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Every year or so I try to watch .  Yeah, I've seen it a lot.

And let me tell you - this movie is just about perfect.

First of all, it has a DeLorean in it.  You can't beat that for sheer awesomeness.  Time travel, Michael J. Fox, a giant bully, a hot mom, near incest, crazy scientists, gigawatts, flux capacitors, and Chuck Berry make the entire viewing experience nothing short of nirvana.

All of the dialogue in the beginning plays a part later on in the film.  The mom talks about how she met the father, a random stranger asks for money for the clock tower, a flyer with information about a lightning strike, Doc discussing how he hit his head off a toilet,  and much more is important to the story.  Hell, Marty's stalled rock band is a huge part of the end.  The poor time traveler's clothing also makes his first few hours in the 50's a funny problem.

Even now, almost thirty years later, everything in this movie holds up.  The special effects, sound, music, acting - everything - still kicks all kinds of ass. Just talking about it makes me want to go watch it once again.

If you've never seen this before, you suck at life.  If you haven't had the joy of watching the of this yet, then you'll love seeing how great this movie looks in HD.   I'll have to take some pictures of my movie memorabilia for this which includes a replica of the flux capacitor and the license plate from the DeLorean.


88 MPH, bitches.

Yup - that's a mullet.

Cynthia Shepp, my editor and a book blogger, asked some questions about writing ACES HIGH that Elle Casey and I answered via video.

To see Elle's answers, check out the .

My collaboration with Elle Casey, , is available on Amazon.  Paperback, B&N, Kobo, and iTunes are soon to follow.

So, what is this?  Well, it's a blend of the genres Elle and I write in - YA and horror with a ton of humor thrown in.  Here's the blurb:

What do a small-time card shark fresh out of the state foster system and a newly-expelled-from-college computer geek have in common? Desperation. And they live in apartments across the hall from each other. An ill-timed peek through a peephole and an impromptu omelet lead to a business venture that takes Charlie (she's the brawn) and Doug (he's the brains) into the strange worlds of bounty hunting and the supernatural.

And there ya go.  Two characters, who are polar opposites in almost every way, get themselves into trouble while trying to make a buck.  There is a whole lot else going on in the background of this book that will be explored in future novels.  We don't know how long this series might go on, but it could be a lot.  The universe we've created is ripe with possibilities.

Quite a few people have asked what our process was for writing ACES HIGH.  Honestly, and I know this sounds too simple, we just passed chapters back and forth every day.  I would wake up and read her chapter and then write my own.  That's it.  No outline.  We had a general idea of what we wanted the story to be, but everything else was just a natural progression.

We uploaded our chapters to Google Docs, which made it easier to keep everything in one place.  And that's all.

Check it out and let us know what you think!

Hell yeah!  I've selected my producer/narrator and he's already completed a couple of chapters.  The final product should be finished in April.  It'll be available at Amazon, Audible, and iTunes.  Not sure what the price will be yet.

I'm practically crapping myself as I wait to hear the whole thing.  Yeah, try to get that image out of your head.

OK, mofos.  It's time for a sneak peak of my collaborative project with .  We're already halfway through the book, maybe a little more, and it has turned into a pretty hilarious story.  Well, it's funny if you enjoy our brand of biting, snarky humor.  If not... well... you suck.

Oh, by the way, I think this cover perfectly captures the relationship between the two main characters.

You can download a .PDF, .MOBI, or .EPUB from the Sneak Peaks section on Elle's site .

I think it'll be fun every week to post some of the funny ways that people find my blog.  I like to talk about random things here, so some of the search engines hits that come my way are hilarious.  Occasionally I might post a stupid video or something for your amusement as well.

So here you go:

gay he mandop and dumber gym carry (those aren't typos)eric roberts musclelzzy haleold teen wolf basketballscary wink
I also managed to find a hilarious commercial for electronic cigarettes.  It stars Stephen Dorff doing his best James Dean impersonation while smoking 'blu' cigarettes.  The slowmo, popped collar, black and white, walking on the beach way he focuses on looking cool while smoking is too awesome.  He might as well have opened the commercial with "I'm Stephen fucking Dorff.  Fuck you."

If you have not finished reading Sheol (West of Hell #3) yet, then you should NOT read this.

Now, for those of you that have finished and are a little perplexed about the ending...

I'm going to start this off with a question:  do you know what the words , , and mean?  If that question confuses you then follow the links or do some Google searches.  They aren't just a couple of weird words that I made up.  I'll give you a hint:  Hell.  (As in West of Hell (I'm so clever))

West of Hell was two stories combined, running simultaneously.  The goal was for you, the reader, to see whatever came naturally to you.  What the hell does that mean?  Some of you, actually most of you, see West of Hell as a zombie/western.  It is.  Others view West of Hell as a literal story about people escaping Hell and entering Heaven (Marom).  It's that as well.

I can already hear some of you asking 'what?!'

The whole point was to allow you to interpret the story however you see fit.  If it's a zombie/western to you that's cool.  If it's a story about escaping Hell, that's cool too.

How is it a story about escaping Hell?  Well, I put a shit load of hints throughout the series.  I'm not going to give you all of them, but I will name a few.  Half the fun is discovering them yourself. I also put references to other stories, the bible, lots of symbolism, etc, in random places.  Ready?


Gehenna, Tartarus, and Sheol were translated to the word Hell in the bible.All of the scripture included throughout the entire series.Marom is Hebrew meaning 'above, heaven, high places'.The weather is always scorching in West of Hell.Everything is always burning.Marom is snow covered and peaceful.Jacob, the man they encounter past the mountain range is from Jacob's Ladder.In Dante's Inferno, Dante finds a gate at a mountain that leads him into Hell.  In Sheol the gate leads Karen and McCall out of it.Because of the sacrifices McCall makes in all three books he is able to open the gate when others can't.Karen's white horse (hehe) is named .All of the seven deadly sins are named or described throughout the series.  Can you find them all?Their memory loss is  meant to be interpreted one of two ways:  1) The plague that started the zombie apocalypse wiped people's short term memories at that time or 2) That's when they died and awoke in Gehenna (Hell).Everyone in the entire series only has one name.  I did that to symbolize the way people's identities are stripped in a prison (ala Hell).The extreme violence is both a product of the zombies and of being tortured in Hell.Evans and his father symbolize the devil/demons.The boy, Stephen, is Karen's salvation.
And there is a whole lot more.
So how did you initially see West of Hell?  As a zombie/western or as a journey through Hell?
Does knowing any of this make you want to read it again?

Nine Days into the new year and I'm already nine days behind.  Shit.

The flu punched me in the face last week.  I didn't get off the couch for days.  I was so sick that I didn't even drink beer last weekend - yeah, you heard that right.  I'm still feeling the remnants of it, but I'm back on my feet and writing again.  Unfortunately, I'm already WAY behind.  It's going to be a serious rush to try and get my new book out by the end of January.  The first week or so of February is probably more likely.

On the bright side, Smelle Casey and I have been plotting our co-authored book together and I think we've got a pretty good idea of where it's going.  It should be a fun ride with lots of douchery in it.

But wait!  There's more!

On Saturday I'm going to a convent (hopefully I won't catch on fire when I go inside) to do some research for a book that I'll start writing in March.  I don't want to give away any details of it yet, but I really like the idea and I think you will too.  With any luck, this book will be released around the beginning of April.

After that, I have several more ideas that I'm kicking around, but I don't know which one I'll start.  At some point I do want to write that Echoes sequel I've been promising forever.

I hope that everyone else is doing better with their resolutions than I am!

This is a great example of why I typically roll my eyes when a new remake of a classic is announced.  For me, I usually feel like there should be a significant amount of time from the original, until a new vision of it can work.  Now this only applies if the original is a classic.  If the first movie was just mediocre, then it makes sense to give it another shot.

Twenty-two years between the Arnold classic and wasn't enough time.  It's not that I can say this movie is bad, because it really isn't.  It's just kind of... there.  It felt boring to both The Tall One and I which is the kiss of death for an action film.  And again, it isn't that the action doesn't look great (it does), it's just that I guess I didn't care about anything going on.

I don't want to go into a lot of detail about it, because the ending of the original is fantastic.  However, the director had been talking about how he kept the story closer to 'the book' (which was actually a short story), and I don't see it.  That's just marketing hype.  Also, all of the things that were so great about the original, seemed to have been stripped out.  The over the top violence being the biggest offense.  That and you can't replace Arnold with Colin Farrell.



Go watch the instead.  It has violence, three boobed women, mutants, and Arnold.

Before 2012 I had never really set resolutions for the coming years.  However, last year I decided that I wanted to try and be a writer.  I made a goal of releasing at least two books.  By the end of the year I had two novels, three novellas, and three short stories.  I kicked last year's resolution right in the ass.

SO, I'm upping the goals for this year dramatically.  Grab onto your butts:

1.  Write and release ten novels.  This is going to be a tough one.  Not all of us are cyborgs like , so I'm going to have to really push myself to get that many books out.  I guess that's what resolutions are for.

2.  Blog three times a week.  That's right.  You'll have the distinct pleasure of reading even more of my drivel. I enjoy blogging quite a bit but it ended up taking a backseat towards the end of the year as I rushed to finish West of Hell.  Unfortunately Facebook has made a lot of changes during that time, most of them dumb as shit, and now my readers can't see half of my posts.  Because of that I'm going to shift back to the blog and continue to ramble on about inane stuff.

3.  Write a new series with Elle Casey.  We're writing a book together in February and we're hoping to make a series out of it.  These will be written alongside our other novels so I don't know how often a new book in the series will be released, but hopefully we'll get at least three out.

4.  Contribute to at least three anthologies.  This one is pretty simple, assuming that I can find three editors (or one that will build three anthologies) who will take my stories.  I already have one in the can for February, so I'm already kicking this resolution's ass.

5.  Release a short story collection.  Not much to explain here.  I have three short stories already.  In order to have enough to release a collection I'll probably have to write at least seven more.

So there you have it.  It's going to be an incredibly busy year for me, but it should also be a great boon to my writing career.  Just looking back at all of these goals, I better get off the internet and start punching the keyboard.