since I last posted here on the blog. Why? Well, it's mainly down to the fact that I don't have the luxury of focusing on my writing at the expense of everything else. There's family for a start, and then there's the day job. I also find writing a fairly intense exercise, which probably reflects the subject matter I tend to gravitate towards. It isn't relaxing that's for sure, and when you have a hefty workload at the 9-5 you need to find ways to wind down, not intensify things even further.
Having said that, I haven't been totally idle as far as my alter-ego as J C Michael is concerned. I've got three short stories lined up for publication in 2014, and a few more submissions I'm currently working on. I'll post up more details of these forthcoming anthologies in the coming days and weeks.
And the picture? That's my recently received prize from Grey Matter Press after I won the "Grand Prize" in their St. Valentines Day Massacre Flash Fiction contest. My winning entry was called INSUFFICIENT, and you can read it here;
The words release the darkness. With them I have unleashed mayhem. I have slaughtered hundreds. Subjected young and old alike to butchery unrestrained by practicality. Demonic visions which plague my imagination set free on paper and screen to infiltrate the mind of the reader. A corruptive sickness to eat away at their soul, as their eyes devour texts born of my own, mental, perversion.
Murder, rape. Suicide, depravity. I’ve written of them all. The ink, blood, the pen, a scalpel. A release of the pressures of modern life in a literary, bloodletting, form. But is it enough?
The self prescribed cure for my affliction no longer releases the inner demons to a sufficient extent. I put down the pen. I pick up a knife. It’s dark outside. I’m dark inside. I need to feel, not imagine. Experience, not invent. The words, now insufficient, the acts to come, will be sublime.