“Pull up a stool. You’ll like what Zim’s pouring.“
— Matt Bean, former editor-in-chief, Entertainment Weekly
I sold my first short story to Gorezone magazine when I was 20 years old. Since then, I’ve written 19 novels, including ghostwriting 12 young adult works in horror, epic fantasy, suspense, espionage, and romance. Some of my short fiction has received honorable mention in Ellen Datlow’s Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror anthologies.
Recent short story appearances:
“Metabolize to Freedom” Rock and a Hard Place #7 (Jan 2022)
“Thousands (Or, the Guitar Hero who Refused Open G)” Rock and a Hard Place #8 (Aug 2022, long-listed for a 2023 Anthony Award)
“Respect the Shemp” Rock and a Hard Place #9 (Feb 2023, long-listed for a 2023 Edgar Award)
The digital magazine Shotgun Honey published my shorts “The Shit We Had to Put Up With in ’95, Man” in Apr 2022 and “How to Measure a Man” in Aug 2022.
I’ve also written more than 1,000 book jackets across all fiction genres. My words helped launch Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books, starting with Killing Floor, and sold other authors as diverse as Stephen King, Tom Clancy, Nick Hornby, Nora Roberts, Clive Barker, and two of science fiction’s best-loved Williams, Gibson and Shatner.
I continue to write and publish my own fiction (scroll down).
For rights and other inquiries: zimwrites@gmail.com
For fiction ghostwriting inquiries, please contact Kim Lionetti at Bookends Literary Agency: klionetti@bookendsliterary.com.
“When they’re circling you, there are no positive metaphors. You’re prey. Or you’re a drain. Very few people get to be the sun.” So comes a twisted novel about the dark soul of Hollywood, equal parts thriller, black comedy, and revenge fantasy . . .
Benjamin Bailey was a good photographer. Still is, technically. But shit, as they say, happens. One day Ben’s shooting celebrities for high-end magazine covers. The next, he’s stalking them on the streets for a different kind of photo. One bad decision, one promising career snuffed. Now this reluctant paparazzo has a new job. Some not-so-nice men have asked Ben not-so-nicely to break into the home of rising starlet Melody Marx. The gig: Plant remote cameras to catch young Melody in the most compromising positions. Ben does indeed get into her house. He plants his cameras. After that, however, the plan changes.
Ben never planned to meet Melody Marx . . .
Never planned to get closer than any fan . . .
To see more than any photographer . . .
To finally bleed for his art . . .
They’re only nightmares …
An ailing cop with a supernatural edge takes on a vicious bank gang in broad daylight.
A controversial shock comic meets a tabloid journalist at the intersection of depravity and legend.
A doomed young man finds his summer of love … and death.
Welcome to Nightmare Paint, a collection of 15 raw pieces of short fiction that will plunge you into the weird, the tragic, the horrifying. Mike Zimmerman, author of Wildman and A Mosquito Over Sunset, offers a first-ever compilation spanning 25 years, previously published and never-before-seen stories combining horror, crime, dark comedy. These are the raw materials of the subconcious.
Lights out. Eyes shut. Time to paint.
In 1969, an underground mine fire lit the fuse on a Pennsylvania town. Thirty years later, the few who remain in this desolate, lawless place will discover something there worth a fight …
Gunther Gott is a dive bartender at the last business operating in town. He has few friends. He’s in love with a girl who doesn’t exactly second the emotion. He’s accomplished nothing in this life except how to achieve the perfect “pour,” and doesn’t see a whole lot of reasons to push beyond that. But there are others in town who want to take what little he has.
A single gunshot will put him on a new path.
A second gunshot will push him down it.
And when Gunther realizes the truth about this long-dead town, he will become the one man nobody expects defending the one place nobody wants. And doing it for the best reason: Payback.
“There’s great poetry in slow decay, and Zimmerman’s eye for texture finds fertile ground in the crumbling, anthracite coal underbelly of this fictional PA town. In a world of pre-fab reality TV shows and silicone everything, the characters in Where the Sun Don’t Shine remind the reader that there’s a real world out there, warts, sinkholes, sawed-off shotguns, and all.”
— Matt Bean, former editor-in-chief, Entertainment Weekly
Mike Zimmerman 