A Serious Question To Every Author I Know

Can someone PLEASE point me in the direction of a publication that would be HAPPY to take humor horror type of stories? I've got a vampire biker bar brawl story that I honestly think has potential to be a fun read for people and I can't see ANY publisher out there taking submissions for something like this.

Writer's Market stopped printing a few years back. I'm looking through Submission Grinder for possibilities but I've been getting rejections with the submissions I've done through them over the years. 

I'm tired of the rejections. It's one of the reasons I've gone to self-publish with Funny Locations to get my stories out there to any readers. But some of these stories I have, I'd like to get them submitted to legitimate publications as a kind of validation, you know?

I understand it's a tough market - and it's getting worse with all this AI-generated crap that the publishers are getting swamped - but I would like help finding the right place to submit the kind of stories I write to the people who'll like them.

/sigh

Writing Update for September 2021

For a submission update, the flash fiction I submitted for "Dose of Dread" did not make the cut, alas.

With October around the corner, I need to start planning for November's NaNoWriMo. 

I am still working on revising my self-published works for an updated anthology down the road.

I need to focus.

Just Released: Strangely Funny VIII Available in Print and Kindle!

Ahhh yeah, volume VIII is officially released!

You can purchase a print copy or you can purchase the eBook Kindle version!

MANY THANKS to the editors Sarah and Gwen for choosing a line from my "War of the Murder Hornets" story as the quote blurb to help sell the anthology! 

"Just want to let you know, so far we’ve got two of the drafted volunteers reporting sick to the base doctor with severe cases of Aw Hell Naw."

-- Paul Wartenberg, "War of the Murder Hornets"

Squeeeee!!!

PLEASE do get a copy, the stories from this series are worth the read, and PLEASE leave a good review for us, I do hope you enjoy our twisted tales.

OFFICIAL: Strangely Funny V Now Available IN PRINT

The news is out, and so is the sixth volume of Strangely Funny Volume 5.

...

Yeah, and it's supposed to be a trilogy OW stop hitting me.

Best way to find it is on Amazon right now, follow this link here to get to it. The eBook version for Kindle is here too!

You can purchase a copy, but I would suggest holding off on that because as soon as I am able I hope to offer a FREE autographed copy giveaway event to promote this! PLEASE STAY TUNED!

If you don't wanna wait, please do buy a copy and I hope you enjoy my story "The Pumpkin Spice Must Flow." If you do purchase, kindly leave a review for the book please and thanks.

A Master Writer Passes: Richard Matheson

News is out that Richard Matheson died today.

Basically, he's THE horror writer of the Sixties and early Seventies.  Before Stephen King, it was Matheson. His literary work covered novels, shorts, television screenplays, movie adaptations.

Matheson's greatest contribution was the updating of the horror setting from the 19th Century (or earlier) to the 20th.  A lot of horror and fantasy by the 1960s had been stuck in the era of Edgar Allan Poe and Hawthorne, in some gothic nighttime landscape of ruined castles and decaying nations.  Matheson brought the horror into the suburbs and cities: his I Am Legend not only redesigned the vampire genre, it basically launched the concept of a Zombie apocalypse (and redefined the concept of just who the monsters really are), and doing it in a world most readers would see as their own (amplifying the horror).  His heroes no longer soldiers or priests or barons in pursuit of the supernatural: they were common blue-collar workers or office drones, suddenly confronted with a real-time terror that wouldn't go away with prayers to a distant God.

This YouTube clip is from Duel, a made-for-TV movie directed by a relative unknown by the name of Steven Spielberg.  Matheson's screenplay played on the fears of driving alone, of being stalked by an unknown force (we never see the driver in full), of a civilized man (an office worker taking a work trip) being stripped of manhood in a stark and dangerous desert land, of the mundane horror that some other human - some bland nobody - can be a monster.

RIP, Mr. Matheson.  ...Just don't mind if we, uh, shove a metal stake into your heart to make sure...  WATCH OUT HE'S GETTING UP HE'S

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