Category: updates

Cerberus Rising in Audio

audiobook, fiction, horror, narrator, publishing, reading, updates, writing

I’ve been listening to the various stories in Cerberus Rising by myself, M Ennnenbach, and Patrick C. Harrison III in audio, and it’s an understatement to say they’re good.

They’re freaking outstanding.

We have nine stories in all in this beautiful book of perfection. Three themes, three stories per theme, nine novelettes. They are:

Cabin Fever

Insides Out

Into the light

50 Words for Writer’s Block—a Decline

Letters

The Final Correspondence of Thomas Baker Wolfe

Baptized by Lethe

Blame Jonathan Swift

Chaos

The Incident at Barrow Farm

Taking the Loop

Day 69

We couldn’t be more proud of these stories…or so we thought. When we started hearing Daniel Caravetta’s readings of these stories, we saw them catapult into the stratosphere. They stand on their own weight, but the fine voice acting and inflection from Mr. Caravetta just sets them all apart in a way that you’ll have to hear to fully appreciate.

There are two stories left to be produced, but the other seven have been nothing short of brilliant. When you hear them, you’ll understand of what I speak.

Are you an audiobook fan? If not, why not? I’ve always loved to have stories told to me, even from childhood with my grandparents and parents, and hearing a skilled actor perform them is all the better. But that’s me. What are your thoughts? What are your favorite audiobooks, and who are your favorite narrators? Mine are Frank Muller, Will Patton, Mare Winningham, Rosario Dawson, Santino Fontana, Matt Godfrey, and, of course, Daniel Caravetta.

I’d love to hear from you. Actually, all three of us would love to hear from you. Send us an email or connect on social media or just respond here. You guys are the best. God bless.

And keep reading!

Chris Miller—10-3-2020

Idiots

fiction, horror, publishing, reading, Suspense Author, updates, writing

I’m aggravated. You could even say pissed off.

Well, Chris, come on, you can’t just say something like that and then not elaborate.

Yeah, yeah, I know. So, you want to know what pisses me off? What pisses off a writer in the so-called “community”?

Readers who equate a work of fiction to the author’s personal character. That’s right, and for once, it’s not my own work in question here. I’ve been called all sorts of names by reviewers who’ve read my books: psychopath, pedophile, homophobe, racist, you name it. And it’s all 100% horseshit. But when I see reviewers heaping that nonsense on other writers—especially in the horror genre—it, well…

It pisses me off.

Most people have no clue how much effort goes into writing a novel. They don’t know the months, sometimes years, dedicated to constructing the very best story you can. Sure, readers have every right not to enjoy your hard work, and they have every right to voice that they do not like it, but there should at least still be a little respect for the author’s efforts, even if it isn’t to your taste, and there should certainly be respect for the author as an individual. It’s entirely possible that the author failed on every front as a storyteller, and it’s fair to say so, but it is not fair to equate the thoughts, deeds, and actions of fictional characters to the personal character of the author.

When I see a brand new work of fiction come out and I begin reading, I’m learning about a person, but I’m not learning about the author, necessarily. I’m learning about a character or characters they have created. People who are not them. So when those people who are not the author do or say or think something off-color, cruel, or outright evil, my reactions to those behaviors are directed towards the character, who isnot the author.

Unfortunately, many seem incapable of taking the same approach. In the age of ‘cancel-culture’ and the constant hunt for what to be outraged over next, people have started to equivocate the content of fiction with the personal constitutions of creators of fiction. They take umbrage to a racist character in a book saying racist things. They take umbrage with characters written true to their station in life and geographic locale, the sort of locker room banter we all remember hearing growing up. But if you write those kinds of scenes accurately, you’re called a bigot. It’s insane, but it’s also very, very stupid. Sure, you have every right to seek outrage at every turn, but please know that the rest of the world is laughing at you and your pathetic sensitivity over MADE UP PEOPLE, for eff’s sake!

I’m getting even more confounded that the particular writing “community” that I’m involved in is the horror one, and for a group who supposedly loves scary stuff and lots of blood and guts, they sure will have a ridiculous hissy fit if an animal is harmed in a story. People? No problem. Even children? Mostly, though a dead kid still doesn’t rise to the level of outrage a harmed animal will in their minds. That’s sick. Not the fact that a HORROR WRITER wrote something HORRIFYING in their HORROR book, but that a reader can get so wound up over the content that they end up writing really shitty reviews (that take them all of five minutes to write as opposed to the months or years the author took in writing their novel) attacking the fact that there are HORRIFYING things in a HORROR novel.

Get bent!

If you don’t like horror, don’t read it. If you don’t like extreme horror, then don’t read that. If you personally have an issue reading about harm coming to children or animals, that’s a perfectly reasonable and understandable thing, and nothing to be ashamed of. But when you read something that isn’t a good fit for you and you review it, stick to the writing. If it’s poorly written, say so. If it’s poor character development, say so. If it’s just not engaging or exciting, say so. Maybe it just wasn’t a good fit for; say so. But stop going into reviews of books you didn’t like and attacking the author personally, or trying to equate them to the characters they created.

Somewhere along the way some idiot decided that characters have to be likable for a book to work. Bullshit. They have to be relatable, they have to be believable, but they do not have to be likable. Not at all. It depends on the story being told whether there will be any likable characters or not.

If an author writes a racist character who uses a racist slur, that is believable and realistic that a racist would use that sort of language. Same for a sexist character or any other kind of bigot. What do you want, Klan member characters written as being politically correct SJWs? What the fuck is going through your brains? Why is it so hard to recognize the difference between trying to write realistically for the story you’re telling and who the author is as an individual?

I don’t care if you like this post. I really don’t. I’m sick of seeing this happen to good people in the “community” (the quotation marks are there on purpose), and yeah, I’m saying something about it. Your mistake of reading something that doesn’t sit well with you or isn’t your cup of tea is your fault, not the author’s (I’m obviously speaking to books you dislike because of content, not the writing itself). I get that some people may not want to read about a character who is racist or a homophobe or a misogynist. It’s ugly stuff. That’s fine. If you come across that in a book, I can see it being a turn off and you should even make mention of that in your review, that it’s something you personally can’t handle reading. Fine. But don’t go call the author a bigot. Fuck you for that. Seriously.

Fuck. You.

Let me clarify once more here—this is not about me. It’s happened to me before, but it’s been a long while and that’s not what prompted this post. I’m not ‘defending my honor’, lol. It’s another author who I know, who I know to be a decent, kind, bleeding heart, getting a review that calls them a bigot. Them, not the character(s) in the book. And they are far from the only ones getting inundated with this nonsense. We all get bad reviews. I’ve gotten some really negative ones that are on my writing before. I have thick skin and I can take criticism and I use that to better my craft. But I’m real sick of being told what an author is “allowed” to write about, how “real” they can get. Eat a bag of molded hotdogs and get the hell out of here with that crap. You don’t like it, fine. But keep your self-righteous indignation and phony ‘outrage’ to yourself. It’s a book. It’s made up. Talk about the writing, talk about the characters and their development, talk about the pacing, the prose, the payoff. Is Stephen King considered a pedophile or a racist for having written IT? I mean it, go read that book, you self-important cretans. You going to throw him under the bus too because he wrote about awful characters doing awful things?

I didn’t think so. Anyway, my blood is up, I need to pick up groceries, and I’m starting to ramble. Eat my shorts. Love you guys. Well, some of you, anyway. The rest of you give this a second read.

Chris Miller—9-13-2020

September 12, 2020

fiction, horror, publishing, reading, Suspense Author, updates, writing

Some minor news!

It’s three weeks in a row we’re meeting here, and I can hardly believe it! The consistency is just mind-blowing, isn’t it? To think, three times in three…

Whatever. It’s not that impressive. Lots of people do this WAY more consistently than I do, have a robust newsletter each month—or even two or four times a month—and they always have new, on the horizon projects to talk about. Sometimes, when I see the go getters really pumping out the business side of writing (the marketing and networking), I get overwhelmed. Just watching how much they’re doing makes me realize just how much I’m not getting accomplished.

But, we’re in the middle of fixing that, right?

As it happens, yours truly here actually does have a bit of on the horizon news, and I’d love to share it with you. We’ve got a few things to cover, so let’s dive into the first.

The Cerberus Rising audiobook is 1/3 complete and it is sounding outstanding! Daniel Caravetta, my long time narrator—he’s narrated three of my novels and now CR—is nothing short of brilliant and he just turns in a fantastic performance with each outing. To say he’s impressive is an understatement and even borders on insult. The first third of the book is stories dealing with Cabin Fever, and let me tell you, you can feel the walls closing in as you listen to Mr. Caravetta perform our words. It’s haunting, intense, and glorious. I can’t wait to share the finished product with the world.

Next up on the horizon, and this one just a bit further out than the new audiobook, I’ve been invited to co-write a crime novel with a very respected crime novelist, screenwriter, and journalist. I’m keeping the details vague for now, since I haven’t quite decided on saying yes or no to this project. I want to do the project very much, but have to read what’s already there to see if it speaks to me. I’ll be doing that very soon and if some magic starts to gel, I’ll be sharing it with you guys. What’s interesting about how this came about is that I’ve been planning to write a couple of crime novels after I finish my collection of horror and suspense stories, which is my current work in progress. I’ve got some ideas swirling around for some really dark, grimy, maybe even blackly hilarious books, and I’d also like to establish myself as more than ‘just’ a horror writer (not that there is anything wrong with that if you are, just saying I want to show that I’ve got more than one bag of tricks). And as those ideas have been percolating in my head, along comes this respected author with a third to half of a crime novel with a really cool story, and says, “Hey Chris, you want to finish this book with me?” Wow doesn’t cover it. Very cool to be invited, and having read this author before, I’ve no doubt the story is going to be good, and I’m hopeful I’m able to contribute to it.

Finally, even further out on a more distant horizon, some news about M. Ennenbach and myself and the collaborations we’ve been working on, both old and new. If you follow me on social media, you’ll likely have at least a passing awareness of a project Mike and I call NEPTUNE 9. It’s an epic space thriller/cosmic horror jaunt far into the depths of our solar system. If you’re not familiar, here’s the quick recap: I wrote novelette of 11K words or so for this idea I had. Then I expanded it to over 30K words thinking that it would make a fine novella. And, it did…except it still felt like something was missing. I sent it to Mike, and in a couple of months we had over 100K words and were still going strong. We’ve got plans to make it into a several book series, but have pulled back and are regrouping now with what part of the story we want to tell at a time. As we do that, we’ve come up with another really cool project that may well tie into N9 and be a mixture of crime, tragedy, cyberpunk, and just a dash of cosmic horror. Not sure exactly when we’ll get started on it, as we are both working to finish up a some other projects right now, but it’s coming and I’m looking forward to it as both Mike and I stretch out into different genres.

Not sure what else there is to rattle on about, and I just crossed the 785 word mark, so I’m probably losing you (being it’s the current year and all and no one has an attention span anymore), so I’ll wrap this up. Big things coming, lots of great stuff and ideas are flowing, and I look forward to chatting with you guys in the comments about anything at all. For all the folks out there who have supported Cerberus by buying Cerberus Rising (linked earlier in this post), THANK YOU! If you’ve read it, please consider going to Amazon and leaving a review. Good, bad, ‘meh’, doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t have to be long, just a few words, a couple of sentences will do it. It really helps and we really appreciate you!

Take care, you fine folks, and never stop reading.

Chris Miller—9-12-2020

Cerberus in The Panic Room (and more)!!!

fiction, horror, publishing, reading, updates, writing

Cerberus howled Thursday night with Xtina Marie and James Longmore, talking about our new book of nine novelettes, Cerberus Rising. It was a total blast, as always, being on with these great folks, and if you missed it, you need to unscrew that in your life and take a gander (with your ears) right here.

In other news, I’ve made some good progress on my novella,Waking Up the Devil. It’s a dark noir story with lots of action and loads of suspense, and it’s going to be in my upcoming collection of short fiction (if you liked my short novel, The Hard Goodbye , you’ll love this one). I’m still trying to decide the title for the collection and it’s down to two possibilities, and it also hinges on whether one of the stories will be in this collection or not. I submitted one I’m really proud of to an upcoming anthology that got put on hold due to the pandemic, and it’s still in limbo. It’s a little long for the call at 11.5K words, but they loved the story and are still kicking around whether to include it or not. If it does not go in that collection, I’ll use it as the title, which will be A Magnificent View: and other perspectives. I really like that title and feel it really grasps the breadth and variety this collection contains. However, if they decide to take it and that story isn’t in my collection, I’ll title it Waking Up The Devil: and other mistakes. I love that title too, but just a little less than the first. We’ll see, but either way, the collection is going well and I can’t wait to see it out in the world. Most of the stories will be brand new, also, so if you’ve been following me for a while and checking out the anthologies I’m in, you won’t have a bunch of ground to reread, which is cool. At least I think so. I hate getting a new collection only to find I’ve already read most or all of the stories elsewhere at some point, so I’ve spent months writing shorts and novelettes and working on this novella to offer something that is almost 100% new fiction. I’m hoping to see it published in 2021. I’ve already pitched the book to a publisher, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

I’m curious about something and hope you guys will reply here on the blog or email me here with a ‘yay’ or ‘nay’. I said last week I want to make this my central hub eventually where people can keep up with and interact with me. So, I was considering doing a flash fiction story here maybe once a month. Nothing big or fancy, just 500-1500 words or so. They’re fun to write and—more importantly—I can write those in just a little bit of time and still have plenty to work on my longer stuff. Is that something that would interest folks here? Again, please let me know, and feel free to make other suggestions as well.

Speaking of flash fiction, there’s a new anthology of drabbles and flash fiction coming out next month called DARK HALLOWEEN. This will the the fifth and (I think) final book of the Dark Holiday series from Macabre Ladies, presented by Eleanor Merry. Eleanor has put together some great books through the last year, both her own work and in the anthologies she’s been assembling with Cassie Angler, and I’ve been privileged to be included in them. For this outing, I did something fun: I made a little trilogy of flash stories (about 500 words each), depicting an event I’m confident everyone will recognize, but from three perspectives you’ve never seen it from before. When you folks read it, I think you’ll chuckle and have fun, and maybe even get a shiver or two up your spine.

Anyway, that’s about all that’s happening right now. At least all I can think of at the moment (it’s 7:23am and I’ve been up for an hour, working on my second cup of coffee). I won’t keep you any longer, but do make sure you subscribe to my blog here so you get these updates. I’m still working out how to relaunch my Newsletter (which you can subscribe to here on my website), but for now, you can get most of the same info right here, so sign up.

Thanks for stopping by, folks, and remember…never stop reading.

Chris Miller—9-5-2020

Where the heck have I been?

fiction, horror, publishing, reading, Suspense Author, updates, writing

I’ve kind of been absent—both here and on my Newsletter—for a good while, so we’ll call this a “soft reboot” of my blog, what do you say? I could start with an introduction, except you’re reading this on my website, so I feel like you must know who I am, at least. But—for all three of my followers—I’ll just assume you landed here by accident and can’t figure out who the hell I am. So, let’s get off on the right foot, shall we?

“Hi, my name is Chris Miller, and I write horror and suspense fiction.”

THREE FANS: ”Hi Chris!”

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s dive in!

So, what have I been up to these past months? If you take a stroll back through my blog here, you’ll find the random update (none very recent, either), but mostly you’ll find book reviews. I was doing this for a while on every single book I read that I enjoyed. I enjoy doing reviews, and thought I could share my love of books on my website, give some other authors a little boost, and maybe help drive some traffic to my own books as well while I was at it. Why not, right?

That didn’t work so well, at least not in the way I had hoped, and I also started to get burned out on writing up reviews. Or, more to it, I was getting burned out on writing all around.It was like the very process of writing seemed to become a burden, and I’d never experienced that before. It’s usually an escape, cathartic and healing, even when I may not feellike doing it. But these last months have been a different story. The pandemic, the unleashing of allthe assholes on earth at once (at least it seems that way), personal and work problems…it’s just been a nightmare. While I’ll look back fondly on 2020 as the year I released my first western, I will notbe looking back on 2020 proper with any kind of fondness whatsoever.

I’ve been largely working on my first collection of short fiction most recently, which I dived into after completing work on my part of Cerberus Rising (which kicks ass and you can get right here). Novelettes and short stories and novellas, oh my! I’ve been working on so much short fiction, both for my own works and for anthologies, that I’ve started to wonder if I’ll have trouble going back into long form. Ugh. And it’s been slow going much of the time, too. Maybe not for everyone, but for me, 2020 has really brought me down, and I find more and more I have been staring at a blinking cursor rather than punching keys.

I’ve tried everything. I tried abandoning a couple works I was in the middle of and started new things, gone back to a couple older projects, took a break for over a week, etcetera. A time or two, this seemed to work, at least initially. But then things would come grinding to a halt again. Being in the midst of all of this—and riding my backlog of projects that have been coming out through this year—I’ve been getting more and more nervous about my writing and wondered if I’d lost my mojo forever.

That’s a scary thing for a writer. Truly frightening, especially when you’ve started getting a modicum of recognition and garnering a bit of a following. And that, my friends, is why this space has been largely inactive in recent months. I just…didn’t have anything to give an update on.

But you know what? I don’t think I’m anywhere near the only person dealing with that. Certainly not the only writer, but wordslinger or otherwise, we’re all going through this level of hell known as 2020 together, and it’s taken it’s toll on us all. We’re going to make it through this, and for us creatives, remember: keep on shoveling, even if all it seems like you’re doing is moving shit from one place to another. You gotta keep on mining, and eventually you’ll start to uncover some gems.

Thankfully, I’ve started to pick up steam again, and I’m getting close to having my first collection completed. Only this morning, I was able to pitch the book to a publisher—fingers crossed on that one! So, hang in there, and try to hold me accountable. You can email me from my site here, just click the ‘Contact’ tab and get in touch. Send me questions, maybe some suggestions on what kind of content you’d like to see here. I want this to become my main hub one of these days where I can talk with fans and you guys can talk with me and we can cut out all the dramatic, nightmare bullshit that is Facebook and Twitter. I just want to be me, and I just want to get to know all of you. So drop me a line, say hi, convince me the world is flat, I don’t care. There’s one place the Coronavirus can’t get us, and that’s on the internet, so let’s use it!

Take care, my friends, and keep reading. We’re far from being done here.

Chris Miller—8-31-2020