Welcome to the website of author Edward Trimnell!
What if the safest place you ever knew became the most dangerous?
Lee McCabe returns from Iraq expecting peace.
Instead he walks into murder, corruption, and a county where everyone seems to have something to hide.
His only choices:
Fight.
Run.
Or die.
BLOOD FLATS is just $1.99 through July 24.
I released a new book over the weekend: KUWA 6226!
This is the story of a deadly online urban legend. (See description below!)
Throughout the world, people who make Internet inquiries about Kuwa6226 meet violent deaths.
In online forums and chatrooms, people are warned not to mention the mysterious entity.
But who, or what, is Kuwa6226? A supernatural force? A cult? A global conspiracy?
Most people say that it’s better not to ask…and Kuwa6226’s reign of terror goes unchallenged.
***
Then two unlikely sleuths, from opposite sides of the world, unite.
Minoru Watase is a corporate IT employee in Japan. Julie Lawrence is a college student in the American Pacific Northwest.
Julie and Minoru have each lost a friend to Kuwa6226. Together, they are determined to discover Kuwa6226’s true identity and eliminate the menace.
Their search will take them from the streets of Tokyo to an American college town in Washington State. When they finally come face-to-face with Kuwa6226, Julie and Minoru will be unprepared for the revelation…and the ruthlessness of their adversary!
There is a cashier at a nearby grocery store where I regularly shop. She is an avid reader of my books.
This woman (I’ll call her Beverly) is probably in her mid-forties. Like me, she has spent most of her life in Ohio.
Beverly subscribes to Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program, and she reads most of my books through KU.
The other day, I asked Beverly if she did much reading on non-Amazon platforms such as Apple Books, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, or Kobo.
Beverly gave me a perplexed look.
“Why?” she asked, honestly surprised by the question. (She had never even heard of Kobo—or, at best, was only vaguely aware that it existed.)
I grew up in an era when the retail book market was wonderfully distributed and diverse. We had Waldenbooks and B. Dalton in the local mall. There were independent bookstores throughout the eastern Cincinnati suburbs where I lived. There were also at least two bookstores serving the University of Cincinnati, which I attended in the late 1980s.
When the brick-and-mortar superstores Borders and Barnes & Noble came to Cincinnati in the 1990s, the retail book market consolidated somewhat—but not all that much. There were still no online book sales, and the market was large enough to support multiple retailers.
That’s the way I prefer things to be. But as is so often the case in the twenty-first century, I find myself out of step with the times.
A few months ago, I took a handful of my ebook titles wide, meaning that I removed them from Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program (which requires exclusivity) and made them available through Google Play, Apple Books, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble.
This past week, I decided to remove those books from wide distribution and place them back into Kindle Unlimited. That decision was based on sales data, as well as further analysis of broader market trends. One factor was the overwhelming cost competitiveness of Amazon’s Kindle devices.
As a result, seven of my titles will be returning to Kindle Unlimited. This process should be complete by the end of the month. It is taking longer than I expected because several of Kobo’s international bookseller partners have been slow to delist the titles, and I cannot enroll them in Kindle Unlimited until they have been fully removed from those sites.
These are the titles that will be returning to KU over the coming weeks. You can find all of them on my Amazon author page:
-ET
The Woman in Crosley Tower is a new title for preorder in my Uncanny Ohio series. It’s a novella of about 24,000 words. The novella will be released on June 26, 2026.
This horror/dark fantasy story is based on a single question: What would happen if a woman disappeared inside a building in the University of Cincinnati during the summer of 1987, and emerged 39 years later?
There is a lot more to it than that, of course. This is a story for fans of parallel world stories, and tales of liminal zones (like the “backrooms” urban legend). And since much of the story is set in 1987, there is also a generous portion of Gen X nostalgia, an element which is rapidly becoming part of my “brand”.
I’ll have some more posts about The Woman in Crosley Tower in the days and weeks ahead. For now, here is the Amazon pre-order link.
The Woman in Crosley Tower will be initially released in digital-only format (Kindle). For those of you who like to read on paper (and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, of course!) the title will be released in a combined volume with several other Uncanny Ohio titles later in the summer/fall.
Also, The Woman in Crosley Tower will be in Kindle Unlimited, at least for the foreseeable future. So you can read it there if you’re a Kindle Unlimited subscriber.
-ET
A married woman in the suburbs develops a sudden and inexplicable interest in graveyard photography. Her husband wonders what’s going on with her.
But what secrets is her husband hiding?
Such is the setup of Involuntary Deeds, my new supernatural/psychological horror novella. The novella is set in Clermont County, Ohio, about twenty miles east of Cincinnati.
Involuntary Deeds is presently available on Amazon. It will be rolled out to the other major retailers (Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, and Apple Books) in the coming weeks.
Amazon description:
Some crimes don’t stay buried.
Pam Vance never cared about cemeteries—until the day she couldn’t stay away from them.
What begins as a strange new hobby quickly turns into something else. An obsession. A need to photograph graves she’s never seen before… places she feels drawn to.
Her husband, Robert, knows something is wrong.
Then the warnings begin.
The ghost of a Revolutionary War soldier appears to Robert with a message he can’t ignore: stay away.
But Pam won’t stop.
Because one grave is calling to her—that of a sixteen-year-old girl who died in 1991. A death long forgotten.
But not by Robert.
As the past closes in, a truth buried for decades begins to surface—pulling the living and the dead toward a confrontation that can no longer be avoided.
‘Involuntary Deeds’ is a novella for fans of classic ghost stories in the tradition of Peter Straub, Shirley Jackson, M.R. James, and E.F. Benson.
David Van Dyke Stewart is waxing pessimistic about the state of indie publishing. In his view, indie publishing is so threatened by AI slop and genre slop that it is no longer worth doing anymore.
He announces in the video below that he intends to “step away” from indie publishing. He’s even flirting with the idea of unpublishing some of his existing novels, because he does not want to be associated with some of the ridiculous excesses that we now see in indie publishing.
A part of me fully sympathizes. As I’ve written previously, I can hardly stand to enter indie writing groups on Facebook anymore. 90% of the authors participating in such spaces are now writing shifter romances, reverse harem—and similarly ridiculous books adorned with man chests. Then there are the dogs and cats solving mysteries, the witch cozies, etc. It is possible for one to feel ridiculous by association.
As for AI…yes, that is a problem of an entirely different magnitude.
And yet…I remain optimistic, if not in the short run, then at least in the long run.
Why? Because I’ve seen this movie before. I remember almost twenty years ago, how everyone was predicting that the entire internet would be taken down—not by AI, but by content farms.
For those of you who don’t remember (or who are a little fuzzy) on the history, content farms were junk sites that were hastily written to maximize clicks in Google search results, and thereby maximize AdSense income. For a few years they represented a real threat to the integrity of the internet.
But the content farms eventually went the way of the pterodactyl. Google changed its algorithm. Search engine users became more discriminating, and learned to recognize query results that led to content farms. The economic incentive for the content farms went away.
That’s what I expect to happen with AI slop (and—to some degree—genre slop). How long can it remain profitable to turn out template-driven trashy romance novels, for instance? Even for the voracious porn/romance readership?
And once you throw AI into the mix, the race to the unprofitable bottom is inevitable. I look for the genre slop writers, and the AI slop producers, to eventually be driven out by their own excesses.
One irony here is that AI slop and genre slop have a mutually destructive, symbiotic relationship. Template-driven, repetitive genre novels are the easiest to produce with various AI programs.
What does concern me is that before it all goes away, it will completely undermine the Kindle Unlimited ecosystem. This is a real threat in the short- to mid-term.
But I don’t look for AI and genre slop to take down indie publishing as an industry. As long as the internet has existed, there have been both outright scammers and individuals who seek to maximize profit by turning out low-effort, repetitive content. That problem is not going to go away. One bag of tricks will simply be replaced by another.
The rest of us will soldier on. As for David Van Dyke Stewart, I hope that he soldiers on, too. I haven’t read any of his novels; but I have watched some of his YouTube content. He strikes me as a thoughtful fellow.
-ET
It is not quite summer, if you want to get technical about it. Summer will not officially begin until Sunday, June 21, 2026.
We are still in April. The schools won’t let out for another six weeks.
But the mercury here in southern Ohio will hit 85 degrees today. That’s close enough for me.
The above is one of my early short stories, “The Wasp”. I wrote it back in 2009, and it was first published in my short story collection, HAY MOON AND OTHER STORIES.
This is very much a summertime story. It’s also based my lifetime loathing of wasps. I can handle spiders, snakes, and other creepy-crawlers (to a point, anyway). I love honeybees.
But I absolutely despise wasps.
As the old German proverbs goes, “God made the bee, but the devil made the wasp.”
-ET
My maternal grandfather, born in 1921, grew up in rural Adams County, Ohio. He told me so much about that time and place, that I sometimes feel as if I lived it all myself.
“Hay Moon” is a short story set in rural Ohio in the summer of 1932. My grandfather never told me a story like this, filled with supernatural forces and the undead. But his real-life accounts of his childhood years helped me add a realistic flavor to the tale, if I say so myself.
You can listen to the story here, or on my YouTube channel (where you’ll find lots of additional audio content).
You can purchase this story as part of my Hay Moon and Other Stories collection. If you like my approach to historical horror, consider The Rockland Horror historical horror series, which is also available in a five-volume boxset on Kindle.
-ET
Revolutionary Ghosts is my 2019 novel based on a premise that mixes supernatural horror and history:
Suppose that the Headless Horseman of Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” were to return to terrorize modern-day America.
But not 21st-century, present-day America. (The current century has enough real horrors without make-believe, thank you very much.)
Most of Revolutionary Ghosts is set in 1976, the year of the American Bicentennial. This is historical horror with a cool ‘70s vibe.
The original 2019 cover was, however, badly in need of a refresh. This is the new cover:
You can find Revolutionary Ghosts on Amazon. The book is coming out of Kindle Unlimited on April 1. Shortly after that, you’ll be able to get it on Apple Books, Kobo, Google, and B&N. Library distribution will also be rolled out. So you can read it that way if your local library has an arrangement with OverDrive.
-ET
The year is 1988. Anything can happen, but nothing is guaranteed!
Get ready for a coming-of-age story that will remind you of your favorite teen/young adult movies from the 1980s.
As the year 1988 begins, Paul Nelson is nineteen going on twenty. Paul is an economics major at the University of Cincinnati. He has big plans to go to work at a major bank after graduation.
But Paul’s life is not without problems. His first serious girlfriend has dumped him, and his best friend Scott gets all the female attention, seemingly without trying.
Paul meets a witty young woman who seems to be his perfect match. But then he unexpectedly falls for an older woman who has secrets and an unknown agenda.
Paul’s life spins out of control. He’s also incurred the unwanted attention of the Cincinnati Police Department, criminal elements, and a military man who detests him on sight.
Filled with a wide range of memorable characters and a generous dollop of 80s nostalgia, ‘No Sure Thing’ is a fun and fast-paced tale from a bygone but fondly remembered era.
TERMINATION MAN is the story of Craig Walker, a management consultant who specializes in “removing” problem employees through entrapment and techniques of “social engineering”.
TERMINATION MAN is fiction, but it is based on my experience in the automotive industry. The novel’s premise also has a basis in HR practices.
“Managing out” is a common corporate HR practice. When an employee is “managed out”, her situation is made so unpleasant or unsustainable that she will effectively fire herself, and voluntarily resign. This saves the company hassle and expense on multiple levels.
TERMINATION MAN is an embellishment of the managing out practice, of course. But the principle exists, and all HR professionals are familiar with it.
Another thing to remember: corporate HR is not your friend. Corporate HR does not represent you. Corporate HR represents your employer, the company.
This doesn’t mean that corporate HR reps are automatically sinister, venal, etc. (Most are not.) But you should never forget who pays their salaries. (Hint: not you.)
-ET
ELEVEN MILES OF NIGHT is a tale of horror on a haunted road.
Jason Kelley is a college student who agrees to take a walk down the most paranormally active road in Ohio. His mission: to document the phenomena he encounters on the cursed stretch of rural highway.
Along the way he encounters hellhounds, malevolent spirits, and trees that come to life.
If you like traditional supernatural horror tales, you’ll love ELEVEN MILES OF NIGHT. Available on Amazon now.
The year is 1938. Betty Lehmann is an undercover German spy. Can anyone stop her? Find out in THE CAIRO DECEPTION, a 5-book, World War II historical fiction series.
Halloween 1980
You’re twelve years old, and trick-or-treating with your two best friends.
You know what they say about the Shipley House. Something very bad happened there in 1959.
For more than twenty years, the Shipley house has stood vacant. No one can live there for long.
You’ve been warned not to enter.
But it’s Halloween, after all. How can you resist?
You try the front door. You’re surprised to find that the Shipley house is unlocked. Almost as if the house has been waiting for you.
You go inside, and walk down the hallway toward the bedroom at the end of the corridor.
Be careful: what you find in that room may drive you mad. And you may discover things about yourself that you don’t want to know.
***
The Shipley house is featured in one of the chapters of 12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN, a Gen X coming-of-age supernatural horror tale set on Halloween night, 1980.
Three young friends decide to go out for “one last Halloween before they enter their teenage years. But this will be a Halloween like no other.
12 HOURS OF HALLOWEEN is available on Amazon, and you can read it for free in Kindle Unlimited.
REVOLUTIONARY GHOSTS…The Headless Horseman rides again!
In the Bicentennial summer of 1976, the Headless Horseman returns from history (and the grave!) to terrorize modern-day America. Can one Ohio teenager stop the carnage?
