The Gates of Chaos Anthology

So I'm going to start out by admitting that I don't know what I'm talking about.  I'm using the terms "linear" and "non-linear" in a specific way, to describe certain observations I make about stories I've read.  I'm also using them to talk about my own writing, my successes and failures as a writer, and what I try to do to make it better. "America's Pastime," my entry into the Gates of Chaos anthology, was very much a linear tale when it was written.  I wrote it in the 1990's for a contest that was called "The Publican Brief."  (The contest name was a mashup of a popular John Grisham novel and the name of the Delphi forum that I helped to run.)  We were given six words and an opening sentence for this particular contest.  Some of the contests only gave the six words.  Some gave opening sentences.  Some gave a topic.  I recall that this one was both because I remember the opening sentence:  "All things are fou...

With 2020 being what I love to call, ‘the year of the toilet’, life took an unprecedented turn for most of us. Tensions also ran higher than ever due to social and political issues, while all of us were quarantined to the safety of our homes with not much else to do than stew on it. That, and bicker with strangers and acquaintances on the internet.  The latter of these two is what caused the first sparks of creative genius that led to this anthology’s birth. As more and more groups lost focus and descended into utter chaos, we decided to do something not many others were doing at the moment and band together to create something positive. Everyone involved was very pleasant to work with and the project as a whole went smoothly and without a hitch. Considering the hell the rest of the World was stuck in, I see the collaborative process we’ve achieved in and of itself as a success.  I was one of the newest of the group and was beyond thrilled that I was offered the opportunity to...

  I first became involved in what later named The Gates of Chaos when Will Jacques first proposed the idea to group.   I recall my reasoning to join the project was to work with writers whose work I had read and enjoyed. I knew from the get-go it was a great opportunity to present my work and hopefully have readers enjoy my tales of macabre. ~ My approach to writing is three-four hours a day. The first story (“Lockdown and Macabre”) was one for which I could clearly see the beginning and the ending. As it is a massive homage to the Tell-Tale Heart and splatterpunk, I read two to three poems by Poe and Richard Laymon before each writing session. I am pantser, as I enjoy letting the story take me by surprise, and this quality was a huge benefit to the story. “Samhain” was a more plot driven story, so I was writing for two hours in the morning and four hours at night. There was a lot of research involved plus the editing process was longer. Scott Beallis (Scott Dyson) was i...

  At the beginning of the pandemic I lost two important influences in my life, my dog Molly, and my father. My father was the one who inspired my love of words and books. We were interested in the same authors, we bought each other books, and we discussed writing. He died before my dream of becoming a published author was realized. Our birthdays are approaching. His is on April 19 th , mine is on April 20 th . This will be the first year we won’t celebrate together. I struggled. I struggled writing, focusing, and I had a hard time concentrating, not just on pages, or paragraphs, but some days on single words. At unexpected times, sadness would overwhelm, and tears would fill my eyes. Most days words wouldn’t flow. I quit querying my novel because the rejections bit too hard. However, like most of my life when times were tough, I could count on books. Books provided a place where I could disappear into and find solace. I have a great writing support group. My wife, my daughter, and ...

  What is sanity? That is the question posed in 'Equilibrium.' what is sanity, as opposed to insanity. As an author, my writing initially examined emotion as a fine line between health and illness. This question, combined with a personal love of the horror genre, guided my work into the realms of horror and all of its sub-genres. I could discuss this further, but this anthology relates directly to life during the pandemic. Rather than examine the horrors of the pandemic, I would rather tell an uplifting story in this blog. Let's shift the bleak moods of late to a genuine fairytale. Writing, for me, is more than a career; it is a vocation. As such I produce work across multiple media platforms. My primary genre, as discussed, is horror. In April 2020, one month after lockdown, my largest work; a book called 'Horrotica' was released and subsequently became an international best-seller. During the month of May I was engaged in book promotions across most social media. ...

  Out of all the books I own, the ones I've read the most, the ones I cherish and will never, ever part with, are a stack of beaten and dusty horror anthologies. Some of the covers are well done, stylish pieces, professionally illustrated with pictures of werewolves, ghouls and witches. Sharp graphics that juxtapose against the murky depths of the deep blacks. Others are cheap and garish things, leering clowns and vibrant blood. It's quite a collection, there's stories by Shirley Jackson, Robert Bloch, essays on the werewolf trials and a hundred others bits and pieces that I read when I was a kid in Benalla. That's where I first read most of them, in books I borrowed from the small catholic school library and later from the larger one in the town, books I'd read and return, one or two of the stories would stick, sometimes I thought I'd imagined them when I recalled them, but years later I'd find a horror anthology in a second hand place, read through, it...

When I first saw the call for this anthology in the Horror Writers' Net group, I wasn't interested.  I didn't want to write a new short story for it.  I didn't have any ideas.  I was pretty busy with life, having college kids getting ready to return to campus and a practice that was still figuring out how to handle COVID.  So how, one might ask, did I then end up contributing a story and being the primary driving force behind actually getting it published?   I thought about it.  Yeah, even though I had decided that I wasn't interested in writing a story for it, I couldn't get the theme out of my head.  I was part of an anthology called QUANTUM ZOO back in 2014 (or thereabouts) and we were given the theme of writing a story about zoos.  And I had one I hadn't finished that I called (for lack of a better title) "The Zoo Planet."  Yeah, it was science fiction. But it came to mind as I read the call, and so I finished it and submitted it....

  The pandemic ended a decade long hiatus on writing. After almost finishing a BFA in creative writing, I suffered burnout and when a career opportunity presented itself, I stopped attending school and stopped writing. Furloughed, and suddenly realizing that my current job isn’t as fulfilling as I wanted it to be, I kicked into a storm writing stories non-stop throughout all my free time. I’d been devouring all resources on writing and even now am back at work finishing my degree. That’s when I came across some advice from an odd source— The titular character in an Archer episode says that language is all idioms. “Time Out in the Long Weekend in the Long Year” started with only two goals: Set the story in Texas and create a strong character who spoke in idioms.  Another goal I try to achieve- and often fail- is taking some mundane task and make it menacing. Even the best, most well-behaved and innocent children end up in time out. Thus the average, everyday action of a parent ...

  I'm going to take a minute to discuss the most recent character that I've written about. He appears in the new publication I've been promoting, The Gates of Chaos . Some of you wonder how a guy like me, married, a father of seven, who has renovated an old school house, and seeking every dream, creates such evil. First off, you should know that “Vasectomus” was me writing as Jim Falcon. Let me explain. I've often struggled with crossing that fine line in horror (most of you are shaking your head, NO YOU HAVEN'T! ). Instead of using blunt words I'd soften them. For example I'd use "privates'' instead of "dick" when referring to male genitalia.  Jim Falcon doesn't hesitate to jump into the taboo, to write the rawness that can chill someone and disturb on a level that I'm (Tim Eagle) still working on in my horror. When I put Jim's name on something I'm still giving readers the quality, without the softened blows. Writing ...

My wife and I hunkered down to watch a lot of movies during the summer leg of the Coronavirus pandemic. One oddly agoraphobic Saturday night, we were watching Ken Burns’ Vietnam . The first episode of the documentary begins with an Army vet talking about the fact that he sleeps with a nightlight. He talks about it in a way that says he’s not trying to rationalize it. It’s a fear he brought back from the jungles of the east, and its solidly entrenched in his psyche. The combat, the uncertainty, the tedium and spontaneous chaos of war had culminated in a fear of the dark. His simple solution was a nightlight. An irrationality his kids were forced to outgrow, but one that he now required for his sanity. The episode told the stories of several other combat veterans, all compelling, all told with candor and conviction. I found the story of the “tunnel rats” to be the most compelling.  Tunnel rats were soldiers who operated within the Iron Triangle, crawling through yards of underground ...

“Two Bobbies” started as a 250-word flash fiction writing assignment for my writing group (Moorhead Friends Writing Group) in 2017. While struggling to query my novel I decided not to edit book two or start writing book three until I found an agent or a publisher. I still needed to write. I started writing a werewolf short story entitled “Roadkill Surprise” that had been percolating for the past 30+ years, ever since driving numerous times on US-71 North between Blackduck and International Falls Minnesota. It’s dark at night, and your imagination can get the best of you. The story still isn’t finished, but it might have a home once completed. A short time later the call came out for The Gates of Chaos: Stories Written During the Pandemic . I didn’t think about the Pandemic, my mind wandered to the words Gates and Chaos . My novel, Sins of the Mother , uses magic-marker drawn doors as gateways between realities. I pulled out “Two Bobbies” from my short story folder and the ideas flowed...

With my story, “Lockdown and Macabre,” the two biggest inspirations were The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe and the works of Richard Laymon. I wanted to explore the emotions and paranoia brought on by isolation but push the idea further.  If we did not have family or friends to keep us grounded how would we cope with the fear of the outside world? The setting was easy to write about and the first-person narrative was  a throwback to Poe. My second story, “Samhain,” was my chance to write a full-on horror epic within a few pages. Halloween is my favourite holiday and the mythology and history is fascinating.  The idea of a lockdown being the catalyst for unleashing ancient evil gave me plenty of room to amp up the gore and atmosphere.  Adding the staunch curfew and the enforcers was just me taking the real-world response to the pandemic to the extreme. Adding the supernatural and gore was my way to present the horror as otherworldly in a real-world-styled setting...

 Today, the Horror Writers' Net is proud to present THE GATES OF CHAOS:  Stories Written During The Pandemic.      The anthology contains 18 short stories written by 14 different authors, including BT Noonan, Jesse D'Angelo, N.M. Brown, Chris Stenson, Florence Marlowe, James Miles, Valkyrie Kerry, Adam Michael Dodds-Wade, Wayne Hartshorn, Brianna Van Riet, Nelson Hurley, Scott Dyson and Rob Harman. It is lavishly illustrated by pen-and-ink artist Will Jacques, who is also the administrator of the Horror Writers' Net Facebook Group. It is available for $2.99 for a limited time, only through Amazon Kindle.  It is free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers for the next 90 days! THE GATES OF CHAOS Watch this blog for posts from the authors of this anthology.  The first will be on Wednesday, March 3rd, from James Miles, an English writer who penned two of the stories in the collection. Enjoy!