Surprise, Surprise: Pit Bulls kill things

Hands Off by David Hudnut

Did anybody see the news story last night about the two pit bulls that traipsed into Sandra Anderson's house in Longview Washington, through her patio door, and killed her cat napping on the window sill? The article is here.

It drives me nuts when I read news stories like this. They are common. Where I live, I periodically see pit bulls roaming the streets without an owner anywhere in the vicinity. Why? Because the fences in people's yards are low enough for any medium-sized dog to climb over. It's no surprise that the dogs get free.

I've even had two pit bulls run into my backyard chasing a cat. I had to chase the pit bulls off by yelling at them because I didn't have anything handy like a bat. I would've preferred a spear. There I was, in my sweats at 7:30 in the morning, shouting at the top of my lungs in my front yard:

"GET OUT OF HERE!! GO HOME!! GET OUT OF HERE!!"

When the neighbors came outside, the dogs had already run off. I must have looked like a lunatic to them.

Because this infuriates me to no end, I wrote a story about this exact topic. It was a way for me to work out my irritation in a constructive fashion. If free-roaming pit bulls chap your hide, and you like horror stories, you will enjoy my story Hands Off.

You can buy Hands Off on Amazon.com here.

Dog bites

Hands Off by David Hudnut

FREE DOG BITES!!

That's right, if you hop over to Amazon.com TODAY thru Sunday, February 17th, you can get a free dog bite!

Well, you can read about dog bites in my suspense story Hands Off.

For FREE.

Have you ever been casually walking through your own neighborhood, minding your own business, and a snarling dog comes out of nowhere? Doesn't that IRK you? It does me. I always wonder WHY the dog isn't where it belongs, behind a fence in someone's yard.

If this scenario gets under your hide like it does me, I bet you will LOVE Hands Off.

It's all about dog bites.

Hands Off is free on Kindle for 3 days.

Wordstock 2012: MORE ZOMBIES!

Meet my zombies

The victims

My zombie army grows. Like the mad necromancer that I have always been, I keep turning more people into zombies. This time, my unsuspecting victims were attendees at Portland, Oregon's very own Wordstock 2012 Book Fair, where I was selling and promoting my new novel Night Walk and my short story collection The Nose Knows & Other Stories. I find large festivals a great source for fresh bodies.

The book lover's party went on for two days, so I had plenty of time to bag a bunch of corpses, bury them in a graveyard overnight, sprinkle magic necromancer powder over their graves, water, and wait for my zombies to grow.

And this time, the zombies sprung up like weeds!

Zombie Monkey attacks!!

Look how many different varieties crawled out of their fresh tombs! My very own botanical garden of monstrosities. It was like a scene out of The Walking Dead, but more gruesome and with no survivors. EVERYONE got turned into a zombie.

So let this be a warning to anybody who decides to purchase my horror novel Night Walk or my short story collection The Nose Knows & Other Stories: if you see me at a book event, and you decide to buy my book, you may very well wake up dead and zombified. 

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED...

The Necromancer and his wizard's laboratory

Meet my Zombie Army

Heavy Metal Hair

I was at the 2nd annual Florence Festival of Books last weekend selling my horror novel Night Walk and my new short story collection The Nose Knows & Other Stories and I had a great time.  Books were sold and drawings were drawn.

I think for any of you who know me, you all know the real reason I attend so many book festivals is to show off my heavy metal hair. Yeah, I'm metal. Deal with it.

But more importantly, I've been building my very own zombie army. Now before you all get up in arms and waving pitchforks around while shouting "David Hudnut is a necromancer!" calm down. When I say I'm building a zombie army, I don't mean I'm actually going to graveyards and morgues in the middle of the night to steal bodies and later resurrect them in my evil wizard's tower. Because we all know, I would never steal bodies. But I do have my very own wizard's tower, and I may or may not have resurrected dead bodies in it now and then.

At any rate, what I WAS doing at the Florence Festival of Books was drawing a picture of each person who bought a copy of my novel Night Walk or my short story collection The Nose Knows & Other Stories in the book they purchased. In some cases, it was a gift for someone not in attendance, so I worked from a photo.

The zombie army

I did all of the sketches using a Pentel 0.5 mechanical pencil, inked with COPIC 0.35 Multiliner SP, and colored with Tombow Dual Brush pens while I chatted with the customers about eating brains and the end of the world. No surprise that zombies LOVE to talk about brains.

The Brain Lovers Society

As usual, The HUDNUT IMP was trying to steal my thunder by crowding me out and getting in the way the whole time. You can see one of his unnecessarily gigantic comic strips right there in front of my booth! What a scene-stealer and attention whore that guy is!

The HUDNUT IMP trying to steal my thunder

The HUDNUT IMP

But I love the little green guy, so I let him get away with it every time.

Now that the show is over, don't fret. You can still buy my novel Night Walk and my short story collection The Nose Knows & Other Stories on Amazon.com.

And if you want me to turn you into a zombie, I will be at Wordstock this coming weekend, October 13 & 14, in Portland, Oregon selling books and drawing people as zombies.

Until next time,

"BRAINS!!!"

Rose City Comic Con 2012

Me and my booth before the mayhem

I was at the Rose City Comic-Con this weekend up in Portland. Attendance was beyond what anybody expected for a debut convention. It had the density of much larger shows like Comic-Con International in San Diego or Emerald City Comicon, but in a smaller, more intimate venue.

The fans were incredible and full of enthusiasm. A lot of them had never attended a comic convention, or had only discovered the Rose City Comic-Con on the day of the show. I think the Con owes a lot of credit to the large number of people in costume. Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Pirates of the Caribbean, Marvel & DC heroes, and zombies were all in abundance. There was even a Klingon, and my personal favorite: a guy in a "The Greatest American Hero" outfit with a permed blond wig. When you see a crowd of people wearing awesome costumes and lined up outside waiting two hours to get into the show, you probably think "I want to go wherever that guy in the Chewbacca costume is waiting to get into."

I know I certainly wanted to be there.

Although I was at Rose City Comic-Con to sell my novel Night Walk, my short story collection The Nose Knows & Other Stories, and Owie-Cadabra's Verbal First Aid for Kids (written by my friend Judith Simon Prager and illustrated by yours truly), the spirit of the American comic book pantheon was contagious. It wasn't long before I set to work sketching The Incredible Hulk, one of my all-time personal favorite Marvel Comics characters. I ended up working on him most of the weekend, and finished my first official comic convention-drawn Hulk on Sunday. Several people offered to buy the sketch, but I couldn't let go of my first-born comic con sketch baby. But through the magic of the internet, all of you can get to know him better:

My Incredible Hulk sketch from the show

For the artists out there, I drew the Hulk in pencil using a Pentel 0.5 mechanical pencil, inked with COPIC 0.35 Multiliner SP, and colored with a combination of Tombow Dual Brush pens and Stabilo Pen 68 (from the 20 color set), both of which are water based. I've used alcohol markers like Prismacolor and COPIC extensively over the years, but I've found the water-based markers are easier to blend because they stay wet longer. Make sure you draw on thick laser printer paper that has some plastic coating to it. You can tell there is a coating because the paper surface will have a slick feel. I like the Hammermill 28 pound Color Copy Digital, or something heavier like Mohawk Color Copy Premium. You can usually find the Hammermill at any office supply store. If you use cheaper papers with the water based markers, you're likely to soak your paper and the fibers will start to lift and "pill" into little wads, and possibly make a hole in your paper if it's not thick enough.

During the course of the show, I met a lot of great comic creators, including Clayton Crain, Chris Mcfann at RKDN Studios, Ibrahim Moustafa, Jonathan Case creator of Dear Creature, Alex J. Murd and James Johnson with CrazedPixel Comics, Aaron Lopresti, and novelist James Shipman, author of Willie Washer's Local No. 38. Be sure to check out all of their respective work. It's all great stuff.

I will be at Rose City Comic-Con next year for sure! I can't wait!

Thanks to organizers Ron Brister, Dave Brockway, and Matt Makin for making the show a success.

The Nose Knows & Other Stories

The Book Gargoyle is back. You all remember him. He's the guy who supports printed books. He hates eReaders because his stony fingers always scratch the screens when he tries to turn the pages the old fashioned way: licking his stony finger with his stony tongue and swiping to the next page. You can imagine how well that would work on an iPhone screen!

The Nose Knows & Other Stories is a collection of three of David Hudnut's shorter works which were previously available only on the Kindle: The Nose Knows, Hands Off, and Donut Does It; it also includes The Hitler Machine, which is only available in this printed collection.

From the back of the book

THE NOSE KNOWS: Calvin Dunkley tries to find true love, but the mutant nose hair he discovers growing from his nostril doesn’t want him to...

HANDS OFF: Sometimes dogs are not man’s best friend...

DONUT DOES IT: Did you know that doughnuts can kill? Find out how...

THE HITLER MACHINE: Surprise, surprise. Adolph Hitler is still alive, trapped in a super-secret underground bunker. He’s old, he’s ornery, and he needs a nursemaid. That nursemaid is YOU...

And from the Book Gargoyle himself:

"E-gads! What a scary bunch of stories! I almost wet my concrete pants when I read these stories! I was scared stiff, and not because I'm made of stone! I posed with the book for this photo during the day time because I was too darned scared to stand next to it at night! Wow! Good thing for me I hang around cathedrals the rest of the time. God protect me...David Hudnut must get his stories straight from the devil..."

---The Book Gargoyle

The Nose Knows & Other Stories by David Hudnut

Now available in book form