Mmmmm. Elder gods.

The call for stories for Ride the Star Wind caught my eye fast: they wanted Lovecraft-inspired space operas. I'm not entirely sure why no one's ever gone that route before (save for a few anime series here and there, but you know what I mean). I couldn't help but throw my hat in the ring and, well, things happened and I made it in.

And it's wild.

Despite my love for Junji Ito and the fact that I co-created a book series about demigods, I've never really delved into writing eldritch horror. I love reading it, but I couldn't ever quite put it into words properly. I know what I like. And I know what scares me. But scaring someone else -- or at least unnerving them -- feels like a whole other ballgame.

I ended up writing "Canary Down," the story of two archaeology students on a fairly simple mission: go to a space dig for their final exam. They'd be equipped with all the usual tech, including a "canary" -- an artificial humanoid whose job it is to constantly read and analyze the safety of an area, making sure its owners are safe to proceed.

But what they find is not your typical dig site. And the information their Canary picks up is a bit more distressing than temperature and oxygen levels.


Ride the Star Wind comes out this summer from Broken Eye books, and contains TONS of awesome stories and illustrations. Yeah -- illustrations. So just in case your brain won't wrap itself around the deep space horrors described, one of their awesome artists can help. I just saw the one going with mine, and it's even creepier than I imagined when I was writing it.

You can preorder your copy in hardback, paperback, or ebook format. And if you do, please tell me what you think. Because I'm itching to write more weird. But I need to see if I'm good at it first.