|
September 13, 2025
Sale date for HorrorScope is October 20, 2025. The imprint confirmed for me that the metadata was sent to Amazon and all online sellers, etc., so it should be turning up for presales any time now. I’ve been told by a few people that they check Amazon weekly, but it has not yet shown up. It all depends on their workload. Sometimes Barnes & Noble is first.
I checked myself for the first time yesterday and was shocked to see that other books carry my title. They are about dark fantasy poems or astrology. When I announced my title over 10 years ago, there was no book with that title.
August 5, 2025
The actual dust jacket for HorrorScope. On sale date October 24, 2025. Presales soon.
July 18, 2025
The chapter titles taken from a cut and paste of HorrorScope.
CONTENTS
Introduction “This is the Zodiac Speaking” 7
Chapter 1 The Sign of the Crimes 11
Chapter 2 Sadistically Gunned 21
Chapter 3 Silence of the Peacocks 35
Chapter 4 Murder Said Easy 47
Chapter 5 Gamester of Death 59
Chapter 6 Good Times in Vallejo 65
Chapter 7 Ceremonial Bum 71
Chapter 8 Car Door Score 80
Chapter 9 Zodiac 97
Chapter 10 Ante 105
Chapter 11 Autumn of Angst 114
Chapter 12 Comic Strip Crusade 128
Chapter 13 Skillful Player 138
Chapter 14 Paper Tiger 145
Chapter 15 Southern Exposure 160
Chapter 16 Billowy Wave 182
Chapter 17 Titwillo 189
Chapter 18 Fiddle and Far . . . out 198
Chapter 19 Clews 207
Chapter 20 East By Northeast 215
Chapter 21 Steve H.219
Chapter 22 Riverside Ruse or Proto Zodiac? 226
Chapter 23 The Omicron Suspect 235
Chapter 24 Signed, Yours Truly 249
Chapter 25 Through the Triage Glass 257
Chapter 26 The Iota of Omicron 263
Chapter 27 Dead Ringer 269
Chapter 28 The Shadow 295
Chapter 29 Joker in the Deck 305
Chapter 30 The Spook 315
Chapter 31 The Zodiac Club 331
About the Author
Index
March 31, 2025
Sorry about the lack of updates. HorrorScope is near the threshold finally. It is 344 pages, with Index. In about a month I should have my own review copy. After any necessary corrections, it then goes to the printer and to Ingram’s catalog. It will then appear for pre sales. I will post a picture of the actual copy when I have it and post links when it goes up for pre sales online. It will be available everywhere online and in your local bookstore (if they still exist)
February 3, 2025
Things are still coming along smoothly with HorrorScope. A massive Index caused an extension. Everything is on its way.
I don’t make a point of correcting cyber misperceptions in my books, so I’d like to simply correct a false impression here. For whatever reason, someone has listed Ray Davis, the slain cab driver in Oceanside in April 1962, as Gerald Raymond Davis on Ancestry.com. This is actually a different person. Ray Davis was the name of the murder victim. It was not Raymond and he had no middle name. As a basic part of research, I obtained vintage documents; in this case even his Selective Service Identification Card.
October 8, 2024
Nothing has changed. HorrorScope is still slated for winter. I have not updated for a while because I didn’t think there was any need. It’s on its way. Lots of pictures. Lots of references to documents, court cases, military histories, strings drawn together. The lives of a few men are followed, they intertwine briefly, and within this mesh the real Zodiac does take form. The great delay all these years, as noted, has been the search and discovery and then following of the Omicron Suspect, and then my pursuit of “The Shadow Zodiac,” the killer by .22 caliber in southern California 1962-1964. I had two pathways to follow-- that one man did all the murders or that 2 men knew each other and one inspired the other. One thing is certain-- at least 5 men’s lives all had a common connection that is beyond coincidence. The reader will be in for many surprises.
May 10, 2024
Everything is still on schedule for HorrorScope’s release winter 2024/2025. In downtime, those periods in which I must walk away and clear my mind to prepare for the next session of finalizing, editing, and the like, I have not been idle. I’d like to share some links here. A series of old Bermuda Triangle cases I never wrote about before because I thought most would not be interested in old cases that hadn’t been particularly famous. But some are significant to the foundation of acceptable theories. So here are some links:
Camilio Cienfuegos, 1959
Society Quartet, 1956
Early Fog, 1968
The Bahama Twilight Zone
The Driftwood
I re-uploaded some old pages to the site, particularly the stories of survivors of unusual encounters, and The Philadelphia Experiment, Atlantean Crystals, and a strange enigma of “Spector.”
April 8, 2024
Time to update again. HorrorScope is on track and on time. I had found The Omicron Suspect, the name I gave someone who was inferred to exist but not proven to exist. He was somewhere in Leigh Allen’s past. A whole separate journey began there, one through the southern Cal murders and back to the Bay Area. The reader of HorrorScope will come to understand why the mere inference of this person haunted me and why I had to prove his existence and where he might fit. It is a journey if nuance and fact the reader will take to a very surprising outcome.
January 26, 2024
I have not updated for months, and I suppose the last post below should be followed up. In other words, it is time to explain so many delays. HorrorScope has become the result of a massive search. It is not just about Steve. The recreation of the crimes and times of the Zodiac was completely finished by the time I triaged. HorrorScope is about picking out the guilty from the context as I continue to explore many avenues— the southern Cal murders, Bates, the search for R.H. and the heavyset man with the beard. The search for a possible accomplice. Much of the delay is caused by outing the haunting specter of The Omicron Suspect. Was Leigh Allen a link to the real Zodiac?
HorrorScope is by no means about identifying a suspect on hand printing. I can’t tell you how many POIs I’ve encountered who wrote almost identical to Zodiac.
The samples above are just that. They are just samples. I’m not saying they represent Zodiac. But they underline a problem in triaging. There is hand printing and there is hand printing in context. This is a far different matter. HorrorScope is a search for context. It is not a variation off a median pole. I open up the evidence. I do not suspend myself precariously from the overproduced narrative and rehash it. As such, I must be bold and consider all possibilities the clues suggest.
The samples above are also good for context in another matter. They are far superior to anything written by the “morbid poet” or any letters in Riverside. R.H. may not even be a man. The traditional narrative is narrow and damning to uncovering the truth.
I detest the S.F.P.D. sketch. Zodiac looks like a skinny mongoose villain. Mageau described him as blonde and stocky, short. At Lake Berryessa, the young man wondering about had dark hair, stylized, close to 6 foot. Zodiac’s footprints prove he was heavy, about 210 pounds. At Washington and Cherry he is skinny and reddish brown hair, crew cut. Yes, the estimate of weight is by 13 year old kids who themselves probably weighed 65-80 pounds. They estimated the killer at 150 to 175 pounds. So to them that was heavyset. But they might also think an elephant weighs that much. They were only kids. However, the sketch artist, being an adult, draws what is a 150 to 175 pound man to him.
But what if there was more than one killer? Yet only one did the writing? Did two do the killing? Did one kill the other?
Then there’s the clues Zodiac had an “in” at S.F.P.D. When the Chronicle agreed to not publish Zodiac’s summer 1970 letters, why didn’t he write to the Examiner or Times-Herald? Did he know the fix was in and there was no point? Or is it all coincidence?
Who fits all the clues? Hand printing, even DNA, will not tell us in the end. Context will. The sheer weight of it all.
HorrorScope is about uncovering Zodiac and not just declaring Zodiac.
January 25, 2024
A reminder-- this is coming up next.
September 16, 2023
More pages have gone up here on Q Files— The Zodiac & Ray Davis and The Zodiac & San Diego. These are an examination of the Ray Davis cabbie murder in Oceanside in April 1962 and the double murder of  Johnny and Joyce Swindle in San Diego’s Ocean Beach area in February 1964. You will get an idea also of the new site design, as the overhaul continues.
September 3, 2023
Two new pages are up-- they are introduction pages to 2 upcoming sections. Murder, Most Queer— The Gay Murders of San Francisco 4 and Cruise to a Kill: The I-70 Killer. You will get a taste of the new website layout style as well.
August 22, 2023
Jack the Ripper section is now down. The link on the True Crime page goes to Amazon’s page. Bigfoot will remain since it only a series of a few pages fleshing out the basics of the contradictory evidence. The section, however, has been updated. The site continues its long overdue overhaul. New sections are being planned— Murder, Most Queer-- The San Francisco Gay Murders. Also, the “Zodiac’s” Southern Cal murder articles will be moved to the site so that I can shut down my old blog.
August 12, 2023
Q Files is now undergoing its facelift. Slowly but surely you will see pages converted to a new and standardized display. This will bring coherence to a site near 500 pages. It will make it easier to update and add new sections from long-standing investigations. When the site is fully overhauled, you will notice that the Jack the Ripper section and probably Bigfoot are gone. My work there has been condensed into books, and it is not necessary to have it online. My section on advertising my books will also be removed. The exact same bio and promo is on the book sellers’ websites, which get far more traffic, so it is redundant on my personal site. Also, this page-- UPDATES-- will go. There is no need for it. Updates will be posted on the home page from then on.
|
