Hey everybody, M. here,

Happy New Year! This year I am breaking from tradition and attempting to actually get my New Year’s blog post up on the first day of the year. Without further ado, here is a quick recap of what happened over the last 365 days publishing-wise, followed by a run-through of what I’ve got lined up for 2026 so far.

Stories that came out in 2025

2025 ended up being a very productive year, maybe my most productive one since I started getting published, but not a particularly high-volume one for anthology appearances. Such things can happen when acceptance dates and release dates line up in a particular way.

Over the summer, I appeared in Weird Tales to Haunt Your Reptilian Brain, the un-themed multi-author horror anthology from Burial Books with my story #FireofLove. Then at the end of October, I was in Inkd Publishing‘s Cthulhu Mythos anthology Cthulhu Dreams with my story A Special Way of Doing Things. This was my first time appearing in an anthology from either of these indie presses, and I was really impressed at how both of the books ended up looking (and the work of the other authors found therein!).

#FireofLove is half social media-era tech tale told in snippets of online video, half noirish revenge plot, with a demonic twist that ties together the two narrative threads. I could go into the details a little more here, but when the story came out, Burial gave me the opportunity to talk a little more deeply about where the story came from and what I was going for with it, in an article that you can read on the Burial Books website.

A Special Way of Doing Things is also now that I think of it, completely by coincidence, a story told from two perspectives; one of a woman who has just been hired on to work in IT at Miskatonic County, and of the author of a digital diary she stumbles on to written by a temp decades earlier.

While this dive into the Cthulhu Mythos deals with the denizens of Innsmouth, the semi-epistolary style of this reality-bender was more inspired by my favorite H.P. Lovecraft story, The Whisperer In Darkness. I think it’s a pretty idiosyncratic take on the Mythos that nevertheless plays with those classic Lovecraftian themes of madness and the loss of certainty about one’s own sanity, which I find to be the most authentically scary stuff in Lovecraft (and one of the most authentically disturbing things in general).

Sound interesting? You can pick up a copy of Weird Tales to Haunt Your Reptilian Brain here, and Cthulhu Dreams here.

Now on to some, but not all, of the stuff I’ve got lined up for 2026.

What’s On The Way in 2026

I’ve got a couple of things in the works that I’m not quite cleared to announce yet, so I’m going to restrict myself to what I can. First, as I just announced on Facebook, my short cosmic horror period piece The Magician will be appearing this month in the Knot On Tree, Fire On Stone: Curse On Axe and Bloody Thrones anthology of dark age pagan fiction from UK-based publisher Harvey Duckman Presents… The story is set in the Julio-Claudian period of the Roman Empire, which has long been one of my favorite historical eras.

Then, in the summer, I’ve got two more stories on the way.

My horror story What’s Behind The Walls is slated to appear in the Summer 2026 issue of Chthonic Matter Quarterly, and is a thematic followup to my story Sticky which ran in the Winter 2024 issue.

My science-fiction comedy Kayfabe will be appearing in the sci-fi anthology coming up from Burial Books. It is a story much different from the on in Burial’s horror anthology, though it also deals in some sense with the madness of crowds. If you know the word in the title, you’ve already gotten a teaser into what it’s about, but that’s as far as I’m going with spoilers.

Other Miscellany

Other than the stuff I’m waiting for the go-ahead to talk about, I have a project I’ve been working on here and there which I was hoping to be farther along with by now but might still get into place this year. How’s that for cryptic?

Relatedly, I’ve sort of been considering a social media/web presence revamp. I’m torn on it, because I believe that maintaining a web presence that you, as an author, own and can point people to as a public-facing destination is important (dystopian issues and paradoxes surrounding what constitutes ownership online that have sprung up in the past few years aside). At the same time, expecting to draw much organic, non-bot traffic to this blog, let alone use it to generate a great deal of interest, might be an artifact of a kind of thinking stuck in the late-’90s. And since I’m far from being a WordPress developer, there are some annoying facets of upkeep that occasionally worry me.

We’ll see. If I end up actually getting myself onto an additional, more useful social media outlet than what’s left of Facebook, I’ll let everyone know here (and on Facebook).

Anyway, I’m trying to start out the year strong, so time to get back to reading! Much more news to come over the next couple of months. Take care everyone!
-M.

Hey everybody, M. here,

I was getting ready to write my year-end wrap-up post without making any of those big announcements I’d mentioned in my post earlier this month, but much to my excitement I got an email yesterday that crossed some t’s and dotted some i’s, so I can officially announce that my short story The Magician will be appearing in the upcoming anthology from UK-based publisher Harvey Duckman Presents! The anthology will be called Knot On Tree, Fire On Stone: Curse On Axe and Bloody Thrones. It is a collection of tales set in (or around) the Dark Ages and steeped in ancient pagan mythos. My story is a tale of cosmic horror set a bit before the Dark Ages, during the Roman Empire’s Julio-Claudian era, but it gets you ready for the fall.

I’d say more but I don’t want to veer into spoiler territory; but fear not, you will not have long to wait to see what this one is all about! The anthology is slated to come out in January, in fact you can already pre-order the Kindle version if you’re an e-book person (print should be on the way shortly thereafter).

Much, much more to come, on this story and a few other things I am still waiting to share the news on. Take care everyone!
-M.

Hey everybody, M. here,

It’s been a couple of weeks since I got my contributor copy of Cthulhu Dreams in the mail and while I got some pictures up over on Facebook pretty quickly, I realized I neglected to share them here. I was running into some problems uploading images that I’ve now gotten basically figured out, so you can take a look at some pictures of this absolutely beautiful volume right here next to these words and down there below.

Again, totally thrilled to be in this anthology from Inkd Publishing and if you’re looking for some new Cthulhu Mythos horror to add to your reading list for 2026 from a lineup of exciting and innovative authors, this is the one to pick up! (Available in print or e-book). This one contains my short story A Special Way of Doing Things, a decades-spanning, perception-warping, partially epistolary tale of local government and IT management done the Miskatonic County way.

I’ve said before that this story is both one of my most idiosyncratic and one of my most traditional explorations of the Lovecraft Mythos, so if you want to see what that means, grab one of these in your format of choice (and you can take a look at that preview of the first page of the story right there to get a hint of what you’re getting yourself into).

Besides the annoying changes in how I upload images over here vexing and haunting me, one of the reasons I’ve been sitting on posting these images here on my author blog is because I was hoping I could time things such that I could possibly post some additional news alongside the pictures. I’ve got three or four updates at this point that I am absolutely itching if not outright on the verge of exploding to share, but I might not be able to speak about a couple of them before the end of the year.

At the very least I should have a year-end wrap-up coming soon, possibly with some teasers of stuff to come and more news on the upcoming stories I’ve already announced over the past couple of months.

Time to get back to work, take care everyone!
-M.

Hey everybody, M. here,

I’m happy to share that the Cthulhu Dreams anthology from Inkd Publishing is now available for purchase in print and digital.

This one contains my story about a rediscovered digital diary and the eldritch secrets that may be revealed within, A Special Way of Doing Things. It’s been a while since I’ve made a foray into the Lovecraft Mythos, and I think this perception-bending tale of local government done the Miskatonic County way might represent both my most idiosyncratic and my most traditional take on it, so grab a copy in print or digital and find out what I mean!

Should have some more updates to come in the relatively near future, don’t forget to follow me on Facebook if you’re on there and dig my stuff. Take care everyone!

-M.

Hey everybody, M. here,

Got a few developments over the past few weeks I wanted to share! First of all, the Kickstarter for Cthulhu Dreams is going great, it’s funded and moving into stretch goal territory with about a day and a half left to go.

As part of the social media promotion for the Kickstarter, Inkd Publishing has been putting together these cool looking images announcing the story for each author and today mine hit Facebook. I wanted to share it here as well because I’m really excited about the look of this one, especially with that image of yours truly, which I think makes me look like a walking work of German Expressionist cinema (a thought that in turn has made me want to re-watch one of my all-time favorite horror movies, Carl Theodor Dreyer‘s Vampyr, this coming spooky season).

Inkd’s Facebook post also has a nice blurb about the story, so have a look at it if you want the first look at what you’re getting into with my latest Lovecraftian tale. I’ll probably have more teasers in the coming weeks, as I believe the anthology is set to go on sale in October.

I’ve got another cool picture as well that you might have seen if you’re following me on Facebook. Last month (or two months ago? Time is flying by!) when Weird Tales to Haunt Your Reptilian Brain came out, I snapped up a paperback copy as soon as I could which you might have already seen.

A few weeks later, I received the exciting news that contributors would be getting a HARDCOVER copy of the anthology from Burial Books, which I received in the mail a few days ago. I thought the cover art was stunning to begin with, but I think something about the artwork really lends itself to the hardcover format. You can see it pictured right there next to some of my favorites in the genre, and you can buy one of them of your own if you want your shelf to look at least that cool if not cooler (and want some excellent new horror to read!).

And oh yeah, speaking of hardcovers, in the statistically unlikely circumstance that you happen to be reading this while the Kickstarter is still rocking, you can back it for a hardcover copy of Cthulhu Dreams that will NOT be available after the Kickstarter ends.

Time for me to get back to work, take care everyone!
-M.

Hey everybody, M. here,

I was getting ready to run out the door and go out of town for a few days when the news dropped last week that I was permitted to announce my upcoming appearance in Cthulhu Dreams, so I didn’t have a chance to post about the Kickstarter for the anthology, which launched that day and is still going for another week and a half or so. I mentioned it on Facebook the other day and figured I ought to share it here as well.

I don’t think this author blog gets much traffic (does any non-slop content get meaningful traffic online anymore?) but if you do happen to end up looking at this in the next few days and you’re a fan of H.P. Lovecraft, the Cthulhu Mythos he created, and the work he inspired, check out the Kickstarter and consider backing it. There are some sweet rewards including a limited edition Kickstarter-only hardcover of the book, and if you’re so inclined, you can also grab some other horror anthologies from Inkd Publishing, including a full set of their Behind the Shadows anthology series. And backing it does help support all the authors in the book and this cool up-and-coming indie press.

So if you’ve got some money earmarked for Cthulhu fiction, this is a good place to spend it, and you’ll be one of the first to get your hands on my new reality-warping horror story A Special Way of Doing Things.

More details on the story itself and the release date coming soon!
-M.

Hey everybody, M. here,

Wanted to share some news I have been waiting to share for a while. My new story A Special Way of Doing Things will be appearing in the upcoming Cthulhu Dreams anthology from Inkd Publishing. They just released the TOC this morning and you can check it out below:

Much more news on this one to come, take care everyone!
-M.

Hey everybody, M. here,

Weird Tales to Haunt Your Reptilian Brain, containing my story #FireofLove, has been out for a little over a week, and if you’ve had a chance to read it (or are planning on reading it and don’t mind a minor spoiler or two),the Burial Books blog is featuring a short piece I wrote about my inspiration for the story, particular stylistic choices I made while writing it, etc.

I also now have a copy of Weird Tales to Haunt Your Reptilian Brain in my possession, so if you didn’t see the pictures of it that I posted over on my Facebook page you can take a look at a few of them right here.

I’ve been a sucker for the early Powell & Peralta and/or Zorlac Skateboards aesthetic since back when I was a little kid and it was all relatively new, and that is definitely the feel I’m getting from this cover. Even the freaky title text jumps out to me on this one (I think even a little more in print than can be observed online). Totally sweet. And it’s got a TOC to match! I’ve only just begun digging into it and I’m happy to report that I am once again among some top-notch tales in this book.

Along with an image of that beautiful cover, here’s a sneak preview of the first page of my story so you can get a feel for what you’re in for.

So if you want a nice big hunk of horror to read as the summer wears on, pick up a copy from Amazon or from Burial Books directly (and check out all their other great new indie-horror offerings, including the two volumes of the Inanimate Things series).

After you finish reading that one, keep your eyes peeled for more news on my sci-fi comedy Kayfabe, which will be appearing in an as-yet-untitled science fiction anthology from Burial Books sometime next year.

Other than that, I should have an additional announcement coming up in the next couple of weeks; still too early to give any details but hopefully I’ll be able to talk about it very soon.

Take care everyone!
-M.

Hey everybody, M. here,

Happy to announce that Weird Tales to Haunt Your Reptilian Brain from Burial Books is now officially available in print and e-book form, so if you didn’t pre-order one and want to get your hands on my new twisty-turny tale of terrors memetic and demonic, #FireOfLove, and a huge table of contents of other excellent new horror stories, pick up a copy today!

More news to come!
-M.