My latest novella is now available! It is a mythic creature feature with a monstrous elephant tearing through its center. I don’t know about you, but I think we all need more killer elephants in our lives.For a couple months after the release of my novel Cat Key I tried to think of a good creature-feature concept to serve as the basis of a novel or novella. No ideas would materialize, which any writer knows is a terrible feeling. Think being lost in a desert with no sustenance and no sense of where to go or how you even ended up there in the first place.

Maybe throw in some kind of humanoid beast tracking your scent in the distance for good measure.

That might be a bit dramatic, but it doesn’t feel great either way. Finally, I dug through some old dream-memory files as I often do. The great thing about story ideas is that they never really diminish, no matter how much time passes.

This particular story idea can be traced back to the dream of a nine-year-old me still riding the wave of euphoria sparked by Jurassic Park and the sci-fi/horror, creature-feature frenzy it whipped up.

In this dream, I watched a movie about killer elephants breaking out of a lab and slaughtering folks. Who knew what the exact concept or plot was, but I remember fearsome beasts with sharp tusks and glowing red eyes. The dream movie was called “Goric.”

I woke up and asked my mom if ‘goric’ was a real word, and she said she didn’t think it was –– but that elephants can GORE people with their tusks.

I had no idea the word ‘gore’ could function as a verb with that meaning, so, while ‘goric’ wasn’t a proper word, it suited the dream movie perfectly in a way…which was more than a little strange.

Anyway, I always wondered if I’d ever do something with the idea. Now, twenty-seven years later, Gory finally rears its scarred, dripping head. The story is more mythical and supernatural than sci-fi-entific, but the tusks and red eyes are present.

‘Goric’ didn’t quite make sense as a title. ‘Gore’ has no real ring to it.

But Gory…Now, that –– as gruesome adjective and colloquial epithet –– works just fine as the title of this story. My nine-year-old brain couldn’t quite get it right back in 1995–96, but that’s okay.

It’s never too late for a story to be born.