Hello? Anyone out there? Is this mic on? Yes, it’s still me. The same ol’ Carver. Way back when I first started this newsletter. Back in the day, which was less than a year ago, I explained my reason for calling this sometimes monthly but kind of sporadically produced newsletter Carver’s Horrific Sunday Paper. It was because growing up, nothing seemed more sacred than that thick thumper of a publication known as THE SUNDAY PAPER. I wanted my newsletter to be THAT important, and I planned to produce it on Sundays. Ha! Haha! Hahaha! You’re laughing with me I bet because not a single fucking Sunday did this newsletter slip into your inbox. I don’t think it ever came out on a Sunday. Plus, the name just sounded wonky.
Carver’s Block is what I call my group on Facebook. It’s what my merch and apparel shop is kind of built around, and I just like the sound of it. Since a blotter is a sort of rundown of events, and this is my rundown of events, The Carver’s Block Blotter seems more fitting. Don’t you think?
I’ve got a funny story to tell you, which is how I usually kick off my newsletter, but since I have a lot of important news to pack into this issue, I figured I’d cover those things first. Then we can get to the ridiculous tale.
And, boy, do I have some stuff to tell you about in this issue. I finished Kin of the Fallen. Yes! The ebook and paperback are both live on Amazon right now. Click on the cover below to be taken to the Amazon page.
I love that cover. Thank you to everyone who pre-ordered the book, everyone who has bought a copy since it went live, and everyone who clicks on the book cover and does it now. This one’s wild. It’s definitely not as light as Faces of Beth. You’ve been warned.
Here's the book blurb/synopsis:
It’s serial killer VS bikers
The world’s most notorious slashers hacked their way into our psyches and buried their hatchets in our hearts. Summer camps became sinister slaughterhouses, jigsaw puzzles twisted into bloody brainteasers, and all small Texas towns conjured images of cannibalistic chainsaw carnage.
But these bloodthirsty butchers didn’t only slay the victims, they destroyed the loved ones left picking up the pieces of their shattered lives.
The parents.
The children.
The siblings.
The uncles, aunts, cousins, friends…
Grief breeds rage and vengeance within the Kin of the Fallen MC.
It’s their creed. It’s on the patch they wear.
For this crew, stopping these killers before they strike again is the only thing that eases the pain and satisfies their need for justice.
There’s a new breed of slasher stalking the streets. He’s heard tales of the Kin of the Fallen and sees the bikers’ threats as a personal challenge. Now, he’s hunting them down and ripping them apart limb by severed limb.
What else is new?
I have other exciting news! I’ve been working hard at revamping my website to make it easier for people to purchase signed copies of all my books. Instead of having to reach out and ask me personally if I have any copies available and wait for my answer, you can always go to
There you’ll find all my books along with other cool info. You choose what you want, place your order, and I’ll sign/personalize the book and send it to you. It’s super easy now. As of right now, I don’t have copies of Kin of the Fallen up on the site because I’m waiting on them to come in from Amazon, but check the site and they’ll eventually be there.
That’s not all! There’s a link on my website that'll take you to my Carver's Block Swag Shop. That's my new merchandise and apparel store. You can get to it from my website or click HERE to go straight there. Just remember you can always find it by going to carverpike.com and clicking on the Carver's Apparel, Merch, and Swag page.
You’ll find merch with my new logo, and I’ve been creating apparel and merchandise to go along with Kin of the Fallen. It won’t make a whole lot of sense to you before reading the book, but there’s a restaurant the MC loves to frequent called Stank Wobblies, a podcast used to tell some of the story (Listen Here, You Horror Podcast), a fictional West Virginia rapper named Lil’ Mud Butt, a big festival called Moonshine Madness, and of course I’ve made merch with the biker logo itself. Here are some images to show you what I mean. As you read the book, you'll understand more.
And I had a few readers of Faces of Beth request #TeamGore merch so here you go.
All of these designs are available in a few different colors in men's and women's hoodies, tees, tank tops, long sleeves, sweatshirts, and other merchandise like tote bags, stickers, mugs, and more.
I’m so excited. I think you’re going to have fun with Kin of the Fallen. This book even has a kickass playlist inside. If you have Spotify, you can click the link (or scan the barcode) and go right to it so when a song plays in the story, you can have it playing in the background.
Tell me a story
Oh, the funny story. Want to hear it?
I can’t believe winter is here already. Fall just slipped right by us. Summer is long gone, and I only got to go out on a boat once this year. It was a busy year. Of course, I’ve got a story to tell you about that one boat ride.
Every year we hang out on Janet’s boat. She’s Jules’s best friend, more like family to us. Now, Jules and Janet like to do some drinking when they’re together. Come on. You know you have that friend, too. The one you can’t wait to meet up with so you can bitch about work. The one you get sloppy drunk with? Well, that’s Jules and Janet - but on a boat.
I’ve seen Janet pretty drunk before and even when she’s shitfaced, she knows the lake like the back of her hand. I should probably add that the lake around here is fucking massive. It reminds me of when I was a kid and lived with my grandmother for a little while along Fort Lauderdale’s intercoastal. This lake has all these canals and inlets and I don’t know all the fuckin’ lake terms. I’m not a pirate. I don’t work for Nautica. I don’t even have any signs in my house framed in sandy rope or lined with starfish or fixed with an anchor with witty sayings like “Gone fishin’” or “The worst day fishing is better than the best day working!” Don’t get me wrong, fishing is cool. I’ve just never been an avid fisherman myself. But Janet! She knows that damned lake and this lake goes on and on, has many different alcoves, and lots of places to easily get lost.
This time, due to my health issues, I agreed to refrain from having beers and drive the boat instead (as long as she showed me how and where to go – no, I’d never driven a boat before) so she and Jules could have their fun. They had A LOT of fun. For A LONG TIME.
At one point, they were dancing for what they believed were cars’ headlights up on the highway for drivers who’d stopped to watch them because, you know, that’s what drivers do in the dead of night is stop driving to watch drunk ladies shake their tailfeathers on a boat in total darkness down on the lake below. They were dock spotlights, but I didn’t have the heart to tell them. I mean, who was I to ruin their good time? Instead, I egged them on with, “Yeah, y’all got lots of fans up there. I think somebody just whistled.”
One o’clock in the morning rolled around, and I realized the lake was pretty empty of other boats. The girls still weren’t ready to call it quits, but they were both pretty blitzed, and I needed Janet’s navigational skills. I wish I’d just trusted my own. If I had, I would have turned the boat around and headed for those dock lights they’d been dancing for earlier, but instead, I listened to Janet when she said, “That way.”
“What?” I asked. “The docks are right behind us. See those lights back there?”
She shook her head. “No, go that way. I’m tellin’ you.”
“Janet, I’m pretty sure—”
“Chris, have I ever steered you wrong?”
She had a point. She had never steered me wrong. She’d always taken us back very quickly.
“Okay,” I said, “lead the way.”
So, she did. One thing about Janet’s boat I’d never realized before, and maybe it was because it had just gone through repairs and this was the first time it had been taken out on the lake since its overhaul, but there were no lights on this thing. No headlights of any kind. No spotlight. And a lake at one o’clock in the morning, surrounded by West Virginia woods, is pitch black. The water is like ink. Our cell phone lights didn’t do much at all to cut through the night.
“All right, turn down that way,” Janet ordered after about ten minutes of steady traveling.
I did as I was told, turning into this super dark alcove with trees to both sides. I couldn’t tell the water from the land. Janet was on my left, a little closer to the front of the boat, swaying drunkenly and kind of leaning forward like Michael Jackson in his ‘Smooth Criminal’ music video.
“You’re doing great,” she said. “Just keep going.”
“Are you sure this is the way to the docks?” I asked.
“Yep! Keep going!”
I’d only been out on the lake at night a few times and it had been at least a year since the previous time, but I remembered the ride into the dock area as being really wide with campers and tents to both sides. Lights nearly as bright as stadium lights were kept on all night. This, where we were, was not that.
“Baby,” I called out to Jules who was still dancing behind me, “I don’t think this is right.”
“I can’t see anything,” she said as she sipped from her drink and smiled lazily back at me.
“Janet!” I yelled. “This isn’t the right way.”
“Sure it is!” she replied.
“How can you see anything? It’s all pitch black to me.”
“What? I see fine!”
She was so sure of herself. Yet to my right and left and below all looked dark. Suddenly, in front of me, a new shade appeared. It was slightly lighter. I leaned closer.
“Holy shit!” I yelled and threw the boat in reverse just in time.
The boat barked in response, not appreciating my sudden change of heart, but it slowed and backed up, practically knocking Janet and Jules over at the same time.
“Why’d you do that?!” Janet yelled. “Why’d you stop?”
“Why’d I stop?!” I replied with disbelief that she, who could see so well, couldn’t see what was right in front of us. “Janet, I stopped because there’s a fuckin’ mountain ten feet in front of us! You don’t see that?”
We’d seriously, 100% honest, no exaggeration, come that close to slamming right into a solid wall of rock at the end of that alcove.
Janet squinted as she moved toward the front of the boat. “I don’t see anything.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked. “It’s bigger than the fucking iceberg that sank the Titanic!”
“Oh,” Janet said. “I see it now.”
Then it was the funniest damned thing she and Jules had ever seen. Meanwhile, I’m turning the boat around. Now, we were really lost. Janet convinced me once more she knew where we were going. I didn’t have much of a choice but to listen. My phone's GPS wasn’t much help. We found another alcove that had lights, campers on both sides, and even though I still thought the main dock area was much wider, this did seem promising.
Until we were driving through, and Janet said, “Okay, keep going and just make a left around the bend.”
“What bend?” I asked.
“Up ahead. Just make a left around that bend.”
“There is no fuckin’ bend, Janet. It just ends right up here.”
And it did. With another solid stone wall.
“Ohhhhhh. Well, the good news is now I know exactly where we are.”
And that time she did. We made it to the car by about three o’clock in the morning. Too late to get the Taco Bell I’d wanted, so I was not in the best of moods.
What’s on TV?
We finally finished Stranger Things. I know I wasn’t much of a fan in the beginning, but I became one. The show’s pretty awesome. I’ll be sad to see it end. Since then, I’ve started watching The Chosen with Jules, which follows scripture pretty closely as it relates to the life of Jesus and his disciples. I’ve been reading The Bible, and it’s cool seeing what I’m reading. It’s helping me get a better understanding of everything. I’ve also been watching Tulsa King with Sly Stallone. That’s a pretty cool show.
What am I reading?
A better question is what aren’t I reading? I’m juggling several books on my Kindle including Darkness on the Edge of Town by Brian Keene, Lonesome Oaks by my friend Kelvin V.A Allison, Monsters Come Out by Robert Essig, and many more. In paperback, I’m reading Bishop Candace Nola and as mentioned above I’m reading The Bible. On audiobook, I’m listening to The Town by Bentley Little. All of these titles are great so far. They’re all keeping me entertained. I’m just a book rotator by nature, so I tend to read a chapter or two of one, then I switch to the next, and I keep cycling through. So, I’ll probably finish them all right around the same time—except The Bible of course.
Other news?
In addition to maintaining all my social media accounts, I’m starting to spend time on Brian Keene’s new forum. If you’re not already there, you should stop by and hang out. It’s like the old-school forums from back in the day. I have my own board on there and so do many other authors you’d be familiar with. There’s a general discussion board and a whole section for writers. There’s all kinds of cool stuff on there. On my board, I’ve created threads for book spoilers. So, if you’ve read my Diablo Snuff series and want to go in there and shout about something that pissed you off or you have a question you want me to answer or hope someone else has questioned, you can go in there and do that. If there was something in Faces of Beth you just need to discuss, go into the Faces of Beth Spoiler Thread and say it.
Here’s the link to Brian’s forum. You’ll need to create an account to join:
https://thekeenedom.freeforums.net/
Podcasts and Interviews
Since my last newsletter, I think I’ve only done one interview and it was a written interview with my good friend and badass horror author Sian B. Claven. If you haven’t read Sian’s work, you’re missing out. I read the beginning of her book Buried on an episode of First Chapter Freakshow. She’s a sweetheart, a really great friend, and I was so glad she asked me to be on her website. Click HERE to check out her work.
You can read our interview by clicking HERE.
First Chapter Freakshow Episodes
So, I only recorded one episode of First Chapter Freakshow since my last newsletter. I think the issue I’m having is just the amount of time it takes to record and edit the show. I’ll be the first to admit when I’ve failed, and my plan to add fun extras to the show resulted in too much work in the long run. All the extra stuff made the episodes stretch from the original 20-30 minutes to what’s been closer to an hour. Recording it isn’t the hard part. Finding that stuff and editing it is what’s time-consuming. I’d always planned for the show to be an easy read-for-friends kind of thing. So, I think I’m going to take it back to that. I’ll be pulling out all that extra fluff (book of the week, influencer of the week, etc.) and stripping it down to the original format of just talking and reading. Episode 59 will be the last one with that extra stuff in there.
Episode 59: Dead By Morning by Kayla Krantz
Written in Red
I’m also one of the co-hosts of the Written in Red podcast with Aron Beauregard, Daniel J. Volpe, and Rowland Bercy Jr. Due to personal matters, I miss some of the episodes, and I wish so badly I could say I was there for Jay Wilburn’s episode. It’s an important one filled with so much great information as Jay was a wealth of knowledge. He always gave so much to so many people and never got involved in the drama that often takes place in our book world or horror world. He was definitely one of the great ones, and he’s already missed. Thank you for giving so much of yourself to so many of us, Jay. We miss you, and we love you, man.
Here are the episodes we recorded since my last newsletter.
Episode 37: Wile E Young and Stephen Kozeniewski Interview
Episode 38: Jay Wilburn Interview
I guess that’s about it for this issue. If you’re not already following me, make sure you’re hitting me up in all these places:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carver.pike.98/
Facebook Author Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/carverpikereadergroup
TikTok: @carverpike
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CarverPike
Instagram: @carverpike
Twitter: @carverpike
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