Welcome to the online home of author Edward Trimnell
I’m getting a new YouTube channel up and running.
It will mostly consist of readings from published and unpublished stories, though I may throw in some other stuff, too.
For the inaugural video, I begin readings for my horror novel, Eleven Miles of Night.
I’m presently working on The Rockland Horror 4. As the title suggests, this is the fourth installment in The Rockland Horror series.
The release date for the book has been set for May 3, 2022. It should be available before then, however. (I would imagine sometime in January or February of next year; March at the latest.)
If you would like to order the book in advance (at a reduced price), then you can do so here, via Amazon. Another advantage to the preorder is that the book will drop automatically onto your Kindle when it comes out.
If you would prefer to wait, or if you haven’t read the first three books of The Rockland Horror series, then you can either check back here (I’ll announce the actual release with a blog post, of course) or check The Rockland Horror series page at Amazon.
A note on reading order. While each of the books is a self-contained story, they are best read in order. If you haven’t read books 1, 2, and 3, I would recommend that you start with those.
Happy Tuesday, everyone. As we are now approaching Christmas, here is a Christmas photo from 46 years ago.
The above photo was taken on Christmas Eve 1975. My maternal grandmother, the camera bug of the family, almost certainly took the photo.
My parents are the two youngish adults. I am seated on the far right, in red.
The cat’s name was Patches. A very even-tempered cat, as I recall.
The mid-1970s was not a great time for America. Vietnam, Watergate, and the social turmoil of the late 1960s were all still recent memories. Although the specific issues were different, the country was very divided in 1975, much as it is in 2021. Continue reading “Christmas 1975”
Read, “The Robots of Jericho” here on Edward Trimnell Books.
This is one of my early short stories. It was inspired by my many years in the automotive industry.
I’ve spent a lot of time in factories of various kinds, and that means plenty of time around industrial robots.
Industrial robots often seem to be alive. “The Robots of Jericho” is a story about what happens when some actually do come alive.
I’ve recently started reading Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War.
Or rather, rereading it, I should say. I read the book for the first time back in the summer of 1986.
That was the summer I graduated from high school. Needless to say, I’m a few years older now. The Winds of War, moreover, is mostly gone from my memory banks, save the barest elements of the plot. So this is like reading it for the first time.
(My general rule of thumb is: If you enjoyed a book, consider reading it again after 10 years; it will be a different book. I’m therefore more than overdue to give The Winds of War a second reading.)
This is a very good novel, even though it breaks some of the “rules” of good novel writing. For example, the novels contains huge swaths of backstory in the opening chapters.
I believe that this will be a fast read, despite the page count of over one thousand pages. Continue reading “‘The Winds of War’ by Herman Wouk”
On this, the 80th anniversary of the event, remember Pearl Harbor, and those Americans who died there.
I have no memory of the day, obviously. Nor do any of my living relatives.
But my maternal grandfather told me about it. He heard the news on the radio, within hours of the actual bombardment. Continue reading “December 7, 1941 + 80 years”
Books 1 and 2 of my new World War II-era epic are now available on Amazon!
I’ve got a new series coming out, which you’ll be able to preview on Edward Trimnell Books:
In 1938, a rogue German physicist flees to Cairo to prevent Hitler from acquiring the atom bomb.
On his side are his rebellious daughter, and a restless American treasure hunter.
Pitted against him are a ruthless Gestapo agent, and a beautiful American woman with Nazi sympathies.
It is summer, 1937, in the town of Dutch Falls, Pennsylvania.
Elisabeth “Betty” Lehmann is a 19-year-old woman who works in her family’s business— a small-town general store.
Oh, and she’s also a member of the German-American Bund, an organization that actively supports Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler.
Betty is present at a Bund rally when unwelcome visitors arrive.
A view from my lawn this morning. In my part of the world (southern Ohio, Cincinnati area), the last of the warm weather seems to have departed for the year. These last two nights, the temperatures have dipped down into the 20s.
That’s typical for November, of course. And while there’s nothing we can do about the weather, it is worth reflecting for a moment….that 2021 is drawing to a close.
You have 58 days (including today) until the end of the year. The time is now to take stock, and apply the gas pedal to any projects that you want to have completed before January 1, 2022.
I know I have a few of my own. The last 58 days of 2021 will be busy ones, indeed, for me.
What do you have planned before 2021 draws to a close?
I am working on BOOK 4 of THE ROCKLAND HORROR series. THE ROCKLAND HORROR is a multigenerational horror saga about a cursed house in Indiana.
BOOK 4 will be set in the immediate post-WWII era of 1945 to 1946. More information on that shortly.
BOOKs 1, 2, and 3 are already available on Amazon, and enrolled in Kindle Unlimited (for those of you who read through KU.)
BOOK 1 is FREE on Kindle for everyone from November 1 through 5, 2021.
Keep in mind that Amazon manages the back end of all of this, and the exact hours at the tail end of the free run may vary, depending on your time zone. (So grab it early. Don’t wait until 11:58 p.m. on November 5.)
If you’re interested in trying out the series with a zero commitment, this is your chance.
If you’re interested in trying out Kindle Unlimited, check it out here.
Halloween 2021 went fairly well in my part of the world, with pleasantly warm weather (and the departure of an extended pattern of rain that left the Cincinnati area just in time).
I live in a neighborhood with a homeowners association, or HOA. The HOA is a Sovietized institution that is always meddlesome, and occasionally a creative outlet for aspiring Stalins and Pol Pots. Participation in the administration of an HOA is voluntary, and tends to draw personality types who don’t like minding their own business.
The parents in my HOA got together this year and voted to extend trick-or-treat hours for one hour beyond the 6 pm to 8 pm time frame designated by the local government. (Another thing about HOAs: they regularly mistake themselves for governments.) So trick-or-treat in my neighborhood was set at three hours this year, lasting from 5 pm to 8 pm.
I thought this was unnecessary, but you have to pick your battles in this world. I went along without any outward grumbling. I enjoyed Halloween as a kid (a theme I explore in my novel 12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN), and I don’t begrudge today’s children the pleasure of trick-or-treating.
But three hours of trick-or-treating turned out to be more hours on foot than the average child or parent in my neighborhood could handle. The net result of the time extension was that everyone in the neighborhood went trick-or-treating from 5 pm till 7 pm, and the streets were empty during the hour from 7 till 8.
Speaking of parents and Halloween: I have written before of the downside of helicopter parenting; but there is one upside which I must acknowledge: less youthful mischief on October 31. During my youth in the 1970s and 1980s, Halloween was basically a free-for-all, with kids running wild. Sometimes they victimized homeowners with vandalism, and other kids with bullying.
There seems to be much less of that nowadays, at least in my pleasant suburban part of the world. Change is rarely all good or all bad. It almost always involves a series of tradeoffs, with some things getting better, and some things getting worse.
BLOOD FLATS, originally published in 2011, was my first novel. It is the story of a former marine who goes on a quest to clear his name after he is wrongly blamed for a double homicide.
BLOOD FLATS is the story of a journey–with lots of gunfights along the way, of course.
I reedited and republished the book last year; but the cover sorely needed updating. This is the newest cover (and the third since the book’s publication).
It’s that season of the year again!
Last night I went out for a walk in my neighborhood around 7 pm. (We’ve had an unseasonably warm spell here in the Cincinnati area.) I didn’t take into account how quickly the dusk settles in this late in the year. I was only halfway out when it suddenly became very…well, dark.
I therefore walked back to my house in the dark. The houses around me were festooned with various Halloween decorations: skulls, black cats, and even some cool Halloween projector lights.
I love Halloween. For me, Halloween is the time when we mortals come to terms with two constants of human existence: a.) the unknown, and b.) the inevitability of death.
The celebration of Halloween is an act of acceptance. Our lives will always contain tragedy, dissatisfactions, and uncertainty. But we cannot allow ourselves to paralyzed by fear…or by sadness.
Halloween is a time when we laugh at death, and embrace our mortality.
A few years ago, I wrote a Halloween novel called 12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN. This nostalgic, coming-of-age horror tale is set on Halloween night, 1980. Check it out here.
I’ve added an extended preview here on the site for The Consultant.
The Consultant is the story of an American marketing consultant who takes a business trip to Osaka, Japan, and talks to the wrong woman in a bar.
One thing leads to another, and he ends up in North Korea.
The story is loosely (I emphasize loosely) based on real events.
The North Korean government has carried out targeted kidnapping campaigns of civilians over the years. Most of the known targets have been South Koreans and Japanese. But there is no reason why an American couldn’t be the target of such a kidnapping. This novel explores that scenario.
The Consultant is a good read for Tom Clancy fans who also like James Clavell…or James Clavell fans who also like a bit of action.
Here’s the first chapter of The Rockland Horror 3
It was a chilly, wet day in March 1917, and thirty-year-old Joe Cullen was overdue for a smoke break.
Joe shot a quick glance over his shoulder. He wanted to make sure that his foreman was nowhere in sight.
Joe was relieved to find himself completely alone on the tree-lined road. All around him, there was nothing but the silent woods. And the light, cold moisture falling from the leaden sky.
Well, almost nothing. There was the Briggs House, too.
This thought made him smile self-consciously. Country people and their superstitions. Never mind that Joe was as country as they came. He also read books, dagnabbit. He had knowledge of the broader world.
He bent and laid his shovel down in the long, sallow, late-winter grass at the edge of the road. The road itself was muddy, owing to the wet weather. He did not want the handle of his shovel to get muddy, too. He still had a lot of work to do with that shovel before quitting time.
That done, he stood, removed his gloves, and slipped them into the lower left side pocket of his coat. From the lower right side pocket he removed a box of Lucky Strikes and a box of wooden matches.
Joe was wearing a broad-rimmed hat, a treated canvas raincoat, and heavy boots. The overhanging tree branches—though still bare of leaves—also caught some of the light rainfall. But when you were working outside in weather like this for an entire day, it was impossible to avoid either the dampness or the chill.
Today’s precipitation was not a hard, driving rain; but it was a steady, unrelenting spittle that varied between mist and drizzle. Fireplace weather, Joe’s mother would have said.
But there would be no fireplace for Joe today—not until quitting time, at least; and that was still several hours away.
***
Joe was currently employed by the Indiana Department of Transportation, a brand-new state agency created by the Indiana Highway Act of two years prior. Joe was part of a crew that had been charged with preparing Washington Hill Road for paving.
At present, the road was all packed earth and gravel. It was literally the same road that had been used in the pioneer days. Washington Hill Road turned to mud every springtime, or even during a midsummer thunderstorm. That might have been suitable for the age of the horse. It would not do for the age of the automobile.
As he paused to light his cigarette—cupping both the cigarette and the match in his hands to shield them against the moisture in the air—Joe allowed himself a look at the Victorian mansion that was impossible to miss at this point on Washington Hill Road.
The Briggs House rose above him in the distance. The decrepit monolith appeared old-fashioned and dark, even when silhouetted against today’s cloudy gray sky.
The Briggs House was on the left side of the road. It stood at the top end of a long, winding, overgrown private lane that rose to a promontory. When the trees were bare, the roofline of the mansion could be partially glimpsed far below Washington Hill, Joe knew. He was a lifelong resident of Rockland, Indiana.
He smiled to himself, and took a drag on his cigarette. Joe Cullen knew all about the Briggs House—the murders, the whispered stories of witchcraft and necromancy. Much of that was pure fabrication, and at least half of it was pure nonsense.
Joe Cullen had no way of knowing that within a matter of minutes, he would hold an entirely changed attitude about the Briggs House.
About The Rockland Horror saga:
The Rockland Horror saga is FREE to read in Amazon Kindle Unlimited!
