New Release: ALL THE THINGS YOU CANNOT SEE

Happy book birthday to All The Things You Cannot See: An Oceanic Horror Anthology, featuring my short story "Overboard," in which a pair of young brothers fall...well, you know, overboard. I've often wondered what would happen if someone fell off a cruise ship in the middle of the open ocean -- especially if they were lucky enough (or maybe it's unlucky) to survive the plummet. How long would it take before anyone realized what had happened? And how would anyone find survivors in a situation like that? The existential dread of that sort of scenario, and all the horrors, both real and imagined, it entails inspired my dark tale.

All The Things You Cannot See also features works by Chanel Harry, Rob Grimoire,

Laura Bilodeau, Eden Avery Blake, Christy Aldridge, D.L. Winchester, Chisto Healy,

Boe Healy, Leonardo J. Lamanna, and Desiree Horton.

Reviewer Milt Theodossiou had this praise for the anthology:

It's quite refreshing to find an anthology of thalassophobic horror which avoids Lovecraftian tropes and overused monster attacks, and goes for atmosphere and emotional depth instead. "Thalassophobia" is a just a big word for the fear of deep water, and several of the eleven stories in this book manage to instill that kind of scare you get when you're suddenly told you're swimming in waters three miles deep (extremely uncomfortable if you've experienced it yourself, a vertigo akin to "Don't look down!" when crossing a glass walkway).

To mention my favorites, for example: the opening story, Christy Aldridge's "Saltwater," is an unforgettable tale of grief horror, brilliantly written, whereas Chisto Healy's "Recurring Dream" develops into a revenge tale where the deep waters are those of guilt; S.E. Howard's "Overboard" is a delirious, heartbreaking story of two siblings finding themselves in the middle of the ocean after accidentally falling from a cruise ship (but it has its funny moments, as well); Desiree Horton's "Sea Dogs" combines novel deep sea biology with the anxiety-inducing possibility of submersible implosion, taking things into a rather different and highly ironic direction - all for the sake of science, of course; D.L. Winchester's "Sea Front Property" figures a guy buying a mining claim from an old miner at the top of a canyon, only to be told that it's a "ocean-front real estate" (whaaaa...?!); and Rob Grimoire's "The Air Between Us," another grief horror tale, brings the sea in the story as a weird allegory for healing.

Overall, this is a deeply satisfying sea horror anthology, demanding the attention of all serious horror fans.

All The Things You Cannot See is available here.