I keep making my handwritten notes, and I have a stack of books to read for research, and in a few weeks time I will “officially” begin working on my next manuscript:

THE BODY IS A MACHINE THAT MAKES GHOSTS.

Not content with simply working on a new book, I’ve decided to make a documentary, of sorts, which will chronicle the period of time I spend working on this novel, from the day I open the Word doc and type out the first sentence all the way until it is wrapped and ready to shop around. The title of this documentary is, tentatively, Ghosts Don’t Give a F*ck About You. And whatever becomes of it, whatever its final form ends up being, it ought to be a nice marketing tool for the book.

I’ll be filming everything using a bare-bones setup: iPhone with anamorphic lens; gimbal; tripod; lavalier mic. Eventually, I’ll edit on hardware I already own, likely using Davinci, unless some enterprising soul comes along and wants to do the work (LOL). I do have most of this equipment, as Rooster Republic purchased much of it last year, intending to shoot video footage over the coming 2020 summer to use in online marketing. That plan, as you can assume, has been put on hold indefinitely. The final pieces of that puzzle are the tripod and lavalier mic, which I ought to be able to cover with my forthcoming royalties check. Thanks, by the way, for buying so many of my books in 2019!

Just getting to this moment has been a hell of a chore, and that was before a fucking pandemic flushed this year into the toilet of history. Finishing GRIND YOUR BONES TO DUST completely wiped me out, mentally. Hustling that book through the latter-half of 2019 was no small feat either, but I can’t say that the effort wasn’t worth it. In six months, GRIND has sold 800+ copies. Not bad for a nobody author at a micropress, all things considered.

So, between those sales, and subsequent critical response, I have no small amount of hope for THE BODY IS A MACHINE THAT MAKES GHOSTS. I’m looking at the structure of works like Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 and Bram Stoker’s DRACULA. I’m reading a hodgepodge of philosophy and science and books about the paranormal. And I’m reading quite a bit about birds, since the main character had, at one time, studied to be an ornithologist, and it is this study (especially regarding plumage) which leads Ridley Gastham to a hypothesis that changes his life forever, so many lives as a matter of fact, and not for the better.

I’m building a rather large sandbox with this project and fully intend to write a horror novel quite unlike any other I’ve ever read. It is not enough to write about a haunted house, not when there’s an entire world full of dark places, and beyond that… into an unfathomable universe where no stars shine.