I lived for a few years near Dupont Circle in Washington, DC. When D.C. was the murder capital of the US and Marrion Barry was the major (the same guy caught smoking crack with a hooker in a hotel...

Christmas is Cancelled. I always viewed the character of Santa as being highly questionable. For my short story "Christmas is Cancelled", I imagined him as this solitary, archaic figure who just does what he is always required come Christmas season. As...

The horrors of forsaken land. When I was in elementary school, my Dad was attending West Point, and we lived in a rural military neighborhood, occupying an old, two-story Victorian-style house. It was atop a hill, next to a...

The Key Bridge. As a teenage punk rocker, I crossed the Key Bridge from the affluent buildings of Virginia into the downtown Georgetown of Washington, DC. The dichotomy between the two could not be clearer. Virginia was ordered, civilized, and very...

Alien Invasion! Those monotonous rows of townhouses in the suburbs always unnerved me and seemed to harbour some hidden evil. Maybe it's a psychological thing, tied into the attitudes of most of their occupants (who tormented me in my punk...

Cowboys versus Aliens! I finished the illustration that will accompany my story for Merrill David's upcoming anthology of western horror, "Tumble Bleed." The October horror/writer/artist/monster makeup convention, Dead Man's Hand, will also be using the image. Dicey Grenor and Tommy...

Meat, for the beast. There have been some movies, Predator being one of them, in which alien visitors view humans as just livestock. Growing up, we always had a skinned deer carcass hanging in the garage. A bucket was strategically placed...

The Destructive Power of the Wormhole. The scene in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, where the Klingons try to interact with a phenomenon they don't understand and get destroyed, always stuck with me. The movie isn't that good, but...

In my novel "The End of the World" (available here on Amazon), an oligarchy of old men brings back an ancient evil, hoping it will give them immortality. I have always loved the work of illustrators like Wally Wood and...

Escape through the Stargate! Wormholes have always fascinated me. I took advanced Calculus and physics in school, and read up on string theory and relativity. Reading about the concept of wormhole interdimensional travel, and seeing the movie Stargate in...