum version, released the same month as Disney's Maleficent, is... let's say... worse. It's fun and campy, but I couldn't see myself getting lost in the awkward CGI. Is it a train wreck? No. But it is a very strange passion project from a B-list action star whom I will not mention in this post. Check out the review. I promise you won't fall asleep.

Avengers Grimm

                 
Welcome to another snippet from my weekly mockbuster articles over at Slickster Magazine. This week, I'm discussing Avengers Grimm, the fairy tale rip-off of Avengers: Age of Ultron. You can check out the full article at Slickster Magazine. In the meantime, here's a little taste, just in case:
                   
Now, this (admittedly stupid) premise could absolutely deliver an entertaining, brainless bit of fluff. All the filmmakers had to do was pick a few recognizable characters, give them powers based on their personae, make them squabble in character-based ways, and have them reluctantly cooperate to take down a villain. You know what? Let’s brainstorm this movie together, shall we? Let’s say we have Snow White, whose special power is… I don’t know, throwing apples at people. She has to work with Cinderella, who can kick ass in those glass shoes. They’re constantly arguing, because… Snow White thinks Cinderella exploits the little mice and vermin that come and help her. They both team up with the Frog Prince, who can now change into a bunch of different animals. He’s the third link in our love triangle, but he’s sarcastic and super-rich, much like a certain man made of iron. We can go on from there, but you get the point. The stuff writes itself.

To see the rest of the article (and learn all about Lou Ferrigno's single greatest acting achievement), go to Slickster.

Laughter in Sarnath

 Re-Animator.

Snow White.

The Necronomicon.

Sleeping Beauty.

What do these words have in common? Absolutely nothing… Until now.

Wanderer’s Haven has collected a bunch of Lovecraftian fairy tale mash-ups for your reading pleasure. While my short story was unfortunately not included in the initial roll-out of stories, you can still find it up on their website.

My gory little story Laughter in Sarnath takes its inspiration from Shadow over Innsmouth and all those fairy tales about trying to make a princess laugh. (Seriously. There’s a bunch of them.) I’m really happy with the ending of this one. I was aiming for a Tales from the Crypt vibe, and I think it delivers.

And reader beware: this one is really bloody.

Bleeding Cool Shout-Out

Hey everyone! I got a nice shout-out in Bleeding Cool News. They wrote some pretty nice things about the Mythos Grimmly anthology that’s coming out later this year. Check out the article. And I’ll be sure to keep you posted about when this one is released.