Here's the first part of a trilogy created and posted on Youtube courtesy of The Metal Crypt radio show and Skullvines Press from a guest spot I had not long ago. Check it out. It's cool, but I can't stand listening to my own voice......

TO ALL HORROR READERS, AS WELL AS WRITERS, AND TO EVERYONE

We’ve all got something to sell and news to tell:

BLACK BED SHEET/DIVERSE COMPENDIUM NEWSLETTER: FEB 2009....
All things Grabowsky and then some.....

WWW.DOWNWARDEN.COM....

“Nick’s writings is smells.”

---something a serious meth abuser once told me in front of a karaoke bar, after he convinced me he had read one of my late ‘80’s horror paperbacks, and I asked him for a blurb of praise if I offered him a cigarette.  I don’t know what it means, but it’s funny.....
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Something to sell:....

RED WET DIRT, folks…..it’s brand-spanking new and kick-ass.  Its price is economy-sensitive.  It’s available everywhere.  I’m very proud of it.  Given the chance, I’d shove it all down your throats and you’d thank me for it afterwards, each of you, and shower me with wows, to which I’d respond by putting out another newsletter and thanking you for making it worth all that time of drinking and chain smoking.  You should see the trailer if you haven’t yet.  I’m also putting together a CD of Red Wet Dirt-inspired music performed by independent bands.  This release and the upcoming special edition of The Everborn are what I’ll be pushing this year, and I’ll be spreading it on thick.  Both are the best I’ve ever written.  Like, in my life.   

What’s RED WET DIRT?   Introducing three short stories & three novellas: While on vacation, a young man's fiancé becomes a heart-collecting Yuletide Thing on Christmas Eve. Get stuck in traffic when The Freeway Reaper claims another soul. A suburban family is plagued by a horde of were-rats. Special Agent Sam Cross, mortally wounded by a Jamaican specter, journeys into a psychedelic Festival of Fallen Souls in search of a supernatural healer whose lover's touch brings in contrast instant death. A legendary flesh eater arrives on the shores of an ancient Minoan city, infecting its population, beginning with a teenage boy's father who's summoned by the pompous king to become an undead garbage disposal. In Red Afterworld, an ex juvenile preacher gets his childhood wish of becoming a vampire when he's recruited into a male-only biker fraternity and finds himself one of the few survivors of global nuclear war, discovers a time portal in the Arizona desert with the hope of saving the world, and finds true love. Including extra minor works from the author's youth and the short screenplay Cutting Edges, the basis for an upcoming film and the author's directorial debut, Red Wet Dirt is to die for and is destined to become a classic way beyond its genre!....

-----so says the description that’s going around, taken from the back of the book.
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News to Tell:....

BLACK BED SHEET BOOKS....

I am proud to announce my small traditional publishing company, specializing in horror fiction, has taken flight.  Here are some particulars, in the sort of way Writer’s Market would show it:....

Black Bed Sheet Books/Diverse Media

Roseville, CA.  Email:  downwarden(at)earthlink.net  Acquisitions:  c/o Acquisitions Department.  Estab. October 2008.  Publishes hardcover and trade paperback originals and reprints.  Publishes 10-15 titles per year.  Receives 40% of books from first-time authors; 95% from unagented writers.  Pays average of 12% royalty on wholesale price.  Does not yet offer advance.  Publishes book up to one year after acceptance, with an average of 4-5 months.  Accepts simultaneous submissions.  Publishes fiction and nonfiction of all types, but specializes in horror/fantasy fiction.....

Recent titles:  Blood Bar by Norm Applegate; Grave Whispers by Ryan B. Clark; Thoughts of Unbridled Black by Jake Istre, Flatty Kat Astray by Phyllis Haupert.....

In the works:  a MICHAEL MYERS anthology!....

We’re accepting queries/submissions.  Check out the Black Bed Sheet website at  www.downwarden.com/blackbedsheet , take a look around and join the MESSAGE BOARD!....
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Come to think of it, we’ve updated the Diverse Compendium at www.downwarden.com, with detailed news, specials, clips, and NICK READS & REVIEWS is catching up with that backlog of books to review.  Keep an eye out for the recipe for MICHAEL MYERS PIE at Wicked Eats. 

ADVERTISE WITH US!  Downwarden.com has a new sidebar on all its major pages where monthly ad space is dirt cheap.  Inquire for details.

WWW.DOWNWARDEN.COM  ---the official site of all things Grabowsky, and then some.....

WWW.DOWNWARDEN.COM/BLACKBEDSHEET  ---“Publishers of exemplary literature, fiction & non.”

To all horror writers, large and small, big press, small press, even smaller press, self-published, not even published at all:

In my youth, my dad would every once in awhile take me fishing off any given pier in the Pacific Ocean off Southern CA.....Newport, Huntington, a few others.  He'd wake me up super early, we'd salvage enough twinkies and sandwiches to fill an Igloo, get our bait, drive, find a nice spot amongst the other fisher people there doing what we were about to do, and then cast our lines and do it.............sitting there for hours trying to catch something, among countless others doing the same thing, rooting for one of us that brought in something big, wowing over the guy with his little daughter who caught something so tiny they threw it back but nonetheless it was still quite a spectacle....it was all a thrilling experience for me.  A couple of times, we caught a nice one.  Other times, somebody else did, and it was bigger than mine and others took photographs.  Some talked about the big ones that got away, and you could never really know for sure if they were telling the truth.  One time, a fight broke out between two of the fisher people, and I had to move out of their path.  I forgot what happened with that;  either they settled their differences, had to be escorted out, or just stayed away from each other.  I guess it didn't matter....if they didn't cease to exist sometime afterwards, they had to still be fishing, somewhere, eventually, if that's what they love to do.

The way I see it, from within the industry and without, down to the smallest aspiring horror writer, from the Kings to the Keenes to the most noble amongst us down to the guy in Nebraska who's horror's biggest fan but just can't get past chapter number three in his hoped-for debut novel, we're all of us fishing on a pier with a box full of twinkies and some bait we hope will catch us a big one.  Maybe you catched a big one already, maybe you have a long history of award-winning big ones we all love or aspire towards, maybe you're constantly asking those who caught a big one just what bait they used.  We've all had our lines in the water, all sitting at that very long pier doing what we strive to do best, and as far as I'm concerned we're all in this together, trying to do the same goddamn thing.

Write horror.  And hope people like it. 

Maybe you're not serious enough, and you'd just as well take your fishing pole and go home to something more suitable to what you really want, towards a direction in your life just as noteable.  I'm talking to the ones who want to stay, as well as to the ones who have stayed there and done very well for themselves.....

We're all on the same pier, always fishing, fishing for that first one, fishing for more, and it's a long-ass pier.  Let's make this pier the best fucking pier the book industry has ever seen, turn it into the 2-plus bookcase section at Barnes & Noble the horror section well deserves and hasn't seen for a long time, turn the genre on its heels and make the reading public love us.  There's desire for it.  There are many people out there who love horror and just won't read.  Let's change that.   Let's nurture each other for the love of horror and its written word, and embrace each other in this art form and set aside any differences you may have, speak to the public in one loud, clear, decadent voice. 

We will take over.

And who am I?  Nothing really but just another fisherman.  And I embrace all of you others.  I'm a horror writer, and I'm damn proud of being so.  No matter what else I've done, I've been a horror writer all of my life, as fate would have it, and will die being one.  Every last one of you suit my cause and are my kin.

Let's support each other.

Peace.

---Nick