External Links... plus Sulawesi, Isle of Nightmares

'Sup.

It's been kind of a busy month. I participated in Kayla Curry's Blogger Book Fair this weekend, and so most of my extra-curricular focus has been on doing some stuff on other blog sites. To be more specific I wrote a flash fiction piece for Thomas Winship's Vaempires site, which you can check here... Along with my own humble effort, there's a couple of real doozeys by some other, very talented writers.

I also did two interviews, one with Beck Sherman at Dying To Write and another with Brandon R Luffman at his site on Wordpress.

Last week I wrote a guest post for the excellent Armand Rosamilia, but I'm having some trouble linking to it currently. So instead, I'll just throw up some of it here. If you get a chance, definitely check out some of Armand's work. I'm a big fan of his Miami Spy Games zombie series.

So without further ado, here's an excerpt from the post I did for him: Sulawesi,Isle of Nightmares


It’s quite obvious that Mother Nature hates us. And I’m not talking about that quiet seething hatred you may encounter from time to time when you crash a dinner party and everybody is just too gosh-darned polite to ask you to leave (or is that just me?). No, this is the crazy, jabbering breed of hatred that a homeless lunatic might have for the guy who stole his imaginary pet dragon. If you have any doubts about this, look no further than the Indonesian Isle of Sulawesi, where scientists have recently discovered some new and objectively terrifying level-ups to some of the most common animals on earth.

For example, the Sulawesi Babirusa is a wild pig that is fairly common in this region. While the males tend to travel solo, the wimmin’ and chillun’ will sometimes travel in packs numbering close to 100. The males can grow up to 100 kilograms (that’s 220 lbs for us non-communists) and run at a top speed of 35 mph.
Oh and there’s this:

That second pair of tusks is not only the most WTF set of secondary teeth you’ll see outside of the Alien franchise; if left unchecked, they will curve right back into the boar’s skull, pierce his brain and kill him. So, to recap, they are a massive, fast-as-hell breed of omnivore with a built-in biological imperative to destroy as much stuff as possible, as often as possible.

If pigs aren’t your thing, that’s okay. Say hi to the Garuda Wasp –

About roughly the size of a small hummingbird, these fellows are characterized by an unusually thick, armor-like exoskeleton rendering them almost impossible to squoosh. Also, their massive mandibles - which they tend to wrap around their heads when not in use - are twice as long as their front forelegs. There’s just something a little too horrifying for words about a species that will wear its own jaws as some sort of jaunty scarf, but then again what can you say about an animal whose venom is well-documented at turning some of its victims into zombies?

But, for me at least, this is the true face of horror:

That’s not a snake, it’s one of 9 species of fanged frogs that scientists have found recently around Sulawesi. Or, to be more accurate, one of 9 species of rapidly adapting fanged frogs that are taking over the island. This is, and has been the stuff of my nightmares ever since I saw this as a kid:

At least in the movie, they had the decency to not give the things goddamn fangs, but Mother Nature has no such compunctions, on account of – like I said earlier – she totally hates us.