The Collins Widow is out now and available to download for only 0.99 for a limited time. You can also read for free with Kindle Unlimited. Here's the pitch:

Twin Peaks meets Rebecca in this fast-paced tale of Gothic and cosmic horror. When a widow goes in search of answers regarding her dead husband's past, she gets more than she bargained for when she uncovers a family curse, a century of murder and violence, and a monstrous entity who demands sacrifice.

I'm now going to be elbow-deep in fantasy as I dive back into the Frankie Mourning (Blood of Cain) series, and I'll also be working on my upcoming witch series The Diablerists. Watch this space for more information on those titles, or sign up for my newsletter where I'll be sharing sample chapters and updates.

Exciting times, friends!

If you subscribe to my newsletter this will be old news, but I have another book coming out! The Collins Widow is available now for pre-0rder for only 0.99 and I cannot wait for you all to read it.

The backstory is that I wrote The Collins Widow several years ago, and some of the themes translated to The Hungry Deep. But the truth is that The Collins Widow is a very different animal. One part cosmic horror, one part gothic, one part epistolary novel, I let myself go full weird for this one. I'm not quite sure how it'll land, to be honest, but it'll definitely be interesting. 

Here's the rough pitch:


Some family secrets are better left buried.


Six months ago, Stella Collins killed her husband, Morgan. Previously mild-mannered and caring, Morgan changed, becoming monstrous in an instant, and tried to murder Stella on the staircase in their home, instead falling to his own grisly death.

In an attempt to understand what happened to her husband, Stella travels across the country to Morgan’s childhood home to search for answers. She finds the house derelict, rotting from time and neglect, leaving Stella with more questions than answers.

Uncovering a packet of old letters and diary entries that belonged to the matriarch of the family, Elizabeth, Stella begins to uncover the horrors of the Collinses, the house, and the winding caverns that snake beneath. As Stella’s mind begins to play tricks, she learns of Elizabeth’s plight, she is haunted by the literal ghosts of the past, including Morgan. And the more she learns, the more she is convinced that all of it, even Morgan’s death, leads back to the past, to the original Collins widow. And to the unspeakable horror which has plagued her husband’s family for a century.

Pre-order The Collins Widow here, or read for free on Kindle Unlimited on January 31!

The Hungry Deep, the first installment of my new series Gothic Folk, is out now! You can get the ebook or the paperback here, and you can read it for free with Kindle Unlimited. 

Here's the pitch:

Some places are abandoned for a reason.
 
When newlywed Rachel Corrigan agrees to accompany her husband, Tom, to his family estate before starting their lives together in the city, it is an opportunity to get to know him and to explore the manor where he grew up. But when Rachel arrives she finds Corrigan House strange, the nearby town empty, and her husband's sudden cold demeanor increasingly frightening. She soon learns that one year ago, Tom's first wife, Lavinia, took her own life in the twisted forest behind Corrigan House. The servants claim that her spirit resides there still, calling out from the wood, her voice as clear as the day she died.
 
In an abandoned town where everyone harbors a secret, Rachel finds herself a prisoner in a place which is becoming increasingly treacherous. When the village priest is found savagely stabbed and on the edge of death, it becomes clear that the remaining townsfolk - witnesses to Lavinia's demise - are being hunted down one by one. But Lavinia Corrigan is dead. Isn't she?

You can read it now here, and don't forget to rate and review on Amazon and Goodreads, it really helps get the next book out quicker!

In other news, I have joined the world of social media again, and you can find me on Facebook and TikTok, where I've been the most active. It's really good to be back in the world again after a long break, and I've got a lot of exciting projects in the works right now, which will be coming to you soon. Some of these include: a bizarro haunted house novel with a monster; a series about a family of dark witches spread across the world in 1865; book three of the Frankie Mourning series which I describe as a really murdery and horrifying version of The Labyrinth; and a novel about a walled city where the inhabitants believe they are divided into factions of heroes and villains, and the sheriff who has to keep the place from devolving into chaos.

Anyway, those are all coming in the next year or two, so keep an ear out for them. Thanks so much for all your support and generosity the past few years. I was incredibly ill for a long time, but now that I am well again, nothing can stop me from continuing to write weird books for you all until the end of time. Thank you for being here. (But also, don't be afraid to buy the book ;) )

Hello, fellow humans! I am emerging from my cave and blinking in the bright sunlight to announce that I have a new book coming, as well as several that are in the works, and barring dismemberment (always a possibility!) I should be publishing several in the next year.

The Hungry Deep is a slow-burn gothic horror novel set in the dwindling mining town of Goodhope, where something is stalking the residents one year after the death of a woman called Lavinia Corrigan. Here is the blurb:

Lavinia Corrigan is dead.  


One year ago, after her body was recovered from the wood behind Corrigan Manor, it was believed Lavinia had taken her own life. But on the anniversary of her death, Father Philip Hackley can no longer keep his secret. He has known about the Corrigans' abandoned mine for the last 50 years, but he is no longer able to protect the town of Goodhope from what resides within. Father Philip is haunted by what he has done for the Corrigans, and with his health deteriorating, he finds himself with little time to right his wrongs.

Eleanor Craft, come to Goodhope to care for her ailing aunt, is grieving. One year ago she was supposed to run away with Lavinia, but her lover never showed. When Tom Corrigan found the body in the forest, El was wracked with guilt. Now, one year later, El swears she can still hear Lavinia's voice coming from the wood where she died, and she would give anything to see Lavinia alive again. Absolutely anything.

Anabel Corrigan watched her mother disappear into the woods one night, and did not see her come out again. Sickly since birth, Anabel has little to do but watch and wait for her mother to re-emerge from the forest. She hears her mother calling her father's name. And she sounds very, very angry.

Throughout the course of the night, it becomes apparent that something is stalking the residents of Goodhope, and one by one the townspeople turn up dead. As secrets are exposed, and mysteries uncovered, it appears that none is without fault in the death of Lavinia Corrigan. Soon, there will be no more secrets left to tell. If they can survive until morning.


And here is the cover! You can pre-order The Hungry Deep on Amazon, and add it to your Goodreads list here. Thanks for your support, and I look forward to inundating you with lots of creepy books in the near future. 

EZVID WIKI loves Blood Day, and made this list to prove it. This made my day, so thank you, Peiasantiago for including it. Weebly won't let me embed it, so here's the link.
​https://wiki.ezvid.com/m/10-dark-fantasy-books-that-horror-fans-will-love-RlI7DnxKZie47

It’s like a slow creeping inertia that methodically envelops the brain. Blocked, stuck, in a rut, whatever you call it. Every writer experiences it, though many – for whatever reason – will not admit that it buyexists. There is, of course, a cure, which may be why so many reject the idea that the creativity has stopped. All you need is time, they say. Go back to the beginning, try again, try harder, stop admitting defeat.

​I’m so tired.

My mind often slides toward silence, the dark, something soothing as a warm pool, a summer day, a tranquil scene spread out before you. Mine is the dark, the quiet, and I can never find the quiet these days. I can never seem to reach the tranquil part of my mind, the place where I can let go and allow the thoughts to flow. Children, diets, worry, illness, school, money, relationships, money, groceries, money. Where does it end? Where can it end when everything is an endless loop, knot of anxiety that never ends, never untangles, is never satisfied with the time and energy expended upon it?

Claim politics. Current events. Gun control. Abortion. No one appreciates art anymore, so why bother? But they are all excuses. Art comes from within, art is a subversive act that needs no vindication. We make art in the face of dysfunction, greed, violence, disdain. We make art because we cannot bear not to.

What happens to us when the art refuses to come, though? Are we people, like everyone else? Or are we filled up with our thoughts, the way the colors change at a certain time of day, the way your wife says a word, imaginary people and places and things and horrors and beauty and love and disgust and hate and lust. Are we really people? And if we are, why does it hurt when we are empty?

I am empty, but filling.

​There is no one word that fills me with joy, but rather thousands of words, millions of words. I am made of words, my skin is punctuation, my eyes are quotation marks, my breath is every word that exists to describe a sigh, my guts are in italics. The rest of me is words, infinite and forever. And when my soul is sick, my words grow sluggish. When I am too spent to feel the way they taste in my mouth, I must stop the noise, the thoughts, the way I worry. I must stop and step back into the darkness and the silence.

It’s always there, waiting for me to shut the world out, shut my thoughts down. It’s always there, waiting for me to breathe. My mind slides toward silence and I allow it, and that’s all it takes. I am filling up again until the next interruption, the next frenzied thought, the worry and the blame and the inability to turn off, to shut down.

But for now, the silence. I am filling. That is all that matters.

I try. And I get up again and write.

It's Sunday night at 10:22 PM, and I have once again deactivated my Facebook account.

I've written about this before, but I'll say it again, veering off from the crowd is such a goddamn freeing, liberating feeling. Every time I do it, I feel I can breathe again, think again. Every time I do it, I close my eyes and revel in the silence.

So why do I do social media at all, you might ask. Why don't you just stay off the social channels for good, J.L.? Focus on the important things, the writing things, and forget about the noise. Why do I do it? Short answer: because I've been promised the world if I conform. Because every site featuring every indie blowhard get-rich-now scammer proclaims it so. If I am on Facebook, glorious things will happen! I will find readers and influence...other readers! If I get a thousand followers on Twitter, fame! Notoriety! The Nobel Prize! 

I can't listen any longer. I am tired, and all I want to do is write.

Earlier today, a friend tried to show me a Superbowl commercial. "No, thank you," I said, "I don't watch commercials." I found the idea so offensive that I was perhaps a bit too forceful in my words. And yet, I do watch commercials. For marketing, for attracting reader interest, for being absolutely and insanely entrenched in the crowd in the off chance that I might one day speak to the right person. But these slick men and women (in a format that hearkens back to the infomercials my grandmother watched in the 1980s) don't promise that I'll become a better writer, that I'll write a spectacular book, that I'll blow my readers away with my voice and story structure and craft. They all have one thing in common: the point is to make money, and lots of it. Throw out schlock and put a snazzy cover on it, and then market the everloving heck out of it.

Gross.

It's not that I don't want to make money. It's that I want to keep my soul. I want to get better with every book, and I want to feel the intensely-expanding burn in my chest when a story is about to burst forth. I can't do any of these things if I'm obsessed with money. There's a reason for the old cliche about the starving artist/writer/whatever. Sometimes you need to starve for a while to build that fire in your belly. Sometimes you need to step away from the crassness of business to focus on the words.

There is loneliness in solitude, but the road to hell (for me) is paved with unnecessary small talk. 

Today, my husband told me I needed a year to write. Maybe even five years to write. Nothing else. Just write. No social media, no noise. He knows me, you see. He can see me struggling with balance, the art life versus the people life. Even though I argued with him at the time, I realized he was absolutely and maddeningly correct. I am just not the kind of writer who can wear many hats. I have one battered and torn hat, and it's the only hat for me, and I love every crease and stain and tear. So I'll just keep wearing my writing hat now, eschewing all the sleek and elaborately polished hats for the time being.

Just write. Just write. Just write.

May I present to you Wicked, Clockwork Heart, a short and bittersweet tale of love, loss, and magic. It is available wherever ebooks are sold. Here's the synopsis:

​Summer's heart doesn't beat, it ticks along with time. Her mother claims she's wicked, that her clockwork heart is cold and unworthy of love. But when Summer meets Noel, a country boy who loves Summer just the way she is, she wants to believe she can be happy. Happiness is tricky, though, especially where magic is involved. Summer learns the ruby that powers her heart came from a powerful witch. And Summer is just what she's looking for.

In this short story, J.L. Murray weaves a tale of love, loss, betrayal, and devotion. Of dancing bears and tinkered treasures, magical rubies, witches, and gold filigreed hearts. Wicked, Clockwork Heart is sure to stay with you long after the book closes.

You can find Wicked, Clockwork Heart at Amazon or your preferred source for ebooks. And stay tuned tomorrow, when I will be posting an exciting cover reveal for my forthcoming novel, The Collins Widow.

Stay creepy, friends!

As a writer, I hear all sorts of opinions on who I am and what I do. Writing is not art. Writing is art. Writers shouldn't talk about craft. Writers don't talk about craft enough. Writers should focus on characters. Writers should focus on plot. It's all overwhelming, and everyone has an opinion about everything, it seems. Of course in reality, people have always had opinions, but now those opinions are all public at the same time, all equally passionate and sure of themselves. Which is a wonderful thing most of the time, but as an artist, it can be taxing.

It's different to be on the other side of those opinions. It's been a strange life since I began writing professionally, and if I said the wonder and joy of creating wasn't fraught with danger and pitfalls, I'd be lying. There is a strange sense of being not-quite-real when you write about imaginary people. As Scott Fitzgerald put it, "Writers aren't people exactly. Or, if they're any good, they're a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person." The severe self-examinations that lead to examining the lives of characters to make them more real can be, in its most dangerous incarnation, a form of creative self-harm. Why did I do that? What was I hoping to achieve? What happened to me to make me react in such a way to that event? These are all good questions which humans can use to better themselves, but when you find yourself asking yourself what your motivations are for choosing chicken instead of fish, you know you've gone a bit too far down your own rabbit hole.

The hard part of any sort of public life, of course, is to weigh carefully the things that we must hold dear, and to reject that which is harmful. The things about writing that I keep close are the beauty of creation, the satisfaction in bringing people to life who did not exist before, the joy of carving into the pure prose of a rough draft and coming out with something gorgeous and very much its own entity. Admittedly, there is a bit of the holy in any kind of writing, and we all revel a bit in our chance to play God. Creation, destruction, rebuilding, these are the tools of the trade. So when you think a writer is being a bit obtuse, a little out-of-the-real-world, try to remember that we do not live in the real world by design. Forgive us our trespasses and acts of doltish pride, we know not what we do. And when we know what we do, we are usually wrong.

But I digress.

Now on to the things to reject, for they are many. Here, I only speak for myself, but perhaps it may strike a note that many will recognize, and even better, more may see and understand. Writers are essentially artists, and as such, we are sensitive to things which may seem mundane and silly to others. We must see the world as children, in order to be able to describe absolutely ordinary things with succinct precision and enthusiasm. Something I've learned to avoid are reviews of my work (though they are always immensely appreciated). It is none of my business if someone did not like a book, and  writers should stay well enough out of the conversation. It's difficult enough to write a story, and when you bring debate over the color of curtains into the mix, it is absolutely none of our business whether someone finds symbolism in that. We make the art, we do not get to dictate what readers get from it.

This could be a blog post purely on the things in the world we would do well to reject. But to avoid that sort of negative laundry list style of writing, I will only say this: WRITING IS HARD WORK. That's all you need to know. It is hard enough to craft a novel, to feel a story blooming in your chest and eyes and belly and to pull it out thread by shining thread. It is hard enough to spend your days banging away on a keyboard or scratching away on paper for no other reason than to develop your writing voice. It is hard enough to plot out a story that didn't exist before, to spend weeks, months, years sketching a barely passable rough draft, to spend weeks, months, years revising said words until something like a book emerges. One can spend their entire life on simply thinking about one story, and yet most of us who try to eke out a living at it are lucky enough and hardworking enough to grant themselves multiple stories, dozens sometimes. Hundreds, even. It is hard enough to do all of this. And what I mean by this, my long-awaited point that I'm trying to make, is this: It is enough. It is enough to write, to make stories, to fill the world with something that didn't exist before.

It is enough, and you are enough for doing it.

I spent years feeling inadequate, years beating myself up for all the things I tried to do but failed. For all the things I was ill-equipped to learn, that I did not have the time or energy or capacity to do. I should be many more things, I thought. I should be able to successfully market my books, I should be successful at proofreading and editing and artistic representations of the stories. I should be able to do this or that, I shouldn't be only one thing. And yet, none of it was true or valid. It's great if you can be everything, but in truth, it sounds exhausting. Ever since I was a child, I knew what I wanted to do, what I wanted to be good at. And do you think at any point I dreamed of advertising or catchphrases or ROIs? Good Lord, no. I wanted to write, and so that is what I set out to do. By all rights, I've already achieved my childhood dream, and yet, even now, I beat myself up for what I cannot do. It's hurtful and without merit, and it has nothing to do with me, just as someone's criticism of my body of work has nothing to do with me. If we as writers focused half as much on craft as we do on our desperate clutching at algorithms and promotions, can you imagine the beauty we'd bring to the world? If we didn't care about agents or sales and clutched as desperately at our art instead of our pockets, the world would become infinitely brighter, exponentially more gratifying and full of  exquisite, eloquent words. 

Yes, writers are poorly paid and widely taken for granted. I do not offer a solution to that problem. Perhaps what is needed is an entirely new system. The readers are there. The readers want more. But if we are only writing what we believe they can handle, we are doing them a terrible disservice. Perhaps what is needed is a revolution of the soul, perhaps we should boycott rehashed plots and two-dimensional character, eschew the old in favor of the new, reject the tired tropes for the shining threads that burn in our hearts and brand themselves in our minds. And, at last, perhaps I am asking the wrong questions. After all, instead of asking "Why don't we write the fire in our hearts until it burns the very paper it's printed on?" it is far more democratic to make a statement. "I will write the fire in my heart until it burns the very paper it's printed on."

In the name of our craft and our art, I urge you to do the same in the coming year, in this brave new world, in the living dystopia where beauty, truth and wisdom are so, so terribly needed. Do not practice creative self-harm. You are enough, we are enough. Being gifted at one thing is not a failure, it is absolutely rare. We cannot be everything, and we cannot bear to be required to account for the revolutionary act of feeling pride for our art, for our calling. Because no one sets out to be a writer, rather writing finds you. It calls to you with its siren song, and if the calling is real, you won't want to hear any other songs. You will sway and dance to that song until the end of your days, and feel privileged to so. Being called to a purpose has never been an easy life. Indeed, writing is a bit like becoming a monk as we reject the outside world for what we know shines within us. So too, there is a reverence that must be adapted, a respect for the words and whatever forces that leave the stories lying around, to be picked up by those who can see them, polished, and turned into something tangible. 

You are a writer. You are not a writer. You are already many things, so loving only one thing, knowing only one thing is almost overkill. Being gifted is enough, and so are you. I would even argue that you are more than enough. You are the light that the world needs most right now, and all you have to do is shine.



J.L. Murray is the author of thirteen novels, including Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, Blood of the Stars, and Monstrous. She lives in Eugene, Oregon with her family and a growing menagerie of pets. She can be reached through her website at JLMurrayWriter.com, her Facebook page, and on Twitter. 

I recently received a review in which the reviewer scathingly researched how many times I wrote the word "said." This was tempered with another recent review where the reader hated the first two books in the same series, liked the third, and for the fourth gave a raving five-star review.

My point being that reviews don't matter. Sales don't matter (but of course they do help keep the lights on). The only thing that matters is that you find elation in what you do. Pride, perhaps even a taste of rapture. I loved writing the series I just mentioned, and it being my first toe dipped into the water of publishing, it was the first time I felt absolute joy in my work. The fact that, almost five years after the fact, that people are still reading, still debating, still feeling so passionately about the characters in said books, well that speaks to the power of story.

Go forth in the coming year without thinking about readers, without worrying about sales or reviews or how something will be received. The world has changed, literature has changed, but good writing, unique writing and delight in the craft will always be in our lives as human beings. Embrace the change, follow your characters down their respective rabbit holes (no matter how weird things get or how deep and scary, for in fear there is beauty). Writers are the portents to the future and we can show future generations that in the midst of chaos, we made art. In the midst of despair, we wrote of hope and love and adventure, and yes, we wrote deliciously of fear and terror.

As we set forth into a new year, let us make art that speaks to our souls. This is the art that will speak to the souls of generations to come. So when our grandchildren say, "Well, what did you do?" we can proudly say, "We made ugliness beautiful and thus created hope in the world."

​(This post originally appeared on Facebook)