Now out, my erotic vampire story, “Initiate,” appearing in the X is for X-Rated volume of A-Z of Horror by Red Cape Publishing. Suffice it to say, mature audiences only. Available at Amazon.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

As a teaser to my horror collection, Bringing in the Creeps, from Anuci Press, I offer you a quickie story which was also awarded a runner-up nod by Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine for their “Mysterious Photograph” contest.

“The Cleansing of the Soles”

From Bringing in the Creeps by Ray Van Horn, Jr.

The Givenchy sneakers clumped around the drier’s rotating drum like the rumbling floor toms from Manic Augustinians drummer Shay McDaniels. A band no doubt reconsidering their lyrical huckstering of self-deprecation and suicide after tonight’s meet and greet of death.

Sha-shunk-a-thunk. Repeat pattern.

I was missing Donna three months after her curt parting. Senselessly longing for her bickering over my accumulation mania. “Hoarding,” she’d called it, always to set me off.

I seized those shoes the minute fate drove them my way amidst the adrenalized turmoil murder brings. Shucked and scattered somehow. An untagged forensics exhibit, all mine.

The blood was problematic.

The pricey kicks belonged to Manic Augustinians guitarist, Marc Roberson. Late as of five hours ago.

Listening to the groaning fan and repetitive banging of those shoes, I’m sitting cross-legged in front of the machine, relishing the hot air massage. It casts the first aura of triumph I’ve enjoyed since forever.

I’m fanning through a crate filled with handwritten set lists I’ve poached over the years. I got another one for the collection tonight, though I’d hoped for Roberson’s autograph at the band’s bus. Maybe a selfie.

Impossible to get either of those now, the rear parking lot then filled with the arresting canvas of shock dashed by twirling police cherries. The lookee-loos ushered away from Marc Roberson’s shivved corpse. The cuffed and giggling culprit covered in crimson, claiming he did it as “the band’s ultimate fan.”

Hardly the first time I’ve plundered treasure from a dead rock god.

Grab your copy of Bringing in the Creeps at Amazon or your favorite online retailer. Also available digitally at Kindle, Nook and Kobo.

Link:

Order Bringing in the Creeps here

—Ray Van Horn, Jr.

I am STOKED to announce I am returning to Philcon this month as a guest panelist. I will be there all weekend long on six panels, a reading session and a signing hour from November 21st to the 23rd at the Doubletree Hilton in Cherry Hill, NJ. I’ll be talking horror, comics and GODZILLA! Everyone here who knows me know I am geeking right now. SKREEEEEEEONK! I’m so excited I ordered a special edition Godzilla Day 2025 shirt I hope to have in time for this panel. Uber rad, the back has every Godzilla film in history by Japanese titling.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

National Author’s Day. This is cool. Let me tell you a little story involving a couple of authors. I first met TJ in 1999 working together. We had instant chemistry even then. Instant friends. A pair of close goofballs who we could also vent to about our personal lives. We were both struggling writers. I coached her, she beta read me. We pushed one another, we cheered each other on. Eventually we landed Darth Maul stories together at a Star Wars fan fiction site. We kept talking then about one day getting published in something bigger together.

Flash forward many years and other jobs we had together that wasn’t the same mojo we’d enjoyed as our personal lives tailspun. Eventually, we just lost contact with one another. Four and a half years ago, only a few months after separation from my first wife, TJ spots me and my kid in a Panera. She asks me out on the spot. Of course I said yes. You all know what happened afterwards.

For all the success I enjoyed 16 years as a music and film journalist, I was still subversively miserable despite a fruitful three year stint dogging open mikes in Maryland and building a family within who eased some of my angst. My fiction writing was ghastly and it reflected who I was then. It was getting together with TJ when my fiction began to build. I grew stronger. I grew more motivated. I wanted to reclaim what had died inside of me. I wanted to write and I wanted to matter again.

She restored my wherewithal and the happy smiles you see on my face in photos or at a book signing or on the open mike these days is because I have a spitfire author for a wife who isn’t afraid to call me out if I lambaste and lament, chastising myself as a pretender. I know many of you feel me.

We are there to back one another at many of our individual book signings, but the true bliss for me is when we have joint signings. Fulfilling something we only gave voice to and dreamed about in ’99. There is no competition between us. No ego. Only love.

I have begun a gradual acceleration these past few months similar to how I rose covering metal, punk and horror. Those were glorious times which I feel beginning to restack with my new endeavors.

I fearlessly reach out and network to established pros and celebrities in the writing world, because it worked for me in my old life. I know it can happen again. It’s extra special this time, because I have an exceptional woman at my side, another author who deserves to bask in today’s laudatory theme.

To all of my brothers and sisters of the word, no matter your level of success, bask and be awesome, today and evermore. You are awesome for even trying.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.