Wednesday, November 28, 2012

“The Next Big Thing” Project: My latest work and three emerging writers you should know about

My writing compatriot, ERIK T. JOHNSON, tagged me last week as part of a round-robin writer concept that allows authors to promote other authors they see as rising through the ranks with significant accomplishments and soon to be “The Next Big Thing.”
 
It begins with each author answering ten questions about their own current projects, and then passing the mantle to three other writers.
 
For example, Erik T. Johnson posted on November 21 at: http://www.eriktjohnson.net/blog.html
 
Erik was tagged by John F.D. Taff on November 15.
 
Today it's my turn to answer the ten questions!
 
1) What is the working title of your next book?
 
I’m going to break the rules here and discuss TWO book projects, because each is so different:
 
a) AFTER DEATH… = an Anthology
 
b) JOEY THIRD’S LAST BAGGAGE AUCTION (working title) = a Novella
 
2) Where did the idea come from for the book?
 
a) AFTER DEATH… = Like most people, I’ve wondered often at what may occur after we die. I don’t dwell on it, of course, but harbor a healthy curiosity. There are countless ideas throughout history and across cultures, and I wanted to explore this topic through the voices of horror and mystery fiction writers.
 
b) JOEY THIRD’S LAST BAGGAGE AUCTION = I read an excerpt of the lives of traveling circus performers, and included was an account of a group of carnies who frequented the Baggage Auctions in the 1960’s. The baggage auctions were treated as a form of gambling, whereas attendees would bid on unopened luggage that was left behind at hotels and airports. The winner would open the luggage and keep whatever they found inside. I wanted to incorporate this background into a horror ghost story.
 
3) What genre does your book fall under?
 
a) AFTER DEATH… = Speculative Fiction, Horror, and some Science Fiction.
 
b) JOEY THIRD’S LAST BAGGAGE AUCTION = Dark Fiction
 
4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
 
a) AFTER DEATH… = n/a
 
b) JOEY THIRD’S LAST BAGGAGE AUCTION:
 
Charlie Stewart = Steve Buscemi
Joey “Third” Thurston = a cross between William Hurt and Kiefer Sutherland
Ray Galler = Ray Liotta
Vic = Michael Parks
Yefim László = John Malkovich
Gail Donovan = Connie Britton
 
5) What is a one-sentence synopsis of your book?
 
a) AFTER DEATH… = An anthology of stories that suggest different ideas of what may occur after we die.
 
b) JOEY THIRD’S LAST BAGGAGE AUCTION = A gambler in 1960’s Detroit acquires a haunted record player and falls influence to the occultic chanting it plays, recorded by a murdered mystic.
 
6) Who will publish your book?
 
a) AFTER DEATH… = Dark Moon Books, an imprint of Stony Meadows Publishing, www.darkmoonbooks.com
 
b) JOEY THIRD’S LAST BAGGAGE AUCTION = JournalStone, www.journalstone.com
 
7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
 
a) AFTER DEATH… = Between announcing open call to producing first draft of anthology was about eight months.
 
b) JOEY THIRD’S LAST BAGGAGE AUCTION = Still writing first draft, but overall time for completion will be about four months.
 
8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
 
a) AFTER DEATH… = I’m sure they’re out there, but I’m not aware of any other horror fiction anthologies that deal exclusively with different stories exploring what occurs after we die (i.e. not just “ghost stories”).
 
b) JOEY THIRD’S LAST BAGGAGE AUCTION = The 1st person POV voice in my head is most reminiscent of Andy Dufresne in Stephen King’s “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.” However, the plot is structured more like “Christine.” (Yes, like most horror writers, I draw great inspiration from “the King!”)
 
9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?
 
a) AFTER DEATH… = My long-standing wonder at what occurs after we die.
 
b) JOEY THIRD’S LAST BAGGAGE AUCTION = Lisa Morton inspired me to write a novella and offered me an opportunity to participate in Journalstone’s Double Down series.
 
10) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?
 
a) AFTER DEATH… = This anthology contains thirty-four brand new stories, each beautifully illustrated. Some of the authors include: Steve Rasnic Tem, Bentley Little, John Langan, Lisa Morton, Simon Clark, Joe McKinney, etc.
 
b) JOEY THIRD’S LAST BAGGAGE AUCTION = At the risk of sounding bold, I think this is the best fiction I've yet written! Atmospheric and dark, I modeled a classic ghost story and added historic flair, placing this in 1960’s Detroit.
 
And now … onward!  My three taggees that I pass the mantle to are:
 
Andrew Williams - www.offthewrittenpath.com
Max Booth III - www.talesfromthebooth.com
Christine Morgan – http://sabledrake.livejournal.com
 
Check each of them out next Wednesday, December 5, when they answer the above ten questions about their own work and then tag more worthy scribes.

Friday, November 9, 2012

ACCEPTANCES FOR THE ANTHOLOGY, “AFTER DEATH... ” ANNOUNCED!!

I am thrilled to announce and congratulate the following authors who were accepted into my second anthology project, “After Death... ”!

Andrew S. WilliamsSomeone to Remember
David TallermanPrisoner of Peace
Steve Rasnic TemThe Last Moments Before Bed
Lisa MortonThe Resurrection Policy
John M. FloydHigh Places
Kelda CrichCircling the Stones at Fulcrum's Low
David SteffenI Will Remain
Aaron J. FrenchTree of Life
Sanford Allen & Josh RountreeThe Reckless Alternative
Brad C. HodsonThe Thousandth Hell
James S. Dorr Mall Rats
Ray CluleyAfterword
Jonathan ShipleyLike a Bat out of Hell
Edward M. ErdelacSea of Trees
Jacob EdwardsThe Overlander
Bentley LittleMy Father Knew Douglas MacArthur
Jamie LackeyRobot Heaven
John PalisanoForever
Robert B. Marcus, Jr.Beyond the Veil
Alvaro RodriguezBoy, 7
William Meikle Be Quiet At The Back
Christine MorganA Feast of Meat and Mead
Simon ClarkHammerhead
Peter GiglioCages
Kelly DunnMarvel at the Face of Forever
Trevor DenyerThe Unfinished Lunch
Steve CameronI Was The Walrus
Larry HodgesThe Devil's Backbone
Benjamin Kane EthridgeThe Death of E. Coli
Emily C. SkaftunFinal Testament of a Weapons Engineer
Joe McKinneyAcclimation Package
Josh StrnadHellevator
Allan IzenIn and Out the Window
John LanganWith Max Barry in the Nearer Precincts
 
 
The theme of this anthology is to imagine what may occur to someone AFTER they have died.
 
As of my final selection earlier this week, there totaled 364 submissions. There were so many brilliant and well-written ideas that it was agonizing to only be able to select a handful. I wish I could include many more authors, but space was limited. As it is, I grew the project larger than originally planned. Of the afore-mentioned stories, six were by invitation and the remaining selected through open call. The book comes out to about 115,000 words of all new and original fiction!

Every story will be custom illustrated by Audra Phillips, http://www.audraphillips.com

Publication is on schedule for Spring (March/ April) 2013 through Dark Moon Books. http://www.darkmoonbooks.com/homepage.htm

Thank you, again, to all who submitted — I truly enjoyed reading every story.

Keep writing!


Cover Art for AFTER DEATH...

Sunday, November 4, 2012

GUEST BLOG: “What the Hell is That?” Writing Contemporary Horror Fiction by Mike Robinson

A friend of mine tells the story of when he was ten years old and lying in bed. He was having trouble sleeping, and so tossed and turned well into the deep redeye hour, that time when, regardless of location, the primal country of our ancestors seems most palpable. As he finally started to drift off, he felt a tug on the sheet, then heard a voice (“Gruff,” he explains, “like a grown man”) whisper harshly into his ear, “Scoot over!”

Sleep never came that night and, whether ghostly or imagined, the cold-fingered memory still grips his spine.

Or take my younger years. One Christmas Eve, after watching the George C. Scott version of A Christmas Carol, I sat in bed, wide awake. I’m sure I was joined by millions of others my age, but it wasn’t the anticipation of presents keeping me up. It was the damn Ghost of Christmas Future, who I expected any moment to come drifting down the hallway to my room. I wanted to close my eyes, but was too afraid I wouldn’t see him coming, and so would snap awake to a tall robed figure looming bedside, pointing its long skeletal index finger at me.
 
It’s difficult for me to believe that one can write truly effective horror -- horror that feels organic, new and authentic -- without some variation of this wonderful “fright gene.” And while many kids get scared, I’d venture to guess it’s a minority that actually craves such experiences, and would as an adult classify them as ‘wonderful.’ They’re frightening at the same time they’re uplifting, texturing the world in rich, noble insanity. I still have them, too, to some degree. They’re baked into the cake. For whatever reason, my brain works often in perverse entertainment to unnerve itself, like when I lie awake in the dark, on my side, and think, “I’m alone right now. What would happen if I felt a light tap on my shoulder?”
 
This gusto for goosebumps, this knack for nightmare, is, I believe, a formative and fundamental part of writing good horror fiction, fiction that is borne of an innate, ongoing process, and not just relegated to Halloween. Such a mindset also encourages originality, because for you the tropes and stock creatures and boardroom frights have come and gone, and you’re out scouring murkier fathoms.
 
By no means am I insinuating that horror writers belong to some exclusive club that asks potential members to list their childhood terrors for approval. I’m merely saying it helps incalculably if that hungry fascination, both celebrated and unsettling, runs in your DNA.
 
Take a novelist acquaintance of mine. For years she wrote romance and erotic fiction. Successfully, I might add. But one day she became interested in trying horror, “because it always sells.” I was skeptical -- I thought she should no more write horror than I should romance. But hey, I’m open-minded (truly I am), so my reply never went beyond a nod and some words of wooden encouragement.
 
Her result, while well-written and passable, was largely what I expected: a paint-by-numbers retread of typical genre fare. She didn’t have it in her blood, nor had she sopped up enough of the genre to know what was overrun and what awaited better exploration. Her approach was artificial, mechanical (not helped by the dollar signs in her eyes). I’d seen such things as hers, and had yawned past them. And yet, decades-old work by the greats, which I’ve read and re-read, continue to chill. Stephen King said horror must regularly renew itself, or die. H.P. Lovecraft, Richard Matheson and Clive Barker are some of last century’s revitalizing visionaries. Who’s holding the defibrillators this century? Why not you?
 
We’ve all heard the mantra that the heart of horror is fear of the unknown. Increasingly, however, that truism is more acknowledged than executed. Since the 1980s publishing bust, when oversaturation proved the genre’s downfall, horror has limped on, like a transient ambling down the road, pitied by faces watching from curtains of snug homes. Dark Fantasy took it in, as has Paranormal. YA has sucked up some of it. It’s been broken down and mixed in with other genres. This is partly why we’ve seen the resurgence of tropes like vampires, werewolves and zombies, all of which hardly represent “the unknown,” not any longer. They’re well known, and so, in this author’s opinion, not very scary.
 
Some of the best inspiration for those looking to break this rut can be found not necessarily in mainstream books but in the thousands of utterly bizarre reports posted everyday in archives and message boards of websites catered towards strange phenomena. Even documentary-style TV shows like Paranormal Witness can offer up good fodder. Whether you believe these people or not, it’s for sure that nothing can be as weird as reality. And I don’t just mean Victorian-garbed girls fading into thin air, or Sasquatch strutting through the brush. Consider the following example of a man who, while living in the jungles of Hawaii, was invited to dinner by a neighboring couple, Tom and Anne, whom he’d always considered nice, but odd. He goes on to explain:
 
“One night .... I was over at their house as usual and was sitting at the table having some food and conversation. I was eating, looking down at my plate. Tom and Ann were saying something. All of a sudden, like a switch went off, they stopped talking in mid sentence. I looked up from my plate, across the table at Tom and Ann next to him and I saw them there, as if frozen in time. Their mouths wide open with their eyes and their mouth’s completely black. And I don’t mean normal black. I mean a deep, empty black. Blacker than any black you’ve ever seen your life. Almost like another dimensional black. Their mouths as black as their eyes. You could feel the black (if that makes any sense).
 
I was immediately struck with a sense of fear. As I stood up and looked at them, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I wasn’t high, I wasn’t drinking, I was just seeing something that I couldn’t understand. I contemplating running through that dark jungle full of fear to get home. When everything returned to normal, like a light switch turned back on, as if nothing happened at all.”
 
There’s another report in England of a couple encountering, early in the morning, what they called a “stickman,” a flat, silhouetted humanoid they compared to the logo on the door of a Men’s public restroom. It’d been “lolly-hopping,” was their term, until it stopped, realizing they could see it.
 
Those are just two of an infinite number of examples. I bring these up not to revel in weirdness, but to suggest how deep and dark those unexplored fathoms can be. So grab a flashlight! And of course, while I tack towards the supernatural, or extraordinary, keep in mind horror does not have to be physically inexplicable, though it does involve something inexplicable, like the who or why of the creepy (and very earthly) home invaders in the underrated film The Strangers.
 
Most really good horror fiction also, for me, is like a solar system. In the center pulses the Central Big Idea or Image, which nourishes the smaller ones orbiting it. Of course, this can be seen in other genres (notably theme-layered literary fiction), but I feel it’s particularly significant with horror. It’s usually the image or idea that starts the juices flowing, that spools out the rest of the story. It’s the image that, when successfully realized, will survive in your readers’ minds (and dreams) long after the closing passage. Think of The Shining, for instance, and you think of a murderous father pursuing his wife and son.
 
My forthcoming horror novel The Prince of Earth began with the image of a young woman injured and alone atop a misty mountain in the middle of the Scottish Highlands, where she is plagued by a malevolent force. To me, it was a powerful aesthetic vision, and the progenitor of all else that came after it. And this image wasn’t attached to any specific idea. Oftentimes, the idea, or ideas, are built into the image, and it’s your job to decode them and discover them, unearthing the morbid delights in that visual package.
 
If it’s not entirely obvious, I’m not a big outliner. I realize this is subjective, and in all fairness I have been known to what I call “micro-outline” a certain section or chapter I’m having trouble with. Every writer should do what they feel works for them. But when it comes to horror, a genre that relies on suspense, surprise, underlying trepidation of what’s around the corner, I’m mildly suspicious of outlining. If you as the author are the first to take the journey of your story, unsure yourself what lurks out there (or within), that shows in the result. It gives the book a heartbeat, a greater sense of intrigue, doubt and wonder. If the tale is more or less composed as a “Fill in the Blanks with Scare A, B, C,” or a connect-the-dots exercise, it tends to dilute the reading experience.
 
And, of course, if your Big Image proves too big for an outline, it may just break its cage, maul your mind and tell you other ways of doing things. And wouldn’t that also be a wonderful experience?
 
 
***
 
 
Mike Robinson has been writing since age 7, when his story Aliens In My Backyard! became a runaway bestseller, topping international charts (or maybe that was also just a product of his imagination). He has since published fiction in a dozen magazines, literary anthologies and podcasts. His debut novel, Skunk Ape Semester, released by Solstice Publishing, was a Finalist in the 2012 Next Generation Indie Book Awards.
 
Currently he’s the managing editor of Literary Landscapes, the official magazine of the Greater Los Angeles Writers Society (glaws.org). His supernatural horror/mystery novel The Green-Eyed Monster is now available from Curiosity Quills Press.
 
Link to Amazon Purchase Page:

 
Link to Mike Robinson’s Author Page: