The Shroud Underground

I'd welcome the opportunity to get to know you all a little better, so please post your introduction under this topic. I'll start.

My Name is Tim Deal and I am 40 years old and living in Milton NH in a log home on five and half acres of land out in the woods. I am married and have a 14 year-old son from a previous marriage that lives with me full time. He is without a doubt the coolest "kid" in the world. His passion is snowboarding and skateboarding, and like his dad, is a huge fan of classic punk rock such as Minor Threat, Dead Kennedys, Bad Religion, Fugazi, The Misfits, etc.

My Beautiful wife Jenn is six months pregnant with a boy who we have decided to name Seamus. We are, obviously very excited. However the prospects of being a 40-year-old father to an infant is a bit daunting.

In addition to being the editor and publisher of Shroud, I am a writer/analyst for a large well-established publishing firm located just outside of Washington DC. I telecommute from home and travel often for this job.

Prior to working as an analyst I was a police officer here in New Hampshire, and was in the Army for a total of 16 years, first as an infantryman in the 2/504 Parachute Infantry Regiment, then in Military Intelligence in a variety of duty stations.

Despite my background I tend to be pretty dang liberal, while advocating for people's constitutional rights.

I love music, film, hiking, geocaching, writing, dogs, nature, German Weizen, questioning authority, playing guitar, getting underwater, and traveling.

I think that almost covers it for me.

Oh, here is a pic of our dogs. A German Shepherd, a Boxer, and a puppy of unknown breed. You can see how they absolutely MUST be in direct contact with my wife at all times. They are her evil minions:

Hi, Tim, et al.,

John Bushore here. I'm a writer from the Great Dismal Swamp in Chesapeake VA. I work as a building controls guy for a local school system and usually spend my lunch hour on writing forums, so I'm glad to see this one started.

I'm, er, a couple of years older than Tim. Don't worry about having a kid at 40, Tim, my daughter was born when I was that age and I survived. She's 21 now. I also have a son, 24 and a wife of 34 years, age unmentioned. I live on 3 acres of former swampland that was recovered in the 1800's and there's enough swamp left that we see the occasional bear in the yard. On this flat hunk of dirt, we keep 3 horses, chickens, geese, turkeys, cats, a dog and my personal buddy, a 3-foot green iguana named Banana-Boat Bob.

I've had dozens of stories and poems accepted for publication in magazines and anthologies, including a story in Shroud's new BENEATH THE SURFACE anthology. I write in all genres, but I'm proud to say that 2 of my more macabre stories are in textbook anthologies used to teach Gothic and Horror Literature. My novel, FRIENDS IN DARK PLACES, was put out by Sam's Dot Publishing in 2006. If you want to know more about that sort of stuff, my website is listed below.

See you all around the forum,

JohnB

John, that is very cool. I used to live in VA beach and Norfolk which I believe are not too far from you. We plan on getting a couple horses in the not so distant future. The Iguana, I am not so sure about

Howdy Tim and John. I'm from the backwoods of Americus, Georgia. I'm currently a librarian; I was the managing editor of a small newspaper in Cordele and served as a correctional officer. I've been writing for ten years and have met many interesting people in the horror community. I look forward to this forum. John, I just checked out your site. Friends in Dark Places looks like just my type of read.

I'm as happily married as a man can be and have one son, Jake. I recently got named as an honorable mention for Tim's MySpace flash fiction contest for "The Devil Calls," and my story "Bad Billy" will be appearing in the October edition of Necrotic Tissue.

I look forward to meeting everyone.

I'm Scott McCoy, I use R. Scott McCoy for my writing and professional life because my first name is Richard. Scott was my mom's choice, not mine and I have been called Scott by family from birth. This identity issue may explain my skewed view of the world.

I'm 41, married with 2 daughters and I have three good-sized dogs. My wife is currently stay at home and my girls are 7 & 4. The dogs are 12, 9 & 2.

I am a Chief Security Officer for a big company in Minneapolis Minnesota. That's a fancy title for in charge of physical and IT security.

I went from High School to the army and was an Explosive Ordnance Disposal Tech. (Another reason for a skewed view). I did 4 got out and spent 10 more in the reserve as an Interrogator (Russian linguist) and Psychological Operations Specialist (ahhh, now the twisted picture is complete).

I used to have a lot of hobbies, but now focus on my family, writing, reading and publishing.

I write non-fiction dealing with security issue, dark fiction mostly with some humor. I also publish an ezine called Necrotic Tissue. I believe that there aren't enough horror markets, and that none of us are in competition. There are some many good writers out there and while many markets claim they accept and publish horror along with several other genres, most have a limited view on what is horror.

Hi everyone. My name is Phil Kuhlman. I call myself an "Aspiring Horror Writer" simply because I haven't been published yet. I'm a 26 year old former professional Stagehand for everything from the San Antonio Spurs to Aerosmith and Ozzy Osbourne during my time working at the Alamodome in San Antonio. I continued the trade when I moved to Kerrville, Texas, tiny little place just north of SA and westish of Austin.

About a year ago I woke up paralyzed by what turned out to be a tumor that had attached to my spine following two nasty whiplash injuries a year before. So I worked with this broken neck/back with a tumor eating the five vertebrae for a full year before it paralyzed me. Thankfully the surgery to rebuild the 5 high-spine vertebrae was a success and I am finally able to walk with a cane pretty well. Sadly I can't do the stagehand work anymore, but I have gotten back to acting at the local community theater where I was employed before this whole mess.

The chemo worked well too, no more cancer and no more grapefruit sized tumor, but I'm just now getting over the side effects of the chemo to where I can write again. Chemo brain sucks, horrible side effect. Makes you feel like you're ADD and confused all the time.

I'm currently working on a novel/novella, not sure how long it'll be till it's done, called The Abyss Looks Back. It's a lovecraft inspired detective story, but in no way is it a cthulhu mythos story. I've also written a handful of other short stories, one of which I submitted to this magazine a month back or so. They may not be art, but as long as someone enjoys them in some fashion then I'm doing my job as a story teller.

If you get the wild urge, or get incredibly bored you can find them at http://www.writerscafe.org/writers/Phil%20Kuhlman/

Can't wait to get some of the anthology books Shroud has worked on, I've read a few of the writer's listed before, and initially heard about the magazine from Nate Kenyon, great guy. I love that shroud is trying to be a good horror magazine and not saying it's horror when it's really an Anne Rice/whiney emo-kid fanmag.

Thanks for reading! Hopefully you aren't bored to tears.

Hey Tim and everyone else.

My name is Steve Vernon. I've been a writer for an awfully long time, with work sold to such magazines and markets as The Horror Show, Cemetery Dance, Flesh & Blood, Horror Garage, Karl Edward Wagner's Year's Best Horror XIX, Hot Blood XIII, Not One of Us and more other places than I can remember.

My latest genre work is coming out from Bad Moon Books. A novella called Plague Monkey Spam. My first novel is coming out from Five Star Press this summer. It's called Gypsy Blood.

I am also a writer of ghost stories and have one collection out from Nimbus entitled Haunted Harbours: Ghost Stories from Old Nova Scotia. At last count we've sold about 4000 copies. The follow-up collection, Wicked Woods: Ghost Stories from Old New Brunswick will be coming out from Nimbus sometime in April.

I am currently working on a novella for a four novella collection of weird westerns for Cemetery Dance - along with Brian Keene, Tim Lebbon and Tim Curran. The book is entitled Four Rode Out and will probably reach the market sometime in 2009.

I've got a short short in Shroud Magazine, issue #2.

Thus endeth the infomercial. For more details check out my website.
http://stevevernon.ca

Howdy Folks,
Names Nathaniel Lambert, 30 years old, married, 2 kids (Whom I'm convinced are a perfect match for the leading role in The Omen... if they ever remake it again.).
I've had too many jobs to remember, all the way from training sled dogs to developing vaccines. I had a great job as a network administrator, and then woke up one morning with the crazy idea that I wanted to go back to school to get a PhD in Immunology. My wife was really happy about that one.
Nice to see a few of the members with a military background. I joined the Marine Corps to work on computers. Got sent to the infantry (Guess what. There's no freakin' computers in a fighting hole!), and was ordained a gunteam leader. Did my four and split.

Always been a HUGE fan of the horror genre. Over the last few years, I've started writing myself. Mostly rejections, but you can find my cave drawings here and there: Necrotic Tissue, Twisted Twins, Microhorror.com, and Shroud #2.

I've also cowritten a novella "SIDESHOW PI" with my man Kevin Sweeney. It will be serialized and posted FOR FREE, MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS by Graveside Tales.
SIDESHOW PI

P.S.
Steve Vernon is a kick ass author!

Nathaniel Lambert wrote:
P.S.
Steve Vernon is a kick ass author!

As are you man! Looks like we have quite a few kick-ass authors on board!

Hello everyone, nice to see some familiar names/faces.
I'm going to go read some of the other threads for a bit.
Thank you for the invitation Timothy.

~Angeline

Hi everyone. My name is Rob Davies. I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with my wife Sara, two cats Lilith and Tiamat, and several hernias worth of books. I write stuff my mother hates. Mostly short stories, but I am currently working on a novella about circus freaks and the eruption of Krakatoa. My stories have appeared/will appear in Interzone, Weird Tales, and Shroud. My website and blog can be found at www.robertedavies.com.

Welcome Angeline!!! Hey Rob! Thanks for joining us!

To the Shroud Crowd:

Hey all!

My name is Sheldon S. Higdon and I have been breathing for 36 years. Although I "shouldn't" be here...but I am. (A story for another time by those who pay by beer.)

My wife, Linda, and I currently live in Pittsburgh where Zombies still lumber through the streets eating the living when they can. The sounds of children do not echo through our home but that may soon change...the discussion has been set upon the table. Personally, I'd rather scare them than raise them but who else will support me when I'm old and senile, so children are now in discussion.

I'm currently doing an internship for a magazine. I've had some short stories published and have had screenplays placed in contests. I was an honorable mention in Shroud Magazine's MySpace Flash Ficiton Contest as well with the entry entitled, Entombed.

If you'd like then take a look at the following article that I wrote about four years ago about my ordeal with writer's block: http://www.absolutewrite.com/fun/transf ... ggling.htm
or check out my MySpace page at: www.myspace.com/sheldonhigdon

But when I'm not writing, I'm thinking about writing. And when I'm not thinking about writing, I'm reading. And when I'm not reading, I'm watching every film ever made...okay...I'm watching a lot of films, especially horror.

So there you go, the short and sweet version. If need be I can always give you the longer version that has many more interesting tidbits but hopefully this was interesting too. I look forward to meeting all of you through these forums or through my myspace page.

Just remember: We all live in a world where demons and ghosts haunt our waking hours, but it's the ones that dwell within that are the ones that keep us up at night.

Stay Evil,

Sheldon S. Higdon

Many thanks for the invite to njoin this forum.

It looks like I might be the first Brit to join this forum - if I am I certainly hope I'm not the last!

I've been writing on and off since the late sixties. I had my first sale to the old Pan Book of Horror anthologies back in 1970 - which is seeing a reprint in Cemetery Dance and John Pelan's Century's Best Horror Fiction sometime in the near future. I've had storiesin a variety of places since then, including Corgi Books, Sphere Books, Doubleday, DAW, etc and in magazines like Aboriginal Science Fiction, Fear, World of Horror, Fantasy Tales and, soon, Dark Discoveries and Dark Wisdom. John Pelan will be publishing a collection of my stories under his Midnight House imprint later this year, The Lurkers in the Abyss.

At the moment I am concentrating on writing novels, with one completed last year, a second completed to first draft stage, and a third of a new one still being written.

I'm a member of the HWA and the BFS (British Fantasy Society).

It's nice to see a few familiar names and faces already on this forum.

Hope things go well for it.

David

Sheldon and David,

Welcome! It's wonderful to have you both join us on the board. Sheldon you'll be relocating back up to New England soon eh?

David, if I am not mistaken, don't you also own a bookshop in England?

Tim