Michael Picco, Author

Some works in progress, posted for your amusement...

The latest revision of the cover from the publisher. I am happy to announce that my Italian Sonnet "The Vampyre's Last Dawn" will be included in the 2018 collection of poetry ( Speculations ) from the Weird Poets Society!  The volume is due to be released in January or February of this year!

My contributor copies for  Stranded: Lone Survivor Deserted Island Horror Stories   arrived in the mail yesterday!  This anthology from Dark Regions Press, contains my flash fiction short story, "Isle for One?" — which took Fourth Place in their writing contest this last summer!  Considering that there were "over 1,000 entries" in the contest, I consider this a pretty big deal (like in the 99.5 percentile!)!  It's great to be a part of this anthology — especially from such a well-respected publisher. 

I've been steadily working on a new short story called, The Bark Men . It takes place in my back yard, (Ouray, Colorado) and is told from the perspective of a thirteen year old boy (someone whose voice I can hear quite plainly. A testament to the tough little kid still alive and kicking in my head after all these years!). The story is an offshoot of the Dust Bunny Monster ... it's progenitor, really. I came to realize this fall that I was trying to tell two separate stories, and have since separated the two. Now at nearly 6,000 words, The Bark Men  is nearly three times the length of the Dust Bunny Monster and has gained a lot of momentum. Hopefully I will have it completed by the end of the year. Here's an excerpt:

{Author's note: although this story won't find its way into Corpse Honey (I simply do not have the room for it), I was happy with how it turned out, that I just had to share it. I think my regular readers will find it delightfully twisted and macabre. My thanks to Rob Mosher for inspiration and collaboration on the piece. } The ones who screamed the longest were the first ones to die.  Cimarron, the stone mason’s daughter, had been the first to go. Her desperate pleas had changed to cries as the wheel turned. Those cries steadily dissolved into ragged screams as she was lowered down, into the trough. Sebastian could still hear her even after she was plunged under the murky black waters. Even now, days later, he could still hear her gurgling screams as she had thrashed and strained against her lashings. He’d watched her go under that first time. Watched as she had closed her eyes, her tears running down, over her forehead, falling down into the basin. Sebastian remembere...