Happy New Year

There will be some exciting things coming in 2017. I plan on running several giveaways throughout the year. With luck, MAG: Mutant Assassin Group will be published or have a publication date; in either case, I will soon be drafting the sequel which will lay waste to Seoul, South Korea. I also have a twisted idea for a twisted serial killer novel/novella that is partially based on my life; the research on that one will move me to the top of the FBI watch list. And of course, there will be conventions and book signings, plus lots of other good news as it becomes available. 

So until then, have a safe and Happy New Year. I'll talk to you all in 2017. Great things are coming our way next year.

Apocalypse Monday

I thought I'd go a little sexy today.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to All My Readers

Wishing all my readers around the world a Merry Christmas and joyous holidays.

Apocalypse Monday: Christmas Edition

Now, Delta! Now, Foxtrot! Now, Papa and Victor! On, Tango! On, Lima! On, Charlie and Bravo! To the top of parapets. To the top of the wall. Now open fire! Open fire! Open fire on all!

Apocalypse Monday

It's been a while since I picked on my hometown of Boston, so here we go.

I Will Be Attending Dreadfest on 28 January 2017

On Saturday, 28 January 2017, myself and several other members of the Dark Alley Crew will be attending DreadFest at the W.T. Bland Public Library at 1995 North Donnelly Street in Mount Dora, Florida. DreadFest "celebrates the creeping sense of dread that good horror writing inspires: the fear of the unknown and the likelihood of an unhappy ending. Horror fiction is much more than slash-and-scream; it can be exquisitely suspenseful, other worldly, rich in descriptions, and more."

The event will include writer and screenwriter panel discussions, a nanofiction contest, an evening author reading, and a published writer showcase of horror fiction.

I'll post more details as they become available. In the meantime, you can visit the DreadFest homepage here.

The Books 4 the Next Generation Christmas Event Is Underway

The Books 4 the Next Generation Christmas Event is well underway. Please drop on by the site and check out the fabulous writers who are participating this year. Books make the best Christmas gifts, so buy some for your family and friends, or treat yourself to an early holiday gift because you deserve it. The proceeds go to a good cause. And if you don't buy a book, then Krampus will pay you a visit, and we all know how that will turn out.

Apocalypse Monday

I've been trying to read Metro 2033 this week, and thought this image was appropriate.

The Gal in the Blue Mask Has Posted My Classic Christmas Zombie Story "Deck the Malls With Bowels of Holly"

The Gal in the Blue Mask is running a 62 Days of Horror Christmas Takeover that is showcasing the finest in holiday horror. I'm honored that she is kicking off her festivities by publishing my classic Christmas zombie story, and one of my favorite works, "Deck the Malls With Bowels of Holly" in which an alcoholic mall Santa battles zombie reindeer (picture Army of Darkness meets A Christmas Story). This is my Christmas gift to all my readers. If you haven't read it before, sit back, kick off your shoes, pour yourself a glass of whiskey, and have fun because it's time to play some reindeer games.

Spooky Empire Is This Weekend

Spooky Empire begins tomorrow at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando. Despite this being the make-up date after getting screwed over by Hurricane Matthew, a lot people rallied around the Spooky crew and we will make this weekend a huge success. There will be plenty of celebrity guests, writers, and events, including the infamous authors' panels. And the Dark Alley Crew will be there all three days keeping things... interesting.

Hope to see you all this weekend.

UPDATED: I'll Be Participating in the Books 4 the Next Generation Christmas Event

From 1 to 24 December the Books for the Next Generation Christmas Event will be held to raise money for the Friends of Edith Borhtwick School in Braintree, Essex. The school specializes in educating children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), Attention Deficit Hypersensitive Disorder (ADHD), Aspergers, Down Syndrome, and other conditions that make learning difficult. The school needs new equipment to continue helping to teach these children, and this event will assist in that effort.

As part of this event, I will donate 50% of my net royalties from every on-line sale of any of my books sold between 1 and 24 December. This include my novels: Yeitso, (Amazon, Kindle, and Nook), Rotter World (Amazon, Kindle, and Nook), Rotter Nation (Amazon and Kindle), Rotter Apocalypse (Amazon and Kindle), The Vampire Hunters (Book One of the Vampire Hunters Trilogy) (Amazon, Kindle, and Nook), Vampyrnomicon (Book Two of the Vampire Hunters Trilogy) (Amazon, Kindle, and Nook), Dominion (Book Three of the Vampire Hunters Trilogy) (Amazon, Kindle, and Nook); my novellas Dead Water (Kindle only) and Nazi Ghouls From Space (Kindle only); and my anthologies Cruise of the Living Dead (Kindle only) and Incident on Ironstone Lane (Kindle only). This is an incredibly worthy event and I hope all of you will participate. Besides, nothing says Ho-Ho-Horrordays like a good scary novel.
 
If you've already purchased my books, then please buy from one of the other writers involved in the event. To see which other writers and genres will be represented, please check here.

I'll Be Participating in the Books 4 the Next Generation Christmas Event

From 1 to 24 December the Books for the Next Generation Christmas Event will be held to raise money for the Friends of Edith Borhtwick School in Braintree, Essex. The school specializes in educating children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), Attention Deficit Hypersensitive Disorder (ADHD), Aspergers, Down Syndrome, and other conditions that make learning difficult. The school needs new equipment to continue helping to teach these children, and this event will assist in that effort.

As part of this event, I will donate 50% of my net royalties from every on-line sale of Yeitso, including Amazon, Kindle, and Nook, sold between 1 to 24 December. This is an incredibly worthy event and I hope all of you will participate. Besides, nothing says Ho-Ho-Horrordays like a good scary novel.
 
If you've already purchased my books, then please buy from one of the other writers involved in the event. To see which other writers and genres will be represented, please check here.

I'm Giving Away a FIRE Tablet

I didn't want to be left out during Black Friday/Cyber Monday, so I decided to run an Amazon giveaway of a FIRE tablet with a 7" display screen with WiFi and 8 GB. To enter the giveaway, click here and do as instructed. Good luck.

Apocalypse Monday

Not entirely plausible, but still a nice piece of apocalyptic artwork.

Happy Thanksgiving

 Happy Thanksgiving to my family, fans, and friends. May you all be happy and healthy, and may you enjoy your Cthulkey.

Apocalypse Monday

Something about this artwork of post-apocalypse London creeps me out.

Pictures From Our Trip to Germany and Poland: Treblinka

Alison and I never made it to Auschwitz as we had planned because on the day of our tour I came down with a bad intestinal bug. We did stop by and spend several hours at Treblinka, the most infamous of the SS death camps. My reasons for wanting to see these locations was two-fold. First, having studied modern German history for most of my adult life, I wanted to see first hand what I have read about in such detail. Second, I needed to ground myself in reality. As you know, I'm developing a new series about OSS officers battling Nazi occultism during World War II. While Nazis make great bad guys in books and movies, I do not want to trivialize the fact that Hitler and the SS attempted, and nearly succeeded, in the genocide of Europe's Jewish and Romani population, carrying out their plan with a ruthlessness and efficiency unparalleled in history.

I debated for awhile whether or not to post the photos of Treblinka, and have opted to do so for the same reason that I visited the site in the first place -- to make certain this period in history is never swept under the rug and forgotten. Sometimes you can not comprehend the true horror of the location until you see it with your own eyes.

One note: The SS leveled Treblinka in August 1944 to prevent it from being discovered by the advancing Red Army. The site was completely plowed under and a farmhouse erected at the location. Unlike many other concentration camps, nothing remained of Treblinka. Today only monuments stand representing the actual camp site.

Treblinka is the most notorious of the SS death camps because it was one of the few camps set up solely for extermination (all the other camps, including Auschwitz, the most infamous concentration camp, were also used as slave labor camps). Between it's dates of operation, from 23 July 1942 to 19 October 1943, Treblinka exterminated over 900,000 men, women, and children, more than any other camp except Auschwitz.

The path of the rail tracks leading to Treblinka's unloading platform, visible in the left center of the photograph.

The platform where the trains unloaded. A fake station was set up here to lull those who arrived into a false sense of security.

Those slated for extermination where led from the platform up this path to two buildings on the right and left where women/children and men, respectively, got undressed and surrendered their valuables. The victims were then led along a path that skirted the perimeter of the compound and through a fence to the gas chamber where they were suffocated with carbon monoxide. The large stone monolith in the center left marks the location where the gas chamber stood.

Once removed from the gas chambers, the bodies were placed in mass graves throughout the compound. Today, stones bearing the name of each city or town in Poland whose Jewish population was murdered at Treblinka mark the locations of where the mass graves were once located. To give you an idea of the enormity of the crime, the monument to the gas chamber is one hundred feet to the left, and the stones extend to within yards of the monolith. The stones also extend another one hundred feet to the right and then curve around (the tip of the mass grave is visible in the center right). On the opposite side of the field is another set of stones that extend back to the monolith. 

In the spring of 1943, fearful of what would happen when the Red Army found the mass graves, the SS began opening them up and destroying the remains in large cremation pits. The pits consisted of railroad tracks laid in grate formation on top of concrete blocks. The corpses were placed on the tracks, doused in gasoline, and set on fire. In this manner, the SS could continue cremating the remains without having to stop their operations. This site marks one such pit, located directly behind the gas chamber.

Apocalypse Monday

With everything that went on last week, how could I not destroy Washington today.

Pictures From Our Trip to Germany and Poland: Wolfschanze

Wolfschanze was Hitler's advanced headquarters just outside of Rastenberg (now Gierloz), Poland, where he spent much of the war conducting the campaign on the Eastern Front. Built to oversee the implementation of Operation Barbarossa, Hitler used Wolfschanze as his primary headquarters, spending more than eight hundred days there from 23 June 1941 until he left it for the last time on 20 November 1944. On 25 January 1945, the SS attempted to destroy every building on the compound two days before it was overrun by advancing Red Army troops.

Hitler's bunker (#13 on the map below). The walls of this bunker were twenty-five feet thick in some places and designed to withstand bombing attacks from the air. Most of the bunkers were so heavily fortified that the SS found it difficult to destroy them to prevent the Red Army from using them.

Martin Bormann's bunker (#11 on the map).

A collapsed section of the Bormann bunker wall. This photo gives you a good idea of the thickness of the walls and how heavily they were reinforced with rebar and steel.

Herman Goring's bunker (#16 on the map).

 Herman Goring's private residence (#15 on the map).

The interior of Goring's house.

Me inside Goring's house.

The bunker belonging to Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht OKW, the supreme command of the German armed forces (#19 on the map).

 























The bunker belonging to General Alfred Jodl, chief of staff of the OKW. (#17 on the map).

 The former barracks for Hitler's SS bodyguard detachment, now turned into a motel for visitor's to Wolfschanze (#1 on the map).

The accommodations are far from luxurious.

The layout of Wolfschanze's Sperrkreis 1 (Security Zone 1), the inner circle of the headquarters reserved for Hitler and his closest associates. Following the destruction of the compound by the SS in 1945 and its capture by the Red Army, the area was abandoned and left for nature to reclaim the land, only becoming a tourist attraction following the collapse of Communism in the 1990s.

[Next week: Treblinka]

Apocalypse Monday

Neglect can be just as devastating as the apocalyptic event.

Pictures From Our Trip to Germany and Poland: Berlin -- The Adlon Hotel, Salon Kitty, and Karlshorst

While In Berlin, we decided to go stay at one of the most luxurious hotels in the city -- the Adlon Hotel, within a stone's throw of the Brandenburg Gate (and a major location in my upcoming techno-thriller).

The Adlon Hotel has built in 1907 and served as both a luxury hotel and major social center in Berlin until the end of World War II. The guest list included such dignitaries as Czar Nicholas II, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover, Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplain and Mary Pickford, and more. The hotel suffered heavy damage during the war; what portions remained were burnt in 1945 after Red Army troops raided the wine cellar, got drunk, and set fire to the building. The hotel was torn down in 1952, leaving only the rear service wing. What remained of the hotel was renovated and reopened in 1964, closed in 1970 to serve as a lodging house for East Germans guarding the Berlin Wall, and finally demolished in 1984. The current hotel was built and reopened in 2003-2004.

The view from the Adlon Hotel today.

The view in the summer of 1945.

Salon Kitty, a high-class German brothel located on Giesebrechtstrasse in the Charlottenberg District of Berlin, a favorite spot for high-ranking Nazi dignitaries, important foreign visitors, and influential diplomats and business leaders. Taken over by the Sicherheitsdient (SD), Germany's security service, the SD employed the most attractive prostitutes they could find, trained them in how to gather sensitive information during pillow talk (in rooms bugged with microphones), and set up a workshop in the basement where these conversations could be transcribed and the information passed on to Reinhard Heydrich. (Heydrich frequented Salon Kitty, but always made sure the microphones were shut off during his trysts.) The salon was closed after a bombing raid destroyed the building in 1942.

The interior of Salon Kitty.

Karlhorst, a former Wehrmacht mess hall in the Lichtenberg borough of Berlin, which was taken over by Soviet Marshal Zhukov as his personal headquarters and where, on 8 May, the Germans surrendered to the Soviet Union, formally ending World War II in Europe.

The hall where the surrender was signed. The small table on the far right, extending outward from the table-mounted French flag, was where Field Marshall Keitel (representing the Wehrmacht), Colonel-General Stumpff (representing the Luftwaffe), and Admiral von Friedeburg (representing the Kriegsmarine) signed the document of unconditional surrender.

From 1945-1949, Karlshorst served as the headquarters for the Soviet Military Administration in Berlin. This is the conference room and table where they met.

[Next week: Wolfschanze]

My Interview from THe GaL iN THE MaSK's 62 Days of Horror

Please check out my interview from THe GaL iN THe BLue MaSK's 62 Days of Horror. And if you haven't already, be sure to buy one of the books featured in the interview -- Yeitso or Nazi Ghouls From Space.

Apocalypse Monday

Since it's Halloween, let's go with a more light-hearted approach to the end of the world.

November and December Appearances

On November 6, from 9AM to 2PM, myself and fellow Dark Alley writers Mitch Hymen, John Catapano, and Tyson Hanks will be signing books at the Rabbit Hole Bookstore on Montrose Avenue in Clermont, Florida. Not only will we be signing books, we will also be hosting several writing-related panels and readings. This is a very family-friendly event, so come on by and bring the kids.

Two weeks later, on Sunday, 20 November, from 10AM to 5PM, the same Dark Alley crew will be attending Clermont Comic Con at the Clermont Performing Arts Center.

Finally, from 2-4 December, the entire Dark Alley crew will be attending Spooky Empire at the Orlando Civics Center. This is the make-up date for the convention closed down in October by Hurricane Matthew. We may not be rocking it for Halloween, but this is the perfect opportunity to pick up Scaremas gifts for all the bad little boils and ghouls on your Horriday shopping list.

Pictures From Our Trip to Germany and Poland: Operation Valkyrie

One of our primary reasons for going to Germany and Poland this time was to see the locations associated with Operation Valkyrie -- the attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler on 20 July 1944. For anyone unfamiliar with this event, watch Valkyrie with Tom Cruise. It's historically accurate with only a few changes made for dramatic effect.

These are the remains of the Lagebaracke, the conference room at Hitler's forward headquarters in Wolfschanze, just outside of Rastenberg (now Gierloz), Poland, where Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg set off the bomb that was intended to kill Hitler. Unfortunately for Stauffenberg, the meeting on 20 July was not held in the main bunker but in a smaller barracks with windows where the ventilation was better. The wooden ceiling and windows absorbed the blast, allowing Hitler to escape with only minor injuries. (The remains of the Lagebaracke were destroyed by the SS, along with every other building on the compound, when Wolfschanze was evacuated in the advance of the Soviet Army.)

The interior of the Lagebaracke after the blast.

Me at the Lagebaracke.
  

The Bendlerblock in Berlin where Stauffenberg and the rest of the Valkyrie resistance members had their offices. When the attempt to remove Hitler and the SS from power failed, Stauffenberg and the others made their last stand inside this building.

The courtyard of the Bendlerblock. After German troops loyal to Hitler took control of the building, General Friedrich Fromm, who had been aware of Valkyrie but said nothing, hoping to keep open his political options, ordered the immediate execution of Stauffenberg and the other leaders of the resistance (General Olbricht, Colonel Quirnheim, Oberleutnant Haeften, and former General Beck) to conceal his knowledge of the plot. The five men were shot in the courtyard where the black marble strip is located. For those who have watched the movie, the balcony above the doors to the right is where Fromm (played by Tom Wilkinson) watches the executions. Fromm was arrested on 21 July and executed on 19 March 1945 for not doing more to stop the plot.

The statue in the courtyard commemorating those who lost their lives in the 20 July resistance movement.

Plotzensee Prison, where ninety members of the resistance movement were executed for their participation in the 20 July plot.

The execution chamber inside Plotzensee. Members of the 20 July resistance movement were hanged with piano wire on the hooks at the far end of the hall. The piano wire was wrapped around their necks and they were slowly lifted off the ground until they strangled to death. A video was made of their suffering and shown to Hitler for his entertainment.

 






















A close-up of the hooks.

Later in the afternoon on 20 July, Benito Mussolini arrived at Wolfschanze. Hitler greeted the former Italian dictator at the train station.

Me standing at the same location as it looks today.

[Next week: Berlin: The Adlon Hotel, Salon Kitty, and Karlshorst.]