The Ghoulish Times | 03/26/23
The Ghoulish Times | 03/26/23
Abnormal Statistics - Crazy Schedules - 3 Eggs
Hello and welcome to the latest issue of The Ghoulish Times. My name is Max Booth III and I am losing my mind. I am typing up this newsletter during an extremely hectic period of my professional life, which I will get into in just a moment.
Disclaimer: This is a long issue. You might want to read it in your browser to avoid the email version cutting off halfway through.
First, if you missed the previous newsletter, we decided to release the digital edition of Bound in Flesh a month early for Trans Rights Readathon—for free. After posting about this last week, our local alt newspaper the San Antonio Current wrote up this super cool story about it
Paperback copies of Bound in Flesh actually arrived yesterday, and they look beautiful. Here’s a quick little video I posted on TikTok showing one off.
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Our editor, Lor Gislason, has also signed hundreds of author stickers for every paperback pre-ordered through our webstore.
Paperbacks can still be pre-ordered through our webstore HERE.
ABNORMAL STATISTICS
My new short story collection, Abnormal Statistics, officially released a couple days ago from Apocalypse Party. It consists of 10 reprints and 3 stories original to the collection, including a new 28,000-word novella called “Indiana Death Song” which I’m pretty excited (and, admittedly, nervous) is finally available for folks to read.
Here is the entire table of contents:
Indiana Death Song
You Are My Neighbor
Blood Dust
Fish
In the Attic of the Universe
Disintegration is Quite Painless
Scraps
Boy Takes After His Mother
Every Breath is a Choice
Munchausen
Abduction (Reprise)
Video Nasties
List of familicides in the United States (by decade)
“Abduction (Reprise)” and “List of familicides in the United States (by decade)” are the other two stories that aren’t reprints. It is only a coincidence that both of them incorporate parentheses in their titles.
The dedication page simply says I don’t know who this book is for. and I stand by that. This collection is deeply personal, almost on an embarrassing level—especially the opening novella. But it was something I needed to write. “Indiana Death Song” is about a young teen living in a hotel with his parents for several years. He is pulled out of school, he is isolated from his friends, and he sort of goes insane with depression, suicide ideation, and paranoia. At a certain point, he starts suffering from Truman Show Syndrome, which is indeed something I experienced under very similar circumstances around the same age. I’ve tried writing this novella for probably 15 years, and I am honestly relieved I was able to finish and publish it before exiting my 20s (I turn 30 this July).
Here is what Publishers Weekly had to say about it:
Click HERE to purchase the paperback through Bookshop.org. Click HERE to purchase the eBook.
I also commissioned Kelby Losack to produce an audiobook version. Here is the cover, which is a childhood photo of myself and a neighbor girl riding a toy jeep.
The best place to buy the audiobook is through Libro.fm. Click HERE to buy it through the Ghoulish Books-affiliate page. The audiobook will also eventually be generating everywhere else you can listen to audiobooks, but I’m not sure when. I’ve submitted the files. Sometimes it can take a while for every outlet to finish approving submissions.
THE ARC PARTY / THIS IS HORROR
I was recently a guest on a crossover episode of The ARC Party and This is Horror. This will actually be two episodes, but episode one is already live (I’m recording episode 2 later tonight with the fellas). You can watch it here:
GHOULISH TRAUMA
In the latest episode of GHOULISH, the undead host becomes the undead guest. I am interviewed by my friend and fellow author LP Hernandez about my new collection ABNORMAL STATISTICS, which is out now through Apocalypse Party. I hope you’re a fan of trauma, because this is the trauma episode, baby!
ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE FOLLOW-UP
On Friday, I drove up to Katy, TX with my friends Andrew Hilbert (author of XCRMNTMNTN) and Miguel Myers (host of the My Horror Confessional podcast) for an event at the Alamo Drafthouse. We sold a shit-ton of books, met some really cool people, and introduced The People Under the Stairs and The Greasy Strangler. We also each performed a reading on stage. Andrew read a story called “Nothing Bad Happened” and I read a brand-new story I wrote a couple days ago called “3 Eggs”. It is a very gross story that definitely made the crowd uncomfortable. However, they also laughed quite a bit, so I think I won them over. If you are a good newsletter reader, I will post the story in its entirety at the end of this issue, but only if you behave and read everything else first. Here are some pictures from the event:
UPCOMING EVENTS
Here are some other upcoming events that should be on your radar.
The Ghoulish Show (XCRMNTMNTN / ABNORMAL STATISTICS Book Launch!)
March 28, 8pm
Austin, TX
Radio Coffee & Beer
We will be celebrating the release of both Andrew Hilbert's XCRMNTMNTN (Ghoulish Books) and Max Booth III's ABNORMAL STATISTICS (Apocalypse Party) by performing fun, ghoulish material on stage. Special guests will be joining us (to be announced later)! Come down, grab a drink, buy a book, and celebrate all things spooky!!!
Bombay Beach Lit Fest
March 30-April 2
Bombay Beach, CA
The Bombay Beach Lit Fest is a no-tickets/no-sponsors/all-free festival featuring activism, environmental day, writing the art of sex, centering characters of color, and many, many unconventional conversations, music, and films. (Note: Although Ghoulish Books will not have a table at this event, one of our authors Michael Paul Gonzalez will be doing a live reading of his novel Beneath the Salton Sea on Friday, March 31.)
Scares That Care AuthorCon II
March 31-April 2
Williamsburg, VA
Doubletree By Hilton Williamsburg
A three-day celebration focusing on some of the best and brightest authors in the business. (Ghoulish Books will have a vendor table here.)
LIKE REAL (Book Launch)
April 1, 6pm PST
Glendale, CA
The Glendale Room
Readings and comedy from: Shelly Lyons, Ron Lynch, Tony Sam, Laura Kightlinger, Davey Johnson. Music accompaniment from Michael Mortilla Readings, comedy, book signing, books for purchase, and cookies. (If you can’t make the event, you can buy Shelly Lyons’s Like Real directly from Ghoulish Books.)
Ghoulish Book Festival
April 14-16
San Antonio, TX
Hermann Sons Home Association
A weekend-long book festival for horror fanatics founded by Ghoulish Books.
Tulsa LitFest
April 20-23
Tulsa, OK
Whitty Books
Tulsa LitFest brings together diverse literary artists and writers to collaborate and inspire, enriching the Tulsa community. The free festival includes events ranging from open mic nights and live readings to a small press book fair and a jazz show, presented in a variety of bookstores, taprooms and museums near downtown. (Ghoulish Books will have a vendor table only on Saturday April 22.)
OTHER UPDATES
Things have been pretty nuts lately, understandably. On top of preparing for all of the above events, we’ve also been hard at work with finalizing some upcoming titles for Ghoulish Books plus getting our new brick & mortar bookstore off the ground. Here is a giant fucking shelf we assembled last night:
Many people have expressed enthusiasm for the bookstore and have asked when we plan to open. I appreciate the excitement and am thrilled people want to come check it out. Right now, it’s a little hard to tell when exactly it’ll open other than “soon”. I think, right now, the plan will be to do a soft open within the next week or so, and then plan a more elaborate grand opening party with a food truck and live readings and other fun activities toward the end of April, once all of these other events are behind us.
Lori and I are getting married on Saturday, April 15th during the Ghoulish Book Festival, and we are only just now really getting around to uhhh sizing our fingers and shopping for rings. She has her dress already, and it’s beautiful. I need to figure out what the hell I’m going to wear still. Plus we need to get our marriage license from the county at some point. Andrew Hilbert will be officiating the actual wedding on Saturday. I think he’s going to dress as Dracula. I am not sure.
I am currently writing a novella for Cemetery Gates Media titled The Last Haunt: An Oral History of the McKinley Manor Massacre. It is a weird, experimental piece about an extreme haunted house attraction. Assuming I don’t fuck everybody over and not finish this in time, it should come out sometime this October. I’m excited about it.
I have another novel I’m about 45,000 words into titled She Creeps. It’s about vampires. It’s also about brothers. I have no idea when I’ll finish it. I thought I would have finished it last year, then a personal tragedy sorta crushed those plans. I don’t know what I’ll do with the novel when it’s complete. I don’t need to stress about that until it’s finished.
Screenplay wise, I need to find some time to work on revisions for the adaptation of Indiana Death Song so we can begin shopping it around. It’s definitely hard to find time to do anything right now, so it might be a couple months before I can take another pass through it. We are also currently shopping around a pilot script I wrote for my novel The Nightly Disease, plus the company that optioned Touch the Night two years ago continues to take it around Hollywood. Fingers crossed something there happens soon. We almost had something get greenlit with Peacock, but they decided to pass at the last second. Onward we go, I guess.
I am currently reading The Strange by Nathan Ballingrud and Burn You the Fuck Alive by B.R. Yeager and both are incredible.
“3 EGGS”
Okay, here is a very gross story I wrote recently. You will probably regret reading it. I apologize for nothing.
“3 Eggs”
by Max Booth III
MONDAY
Bob saw the tweet at 6:27 A.M. while sitting on the toilet. He had to be leaving within the next 20 minutes or he’d be late for his shift at the Halloween factory. It was a factory dedicated to manufacturing spooky props and decorations for the Halloween season. However, his job honestly isn’t relevant to this story, but it’s still a cool job, so I thought it would be fun to mention it. Plus it makes him seem more developed as a character, and I am told it is easier for readers to connect with developed characters compared to undeveloped characters. So there you go. He had a job at the Halloween factory. But that’s not important.
What is important, however, is what happened as he was making his daily bowel movement before going to the Halloween factory. He was scrolling his phone, pretending that he wasn’t emptying himself in the same room that he and his wife often brushed their teeth in, when the tweet popped up in his feed. It was posted by someone he wasn’t following. And nobody had even retweeted it, either. In fact, there had been zero interaction on it whatsoever. Yet for some reason Twitter thought it might be a tweet he would enjoy. The person who tweeted it had a chicken emoji for a username, which would make sense once he read the tweet.
This is what it said:
Hubby likes shoving soft-boiled eggs up my vagina (I can hold 3) and then I squat down and lay the eggs like a hen and hubby eats them coated with my juices
“What the heck,” Bob said aloud, and immediately finished his BM. He closed his phone and proceeded to wipe. He did not think about the tweet again until he was driving, where he was sure he had misread it. In the Halloween factory parking lot, he got out his phone again and looked at the tweet.
Hubby likes shoving soft-boiled eggs up my vagina (I can hold 3) and then I squat down and lay the eggs like a hen and hubby eats them coated with my juices
He had not misread it. “What the heck,” he said, then got out and clocked into his shift. There was no time to consider what this tweet might have meant. He had plastic skeletons to put together.
TUESDAY
Bob and his wife Bobetta were eating hot pockets and watching some true crime docu-series on Netflix. Bob’s hot pocket was cold on the outside and steaming hot in the inside. Bobetta’s hot pocket was the opposite. Sometimes life was truly mystifying.
“Hey,” Bob found himself saying, “I saw the strangest tweet yesterday.” He didn’t know why he was telling his wife about this. He hadn’t even realized he’d been thinking about it until he started talking.
Bobetta asked him what the tweet said, and Bob recited the tweet verbatim without having to look at his phone.
Hubby likes shoving soft-boiled eggs up my vagina (I can hold 3) and then I squat down and lay the eggs like a hen and hubby eats them coated with my juices
Bobetta made a face like she was going to vomit. “Why would you tell me that while we are eating hot pockets?”
“I don’t know,” Bob said. “I’m sorry.”
WEDNESDAY
Bobetta was surprised to find Bob in the kitchen when she woke up. Usually he would have left for his job at the Halloween factory by now.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “Is everything okay?”
“Oh yeah,” Bob said. He was in the process of preparing a big breakfast. “Everything is fine. I called in and told my boss I’d be a little late. That I had a doctor’s appointment I forgot about.”
“What appointment?” his wife asked.
“That was a lie. There is no appointment. I just thought we hadn’t enjoyed a good breakfast together in a while. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
“Yeah, I suppose so,” Bobetta said, and sat at the table, then noticed next to her cup of coffee a small container consisting of three soft boiled eggs.
Bob noticed his wife noticing the eggs, then let out a nervous laugh. “Hey, remember that tweet? Hahahaha. Remember? Hahaha.”
Hubby likes shoving soft-boiled eggs up my vagina (I can hold 3) and then I squat down and lay the eggs like a hen and hubby eats them coated with my juices
Bobetta said, “You’re disgusting, Bob.”
Bob said, “Hahaha.”
THURSDAY
Bob did not go to the Halloween factory at all on Thursday. He didn’t even call his boss with a fake excuse. He simply sat at the kitchen table and waited for Bobetta to wake up. He had collected three new soft-boiled eggs from the fridge and had been looking at them for so long his eyes had begun aching.
Bobetta came down to the kitchen and gasped at her husband.
“Bob,” she said, “what is going on? What are you doing?”
“Why would she tweet that?” he asked. “Why would anyone want to do that?”
“Do what?”
He pushed the three soft-boiled eggs across the table.
Hubby likes shoving soft-boiled eggs up my vagina (I can hold 3) and then I squat down and lay the eggs like a hen and hubby eats them coated with my juices
“Oh Bob, are you serious?”
“It’s driving me crazy.”
“Sometimes people just like to be gross,” she said.
He looked up at her like a little puppy dog. “But what if I like to be gross?”
She took a step back. “Do you…?”
And Bob shrugged. “I don’t know. How would I know?”
“I don’t think this is healthy, Bob.”
“Can’t we try?” Bob asked. “Please, just once…?”
“Bob, are you fucking with me?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said.
“I’m not shoving three soft-boiled eggs up my vagina.”
“Can’t you just consider it?”
She turned away from him and walked out of the kitchen. Bob remained at the table looking at the eggs for the rest of the day and night. He could not think about anything else.
FRIDAY
“Okay, goddammit,” Bobetta said. She was standing in the kitchen, looking at her sleep-deprived obsessed pervert of a husband. He was already late for Friday’s shift. Three shifts in a row. At this rate the Halloween factory was going to terminate him. “If I do this, you have to promise that this is a one-time thing, and that afterward you’ll go to the Halloween factory and beg for your job back.”
Bob nodded like a zombie. “I promise.”
They laid down some dish towels on the floor. This was going to be messy. That was the only thing they both could agree on.
“I don’t think I can fit three of these things inside me, Bob,” she said.
And he kissed her on the lips and said, “Let’s just take it one egg at a time.”
SATURDAY
Bob woke up that Saturday morning depressed. The previous day had been one of the best days of his entire life, yet it wasn’t enough. He had this itch, this desire that he couldn’t quite squash. He had eaten the three eggs, and they had been heavenly, but somehow he needed something else. Something more intense. It wasn’t even about the eggs, he realized as he brushed his teeth. It was about the juices. The eggs were the lucky ones. They got to be inside his wife. They got to be drowned by the juices. They got to be consumed. That was what Bob wanted. Bob wanted to be one of those eggs. He wanted to be swallowed from head to toe into his wife’s vagina.
But that was crazy. Even he could recognize that. A man didn’t crawl into his wife. A man wasn’t a soft-boiled egg. These things simply did not happen. He was just delirious. High off the previous day’s juices. Besides, Bobetta would never allow him to climb inside her. She had drawn the line at three eggs. An entire human would be out of the question, even if that human happened to be her husband. If he even brought up something as ridiculous as this idea, she would leave him without a second thought. She would call the cops. They would drag him away to the looney bin.
Bob would not ask his wife if he could crawl inside her vagina because only a crazy person would ask something like that, and Bob was not a crazy person. He was a husband who sometimes liked gross things, and there was nothing wrong with that.
Bob was content not being an egg. Most people were not eggs and they lived life perfectly happy. Bob could be like one of them. He did not have to crawl inside of his wife. Everything would be okay.
SUNDAY
Bob shook his wife awake at 5:00 A.M. and said, “Honey, I have to talk to you about something.”
Okay, that’s it for this week. You can support us on Patreon, browse the books in our webstore, and follow us on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter (PMMP | Ghoulish Tales | Ghoulish podcast | Ghoulish Books | personal).
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See you next time, ghouls.