My Scariest Book - OLD DIRT ROAD - Available!

I have released OLD DIRT ROAD as an eBook (finally) as I believe it should be. It ended up being something much more than I could have anticipated, and it is a really cool feeling when that happens. You get stoked...I do, anyway. I believe it is the most unsettling book I have written to date, without being gory or sickening. It is also a much slower build, with more character development. It is different than THE SWARM, and I think you will see that. THE SWARM wanted to be written without letting you, my readers, catch your breath. OLD DIRT ROAD wanted to be written so that you would slowly descend into the chaos and deep dark with Eddie Glenn, the protagonist. You let me know if you like it, cool?

So it is priced a little higher than the other books, at $4.99, because I have bills to pay, and the writing and editing of this took a tremendous amount of time and effort. I just want to make sure I can still put such time into making these stories for my fans (the five of you out there are, including mom and dad!...he he). While I never write for money (I write because these stories get big in my head, and I cannot seem to see around them until they are out), making sure I can validate the time spent on this is important. I cannot feed my kids and pay my bills with the fumes of fun, sadly.

Here is an excerpt or sample of Old Dirt Road if you want a little longer sample than those offered on Amazon or NOOK.

It should be available by the end of today, and definitely by tomorrow, on KINDLE and NOOK Devices. Apple and other devices are another story! I expect that will take a couple weeks.

In light of that, I thought I would put an option to pay via Paypal here. Do this ONLY if you have a way to open an ePub or PDF file (any Apple device with email can open ePub, and pretty much anything digital can open a PDF file). Once you put the order through on Paypal, I will get an email from Paypal saying you paid. I will then email you both the PDF and ePub files. But I do not yet know how to do this for NOOK or KINDLE users, so these folks will have to hang tight for a couple hours until the book pops up in the queue. Keep checking, should be there any time today! So if you want the book emailed to you digitally, go ahead through Paypal below.

I am really, REALLY excited for this book to get out there and to see how it is received. It is more polished than The Swarm. I think it is a tremendously complex story, with a lot of symbolism, but above all the story that starts with Eddie Glenn stumbling into that space at the end of the dirt road, where the shadows seem misplaced and the sound of the highway is somehow moaning, was truly unsettling and unnerving to me. I do not know where these ideas come from, honestly. The Great Gulf maybe, where the dead sing? I do not know. Sometimes when I am finished with a book, or while wrapped deep in it, I understand why some artists go over the Edge. It is a scary thing to not feel in control, like you are driving a car in which the steering wheel does not work. But is anyone of us really in control? (There is a good amount of this working in the book, too.) But as heavy and troubling as this book was to me, its author, it has tremendous meaning and power and it was liberating to write.

Now go...it has reach, and it reaches to you.

March & non-burnt Offerings - 2 Free Shorts

I cannot believe it is March already. The air is still cold here in Jersey, but we had a few random hot days and my wife's flower buds are starting to poke through the ground. This has overall been a pretty strange year for weather, hasn't it? I hope this doesn't have anything to do with the dreaded December 21, 2012 Mayan Calender end...probably it doesn't. I believe very much that everything in life is cyclic; not only in non-tangibles but tangibles as well. Why do all the objects in space favor a sphere or round shape? Because a sphere is the most economical shape, and that is how gravitational pull works. Okay, and then we have the female reproductive cycle, the lunar cycle, mental illnesses like Bipolar in which manic episodes seem to appear at the same time each year...why do planetary orbs move in circles (ellipses, more accurately), and why do electrons rotate in theorical circles too? Why are the human eyes, at which we as humans focus, round? There is both power, beauty, and divinity in circles, cycles and spheres. I do not think it is just a coincidence that the circle, cycle or sphere is seen so much in our world, both in visual and non-visual things. That said, I don't think the end of the world will be this year, as the Mayans predicted as part of this cycle ending.

Phew, now that we're out of the woods on that, here are two free short stories. They are a little different than my typical horror type stuff, but I wanted to see what you thought of them. One is story about a woman who has an abnormal tumor growth, the story of which was inspired by watching a TV special. As a writer, I am always curious, both selfishly and empathically, to see if I can put myself in someones shoes. This was my attempt to put myself in this poor woman's shoes. Some of the writing style may seem odd, and it is; I was experimenting and trying to come to what I think of now as my style. I went overly heavy on some of the techniques in the writing here, but I think the story is still okay.

The second story is a fantasy story about a character I call Hilt. To be honest, Hilt is my version of Robert E. Howard's Conan. Except my barbarian is not precisely a barbarian, but a sort of normal guy, and is in a world that has been swept empty by a disease known as Green Thunder. I have written about a half dozen Hilt short stories, and I know there is a long novel in all these connected stories. I like writing in wholly fictional worlds because I can let my imagination go. You'll find in this story some of the imaginary stuff that is showing up in my Dark Storm Fantasy Series I am hard at work on.

Anyway, hope you enjoy them. Peace, love and nightmares...

The Mile Jetty - Freebie (and one of my fav)

As promised, here is another short story called The Mile Jetty. I think you will like it. It was actually one of the first stories I wrote, when I was just discovering something within me as a story teller. This version is a rewrite, because the first one was rough and choppy. I think this version is much better. My parents have a small beach house in a NJ shore town (very much like the fictional Bay Isle in THE SWARM). When they first had it, I went alone for a walk on this part of the beach that is a designated Bird Sanctuary. It is roped off, and you cannot swim there, but at certain times of the year when the birds are not nesting, you can walk along it. Well, it is about a mile walk to the end, and at the end is this gray jetty stretching into the water. On the way there, alone on a gray morning, I came across a sea turtle that had died on the sand. It was so odd and out-of-place that it set my mind on edge. I got to the jetty shortly later, and walked to the end of it. I was alone the whole time, and my imagination was already accelerating. As I stepped over the gaps in the rocks, I saw a lot of trash: beer bottles, a friggin shoe, dead fish. I did not stay on the jetty very long. I went back home, passing the dead turtle that watched me with its dead black eyes. I kept wondering why there was so much trash stuck in the jetty, and this imaginative story came forth.

This will always remain one of my favorites. Partially because it was during a time when I was discovering my talent, but also because it was borne of a real-life experience that was just so strange!

Thank you everyone for following along! Keep checking back, keep reading good books, and do not head to strange jettys alone.

Stephen King's Pet Semetary

This is, hands down, the most frightening novel in existence. Stephen King has often talked about how he left the book in a draw, unpublished, because he believed it would be too awful to bring to the public. Let me talk a bit about it. Also, if you HAVE NOT READ PET SEMETARY, then DO NOT READ THIS POST, as it will spoil it.

I think King is referencing the death of the toddler, Gage, as the too awful part. Certainly, that is horrific and awful. But I think that, even if the novel had not involved a child's death, it would still be the most frightening novel ever.

Why? King's language and prose. In this work, above all, King's writing at its best presents a feeling of omnipresent dread and helplessness. As in most books I read that are worthwhile (and these days I am not finding that many, sadly, most fiction published seems to be generic copies of each other), I will dog-ear pages where certain passages struck me as very powerful. And because I am a writer, ever once and a while I will re-read those pages for inspiration, or to remind myself I have light-years to travel before my talent is at a comparable level (if ever). Here is a passage that I marked. For those that have read Pet Semetary, this is the part where Winston Churchhill, the Creed's cat, gets run over and Jud, the neighbor, calls Louis and startles him out of an afternoon nap. Louis, the protagonist, knows that it will be his little daughter's cat before even seeing it. Upon seeing Louis's reaction, Jud will then decide to pass on the secret of the Micmac burial ground beyond the Pet Semetary. This is some of the most powerful, dread-inducing prose I have ever read, and it is the perfect setup for what is to come: a journey past the dead-fall and into the strange woods in which the rolling laughter of a (Wendigo?) creature can be heard. We all know what happens to the cat after it is buried up on that Micmac burial ground, where the bedrock's close. Anyway, here is what I consider one of the most powerful dread-invoking two paragraphs ever:

It was about five-thirty. Twilight was ending. The landscape had a dead look. The remaining sunset was a strange orange line on the horizon across the river. The wind bowled straight down Route 15, numbing Louis's cheeks and whipping away the white plume of his breath. He shuddered, but not from the cold. It was a feeling of aloneness that made him shudder. It was strong and persuasive. There seemed no way to concretize it with metaphor. It was faceless. He just felt by himself, untouched and untouching.

He saw Jud across the road, bundled up in his big green duffel coat, his face lost in the shadow cast by the fur-fringed hood. Standing on the frozen lawn, he looked like a piece of statuary, just another dead thing in this twilight landscape where no bird sang.

Right after this, Louis goes to cross the highway and almost gets run down by a truck (foreshadow), until stopping at the last minute. Much later, when Gage is struck by the truck, we get the impression as readers that the Micmac burial ground and the spirit/evil/whatever trapped there somehow can control the trucks or cause these accidents, as if knowing what will happen: that some idiot will come and bury whatever the trucks hit. These two paragraphs, in very simple language, provide the omnipresent sense of dread that will be with you, as the reader, as you move forward in the book from this point on.

He just felt by himself, untouched and untouching. Man, in the context of the story, that is a powerful line. I also believe there is much more in terms of the story's roots: the part of it we do not see, or might not see upon first or second read. Pet Semetary is at its core a novel about secrets. King writes in the forward, Death is a mystery. Burial is a secret. The rest of the novel adds to the strength of this, including Rachel's sick sister (Zelda, I think her name was) who was secretly locked away. Why not click the link below, which directs you to a post I did on Stephen King's website and user forum. It lays out some of my thoughts on why, after Mr. King wrote the book, he saw what the book was about at its core and strengthened it. Even consider the mispelling of the title "Semetary" instead of "Cemetary", which I talk about in the forum post. Did King do this by accident, and then cleverly disguise it to the reader as a child's mistake? I am not sure, but I think not. Secrets begins with "S", and the Pet Semetary is the biggest secret, passed on by the men of Ludlow through generations. Do you know why? Because the soil of man's heart is stonier. And a man grows what he can, and tends it. Read the post, and perhaps re-read this masterpiece, if you can.

http://www.stephenking.com/forums/showthread.php/24180-Deeper-Meaning-Secrets-in-Pet-Semetary?highlight=deeper+meaning+in+pet

I wrote a novel when I was 22 called OLD DIRT ROAD, which was inspired by Pet Semetary. It is not a very good novel, I do not think. I like the idea and there are certain imagery and scenes which still terrify me. But 8 years later, reading it back, I feel that the writing is juvenile and not scary enough, and certainly pales in contrast to Pet Semetary. I have a hard time looking at it objectively, because so much time has passed since I wrote it and my writing style has evolved and hopefully improved. If any of you are looking for a book of mine to read next, why not try this one? Let me know if you think it is any good. I am toying with the idea of re-working it, especially because the conceit and idea is strong. I feel that I did not do it justice in its current form, but it is hard to tell. But only if you want to, okay? Thanks for coming along today, and should you see a sign that reads END LIFE, I suggest you not walk past it.

THE SWARM peaked at No. 10 on Barnes & Noble NOOK Top 100, and a stupid reviewer on Amazon

THE SWARM, a horror and supernatural thriller, peaked at No. 10 on Barnes & Noble Top 100. This was yesterday and now it is down to No. 11, which still is not bad. It has been selling 1,000 copies a day for the past couple days. Thank you everyone for reading it! I am hoping this generates enough income for me to write full time, as I have many stories to tell.

On another note, I read a review this morning on Amazon for THE SWARM that gave me a 3-star on the condition that the first scene, which involves and describes the experiences of a miscarraige, was too vial for her to read. She then had the audacity to presume that I never had a miscarraige.

She is terribly wrong. The first chapter of the novel describe what my wife and I went through. The description is...well, descriptive and visercal and is meant to evoke emotions of disgust and horror. After all, what about the lose of a child (whether a fetus or in reality) is not disgusting and vile?

But I get it. Somethings are too difficult to watch or read or face with clear eyes. I cannot watch anything on the news related to children being hurt. As a father of two now, such acts go against all my instincts and emotions, and couple that with my very clear imagination, I cannot handle listening to news stories on children being hurt. The Casey Anthony case was one of them. While all my family was watching the trial, I could not stand to listen to the descriptions and actions.

I would think that, if it was described so vividly and powerfully, than this would be evidence that I had first hand experience with it. In any event, you can read the review and my comment back to the village idiot HERE

Thank you again, and hopefully will have some exciting news for anyone following along (here is a teaser: potential movie deals and print book deals, but that is all I can say now!).

A Freebie, as thank you - Just a Messenger Short Story

As a thank you, I wanted to put a downloadable short story up for FREE. It is a PDF file, which means everyone should be able to get it. It is a horror story, and you will have to go into it with an open mind. A lot of the technical stuff probably does not work, but that did not stop me: I had a story to tell and I told it. It is told almost exclusively through Instant Messages and emails, which I thought would be fun. I wrote it back in 2004, before the popularity of Facebook and Twitter, so I stuck to good old Instant Messanger. And so the formating may seem odd, but it works, I think. Hope you enjoy it, Dimple.

Read Just A Messenger Here

Download PDF of THE SWARM - for those without a Kindle, Nook or Adobe Digital Editions

So I put up an option for people to purchase a PDF file, which you can open on any computer or hand-held device. A few people have asked for it on Facebook, so here it is. It is $2.99, which is the price represented to what the other sale sites will be going up to.

You can click the button, then the payment is processed securely through Paypal. You do not need a Paypal account and can pay via credit card. This is the best I can do. The PDF file will be emailed to you within a couple hours after reciept of payment (unless I am sleeping!). If you have any questions, email me or post on Facebook. I will be raising the price to $2.99 for THE SWARM, which I need to do to cover the advertising costs, without which I wouldn't have reached all you guys! If this is useful to readers, then I can put up some more books as PDF files if anyone's interested.

The Swarm - a Novel (PDF)

THE SWARM hits No. 2 on NOOK Horror Bestsellers and No. 23 on Amazon KINDLE (so what does the ending of it mean?)

I am really happy THE SWARM got to No. 2 on the NOOK horror bestseller list and likewise No. 23 on KINDLE. I actually had a solicitation from two movie production companies, which was cool and unexpected, though I am fairly sure nothing will come of it.

I want to talk a bit about the literary aspects of THE SWARM, though some may argue there are none and that is fine; art and creation is great because it allows for a wide variety of opinions. First, though, I apologize that the replies on this blog were deleted. For some reason, the posts were appearing throughout the enter page on each topic. Since I did the programming myself, I need to stop to figure out why, then get a better version up. I am very sorry about that! In the interim, if you had questions on this, you can email me directly rob_(at)_sketchesfromacelestialsea(.)com. Remove the underscores and other junk; this helps stop spam.

There was a review on Amazon that gave me 3 stars today, and one of the concerns (besides the typos, phew, I will not live those down) was that the ending was not clear, or not explained. So originally I had recorded a video of me talking about the Deeper Meaning in THE SWARM, but it was too disjointed and rambling (my thoughts flow much better while writing). Finally, though, this 3-star review prompted me to offer a little more on THE SWARM to those who have read it, and it is provided at length below. If you have not finished THE SWARM, THEN DO NOT READ FURTHER, for there be spoilers ahead, Wanderer.

First, there is no right way to have interpreted the ending or book. This is not school, or an assignment and I am not a professor or literary scholar. I wrote THE SWARM to tell a story, but saw something deeper as I was writing it. So if what you read here is not what you took away from THE SWARM, no worries; I will not be mad and you will not be wrong. Art is an interpretation or way for the artist to express the world, and it is not always received the same way by those who read or see it. So please do not be upset or mad or discouraged or hateful if this is not what you thought, okay? Thanks.

As THE SWARM progressed, I began to see threads throughout the book. They were no overtly apparent, but rather formed the mesh back-bone that held the story up, and it occurred to me that there was something more in the book and that I should strengthen it. I am not Hemingway or Fitzgerald or James Joyce, just Rob Heinze, the guy who is apt to trip while walking on stage in front of a crowd, and I did my best with it. Here we go, we are about to get crazy in here, ready?

There is a belief in something called The Collective Unconscious, which was a term coined by Carl Jung. Here is an excerpt directly from Wikipedia.com:

My thesis then, is as follows: in addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents.

The collective unconscious concept is also featured heavily in Yeats powerful poem, The Second Coming, in which it, The Collective Unconscious, is referred to as Spiritus Mundi from which the poet receives a mental image of the antichrist being born in a desert wasteland. For those that have read THE SWARM, you will find a lot of Yeats poem echoed throughout the novel, particularly when reading about the character Reagan and direct language borrowed from it, such as, the ceremony of innocence shall be renewed.

A modern day analogy to the Collective Unconscious would be saying that all humans come pre-programmed (pre-coded, engineered, whatever) with already downloaded images, thoughts, fears, etc...(like that of the antichrist in Yeat$#39s poem) that are universal to all of humanity. If this does not support the evidence that Something (or Someone) created us, then I do not know what does.

I then thought, well, what if there was Collective Unconsciousness that was not human? Surely, there must be, right? And I further thought, if all of conscious beings of the same species share a pre-programmed collective unconscious, could it not be possible that a human, if provided a link (think again in terms of the modern computer world) to an alien collective unconscious, could that human not receive new experiences through some sort of mental download? Could it not be possible that a similarity in alien Collective Unconscious and Humanity#39s Collective Unconscious exists?

I believe that is very possible, and I also believe that all of life (even non-living things, in fact, for there are only so many chemical elements with which to form the physicality of our universe) is connected and shares a core of creation. Think about it: if the Big Bang created the universe from a central point and exploded outward, all things in the Universe must share characteristics. I am not a physicist, though I have always loved astrophysics and general physics, and wish I had more of a mind bent towards the geniuses in that field. But instead I can use only my artistic skills (or lack thereof) and senses to think about the universe. So really think about it, and tell me if it might not be possible that some other life-force could be scattered throughout the universe from the Big Bang, evolving without us knowing, its ultimate evolution goal to go back home, to its core, its existence and creation? Is that not what we, humans, are doing here?

So with this in mind, you can see why the ending of THE SWARM grew incoherent as the 1-star reviewer on Amazon wrote. There is no easy way to express this with words, while keeping it in the context of the story narrative and not descending into cant and lecturing. I never wanted to write a story showing the above stuff, but I wanted it to be there, get it? Like the ever-reaching roots of a tree that hold it up, out of sight, but which can be unearthed if dug. That is what great books do, and while THE SWARM does not qualify as a Great Book, it is my humble attempt and it means much to me.

Here is some more food for thought, to steal a cliché. There are a large amount of foreshadowing elements as to what the ending will be, most of which are references to going home or coming home. For instance, the rich guy, Colin Redman, who gets killed (unplanned, even surprised me) felt like the washing waves seemed to whisper to him welcome home, my love, welcome home. In the same capacity, Quentin Warsaw (the character for whom I actually felt a little sorrow, as he seemed unable to keep himself from spiraling into worse situations) feels as though he came home when he was at that strange spot. There is also one point in which there is reference to women pregnant from the swarm twirling in quick circles as if to blast off (think about that with the context with the ending). Of course, there is the woman Kelly, who is mumbling home, home, home while in the throes of one of her many trances (or downloads from an alien collective unconscious).

I would ask people who called the book incoherent to consider how difficult it is to write the scenes of Kelly's visions (or downloads). The human language was created from human experience and serves to represent and communicate our world to each other. A writer, whose tools are words, is limited to language to describe something beyond his or her experience. Trying to provide a simile or analogy to an alien unconscious or alien experience...well, it ain't easy, sleazy. So while Kelly's visions and the ending may seem rambling and incoherent, there really is no other way to express it. The woman getting the information, think how she must feel, how that must contort her mind, her connection with reality (at least as we humans know it). So in this context, it has to be incoherent and does require a little more thought, but only if you want to dig up the roots, you know what I'm saying? Those are always my favorite type of books and stories.

And what we have in the end, where Kelly gives birth and forms the physical link to the alien consciousness (which was the island itself), the connection completes and it is now able to link to its other relatives (for lack of better word) and pull into its great core, the point of its creation. What that is...I do not know. It was only how I envisioned it. And as to why it was light that was described as rising, well, how is distance measured in the universe? In light-years, indicating that at the speed of light (which travels the fastest of all things and is representative of energy in the SWARM ending) is the only practical way to transverse the universe. This is why, at the end, the sky comes alive with lights as all these scattered alien entities connect and go home, to that single spot, billions of light-years away, which shone longer than the rest and blinked out.

Readers, are we destined for the same spot on the edge of the universe? When we die, when we go home? I do not know, but I think we will find out just how much all our universe is connected at that time, when we go home.

So that is it, still not easy to express, and I think it works better in the context of the story, rather than spat out here like so much intellectual mucus. If this is too heavy for you, or not what you got, no worries. THE SWARM started as a story, and it ended as a story. I just saw these underlying threads in the book, and brought them together and am now showing you, Reader, what I found.

Also, if you want to comment on this, click the Facebook link on the left and I will start a new post and you can comment below. Peace, Rob

In Which Author Rob Heinze (me) Discusses Why There Are No Print Books of His...AND also talks briefly about THE SWARM, his newest novel

Here I am in all my rambling, stumbling, I-am-a-writer-not-speaker glory. You have been warned, but if you want, go ahead and listen to me ramble about why my books are only available digitally and also ramble about THE SWARM.

Writing Contest, Amazon Kindle KDP & Andre the Giant Singing Like Whitney Houston

Have you ever heard Andre the Giant sing like Whitney Houston? No? Good for you, me either. Do you know why? Because it would be impossible, comical and possibly heart-breaking.

I hate to knock other writers, especially since I know how frustrating this art is, but I have been reading some of the self-published indie books on Amazon Kindle and Apple iBooks, etc...and I am stunned mute. I am very passionate about the art and craft of writing, and believe that I have something in me that resembles talent for this.

But reading some of these books (which amazingly all have five-star reviews from people who must, absolutely be friends of the writers, or other writers trying to cross-promote their books), I want to cry and laugh simultaenously. I mean, come on...is there anyway that a ringing phone can dip its hand into the darkness of someones sleep? Good one, huh? Wait! Wait, here is a better one:

The door was open and allowed the first bluish of morning sunlight to accost the darkness of the bleak motel room

This is from one of the top ten paid ebooks on Kindle! Do you know what makes this awful prose?

People, if you do not know that a phones ring has no hand, or that a chin cannot be determined, you should not be writing fiction. Stick to non-fiction. My goal is not to be an arrogant asshole, but to perserve what I work so hard for: to tell stories powerful enough to grab a reader and take them away, not to assault their senses with horrendous similes, metaphors and mis-constructed sentences. If a writer like Stephen King or J.K. Rowling or Tolkien can makes us, readers, believe in these make-believe worlds with such amazing acuity, should we not put them above the ponderous, clumsy blokes clubbing at their keyboards and trying to engage us?

Writers of my generation will have an even harder time to hold a readers attention. If you cannot absolutely force the reader to look--damnit look!--at what you are trying to show them with words, we can kiss books good-bye as there will not be anymore books in business.

Writing fiction is an art, just as painting or designing or singing or composing. It is very hard to do, and when bad writers attempt it, it gets awful fast. Like all art, writers of fiction are subjected to the limitations of their coding (e.g. their genetics). In the same capacity, as the talent gets better, the number of people housing that talent gets smaller. So it is very easy for the small number of true talents to get mired in the mix of horrendous, bad writers.

I am mixed on the self-publishing craze now. It strips away the filters (i.e. agents, editors) who can usually (not always) spot bad writing within the first paragraph, and it also opens up young writers just starting to explore their craft to critics, which may discourage that talent from growing.

Me? I hope not to come off arrogant, and I know that you--as readers--will have a sense what of a good writer vs. a bad writer is, just as I would know when Andre the Giant or Whitney Houston is singing. That is not to say you will not enjoy a badly written book, nor is it to say that I am a good writer. It is only to belabor a point, which I think I lost by now. And if Andre the Giant were still alive, I would certainly watch him sing but for different reasons entirely.

As an avid reader, which I was long before I ever realized I had talent as a writer, I am afraid. I am afraid that, if bad writers take over the publishing world, there will be nothing left to read. So let us have a story contest, shall we? What does that mean? If you have written a story, less than 10,000 words, email it to me at rob (@) sketchesfromacelestialsea.com. It can be whatever subject matter you want, provided there is no child abuse, pornography or anything related to hurting children.

If your story is about a vampire, werewolf, zombie, or end-of-the-world, please be advised that, unless your prose is like that of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joyce Carol Oates, or Vladimir Nabokov, it is unlikely to win.

What is it worth to you? How about $150 for first prize, $100 for second, and $50 for third and showing up here for everyone to read. I am trying to find writers out there with talent. So email away as PDF, ePub or WORD files with the word CONTEST in the subject. I will close submissions on 1-31-12.

I reserve the right to not award any winners. So if every story I get has prose where the hero shot him a look or the character is electrocuted with alertness, there will be no award. So surprise me, okay?

THE SWARM up on Amazon Kindle (and soon on iBooks and NOOK)

So my newest work, THE SWARM, is up on Amazon Kindle. I have no clue why iBooks and NOOK take so long to process the submittal...but they do, sorry about that. Here is the photo and link to it on Amazon:

What would you do if you awoke naked on a beach with 12,000 other people and had no memory of getting there?

Become part of The Swarm...

PS...thanks to all who have downloaded and are reading my books now! I want these guys in print, so the more people that look at it digitally, the more likely it is that a publisher will print it.

I am back...from The Swarm.

I finished a good length book called THE SWARM, which I hopefully will have up soon. It was great fun writing, extremely strange, and burned its way out of my with very little effort.

I decided to put all my old works up for sale on Amazon HERE, including the collection of short stories after which this blog is named. There are a few of them, like 11 up now and a few more to come. When I first discovered I loved to write, had a lot of stories to tell, and wanted to do it professionally, I wrote non-stop from when I was 20 till 25. Then I froze up, after having been warmly rejected (that is how I think of it, anyway) by agents and editors alike. I finally had my inspiration return after five years and banged out THE SWARM.

If you like Stephen King books or Dean Koontz or just imaginative work with a scary twist, check out my stuff. I can promise you that they are original, and you will not find an overload of vampires or werewolves or zombies (not that there is anything wrong with these tried-but-true monsters).

If I had to tell you which book to read first, I would not be able to. That is like asking a parent which child they like best. That said, the writing in some of my older books is still a bit rough, but the stories are still strong and will certainly entertain and scare you.

I would suggest either THOSE OF THE LIGHT & DARK:

or EASTERLY RETREAT:

If you spend the money to buy the books, I can promise they will keep you entertained (I hope they do). You would also be doing two things besides getting an escape from the dredges of everyday life: you would be paying for my advertising costs, and you would be validating the time I have spent writing these books. There are more stories always fermenting in my, and sometimes I cannot let them come forth or else I would not work and would default on my mortgage.

Thanks, happy 2012!

Where did my eBook go?

So I took the eBook SKETCHES FROM A CELESTIAL SEA temporarily off-sale, as I am making some adjustments, but I expect to have it back up soon. It should hopefully be back up in the next week or so, thanks to everyone asking about it.

On another note, a new novel has been pouring out of me over the past few days. This after almost five years of no inspiration or creative writing.

I might know the reason for my renewed faith in my talent (or lack thereof) and a sudden burst of creativity: a little glimmer of hope. About 4-5 years ago, I succeeded in getting my stories and an old novel in front of some big publishers and their editors, with the help of 2 literary agents. I was 24 then and just assumed I would publish my first novel at the age when F. Scott Fitzgerald published his first one.

Have you helped someone position a picture? A little to the right, no...left...back to the right a little. That was sort of what happened, and it seemed that I had written some great stuff that no one could fit into their publishing rotations. Turns out my fate was not the same as Fitzgerald's, and neither is my talent...FML

I spent a lot of time focusing on my business, my house and my family, which are all good things to focus on...but I still felt that I was somehow squandering a talent I had been given. To be honest: I was really afraid to write again, wasn't sure if I could do it.

Seeing the amount of likes on Facebook, comments, downloads of the eBook (temporary off-line), and the possibility of self-publishing for free has renewed me.

It does give some validation to my thought, which is not original to me, that everything in our lives as humans moves in cycles.

Perhaps my time has come round at last?

Until then, here's a FREE short story from SKETCHES FROM A CELESTIAL SEA called RECORDING. OPEN PDF VERSION. Let me know what you think. It's short, sweet, and all people with bad spitting habits should read it.

Dead birds, malfunctioning iPhones and a ground-shadow with no source

So this story is happening to me, in front of me, and what am I supposed to do? I don't know. I am posting live updates via Twitter & Facebook as they happen. Follow along; I don't know how this will turn out. I just hope it will be okay, and I hope you 'll be there with me for support.

What Winter Means to Me As A Strange Fiction Writer

My creative juices (somehow that does not sound okay, sorry about that) always flow around this time of year. I don't know why. Perhaps it's the noise the wind makes as it moves, unchecked, through leaf-less trees. There is a gleeful, celebratory tone to it, isn't there? Or it might be the way the sun falls, not sinking but dropping below the trees with little warning. I think, too, that it might be the way a gray-washed sky can suddenly unleash a binding winter snow, blowing your electricity out and leaving you, a shadow among shadows, to think how strange your home feels in candlelight. I think often about how malformed shadows look inside a powerless home, especially in the winter months when the days are short. I think all these culminate into a single, self-preserving thought: fear the night, and the creatures that lurk therein.

What does inspiration feel like?

Strange. And wonderful. You feel like you're not in control but the words (or lines or drawing) is being produce by you passively, somehow...so how is this possible?

I believe inspiration is recieved like a signal that seems to come from the cosmos or space or a satelite or God. A person might get a weak signal, might work with it, fighting until there was a grainy, fuzzy image (or story, or painting, or song). On the other hand, sometimes a message comes so strong that it displays an LCD, LED, blazing 3D image in our minds that it takes very little effort to decode it. When this happens, there is little else that can compare to it. It does feel like a message from somewhere other than you.

Copyright 2011 by Rob Heinze

About Me

Rob was born in 1981. A poor student throughout grade school and high school, Rob spent much of his time in ADD-induced hazes of imaginative ramblings. He wrote his first short story at 19, and has since completed more than twenty (20) novels and two-dozen short stories. A proud father, husband and businessman who reserves the right to dream of becoming a famous storyteller despite the unlikely chances of said dream happening. Share your thoughts or comments below or via email rob [at] sketchesfromacelestialsea.com