The Seers’ Table January 2021

The Seers Table! December 30, 2020 by HWAWeb Kate Maruyama, Member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Community Linda Addison Recommends: Hailey Piper writes horror and dark fantasy, and is a member of the HWA. She is the author of The Worm and His Kings, The Possession of Natalie Glasgow, Benny Rose, The Cannibal King, and others. Her short fiction appears in publications such as Daily Science Fiction, The Arcanist, Flash Fiction Online, Year’s Best Hardcore Horror, Tales to Terrify, Blood Bath Literary Zine, and many more. She lives with her wife in Maryland, where she haunts their apartment making spooky…

Members New Releases – 2020

Welcome to the showcase of member publications! Select a book cover to purchase or learn more about it or the author. You can view the wall of amazing cover art from past years by using the dropdown in the menu above. And members, please sign into the members-only area to submit upcoming releases. Thank you!

The Seers’ Table December 2020

Linda D. Addison, Member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Community You can see any of The Seers’ Table posts since inception (March 2016) from the menu item “Diverse Works” on the top of the HWA’s main page. Kate Maruyama introduces: Grace Chan is a speculative fiction writer and doctor. Her family migrated from Malaysia to Australia where she grew up. She writes near-future science fiction about medical technology, far-future space escapades to strange worlds, and psychological horror where the real and the unconscious blend together. Her short fiction can be found in Clarkesworld, Black Cranes, Going Down Swinging, Aurealis, AntipodeanSF,…

The Seers’ Table November 2020

The Seers Table! October 30, 2020 by HWAWeb Kate Maruyama, member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Committee So many of our local bookstores are hurting during these times. If you give books at Christmas, might I suggest spreading out your purchases over time (I do this so our budget in December doesn’t get crushed) and over local bookstores. Most ship or have curbside pickup. Or, to support indie bookstores at large from your home, Bookshop.org functions like Amazon, but works through indie bookstores. Here are some awesome titles to start with! Theresa Derwin recommends: Nikki Woolfolk. I first found out…

Halloween Haunts: When Captain Howdy Visits on Halloween: The History of the Ouija Board

By Lisa Morton Whenever I tell people that I’ve written a book about séances, the subject of the Ouija board usually comes up very soon. Ouija boards have fascinated us for almost 130 years now; for the price of a board game, they offer us the promise of communicating with spirits in the comfort of our own living rooms. Unlike a more traditional séance, which must be guided by a medium with some experience or skill, anyone with fingers can use a Ouija board. Ouija boards connect with Halloween in the idea of easing contact with ethereal spirits. Halloween is…

Summer Scares Reading Program

The Horror Writers Association (HWA), in partnership with United for Libraries, Book Riot, and BookList, has launched a reading program that provides libraries and schools with an annual list of recommended horror titles for adult, young adult (teen), and middle grade readers. The goal is to introduce new authors and help librarians start conversations with readers that will extend beyond the books from each list and promote reading for years to come. Each year, a special guest author and a committee of four librarians will select 3 recommended fiction titles in each of 3 reading levels (Middle Grade, Teen, and…

Halloween Haunts: From Birthdays to Doorbells to Arson: Mischief Night

By Kevin Wetmore My mother’s birthday is October 30.  She told us that when she was growing up her parents would throw a Halloween-themed birthday party. My grandmother would call my mother’s friend Bunny’s father, who ran a bakery, to make a Jack-o-lantern cake decorated with plastic witches on broomsticks holding the candles and all sorts of Halloween themed plastic paraphernalia.  (To me that sounds like Heaven).  As a result, however, my mother does not much care for Halloween, as it required her to share her birthday with a national holiday aimed (at the time) at children and she felt…

Halloween Haunts: The Haunter of the Cul de Sac

By Nancy Holder Oh, Halloweens of my childhood, those halcyon days when our parents hardly ever supervised us and had no idea of the traumas we underwent in the name of fun—most of the time. How it is that I have teeth and am still alive is a mystery to me given all the perilous adventures I took myself on. Yet here I am, remembering not a terrifying Halloween tale of menace most shambling, but the Halloween season when my father shared in the soaring triumph and ultimate defeat of the robot costume he made for me when I was…

Halloween Haunts: The Hungry Ghost Festival

By Lee Murray & Geneve Flynn Lee Murray: As a girl, I remember my Kiwi-Chinese mum lighting joss sticks for the spirits of the dead, always three or five slender sticks since those numbers are auspicious. She would hold the sticks in both hands, the tips glowing red, and bow respectfully, before placing the still-burning bamboo on a stand on the windowsill where the aromatic smoke would curl upwards and permeate the kitchen. I loved that smoky scent. And the solemnity of the moment, quiet amid the general busyness of my childhood. It’s a practice that seems out of place…

Halloween Haunts: “You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps”

by Frazer Lee In another life, and another time (1998 to be specific) I was hired to work crew for several weeks on a film shoot. The movie production in question was Siamese Cop, which had the awesome logline: ‘Two cops. One jacket’. A low-budget affair (no kidding) the bulk of the shoot was confined to one main location, which would also serve as the production base, equipment store, and – as it turned out – a place to haunt your every waking step. Friern Barnet Mental Hospital, as it was then known, opened its doors as Colney Hatch Asylum…

Halloween Haunts: The Voice and Poe

by Naching T. Kassa   When I think of Halloween, sweet memories come to mind. The scent of caramel apples, the brisk chill of October’s dying breath, horror films flickering on a small screen, and the smooth taste of chocolate on my tongue. These memories are beautiful, but my most favorite is the sound of my dad’s voice reading Edgar Allan Poe. My father loved Poe. Growing up, he’d read every story, from “The Masque of the Red Death” to “The Gold-Bug.” He also loved the movies, and my first introduction to Poe was through the Roger Corman films starring…

Halloween Haunts: Rising from the Dead

by Chris DiLeo Every Halloween, my father rose from the dead. He would wait until his victims were so close there was nowhere they could run, and as those quivering trick-or-treaters’ hands stretched across the open coffin reaching for the individually wrapped Twizzlers splayed across his chest, my father’s eyes would open and he would attack. My father died when I was eleven. Happened right before my eyes. His hand reached out, fingers trembling, and a crackling moan rattled in his throat. His eyes were wide, frightened, and he stumbled and fell. He never got up again. At the funeral…

Halloween Haunts: Can Halloween Be Pandemic Proof?

By Pamela K. Kinney   I always loved Halloween. When people asked me as a child what my favorite holiday was, I knew they expected to hear it was Christmas. I mean, Christmas is Santa Claus, gifts, and other things that excite a kid on this holiday--right? But no, I always answered, "Halloween." Their mouth would drop open, same as did some of my childhood friends. But there was something about Halloween growing up in the Sixties, when in October they brought out the wax Halloween harmonicas, wax vampire lips, and cardboard skeletons and cats to hand on your windows.…

Halloween Haunts: Dive Bombed in a Nightmare

by Damian Serbu Halloween often brings to mind memories of past frights and haunts. As a horror writer, I find myself drawn to moments that scared the crap out of me, so I can relive the intense thrill and ponder anew its meaning. I am not talking about actual-horrific events that I experienced in life, but false alarms or watching a horror movie or going to a haunted house. Something frightening without a real threat of violence to myself. This summer’s publication of The Bachmann Family Secret and the arrival of October has me thinking about one particular recurring nightmare…

Halloween Haunts: Thank You, Horror

by Tom Leveen   The thing is, the non-readers of horror don’t get it. They don’t get our attraction to the darkness, to the monstrous. They don’t get that we, more than they, are attuned to the human condition. To mortality and disease and the unfairness of monsters in our midst. They don’t get that that’s why we write it, why we read it. It’s our inoculation. It’s our telescope and microscope, making the distant loom large and the subtle come to life so that we can study it and, perhaps, sublimate it. We are healthier and stronger for it.…

Halloween Haunts: Everybody is a Book of Blood

By B.R. Yeager   Each October, we immersive ourselves in narrative. Yes, yes—those classic and cult films, those new and beloved books. I don’t need to tell you. Search “best Halloween movies” and Google spits out 186 listicles before asking you to be more specific. Search “best Halloween books” and you get roughly the same result. But an important aspect of this month gets neglected: narratives come unglued from consumerist machinery to spill out into the rest of life. We tell each other stories. One particular house in my neighborhood sticks out: it’s an average bungalow, apart from a large…

Halloween Haunts: Short Stories, Long Journeys – Halloween Lights

by Anna Taborska Halloween has been lucky for me as a writer. The first story of mine ever published was a Halloween-themed story, and it came out in time for Halloween.             When an author publishes a novel through a publisher, they usually sign away their rights for many years, sometimes indefinitely – if they’re not careful. This is generally not the case with short stories, where a publisher might ask for first rights to a book for a year after publication or perhaps even ask for non-exclusive rights to a story. Thus short stories (and the rights to them)…

Classical Frights — Halloween Poetry by the Great Ones

By David E. Cowen, Bram-Stoker Nominated Author of Bleeding Saffron Every October social media sites become saturated with celebrations worthy of Samhain (pronounced “so-win” in Gaelic I am told). The HWA has a rich tradition of dark poets who all relish this season. Not a single member of the HWA I would wager would not include Edgar Allan Poe on a short list of dark poets, probably then jumping to Robert Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, George Sterling and H.P. Lovecraft. But would you jump to Samuel Taylor Coleridge with his The Rime of the Ancient Mariner? What about Robert Frost…

Halloween Haunts: Halloween Then and Now and in the New Now

by Kate Maruyama   We do enjoy Christmas, but the most wonderful time of the year for my family is the Halloween season. When we first moved to the neighborhood, my husband and I would rent a pile of scary movies, and hand out Halloween candy (as well as eat our share of it). Then we had kids. Every season (they’d have to wait ‘til October 1st!) we’d decorate the house, make decorations, fabric ghosts one year, a haunted candy tree another. We’d start making treats, planning costumes (always homemade,) and we’d make a gingerbread Halloween house. This may sound…