Halloween Haunts: Tricks, Treats, and Chainsaws by James Chambers

I’m certain I’m not the only horror writer who’s ever wondered what they would do if they found themselves in the real-life equivalent of a chainsaw slasher flick. I’d venture, in fact, that this is something horror writers spend far more time considering than the average non-horror writer. We probably spend slightly more time thinking about this than figuring out our survival plan for a zombie apocalypse but not quite as much time as we spend imagining what we’d do if we were vampires. However, I think it’s also safe to say not many horror writers ever get to learn…

WITCH HUNTS: A GRAPHIC HISTORY OF THE BURNING TIMES by HWA Member Rocky Wood, Lisa Morton (authors) and Greg Chapman (illustrator)

Author: Rocky Wood, Lisa Morton (authors) and Greg Chapman (illustrator) For nearly three centuries, as the Black Death rampaged through Europe and the Reformation tore the Church apart, tens of thousands were arrested as witches and subjected to trial, torture, and execution, including being burned alive. This graphic novel examines the background; the methods of the witch hunters; who stood to profit; the brave few who protested; and how the trials finally faded as Enlightenment replaced fear and superstition with reason and science. The book examines famed witch hunters Heinrich Kramer, architect of the infamous Malleus Maleficarum; Matthew Hopkins, Englandâ…

THE DONORS by HWA Member Jeffrey Wilson

Author: Jeffrey Wilson A powerful and evil force is at work in the Hospital where little Nathan is recovering from injuries at the hands of his Mom's abusive ex-boyfriend. Demonic looking men with pale faces and glowing eyes lurk in the shadows and, worse, it appears that someone is harvesting skin and organs from living-- and awake-- donors against their will. In his dreams, little Nathan can see these demons in their true form-- evil creatures who feed on the fear and hatred they help create in their victims. Nathan's only ally is the young Doctor who cares for him.…

THE HAUNTED MANSION PROJECT: YEAR ONE by HWA Member Editor E.S. Magill

Editor: E.S. Magill In the fall of 2010, ten horror writers met at a real haunted mansion to spend four days together. Joining them were a group of paranormal investigators who studied the house and reported their findings. This anthology is a collection of the fiction, poetry, journals, real impressions, and investigative conclusions created at or inspired by that weekend. Find out what scares horror authors: E.S. Magill, Rain Graves, Nikki Boscia, Loren Rhoads, Sephera Giron, Kim Richards, Yvonne Navarro, Weston Ochse, Christian Colvin, Dan Weidman, and S.G. Browne. Proceeds from this anthology go toward future Haunted Mansion events. TOC:…

SOUNDTRACK TO THE END OF THE WORLD by HWA Member Anthony J. Rapino

Author: Anthony J. Rapino A suicidal nudist strolls into traffic. An eccentric Buddhist claims he can occupy other people's bodies. All the while, whispers of a new form of entertainment blow through town. Prompted by these strange occurrences, Marty Raft, a not-so-gentle giant, investigates and discovers underground clubs peddling music that induces an out-of-body experience. Marty and a wannabe comedian, Corey, set out to prove these special frequencies are nothing more than a hoax, or at worst, a mass-drugging. Instead, they uncover a secret with world-ending possibilities. If you can hear the music, it's already too late. An impressive debut.…

PAVLOV’S DOGS by HWA Members Thom Brannan & D.L. Snell

Authors: Thom Brannan & D.L. Snell WEREWOLVES Dr. Crispin has engineered the saviors of mankind: Pavlov's Dogs, a team of soldiers capable of transforming into fearsome beasts. But when Crispin and his team welcome a new talented neurotechnician to the island, Dr. Crispin quickly realizes his masterwork has fallen into the hands of a man he does not trust. ZOMBIES Back on the mainland, Ken Bishop and his best friend Jorge get caught in a traffic jam on their way home from work. There's a wreck up ahead. And something worse. The first sign of a major outbreak and Ken…

THE CHESSMAN by HWA Member Jeffrey B. Burton

Author: Jeffrey B. Burton Hidden forces are willing to kill any and all who stand in the way of untold billions. To toss the authorities off track, they borrow the modus operandi of a brutal serial killer The Chessman who stalked the corridors of power in Washington, D.C. some years earlier. The ruse is working brilliantly except for one minor detail. The real Chessman is not pleased not pleased one iota that someone has stolen his M.O. Enter Drew Cady, ex-FBI agent, who finds himself being sucked back into the very case that almost took his life, a case that…

LITTLE DEATHS by HWA Member John F.D. Taff

Author: John F.D. Taff You think you’ve got bad dreams? Consider author John F.D. Taff’s nightmares. How about the one where a guy resurrects his dead girlfriend with a set of the prop neck bolts used on Boris Karloff in the 1932 classic Frankenstein? Or one where the ghost of the author s dead dog keeps coming back to entice him into death so they can be together? Or the one where a guy loves candy to death? Taff has the kind of nightmares no one wants. But it’s nightmares like these that give him plenty of ideas to explore;…

THE CHESSMAN by HWA Member Jeffrey B. Burton

Author: Jeffrey B. Burton Hidden forces are willing to kill any and all who stand in the way of untold billions. To toss the authorities off track, they borrow the modus operandi of a brutal serial killer The Chessman who stalked the corridors of power in Washington, D.C. some years earlier. The ruse is working brilliantly except for one minor detail. The real Chessman is not pleased not pleased one iota that someone has stolen his M.O. Enter Drew Cady, ex-FBI agent, who finds himself being sucked back into the very case that almost took his life, a case that…

THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES published by HWA Member David Sutton

Author: Richard Davis Publisher: David Sutton's Shadow Publishing David Sutton's Shadow Publishing is pleased to announce that The Female of the Species & Other Terror Tales by Richard Davis (1935-2005) will be published late Spring this year. Richard never saw a collection of his stories publishing in his lifetime, and this book will include all of the author's short stories, culled from as far back as 1963 and 'The Fourth Pan Book of Horror Stories' up to the 1980s. The collection will include an introduction about his life, the fiction and anthologies, including his work as story editor for the…

An Interview with HWA Member Christopher Conlon

Interview by Ron Breznay Christopher Conlon bills himself on his web site as a writer, poet, and editor. He has written a number of prose works, including many short stories and two novels, Midnight on Mourn Street And A Matrix of Angels (he has adapted the former into a two-act play). Some of his short stories have been gathered into two collections, Thundershowers at Dusk and Saying Secrets: American Stories. He has published many poems in various magazines as well as in four collections of verse: Starkweather Dreams: Landscape with Figures, Mary Falls: Requiem for Mrs. Surratt, The Weeping Time:…

THE COLOR OF EVIL by HWA Member Connie Corcoran Wilson

Author: Connie Corcoran Wilson "The Color of Evil" has been awarded the Gold Medal (1st place) in the 2012 E-Lit awards. Tad McGreevy has a power that he has never revealed, not even to his life-long best friend, Stevie Scranton. When Tad looks at others, he sees colors. These auras tell Tad whether a person is good or evil. At night, Tad dreams about the evil-doers, reliving their crimes in horrifyingly vivid detail. But Tad doesn't know if the evil acts he witnesses in his nightmares are happening now, are already over, or are going to occur in the future.…

BY THE BLOOD OF HEROES by HWA Member Joseph Nassise

Author: Joseph Nassise Train them . . . Arm them . . . Then turn them loose on the zombies! At the tail end of 1917, the Germans introduced a new type of gas to the battlefield, T-Leiche, or "corpse gas," and changed the face of the war by resurrecting the bodies of the dead, giving the enemy an almost unlimited source of fresh troops. When the American ace Major Jack Freeman poster boy for the war against the Kaiser's undead army of shamblers is downed over enemy lines and taken captive, veteran Captain Michael "Madman" Burke is the only…

THE UNAUTHORIZED AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ETHAN JACOBS by HWA Member Dan Dillard

Author: Dan Dillard A computer programmer follows his obsession with the occult to a dark place. Visions of a domineering father drive him beyond the help of a best friend, a loving girlfriend, and even his dog, Slobber, to look for answers to questions we all wonder about. At first, it's a hobby, but after meeting a woman who claims she was haunted as a child, Ethan becomes entranced. When the entity first visits him, he is energized, but quickly becomes tortured and spirals away to a place where no one can reach him to help. He battles back with…

POSEIDON’S CHILDREN by HWA Member Michael West

Author: Michael West Man no longer worships the old gods; forgotten and forsaken, they have become nothing more than myth and legend. But all that is about to change. After the ruins of a vast, ancient civilization are discovered on the ocean floor, Coast Guard officers find a series of derelict ships drifting in the current high-priced yachts and leaking fishing boats, all ransacked, splattered in blood, their crews missing and presumed dead. And that s just the beginning. Vacationing artist Larry Neuhaus has just witnessed a gruesome shark attack, a young couple torn apart right before his eyes. At…

THE COLD SPOT by HWA Member JG Faherty

Author: J.G. Faherty Clay Daniels is an outcast among outcasts. Cursed with a terrible birthmark on his face, his life is an endless misery of teasing and physical abuse from his classmates. Things only get worse when his parents die and he's forced to move in with cruel relatives who make the torture of school seem like paradise. Then everything changes when he meets a boy named John in the woods behind his house. John and his friends don't care what Clay looks like, or that he's not strong or particularly smart. That's because they're dead, and the dead don't…

An Interview with New Member Gregory Frost

By Ron Breznay Gregory Frost is a writer living in southeastern Pennsylvania. He has penned novels, short stories, articles, and book reviews in the fantasy, science fiction, and horror genres. Greg has an extensive education in writing. He is a graduate of the writing program at the University of Iowa and of the Clarion Writers Workshop, at which he was later an instructor. He attended many Sycamore Hill Writers Workshops, the Nameless Workshop, and the Philadelphia Stories Workshop. In addition, he was one of the rotating Fiction Writing Workshop Directors at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Greg’s work has been…

CARNAGE ROAD by HWA Member Gregory Lamberson

Boone and Walker, the last surviving members of the Floating Dragons motorcycle gang, set out to "re-discover America" during the zombie apocalypse. Their odyssey takes them from Buffalo to Ohio, Kansas, Hollywood and Texas. Along the way, they discover that their fellow survivors pose an even greater threat than the undead. Jack Kerouac, Roger Zelazny and Cormac McCarthy have a new traveling companion. With Carnage Road, Greg Lamberson has taken his unique talent on a savage apocalyptic road trip tailor-made for the zombie generation. This book is dark gold, and demonstrates once again why readers who like their horror shot…
2011 Bram Stoker Award™ winners and Vampire Novel of the Century Award winner

2011 Bram Stoker Award™ winners and Vampire Novel of the Century Award winner

At long last, the anticipation is over. The Horror Writers Association announced the winners of the 2011 Bram Stoker Awards™ at its annual awards banquet tonight. This year’s presentation was held in Salt Lake City, Utah, at the World Horror Convention, and marks the 25th Anniversary of the awards. Twelve new bronze haunted-house statuettes were handed over to the writers responsible for creating superior works of horror last year. This year’s winners are: Superior Achievement in a NOVEL Flesh Eaters by Joe McKinney (Pinnacle Books) Superior Achievement in a FIRST NOVEL Isis Unbound by Allyson Bird (Dark Regions Press) Superior…

THE SORROWS by HWA Member Jonathan Janz

Author: Jonathan Janz The Sorrows, an island off the coast of northern California, and its castle have been uninhabited since a series of gruesome, unexplained murders in 1925. But its owner needs money, so he allows film composers Ben and Eddie and a couple of their female friends to stay a month in Castle Blackwood. Eddie is certain an eerie and reportedly haunted castle is just the setting Ben needs to find musical inspiration for a horror film. But what they find is more horrific than any movie. For something is waiting for them in the castle. A being, once…