Richard H. Fay

I finished a wizardly fantasy story yesterday (November 4th), and sent it out into the cold, cruel world of publication submissions. Trying to follow the path many of my writer friends tell me I should follow, I sent it to a pro-venue. Well, it has already received rejection number one, and has been promptly sent off to pro-venue number two (more than likely to receive rejection number two).

Why am I going on about this, you might ask? Well, I think it might be interesting to see ...

My copies of David C. Kopaska-Merkels' Brushfires, the poetry collection that I did the cover art for, arrived in the mail yesterday. Yet again, I'm amazed by what my art looks like printed on a nice glossy cover. You see, I do my colouring digitally nowadays, and I rarely if ever see a completed piece actually printed up until it is printed in a publication. Viewing the image on a computer screen never does it justice. I noticed this with "A Leviathan Ascendant", the work that graced ...

I received word from the editor at House of Horror that the House of Horror Best of 2010 anthology has finally gone to print, which means that my nasty little horror cinquain "My Final Masterpiece" will be published once again. It first appeared in the December 2008 issue of Niteblade, then appeared in the April 2010 issue of House of Horror, and is now appearing in the HoH Best of 2010 anthology.

I may have said this already, but I'll say it again - I'm getting quite a ...

I have yet more November publications to announce. My poems "Life's Waning Season" and "Texas Stargazin'", my non-fiction article "Edward IV", and my illustrations "Edward IV/Fifteenth Century English Knight" and "Poleaxe of Edward IV", have all been published in the November 2010 Print Issue of Abandoned Towers. Buy a print copy or purchase the download and check 'em out!

"Life's Waning Season" is one of my rare forays into ...

My scifaiku "purring cat" has been published in the on-line version of the November 2010 Issue of Scifaikuest. I should also have another scifaiku/horrorku ("pale shadow") in the print version of the same issue. I'll post the details about that one once I receive my contributor's copy.

My prose fiction story "Vengeance of the Alpe" has been published in the All Souls' Night 2010 Issue of Hungur. Yes, you read that right, I said prose fiction! This actually happens to be a landmark publication for me. It's my first piece of prose fiction longer than flash fiction (about 2,800 words) to be published in any zine, ever. I hope it won't be my last.

"Vengeance of the Alpe" was inspired by the alpine folklore about the alpe (singular alp). In certain ...

My little piece of horror fiction about an oozing terror unleashed from within our own planet, "From Within the Earth", is now on-line at MicroHorror. Yes, this is prose fiction, not poetry. It was my entry in MicroHorror's 2010 Story Contest, which had the theme of "Space", as in the physical dimension. I tried to follow the path of past writers of weird tales with this bit of prose, since those are the sorts of tales I love so well.

Please feel free to leave ...

My horrorku "masque at midnight" has been posted (November 1st) in the tweet-length speculative poetry publication Microcosms. This one was supposed to be posted on the 29th of October, but Stephen's Twitter account was apparently down for a week, so the posting of the horrorku got postponed for a few days. Better late than never. Anyway, I can just add it to my huge list of November publications. Stay tuned, more to come! (I figure I had better split them up in separate posts. Otherwise, ...

My seasonal poem "Gathering of the Dead" has been published in the Halloween 2010 Issue of House of Horror. This one has been previously published; it originally appeared in the Halloween 2009 Issue of Tales from the Moonlit Path. However, even if you have already read it in TftMP, check it out again in House of Horror. I made a few minor corrections and alterations to the poem prior to sending it back out.The version in House of Horror is slightly different than the one published in ...

Three more of my dark speculative poems will be appearing in forthcoming issues of the web-zine Aphelion. Two are reprints, and one has appeared on my blogs but hasn't yet appeared in a zine. "The Accursed Castle", originally published in the 2008 issue of Champagne Shivers, is slated for publication in the December 2010 issue of Aphelion. "Who (or What) is at the Door?", a poem inspired by real-life encounters with the paranormal, is slated to appear in the February 2011 issue. ...

...may have been a bit of a mistake. Last night, I finished a dark speculative poem poem inspired by a creepy abandoned house around the corner from where I live. This morning, I performed the standard market search. A few paying markets seemed promising, until I came to the part in their guidelines which states that they take poems of fifty lines or less. The poem as it stands now has six stanzas of ten lines each, and I really don't think I could ditch one whole stanza. It would break the overall ...

shrouded skeletons
swaying amidst cobweb veils
seasonal decor

Copyright ? 2008 Richard H. Fay

Apparently, it's very, very, very wrong to use a racial or ethnic slur (or perhaps even to call a particular group "PC parrots"), but it's A-okay and a sign of extreme wit to refer to certain people as "incompetent wannabes", "Grade-A Five Star Morons", or "alpha-wannabe knuckle-draggers" (to name just a few examples of such denigrating tags I've seen flung about out there in the blogosphere).

In the mind of this Grade-A Five-Star moron, the ...

Spooks and Frights

By Richard H. Fay

Spectres take flight!
Phantoms and ghosts drift into sight.
Bogles and bogies,
Goblins and ghouls,
Join all strange things that go bump in the night.

Skeletons chuckle!
Graveyard moulds heave and buckle.
Creatures and critters,
Monsters and mutants,
Rise up slowly from the miry muckle.

Leaves fall and blow!
Corpse light candles flicker and ...

A reminder that items featuring my artwork can be found in both my own Azure Lion Productions Zazzle Store as well as the Abandoned Towers Zazzle Store. Each store features different artwork. In the Azure Lion Productions Store, you can find pieces like my Lancastrian, Yorkist, and Tudor Roses, Tentacled Face, and Vikings and Saxons. In the Abandoned Towers Store, you can find many of my illustrations published in the Abandoned Towers zine, as well as other pieces such as my Merfolk, Celtic Birds, ...