It occurred to me a little bit ago that in the long time I have been writing I have put out or been in a LOT of publications. More than I consider a lot of the time. I made a list and it was pretty ridiculous. I thought I would share it, not out of some sense of bragging but as a chronicle of what I have worked on. I wrote movie reviews for a website and did movies, books, and music reviews for a local paper for a time but outside of those this is about as official of a chronicle as I can recall.
I will try to be chronological but we’ll see how that goes.
CineGore – fanzine from the very early ’90s I did with a friend that was all about our love of horror. Pretty silly and sorta charming.
Qua – Literary journal put out by the University of Michigan – Flint English Department. I have a story in it that ended up in Back from Nothing.
Punk As Fuck – Indie Flint ‘zine. I really wasn’t punk though but don’t tell anyone I said that.
Ghoulash– This was a ‘zine some friends and I did that was the spiritual successor and evolution of CineGore. A friend took an issue to comic writer Joe Monks and he picked us up for an issue that went national. We were sadly a little to weird and scattershot and were aimed towards comic stores and while we were told we broke even on the first issue we didn’t publish a second issue though there IS a second issue that still could see the light some day.
Back From Nothing – My first collection of short stories. Very raw, very dark, and a lot angsty. I love it but it is very early work. I went through a subsidy publisher for this first book after a couple years of rejections. Bless my parents’ hearts for footing most of the bill, though I like to think that my continued writing and publishing paid it back to some degree.
The Eyes of Bennie Bromstein – The spiritual successor to Ghoulash. Much funnier, and more directed and completely local but darn it was fun. There are still issues very infrequently.
Children of Nothing – Small story collection I made up for Motorcity Comic Con.
Born Broken – Another small sampler to sell at small shows and the MCC.
Hope In The Inferno – Another sampler in a smaller format.
The Meep Sheep – The original short story sold on its own at shows.
Cemetery Earth– The first stories of the original vision I had of what became the novel. Things really changed when I picked the book back up this year to get back to work on it.
In These Woods – I have a story cycle focused around a creepy ring of trees called The Sisters Six that stand in the center of a forest and grant wishes to those that will give an offering but you’ll really want to watch out for their children. They tend to be nasty. And hungry.
Voices – This is a publication put out by The Greater Flint Creative Alliance. I was a member of the group for a couple years and have a piece in one or two of these annual publications. I forget now.
Bare Bone 7 + 9 – In the early 2000s I got the most random of emails from a writer looking to get people to read his book. I read the email, which I thought at first was SPAM and contacted him. His name was/is Kevin Donihe and he and I struck up a friendship that lead me to NYC and the 2005 World Horror Con. I was published twice in Bare Bone, a horror anthology series edited by Kevin. I even received a couple Honorable Mentions in The Year’s Best Horror and Fantasy for the work.
CThulhu Sex – Some more great folks in NYC were the guys behind this swell erotic horror magazine. I submitted a weird little tale to them and got it published. My one connection to Lovecraft. There you go. Ta-Dah!
This Beautiful Darkness – The second breath in my little literary career. I was at a comic con and was next to a guy who had put his own book out via Lightning Source, a self publishing house. It was that weekend that I decided I needed to look into that and found Create Space and here I am, a self pub madman!
The Meep Sheep – The full story in all its glory.
Red Dreams – After the cuteness of flying sheep I needed a return to darkness, which this was in spades.
The Kreep Sheep – The second book in the Meep saga. A little darker and more disjointed as its about the many stories about the Lands of Man but it sets the stage for the final book.
Noches De Corazones Negros –Nights of Black Hearts. I set to do something very small in page count but very nasty so I got together a bunch of mean spirited stories and here they are. Though it’s not as dark as I first intended. Which may be for the best.
A Shadow Over Ever – My LONG in the works novel. The story of a lonely, angry man and his fight against the world that leads him in a battle to save it. I love this weird book and am pretty stoked we managed to get it to 666 pages in layout.
Disaster Anthology – A friend was putting together an anthology of stories where the proceeds would benefit disaster relief and I was game. We were given an historic disaster and asked to write a corresponding tale. I wrote about the Dust Bowl. I really love that story.
Cemetery Earth – The most recent book. My long in the works zombie epic about the ending of the world and the dawn of the Dead Age.
It is crazy to think I have been so blessed as to have been able to put out this much work let alone have this much work get put out there for people. Things have changed so much since the early days of fiction. I just hope that in some very small way I honor that long and storied legacy.
– c
The Spooky World of Chris Ringler 