- Richard Thomas -

Thank you so much to Lisa, Kealan, Damien, Max and Caren. These are five fantastic authors, and I’m honored to have their support for this collection.

“The stories in STARING INTO THE ABYSS are little literary predators that are smart, savage, and stealthy, with a lethal pounce at the end. Readers who enjoy finely-crafted and genuinely disturbing dark fiction will love Richard Thomas’s outstanding collection.”—Lisa Morton, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Monsters in L.A.

“STARING INTO THE ABYSS by Richard Thomas is an outstanding book, a grim tapestry of broken lives and shattered dreams, of dark fantasies and dark reflections. It’s one of the better single-author collections I’ve had the pleasure to read in recent years, and as such, gets my highest recommendation. It’s also a fine testament to a talent I suspect we are going to be hearing a lot more from, and soon.”—Kealan Patrick Burke, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Turtle Boy, and Kin

“With STARING INTO THE ABYSS, Richard Thomas takes you on a ride into a world of darkness and despair, punches you in the gut, and leaves you breathless. You’ll hug your psyche a little tighter after reading.”—Damien Walters Grintalis, author of Ink

“STARING INTO THE ABYSS is gritty and ugly, seductive and sexy. Inside these filthy walls you will find everything you’ve ever feared you’d become; thugs, drunks, cons, prostitutes, murderers. Think of these pages as a mirror of what anyone–even you–can become, after just a few critical mistakes in life. Richard Thomas has proven time and again that he is one of the rising stars in the neo-noir culture. With this collection, he proves he has mastered it.”—Max Booth III, author of True Stories Told By a Liar and Black Cadillacs

“NO ONE DOES IT like Richard Thomas. Dark and disturbing, his unique blend of horror and noir digs its way into your psyche and leaves you begging for more.”–C. W. LaSart, author of Ad Nauseam

FREE eSingle, “Transmogrify” to release before Staring Into the Abyss (Kraken Press)

Posted on February 3, 2013 4 Comments

We’re going to be giving away a FREE eSingle of my contemporary vampire short story, “Transmogrify” soon. Cinder (Cindy to her friends) feeds on negative energy—she’s a psychic vampire, or energivore, a bit of a twist on the classic tale. It’s in my upcoming collection of neo-noir and horror stories, Staring Into the Abyss (Kraken Press) which is out in March. I just wanted to share this excellent cover art by George Cotronis and get you excited about the collection.

There are some fantastic stories in here, including “Maker of Flight” which won a contest at ChiZine, “Stillness” which was in Shivers VI (Cemetery Dance) with Stephen King and Peter Straub, “Splintered” which was in PANK, “Rudy Jenkins Buries His Fears” which was in Slices of Flesh (Dark Moon Books) with Jack Ketchum, Ramsey Campbell and Graham Masterson, and “Twenty Reasons to Stay and One to Leave,” which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Metazen. So STAY TUNED!

Table of Contents:

Maker of Flight
Steel-Toed Boots
Freedom
Committed
Splintered
Fallible
Stillness
Fringe
Underground Wonder Bound
Amazement
Victimized
Twenty-Dollar Bill
Interview
Paying Up
Ten Steps
Honor
Stephen King Ate My Brain
Twenty Reasons to Stay and One to Leave
Transmogrify
Rudy Jenkins Buries His Fears

My story “The Wastelands” is out in the anthology, Into the Darkness (Necro Publications)

Posted on January 20, 2013 Leave a Comment

I’m thrilled to announce that my story “The Wastelands” is now out in the Necro Publications anthology, Into the Darkness. My story is about a man who loses his family, a golem he befriends, and the lengths he goes to in order to get his wife and children back. Sure, there’s a succubus in it, why not. Out now in paperback and eBook.

Release the Kraken! My short story collection, Staring Into the Abyss, will be out later this year.

Posted on January 10, 2013 Leave a Comment

That’s right, my second short story collection, Staring Into the Abyss, will be out later this year from Kraken Press. It’s a collection of 20 dark stories, neo-noir leaning towards horror, and some of my best work to date. Want to know more? Head over to their website or just keep reading. We’re targeting March, but definitely the first half of 2013. And it looks like it will be a book club selection over at LitReactor as well, probably July or August. More information to come.

FROM THE JACKET: As Friedrich Nietzsche said, “Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster; and if you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes into you.” In this collection of short stories Richard Thomas shows us in dark, layered prose the human condition in all of its beauty and dysfunction. A man sits in a high tower making tiny, mechanical birds, longing for the day when he might see the sky again. A couple spends an evening in an underground sex club where jealousy and possession are the means of barter. A woman is victimized as a child, and turns that rage and vengeance into a lifelong mission, only to self-destruct, and become exactly what she battled against. A couple hears the echo of the many reasons they’ve stayed together, and the one reason the finally have to part. And a boy deals with a beast that visits him on a nightly basis, not so much a shadow, as a fixture in his home. These 20 stories will take you into the darkness, and sometimes bring you back. But now and then there is no getting out, the lights have faded, the pitch black wrapping around you like a festering blanket of lies. What will you do now? It’s eat or be eaten—so bring a strong stomach and a hearty appetite.

It includes my contest winning “Maker of Flight,” my longest short story to date, “Victimized,” a Pushcart nominee in “Twenty Reasons to Stay and One to Leave,” and much more. Full TOC below. I hope you’ll pick it up when it comes out. It’s a little over 130 pages, about 32,000 words.

Special thanks have to go out George Cotronis for his amazing cover design. That’s part of the reason I signed up with him, he’s a globally recognized illustrator and artist, and his work is just fantastic.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Maker of Flight 14
Steel-Toed Boots 18
Freedom 22
Committed 30
Splintered 34
Fallible 40
Stillness 42
Fringe 48
Underground Wonder Bound 52
Amazement 58
Victimized 62
Twenty-Dollar Bill 80
Interview 86
Paying Up 94
Ten Steps 98
Honor 106
Stephen King Ate My Brain 112
Twenty Reasons to Stay and One to Leave 116
Transmogrify 120
Rudy Jenkins Buries His Fears 130

My review of Vampire Conditions by Brian Allen Carr is up at The Nervous Breakdown

Posted on December 31, 2012 Leave a Comment

My review is now live at The Nervous Breakdown. But don’t let the title fool you, Vampire Conditions by Brian Allen Carr is not about teeth, and bats and the homesteads of pale night fliers. These stories will drain you, emotionally, and leave you spent, but alive. In a good way.

My review of Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins is up at The Nervous Breakdown

Posted on December 31, 2012 Leave a Comment

My review of Battleborn (Riverhead Hardcover), a collection of Western gothic stories by Claire Vaye Watkins is up at The Nervous Breakdown. Out in the desert there is so much to lose, so much to gain—salvation, for instance. A collection that is sure to be on a lot of MUST READ lists in 2012. It’s on mine as well.

The Next Big Thing!

Posted on November 29, 2012 4 Comments

Today I am taking part in the networked blog interview, The Next Big Thing. I was nominated last week by Joe Mynhardt, a gifted editor at Crystal Lake Publishing. A preview of the novel that my agent (Paula Munier at Talcott Notch Literary Agency) and I are shopping, Disintegration, can be read below:

1) What is the working title of your next book?

Disintegration

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?

After writing my first book, Transubstantiate, I wanted to write something that was not nearly as complicated. So a first-person, linear story was what I wanted to do. I knew that I wanted to tap into some of my personal fears and the worst possible situation that I could imagine was losing my family, seeing them die in front of me. That was the inception for this story. It’s basically Dexter meets Falling Down.

3) What genre does your book fall under?

I call it a neo-noir, transgressive thriller.

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

I’ve always been drawn to Viggo Mortenson as an actor, he’s intense. I’m also a big fan of Christian Bale, he’d be perfect, I think. This is for the unnamed protagonist, the man who falls apart.

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

When a man sees his family die in a horrible car accident he quickly falls apart, disintegrates, into a life of vengeful crime and dark deeds.

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

My agent is shopping it now. I think it’s only a matter of time.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

I wrote the first half over six months in my first semester at Murray State University, under Lynn Pruett, as part of my MFA. I later wrote the second half in one week on a massive purge between freelance art direction gigs the following year.

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Well, obviously the Darkly Dreaming Dexter series, as well as work by Dennis Lehane, Will Christopher Baer, Craig Clevenger, Stephen Graham Jones, Paul Tremblay. Maybe American Psycho.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

The original push came from Christopher Dwyer, who wanted to see something neo-noir but simplified. And I wanted to honor my family, if that’s possible, by “killing them off” in this book.

10) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

It’s a tragedy, for sure. There is a lot of misery in this book, but there’s also love, hope, sex, drugs, violence, redemption, and vengeance. I think it works on several levels—as a fun, fast read, as a layered, dense, immersive cautionary tale, and also as a literary work filled with metaphor and imagery. Hopefully you won’t see the ending coming. I didn’t.

FOR A ROUGH DRAFT OF THE FIRST CHAPTER GO HERE!

Up NOW, December 5th, is Nik Korpon, Caleb J. Ross, Simon West-Bulford, David James Keaton, and Monica Drake.

“Flowers for Jessica” out now in Weird Fiction Review #3 (Centipede Press)

Posted on November 28, 2012 Leave a Comment

I’m really excited that my dark, strange story “Flowers for Jessica” is finally out in Weird Fiction Review #3 from Centipede Press. They do such amazing work over there. SIXTEEN pages of art! I love the cover, the play on Mad Magazine and Cthulhu. Edited by S. T. Joshi, this journal has so much weird goodness, you must pick it up. Only 500 copies were printed, and they tend to sell out. Only $20. Head on over to the website and give it a peek.

What’s my story about, you ask? It’s a bit of magical realism in the same voice and setting as “Fireflies” (originally published in Polluto, and later online at Circa Review). It’s got death, forests, flowers, bodily fluids, remorse, love and regret. It’s a wild story for sure!

Storyville Column is up – Top Ten Authors You’ve Never Heard Of Before

Posted on November 27, 2012 Leave a Comment

Where to start, yeah? For this column I talk about ten powerful voices in contemporary literature that you may never have heard of before. Each one of these voices is somebody that has impressed me with their words, destroyed me with the honesty and emotion, and become a name that I will follow for the rest of my life. Head on over to see what I say about them, but here are the names anyway: Matt Bell, Tina May Hall, Craig Davidson, Holly Goddard Jones, Kyle Minor, Roxane Gay, Benjamin Percy, Lindsay Hunter, Alan Heathcock, and xTx. There’s something here for everybody, but know this: they all take risks, and they all hold nothing back.

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– Richard Thomas –

"In range alone Richard Thomas is boundless. He is Lovecraft. He is Bradbury. He is VanderMeer."—Chuck Palahniuk

Complete List of Online Interviews with Richard Thomas

Blurbs are in for Staring Into the Abyss (Kraken Press) out in March.

FREE eSingle, “Transmogrify” to release before Staring Into the Abyss (Kraken Press)

My story “The Wastelands” is out in the anthology, Into the Darkness (Necro Publications)

Release the Kraken! My short story collection, Staring Into the Abyss, will be out later this year.

My review of Vampire Conditions by Brian Allen Carr is up at The Nervous Breakdown

My review of Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins is up at The Nervous Breakdown

The Next Big Thing!

“Flowers for Jessica” out now in Weird Fiction Review #3 (Centipede Press)

Storyville Column is up – Top Ten Authors You’ve Never Heard Of Before

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