The Seers’ Table December 2024

  Kate Maruyama, Member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Committee.   We have some rich reading in time to buy gifts for friends, dig in! You can see any of “The Seers’ Table” posts since inception (March 2016) by going to the HWA main page and selecting the menu item “HWA Publications / Blogs / Seers’ Table.” Linda D. Addison recommends: Ao-Hui Lin enjoys finding terror in the day-to-day of domestic life, particularly in motherhood, which is why she doesn’t want her children reading her fiction. The truth was frightening enough. When she’s not at her day job, writing AI…

Nuts & Bolts: “Rambo” Creator David Morrell Discusses His Mentor

Before he could create Vietnam veteran John J. Rambo in First Blood, thriller and horror author David Morrell had to find that pesky “ferret.” That’s how his mentor Philip Klass, aka legendary science fiction author William Tenn, used to describe it. Professor Klass, who’d taken David under his wing at Penn State University, used to say that if you’re a writer, a dominant emotion fuels your craft. No exceptions. It could be anger or joy. Sorrow or lust. Like it or not, you’re stuck with it because it’s an integral part of you. The professor compared it to a ferret rooting around in your psyche. Elusive. Ravenous. And worst of all, unwilling to be found.

The Seers’ Table November 2024

The Seers Table! November 3, 2024 by HWAWeb Linda B. Addison, Member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Community You can see any of The Seers’ Table posts since inception (March 2016) by going to the HWA main page and selecting the menu item “HWA Publications / Blogs / Seers’ Table.” Tish Jackson recommends: Sami Ellis is a queer horror writer from the Carolinas with a message. Her debut novel, Dead Girls Walking, can be considered a slasher novel but encompasses themes of coming of age, bullying, and problematic family dynamics. The main character is on a mission to find out…

The Seers’ Table October 2024

Kate Maruyama, Member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Community Spooky season is here with a wonderful variety of flavors of horror! Dig into stirring poetry, creep through some short stories, sample some body horror of a debut novelist, and enter a slow burn of a thriller horror just as it gets hot.   Linda Addison recommends: Screenshot Corey Niles was born and raised in the Rust Belt. His debut novel, Blood & Dirt, was released in August 2022. His poetry and short fiction have appeared in over twenty publications, including Nightmare Magazine, Ghost Orchid Press, and Lycan Valley Press. He…

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: DO GO IN THE BASEMENT

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: DO GO IN THE BASEMENT BY TIM WAGGONER   When I was child in the mid-1960s to the mid-1970’s, I attended a Quaker church in my small southwestern Ohio town. My parents, as far as I know, never attended a church (at least not as adults). My maternal grandmother and great-grandmother did, however, and for reasons I’m not entirely clear on, my parents let them take me. I mostly went to Sunday school, though. My family thought it was too difficult for kids to sit through a full church service, and they didn’t make me try. I did…

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: UNDERWORLD CONNECTIONS

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: UNDERWORLD CONNECTIONS By Lee Murray   Another spooky season is upon us and, once again, I’m scratching my head, trying to come up with something to contribute to our HWA Halloween Haunts blog. Because, as I’ve said many times before, Halloween isn’t really a thing down here in Aotearoa New Zealand. There are lots of reasons: the mostly secular nature of the nation, the bouncy southern hemisphere spring-lamb timing, and the fact that uncanny supernatural things are a part of our everyday, so perhaps we don’t see the need for a unique celebration of the macabre. Very few…

Halloween Haunts: THE LEGEND OF STINGY JACK

Halloween Haunts: THE LEGEND OF STINGY JACK by Debra Every   Herein lies a tale fit nary for babe nor child. Only the brave shall know the legend of Stingy Jack. In a town long gone, nestled ‘tween the McGillycuddy Reeks of Killarney, lived John Finnegan O’Connell, a blacksmith by trade; a wastrel by pleasure. Born under a black moon, he grew from churlish child to mean-spirited man. A trickster. A drunkard. A miser of coin and conscience. He stole bread from the sick, clothes from the poor, coin from the clergy. And ne’er did he help his brethren in…

Halloween Haunts: The Great Pumpkin Massacre

Halloween Haunts: The Great Pumpkin Massacre By Paul Carro   Okay, we all know one. A neighbor. Yeah, that neighbor. The one that might not quite be a demon but certainly knows them personally. My neighbor (let’s call him Toby) was my friend by proximity. He lived two doors down from me, but make no mistake, in any other universe, I would have run in the other direction were I to encounter him in the streets. It is with some pride that I admit I survived the Toby experience. Then again, I became a horror author, so I guess we…

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: ABRACADABRA, I KNOW WHO I AM

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: ABRACADABRA, I KNOW WHO I AM Rosemary Thorne   I remember my name and the year I was born. My beautiful house is so nearby that if I close my eyes, I can feel the familiar shine that leads to its shape. No, seriously, I’ve always had a prodigious memory, I know every detail of my life exactly as she wrote them back then: the smell of the rose bushes, the vivid color of the petals at sunset, the drops of blood on the wooden desk, her sudden flat face covered in white powder jumping over me, and…

Halloween Haunts: The Horror We Share

Halloween Haunts: The Horror We Share By Naching T. Kassa   Every time Halloween season comes around, I think of my dad and how he introduced me to horror. My mom, the kindest person I have ever known, wasn’t very fond of our favorite genre. She’d been terrified after seeing Psycho for the first time and lost all interest in anything that wasn’t Universal Horror or Kolchak the Nightstalker. My dad, on the other hand, had been a big fan of drive-in movies and had watched them as a teen in the 50s. I think I was three when he…

Halloween Haunts: Rekindling The (Halloween) Magic

Halloween Haunts: Rekindling The (Halloween) Magic By DJ Slater I remember when the feeling hit me, the one where you realize something that once brought you immense joy no longer reaches those heights. Since my early childhood, my parents always found the time to take my sister and me to a haunted house attraction every October. We were probably too young for the experience, yet it was common for an 80s kid to be exposed to certain things way too soon. We watched horror movies before we ever walked the halls of an elementary school. We witnessed increasingly violent media…

Halloween Haunts: Halloween in a Theatre

Halloween Haunts: Halloween in a Theatre By Kevin Wetmore   There is a running joke in the theatre, often expressed on a t-shirt, stating, “I can’t – I have rehearsal.” This has felt like a truism for much of my professional life. I am often too busy doing theatre to do much else, including seeing other theatre. Don’t weep for me or my people, however, because we are, like the Halloween People, able to keep the Halloween spirit all year round. Think about it: I get to put on costumes regularly. I play dress up. I play, period. One of…

Nuts & Bolts: The Value of Creative Writing Courses With Author Ray Cluley

Taking a creative writing course is a concept that some of Ray Cluley’s fellow authors seem to find puzzling. Even objectionable. If you’re calling yourself a writer, shouldn’t you already know how to write? Since it’s such a personal endeavor, how can it even be taught?

In this month’s edition of Nuts & Bolts, Ray discusses the full range of benefits from a creative writing course, and how even seasoned professionals can use one to hone their craft.

Halloween Haunts: An Oingo Boingo Halloween

Halloween Haunts: An Oingo Boingo Halloween By Joshua Millican   I’ve always loved horror more than Halloween. Horror, that feeling you get when you face the darkness of the unknown, has fascinated and excited me since I was a kid. Horror movies, comics, stories, toys… you name it, I loved it! By my pre-teens, horror had already become a lifestyle for me. I was a spooky kid with morbid curiosities and a love of fear that made me a standout—for better or worse. When you live horror 24/7, Halloween was just another day. Don’t get me wrong—I loved the fall…

Halloween Haunts: KRAKEN, AND RAVENS, AND RAPTORS… OH, MY!

Halloween Haunts: KRAKEN, AND RAVENS, AND RAPTORS… OH, MY! By Evan Baughfman    October’s not just for things bumping in the night. It’s also when sports grab ahold of me, slide their fangs into my bookish flesh, and transform me into a fanpire. The NFL season is alive, and my fantasy football teams have (once again) been some frustrating version of the undead—ripping opponents apart one week and fumbling around in the dark, headless and heartless, the next. My kids are both playing soccer. Their games have had me on the edge of my seat more often than the newest…

Halloween Haunts: What Ben Cooper Taught Me About Life

Halloween Haunts: What Ben Cooper Taught Me About Life By Den Shewman   The things that made me: The famous Shock Theater package of Universal Studios monster movies, licensed cheap to local TV stations. Aurora’s monster kits, especially the glow-in-the-dark versions, and their wonderfully dark (and horribly short-lived) Dr. Deadly’s Monster Scene snap-together kits, featuring the Doctor, the Pain Parlor, and the Saber-tooth Rabbit (we won’t mention the Victim, who got the PTA all riled up). The Comics Code Authority, the loosening of which in the early 1970s released a slew of monsters into mainstream comics in all their four-colored…

Halloween Haunts: Cinnamon Sugar and Grave Dust: Musings of a Writer in San Diego’s Old Town

Halloween Haunts: Cinnamon Sugar and Grave Dust: Musings of a Writer in San Diego’s Old Town By Kathryn Blanche   “The oldest town in California,” touted the sign posted on the dust-coated message board of the El Campo Santo Cemetery. I wandered through the grave markers, dust swirling around my boots. My friend Kaylee kept pace beside me. Always up for an adventure, Kaylee agreed to join me in Old Town this evening to find a specific gravesite. “I think this is it.” Littered in seashells, bracelets, and other trinkets, it stood out from the others. Kaylee wrinkled her nose…

Halloween Haunts: Learning About Dark Poetry, and a Burning Haibun for Halloween

Halloween Haunts: Learning About Dark Poetry, and a Burning Haibun for Halloween By Stacie Herrington Hello, Halloween people! First off, I would like to thank HWA member and amazing poet Stephanie M. Wytovich along with all the contributors to Writing Poetry in the Dark, which I am reading now and highly recommend. Thanks to the ideas, creativity, and experimentation with form encouraged in this book, I have been writing every day. As a result, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole about form, and learned about a form called the burning haibun. A Haibun, if you have not…

Halloween Haunts: Have You Ever Shaken the Devil’s Hand on Halloween Night?

Halloween Haunts: Have You Ever Shaken the Devil’s Hand on Halloween Night? By David Sandner   Was it a Halloween night when Robert Johnson walked out to the crossroads to make a deal with the devil? I don’t know, I’ll ask him next time I see him. There’s lot of versions of this story (because there’s lots of ways to go to hell, but only one way home). Here’s one account of things: Robert Johnson wanted to be a Blues guitar player, but when he stepped on stage as a young man, he got hooted off. He just wasn’t good…

Halloween Haunts: The Severed Hand

Halloween Haunts: The Severed Hand By Michael Subjack Halloween has always been my favorite time of year, but there was an odd period between trick-or-treating as a child and enjoying more ambitious pursuits as an adult that found me homebound but still eager to celebrate the holiday. This interlude occurred from eighth grade through my senior year of high school. I generally had friends over to watch horror movies while I handed out candy. The street I grew up on was on a direct path to a building known colloquially as the Armory, which hosted a family-friendly Halloween party every…