Cold on the Mountain

All they wanted was a vacation to the Grand Canyon. Instead, they found themselves on a collision course with a terrible, timeless darkness.

Welcome to Adrienne, home to history’s worst serial killers and mass murderers. Nestled in an isolated meadow high in the Sierra Nevada, Adrienne is sort of like a cosmic lint trap. It collects the universe’s negative energy—all of our blackest human impulses—before purging that darkness back into the world in a yearly lottery. From Hitler to Bin Laden…Bundy to Gacy, Adrienne is the way station for dark energy that doesn’t just pass on—it passes through.

When Phil Benson decides to take an unmarked detour over the mountain, he drives his family into the mouth of madness, where they are forced to join a captive labor pool with little hope for freedom. Escape is pointless and time stretches out into eternity, with every new day the same as the last.

Sometimes, it’s better just to skip the shortcut.

With echoes of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” Stephen King’s Needful Things, and Blake Crouch’s Pines series, Cold on the Mountain treads the boundary between horror and supernatural suspense.

THE SKINNY

I like Amazon. I know there is a ton of controversy in the world of publishing on whether Amazon is healthy for the ecosystem, but I think they've been innovators in creating technology (the Kindle changed reading forever, in my view), offering an unparalleled customer experience, and pushing the envelope when it comes to innovative new programs for readers and writers.

I finished Cold on the Mountain this summer. It's a good book, I think--scary and creative and fun, all in one and right in time for Halloween. 

When I started thinking about the appropriate path to publication for this one, I thought I'd take a shot at the new Kindle Scout program. Why do that, as opposed to sending it out on submission and waiting eight months?

Love that marketing push, man. I think Amazon is doing writers a great service in making rights reversion an easy process. I think they are innovating, once again, with their approach to crowd feedback. But, more than any other single factor, I want their marketing prowess behind my book. Their algorithms push books to the top, and they target audiences like no other. 

Cold on the Mountain is now up for review. I'd be honored if you'd give it a read and, if appropriate, perhaps a nomination.  As always, thanks for reading, and for your support.