The Horror Writers Association (HWA) and the University of Pittsburgh Library System (ULS) are excited to announce a new chapter in their collaboration leading up to StokerCon. Building on their roles as Marquee Sponsor in 2023 and Raven Sponsor in 2024, the ULS has committed to a ground-breaking 10-year Legacy Sponsorship starting with StokerCon 2025.
The market is crowded, the rules of social media are constantly changing, and the logistics of building a catalogue are more complicated than ever. The good news, according to author Clay McLeod Chapman, is that time-tested strategies such as supporting other authors and finding a unique voice will still get the job done. In this month’s edition of Nuts & Bolts, he gives advice for beginning authors about getting their material in print.
Bruce Boston
Bruce David Boston, emperor of the weird, the esoteric, the absurd. Once a year at least, my husband Geoffrey Landis and I would sit around the table in his and Marge Simon’s house in Ocala, drinking wine and eating cheesecake or dried fruit. The conversations were esoteric, comical, scandalous, divine. There were other meetings, although as years went by, Bruce became more retiring and skipped Conference on the Fantastic, where he’d been a Creative, and other conferences where he would have been lionized, and even StokerCon.
Kate Maruyama, Member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Committee.
We have some rich reading in time to buy gifts for friends, dig in!
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.
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.”
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.
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 participate in the Christmas and Easter programs since the children always sang or put on skits for them. (Once, I got to be the Smart Star, one of the stars vying to be THE Christmas star. I lost out to the Humble Star, though.) The church didn’t have a Halloween service, though. No surprise there. But it had something way better.
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 of our stores stock Halloween merchandise and we’re not big candy eaters when compared to other countries, either. I’ve been looking back at the blogs I’ve submitted in previous years: a conversation with my Path of Ra co-author Dan Rabarts about why Halloween isn’t really a thing here, another conversation with Dan about why Halloween isn’t a thing here, a meta-article comprising comments from my Kiwi horror colleagues about why Halloween isn’t really a thing down here… Well, you get the idea. But while I’ve been wracking my brains, struggling to come up with something that might fly as a Halloween blog, New Zealand’s Bird of the Year / Te Manu Rongonui o te Tau competition has been in full swing, popping up all over our social media, on the local news, and generating somewhat heated discussions in my extended-family group chat.
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.
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.
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 a sudden freezing blow. I’ve always wanted to touch the splattered blood, which reflects the sunset like powerful rubies. When I wear the red necklace, the shadows flee and I can rest in peace. It is not as painless as I would like the memory to be, but I can perfectly jump over it as a gracious soul, more than able to overcome its nauseous reek of hell. Yes, her heinous face is covered in white powder, and her mouth reeks of hell, and she leaps over me scattering roses everywhere. Everybody loves roses, especially on Halloween, as tonight is the only eve on which passersby don’t run away from me and accept my treats. She was writing this very line a year ago, and it became true because she wrote it and explained it to the air with great solemnity.
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 first showed me King Kong (1931) and five when he showed me Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein and Universal’s Dracula, Frankenstein and The Wolf Man.
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.
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.
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
By Joshua Millican
I’ve always loved horror more than Halloween.
Halloween Haunts: KRAKEN, AND RAVENS, AND RAPTORS… OH, MY!
By Evan Baughfman
October’s not just for things bumping in the night.
Halloween Haunts: What Ben Cooper Taught Me About Life
By Den Shewman
The things that made me:
But really, I blame Jack Pierce. My earliest movie memory is hiding behind my dad’s recliner, watching 1941’s The Wolf Man on TV between my fingers covering my eyes as I clutched my favorite pillow. Lon Chaney, Jr. scurrying through the black-and-white fog, coming in for an extreme close-up to show off Pierce’s amazing creature design.
Halloween Haunts: Cinnamon Sugar and Grave Dust: Musings of a Writer in San Diego’s Old Town
By Kathryn Blanche