Enjoy an exclusive guest post from Ken Goldman, author of “The Last Days Of Leonard Cross,” featured in our upcoming anthology ON TIME.
Hello, Transmundaners.
I’m Ken Goldman, a former English and Film Studies teacher. I used to teach a course on Horror in Film & Literature, and it was pretty popular at Washington High School in Philadelphia. I would even have students who ‘stowed away’ in my class during their lunch periods just to watch the films and get my take on Horror. I showed classic horror, modern horror, creature feature stuff, psychological horror, slasher films, yada yada yada.
Now, I’m a semi-professional writer—or so I’d like to think. Can I brag a little? I’ve published over 915 stories, counting reprints, and written six books: three short story anthologies (YOU HAD ME AT ARGGH!, DONNY DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE, and STAR-CROSSED), one novella (DESIREE), and two novels (OF A FEATHER, and SINKHOLE). They’re easy to find if you Google the titles, and most are available on Amazon. Drop by and scream hello.
About me: I rotate between two homes, one in Penn Valley, Pennsylvania, and one at the Jersey shore. I guess, during the summer, I would qualify as a beach bum, although I spend much of my time at the beach ON my bum because I’m an avid reader. I’m an ‘Active’ status member of the Horror Writers Association, and I’ve been writing since I first picked up a pencil—or maybe it was a crayon. See, as a kid, I stuttered and needed a way to communicate my thoughts, so writing became important to me. I don’t stutter anymore, but writing remains important because it’s cheaper than therapy. And that leads me into my story, “The Last Days Of Leonard Cross.”
The tale mostly takes place in a therapist’s office because Leonard Cross has a unique problem. His life is out of sync, every day seeming a random day from different parts of Leonard’s Life. As he puts it, it’s “…like someone has taken film snips from my life and tossed them into the air, then somehow reedited everything and spliced them together in random order.” That’s a scary prospect because one day you could be a child and the next day an adult, then the following day a teenager—but you never know what age you will be until the new day begins. Is there a reason for this bizarre development in Leonard’s life? Oh yes! But I’m not going to spoil the fun here. It fits nicely into the ON TIME theme of the anthology, don’t you think.
My inspiration? Let’s go back to the stuttering. No child likes to feel so different that he can’t connect to, or communicate with, others in some meaningful way, and that was my circumstance when I was younger. Okay, I outgrew all that, but it was hell to go through at the time. I had speech therapy for a while, a big secret that I kept from my friends because—well, just because. Anyway, we meet Leonard Cross as a child playing baseball, and he’s desperately afraid of striking out and being shunned by others. Get it? Get it?
Like I said, writing is cheaper than therapy.
I’ve had recent short stories appear in these anthologies: Anthology Of Bizarro (“The Pimple On Silverman’s Ass”), Blood & Blasphemy (“The God Seeker”), Corners Of The World (”Frieda In Stone”), Horror U.S.A. – California (“Kissing Off Amber”), and due out by the time you read this: Little Boy Lost (“Killing Miss Pope.”) For more, check http://www.amazon.com/Kenneth-C.-Goldman/e/B004QVWTTE
Please feel free to comment on “The Last Days Of Leonard Cross.” I hope you enjoy it. Happy horrors!
ON TIME is coming in Summer 2020. Be sure to follow us on Amazon.
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