THE CARS greatest hits... and I'm singing along to every word. If not that, then any of DEVO's early 80s albums... and again, I'm singing along to every word.

Just read and formatted the next two "Your Favorite Author's Favorite Author" monthly installments. @patrickbarb.bsky.social is doing such a great job with this interview series and I'm honored to get to publish it via Shortwave Magazine.

Big news today!

Shortwave Hardcover Sale - 20% off for one week only! Use code HC20 during checkout! Shop all Hardcovers here: shop.shortwavepublishing.com/collections/... cc @lyndseycroal.bsky.social @gemmafiles.bsky.social @toddkeisling.com @alandistro.bsky.social

The days I can spend designing book covers and interiors, with Bowie cranked up, are better than the days I can't.

A rare morning getting to work on my own writing. Short story edits are due soon, so I'm buried in those until lunch.

I see there’s a lot of cover art talk going on today. Have you seen the amazing cover @louceph.com did for The Writhing, Verdant End???? No AI there!!! And great lettering by @alandistro.bsky.social!!!

Cover reveal! We worked with the incredibly talented @louceph.com for this illustration and @alandistro.bsky.social for the typography. THE WRITHING, VERDANT END features weird eco-horror stories by @coreyfarrenkopf.bsky.social, @tiffmorris.bsky.social, and @ericraglin1992.bsky.social. (1/4)

Just signed Shortwave's first (but not last) sublicensing deal. And it's with a Big 5 publisher! 👀 A good day for our author, and for us. Sometimes Shortwave's the right home for a project, and sometimes a specific edition needs a much (much) bigger home. More news when we can share.

Received some cool gallies in the mail this morning! 👀 Super advanced copies of @pfracassi.bsky.social's TRAPS AND SPECTERS. This is not the final cover, just a temp design @alandistro.bsky.social put together while working on the official cover.

Look at this cool book I get to work on!

Spending my evening updating PHP versions on my server and building 2026 Shortwave catalog pages. Also, I just added these cool new buttons that let readers browse our catalog by book format, because with over 50 titles 👀, it was getting a bit overwhelming to page through them all.

Scariest escape room yet!

My downloads folder has over 4,000 files, clocking in at 147GBs. Today is the day I begin organizing and clearing it out. Moving the files I need to their proper folders, and finally deleting the duplicates/ones I don't need. This has been a long time coming...

Just "wrapped" the final hardcover and dust jacket wrap design for @gemmafiles.bsky.social's LITTLE HORN collection coming this October. 14 dark short stories and novelettes on October 14th. Cover design/layout/typography by @alandistro.bsky.social shortwavepublishing.com/catalog/litt...

Two big changes coming to all Shortwave books... 1. End credits! Like in movies! Where everyone who worked on a particular title will be credited, alongside their role. 2. A statement on every copyright page which reads, "No genAI was used during any part of the production of this book." (1/3)

There are two publishers out there today in the dark spec fiction genre who are hitting it out of the park with their books. The first, of course, is @badhandbooks.bsky.social and the second is @shortwavebooks.bsky.social. I have spoken.

Waiting on two important emails today. But I should probably stop staring at and refreshing my inbox so I can actually get some work done.

Had someone new asking questions in Shortwave's publishers channel on discord. After helping with their direct questions, I offered up a few things I wish I'd known when I started. Sharing here for others who might be thinking about getting into publishing...

Age verification? I've connected two VCRs to dub a VHS. I watched Terminator 2 on Laserdisc at a friend's house. I got my first email account in college.

Staying up late making announcement graphics for things that might never happen because that's how I manifest.

During lockdown, one of my all-time favorite musicians sold his new album as a Limited Edition of One. One copy. For £10,000. 100% of that sale price went to charity, to the Music Venue Trust, to keep indie music spaces afloat during the pandemic. I was lucky enough to buy that one copy... (1/4)

I actually have merch for a short story! But there's no chance it'll ever turn a profit, films—even short films—and hardcover books and vinyl records are really freakin' expensive to produce. Look up "passion project" in the dictionary and this is the first project cited. 😅

We get offered a lot of great books and have to turn a lot of them down simply due to scale. Shortwave is just me ( @alandistro.bsky.social ), with some help from my partner Kris packing orders and running royalties. If we can ever afford it, first we hire some help, second, we buy more books!

The next horror film project I'm co-producing just landed a full article on Fangoria, showcasing our early trailer! www.fangoria.com/slay-horror-...

Huge congrats to Emily Lockhart on the new We Were Liars series hitting #1 on Amazon today! Back between 2010-2015, I was E's webmaster and built/designed her website (this was something I did for a few authors back then). Which meant I occasionally received signed ARCs for new releases!

So grateful to @alandistro.bsky.social and @shortwavebooks.bsky.social for all their support and for making this li’l novella possible!

One small benefit to being the only person not heading to StokerCon? My inbox is blessedly slow today (and should remain so until Sunday). Time to catch up!

"The Second City is second to none when it comes to terror." I don't live there anymore, but I'm from the Chicagoland area and this anthology from @frombeyondpress.bsky.social, out in August, is all about Chicago horror by Chicago writers. So cool! frombeyondpress.com/product/red-...

Got a horror short? We want to see it! @littleghostsbooks.bsky.social @chrisshapedghost.bsky.social filmfreeway.com/LittleGhosts...

From an email Shortwave just received... I'm going to give myself so much hell if I don't give me a raise after my next annual review! 😂 (also, thank you emailer, I needed this today)

I'm not a coder, but it appears very few modern programs are utilizing multiple CPU cores which, in this era of 20+ core processors, is ridiculous. I shouldn't be waiting on an export progress bar to move when my CPU is sitting at 7% utilization (and disk use is 2%, like what are you even doing?).

Also I loved and was intrigued by the cover before, but having read it now it's for sure another @alandistro.bsky.social genius creation! 👀✨️

If I can keep making "number go up" every month, eventually a distributor has to want us, right? Right?! 🙃

Will someone give me permission to take a month off from everything so I can finish writing the second draft of my next book? ✍️

I can personally recommend @annieneugebauer.bsky.social's collection, You Have to Let Them Bleed, and @toddkeisling.com's collection; Cold, Black, & Infinite. I've read those. They're fantastic!

Most of the time I feel like I have a decent grip on things. But today the Shortwave inbox is causing some overwhelming anxiety. Everything feels like it's late, there are too many submissions, too many requests for things. And I'm only me. Even giving this 8-10 hours a day, I can't possibly keep up

This time of year I get asked a lot about my plans to attend StokerCon, so I thought I'd make a quick post. I would *love* to be able to attend, to table for Shortwave, to meet so many of the authors I've read and/or published, to sit on live panels, etc. But, I am a diagnosed agoraphobic...

I get to edit another anthology! DARK FREQUENCIES features some of the best non-anthology short stories published in Shortwave magazine, chapbooks, and other odd projects. It'll be exclusive to this 101 Horror Stories eBook box set for now, but limited numbered / lettered HC editions are coming!

Here's a real Summer Reading List, full of real books, and their actual authors: shop.shortwavepublishing.com/collections/...

Had to assign my first 979 ISBN this morning and I still hate it. After decades of 978 ISBNs, this new one looks fake. (I know it doesn't matter, and outside of booksellers and dedicated bibliophiles who enjoy collecting unique editions, no one will ever notice.)

Watching the new(ish) Porcupine Tree concert blu-ray, CLOSURE/CONTINUATION LIVE, while packing Shortwave orders for tomorrow morning because, somehow, there are never enough hours in the day. I definitely know how to party on a Friday night. 😂

Trying to describe the ~vibes~ of the Killer VHS Series to an author and I wrote… "It should feel like something you'd rent late on a Friday night from Blockbuster, not something you'd find the following Monday morning in the Criterion Closet." I should work on a better go-to pitch for the series.

Happy two years to OBSOLESCENCE! My first anthology (co-edited with Kristina Horner). @shortwavebooks.bsky.social's first anthology. And the antho that introduced me to dozens of incredible writers, many of whom we've gone on to publish again (and again [and again])!

Recording our virtual panel for StokerCon tonight. Already nervous because my brain hates me. But I'm wearing my @littleghostsbooks.bsky.social's "In Space, No One Can Interrupt Your Reads" shirt for comfort. Soon I will be back amongst the ghosts in space.

No one reads anymore. No one makes money doing this. And none of it is real. Come join the mass delusion of creative writing with us

I'm nearly finished with the interior design for the seventh Killer VHS novella, THE LONG LOW WHISTLE by @laurelhightower.bsky.social. This is the chonkiest entry in the series so far, the first to clock in at over 200 pages!

Too many characters! (An explanation for why this post is a screenshot, not a critique of the books that fail to connect with the right readers.)

Logged into Shortwave's shop to pack orders this morning and noticed our Year-to-Date stats vs Last Year-to-Date. These numbers are for direct sales only, not bookstore/retail sales, but... Sessions (visits to the store page) are up 24%, Orders are up 59%, with Total Sales (dollar amounts) up 57%!