Check my first Freebie horror short story, "Alure", on Patreon

As promised, my first Freebie, a short story available for free to the public, is available now on Patreon. It's called "Alure", it's most definitely a horror short, and, frankly, I'm pretty sure it's not what you'd expect. Read it now by clicking the image below.

Enjoy!

About Freebies on Patreon

Good evening, Friends and Family.  This morning, I published my first Freebie on Patron.  

What's a Freebie?  

Exactly what the name implies: a short story I'm publishing for free to the public on Patreon.  If you're a subscriber, the Freebies don't count toward your monthly benefits, so you'll still get your exclusive short stories of the month in addition to the Freebies.

Now, Freebies will not be a regular thing.  Basically, they'll come out whenever I feel like doing an extra one in a month, and since it's October, I'm already bursting at the seams with ideas, so this felt like a good time to start.

Now, Patrons and friends, what you can DEFINITELY do is share the Freebies as far and as wide and to as many of your friends as you can.  Who knows?  They may like it enough to want to be a Patron one day.

So, the first Freebie, "Alure", is already posted, just click this link.  

In the meantime, Rideshare Tales continue later this week.

All the best

Rideshare Tales continue with "Club 99"

Good evening, and welcome to my next installment in the Rideshare Tales series, "Club 99", which takes us a little outside of our comfort zone into a new part of SoCal.  

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While we pick things up just where we left off in the previous chapter, as you'll discover, this one leans a lot into my love for one of the seminal sci-fi shows of the '70's: "In Search Of", hosted by Leonard Nimoy.

And maybe just a little hint of Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell's "From Hell"

You'll get the connection as you read.  Definitely a change of pace from "Clown Car".  

Remember to bring along your tin foil hats for this one.  :-)

Enjoy!

Patreon Short Story of the Month: Rideshare Tales, Chapter 1: Clown Car

Greetings!  Over the weekend, I just published "Clown Car", the first chapter in my new short series, Rideshare Tales, which is available exclusively for my Patreon subscribers at the following link:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/short-story-of-1-29598749

Needless to say, I'll get into a LOT more about the what and the why and the how, but, for now, just enjoy the ride (no pun intended).
Think of it as Michael Mann's "Collateral"....

...meets "Twin Peaks".

You may think it's a change of pace from what I'm known for, but I think you'll see some familiar DNA.  Enjoy!

#horror Short Story of the Month: Five Houses

As promised to my subscribers on Patreon, this is the first of a monthly series I'm going to publish there exclusively.  The story itself came pretty quickly, but the germ of the idea has been growing for some time.

The story is called "Five Houses", and I like to think of it as a horror confectionary, short and sweet, although there are layers.

Anyway, you can get it exclusively as a subscriber at this link to My Patreon page.  I'll have a lot more to say about this series in general, and this episode in particular, in future posts.

In the meantime, enjoy, share, and let me know how you like it.

When it comes to your doorstep

My next #horror short is part of my new Short Stories of the Month, available exclusively at Patreon.

It's called "Five Houses", and here's the first line:

Just before the start of Sunday Brunch, the monster left its greeting card on the welcome mats of all 5 houses in Astor Place.

To read the whole thing, please subscribe at Patreon.com/damonyoungscribe.

Thanks!

Welcome to My Patreon!

I think this video pretty much speaks for itself.

New, exclusive content at http://www.patreon.com/damonyoungscribe.

Every month.

Wait 'til you see what's been crawling around inside my brain since "33 Ways"...

I'm just getting started

OMG! For the first time in seven years, I've finally completed a new #horror short story. I don't even know what do to with myself anymore. :-) Wanna read it? Stay tuned...

Miss me?

 

heh.

Announcement coming. Stay tuned.

Afraid of the Dark, or some thoughts about my novella, Nite-Lite

As an engineer, I'm sort of turned on by complexity, which is both a blessing and a curse when you're a writer.

When I first started working on my MFA at the American Film Institute, the first screenplay I wrote was a big, sprawling modern fantasy piece with multiple layers of reality and a deep secret history.  It was pretty trippy.  When I presented it to my writing group, I remember my instructor pointing out that my classmates who loved weed were the ones who appreciated it the most.

The major piece of advice that my instructor gave me consisted of one word: "Simple."

It took another script before I really began to take that advice to heart.  And, as most of us in the film industry know, the simplest kind of movie to get made is a horror movie.

Now, you know I love horror.  So I set about to work on the most direct, straightforward horror story I could imagine.

Which, of course, led me to think about my childhood, where, let's face it, just about everything is scary.  Dogs are scary.  Strange people are scary.  Weird looking food is scary.  Clothes are scary.  Plants are scary.  TVs are REALLY scary.

But the single scariest thing of all was the absence of light.

I'm not sure how old I was before I stopped requiring the hall light to stay on to ward off the darkness before I went to sleep, but it was definitely a while.  So I started to mine that base fear to find a simple story to tell.

And, since I'm a research nut, I started looking up the history of things that scared children.  And I started talking to friends and family about their experiences.  As it turns out, for many of them, that fear of the encroaching darkness didn't end with childhood.  If anything, for some, adulthood only crystallized it into something hard and fast and unrelenting.

But it wasn't until I started writing an outline that I started having night terrors.

Imagine lying in bed, suspended in a sort of waking sleep, where my mind, and, in some case, even my eyes are aware of the room around me, but control of my body has left me.  I can't turn.  I can't move.  I can barely breathe.

Now, imagine being in that state, and sensing, no, KNOWING that there is something else in the room with me.  And, let me be clear: not someone else.  SomeTHING else.  Something so awful that its very presence made me tremble.  Something that, if I were to find the strength to roll over and meet it face-to-face, I knew, at the core of my soul, it would result in the end of me.

And now imagine being in that state, KNOWING that is there, and trying to scream.  Trying, and failing.  Trying, where the only thing to come out of your mouth is a faint, breathless whisper that doesn't even amount to the only word with any meaning at that moment.

"Help".

So, that happened to me at least three times, maybe more over the course of writing the first iteration of what is now my first horror novella, aptly entitled, "Nite-Lite".

I'm sure those with sharp eyes will catch some of my influences, which I'll talk about at a later date.  Let's just say, of everything I've ever written, this is the one piece, after all these years, that I've never tried to re-write.

I'm not sure that IT would let me.

I don't have night terrors anymore.  I actually sleep pretty well.

As long as all the doors are closed.  No need to look the darkness in the eye,

Click the link or the image yourself, then.  Read.  Enjoy.  And sleep tight.