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New story: THE WITCHES OF HARMONY

I am drawn to foreign locations. Some of you know that I’m an avid, lifelong student of foreign languages.

At the same time, travel involves many unknowns. There is a lot that can go wrong… especially if you encounter supernatural entities at your destination.

That’s the idea behind my Terrifying Travels series.

The most recent addition to the series is THE WITCHES OF HARMONY, which involves restless 17th-century spirits in the fictional Greater Boston town of Harmony, Massachusetts. Check it out on Amazon.

Amazon book description:

Some business trips are better left unbooked.

Bill Preston has spent years traveling the country for his job, working trade shows in convention centers from one coast to the other. So when he’s assigned to an industrial expo in Harmony, Massachusetts, he expects another routine week on the road.

Then a coworker warns him about Harmony.

He won’t say exactly what happened there. Only that he never wants to go back.

Bill soon discovers that Harmony is a picture-perfect New England town with a history no one wants to discuss. There are whispered stories about witches who escaped the Salem trials—only to meet a more terrible fate in Harmony.

There are warnings not to go outside after dark.

And there are things in Harmony that only certain people can see.

Bill considers himself a rational man. He doesn’t believe in witches, ghosts, or ancient curses.

But something in Harmony has noticed him.

And before this business trip is over, Bill may discover that some places never escape their past.

The Witches of Harmony is a supernatural horror tale of haunted history, business travel, and a New England town with a secret it has been keeping for more than three hundred years.

Dolly Parton and what celebrity deaths really mean to us

As most of you will be aware, Dolly Parton passed away earlier this week. She was 80 years old.

Dolly Parton, born the same year as both of my parents, was already part of the pop culture landscape by the time I was born. As a result, she is one of those celebrities who has been around for my entire life.

I remember hearing her songs on the radio, of course. I also remember the spate of successful movies that she had in the 1980s: 9 to 5, Steel Magnolias, Rhinestone, and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

Because of my generational identity—and perhaps because of my gender—I was never a fan of Dolly Parton in the same way that I was a fan of Rush and Sylvester Stallone. That said, I have enjoyed much of her output over the years. I even have at least two favorite Dolly Parton songs: “Jolene” and “Islands in the Stream” (her duet with Kenny Rogers).

At this point in life, I’ve lost too many people whom I actually knew to be profoundly saddened by the death of an octogenarian celebrity whom I never knew. I will admit my selfish inclinations here. Dolly Parton’s death represents a passing of yet one more part of the world in which I grew up, a world which I believe to be in many ways better than the one of the 21st century.

My personal perspective aside, Dolly Parton seems to have been a genuinely good person, and everything that she added to our culture was positive so far as I remember. Her presence will be missed. Dolly Parton, 80. R.I.P.

-ET

The Texas Roadhoax?

As far back as the 1970s, there have been rumors and urban legends about restaurant employees tampering with customers’ food.

I recall one such story from the 1980s, about a steakhouse employee who supposedly urinated on random customers’ steaks. That might just be enough to make even a sane, well-adjusted person go vegan.

One thing I noticed, though—these stories never stood up to scrutiny. How, exactly, did a single employee manage this urinary sabotage in a crowded kitchen environment, with other cooks, managers, and servers coming and going? Did the cook have a name? Well, no, not exactly… he was some dude who worked at X steakhouse. Continue reading “The Texas Roadhoax?”

Can marriage become a bad habit?

One of my childhood friends (we are both 58) recently got married for the third time.

No—before you ask—this is not a case of an older man trading in his same-aged wife for a younger model. All of my friend’s wives have been “age-appropriate”. None of the three were conspicuously attractive, or more conspicuously attractive than the other two. My friend has always been a man of average means and appearance who dated and married at his level.

Many celebrities have made a bad habit out of marriage. Zsa Zsa Gabor was famously married nine times. Mickey Rooney and Elizabeth Taylor both married eight times. Nicolas Cage has had five wives—including the late Lisa Marie Presley, who was married four times. (Presley’s father, Elvis, recognized that he was a bad fit for marriage, and married only once. That marriage ended after six years.)

I grew up Roman Catholic in the Midwest, during an era when “traditional family values” were still more than talking points in the culture wars. My parents had an occasionally argumentative—but basically sound—marriage, and I benefitted from that upbringing.

That said, I would argue that marriage is mostly a young person’s game, and that it should only be done once. Back to my friend. Why, exactly, does a man in his fifties, who has already been married twice (and who has two adult children from a previous marriage) need to tie the knot a third time? Marriage can be a wonderful thing; but it can also become a life-disrupting, expensive habit—for men and women alike.

Most of us are good at some things and not so good at others. We can spare both ourselves and others much grief in this world if we learn to recognize the things that we are not good at. A man who has already failed at marriage twice has demonstrated that he is not well-suited to the venture. Something is wrong with his fundamental process. Either he chooses poorly, or he is incapable of the deep, one-on-one interpersonal union that a successful marriage requires.

I wish my friend well, of course, in his latest marital venture. But I can’t help recalling that old saw about the definition of insanity: that it is the insistence on doing the same failed thing over and over again… yet somehow expecting a different result.

-ET

A disappearance in 1987

What if someone you knew in 1987 simply disappeared?

Not just physically.

What if her name vanished from university records? Her coworkers had never heard of her. Her boyfriend insisted she had never existed.

And you were the only person who remembered her?

In the summer of 1987, nineteen-year-old Steve Harris meets Mary Wilson while taking a biology class at the University of Cincinnati.

Mary is fascinated by a campus legend involving the deserted upper floors of Crosley Tower. She persuades Steve to investigate with her.

They find something up there.

And the next day, Mary is gone.

But Crosley Tower isn’t merely haunted.

Something inside the building has disturbed the boundary between 1987 and 2026—between one version of reality and another.

And Mary Wilson may not be gone at all.

She may simply be somewhere—or somewhen—else.

THE WOMAN IN CROSLEY TOWER

A supernatural mystery about memory, time, and a building where realities that should never touch begin to overlap.

Available on Amazon and in Kindle Unlimited.

Online book reviews and ratings: take them with a large grain of salt

About a decade ago, I read a review of Mary Miller’s 2014 novel, The Last Days of California, in a print magazine. The reviewer, a book critic whom I knew by name and trusted, highly recommended Miller’s novel.

I was skeptical. The Last Days of California is a teenage girl’s coming-of-age story. I was a middle-aged man. Not long before that, a young woman in my social circle had recommended John Green’s emotional teen novel The Fault in Our Stars. Against my better judgment, I had purchased The Fault in Our Stars and tried to read it. I was unable to finish—not because The Fault in Our Stars was a bad book, but simply because I was the wrong reader for it.

Nevertheless, I ordered The Last Days of California from Amazon. The book promised to be not only a coming-of-age story, but also a story about the dynamics of 21st-century family life with a little bit of the culture wars mixed in. I was intrigued.

I’m glad I took a chance on The Last Days of California. It turned out to be a wonderful story, even though this is the kind of book I rarely read. (My personal reading tastes veer more toward Michael Connelly and Lee Child.)

But the collective readership of Amazon and Goodreads does not agree with me—at least not the ones who are leaving ratings and reviews. At the time of this writing, The Last Days of California has a 3.5 cumulative average on Amazon and a 3.4 cumulative average on Goodreads.

If I had consulted the online peanut gallery, I would have skipped Mary Miller’s book entirely. Fortunately, by 2014 I already knew the truth about mass online review venues like Amazon and Goodreads.

The Last Days of California, by Mary Miller (Amazon product page, 8/25/2026)

In 2012, it was discovered that John Locke, a bestselling indie author famous for his Donovan Creed series, purchased reviews from review farms. He personally compensated some other reviewers.

Black hat practices like that are harder to carry out in 2026. (There was a widespread backlash over the John Locke scandal, and Amazon took some steps to penalize outright review scammers.)

But gray hat practices persist in the publishing industry. Major publishers and imprints retain lists of friendly reader-reviewers, who can always be counted on to give a particular author a 5-star review. Indie authors are not far behind. Most know better than to specifically compensate for reviews, but there are still indie authors who will raffle iPads for their reader-reviewers. That sends a message—and broadcasts certain incentives. Continue reading “Online book reviews and ratings: take them with a large grain of salt”

Don’t Stop for Gas in Zombie Country: a short story

There are still plenty of places in Ohio where you can get off the interstate and, within twenty minutes, find yourself on a narrow country road surrounded by woods, fields, old houses, and small towns.

Those are the places I often have in mind when I write horror.

I’ve always thought that familiar, ordinary settings make some of the best settings for supernatural fiction. An abandoned castle is already creepy. So is a ruined monastery at midnight. The writer doesn’t have to do much work to convince you that something frightening might happen there.

But what about the gas station you’ve passed dozens of times? Or an old country graveyard beside a two-lane road? What about a patch of woods that looks perfectly harmless at four o’clock in the afternoon—but considerably less inviting as the sun begins to go down?

That’s the territory of “Don’t Stop for Gas in Zombie Country,” the short horror story in the video above.

The setup is deliberately simple: an ordinary trip through the Ohio countryside, an inconvenient need for gasoline, and a small rural gas station.

Then things begin to go wrong.

This is also the kind of story I’ve been exploring in my Uncanny Ohio series: macabre tales built around Ohio places, local history, forgotten corners, and the unsettling possibility that the ordinary landscape around us may contain things we don’t quite understand.

The current stories in the series include Involuntary Deeds, Family Secrets, and The Woman in Crosley Tower, and Eleven Miles of Night.

All three are available at Amazon and can also be read through Kindle Unlimited.

But for now, you don’t need a Kindle. Just watch the video above.

And the next time you’re driving through the Ohio countryside late in the day, you might want to keep an eye on the gas gauge.

-ET

The demand side of the porn equation?

Yet another story about a woman who was fired from her day job, after it was discovered that she had a lucrative side hustle as a suburban porn maker.

Heather Boyd, a married, 37-year-old mother of four, made adult content under the pseudonym “Hella Hot Wife.” When her entrepreneurial side hustle came to light, she was fired from her CNA job.

Please note: I am not “outing” Boyd. She has volunteered to appear on an upcoming TLC special entitled “Double Lives of Suburban Wives”. The show will feature interviews with married women who balance ordinary jobs and/or motherhood with autoporning on websites like OnlyFans.

Nor am I here to judge. At least—I’m not here to judge the women who do this.

I do, however, have some genuine questions about the almost exclusively male, demand side of this equation. The “easy money” of OnlyFans has been overhyped in recent years. (The average online adult content creator makes only about $180 per month.) But there is no doubt that some of these women are making huge sums. There is also no doubt that millions of men around the world are tuning in, credit cards in one hand and something else in the other.

This is what I don’t understand. I could understand the demand side, perhaps, if these OnlyFans models were engaged in the world’s oldest profession, providing in-person sexual favors for a fee. But these women are not doing “sex work,” as is so often alleged. What they are doing is better described as “titillation work.”

This is Lucy removing the football just before Charlie Brown can kick the football. It’s a grand tease, men sending digital dollars to women who are hopelessly beyond their reach. Are there really that many desperate, onanistic men in the world? Apparently so.

I would never assert that I am “entitled” to sex with any woman, including the aforementioned Heather Boyd. But if I can’t have it, please don’t wave it in my face. I would gain no satisfaction from having a sexual experience dangled before me on a computer screen—especially for a fee. The male enablers of the OnlyFans boom are sad cases, indeed.

-ET

Shariah law fails Economics 101

One of the nice things about the pre-internet world was that the foolishness of teenagers and young adults was usually restricted to small audiences. But now we have Gen Z social media influencers. Canyon Mimbs is a 22-year-old convert to Islam who wants to tell the world what he knows–or thinks he knows.

Theology is not my bailiwick. Like Elizabeth I, I do not seek to make windows into men’s souls. But economics is another matter.

Young Mr. Mimbs advocates for shariah law in the USA. Well, why not? Half of Gen Z is joining the DSA, if you believe the internet. There are any number of reasons why shariah law would be incompatible with our American system, but in this post, I’ll focus on one: shariah’s prohibition on interest. Continue reading “Shariah law fails Economics 101”

Caveat emptor and toy soldiers in the 1970s

If you were a comics-reading kid in the 1970s, then you likely remember this full-page Lucky Products ad from the period.

100-pc toy soldier set!

Made of durable plastic!

Each with its own base!

And all of this for a mere $1.75 (roughly $9 to $15 in today’s money, depending on the year).

Many young boys, including some of my friends, ordered the toy soldier sets. They were inevitably disappointed by what they received in the mail, five to six weeks later. While there were a hundred toy soldiers, they were so tiny as to require tweezers to move around. A kid could not really play with such things in any meaningful way.

Was Lucky Products engaged in fraud? Not really. But this was what we might have called a sharp practice. The company deliberately excluded any mention of the sizes of the toy soldiers. And they certainly weren’t going to include any scale photographs in their ads.

Caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware. Although I enjoyed playing with toy soldiers as a kid and I saw the Lucky Products ad many times, I was never seriously tempted to send away for this set.

My innate skepticism had already set in by an early age. Part of that no doubt was characteristic of my generation. But I have always been an extremely wary buyer. If something sounds too good to be true, then it usually is. I intuitively grasped that even at the age of nine.

-ET

Lindsay Clancy’s mental health and the question of guilt

Lindsay Clancy is the Massachusetts woman who killed her three children. In any normal society, this would make her an instant pariah.

But this is Massachusetts we’re talking about. Child killing is all the rage in Massachusetts, where abortion was recently made legal until birth. Even as Lindsay Clancy is on trial, her exoneration has become a “cause” among progressive feminist factions of the Bay State. Hundreds of supporters, overwhelmingly women, recently rallied outside the courthouse in support of Clancy—who strangled her young children to death with exercise bands.

Lindsay Clancy’s mental health at the time of the murders is the crux of the debate—and the trial. Here are the basic arguments for the two sides: Continue reading “Lindsay Clancy’s mental health and the question of guilt”

The excesses of dog culture

Consider this recent story from Arizona:

“Woman nearly loses arm in attack by foster dog she saved from euthanasia”

I will freely admit that the excesses of 21st-century dog culture are trying my patience. I just don’t get it.

During my growing up years (the 1970s and 1980s), dog ownership was relatively rare, and most people understood that dogs were potentially dangerous animals.

In the past few decades, dog adoration has become something of a secular cult that crosses both demographic and political lines. People now anthropomorphize dogs and even want to take them in restaurants. In my suburban neighborhood, entitled dog owners form a daily procession with their pooping, barking, nipping beasts.

I actually like dogs (though I don’t understand the current, cultish devotion to them). But we need to return to common sense and moderation where dogs are concerned—especially the dangerous breeds.

-ET

The University of Cincinnati and my fiction

I attended the University of Cincinnati between the summer of 1987 and the early summer of 1991, and it is there that I earned my degree in economics. I arrived at UC in a circuitous fashion, and against my better judgment.

I started at Northern Kentucky University in the fall of 1986. NKU was just across the river from where my parents lived. (I was a commuter student throughout my college years.)

NKU provided an extremely pleasant educational experience—at least in those days. NKU had small classes, attentive professors, and a comfortable suburban/semi-rural environment. Oh, and parking was a breeze, too—no small matter when you’re a commuter student.

And of course, I was too foolish to know a good situation when I had it.

I can partly blame the 1980s. Those were placid, commonsense times, especially when compared to the chaotic cesspool that is the American culture of today.

A common trope in teen movies of the 1980s is the bored suburban/small-town teen whose life is so calm and satisfactory that he spends the first part of the movie waiting around for something exciting to happen. You can observe this trope in Risky Business, The Last American Virgin, Footloose, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

As a student at Northern Kentucky University in the 1986-87 academic year, I knew that the University of Cincinnati was an edgier, more tumultuous environment.

To begin with, UC was more than three times as large as NKU. UC was located in the inner city. UC was more “diverse.” (This was not a term that we used in the 1980s, but we understood the concept.)

UC—in the words of one of my friends—was also “a pain in the ass.” The daily commute was twice as long. Parking was a nightmare. Classes were frequently large, and so overenrolled that you might not get in.

I found the inner-city environment to be wretched rather than stimulating. On my drive home in the afternoons, I occasionally passed streetwalkers and drug deals in progress. The area around UC—both then and now—is a high-crime area. The campus itself was safe enough, but students were sometimes assaulted and robbed in the off-campus perimeter.

I briefly contemplated a return to NKU. But by the time I realized that I had made a mistake in coming to UC, I was already stuck there.

This was because of the way that NKU and UC allotted credits. At that time, NKU was on a semester system and UC was on a quarter system. As a result, NKU credits had a high exchange rate when transferred to UC’s system; but when transferring in the opposite direction, you would invariably lose credits.

So I finished my degree at the University of Cincinnati. The experience was far from a total loss, and not only because I earned a four-year degree. At the age of nineteen, I really had spent all of my life in sheltered, suburban, and (let’s be blunt about this) all-white environments. My years at the University of Cincinnati taught me to thrive beyond those confines—a skill that would serve me well in future years, when I entered some much rougher environments.

My time at UC also gave me a sense of gratitude—for the many unearned blessings that had been given to me by a mere accident of birth. These realizations brought both maturity and humility.

Looking back on it all almost 40 years later, I regard my years at UC as beneficial ones. I was there between the ages of 19 and 22. These are the young-adult formative years. It should not be surprising, then, that the University of Cincinnati shows up in my fiction. Below are the major and cameo appearances of the University of Cincinnati in my novels and short stories:

No Sure Thing

Set in 1988, this young adult novel includes many scenes on or around the UC campus of the late 1980s. While I have taken some liberties regarding professors’ names, etc., No Sure Thing provides an authentic look at the UC of the late Reagan era.

The Woman in Crosley Tower

This dark fantasy/light horror parallel worlds novella is set on the University of Cincinnati campus in the summer of 1987. In this story, one of the university’s actual buildings is the heart of the supernatural setting.

Eleven Miles of Night

This horror novel is set in 2013 and is not primarily about the University of Cincinnati. Two UC students, however, are major characters. There are multiple scenes set on campus.

Hay Moon and Other Stories

At least one story in my first short story collection, “Gaia Cried Out,” takes place partly on the UC campus.

***

I am not nostalgic about the University of Cincinnati in the conventional sense. I do not attend alumni events. Nor do I attend UC’s football or basketball games.

The university is, however, often my go-to location when I need a campus setting, especially one set in the 1980s. Thirty-five years have passed since I was last a student at the University of Cincinnati, and I’m still writing about it. UC will probably appear again in future stories.

-ET

21st-century obesity rates vs the buckle-down culture of the 1980s

@kwbogen

Also whyte supremacy. All bodies are good bodies but let’s not pretend we aren’t all being sold something. Exclusivity creates a marketplace.

♬ original sound – kwbogen

K.W. Bogen, an author/influencer, declares in a public video that the commonly cited male preference for thin/fit women is a conspiracy of corporations and white supremacy.

Because isn’t everything a conspiracy of corporations and white supremacy nowadays? No doubt the patriarchy had a hand in it all, as well.

Ms. Bogen then goes on to show us her figure (about which I will refrain from comment). She asserts that thinness is “really, really difficult to achieve” without “starving oneself” or taking drugs. (I assume she is referring to Ozempic, though I can’t be certain.)

First things first. Many men do prefer thin, fit women. A smaller percentage prefer women who are “pleasingly plump”. A very small percentage actively seek out heavyset women. (This last group of men is rare; but they do exist.)

But what men like is not the central issue here. On that point, at least, I think Ms. Bogen and I may be in agreement—though for entirely different reasons. Continue reading “21st-century obesity rates vs the buckle-down culture of the 1980s”

Nightclub height requirements for men, and the Law of Unintended Consequences

The other day my Facebook feed informed me that a nightclub in Brixton, London held a party earlier this year to which men under the height of 6 feet were barred from entry. The event was called “Land of the Giants.”

And they were serious about the height requirement. Men—and only men—were measured at the door.

The event sold out, but social media opinions were divided. Supporters argued that this was really no different from height filters on popular dating apps. Opponents assailed the height requirement as exclusionary.

I am 5’10” tall. I therefore would have been turned away at the door. Perhaps I should be upset about this. (That’s obviously what Facebook’s algorithm was hoping for.) But I don’t do much clubbing in Brixton, London. (I live in Ohio, after all.) And at my current age of 58, well… I guess I don’t regard this as a personally pressing matter.

The height requirement is tacky. But if a woman really must have a man capable of playing guard on a professional basketball team… “Who am I to judge?” as the late Pope Francis once said.

As sexual beings, we are entitled to like what we like, so long as we confine our liking to consenting adults. Women are entitled to fetishize height. Men are equally entitled to fetishize youth, thinness, and thigh gaps.

The question is not what we are entitled to do, but—perhaps—what we should do. Continue reading “Nightclub height requirements for men, and the Law of Unintended Consequences”

Frank Beard and memories of ZZ Top

I was among that first generation of adolescents to discover MTV in the early 1980s. If you were 14 years old in 1982, as I was, MTV was really great stuff.

The ZZ Top videos were among the best. The music itself was catchy. But ZZ Top’s MTV videos often portrayed short stories, often with fantasy elements.

Among the most memorable of these was “Legs” (1983). “Legs” is essentially a miniature fairy tale, set in 1980s America. The video also features cameo appearances by two Playboy Playmates—Jeana Tomasino and Kymberly Herrin. What could be more 80s than that?

But the members of the band, by then men in their early middle age, also provided a distinctive visual trademark to every ZZ Top production.

ZZ Top was a three-man band from Houston, Texas. They had no pretensions of being glam rockers. The guitarist and bassist, Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill, both sported long beards that made them look like refugees from the Texas Hill Country of some prior decade.

Frank Beard, the drummer, was ironically the only member of the band who did not have a beard. Frank Beard passed away yesterday at the age of 77.

***

My research tells me that Beard was preceded in death by Dusty Hill in 2021. (Hill was 72.)

I’m not going to pretend that either death was a personal loss. But these two men, though strangers, contributed significantly to the pop culture tapestry of my formative years. That pop culture was, on the whole, more upbeat and vibrant than the one we are forced to endure today.

I’m glad that the marketplace rewarded both Beard and Hill for their musical prowess while they were still alive. ZZ Top peaked in popularity decades ago. But their music videos have aged well and are still available on YouTube.

Frank Beard, 77. R.I.P.

-ET