Told'ja I used to do Stuff!

 

When The Darkness Internal was a Thing

 With all traces of the once bi-monthly magazine I used to edit slowly vanishing from the inter-webbings ether, it's gratifying to still find a link that hasn't. 

Click here for proof that the Darkness Internal did indeed at one time exist.

The above link is from when D.I. was a special edition, as evidenced by the description below:

Voluted Tales is currently reading for its first special edition, entitled “The Darkness Internal” which is hosted by guest editor Christopher Nadeau. Christopher is looking for the following kinds of submissions

“The Darkness Internal”- Looking for stories that are outside the norm. They can be horror, dark fantasy, science fiction or even mainstream lit as long they meet the following criteria: Tales of inner darkness. Think Kafka or Phillip K Dick or any U.S. Congressional hearing. Stories should focus on an internal struggle or occurrence. Not looking for genre staples such as vampires, werewolves, and especially not zombies. More interested in tales of torment and struggle as defined by the classic “Man Versus Himself” approach to writing. Still, if you can find a fresh and exciting way to tell the story following the criteria and using those fabled beings, knock us out!

Short Stories No Longer Available.

It always saddens me when something I had published is no longer available to be purchased. And since most of my work has been published by tiny publishing houses, many of which closed their doors after just a few years of operation, the likelihood of not being able to find my work is greater than hoped. This is especially true of work that was only published in print form but it is by far not exclusively the case.

I've been fortunate enough to have published and, in some cases, republished well over three dozen short stories and two novels. The story count might be even higher than that now but I'm not obsessive about counting. Thankfully, the majority of my work can still be found.

Unfortunately, sometimes a publisher doesn't simply cease publishing. Sometimes they vanish like the proverbial fart upon yon breeze. Such was the case with the publisher of SciFan Magazine, the first publication to print a story of mine. I submitted a second story to the publisher only to soon realize he was more interested in promoting his own science fiction novel than in continuing to publish a high-quality magazine.  And it was high-quality. You can see by clicking here that SciFan is no more.

The story SciFan published, "No More Goodbyes," was not one I consider among my best, although I'm still rather fond of it. One story I do consider one of my best appeared in the anthology, "The Good Fight" concerning a superhero called Vanishing Act who discovers that the battle against evil isn't necessarily one he should be waging. That story is now out of print and I feel it deserves further consideration.

Perhaps the most painful loss is my beloved The Darkness Internal. Aussie publisher and friend Mark Turner ran out of funds after a rather impressive dual run of his main Voluted Tales Magazine and my imprint, named above. I got to publish six issues before the inevitable ax descended and, for several years afterwards and to the surprise of Mark, the issues remained online. I foolishly allowed myself to believe they always would be but the links no longer work. Now the only record of The Darkness Internal's existence can be found on blogs such as this one and this one.

It's sad to see a publication that included one's work gone into the ether; it happens to even the most famous authors. But when it's something I worked on from conception to inception, I can't deny that it hurts. I wish I'd thought of compiling the better stories into a self-published "Best of" but alas, I did not.

For those who may not be aware, most short stories, still available or not, become available to the author again within a year of publication. So, those stories that are no longer available could have been shopped around to others while they were still actively able to be purchased. A few were, actually.

As an author, I feel duty-bound to send work I have confidence back out for further consideration. And at some point, they will be collected in a short collection that will also one day go out of print.

I've been Indexed.

I'm not sure what it means, but two of what I consider my best short stories are listed on the Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazine Index. They are:

Killing the Creation- A tale of a grieving father's quest to get answers for the untimely death of his daughter directly from the source of all creation, and

And What's Left of the World's a Better Place for it- In which a young scientist discovers the building she has lived in all her life is not the whole world after all.

click here for the links.

"Darkness Internal" The Five-year Anniversary

Five years ago (give or take a couple months) Voluted Tales Magazine Publisher Mark Turner approached me about editing a special issue of his magazine called "Voluted Dreams." I told him I was, of course, interested but I didn't want to compile yet another typical supernatural horror publication. Instead, I wanted to publish what I considered horrifying, namely the internal world of the damaged human being. To my delight, he agreed and a special project was born!

I was stunned by the amount of submissions I received, but even more so by how many of the authors understood what I wanted. Refusing to believe this was merely a case of my incredible guidelines writing, amazing as it is, what I uncovered was a pervasive hunger on the part of many authors whose work was getting ignored in favor of the common TV/movie tropes of the horror genre. These authors wanted to tell the types of stories I wanted to read, and it was difficult to say no to most of them. That's why Mark authorized a second edition for the overflow. And apparently he liked what he saw enough to go ahead and have me do a third special edition.

From there, I started editing a bi-monthly ongoing edition simply called "The Darkness Internal." I've grown nostalgic for those not-too-long-ago days and I'm pleased to see the issues are all still available to be read.

Click here if you're interested~