Have A Blast

In 2022 I was invited to write a short story to be featured in an anthology focused on Wrath, as part of a series of anthologies centered around the Seven Deadly Sins. I was enthusiastically on board. Revenge and wrath are close to my heart, where fiction is concerned.

Unfortunately, I ran into a couple of issues that led to my inability to submit the story I’d been writing–not the least of which was that, upon rewriting the story, it exploded to almost double the word count expected by the publisher. I felt defeated and like I’d let the publisher in question down by not getting them the story I’d eagerly anticipated sending their way.

When Candace Nola started talking with me about rewriting/revising Innocence Ends, she asked if there was anything new I’d be interested in sending her way. I quickly wrapped up the loose threads I hadn’t tied off in the revenge story and sent it her way.

She wanted it! She had some requests and suggestions for areas she wanted me to expand on, and the story grew to just about the short end of what’s considered a novella.

And so, on August 5th of 2024, Have A Blast explodes onto the scene.

Molded by war and disfigured by a roadside bomb, Oliver Clark doesn’t hold out much hope for the future. Then he meets Jayne, and all of that changes. But when she’s taken from him, Oliver sets his sights on revenge.

No matter who it was, he’s determined that they’ll learn how far someone will go when they have nothing holding them back, and nothing left to lose.

Advance Praise for Have A Blast:

Dog Days: The Complete Lee Melvin Collection

On December 16th, 2023, I decided to finally compile the three Dog Days stories into a single volume, including the Author’s Notes I’d included in each of the individual releases. This title is available exclusively in paperback format.

Lee Melvin left his years as a soldier behind him in the jungles of Vietnam, and he embraced a peaceful life of sobriety in the mountains of Western South Dakota. But a small act of heroism disrupts everything and sends Lee down a path of violence and revenge…and it won’t be the last time.

Based on true stories from the life of the author’s uncle, the three individual Dog Days stories are collected in this one volume along with the author’s notes, detailing the lines that separate fact from fiction.

What readers have had to say about the individual Lee Melvin stories:

“Heartbreaking, savage, and yet extremely cathartic.”

“Gritty, real, and satisfying.”

“…when the violence does come, it makes you feel like it’s not only justified but necessary.”

Nativity (with Elizabeth J. McKee)

On December 16th of 2023, Nativity was released. This story was a collaborative effort between myself and Elizabeth J. McKee (my girlfriend). We’d tossed the idea around for a few months, brainstorming and figuring out the fine details, before I finally started the process of typing out our twisted Christmas tale.

Grace loves nativity scenes.

They’re the centerpiece of her annual Christmas displays.

But for last couple of years, vandals have taken it upon themselves to demolish nativity set after nativity set, leaving Grace feeling increasingly defeated and sad.

This year is going to be different.

This time, Grace will get her revenge and she’ll have a nativity set that will rival anything she could buy from a department store.

This Christmas…you’ll believe in the indomitable power of one old woman’s Christmas spirit.

The authors:

Available from http://www.godless.com at the following link:

Yeshua and Adonai

On November 26th of 2020, I released the short story, Yeshua and Adonai.

Meant to supplement some of my other work by laying out the groundwork for some of the underlying mythology within books like You Will Be Consumed and Beneath the Unspoiled Wilderness.

A father shares a story with his young children, one that had been shared with him by his own grandfather. A story of Yeshua as both a boy and a young man, of how he discovered an unexpected and unwanted destiny placed on his shoulders by Adonai.
The short story, Yeshua and Adonai, introduces readers to the wider literary universe of The Hungering Void by retelling the tale of Jesus in a horrifying new light.

Hounds of War

On February 27th of 2023 I released Hounds of War on Godless. This short story serves as both a stand-alone tale and the introduction to a larger work in progress that combines elements of police procedural and crime noir with cosmic and body horror.

In 1917, a small group of American soldiers venture into the forests of France, searching for a patrol of Germans seeking to get behind the American lines. Scared and cut off from allies, they discover something far more dangerous than enemy soldiers–something that doesn’t pick sides.

As days pass in the mist-shrouded ruins of an ancient castle, it becomes clear that none of them are likely to survive.

For Sergeant Adrien Demos, the war will take something more valuable than his life, it will take his identity–and if he isn’t careful, it threatens to take his humanity.

Errata: Collected Short Fiction and Poetry

Errata: Collected Short Fiction and Poetry was released in 2016, collecting in one volume eight short stories I’d written and released digitally as well as a collection of poetry that had been released as A Wreck In Progress a short while before Unspoken was published.

There is no connecting thread between the included stories, spanning genres from gritty crime drama to bizarro extreme horror. Topics run the gamut from the final scenes of a slasher narrative to the terrifying isolation of interstellar space. There is something for everyone, from fans of horror to those who enjoy hard science fiction.

This collection contains eight short stories spanning subjects from gritty crime drama to the terrifying isolation of interstellar space. There is something for everyone, from fans of horror to those who enjoy hard science fiction.Additionally, this volume includes the author’s collected poetry previously available as A Wreck In Progress.

Unspoken

Unspoken was the first novel I released, back in late 2011, though it was not the first I’d written. There was some small amount of experimentation taking place in the writing of this story, focusing on a protagonist that wasn’t particularly likable or relatable to most people…but hoping to elicit some sympathy for him by the time we reach our conclusion. In that, I do believe I succeeded.

Unspoken is a short, but well-paced and compelling exploration of the themes of unrequited love and the insanity that accompanies it in the midst of a world sliding into madness. A story of love, regret, and the end of the world expressed with a poetic voice and postmodern sensibilities; it could be described as being a combination between George A. Romero’s The Crazies and an amalgam of The Notebook and Love In the Time of Cholera.

The story follows Nathan, recently employed as an overnight orderly in a state mental hospital. He has found himself lucky enough to develop a friendship with Leyna, another of the overnight staff, but that friendship quickly becomes something far more intense for Nathan, a fact he chooses to keep to himself.

Suffering through the turmoil of his unspoken desire for Leyna and inured to the environment of a mental hospital and the madness that has afflicted him in his personal life, Nathan neglects to notice the signs that become more and more prevalent in the world around him, signs indicating that something terrible is taking place. As the world descends into madness, Nathan and Leyna remain at the institution, hoping that isolation might protect them from the world collapsing around them, but in the end there may be no escaping some tragedies.

Horror author David Moody described Unspoken as, “…a brave and thought-provoking piece of work filled with palpable emotions and plausible situations.”

Unspoken by Nikolas P. Robinson

Innocence Ends

Innocence Ends, which was originally released in August of 2020, is a story of friendship and how far that friendship can be tested. Since its release, it has been one of my most successful titles. It was not, however, successful enough in the opinion of Candace Nola, the founder of Uncomfortably Dark Horror. In late 2023, she asked if I would be willing to remove the existing edition of the novel from publication and allow her to work with me to improve it, slap a brand new cover on it (courtesy of Don Noble), and release it through her publishing house. I agreed, and she quickly got to work. In June of 2024, almost four years from the original release date, the new and improved edition of Innocence Ends found new life.

The concept that forms the substrate of this novel is one that arose from a conversation with an old friend of mine, more than 20 years before the book ended up being published. We’d been discussing that certain B-movie tropes were never played as being serious, and we were sort of disappointed by that fact. You know the tropes I mean, the mad scientist with his manor atop the hillside, the group of friends trapped in a town with a sinister secret, and other such things. Snippets of scenes that would ultimately become part of Innocence Ends were posted on this blog years ago because I’d started writing this book long before I finally sat down and finished it in late 2019 and early 2020. More than two decades in the making, I’m pleased with how this one turned out.

Six lifelong friends meet together in an isolated mountain town in Northern Idaho to commemorate the fifth anniversary of a close friend’s suicide.

A week of hiking, spending time in nature, and a bittersweet reunion soon takes a sinister turn as the friends find themselves fighting for their lives and struggling to survive. A seemingly tranquil community bombarded by late spring storms becomes a trap filled with monsters and threats everywhere they turn.

Terrifying secrets are revealed and the survivors are left to wonder what will be left of the world outside if they can find a way to come through the gauntlet alive.

Advance praise for the new and improved edition of Innocence Ends:

This title is also available through http://www.godless.com at the following link:

Horseplay

You might want to dive into depravity with my extreme horror digital short, Horseplay, available exclusively through http://www.godless.com for only $0.50 by following the link below.

This story has since been included in my short story collection, May Cause Unexplained Ocular Bleeding, but you can get your hands on this delicious awfulness as a taste of what you’ll find.

A distributor of the vilest pornographic material available receives a tape that may be more than worth the price he paid to get it in his hands. What begins as documentation of one horrific pornographic act becomes something far more disturbing…but also far more interesting and valuable.

The link to this title on Godless is below:

Horseplay by Nikolas P. Robinson

Daemonica

On August 3rd of 2021 I released Daemonica on the Godless platform. Daemonica is a stand-alone short story introducing readers to the larger story of Daemonica In Claritate, to be released at a later date.

Orphaned for the second time in her twenty-one years with the death of her older brother, Ethan, Layla Torres has been spiraling out of control. When she discovers the truth of what happened to Ethan and his friends, the secret stash of an entirely new drug in her brother’s belongings provides her with a chance for revenge. It’s a chance she’ll happily take.

The link to this title on http://www.godless.com is below:

Daemonica by Nikolas P. Robinson