Letter from the Mausoleum – Spring 2024

Wel­come to the Inau­gur­al Issue of Max Blood’s Mau­soleum! It gives me tremen­dous plea­sure to type that. This pub­li­ca­tion has been a long time com­ing, and it thrills me that it’s final­ly here.

So, for­give me if I gush a moment.

The idea to start a lit­er­ary mag­a­zine has been a goal of mine for the bet­ter part of a decade, but it was only a mat­ter of months ago that I woke in the mid­dle of the night with the specifics. You see, I’d been hav­ing tremen­dous dif­fi­cul­ties sleep­ing, or more specif­i­cal­ly, stay­ing asleep. I would wake with my mind rac­ing over count­less, immea­sur­able thoughts. Ideas for sto­ries, they were not, but they kept me up all the same.

So, at last, I bought a jour­nal with­in which I could tran­scribe any ideas that came to me, hop­ing that expung­ing these ideas might free me from my mid­night live­li­ness. There’s no antonym for the word tor­por that sounds quite as nice, but what­ev­er it would be, I was expe­ri­enc­ing it. Then, what do you know, the first night after buy­ing that jour­nal and plac­ing it by my bed­side, I wake with my mind rac­ing con­tin­u­ous­ly over one thought like a rodent rac­ing with­in a wheel. Max Blood’s Mau­soleum. Max Blood’s Mau­soleum. Max Blood’s Mau­soleum. Like say­ing it three times might sum­mon a flesh-rend­ing ghoul. I record­ed the title in my jour­nal and tried to return to sleep.

Record­ing those thoughts did any­thing but help me sleep. It mere­ly broke the dam that kept oth­er thoughts at bay. I record­ed thought after thought, night after night, until those thoughts began to take shape. I reg­is­tered the domain name on the sec­ond night. Began the devel­op­ment of the web­site after a week. I opened Adobe Illus­tra­tor and Adobe InDe­sign and start­ed some of the pre­lim­i­nary graph­ic design and lay­out that would inevitably become what you are look­ing at and read­ing now.

I’d tell you I put my blood, sweat and tears into this thing, but that quite frankly, is a ter­ri­fy­ing image. So let’s keep the blood to the sto­ries here­in and turn instead to the larg­er of the two sand timers which sit on my desk.

I have been work­ing on this mag­a­zine for count­less hours, and while it’s tak­en time, I dare say it has come eas­i­ly to me, the same way a child knows intu­itive­ly how to play with a toy they’ve nev­er seen or touched before. I grabbed hold of tools I’d learned to use while work­ing in web devel­op­ment or on news­pa­per staffs, and I pushed those tools to the lim­its of my abil­i­ties. And as I did so, every­thing just sort of came togeth­er. I believe that is because I was meant to start this.

Why was I meant to start this? I believe that’s sim­ple. I love hor­ror. Like tru­ly, I love it. If I could take the con­cept of hor­ror and shove it into a fleshy skin-bag, I’d mar­ry it. Just don’t tell my wife. I love read­ing hor­ror, watch­ing hor­ror, writ­ing hor­ror. I love dis­cussing hor­ror with my 11-year-old, and she is ever-so-brave while we do so. She tells me, she says, “Da, I wish I were braver so that I could read your sto­ries some­day.” Like with every child-par­ent rela­tion­ship, I’ve left the indeli­ble impres­sion that I am one of whom to be proud. I wish to take my pas­sion for hor­ror and chan­nel it into some­thing that con­firms that end­less pride.

Now, you have in your hands or on your screen, the first issue of that mag­a­zine. And though I have put many hours into it, it pales in com­par­i­son to the work our con­trib­u­tors have done. Through our recent sub­mis­sion peri­od, these were the sto­ries that delight­ed me. You know when your sleep­ing brain serves you up a night­mare you absolute­ly must jot down. These are sto­ries I wish my brain had served to me, and I had writ­ten. Alas, it did not, and I did not, and I am incred­i­bly lucky to have the writ­ers I have in this issue. And each of them con­tributed more than just a sto­ry. They con­tributed their time, their brain pow­er, their soul, I might say for fear of sound­ing cheesy. They have sent their best, or as I like to say, the best of their worst. It is their work that makes this mag­a­zine what it is today.

Read their tales now, engulf them, let them squirm beneath your skin and feed upon your hair, and when you fin­ish, would you be so kind as to leave a com­ment for them on the web­site: www.MaxBlood.pub. Applaud them their effort, for as much as these writ­ers put in this effort for them­selves, they also put it in for you.