The Fear County Chronicle #40

Thoughts on the disillusionment of retirement, two exciting new book releases, a look back at the crash and burn of my first horror career and the long hiatus afterward, as well as a bonus story!

When I retired in November of 2023, the future looked bright. My mind conjured comforting visions of carefree days, plenty of time and inspiration to write, and more opportunities for taking vacations and attending horror conventions. At first, the dream was real. Then my 401K money slowly dwindled away, and the dream faltered. The reality of trying to make it on my wife’s paycheck and my social security (with two children still at home) hit home. True, I had my writing royalties and sales from my RKHORROR online store to help supplement our income, but even that wasn’t enough. Book sales are down drastically, both on Amazon and my store (my online book sales are currently down 75% from this time last year). My fears of a thriving horror genre eventually becoming bloated with substandard work and oversaturated with too many books too fast were coming true. The fact of the matter is that times are hard and getting harder for everyone. Utility bills, doctor bills, and particularly gas and grocery expenses. Where I normally spent 80 to 100 dollars on groceries per week back before Covid hit, I’m now averaging 150 to 250… and seemly bringing home less than is necessary to keep a family of four fed between paydays.

I know what you’re thinking. Heck, I didn’t come here to hear this old man gripe about his lackluster retirement and the state of the economy. Sorry if this issue of the Chronicle started out with a whimper instead of a bang. But that’s just my nature. I’ve always worn my emotions on my sleeve (as the old saying goes) and I tend to express my concerns and woes transparently. If I held them inside, I’d likely explode, and you’d be cleaning the remnants of Ol’ Ron up with a mop and bucket. Truth be told, I’m struggling. Depression over money woes and an estrangement with my oldest daughter and her husband (we haven’t talked for a year now) has lowered me into a dark well of depression and anxiety and caused a stretch of writer’s block that stifled my creativity for nearly five months. Things are getting a little better, I admit. I’m beginning to slowly get into the groove of writing again, my faith in God and trust in Jesus is still strong, and I’m taking medication for the depression (never shackle yourself with pride and fear of ridicule to the point that you refuse to seek out help for mental health issues). If I’ve dropped the ball in a big way lately and backed out on promises and obligations (blurbs or introductions for books) I apologize. My head and heart just haven’t been in it.

Don’t worry about me, though. I’ve been through this sort of thing several times before in the past 65 years. In any event, prayers and positive thoughts are always greatly appreciated. I know some folks in today’s society consider “thoughts and prayers” to be petty and insincere, but for me it’s always made all the difference in the world.

Now that the gloom, despair, and agony part of the newsletter are out of the way, there are a couple of exciting new books that I’m chomping at the bit to tell y’all about…

Dark Cloud On Naked Creek by Cindy O’Quinn

My good friend and mountain sister, Stoker Award-winning author Cindy O’Quinn has a new book coming out on June 3rd. Well, not exactly new… it’s a revised version of a novel she released back in 2016. Dark Cloud on Naked Creek is the story of one woman's journey of self-discovery, through the revelation of family secrets, and the unearthing of her real roots in the heart of Appalachia.

After a patient under the care of Afton Sullivan, a nurse at a men's prison, dies under mysterious circumstances, she blames herself for the prisoner's death. It isn't the first time strange things have happened with her patients, and Afton fears it won't be the last. Thus begins an odyssey of discovery for Afton, as she ventures into the depths of Appalachia to dig into her family's history and learn the truth about herself and the Cunning Folk of the mountain that she's kin to. Is she killing people, or does something much darker lurk in the hills and hollers of West Virginia?

Dark Cloud on Naked Creek is one of the best novels of Appalachian horror and fantasy that I’ve read in decades. I was honored to help edit the book and write the introduction for it. If you enjoy my brand of Southern prose, you’ll absolutely love this book. Cindy is an exceptional author who writes with great heart and limitless imagination and possesses a storyteller’s soul in the true sense.

You can preorder the ebook or paperback of Dark Cloud on Naked Creek now. Also, for a limited time, Cindy is offering a free signed bookplate to anyone who wants one. Just get in touch with her on Facebook Messenger and she’ll be pleased as punch to send one your way.

Fairy Tale Horrorshow 2: Madness & Mayhem

My pal RJ Roles has just released Fairy Tale Horrorshow 2: Madness & Mayhem, an anthology of twisted takes on beloved fairy tales. The anthology features a table of contents of incredible authors, including Kimberly Rei, Chip DePew, Eric Butler, Winona Morris, Ruthann Jagge, RJ Roles, Colt Skinner, M Ennenbach, Jae Mazer, M Betterelli, Megan Stockton, Tony Evans, Lance Dale, and Ol’ Ron himself. My story is an unnerving take on Little Red Riding Hood.

You can order Fairy Tale Horrorshow 2 in ebook and paperback now! This is an incredibly entertaining collection that I know you will enjoy.

The Long Hiatus

I’m continuing my series on my publishing years with Zebra Books with a look back at the death of the Zebra Horror line and the end of my first career as a mass market paperback author… as well as the long decade of inactivity that followed.

It happened on the 6th of October 1996. My own personal 9/11.
I was working on a short story that afternoon. Joyce was working for an insurance company in downtown Nashville at the time, sixty miles from home. At 3:47 the phone rang (funny how I remember exactly what time it was).

It was my agent at Scott Meredith. Finally! I thought to myself. It’s about time Zebra got off their ass and gave me some good news! But, as it turned out, it wasn’t exactly the call I had hoped for.

"I have news," he said.

"Okay," I answered. Something in his voice unsettled me.

He hesitated for a moment and then sighed. "It's not good news."

The next three minutes seemed to last an agonizing eternity. As my agent began to explain the situation, I felt as though I had been gut punched by a runaway freight train.
Zebra Books was doing away with their horror line. No more gruesome in-your-face covers, no more 500 pagers. Everything was kaput... out of the picture. And with it, dozens of authors who depended on them to pay their mortgage and keep their families fed.

"But they're still going to release the last two books, aren't they?" I asked. No. Hell Hollow and Restless Shadows would be returned to me and, since Zebra had defaulted on the contract, I would keep all advance money that had been paid.

“But we can try someone else, can’t we?” I asked frantically. “I mean, I’ve published eight novels. That should count for something, shouldn’t it?”

"I'm sorry,” he said, “but I don't think finding you another publisher is an option right now," he told me. "My advice to you is to keep writing... but write anything but horror. It's pure poison right now."
When I hung up, I simply stood there for a few minutes, feeling stunned and disoriented. I remember walking onto the front porch of the farmhouse and sitting in a rocking chair until my wife got home that evening from her job. She knew something bad had happened when she got out of the car. "What's wrong?" she asked. She must have thought there had been a death in the family. In an odd way, there had.

"It's all gone," I told her. "Everything. Gone." As a Southern man, I had been raised to believe that tears and emotion were weaknesses. But at that moment I practically fell into my wife's arms and cried for what seemed to be hours.

I had struggled with anxiety and depression when I was a teenager. It all came back, full force, as autumn fell away and the chill of winter set in. I tried to take my agent's advice... tried to write and sell to other genres. But it seemed hopeless. Doors remained closed and my mailbox grew heavy with rejection slips. I lost my resolve and was sure that everything had turned out as it had for a reason. Being a Christian man, I began to believe that maybe God had ended my career; that He wasn't pleased with what I was writing and had brought the whole thing crashing down upon my head. I don't believe that now, but I did back then. So, I just stopped. Stopped writing and stopped trying. Stopped reading horror fiction of any kind. In my mind, I'd had my shot and I'd blown it, although through no fault of my own.
So, I laced up my steel-toed boots, packed my lunch box, and went back to work. Made my living in the factories, just as I had before I’d published that first short story. I had books on my bookshelf with my name on the covers and spine, but it was difficult to even look at them and remember what I had achieved and lost in such a short period of time.

I found a job in nearby Gordonsville, running a shell press for a company that manufactured electric motors for elevators and Jacuzzis. I worked the seven to three shift, loved my wife, and began to raise a family. And I did that for ten long years. Just Ol' Ron Kelly the blue-collar worker, drawing a paycheck and putting the callouses back where they used to be. The Ron Kelly that wrote novels and had met and rubbed elbows with the likes of Robert Bloch, Charles Grant, Karl Edward Wagner, and Richard Matheson was ancient history... non-existent -- dead and gone.

It was a year and half before I got the rights back from Kensington for Hindsight, Pitfall, and Something Out There. It was another year before Moon of the Werewolf, Father’s Little Helper, and The Possession were securely in my possession again. But, for some reason, they refused to relinquish the rights to my bestsellers, Fear and Blood Kin. Not that it mattered much to me. I filed the “Return of Literary Rights” letters in a desk drawer and forgot about them. That was ancient history to me at that point. I had a good job, health insurance, and, for the first time since leaving my hometown of Pegram, stability that didn’t involve haunting the mailbox daily in hopes of finding a royalty check there to pay the water and electric bills.

In 1989, Joyce and I had our first child; a daughter named Reilly. I was now a father, and my responsibilities had increased to a point where a full-time job was absolutely necessary. Even if I’d had aspirations of returning to writing, there was no turning back now. I was a working man with a wife and a child and, like my father before me, I had an obligation to devote all my time and energy in providing for them the very best I could.

Around the fifth year of my long hiatus, I began to grow increasingly unsatisfied and irritated, especially in the shadow of my past occupation. I would come up with an idea for a story or novel out of the blue and immediately cast it from my mind. Don’t be dwelling on stuff like that, I would tell myself. It’s over and done with. You’re just making yourself miserable. I packed up the Zebra books and stashed them out of sight, like they had never existed. The Hat with its rattlesnake skin band sat atop my bookcase, gathering dust. Eventually, I could bear the sight of it no more. I ended up selling it in a yard sale for ten bucks.

In the years 2000 and 2001, I finally discovered the reason why Kensington had refrained from returning the last rights to my work to me. Under the Pinnacle imprint, they rereleased both Fear and Blood Kin. Both sold very well – perhaps even better than they had the first time around. The royalties were very welcome and provided us the opportunity to add another daughter, Makenna, to the family in 2004.

It was around that time, that I began to realize that I was only hurting myself in denying who I was and what I had accomplished from 1986 to 1996. I remember getting up the courage to unpack my Zebra novels and take them to work in my lunch box, to show some of my co-workers. I recall that my line leader at the time, Angela Gibbs, walked up to my press one afternoon with a look of amazement on her face, and asked “Are you actually a published author?” The word seemed foreign to me at first… like the hazy remnants of a dream I’d had a long time ago. I finally nodded and said “Yeah… I was. But not anymore.”

A couple of years passed. More and more, the thought of trying my hand at writing crossed my mind. But I kept putting it off, telling myself it was pointless to consider the possibility. I had been away from the horror genre for a decade. To attempt to return to it after so long an absence would only be setting myself up for bitter disappointment and failure.

But fate has a way of throwing you a curve ball sometimes… and gives you one more shot to knock it out of the park.

Next time: The Comeback!

Bonus Story: The Hatchling

I reckon a couple of things could have brought it about. Maybe it was that new corn feed I bought wholesale down at the co-op or maybe it was simply some unforeseen deformity. Such things happen on the farm occasionally… two-headed calves and the like. But, then again, I always figured there was some strange and sinister intelligence behind the whole ugly business. Something unspeakably evil. Sometimes I wonder if old Lucifer himself hadn’t seeded that hen and caused the sudden appearance of that godawful egg.

I’ve been a farmer here in Crimshaw County since I was fourteen and that was some sixty years ago. I’ve planted and harvested all types of produce; tobacco, corn, soybeans. And I’ve dabbled in livestock, too, but most particularly chickens. Folks from all over the county drive for miles to buy my eggs and poultry. But when I was a younger man my association with chickens was not so innocent. There was a time when I had quite a reputation among the local sportsmen as a first-class breeder of champion fighting cocks. However, I sickened of that blood sport as I grew older and wiser and, much to the relief of my wife Margret, gave it up for honest work.

Anyway, it was a chilly morning in early spring when Margret hollered at me from the chicken coop. “Jake… come out here and take a look at this.”

I had been slopping the hogs, so I set my pail aside and crossed the barnyard to the henhouse.

Margret was standing there in the shadowy coop, a half full basket of white and brown eggs in her hand and a puzzled look on her face. I glanced down at her feet and saw one of our best laying hens stretched out on the earthen floor. I stooped down and picked at it for a while. At first glance, I thought maybe a fox or a weasel had gotten into the coop and laid waste to the poor critter. But, upon further inspection, I saw that it hadn’t been eaten a’tall.

“This is mighty strange,” I told the wife. “Almost looks like this hen was split in two… from the inside out.”

“No doubt it was,” Margret agreed. “Take a look at what it laid here in its nest.”

I stood up and regarded the long, laying bins that went three levels high along the back wall. In the nest that the Rock Island red had always occupied there was the damnedest egg I’d ever laid eyes on.

The thing was big, the size of a coconut. And it was as black as sin. It didn’t have that flat, slightly granulated texture to it like a regular hen egg. Instead, it was slick as a black pearl. You could see your reflection in its surface; the shell was so shiny.

Well, now, I didn’t rightly know what to do. At first, I figured I oughta take it to the county agent down at the farm bureau and see what they made of it. But then I got to thinking. They’d just turn it over to some dadblamed scientist who would likely crack it open and study its yolk and, hell, what would that tell them? Besides, I was kind of curious as to what sort of chicken would hatch out of such a strange egg. So, I decided to just keep the thing my personal secret for a while.

I went to the tool shed and dug out one of the boys’ old incubators that they had used when they were in 4-H club in school. It was a homemade job, just a wooden box with chicken wire windows and hay in the bottom. I screwed a sixty-watt bulb into the fixture at the top and, after setting that gigantic egg down deep amid the straw, put the whole kit and caboodle at the far corner of the henhouse.

Oh, another thing I oughta mention. None of those hens in that coop would go near that egg. Acted like they were scared of the thing. And I had me a couple of hearty roosters, too, who seemed even more leery of the egg than those hens.

For a week, I checked on the black egg, making sure it didn’t get too warm or cold. I fussed over it so, that Margret joked that I was so all-fired concerned with the blasted thing, why didn’t I take to sitting on it myself. I had me a good laugh at that and said I surely would have but, with the size of the thing, it wouldn’t do my hemorrhoids a speck of good.

A couple of nights later, I was awakened by the most harrowing racket coming from that henhouse. Such a fluttering and squawking it was, that I grabbed my shotgun and a lantern and went out there to check it out. I found the door ajar and figured, well, this time it was a fox or an egg-sucking dog. Stepping inside, I shone that kerosene lamp around. There didn’t seem to be any damage done, no dead chickens or broken eggs.

Or so I thought. I walked over to the far corner and uttered a curse in spite of myself. That homemade incubator had been ripped apart. The wood frame was splintered in several places and the chicken wire in the front had a hole the size of a good-sized cantaloupe torn in it. And, down in the hay within, was the shell of that black egg, cracked and lying in two halves.

I examined that hatched egg and was more confounded than I was to begin with. There was the most awful stench coming from the empty shell, like raw sulfur. And when I stuck my finger to the slimy residue that coated the inside, it burned my skin like battery acid. I had to run out and wash it off under the spigot of the long-handled pump, it blistered me so.

As I walked on back to the house, I had the strongest feeling that something was watching me from the dark woods beyond the barn. I checked the load in my Remington, but that didn’t make me feel any safer. With a shiver, I ducked into the house and locked the back door behind me.

I had never, in all my years of living on that farm, locked the doors of my own house. I did that night, however, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I had done so.

The next morning over breakfast, Margret asked me about that black egg. I told her that some animal had gotten into the coop the night before and smashed it. I wanted to leave it at that, wanted to forget that it had ever existed… but something out yonder in those woods wouldn’t let me.

I didn’t think any more about it, until a week later when my redbone hound, String, came up missing. I searched my property high and low and finally found him down by the creek. Poor String was dead. At first, I figured he had died of old age, for he was going on fifteen years. But when I got to checking, I found a single wound on his stiffening body… a tiny hole in his right temple, just beneath one floppy ear.

I couldn’t rightly believe what I was seeing because, you see, I was familiar with that kind of wound, but not in a dog. If you don’t know anything about cock-fighting, let me explain. Just before fighting roosters are thrown into the pit together, the owners attached these tiny, handmade spurs to their feet. There ain’t much to them; just a curved length of steel like a bent nail with leather ties to secure them. The victor of the two cocks is the one who strikes first, driving that metal spur into the side of the other’s head. I told you before, it was a bloody sport and that was one of the reasons I took leave of it.

After burying String down in a honeysuckle hollow, I went to the tool shed out of pure curiosity. I went to my workbench where I knew a pair of those rooster spurs hung on the pegboard, sort of souvenirs for old times’ sake. Well, you guessed it. Those steel spurs were gone. A cold fear hit me then and I figured maybe it would be wise to keep old String’s death from Margret… and especially the disappearance of those spurs.

As it turned out, String wasn’t the only victim. Those two roosters I’d bought to look over the henhouse… I found them out back of the smokehouse. They had died the very same way. A single, clean hole through the side of the head. I took my shotgun that afternoon and hunted the woods over… exactly what for, I have no earthly idea. Nevertheless, I found nothing. Not a track, nor a sign of anything.

Spring passed into summer without incident and then things took a turn for the worse. Someone – or something – tore the back door off its hinges one night and rummaged through the kitchen drawers. Margret took inventory of the utensils the next morning and swore that the only things missing were a couple of old icepicks she used to chip away freezer ice when she was defrosting the Frigidaire. I didn’t grasp the significance of that late night theft until I discovered our finest Holstein milk cow lying in the south pasture a few days later. There was a deep hole in her temple, the wound reaching clean to the center of the brain.

Whatever had killed my cow didn’t stop there. Farmers all over this side of the county began to lose cows and hogs in the same gruesome manner. No animal was ever eaten, just smitten upon the head and left lying there. Alot of crazy theories began to circulate. Frank Masters, who owns the farm down the road a piece, claimed that devil worshippers were to blame. I began to figure that, indeed, maybe there was something of the devil involved, but I didn’t tell any of the fellas down at the grange hall that. I kept my mouth shut and hoped to God that things would die down.

But, of course, they didn’t.

I was cleaning out the hayloft a couple of weeks later, when I came across something that chilled me to the very bone.

It was my pitchfork, the one I had bought at the True Value earlier that year. But something had damaged it, something very strong. Two of the four tines had been snapped off. My mind immediately flashed back to the fighting spurs and the missing icepicks.

That night I took extra precautions before I retired for the night. I checked every door and window in the house, making sure they were securely locked. I even locked our bedroom door and Margret said I was being downright silly for doing so. I wasn’t so sure, though. I lay in bed for a long time before sleeping, turning my suspicions over and over in my mind. If that thing, whatever the hell it was, had graduated from dogs to cows, then what did the missing tines off that pitchfork mean? Did it intend on pursuing larger game now… of the human variety perhaps? The thought so unsettled me that I got up and swapped the birdshot in my scattergun for double-aught buck.

The following morning, I awoke and, much to my surprise, found Margret still in bed. She usually rose an hour before I did, so as to fix breakfast before we did our daybreak chores.

I reached over and shook her gently. “Wake up, dear,” I said. “It’s five o’clock. We’re running a little behind schedule this morning.”

She did not answer me, did not even move. When I pulled my hand back it was covered with blood. With a cry of horror, I turned poor Margret over and…

The doctor said the wound in her temple had been made by a very long, very sharp object thrust downward with inhuman force. “It looks like someone drove a railroad spike through the side of her head with a sledgehammer,” he told me after I demanded his honest opinion.

I had been a law-abiding, church-going citizen of Crimshaw County for many years and so I wasn’t suspected. But I still blamed myself for dear Margret’s death, blamed myself for not doing something to prevent such a thing from happening. I grieved for many days after the funeral and, so, I wasn’t exactly prepared for that horrid night toward the end of August.

Exactly why I awoke at two o’clock in the morning was unclear to me. All I know is that I came awake suddenly, my heart pounding, my eyes straining against the darkness.

I felt a strong presence there in the bedroom with me and there was that unmistakable scent of sulfur.

“Who’s there?” I croaked, but I knew very well what had come visiting in the dead of night. The foot railing of the big, brass bed creaked as something of great weight perched there, waiting for the right moment to strike.

It was moonlight that saved me. Moonlight filtered through the lacy material of Margret’s hand-sewn curtains, and it glinted upon that sixteen-inch spur as it stabbed for my head. I rolled aside, off the bed and onto the floor, as the steel tine ripped deep into the pillow my head had rested upon. I could see it against the light patch of the window then… pitch black and bristling with jagged feathers, its spurred feet clawing that bed to shreds like a grizzly mauling its prey.

I brought up my pump shotgun, jacked a shell into the breech, and squeezed off a shot. The force of the blast knocked that hellish thing off the bed and plumb out the upstairs window. By the time I reached the window, the moon had gone in behind a cloud and I could see nothing but darkness. Hurriedly, I struggled into my overalls and, shotgun and lantern in hand, went downstairs to check it out.

Nothing laid on the dewy grass but shredded curtains and shards of glass. It was beginning to think the awful critter had made its escape, when a noise caught my ears. It had come from the chicken coop.

The walk I took across that dark barnyard that night was the longest one of my life. When I reached the henhouse, I found the door open and heard nervous clucking and rustling inside. I gathered up my nerve, jacked a fresh shell into the scattergun, and, holding the lantern ahead of me, stepped inside. After a few moments, I realized that, except for the regular inhabitants, the coop was empty. Just bins of hay-filled nests bearing frightened chickens. I was turning to leave, when the trap was sprung.

It came through the open door, so tall that its fleshy comb scraped the top of the doorframe. If it had been knee-high, I would have said it was a rooster. But since it was well over six feet tall, I could only describe it as being something horrible and demon-like. It strutted into that henhouse with an arrogance that reeked of pure evil. Its wings and tail feathers were oily black, like that of a crow. In fact, it was pitch black from head to toe; the comb and beard, the scaled feet, even the beak was dark as sable. Only its eyes glowed in contrast, burning like red hot coals. Its fury was unmistakable, as was its intent.

It came for me as I backed toward the far wall and, this time, its aim was truer. It struck savagely, the long spur piercing the muscle of my left bicep, pinning my arm to the weathered boards of the shed wall. The pain was horrendous. The lantern slipped from my fingers and shattered on the hay-strewn floor. The flames spread quickly and soon, the henhouse became an inferno.

With a hoarse crowing that signaled its triumph, it reared back with its other talon, intending to pin my skull to the wall. I remembered the shotgun then and, raising it one-handedly, stuck the muzzle into that hellish rooster’s belly and pulled the trigger. It lurched backward with the blast and the spur withdrew from my arm, releasing me.

I knew I had to get out fast. Flames lapped at the walls like dry tinder, catching the hay of the nests afire. Soon, the whole damned coop would go up. So, I fired again and again, driving the horrid thing back into the far corner with a hail of buckshot. It slumped to the ground, flapping and hollering, but I didn’t take any chances. I left the henhouse, bolted the door behind me, and stood a good distance away to watch.

The boards of that old henhouse were bone dry, and the structure went up quickly. I could hear the demon bird inside, shrieking, battering against the locked door in desperation. But my buckshot must have weakened it, for the door held firm. I watched as the coop became a bonfire, completely consumed in flame.

I figured that was the end of the evil thing, when the corrugated tin roof exploded skyward. Like a great Phoenix that devil cock rose. Its feathers were ablaze; its crow of agony shrill enough to shatter a man’s nerves and drive him to madness.

I raised my shotgun but did not fire. I watched as the fowl climbed into the dark twilight as if trying to penetrate the very heavens. Then it swung off course, heading over the peak of the barn and toward the open pasture. I ran to the split-rail fence and, before my eyes, it seemed to disintegrate and break apart into a million tiny cinders. They drifted earthward like crimson fireflies, then vanished before hitting ground.

With a flashlight from the truck and my scattergun in hand, I searched the field over that night. I found nothing… nothing but a few scorched feathers.

And, by morning, they too were gone, like ashes upon the wind.

20% Off at RKHORROR through the month of May!

Through the month of May, all books, art prints, and t-shirts are 20% off at the RKHORROR online store! Just enter promo code MAY20OFF at checkout for your discount. And, as always, all books come with a personalized inscription and some hand drawn RK artwork on the title page!

Well, that’s it for this issue of The Fear County Chronicle. I hope you enjoyed your visit and invite you to come back for more when Issue #41 rolls around in a couple of weeks. Until then, take care, be kind to one another, and Many Happy Nightmares, y’all!