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Authors Note
Thank you for taking time to read my collection of shorts. I decided to craft this book together from a few of the many shorts I have written but never published in sort of a celebration of the one year anniversary of my first publication, Unsuspected. Though that novelette was not read by many it was read by a few and I received complements from most who read it, and truly I’m here to write for two things, to entertain myself and to entertain my readers, as long as both of those goals where accomplished so is my job.
I’m hoping in between Unsuspected and Dead Ends I grew as a writer, it definitely feels like it. There’s so much to editing you don’t realize you need to do as a writer, editing normally taken care off by an editor which self publishers often don’t have the resources to employ. I’m hoping that this story is better written and much more well read than my last novel, and that you continue to come back to watch my writing mature.
Now onto the important stuff.
Each of these stories has a history that I wish to share a bit of it with you. Creeping death is the youngest of the shorts in this series, when I decided I was going to put together a collection of shorts I wanted a new fresh one, some of these are years old, but creeping death was written just after I started sewing this collection together. It doesn’t have much of a history aside from its star, the yet unnamed darkness wrapped in robes. This creature I introduced to you, and who shows up in the last story as well, will show up in many other stories through the years, and always with him will be his glass pack fitted nineties Firebird. He originates from a old West Creek short I decided not to publish but wrote a long time ago because I found the similarities between it and Stephen King’s Needful Things a little too… similar.
Another character I introduced through almost all of these stories was the little city, or large town, of West Creek, named after a neighborhood of San Antonio I have lived in nearly my whole life. It is a city that is San Antonio and Colorado Springs, my home town and birth place, as well as darkness, mystery, and fantasy. It is as many would say a place where reality thins and strange, impossible, often horrifying things happen. The highway 151 is a real highway in San Antonio though it extends only from one loop to another within the city, and the loop around the city of West Creek will appear in other stories and is likened to the horror that is San Antonio’s loop 1604 which, after near twenty years of promise, is finally being expanded.
Bloodletting is more a short prose, I wrote it for a college class not too long ago during a time of anxiety and anger. Again not much a history to it other than the fact that the dark themes of running away, suicide, and bladed light extended from my emotions at the time.
Crickets is a little more recent, I worked in a facility that at one time had a problem which sometimes re-occurs. We were overrun by crickets, not to the extent as in the story, but it damn well seemed close. Everywhere you’d look there’d be a cricket in the corner, in the drains, hopping across the floor. I’m not a fan of bugs so it was easy to imagine a scenario were a cricket problem became so out of control. The rest of the story of insanity and mystic dreams worked itself into the story as I wrote.
Tall Trees is an ode to Creepy Pasta, though often poorly written the stories and extending video media has captured the once thought lost art of horror, replacing disgust and horror of gore with the pure fear of things you cannot see or comprehend. Marble Hornets’ infamous Slenderman videos captured my attention, and made me jump at shadows once again. In truth I wrote two, unrelated, Creepy Pasta tribute stories, but the second will be saved for another collection.
The Harvest Moon was originally titled The Hundred Word Horror, I had it written for a contest but it didn’t place. Coming back upon the hundred word story I decided it could be expanded, and ended up loving the story. Werewolves have always captivated me but I wanted one that looked and was unique, different from the usual breed of were.
The Hunters I originally crafted for a friend who was supposed to be doing something with it back when MySpace was big and Facebook was unheard of. As far as I’m aware his project never came through, yet I fell in love with it, as I did with actual ghost hunting shows. If you’ve seen The Hunters somewhere and it isn’t credited to me, tell me, because I’ll need to hunt down the old friend and find out why he did that.
Looped has the oldest history with me. When I was a young kid, mostly because of my attention deficit disorder and the useless drugs I took for it, I often had strange dreams. I still do but not so much now that I’m off the legal pills. One dream I had became my only known reoccurring dream, to the point that it reoccurred at least four times. Most of the times in the dream I’d watch the blimp hit the ship from the pool and do nothing, in reality in the final dream I had of it I tried to get my mother to pay attention, to run, but she ignored me. The dream ended always at the explosion.
The Barking, who here owns a dog? Of you who owns a Labrador? How about a blond Labrador? I own a blond Labrador, and have had several in the facility which I currently work, and I can attest they are one of the nosiest playing dogs I’ve ever seen. Most blond Labradors have this monotone bark, one tone means anything and everything to them, and it was while my blond lab, Flip Flop, was barking while chasing her large plastic ball up and down our yard that I wondered what my neighbors thought of her. What if we had truly cruel neighbor that would want to off her or worse?
Though I started crafting this around a loud Labrador I rethought my stance, Labradors are cute and lovable and stealing them and causing them harm would cause people to hate the villain, but I wanted to make a bigger statement.
It was at my job as a care taker for pets that I came up with the idea of inserting a Pit into the story instead of a Labrador. Most Pits I know are also monotone, though of a more high pitch than Labradors deep bravado. Also Pits have a bum rap as people killers when in my experience they are often the best behaved and one of the friendliest breed I interact with. Of the dogs which have bit me aggressively, none of them have been pits… most of them have been Chihuahuas. My brother currently lives with a pit that seems about as violent as a flower, the non thorny kind.
Lastly Sequa, this story is one of my eldest, and favorite, shorts. I’ve actually had a few people ‘almost publish’ it, whatever that means. It’s another story that comes from dreams though the dream this stemmed from ended at the nightly buss scene, and the horror of the town that they fall into came to me as I wrote, often my stories write themselves.
I realize that most of the stories end bad, or worse, and that I’m quickly becoming synonymous with the mass murder of my own characters, but it’s how I write, and it’s how the story asked to be ended, sacrifices to the gods of writing if you will. I wrote many of these stories weeks, months, or years apart and never planned to piece them together as a puzzle of darkness, yet here they are, and hopefully they leave you in a state that has you watching the shadows for a good while less you meet your Dead End.
Thank you again, reader, for supporting my trade and my way of life, the more of you who read, the more I am able to write. And as always I will write until these hands are physically unable to write anymore. I look forward to releasing my first full length hundred thousand word novel in the near future, one way or another.
Author
Joshua Winters
Joshua Winters, born in Colorado Springs, hails currently form his hometown of San Antonio. He is an author that dabbles in all forms of word art. His first publication was the self published novelette Unsuspected. He’s is looking soon to be publishing his first full length novel.
To learn more and keep track of his future works please visit his official Facebook page
Cover artist
Calvin Dunlap
Calvin Dunlap is an aspiring visual artist and writer from San Antonio, Texas who leant his talents to the cover art of this collection. His works can be found at his Deviant Art account ‘cdunlap1’.
Version 1.3
This version is the last self edited version of this collection of short horrors, edited with an official editors program to make it the cleanest I’ll be able to make it without a live editor. I will no longer be updating this collection but look for new works from me to come!
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