OUT NOW!

When he was a kid, Leonard "Lee" Skay weathered the psychological fallout of his mother's escape from a cult. Now entering middle age, he is a builder of hiking trails around Los Angeles County, though hasn't been hired in a while. His marriage to Dawn, a professional screenwriter, is one of increasing friction. So when a wealthy colleague of Dawn's asks him about building a private trail in the canyon behind his Malibu home, Lee jumps at the opportunity.

While out there working, he encounters a strange man named Daniel Williams Janus, who seems to have carved a secret, minimalist life for himself in the depths of the canyon. As Janus quietly helps Lee build the trail, the two form a unique bond, significant given Lee's tumultuous social history.

Then, after a series of unexplained shootings in the area, and some odd coincidences linking Janus to people in his life, Lee finds himself slipping further into the shadows of a potentially deadly mystery...

NEW RELEASES:

A re-release of this award-winning psychological horror HorrorNews.net calls "Fresh and innovative"

Book One of a new science-fantasy trilogy!

"The Year's Best Speculative Eco-Fiction," featuring my story Herdhunters

...Rumblings...

"One of the best voices in speculative fiction today."

-- Leslie Ann Moore, bestselling author of the Griffin's Daughter trilogy

"A fine writer, with an enviable gift for the poetic turn of phrase."

-- Kitty Burns Florey, author of Solos and The Writing Master

"Put Mike Robinson on your list of authors to watch!"

-- Guy Anthony de Marco, Bram Stoker Award Finalist

"Any praise I offer Mike Robinson should be qualified with the simple fact that I'm a fan. He comes by that admiration honestly: by crafting damn good stories and serving them up with ruthless efficiency."

-- Justin Robinson (no relation), author of Everyman

"Mike Robinson does not write casual books. His words are intentional and layered and ... there is something so beautiful about them. These are stories that draw you in and make you think. Force you to think."

-- Vicki Trask, Goodreads book blogger

Who Is This Guy?

It was at the tender age of 7 that an interconnection of cells and organs called Mike Robinson (then Mikey) penned, or pencilled, his first story, The Aliens That Invaded My Backyard!. A runaway international bestseller, it went on to win the World Fantasy Award, Hugo Award, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Or maybe those things were also just products of his imagination.

He later became the author of multiple books, most of which tack toward the weird, the darkly fantastic, the metaphysical, the odd residue scraped from the bottom of our "souls" (he was a PhD in puns). His fiction has been featured in Clarkesworld, The Strand, Amazing Stories, Zooscape, Cirsova, American Gothic Fantasy, ClonePod, December Tales II, Thirteen Podcast, Creepy Podcast, Storyteller, Wondrous Web Worlds, Underland Arcana, Tangle & Fen and more, and featured on Amazon Audible. He's also received honors from Writers of the Future, Publishers Weekly's BookLife Prize, the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, the Kindle Book Awards, The BookFest Awards, the Maxy Awards, the Pinnacle Book Achievement Awards and the Screencraft Awards.

But the story buck doesn't stop there. A native of Los Angeles, his blood is half-celluloid, so it was inevitable that he also became a screenwriter and producer. A feature he wrote, Blood Corral, won Best Horror Feature at the Skyehouse International Film Festival. His short film, Chrysaline, has racked up multiple awards.

In addition, he's a freelance book editor/coach, copywriter and illustrator, and is active on the programming committee of the California Creative Writers Conference. A senior editor at Wordsmith Writing Coaches, he is also co-creator of the New Authors Plunge, a workshop for beginning writers. He is a member of the Editorial Freelancers Association.

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