Welcome to the website of author Edward Trimnell!
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.
Read the short story Thanatos Postponed on Edward Trimnell Books. This tale of terror is inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”.
Mark Bonner is a young American college graduate. He lacks direction, and he seeks adventure.
Mark thinks that he’s found the perfect job: as a private English tutor at the estate of Raul Garcia, a wealthy Mexican businessman.
But there is something horribly wrong in the household of Raul Garcia. Read Thanatos Postponed here on Edward Trimnell Books.
“The Van” is one of five long short stories included in the collection: I Know George Washington and Other Stories: 5 Dark Tales.
The basic setup for the story is this: a divorced father is driving with his 13-year-old daughter through East Tennessee, near Knoxville. Under the custody agreement of the divorce, the girl spends the summers with her dad in Ohio. As the story opens, the summer is coming to a close. Father and daughter are on their way to Florida, where the man’s ex-wife (the girl’s mother) lives.
That route—from Ohio to Florida—takes them through the eastern corner of the Volunteer State, where trouble awaits.
They stop at a barbecue restaurant, not far from Knoxville, to eat dinner. It’s been a long day on the road, and they’re both feeling tired.
The man happens to notice two men standing in line with them. The men look suspicious, and they are ogling his daughter.
“The Van” is the story of what happens next…
***
The trigger for this story came to me one day at the branch office of my local cable TV company, of all places. I was standing in line to see about an irregularity on my bill. There were about a dozen people in the line with me.
I looked at the faces around me and thought: What if one of these people is a serial killer?
That was the kernel of the story: a wait in line leads to a random encounter with human evil.
Stories often begin (for me, at least), with single images or ideas like that. Something will happen—often something very mundane—and it will get me thinking.
A trigger idea always needs work, of course. So it was in this case. “The Van” is not a story about my trip to the cable TV company. A middle-age man (yours truly) standing in line at the cable company is not very exciting. But what about a father who must take daring actions to save his daughter from two very bad men? Well, that’s something else entirely. That’s something we can work with.
I chose the location of East Tennessee as a setting for several reasons. First of all, I’m familiar with it. I’ve been through that area quite a lot. Secondly, this is a portion of the country that you would pass through if traveling from Ohio to Florida, along the I-75 corridor.
If “The Van” sounds like an intriguing story, you might check out the aforementioned collection. I Know George Washington and Other Stories: 5 Dark Tales is available in both Kindle and paperback at Amazon.
In Tennessee, a father and his adolescent daughter must battle two evil men who harbor sinister intentions toward one of them.
In Zacatecas, Mexico, a recent college graduate takes a job as a private English language tutor for a wealthy family. But the entire household is hiding a horrible secret.
In Virginia, a young stockbroker’s colleagues insist that George Washington, the First President of the United States, is alive and well in the twenty-first century.
In rural Ohio, curiosity compels two travelers to stop at an abandoned schoolhouse with an evil history, and a reputation for ghostly activity.
In western Pennsylvania, a junior high student learns that his beloved teacher is not what he purports to be.
A collection of five unique stories, each of which contains an unexpected twist.
Here’s a quick breakdown of the stories in this collection:
“The Van”: While traveling through Tennessee, a single father and his 13-year old daughter encounter two men who take an unwholesome interest in one of them.
“Thanatos Postponed”: A recent college graduate takes a job as a private tutor at the estate of a wealthy businessman in Zacatecas, Mexico. But there is something horribly wrong in the palatial residence high in the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains.
“I Know George Washington”: A young man’s new work colleagues insist that George Washington is alive and well in the twenty-first century.
“One-room Schoolhouse”: A young couple stop at an abandoned schoolhouse in rural Ohio. The schoolhouse is reputed to be haunted.
“Mr. Robbie’s Secret”: a beloved English teacher is not what he appears to be.
I hope you enjoy these stories.
I like short stories, and so I am a habitual reader of the annual Best Short Stories collections, which are edited by Heidi Pitlor and a guest editor.
This series often leads me to the discovery of new writers whose work I enjoy. It was the 2007 edition (guest-edited by Stephen King) that introduced me to the work of the late William Gay (1941~2012). I went on to read all of of Gay’s published books after that. The 2007 collection collection also features John Barth’s memorable tale on age and mortality, “Toga Party”.
But we’re talking about the 2019 collection, guest-edited by Anthony Doerr. I listened to the audio version of the book. (I went through several stories while I was mowing my lawn and my dad’s lawn, in fact.)
This collection is very much a mixed bag. Some of these stories are (in my estimation, at least), pointlessly depressing, navel-gazing stories, while some are actually quite good.
There are two well-known names in the collection: Jeffry Eugenides and Ursula K. LeGuin. I did not like either of their offerings. No big surprise in either case: I enjoyed Eugenides’s The Marriage Plot; but Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides both left me cold. And Ursula K. LeGuin’s work has never been to my taste.
That said, there are a handful of genuinely good stories in this collection—or stories that held my attention, anyway. These included Weike Wang’s “Omakase,”, Alexis Schaitkin’s “Natural Disasters”, Mona Simpson’s “Wrong Object”, and Saïd Sayrafiezadeh’s “Audition”.
Don’t let my very mixed assessment of this very mixed collection dissuade you from giving it a try, if short stories are your thing. Any anthology containing work from different authors is going to be, by definition, uneven and punctuated with many ups and downs. While I did not like all the stories in this book, the good ones more than offset the ones that weren’t to my taste.
***
Like all of you, in recent weeks I have been more preoccupied than usual with current events. As a result, the content here since mid-March has focused on the daily news.
The name of this site, though, is Edward Trimnell Books. I chose that name for a reason. Commentaries on the news will always have a place here. (I’m rather opinionated, as you may have noticed.) That said, this site isn’t, strictly speaking, a news site. I primarily write books, many of which you can find on Amazon.
This is a business for me. I’m an author, of course; but I’m also a micro-publisher.
Nevertheless, these are tough times for many readers. The COVID-19 shutdown has cut US economic activity by about a third. Unemployment now hovers at an unbelievable 18%. Hopefully the economy will be reopened soon, and the raw numbers will improve. Many people, though, will need time to recover from this unprecedented interruption to normal life.
In light of these highly unusual circumstances, I would like to make all of my books available to readers for free.
This is already the case with most of my existing library, if you’re a member of Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program.
I realize, though, that Kindle Unlimited won’t be the right option for some of you. And as much as I love Amazon, people were reading online long before anyone ever heard of a Kindle.
One of the purposes of a website is to provide free online content. Without something for people to read, a website is nothing more than a glorified online brochure.
That’s what all too many websites are. I’ve always wanted this site to provide more to the reading community—especially in times like these.
I initially explored the idea of making more of my existing catalog available here on the site. The problem, though, is that I can’t make content freely available to you here, as well as in the Amazon Kindle Unlimited program. Amazon requires that all Kindle Unlimited titles be exclusive to the Amazon platform (in electronic form). I am bound by the terms of that contract, and I intend to abide by it.
So I had another idea…
I’ve therefore decided to start making some titles available here on the site exclusively—or in advance of bookstore publication. These will not be serials, technically speaking, but I’ll be posting them a chapter at a time, as I write them. And you’ll be able to read them here for free.
I have several titles in mind for the first round of online books. These will be a mixture of fiction and nonfiction. The fiction books will span several of the genres that I usually write in (thriller, horror, mystery). I also have some short stories planned.
And for those of you who have enjoyed all the news commentaries over these past few weeks, fear not: At least one of the titles I have in the works concerns politics. But whereas the daily blog posts typically deal with ephemeral headlines, the upcoming book one will dig deeper and involve more theory.
The plan is to serialize several diverse titles at once, so that at least one of them will be something you’ll be interested in reading. As I say on ETB’s About page , I don’t expect anyone to like everything posted on this site, but everyone should be able to find at least something that they like. That’s one of the advantages of a variety format.
No, this isn’t a prelude to asking you for money.
Some sites that provide free content immediately turn around and panhandle you at every turn—usually via requests to support them on Patreon.
I don’t necessarily have a philosophical opposition to Patreon (or similar crowdfunding intermediaries, like Kickstarter). I’ll probably put up a Patreon page eventually, for readers who would like to voluntarily contribute. But if I’m going to make that an upfront requirement, I had might as well just put everything on Amazon first. A Patreon paywall is still a paywall.
***
But I still have bills to pay, just like everyone else. Can free content work with paying the bills? In part, yes.
One of the really cool things about online content is that “free to the reader/viewer” need not mean “unpaid to the creator/publisher”. This principle goes all the way back to the origins of the Internet-as-we-know-it, in the 1990s.
In the beginning, at least, the Online Books Project will be sponsored the old-fashioned way: through the placement of a few unobtrusive ads.
Some of these ads will be for my books on Amazon. If you really like what you read here for free, consider purchasing a book of mine that isn’t part of the Online Books Project. You may also want to purchase an edited, proofread version of a book that appears online first. But that’s totally up to you.
***
The Online Books Project will also be sponsored (sparingly) by banner ads and affiliate links to third-party products. I don’t fundamentally have any difficulty with the idea of supporting free content with third-party ads. That’s what newspapers, magazines, and television have done since time immemorial.
Online ads have (not without some justification) gotten a bad rap in recent years. That’s because some sites have totally overdone the concept.
The online versions of The Independent and USA Today come to mind here. These sites are littered with dropdown full-screen ads, autoplay video ads, and many more extremely intrusive forms of advertising.
Edward Trimnell Books is old-school all the way. Just like I hate social media (why would anyone want to bother with Snapchat or TikTok?), I’m also allergic to newfangled forms of online advertising. I keep the ads here low-key, like they were up till about 2003.
***
Those are my basic ideas about the Online Books Project.
I’ll be posting new content and new chapters daily, more or less, so check back often!
When Kara Teller met Nicholas Naretti, she thought that she had met the man of her dreams.
Little did she know that Nicholas was a member of a radical underground group—and that Kara and her family were targets of the group’s violent agenda.
Tucker Bates has a new job at George Washington Investments. The pay and benefits are good.
The only problem? His coworkers are convinced that the real George Washington is alive and well in the 21st century.
And that he owns the company!
Or, get it at Amazon. (Available in a variety of formats.)
For fans of Stephen King, Peter Straub, and Bentley Little….
A young American in Mexico comes face-t0-face with unspeakable horror! Read it here on Edward Trimnell Books!
I can recall the first time that I was actually scared by something that I read.
It was the summer of 1977. Somehow a book of short horror stories had come into my possession: Stories of Ghosts, Witches, and Demons. This slender 80-page volume, edited by Freya Littledale, was published by Scholastic in 1971.
Although I read the book cover-to-cover, I have forgotten all of the stories—except one: an especially creepy tale called, “The Demon of Detroit”.
This is the story of a married couple, Mr. and Mrs. Adams, who move into a house in the Motor City. They soon discover that they aren’t alone. Something horrible inhabits their back bedroom.
After a series of disturbing events, the couple decides to move out of the house. The last lines of the story are particularly haunting: They indicate that the Adamses “admit defeat”. Whatever lurks in the back bedroom will now have the rest of the home to itself, too.
The full text of the story (along with a clip of the artwork appearing in the original Scholastic publication) is available online. I do recognize the artwork. I can’t say for certain if the transcription of the 1971 text is one hundred percent faithful. (I was nine years old in 1977, after all.)
“The Demon of Detroit” seems to be based on an urban legend from the 1960s, which has enjoyed a modest contemporary revival. Urban legends, I’ve found, often make good source material for horror films and short stories, because urban legends are instantly relatable and easy to grasp. They aren’t overly complex. That’s important in horror film and fiction.
“The Demon of Detroit” also demonstrates the effectiveness of the short form in horror. This short story is perhaps a thousand words long. Obviously, they won’t all be that short. But as a rule of thumb with horror: the longer the story, the harder it is to maintain the suspension of disbelief. (Notice that Poe, Lovecraft, and even Stephen King are at their best when writing in the short form.)
“The Demon of Detroit” is a story that begins with a subtle atmosphere of darkness, and builds, over about a thousand words, to something truly malevolent.
“The Demon of Detroit” scared the bejesus out of me in 1977. I reread it today (the online version). It still brings a chill to my spine, forty-three years later.
If you’re in the mood for sci-fi horror, check out my short story “The Dreams of Lord Satu” which you can read for FREE here at Edward Trimnell Books.
This story was included in my first short story collection, Hay Moon & Other Stories.
Recommended for readers who would like something set in outer space that also has a dark edge.
If you’re looking for frightening tales, you might turn to a book. (I’m definitely an advocate of those!)
There are, however, plenty of short horror tales that you can read for free online.
First of all, the tales of Edgar Allan Poe are in the public domain.
The copyright surrounding H.P. Lovecraft’s work is varied (and a little confusing). Much of it, however, can be found in the public domain.
I’m also publishing horror stories that you can read here—completely FREE.
The list will continue to grow, but here are some to get you started:
Giants in the Trees: Unspeakable horrors are lurking in the trees of a suburban back yard.
The Vampires of Wallachia: Three travelers discover that a Chinese restaurant in Ohio is home to the undead.
The Wasp: Leo had always been afraid of wasps….for good reason, as it turned out.
For more horror fiction, check out this page, where I regularly post story updates!
If you’d like to read my new five-story collection, I Know George Washington, you have one more day to grab it for FREE. After that, the price will return to the normal $2.99 (unless you’re in Kindle Unlimited, that is).
The FREE promo is scheduled through Oct 26, but I don’t know exactly when Amazon will pull the switch. So if you want it, I advise grabbing it today.
In Tennessee, a father and his adolescent daughter must battle two evil men who harbor sinister intentions toward one of them.
In Zacatecas, Mexico, a recent college graduate takes a job as a private English language tutor for a wealthy family. But the entire household is hiding a horrible secret.
In Virginia, a young stockbroker’s colleagues insist that George Washington, the First President of the United States, is alive and well in the twenty-first century.
In rural Ohio, curiosity compels two travelers to stop at an abandoned schoolhouse with an evil history, and a reputation for ghostly activity.
In western Pennsylvania, a junior high student learns that his beloved teacher is not what he purports to be.
A collection of five unique stories, each of which contains an unexpected twist.
It should be live on Amazon sometime today.
Also, a new novel is in the works.
Details to follow.
I’ve posted my horror novelette, HAY MOON, for you to read here on the site. (An ad-free, kindle version is also available.)
This isn’t yet another post-apocalyptic zombie novel. Most of the action is set in the 1930s in rural Ohio.
