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Let's Hear it for Vicky Ball!

12/17/2024 6:19 PM CST Dear Reader, I blew you off on Sunday. You probably haven’t caught on just yet, but I made an unspoken promise to you that I would write a blog post every Sunday, and I failed you. I am a goddamned disgrace, I tell you. But, if I’m being honest with myself, it was for a good reason. Inspiration possessed me as I hammered out the second draft of a story I am working on. The story that I am going to be turning in for that big anthology I wrote about last week. (See last blog, “In the Eyes of the IDOLS”) In relation to another blog I wrote, “Re-writes, The Horror I Must Face,” I must tell you that writing a focused and well-informed second draft of that story was exhilarating. I know that sounds cheesy, but it wasn’t until I had let a couple of people read the story and I had gotten detailed feedback from a person with a different perspective that I really started to see my story for what it was. More on that in a future blog. I know I have promised seve...
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In the Eyes of the IDOLS

  12/8/2024 8:53 AM CST Dear Reader, This week, I started out thinking I would talk about Street Fighter. That’s right. One of the few things I do nowadays that doesn’t relate to writing is play a decent amount of Street Fighter 6. Sometimes, if I’m struggling with a difficult passage, I will fire up Steam and fight a few online matches. It often gets me out of my funk or at least forces me to take a well-deserved break from the grind of trying to make it as a new writer in my 40s. There are lessons about patience and craft that I’ve learned from Street Fighter, lessons that I plan to apply to my writing. But I’m not going to discuss that today—consider this a tease for later. (For the record, my Ken is currently a two-star gold ranking, and I fought my way there from a low bronze. More on that in future blogs.) Something monumental happened and we have to talk about that instead. I was lucky enough to see an amazing opportunity on social media at just the right time. Mic...
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Re-Writes, the horror I must face.

12/1/2024 10:13 AM CST Dear Reader, Ok. So far, the general topics we have covered are my influences, how I got into reading, how I got into writing, and my adventures in accidental publishing. Today, I want to talk about rewrites, a subject I once hated but am looking to embrace. "Write a second draft." I cringed each time I heard some seasoned editor or agent say it in a "Helpful Tips for Writers" video or when I read it as advice from writers in their blogs. These writers were clearly lying. There is no way they abandoned their 90k-word draft, started over from scratch, and wrote an entirely fresh draft. They obviously want other writers to waste their time and ruin their work, right? My work is a labor of love. I pored over that manuscript for long hours, and there is a delicate balance of symbolism and scenes that unconsciously convey a deeper message and theme. Obviously, I should just do a little editing, revising, and proofreading, and it will be...
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COMING SOON

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11/23/24 9:56 PM CST Dear Reader, Coming soon from Dark Moon Rising Publications , featuring "Traditions Tangled in Tinsel," by Matthew Jon Smith, as well other terrifying horror shorts from other great authors, Last Christmas: A Holiday Horror Anthology. Links to purchase the paperback and e-book additions coming soon.
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Misadventures in early writing and publishing

11/23/2024 6:54 PM CST Dear Reader, I started off the last blog wanting to talk about writing, especially trying to get published, but then I had to start with the concept of reading, as I think reading and writing are obviously linked. I went on a tangent about how I got started with reading and my love of horror fiction. The point is, for about the last two years, I have become a man obsessed with the stories that come to me. In the last blog, I explained that the first thing I attempted to write ended up being a 180k-word behemoth. I started just wanting to write a short story or two. I knew I could come up with a couple and maybe have enough for a short collection. But what it ended up being was a collection of 30 interconnected stories about a cursed town and the people in it. Think Twin Peaks meets Needful Things with a touch of unexpected extreme horror lite. There was so much that I just knew had to be in the book, and it wasn’t finished until all of the crazy puzzle ...
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On Wri- On Reading

  11/11/2024 11:22 AM CST Dear Reader, Let's talk about writing for a second, shall we? But to talk about writing, I think first we have to talk about reading. I have been a reader ever since I was a little kid. I was part of some scholastic book program at school where if you took a book home, read it aloud in front of your parent, and your parent signed a sheet saying that you did it, you got a sticker on your card. For every four stickers that you got on your card, you were given a coupon for a free personal pan pizza from a famous fast food chain pizza restaurant. This was around first through early second grade, and I ran that free pizza game hard. I tried to take a book home every night because I wanted to rack up those stickers. Plus, I liked spending time reading to my mom or one of the members of the extended family, and those simple times where my mom would take me to the pizza place and we would sit down and share our free little pizza were some of my favorite times, so ...
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Influences: A Tiered System

  10/31/2024 11:33 pm CST Dear Reader, Here are my influences in some strange order that might be meaningful. This is not a reflection of the quality of the artists' work, but rather a slipshod attempt at analyzing how much influence I think they have on my writing/storytelling. It's a real who's who and what's what. A list of influences pretty obvious for anybody who grew up in the '80s and '90s and who is clearly a pretty cool guy. S Tier Stephen King  (I will forever live in your shadow.) Chuck Palahniuk David Lynch Strange encounters with things just beyond your periphery Kurt Cobain PJ Harvey A Tier Edgar Allan Poe The Twilight Zone  (and others like it, think  The Outer Limits ) Horror Comics  (especially Junji Ito) Regina Spektor H.P. Lovecraft  (ewww though, right?) Forces beyond my understanding B Tier Ari Aster Any Horror Anthology Film  (especially  Southbound ) House of Leaves  by Mark Z. Danielewski The ever-consuming void that l...
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