Greetings Followers,

The Dark Mountain has broken into double-digits in the Horror Novel contest! Thanks to all who have placed pre-orders and to all those who said they would but haven’t yet but I’m sure will get to it real soon because you are awesome!

To celebrate, I’m doing a raffle!

$40 Amazon Gift Card @ 25 Readers

Everyone who has already ordered is eligible. All readers’ names will be placed into a randomizer online and one person will win the gift card. But the drawing won’t begin until The Dark Mountain reaches 25 readers. That’s only 15 more!

Promo Trailer

I’ve uploaded a cool, corny trailer to my project page. I figured I licensed the stock footage and music a while back so why not get some use out of it. Check it out!

A Brand-New Chapter 1

I’ve struggled for a while how to make my opening more mature and in line with the rest of the book. I finally figured out a compromise between Chapters 1 and 2, and combined them into a new opening. I deleted the awesome action-figure franchise I created, which was going to spin-off as a Saturday Morning cartoon, but oh, well. Must stay true to the story.

Beta-Reads

I’ve completed only 1 so far.

Battle Flag: The Road to Hell: Great world-building, and lots of imagination at work. Give it a try…

The offer still stands for other Inkshares writers: Post your first 3 chapters, give approval, and I’ll read/review them, and send you feedback via email, but only after you pre-order The Dark Mountain.

Nauselbaum,

M.R.R.

45 days and counting.

I just finished up the new edit of Chapter 1 on Thursday and was going to post it and the new version of the Prologue right away but M. Robert Randolph offered to do a beta and critique read on my first three chapters, so with his input I’m going to take another look before I put them up for reading.

The revision was originally motivated by a massive info dump I had in Chapter 1. It was one of those whimsy things that, even as I wrote it those many years ago, I knew it was too damn much. Part of it was just amateurish desire to copyright as many things as I possibly could but I also just got totally lost in the visuals of it all and my world took me for a ride.

What I didn’t remember was that I had already gone through and eliminated the dump before I posted those chapters to Inkshares in the first place, so not a lot changed in the revision. But now I’ve got another point of view to take advice from and I want to take another look.

Thanks again to Mr. Randolph for the critique and you should probably go check out his book The Dark Mountain. I didn’t back it to trade preorders, I backed it because it sounds kind of unusual and I really want to see how it goes.

Talk to you later!

Hello beloved supporters of Kill Creek!

It’s been a long trip, but we are quickly approaching the exit that will take you from the safety of the highway and down the shadowy road that leads to the Finch house.  So I wanted to give you an update on a HUGE milestone: the final draft of the manuscript has been turned in, and just yesterday it was laid out so it, you know, looks like a book.  I can’t tell you how thrilling it is to finally see my Word doc turned into an honest-to-God novel.  There’s still proofing to do, but the heavy lifting is done and Kill Creek will be available for purchase on-line and in bookstores this Halloween!  Holy crap, that’s like two months away.  Okay, take a breath.  Be cool.  Be cool.

In the meantime, I wanted to give you a sneak peak at the fully-formatted first page of the prologue.  Thanks again to those of you who pre-ordered and supported me in this endeavor, although I probably should have warned you: the entity that dwells in Kill Creek has a way of finding you, no matter where you are.  So if you feel fingers grazing the back of your neck when no one else is around, or you see something out of the corner of your eye, a twisted, lurking thing that creeps closer and closer, just remember that your copy of the book is coming soon.  Maybe you’ll find answers there.  Maybe you’ll discover a way to stop it.

Then again, maybe nothing can stop it.

Scott