At last issue #15 of Morpheus Tales, a UK quarterly magazine of horror and science fiction, has arrived!

“It’s a beautiful casket.”
The story begins as a boy finds a key around his dead father’s neck as he lays dear old dad to rest. Curious as to what secrets the key holds he begins a surreal journey through the present while using clues from his past to ultimately arrive at an answer he surely wishes he never found.

My story also brags art from the talented Vladimir Petkovic.

A free preview of the issue can be found at:
http://issuu.com/morpheustales/docs/mt15preview

You can order the issue here:
http://www.morpheustales.com/

The cover art of #15 reminds me of the cover Berni Wrightson did for the Spiderman graphic novel “Hooky.”

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,100 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 52 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Being the holidays and having just suffered a computer crash I have taken the easy way out and ripped another top 10 list from LitReactor available at the following link:

http://litreactor.com/columns/the-top-10-book-to-film-adaptations-that-were-actually-good

1. Jurassic Park
By Michael Crichton/Adaptation by Steven Spielberg

2. Fight Club
By Chuck Palahniuk/Adaptation by David Fincher

3. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
By Ken Kesey/Adaptation by Milos Forman

4. Trainspotting
By Irvine Welsh/Adaptation by Danny Boyle

5. American Psycho
by Bret Easton Ellis/Adaptation by Mary Harron

6. Batman Begins and The Dark Knight
Created by Bob Kane, written by others/Adaptation by Christopher Nolan

7. The Shining
by Stephen King/Adaptation by Stanley Kubrick

8. Bringing out the Dead
by Joe Connelly/Adaptation by Martin Scorsese

9. Memento Mori
By Jonathan Nolan/Adaptation by Christopher Nolan (as Memento)

10. The Godfather
By Mario Puzo/Adaptation by Francis Ford Coppola

My personal favorites are:

FIGHT CLUB – Both the book and movie are fantastic and the movie makes changes in all the right places that work. Great soundtrack, great everything.

THE GODFATHER – The movie was better than the book in my opinion and the book was awesome.

THE SHINING – I can’t beleive King doesn’t like this movie.

BATMAN – As long as the movie was by Nolan it’s good. He captured the struggle between the Dark Knight and the Joker beautifully.

One movie that didn’t make the list was CLOCKWORK ORANGE. Another movie that made a few changes that worked well on film, like leaving out the last chapter.

One of my favorite books that I’d love to see as a movie is THE PHYSIOGNOMY by Jeffrey Ford. If you haven’t read it, please do so. It’s time to make this gem into a film.

My favorites of the group:

2. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, 1953
“It was a pleasure to burn.”

4. The Gunslinger, Stephen King, 1982
“The man in Black fled across the Desert, and the Gunslinger followed.”

5. The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien, 1937
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

See them all here:

http://litreactor.com/columns/the-top-10-best-opening-lines-of-novels

My dark fiction piece on a lost soul floating his way through life and discovering what he may or may not be through various mundane every day occurrences has once more been rejected.

Originally declined by Pseudopod the editor gave me the following feedback : “I really liked the style of this piece, and the tone is great, but I didn’t really care for the way the
narrator deals with his ……. Finding out that ……just didn’t deliver the impact it really
needed to.”

Then I sent it to Morpheus Tales and the editor said: “we enjoyed reading your story we do not feel the material is right for Morpheus Tales and unfortunately we cannot use the material offered. We liked your writing style, but felt the story could only end one of two ways and it was too easy to predict….”

I deleted some plot reveals from the feedback above, but taking what the editors told me I added some depth to the main character and an extra twist or two making the ending much less predictable. Apparently, the changes weren’t enough for the fine people at Apex Magazine, so onward to another publication!

I stumbled across the work of Jason A. Hite on the internet. This guy is making some way cool stuff, as a sculpter extraordinaire. His work is like Clive Barker, MC Escher, and HR Giger got together and had some sort of magical lovechild.

I love his stuff, if only had the cash I would populate my office with his craft s I find it rather inspirational. Rather than me blather on about his creations take a look for yourself:

http://www.hitestudios.com/#!

Everyone’s A Critic Part II:

I’ll share some of the comments from “Cookers” my story that revolves around a small family traveling through a wasteland filled with man-eating plants and legions of super heated undead. I’ll leave out comments that include spoilers

Here’s a link to the story:

http://www.talesofworldwarz.com/stories/2010/08/10/cookers-by-matt-piskun/

The Bad:
OK…believe it or not…there were NO negative comments. Huzzah, mead and salted meats for all!

The Good:
omg! i am blown away by the amount of good stories on this site! nice one Matt, the cookers is seriously intense and entertaining. =) much like the other writers i am hoping you will keep adding more to this story.

That…was…AWESOME.

This sotry is out of this world yet never fails to make that human connection.
The best stories use the environment of its worlds
to drive a point into that mystery we know as the human soul.
This is the best example ive come across on this site.
Thanks Matt, i hope you make this a series..
Id really like to know what happens to the characters.
I really liked grandma, if you turn this into a novel………..
Thanks to all the writers, no the wordsmiths on this site.

Just killer. Nice take and VERY well written. Can’t wait for more… hopefully.

CREEPY,GROSS,TWIZTED,WELL WRITTEN WHERE WE CAN PICTURE THE CHARACTERS IN OUR MINDS OF WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE.
A VERY GOOD JOB

Definitely a diff. take on “zombies”. Reminiscent of “The Road” & the animal zombies of those books by Keene & I kinda saw the cannibalization part from the 1st mention of them eating but very good w/brief backstory & good action scenes depictions. This site is great not to add just typical zombie stories but all kinds. Thanks all authors

Wow,
Just…wow. The world-setting was an original twist, while borrowing in the best sense from I am Legend in a couple ways, and the characterization/byplay between grandmother and Brie was both intense and savagely touching..Awesome, awesome story. Bravo!

And the Greatest Comment of All:

holy fucking hell up the ass with a chainsaw that was an awsome story dude please write some more

Feel free to take a read and write your own!

Just finished 2 more Chuck books:

Diary: Misty Wilmot is a once promising artist who is now a waitress at a tourist resort as her husband lies in a comma after a suicide attempt. She quickly learns everything is not at it seems and that she may simply be a pawn in deep, dark conspiracy. I really liked the concept here but the story didn’t grab me that much. You are either a fan, or not a fan, of his writing and I happen to be a big fan, so I did enjoy the ride anyway. I did like the ending which contained the usual Palahniuk twists and turns and it really elevated the book for me from average to above average. Keep in mind the ending of Beautiful Monsters did the exact opposite.

Snuff: I enjoyed the whole ride on this one. The plot on this gem is that an aging porn star plans to go out with a bang by setting the world record for the largest gang bang. You soon learn why she is really doing this as you learn the reasons for her assistant and three of the actors, who wait their turn, for being there, as well. Oh, and one of them may want to kill her. Great read this book was and don’t let the porn aspect throw you off from reading it. While there are some graphic descriptions there was actually very little actual sex in the novel. The only thing that kept this book from being one of the greats, in my opinion, is that once the book ended there was really no real resolution to any of the characters plights. It still clocks in high on my Chuck reads and I can’t wait for the movie to come out.

I rank my favorites as follows:

Lullaby
Choke
Snuff
Beautiful Monsters
Diary
Haunted

Next up for me, Fight Club.

After months of writing a longer piece, in which I’m currently soliciting input for a third draft, and re-writing a few recently rejected pieces I have found inspiration for a new story.

I was listening to “Hexagon” by Jason Rizos on Pseudopod.org (the very ones who published Infestation by yours truly) and it hit me. The story revolved around bees which then got me thinking about Colony Collapse Disorder, one of natures more ominous mysteries at the moment. I got to thinking about what it meant for the buzzing little bastards and then what it would mean if applied to the human condition….and would it be a good or a bad thing?

Thus I present to you “Untitled Work That I started Today Which I hope Won’t Suck.” I’ll keep you posted on its progress or lack there off.

And in case you haven’t checked it out yet, here’s the link to “Infestation”:

http://pseudopod.org/2009/06/05/pseudopod-145-infestation/

I was fortunate enough to touch base with Vladimir Petkovic who illustrated my short story “The Key” coming up in Morpheus Tales.

Morpheus Tales is of on the UK’s finest Horror Magazines and I am pumped to be published in its pages. However, we need to wait until January of 2012 to see it in print. I can’t wait.

I love the interpretation that Vladimir has made of a scene in my story. Obviously I can’t get into it now but come 2012 I’ll be happy to go over the scene and the gorgeous illustration.

Vladimir is a talented dude. Check out his work here (I also added him to my blogroll):

http://vladimirpetkovic.webs.com/