My stories “Ashur Kang VS the Army of the Undead” and “Paying the Midnight Muse,” as well as a special author interview, are featured in the special collection edition, Ethereal Nightmares: The Complete Trilogy by Dark Holme Publishing.
If you’re interested, you can read my original write-up for Ashur Kang VS the Army of the Undead HERE. That story was featured in Ethereal Nightmares Volume One.
Now, in this new special collection, my Ashur Kang story has been republished, but I also have a fun author interview discussing that story, as well as a brand new tale called “Paying the Midnight Muse,” which is the collection’s only bonus story.
I originally wrote Paying the Midnight Muse for a horror anthology with a theme about writers. My story wasn’t selected for that particular publication as there were nearly 100 other submissions to compete against, and I’m assuming my tale was either too similar to other ones that were submitted or it was simply too odd. And it is odd!
Paying the Midnight Muse is about an aspiring writer, war veteran, and insomniac who finds out through gruesome circumstances that he can only write by paying his muse in blood. Of course, there’s a fun twist to the story that flips everything on its head.
I also wrote this story in a bizarre, rambling (think of a madman ranting as he tells you a story) style that I never tried before. I don’t remember what inspired me to write in such a way; perhaps it was my own muse coming to collect, but even I found this story too weird to submit to many other places. In fact, I only submitted to a few different publications, but I knew it would get rejected because horror publishers tend to avoid tales with a writer as a protagonist. It’s beyond cliche at this point.
I sat on this story for over a year with no real plan for it when Dark Holme Publishing reached out about doing an author interview for my Ashur Kang story. That’s when I had the idea of suggesting they publish a bonus story in this new collection to give readers of the original trilogy some extra content. And wouldn’t you know it, I had just the story!
It turns out that they liked the story a lot, and after rereading it, I rather like it too! It’s weird. It’s brutal. It’s written in a somewhat hard crime noir style that I totally dig. And I think you folks will dig it too!
Caleb James K. 