Michael J. Seidlinger

What came first, the home or the desire to invade? A seasoned invader with multiple home invasions under their belt recounts their dark victories while offering tutelage to a new generation of ambitious home invaders eager to make their mark on the annals of criminal history. From initial canvasing to home entry, the reader is complicit in every strangling and shattered window. The fear is inescapable. Examining the sanctuary of the home and one of the horror genre's most frightening tropes, Anybody Home? points the camera lens onto the quiet suburbs and its unsuspecting abodes, any of which are potential stages for an invader ambitious enough to make it the scene of the next big crime sensation. Who knows? Their performance just might make it to the silver screen.

Anybody Home?

Be mine, she said. I didn't know anything until she came along. She told me I had 'full of fight' tattooed on my insides and then she made me believe it. The first time I took someone for her I knew it was true. I was a taker. She told me she only loved the takers of this world. Of course, we all eventually get taken in the end. You know what I remember from that first time though? The sounds. It almost like the sound a baby makes when it's sighing. That's how quiet it is. I just kept needing that sound over and over again. So I took and I took and I took and I took and I took some more. Of course, I couldn't go deep enough for her in the end. She poured salt on me and I melted into nothing. You know that old saying? She was the type of person who tells you that dragons don't exist, and then she leads you to their caves. I never even really called her by her name even. I never really called her Claire. I just thought of her as god. I asked her what it was like studying forensics and she told me that once you know about the invisible world then the visible world didn't matter anymore. She told me the visible world is what we're all trying to get away from. I just wanted to become invisible with her." - Scott M., aka "Scott the Slaughter," serving back-to-back life sentences at Montgomery State Prison This book defies categorization: A new kind of serial killer story that pushes and prods in all the unexpected directions. You've never read anything quite like this. -CARLTON MELLICK III, author of "Kill Ball" Michael Seidlinger's swift-moving novel is an interesting addition to the genre, with all kinds of offbeat touches there for the connoisseur. He reminds me, in style, of some of the Swedish crime-writers we've seen. The narrative moves quickly towards a satisfying payoff. -TODD GRIMSON, author of "Stainless" 'And now they're talking about media icons and murder': Michael J. Seidlinger's strange tale of Claire Wilkinson, forensics major, and her 'Gentleman Killer' is a wonderful romp through American wound culture, exploring the connection between art, media, serial killing, romance and anonymity. It reshapes the college romance plot as a wing of JG Ballard's "The Atrocity Exhibition." -JOHANNES GORANSSON, author of "Entrance to a colonial pageant in which we all begin to intricate" A rowdy menagerie of the unexpected, this book will delight and disturb even the bravest of readers; all preconceptions of what to trust and what to fear are masterfully upended within these pages. -ALISSA NUTTING, author of "Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls" Michael J. Seidlinger takes the slasher horror movie, snuff film, found footage and webcam porn, and the serial killer docudrama, cuts them all to pieces, pulls out their internal organs, reorganizes them in an 'aesthetically pleasing arrangement, ' and shows us a story that is at once hilarious, pathetically sad, and a brilliant social critique. This is one where you'll want to eat the offal. -JAMIE IREDELL, author of "The Book of Freaks" Part serial killer novel, part unhinged sociological treatise, Seidlinger's latest is dripping with unique and wonderful darkness. It scares me. -J DAVID OSBORNE, author of "Low Down Death Right Easy" I wouldn't let my make-believe daughter out of the house after reading this. -GREGORY SHERL, author of "The Oregon Trail is the Oregon Trail" Michael J. Seidlinger may be the most subversive author I know. In "My Pet Serial Killer" he's redefining homicidal tendencies by way of the pickup arts; that's definitely a trap. -PELA VIA, editor-in-chief of "Manarchy Magazine"

My Pet Serial Killer

Body Harvest

What happens when a woman gives birth to a machine gun?

Mother of a Machine Gun

"The Face of Any Other bravely explores the tenuous personhood of the young and the urban, whose lives grow more ghostly the more they are particularized. Michael J Seidlinger has graced us with a quietly but unsettlingly original novel of the day-by-day slippages from alienation to asphyxiating despair." -GARY LUTZ, author of Stories in the Worst Way

The Face of Any Other

"Michael Seidlinger is a homegrown Calvino, a humanist, and wise and darkly whimsical. His invisible cities are the spires of the sea where we all sail our coffins in search of our stories."-Steve Erickson, author of "Zeroville" Two lovers are adrift in a coffin on an endless sea. Who are they? They are him and her. They are you and me. They are rowing to salvage what remains of themselves. They are rowing to remember the fun we've had.

The Fun We've Had

Metronome

Fiction. America died while no one was looking. All that remains is the skeleton of a land riddled with demise and what had once been referred to as domestic symmetry: those commodities we once called our friends, our colleagues, our neighbors. "Michael Seidlinger's terrific new novel pruned my skin. Seriously, I was reading it in the bathtub one night and I stayed in the water for a good couple of hours, deeply engrossed. It's that immersive (so to speak). It also marks a confident new direction in his work. THE SKY CONDUCTING is elegant, disturbing, and important. Buy it and read it."—Nick Antosca

The Sky Conducting

The Laughter of Strangers

Hunter Warden just wants some peace and quiet. He wants to watch unboxing videos and be lulled to sleep by the monotone voices and smooth talking YouTube hosts. He wants his parents that are always working to either totally leave him alone or be around for once. After a few beers, Hunter decides to get away from it all and go for a run in Falter Kingdom. When you run the gauntlet at Falter Kingdom, a tunnel next to a park on the outskirts of suburbia where local high school kids go to drink and smoke, one of two things can happen -- nothing or you catch a demon. The cold spots, locked doors, scratches on the wall, and disappearing laptop immediately alert Hunter to the fact that a demon is haunting him. He knows the signs, he's seen the videos of people that are possessed, and everyone knows someone that has had to get an exorcism. Hunter knows that he should get rid of it, but he can't help but enjoy the company of "H," despite this demon's sinister intentions.

Michael J. Seidlinger

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