Death March to Happiness
Welcome to Death March to Happiness—a twisted parade of stories that highlight the absurdity of intrusive advertising, the inhumanity of the profit motive, the potentially deadly nature of corporate jargon, and all-too-familiar inappropriate responses to “unprecedented times.”
In this incisive, funny, and possibly disturbing collection, Michael W. Moss blends biting satire, macabre humor, and clever fantasy and other phrases he can’t think of at the moment that would definitely make you want to buy this book.
Encounter tales of eldritch horrors turned into tourist attractions, necromantic capitalists exploiting undead labor for maximum profit, nano-zombies twerking to pop hits, and drug-dealing coffee bots that might just get you killed.
Dancing through cyberpunk beat prose-poetry, oneiric horror, unwarranted steampunk enthusiasm, dark fantasy, and modern satire, Death March to Happiness is a collection of fiction that will lead you through the odd, the ironic, and the existentially absurd.
Wicken susride!
The Trench Coat Minotaur
The Trench Coat Minotaur is a collection of vignettes twisting together Greco-Roman mythological characters, locations, and stories with classic film noir conventions. The collection currently consists of twenty nine prose-poetry vignettes that establish the characters, narratives, and milieu, and a short story that fleshes out the experiences of some of the characters. The short story, titled Carry On, features Charon the cab-driver who transports the dead across the river for a price and details what happens when he doesn’t take his own advice.
Sample:
Apollo
Apollo is at the bar, burning out his liver and lungs on Flaming Chariots and fire as he recounts for a fourth time his forlorn tale of finding the doll of his dreams and how he offered her everything but Ms. Laura Wreath, preferring to be free, instead broke his heart and then made like a tree.
Artemis
Miss “Hard-To-Miss” Artemis is a huntress, a sureshot with a rod and a hit through the heart of every doe-eyed dope who, acting on impulse, tried to fawn over her, finding too fast that her smile hid her teeth and her dress hid a piece to plug a peeping tom or perhaps murder a mark.
The prose-poetry vignettes and the short story Carry On are featured in the short fiction collection The Trench Coat Minotaur and Other Short Fiction.
Purchase Link: Amazon Kindle and Paperback editions
The Joe Garrison Case Files
The Joe Garrison Case Files are a collection of stories of the experiences of Private Detective Joseph Garrison in the 1930s and 1940s.
Murder is Suicide
About: Murder is Suicide is a hard-boiled detective novel set in Portland, Oregon in 1937.
Description:
“It’s not every day you investigate your own murder.”
When the police find a body that looks a lot like private investigator Joe Garrison, it’s time for Joe to find out who did it and if he was the intended victim, before the police try to blame him for it.
Follow Joe through a world of dirty thugs, dirtier cops, and treacherous dames in 1930s Portland, Oregon – a world where morality might be black and white but the truth is always a shade of gray and where Joe may find out along the way that Murder is Suicide.
Murder is Suicide’s Joe Garrison follows in the shadowy footsteps of Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and Hammett’s Sam Spade, but with his own cynical take on the world filtered through several glasses of whiskey, glaring personality flaws, and the piercing insight of the femme fatale he encounters. Garrison experiences historical events, circumstances, and locations of Portland, Oregon in 1937 while he seemingly investigates his own murder, mixed in with novel inventions for the sake of the narrative.
Murder is Suicide started as an interactive web comic that was very time consuming to develop. As time went on and I made less progress than I would have liked, I decided to finish the project as a novel instead.
Purchase Link: Amazon Kindle and Paperback editions
Neat Whiskey and the Dirty Truth
Joe Garrison investigates the theft of a valuable necklace in a yet to be published select-your-own-experience story.
War is Hell without Whiskey
It’s July, 1944, weeks after Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of France, and Joe Garrison is knee-deep in war and involuntarily sober.
When a company captain is murdered, possibly by one of his own soldiers, Joe gets assigned to the case in an unorthodox breach of protocol. With limited time before the next big operation, he needs to find the truth, find the murderer, and find a drink.
War is Hell without Whiskey is a short story telling the experiences of Joe Garrison during World War II in France. The story is featured in the short fiction collection, The Trench Coat Minotaur and Other Short Fiction.
Purchase Link: Amazon Kindle and Paperback editions
Other Fiction
Story |
Genre |
Description |
Status / Publication |
Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Eldritch God Daily Tours |
Eldritch Horror |
Cassidy just wanted to sell her great aunt’s house. She wasn’t looking to be a tour guide to all the stupid people who wanted to see the eldritch god that appeared out of nowhere. |
Death March to Happiness |
|
Speed Kills |
Cyberpunk |
Commuting down the metaway is annoying on its own, but trying to do so on a stolen bike while running from the corporate hitmen sent to kill you by your former employer is a bit more stressful. |
Death March to Happiness |
|
Wasting Away |
Horror |
The price of the house was too good to be true, but Harold was just happy to move into his first home…until he realized why it was such a bargain. |
Death March to Happiness |
|
The Grubby Goblin |
Fantasy |
The tavern in the castle ruins on the edge of the swamp is an attractive resting spot for adventurers on their way into the danger of the mud and the mire. It’s also the home of a very grubby goblin. Not everyone who visits the tavern will appreciate his puckish nature. |
Death March to Happiness |
|
The Sandmother |
Fantasy |
The desert is a dangerous place. You need water to survive. You might even bargain with a desert witch for her conjured water. But you also have to be wary of desert bandits and sandstorms. Most of all, if you ever encounter the Sandmother out on the dunes of the Great Stretch, you should run. |
Death March to Happiness |
|
The One and Only King |
Fantasy |
Keiros, a mere tavern tapman, is imprisoned by the Hwerdan on the eve of their invasion of his homeland. What do they want with a nobody? Due to the deaths of the reigning line, this nobody is now The One and Only King of Areganis. |
Death March to Happiness |
|
Nothing to be Done |
Grim Dark |
Orson is tasked by the elders with an unthinkable task, so he doesn’t think about it. He just does what he’s told. After all, there’s nothing to be done. |
Death March to Happiness |
|
Wreckless |
Steampunk Fantasy |
Street urchin Mirabilis “Mira” Morwyn is determined to escape from the refuse piles and dangerous back alleys of Cobblegrit, even if it requires theft, engine grease, and volatile energy sources. |
Death March to Happiness |
|
Living Wage |
Fantasy |
Harrow had it pretty easy as the best damn mason in the bustling city of Werkel, at least until the necromancer’s order started using undead labor to underbid on construction contracts. Now he’s caught up in the conflict between the laborers and the necromancers that threatens to engulf the entire city. |
Death March to Happiness |
|
Invasion |
Science Fiction |
The aliens were unstoppable in their invasion, pursuing a single, malevolent purpose. |
Death March to Happiness |
|
Misadventures in Necromancy |
Fantasy Humor |
What happens when your arisen minions don’t cooperate with your evil revenge schemes? |
Death March to Happiness |
|
The Tell-Tale Cardiac Pump Unit |
Cyberpunk |
Roommates are the worst, especially when their optical unit flares its red diode in your face constantly. Sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands when the auto-injected meds aren’t working. |
Death March to Happiness |
|
The Dead Rose |
Fantasy |
Nev woke up feeling dead inside for the very good reason that she was in fact dead. Now it was time to find out who murdered her. |
Death March to Happiness |
|
Sacrifice |
Fantasy |
When a rampaging monster threatens the village, there’s only one thing you can do: find a useful sacrifice and drag her to her doom. |
Death March to Happiness |
|
The Miracle |
Cyberpunk |
They called it a miracle, but between the cost, the glitches, and the hacks, you might be grateful you couldn’t afford to be an early adopter. |
Death March to Happiness |
|
Do No Harm |
Science Fiction |
Lunis encounters an ethical challenge during his first combat experience on a foreign moon as a medic. |
The Trench Coat Minotaur and Other Short Fiction |
|
Italian Suicide |
General Fiction |
He just wanted to get back to his girl and meet his kids for the first time. Was that so much to ask? |
The Trench Coat Minotaur and Other Short Fiction |
|
Viral |
Science Fiction |
What will happen when the social media generation reaches old age? |
The Trench Coat Minotaur and Other Short Fiction and on Medium |
|
If These Walls Could Text |
Science Fiction |
The security-deficient internet of things meets kitsch technology architecture. |
The Trench Coat Minotaur and Other Short Fiction and on Medium |
|
One More Journey to the Woods |
Dream Fiction |
Why can’t the people who want to spend their time in the woods just be left alone? |
The Trench Coat Minotaur and Other Short Fiction |
|
Freecrasher |
Science Fiction |
Freecrashing in urban vertical expanses is stupid and dangerous, that’s why we do it… |
The Trench Coat Minotaur and Other Short Fiction |
|
The Gift of the Imagination |
Urban Fantasy |
One boy’s daydreams might be his father’s everyday experiences. |
The Trench Coat Minotaur and Other Short Fiction |
|
Beat Nick |
Prose Poetry |
You can find the iconic 20th Century poets and the artists in the dirtiest bars if you try hard enough. |
The Trench Coat Minotaur and Other Short Fiction |
|
An Elevator Man |
Horror |
Stay clear of the cage in the roof of the elevator carriage. You never know what might get in. |
The Trench Coat Minotaur and Other Short Fiction |
|
Future Singular |
Science Fiction |
Life after the singularity is very primitive, hunting the metal beasts for survival and fixing the machines that keep your tribe alive. |
The Trench Coat Minotaur and Other Short Fiction |
|
Carry On |
Noir |
Charon the cabbie ferries the bodies of the dead across the river, but sometimes the dead come back to haunt you. |
The Trench Coat Minotaur and Other Short Fiction |
|
The Hole World |
Fantasy |
White the Rabbit found a hole within his hole. |
The Trench Coat Minotaur and Other Short Fiction |
|
Lucy Dreaming |
General Fiction |
When our loved ones die, are they really gone? |
The Trench Coat Minotaur and Other Short Fiction and on Medium |
|
Keep Portland Wired |
Cyberpunk |
In an anarcho-capitalist near-future Portland, the government is extinct, corporations own everything, the poor with no credit score can’t even cross the street safely, and dissident punks race stolen rideable drones in dangerous rooftop competitions. Kal, a member of a local punk collective, finds that she can’t escape her past, no matter how hard she glides over the ruins of Portland’s landmarks. “…cyberpunk is, as mentioned above, a literature of rebellion. It is predicated on the need for challenge; dynamism. Whether or not the revolution is successful, the act of rebellion is meaningful, and often has its own, discrete impact. Michael Moss’s “Keep Portland Wired” is a great example of this…” – Jared Shurin, Editor of The Big Book of Cyberpunk |
The Trench Coat Minotaur and Other Short Fiction Reprinted in The Big Book of Cyberpunk |
|
Moxie the Rocket |
General Fiction |
The boys learned not to mess with Moxie the Rocket after they got a taste of her fists. |
The Trench Coat Minotaur and Other Short Fiction |
|
The Thief of Silence |
Fantasy |
Wulfgar the Hunter rests in a village tavern, yearning for the next adventure, and unfortunately, he finds it in the Thief of Silence. |
The Trench Coat Minotaur and Other Short Fiction |
|
The Long Download |
Noir Mythological Programming Mashup |
A murder mystery mashup of noir, mythology, and computer programming texts. “One of the problem is found in her native darkness. I were a time and place where was clutching her tight enough that the evidence to criminologists is the encoding in the output of this function to help me.” |
Web Published |