Escape Hatch 053: Sign of the Times

Surprise! - New Story; The Black Phone II; Halloween Recommendations

Sign of the Times

(illustration: Brian Coldrick)

Trick or treat, you say? Okay: how about a little of both?

Here’s a new short story, available only through Subterranean Press’s website… and it’s free. Not only that, it features the grisly-cute artwork of Brian Coldrick, a favorite of mine.

It’s easy enough to explain how I came to write “Sign of the Times.” Blame Escape Hatch.

I had an idea maybe I could bang out some flash fiction for the newsletter: little works of the gothic and strange that can be read in six minutes. The problem is that my stories tend to slip the leash and run away from me. It’s been a problem for nearly twenty years now. True fact: when I started writing Heart-Shaped Box I thought I’d be typing “The End” after 25 pages. Judas Coyne had other ideas.

So when I set out to write “Sign of the Times” — a weird murdery goof on Lovecraftian magic going viral — I was aiming for 500 words. I wound up at 3000 instead, a bit long for the newsletter. Bill Schafer has been publishing my stories for a long time (the first was “Voluntary Committal,” all the way back in 2005) and was kind to take a chance on another. I hope you like it, but if nothing else, it’s hard to beat the price point, right?

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Ask Not For Whom The Phone Rings

The Black Phone II will be out in the summer of 2025. Don’t it just make you smiiiiiiiiiile?

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Let’s Play

It blows my mind that this is a real thing and not a faked up fan image. Apparently available right now, in several different flavors.

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All Boxed In

I don’t do a lot of podcasts but I went on the Short Box show earlier this month, after I got to know one of the hosts, Badr, while I was in Florida to do an event at the Jacksonville Public Library. We talked for two hours and wound up covering a lot of ground: scary comics, the history of pop culture censorship, the psychology of horror fiction, future projects, and the ancient battle between Marvel and D.C. If you’ve got a long commute and want to geek out with us, I think it was a pretty good conversation.

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Lewiston-Auburn

I don’t have a lot to say about what happened in Maine last week, except that I feel ill in my heart when I think about it too much. And, anyway, most of my thoughts on our heavily armed, gun-addled nation were covered in a novella called “Loaded,” which appeared in Strange Weather. I have nothing new to add to what’s there.

Lewiston-Auburn has been a good place to my family. Doctors in Lewiston saved my father’s life, after he was struck by a van in 1999. A couple decades later, my oldest boy went to college there — happy years for him. The folk of Androscoggin County have all my love. I only wish there was something more to offer them. Love never staunched a single bullet wound.

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Plunge In, Buckaroos

This was cool. Author Chuck Tingle (who is just out with his first horror novel) ran down his favorite bloody horror comics and threw Plunge on the list. Thanks, Buckaroo — you’re too kind.

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Hail Hail

The Rolling Stones are out with a smokin’ new album; The Beatles are about to drop a new single and make us all cry our eyes out. It’s 2023.

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More Fiction

I wrote a whole run of short stories in the early part of the year: “The Pram” and “A Sign of the Times” were just two of them. Keep your eye on Kickstarter and Joe Lansdale’s Twitter account. I’ll be able to talk about another of them pretty soon.

(For those of you keeping score, there were six in all, counting “Back to the Graveyard,” a very short NOS4A2 tale written to accompany Skelton Crew’s Key to The Graveyard of What Might Be. And, hey, while we’re thinking about NOS4A2…)

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Christmasland is Closer Than You Think

If you’re scratching around for a Christmas present, signed books are a good one, and as a bonus, they’re easy to wrap. You can get a signed copy of just about anything I’ve ever written through Water Street Books and they can ship almost anywhere, if you can cover the cost of the postage. We’ve done this for almost a decade now and it’s always a pleasure.

Please note that if you want a gift in time for Christmas this year, you’ll have to get your order in by December 10th. That’s a hard deadline so if this is something that interests you, best to get your order in early.

Thanks, guys, and remember to be good to each other over the holidays… you don’t wanna wind up on Charlie Manx’s Naughty List.

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All Hallows’ Read & Happy Halloween Viewing

Want some fast fright recommendations for the Halloween fearfest? Shudder’s Deadstream is a gonzo send-up of YouTube influencers and provides a lot of jumps on a miniscule budget. Find it on Shudder or AMC+.

The Pale Blue Eye is a Poe-ferct mystery-shocker for the season, anchored by brilliant performances from Christian Bale and Harry Melling. Catch it on Netflix and then load up Mike Flanagan’s update on Poe’s legacy in House of Usher. Also, check this out — a luxury limited edition of the book that inspired Pale Blue Eye, with a forward by my brother Owen.

And if you need something that’ll keep you up late turning the pages, Tananarive Due’s The Reformatory is probably the best straight-up horror novel of the year. Don’t take my word for it. The New York Times is calling it “heart-smashingly good.” They’re right.

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Wishing everyone love and scares for Halloween. Thanks for subscribing to Escape Hatch and taking a little time out of your day to read my blab. Don’t eat too much candy corn, okay? That crap is disgusting.