"Gee, what the heck is Craig working on?"

Some of you might be thinking that. Well, the four of you are lucky. I'm going to tell you, kind of.

I'm working on a few different things. I'm currently doing yet another readthrough of Speak Of The Devil before sending it out to a whole new slew of agents. I'm also logging editing progress on its sequel Heavy Lies The Crown and a novella that has nothing to do with this series called Secrets To The Grave.

The third book in the Ruination Trilogy, titled Deliver Us From Evil, is slow going, but I'll have more time to work on that bad boy once I'm finished editing the first two books and finding myself an agent, though the latter is much harder than it sounds.

I've also got two more books that I've already got outlined and whatnot. The first is Robin Banks Robbin' Banks, which is part horror, part crime, part adventure, part comedy... part everything, really. The second is a superhero thing I'm working on, titled Thorn. I'm not too sure whether to do this as a graphic novel or just a novel, but I've already got most of the story panned out.

On the short story front, there isn't much new going on there. I have been tossing around an idea about a collection of zombie stories all in the same world. I don't have the time or motivation to write an entire book centered in a post-apocalyptic zombie world, but I've had a few stories bouncing around in my head for as long as I can remember. My thing has always been trying to avoid writing something eerily similar to something that's already been written, and that's terribly hard to do when you're adding your voice to the clusterfuck known as the zombie horror subgenre. Nonetheless, I have high hopes for these stories, and I'm excited about writing them.

My story collection The Sadness Will Never End has garnered three 5 star reviews, for which I'm extremely grateful. If you're interested in buying a copy, it is available in both e-book format (here) and paperback (here), and if you'd leave an honest review I would be doubly grateful.

My baby girl Levi Athena Herndon is due on July 14th, less than three months away. I've never been a dad before, so wish me luck on that, too.

Until next time, friends!

Important Update.

I lied about this update being important, for one.

For two, I haven't really written anything in the last two months. Whatever. A thousand words here, a thousand words here. Nothing to write home to Mom about. I've been busy, tired, and uninspired.

But I'm back. Maybe not better than ever. But I am back, and I've got big plans.

Expect to hear neat things in the coming weeks.

Buy My Book... pretty please.

(BUY THE BOOK HERE)

It's exactly what it sounds like; a lot of the stories in this book will leave you feeling pretty upset. Whether we're talking sad, disturbed, or just plain creeped, you'll at least feel something. If you don't, then Craig's probably not that great of a writer, anyway, and chances are you'll wipe your hands of him after this. Here's hoping that doesn't happen.

It took Craig a while to build confidence enough to compile this collection, but after two and half years of publishing short fiction, he's finally done it. A cannibalistic B&B; a singer whose lust for fame takes a wrong turn; a woman who will go to any and all lengths to replace her deceased soulmate; a boy who takes the whole 'reincarnation' theory as far as it will go; and more!

While five of these stories have been published with great markets, three of them are original solely to this collection. Check out this collection of stories from Craig Steven, a member of the Horror Writers Association and one of the freshest voices in the horror genre.

"Craig Steven is that rare combination of talent and skill acquired early. His fiction is dark and evocative, searing images of violence and redemption in the soft tissue of your brain. His is a promising voice, all the better because of his clear dedication to getting the details right."

-Zachary Jernigan, author of The Jeroun Series

(Scant) Writing News.

No, that wasn't a joke this time. Very scant news indeed.

Pounding away at HEAVY LIES THE CROWN, the sequel to SPEAK OF THE DEVIL (which I've yet to find representation for, sigh). The manuscript is currently sitting pretty at 45,000 words, so it's getting there. I think it'll round out at about 75,000, then I'll be focusing on editing the last bit of my novella, SECRETS TO THE GRAVE.

I do believe I'll be publishing a Kindle Single here soon. It'll be my short story, THE FREAKSHOW, which I've sold twice. So that must mean it's at least decent, right?

That's all. Really. Been a slow month. Until next time, pals.

On Being Vegan.

All right, so I'm coming up on my three month anniversary of being a vegan. I haven't really talked about it publicly, nor do I really have a reason to. I doubt any of you care what I eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It's a great lifestyle change, though, and on top of all the weight I've lost (about 35 pounds in less than three months), I just feel like a new person.

The strange part for me, though, is the stigma surrounding veganism. Hardly anyone knows about me doing it, personally, and I still take a lot of flack for it. The thing is, though, that people are just now judging what I choose to eat instead of doing so when I got so heavy as 280 pounds (and in high school, at that). Eating things that are good for you and living an ultimately healthy lifestyle is apparently the strangest, most blasphemous thing in the world when you could be shoving your face full of a bleeding, greasy meat patty.

That's all. Not really writing related, but hey, nothing wrong with changing it up a bit.

Selling My First Short Story.

Since I already went into excruciating detail about how I came to write my first short story, I will now go into even greater detail (maybe not; depends on how much I feel like writing) about how I sold that story.

So, of course, I finished "Follow My Lead (formerly titled "Robbin' Banks With Robin Banks)" in April, but I didn't sell it until late July. That's because the idea of spreading my fiction around to the world (something I've never done before) intimidated the hell out of me. For people who edited and published magazines to read my stories and tell me whether or not they were good enough for publication? Astounding!

Of course, now I don't think it's so intimidating as it was. The number one rule of being a writer who submits a bunch of short stories; hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

Anyway, I found this neat little site called Duotrope, which not only gave me the names and websites of hundreds of markets looking for short stories, but also how much they paid, their word limit lengths, when they'd be closed periodically for submissions, etc. It also let me keep track and when and where I'd send a short story, and for a scatter-brained bastard like myself, this proved invaluable.

So I set up my account, looked around for a magazine, and I found one! And it paid TEN CENTS A WORD. It was called Clarkesworld. Yeah, that's right. First short story I ever tried selling was to Clarkesworld. Laugh it up, 'ya yuppies. I got a form rejection within two days. Big deal.

Then I found Beyond Imagination Digital Magazine, ran by Dayne Edmonson. A nice little startup magazine. So I sent my story in, my expectations set low. In truth I'd already found the next market I was going to send it to once Dayne inevitably rejected me. I forget the name of it now, though.

Because Dayne accepted the story. I was thrilled. I couldn't believe it. Someone else besides me and my mom liked my stories. Holy cow, was I floored. I must have bragged about that for weeks.

And they just kept going. I'm up to almost three dozen sold now, and that's a nice number. Still aiming for that big five-o announcement, so we'll see how long that takes.

Until next time.

My First Short Story.

When I first started writing my book back in like, late 2012, I knew it would take me a while. But I didn't want to work on anything in between working on that. Though I did jot down some other ideas for some ideas concerning long fiction, I was pretty damn focused on getting that novel completed.

I never wanted to write short stories. I really didn't want to leave my comfort zone. Writing a book, at that time, anyway, was hard enough for me, and I wanted to focus solely on that and not dedicate time to anything else.

Stupid idea.

It wasn't until early 2014 that I had an inkling for a short story. I don't know what brought it on. But I heard a lyric from a Fall Out Boy song (that's right, I listen to them sometimes) and it said something about "making a career out of robbin' banks." And when I first heard it, I asked myself, did they say something about a person named Robin Banks, or are they talking about someone whose career is literally robbing banks?

And then I thought, why not just combine the two, and just for kicks and giggles, make him a werewolf while we're at it?

I wrote the story in one day, and it rounded out at about 4,500 words. At that time, it was my most productive writing day ever. I wrote it for fun in April, and when I decided to start writing a lot more short stories and selling them in July, I sold it on my second try. I'm still pretty proud of that.

There you have it. If you want to read the first short story in the "Robbin' Banks With Robin Banks" saga, it is available on Amazon in the 7th issue of Beyond Imagination Magazine.

See 'ya, pals.

My Favorite Song (Right Now)

There's also a cover by Dustin Kensrue, the lead singer of the band Thrice, and it's just as beautiful as the original, if not more so.

Hotline Bling Sneak Peak!

I know I've been teasing this new story for a while, due to be published in an anthology on Halloween. Since I'm such a tease, I'll let you guys in on a little sneak peek of "Hotline Bling." If you like it, buy the book when it comes out, for the rest of this story and a lot more by a few other great authors!



“I just…I don’t know what to do anymore,” the man on the other end of the phone said. The tears no doubt pouring down his face did a great job of making him damn near incoherent. “There’s no reason for me to keep going, is there?”


“There’s always a reason to keep going, Frank,” Alex said into his receiver, bored. He stirred his spaghetti, careful not to burn it this time. He checked on the chili cooking on the next burner over. It was as close to actual cooking as he’d go. Threeway for one. He grinned in excitement.


“You say that,” Frank cried. “You say that because you don’t know. How could you? You don’t know anything about what I’ve been through!”


Alex resisted the sigh ready to come out. He closed his eyes tight and pursed his lips. If all you’re going to do is argue with me, why the fuck did you call me in the first place, you stupid twat, he thought. When he first volunteered to help out with the suicide prevention hotline, he thought he’d be doing some good. He had a cell phone dedicated to nothing but answering the second it rang. The calls were forwarded to him from the main office. He liked it at first. That emotional “thank you so much” he often received at the end of each call made it so worthwhile.


But he’d grown tired. There was something to be said about a lot of the people that called him--they didn’t want to kill themselves. They were just being dramatic. It was the equivalent to parents of newborns holding their child in the air, telling them they were going to drop them. They did for a split second before quickly catching them, and they shared a great laugh. Those were the callers Alex often received. They said they were going to kill themselves, they swore they were going to do it, but more often than not, the threat was nothing more than a ploy. Only instead of the entertainment the newborns received, the caller only got the attention they wanted in the first place.


It occurred to him Frank was still talking. He stifled a yawn and stirred his spaghetti. It was nearly finished.


“Buddy, I know I don’t know your situation. But no matter how dire, ending your life isn’t the answer. Think of your family, your friends, all the people you’ll be leaving behind. It’s almost selfish to-”


“Selfish? Selfish?!” And the man went on for a while about how little his family cared about him. His mother shunned him in favor of his brother and sister, both of whom were loads more successful than himself. His father didn’t care to have a relationship with him after he’d divorced his mother. He supposed his half-brothers were much more interesting than him, thus absorbing all of their shared father’s attention. Girls rejected his advances often, and the few friends he had were only there for him when convenient for them.


Alex listened to all of this with a smile, if only because the spaghetti was finished. He slurped a piece of pasta from the end of the forked spatula. Perfect, he thought, turning the burner off. He held the phone between his ear and his shoulder, carefully grabbing the pot’s handles and carrying it toward the strainer in the sink.


“God!” Frank screamed on the other end of the line. It’d come from nowhere. He was merely mumbling about how much his family hated him one second, screaming into the phone the next. It was so sudden, however, that Alex’s arms jerked forward reflexively. Boiled water and hot spaghetti flew over the edge of the pot. He tilted it back to save his dinner, causing a bit of the water to pour down his front, burning his stomach and falling at his feet.


“Fuck!” Alex screamed back. He dropped the pot in the sink and set his phone on the counter. He tore his shirt off and wiped at his stomach with a wad of paper towels, doing the same to his feet. The spots the water had touched were quickly turning bright red. That was going to hurt for a few days.


The guy was still screaming through the receiver. He was partly bitching at Alex for scaring him and using such horrible language, partly still whining about how little his family liked him. Alex took a deep breath and picked the phone back up.


“All right, I’m back,” he said calmly. “Sorry about that. Now listen-”


“I’m going to do it!” he screamed again. Alex wondered where the man lived that he would so blatantly and carelessly scream his intentions of suicide. “I’m going to fucking do it! You don’t care, my family doesn’t care, nobody cares!”

“Okay,” Alex said. “Do it.”

Those Who Inspire Me: Robert Jackson Bennett; Writer.

When I was seventeen or eighteen, though I still longed to sit down and read a book every once in a while, reading had taken a backseat to everything else that had come along at that age. Senior year of high school, usually going straight to work after school, and using the time in between to hang out with my delinquent friends and chase some tail. My crew's usual Friday night plans were to trek the forty-five minutes to Newport On The Levee, the closest thing we had to a mall in Northern Kentucky (with only our legs as transportation).

There was a Barnes & Noble there. Our usual trips inside were dominated by making puns based on books' and authors' names. I found a book I made a pretty decent joke about (too vulgar to share here, and I barely remember it enough to paraphrase it), but upon reading the synopsis on the back, I realized right then that I needed to have this book. Mr. Shivers, by Robert Jackson Bennett.

I bought it on a whim and carried it with me on the walk back home. I didn't think I'd ever get around to reading it, but it was nice knowing it was there if I ever did get around to reading it. A couple days after that trip to B&N, when the internet (and subsequently, Xbox Live, the chief thief of my alone time) went out, I was stuck in the house alone with nothing to do.

Besides read. So I picked up Mr. Shivers, got comfortable on my little pallet of spare blankets on the floor, and began reading.

I finished the book within a span of two days, and long after finishing it, I found myself thinking about it and the possibilities its ending presented. It was one of the few books that has stuck with me, even now, seven years after closing it.

I went back to Barnes & Noble the day after on my dolo, and I hated them at that moment because they didn't have anything else from Robert Jackson Bennett's bibliography. Granted, even back then, it wasn't that large, but I digress. The only other thing RBJ had released up to that point, in novel form, was his novel The Company Man. "Well," I thought to myself, "it probably won't be as good as Mr. Shivers, but I really like this dude, so I'll check it out." That was actually the first time I've ever ordered a book online. I've done it hundreds of times since, in spite of what my checking account suggests.

I loved The Company Man, even more than Mr. Shivers, and it was then that I knew, thanks to this guy Robert Jackson Bennett, I'd rekindled my love of reading, which in turn provoked me to start writing again for the first time in a long time.

I kept my eyes glued to his website like a hawk, and every time he spoke of any new books coming out, I would mark that day down in my calendar (okay, maybe not, but I at least committed it to memory) to ensure that I would be one of the first people to read his work. The Troupe was released in 2012, and to this day, I still name that the best book I've ever read. My all-time favorite. I don't really think it stands a chance of being dethroned. American Elsewhere followed shortly after, and its twists and turns caused me to stay up way past the hour I should have been in bed, regardless of what I had to do the morning after.

City Of Stairs took a new turn, as it was the first world he'd created which didn't really mirror our own. I loved it regardless, and though I haven't picked up the sequel yet, it is high on my list of things to read next.

RBJ has a habit of creating characters who seem as real as the people we speak to each and every single day. He makes you fall in love with them, and when he hurts them and puts them through trials unfair to any human being, we're in pain with them. His stories are intricate, crossing into each and every genre I can think of like a tightrope walker, never committing too long to just one. I've never read a book of his I didn't like, and at this point, I don't think it's possible.

Here are some links to his work and his website, so that you might get hooked to his work the same way I have. And if you do, remember to think of me and thank me with all your heart whenever you can.

http://www.robertjacksonbennett.com/

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2916869.Robert_Jackson_Bennett?from_search=true

https://twitter.com/robertjbennett?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor