November 2018 Table of Contents
A Not-So-Final Note from the Editor ...... 1 From the Trenches: Stoking the Fires for StokerCon™! ...... 3 Spotlight on the Bram Stoker Awards® ...... 6 StokerCon™ Link is Live ...... 8 Update from the Membership Committee ...... 9 National Dark Poetry Day Established ...... 10 The Seers Table ...... 12 HWA Events – Current for 2018 ...... 16 Las Vegas Chapter Update ...... 17 San Diego Chapter Update ...... 19 San Francisco Bay Chapter Update ...... 20 HWA Colorado Update ...... 23 Wisconsin Chapter Update ...... 26 Pennsylvania Chapter Update ...... 29 NY Chapter Update ...... 31 Ad: Horror Island ...... 36 Fiendish Endeavors ...... 39 Calendar of Readings and Signings ...... 42 Blood & Spades ...... 43 LA Chapter Update ...... 50 Brain Matter ...... 52 Recently Born of Horrific Minds ...... 54 Authors for the November KGB Reading Series ...... 57 Shrieking Crowds of Horror Fans! ...... 58 The Grumpy Grammarian ...... 61 Haunted Travels: Loftus Hall ...... 65 Frightful Fun ...... 68 Watchung’s Horror Watch ...... 70 Voices {From the North} ...... 73 Entombed by My Long Boxes ...... 75 Tales From the Other Side (of the Atlantic) ...... 79 Ad: Out of What Crypt They Crawl ...... 81 Forbidden Words (And When to Use Them) ...... 84 Straight to Hell ...... 88 Dead Air: Spookies (1986) ...... 89 It’s a Strange, Strange World ...... 92 In The Spooklight ...... 95 Welcome to the HWA! ...... 98 HWA Market Report #278 ...... 101 Advertisements ...... 104 A Not-So-Final Note from the Editor
By HWAWeb | November 2018
Kathryn Ptacek
So … what’s new by you? Getting lots of writing done? Burnishing the cobwebs in your Halloween decorations? Counting flowers on the wall? Well, get busy (if you aren’t already)! The end of the year is fast approaching like a freight train filled with bags of leftover (and very stale) candy corn! Let me know how you’re doing!
I hope you enjoyed the October issue. There was a lot of entertaining and informative stuff in those pages, and a lot of folks burned a lot of midnight oil to get that mammoth issue out. There will be, by the way, a quiz on that issue at a later date. Heh. Please be sure to let the various writers and artists and poets know that you liked what they did. No one likes to work in a vacuum. Good words are always appreciated.
Oh, yeah, February’s issue has a theme: kid horror! This is horror and dark fantasy geared to children of various ages (in other words, not all young adult stuff). Interested? Got an idea to run by me? You know the drill.
I’m still looking for photos for the “Sinister Slideshow” just above the editorial each month. E-mail me if you want to know what theme I’ve plucked from the ether. Do not send huge Huge HUGE photo files. My E-mail program will not be happy. I like atmospheric nature photos. I am not all that thrilled by people in photos; of course, if you do have a human in your photo, you have to get a release form for them to sign and then send it to me. Nope. Don’t make it more complicated.
Don’t send me anything in Dropbox or anything remotely like that. Nope.
Do you promote your work? I’m interested in tips and techniques for a newsletter column I’ll be starting sometime next year.
I am still interested in knowing where you work. I have a handful of photos, but had a massive E-mail
1 program meltdown at one point, and some of the stuff might have evaporated. I guess we’ll find out when I start this feature and you don’t see your working space there. Stay tuned!
If you have any ideas for an article, query me at [email protected], or you can send me a private message on Facebook. Do NOT query me in a post on my Facebook page or HWA’s page; I will delete it after getting excessively grumpy about the whole thing. I like interviews, too, but nothing over 4-5 pages, please, unless you do a two-parter. And I shouldn’t have to say this, but please doublecheck to make sure that proper names are spelled correctly. The proofreaders and I catch most of these, I believe, but I hate the idea that one misspelled name might slip through.
And don’t forget to send photos of your book signings and readings and seminars and dictionary-tossing contests and other writerly events.
The deadline for each issue is ALWAYS the 15th of each month, so send your news/photos/whatever early to the proper person (Your local chapter! The calendar! Your fiendish item! Recent releases! There are so many options!)—that is, BEFORE the 15th and not on that date or shortly after because that’s when the columnists send me their stuff; they need YOUR stuff before the deadline! REMEMBER: This is all FREE promotion for you and your work! Month after month of free promotion with no strings attached! FREE! FREE! FREE! Take advantage of that!
Don’t forget that you can purchase a display ad or two or three … The prices are very reasonable. Ad sizes are listed in the advertising link on the front page of the newsletter. Let other HWA members see what you’re doing!
As always, I would like to thank my intrepid proofreaders: Naching Kassa, Brick Marlin, Marge Simon, Anthony Ambrogio, Lori Gaudet, Walter Jarvis, Joseph VanBuren, Marty Young, Amanda Niehaus-Hard, Morven Westfield, Allie Yohn, Chad McClendon, Sheri White, Greg Faherty, and Joel Jacobs. And thanks to Donna K. Fitch for all her extremely hard work getting the newsletter put up at the site! All those articles! Those columns! Those photos! Thanks, Donna!
The deadline for the DECEMBER issue is Thursday, November 15.
Write!
2 From the Trenches: Stoking the Fires for StokerCon™!
By HWAWeb | November 2018
Brian Matthews, StokerCon™ Chair
Have you ever tried to herd a clowder of cats while they chased a nest of mice who were trying to corner an army of ants, all the while being attacked by a murder of crows?
No?
To truly understand that chaos, try your hand at being a StokerCon™ chair.
Five months remain before we gather in Grand Rapids, Michigan, at the historic Amway Grand Plaza Hotel, for StokerCon 2019. However, as I write this article, eight long months exist between now and the convention.
Seems like an eternity, right? Plenty of time to get everything airtight and shipshape, right?
To paraphrase Monty Python—I laugh in your general direction.
Today alone, I sent off E-mails addressing questions about convention programming, Librarians Day, the Dealers Room, the official StokerCon bookseller, and the StokerCon souvenir book. I still have two StokerCon Web site pages to populate. The convention catering looms ahead of me. And I have deadlines on three articles (including this one) rushing at me like three-hundred-pound linebackers with murder in their eyes.
And this is eight months out.
By the time you read this article, I might well have pulled my hair out.
3 You wanna know something?
If I were given a do-over by the gods, I would still pick running the convention.
That answer may surprise you, given what you’ve just read.
Yes, chairing a StokerCon involves hours and hours of work. But two things make it worthwhile.
One, you get to work with a stellar group of people. The success of a convention does not fall on one person (though its failure arguably could) and many people work long, tireless hours to make a StokerCon the best convention it can be. The crew we have for StokerCon 2019 include some of the best the HWA has to offer: Lisa Morton (deputy chair and Bram Stoker Awards® coordinator), Linda Addison (editor, souvenir book), Brad Hodson (administrator), John Palisano (publicity), Jonathan Maberry (our new Bram Stoker Awards emcee), Meghan Arcuri-Moran (social media and sponsorships coordinator), James Chambers (Horror University), Jonathan Lees (Final Film Competition), Nicholas Diak and Michele Brittany (Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference), Becky Spratford (Librarians Day), Kevin Wetmore, Jr., (volunteer coordinator), Rena Mason (pitch session and guests-of-honor liaison), Jacques Mersereau (A/V tech coordinator), Lee Murray (readings), and Greg Chapman and M. Wayne Miller (artists). These people are so much fun—they work so damn hard—that I feel honored to be listed with them. And seeing the tremendous effort they are putting into this event, I feel personally responsible to bring it all together without a hitch. Nothing would make me happier than to see these fine individuals gather at the end of the convention and say, “Wow, look at what we accomplished. That was really something.”
The second reason is more personal. I have attended several World Horror Conventions/StokerCons. I found them fun and educational—even inspirational. I’ve learned so much, met so many wonderful people, and been given so many chances to improve and succeed as a writer, I want others to have the same experience. The idea that my small part in hosting a successful convention may inspire or aid a fledgling writer, the way previous conventions have inspired me, brings with it a deep sense of satisfaction.
While a StokerCon isn’t technically a mentoring event, it does offer an avenue where mentoring can happen. The programming, the Horror University classes, the informal gatherings, the new friendships—they can all help refine and advance your writing. The convention provides a unique opportunity to talk, face-to-face, with those you respect and to learn from them.
I remember my first writing convention in New Orleans. This was back in 2012. I had the opportunity to sit down with that year’s Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Robert McCammon. We talked about writing, the book he was working on at the time (The Border; an excellent read), even my debut novel, which had recently come out. We didn’t talk for long, maybe fifteen minutes, but it’s a memory I will never forget.
I mean, how awesome is that?
More importantly—how awesome would it be for someone else to have a similar encounter with their writing hero?
It bears repeating: chairing a StokerCon involves a lot of work. Planning will consume much of my time until the convention is over. I’ll be answering questions and navigating the bumps in the road that inevitably happen with a project this large. I’ll truck to the other side of the state a handful of times to work out the finer details with the hotel and perform the necessary walk-throughs. And, of course, I will rely heavily on “the team” to make sure everything is perfect.
In the end, though, I won’t do it for myself.
4 I will do it for every person who takes time out of their lives, both personal and professional, to attend StokerCon 2019. You expect no less, and I should deliver no less.
Okay, I have other jobs to finish, for this one is completed.
One last thing, before I sign off. If you come to Grand Rapids in May and you find you’ve enjoyed your StokerCon (for that’s what it really is—your convention), do me a favor: stop one of the people mentioned above and thank them.
They’ll have earned it.
5 Spotlight on the Bram Stoker Awards®
By HWAWeb | November 2018
New Jury Selection Process
James Chambers and Rena Mason, Bram Stoker Awards Co-Chairs
The Bram Stoker Awards® Committee is pleased to announce a new Jury selection process! The opportunity to serve on a Bram Stoker Award Jury is open to Active, Affiliate, and, in some cases, Academic members of the HWA. Jurors and Jury Chairs are selected by the Awards Committee.
Going forward, this process will be streamlined through the membership database system, Wild Apricot. We have added a new data section that appears in the accounts of all members in qualifying membership categories. This section includes three parts. The first asks members to note whether or not they’d like to participate on a Jury. The second requests members to note the top four awards categories on which they’d prefer to serve. The third asks for the member’s qualifications as a juror (short bio).
As new members join, they will provide this information as part of the application process.
VERY IMPORTANT! For existing members, we ask all those who wish to serve on a Jury in 2019 to please log into their Wild Apricot account and complete this portion of their member record. If you do not provide this information via Wild Apricot, you will not be eligible to take part on a Jury for the 2019 awards year.
The Committee will review the submitted data, make selections, and contact jurors directly about taking part until all Jury positions are filled. Starting in 2019, we will be selecting jurors exclusively through this process, and, if we don’t have your data in the system, we will be unable to consider you for the Jury- selection process.
We hope this new process will improve efficiency, help preserve the integrity of the Bram Stoker Award Juries, and simplify things for our members. The Committee is deeply grateful to all those who take on the volunteer work of being a juror each year!
This is also a reminder that recommendations are open for the current HWA Bram Stoker Award 2018 Reading List. Any dues-paying member at any level may recommend a work. If you’ve read an outstanding work this year, please let other members know about it by making a recommendation for it. Here’s a link to view the current list: http://www.horror.org/awards/2018readinglist.php.
There’s only a month left to submit your 2018 published works to a Jury (publish date from January 1, 2018 through November 30, 2018). Only the authors/publishers/editors of a work may submit works.
If you have work(s) to be published December 1, 2018 through December 31, 2018, there will be a submission window open for those works. Only works published in December 2018 will be sent to the Juries for review.
Here’s the link (you must login first) to Recommend a work (Red Button) and/or Submit a work to a Jury (Purple Button): http://horror.org/members-only/2018/05/29/stokers.
Please E-mail [email protected] with any questions.
6
7 StokerCon™ Link is Live
By HWAWeb | November 2018
StokerCon™ will be held in Scarborough, UK, April 16-20, 2020. The convention now has a Web site with membership information and other pertinent details. Check it out, and keep coming back to see what’s been added. https://stokercon-uk.com/
8 Update from the Membership Committee
By HWAWeb | November 2018
James Chambers
The Committee is pleased to announce some recent changes and additions that will enable it to continue welcoming new members to our steadily growing ranks and provide support to current members.
Please welcome longtime committee member Kenneth W. Cain as our new chair! Kenneth has worked with the committee for many years to process membership applications and help new members get up and running. He will be leading the committee going forward and overseeing membership matters.
Please also welcome Den Shewman and Naomi Brett O’Rourke, who join veteran committee member Eugene Johnson to work with Kenneth in bringing new members into the fold. I will be remaining on the committee to help out.
I would like to thank Kenneth and Eugene for all their effort and support during my time as committee chair. I’d also like to thank Lisa Morton and Brad Hodson for their constant help, input, and advice. It has been an honor to work with the committee during the past years of incredible growth in our membership, and I’m certain the trend will continue into the future.
For any questions about membership, please reach out to [email protected].
9 National Dark Poetry Day Established
By HWAWeb | November 2018
Nearly 170 years after renowned author of dark poetry Edgar Allan Poe drew his final breath, a National Day of Recognition has been created to celebrate his legacy. The HWA is proud to declare October 7, the day Poe died, National Dark Poetry Day.
National Dark Poetry Day is the brainchild of HWA Poetry Showcase founder Peter Adam Salomon. Salomon is a Bram Stoker Award®- nominated novelist and author of three poetry collections, and his work has appeared in numerous anthologies; it has also been performed by The Radiophonic Workshop on BBC Radio 6.
“Dark poetry has existed for centuries,” Salomon said. “One of the oldest surviving works of literature is the Epic of Gilgamesh, which dates to the 18th century BCE. Poetry doesn’t get much darker than that. It’s been almost four thousand years since the time of Gilgamesh, but a vibrant, vicious thread of darkness has haunted poetry ever since. And celebrating that thread is the purpose of National Dark Poetry Day. In dark poetry, we share in the ancient knowledge that the darkest of poetry shines a light on the greatest truth.”
“HWA has just released the fifth volume of its acclaimed Poetry Showcase series, so we are obviously and proudly committed to supporting dark poetry,” said HWA President Lisa Morton. “We hope readers everywhere will join us in celebrating this beautiful art form on October 7.”
National Dark Poetry Day is not just a day for re-reading “The Raven,” but a time to discover all those who have followed in the footsteps of Gilgamesh and Edgar Allan Poe. It is a day to celebrate the voices that bring poetry out of the darkness and into the light.
The HWA Poetry Showcase, Volume V is now available at Amazon and Kobo in both print and e-book.
Update from Peter Adam Salomon
There ended up being a couple of hundred tweets and retweets, posts and the like, from dark poets and readers around the world, including the ALA and other organizations devoted to all literary concerns.
For 2019, there are already great plans afoot with greater outreach as HWA has time to plan and prepare for everything from schools to poetry societies and more. If anyone has any thoughts or ideas, no matter how
10 outlandish (what could be more outlandish than even trying to create a “Day”?) please contact Lisa or me and let us know and/or help us spread the word.
Celebrating National Dark Poetry Day, honoring the legacy of Edgar Allan Poe and all the other tremendously talented dark poets past, present, and future will be an ongoing event every year. And, next year, it will be the 170th anniversary of Poe’s death.
11 The Seers Table
By HWAWeb | November 2018
Linda Addison, Member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Community
November contains National Pizza Day; enjoy new work with your meal!
Andrew Wolter recommends
Larissa Glasser is a librarian, genre writer, and queer trans woman from Boston. Her short fiction has appeared in Wicked Haunted (New England Horror Writers), Tragedy Queens: Stories inspired by Lana Del Rey and Sylvia Plath (Clash Books), Procyon Science Fiction Anthology 2016 (Tayen Lane Publishing), and The Healing Monsters, Volume One (Despumation Press).
Larissa co-edited Resilience: Surviving in the Face of Everything, a collection of stories by trans writers (Heartspark Press) and which was a nominee of The 2017 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction. Her debut novella, F4, is available from Eraserhead Press. Larissa is a Member at Large of Broad Universe,
12 which advocates for female-identified writers of genre fiction.
Recommended Reading from: F4. A cruise ship on the back of a sleeping kaiju. A transgender bartender trying to come terms with who she is. A rift in dimensions known as The Sway. A cruel captain. A storm of turmoil, insanity and magic is coming together and taking the ship deep into the unknown. What will Carol the bartender learn in this maddening non-place that changes bodies and minds alike into bizarre terrors? What is the sleeping monster who holds up the ship trying to tell her? What do Carol’s fractured sense of self and a community of internet trolls have to do with the sudden pull of The Sway?
Larissa Glasser can be reached on Twitter @larissaeglasser and blogs at https://larissaglasser.com/.
Kate Maruyama recommends
Priya Sharma‘s fiction has appeared in Albedo One, Interzone, Black Static, and on Tor.com. She’s been anthologized in several of Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year series, Paula Guran’s Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror series, Jonathan Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014, Steve Haynes’ Best British Fantasy 2014 and Johnny Main’s Best British Horror 2015. She’s also been on the Locus’ Recommended Reading Lists (2010, 2012, 2013, 2015, and 2016). Her story, “Fabulous Beasts,” was a Shirley Jackson Award finalist and won a British Fantasy Award for Short Fiction.
All the Fabulous Beasts is a collection of her some of her work and is available from Undertow Publications.
Words on Priya from our own Ellen Datlow: “Priya Sharma has been writing and publishing short stories for over decade, and I’m delighted that she’s finally receiving the recognition her work deserves. She’s extremely skillful in creating characters with whom we can empathize—no matter their deeds—leading her readers down roads of beauty and horror. I especially love her award-winning novelette Fabulous Beasts, a perfect piece of storytelling.” — Ellen Datlow, Best Horror of the Year series.
Find out more about Priya at https://priyasharmafiction.wordpress.com/.
Kate Jonez recommends
13 Zoje Stage is a former filmmaker with a penchant for the dark and suspenseful. Her debut novel, Baby Teeth, released by St. Martin’s Press in July 2018, was a USA Today bestseller. It was published in the UK by Transworld, under the title Bad Apple. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA.
Recommended Reading: Baby Teeth. Afflicted with a chronic debilitating condition, Suzette Jensen knew having children would wreak havoc on her already fragile body. Nevertheless, she brought Hanna into the world, pleased and proud to start a family with her husband Alex. Estranged from her own mother, Suzette is determined to raise her beautiful daughter with the love, care, and support she was denied.
But Hanna proves to be a difficult child. Now seven years old, she has yet to utter a word, despite being able to read and write. Defiant and anti-social, she refuses to behave in kindergarten classes, forcing Suzette to homeschool her. Resentful of her mother’s rules and attention, Hanna lashes out in anger, becoming more aggressive every day. The only time Hanna is truly happy is when she’s with her father. To Alex, she’s willful and precocious but otherwise the perfect little girl, doing what she’s told.
Suzette knows her clever and manipulative daughter doesn’t love her. She can see the hatred and jealousy in her eyes. And as Hanna’s subtle acts of cruelty threaten to tear her and Alex apart, Suzette fears her very life may be in grave danger …
Follow the author at https://zojestage.blogspot.com/; Twitter: @zooshka; Instagram: @zoje.stage_author.
Linda Addison recommends
Dexter E. Williams is a screenwriter from Durham, North Carolina, who has been writing horror scripts for a decade. He strongly believes film is the best medium to tell stories of the strange and fantastic.
14 His script, “Demon Crystal,” was a Semi-Finalist in the Southeastern International Film Festival and the Sacramento International Film Festival, as well an Official Selection in the Fright Night Film Fest. The script for “Mistresses of Sleep” was also an Official Selection in the Fright Night Film Fest, a Semi-Finalist in the Sacramento International Film Festival, an Official Selection in the Oaxaca Filmfest in Mexico, and was nominated for three awards: Best Original Concept, Best Horror Script, and the top prize—Best Overall Script. Williams has several scripts optioned; keep an eye for productions of his work soon.
Williams’ deep interest in hypnosis has resulted in incorporating hypnosis into his stories, such as “Enslavement.”
“Enslavement” is a cross between THE CRAFT and RED DRAGON. It’s a horror-thriller about a shy high school student who gets hypnotized by a dangerous Goth girl into performing bloody ritual sacrifices for her sinister goddess-worshiping cult. Four performances provided the inspiration for “Enslavement”: Fairuza Balk in THE CRAFT, Kim Director in BOOK OF SHADOWS: BLAIR WITCH 2, Sophia Bush in STAY ALIVE, and Dakota Fanning in THE TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON. It took Williams just two weeks to finish the script, and it was named an Official Selection in the Underground Indie Film Festival.
For more information, follow the author at https://www.horrortourguide.com/single-post/2018/08/29/Dexter-Williams; anyone interested in his scripts can reach Williams at [email protected].
15 HWA Events – Current for 2018
By HWAWeb | November 2018
Angel Hiott, Events Coordinator
Just make sure to get those applications in to JG Faherty ([email protected]) so he can approve them!
If you know of an event you would like the HWA to consider attending, please fill out the approval form: http://horror.org/subhub/index.php?sid=95628. Greg and Brad will review it for approval.
16 Las Vegas Chapter Update
By HWAWeb | November 2018
Mercedes Murdock Yardley
Tim Chizmar and Mercedes M. Yardley represented the Las Vegas chapter of the HWA when they traveled to Hemet, CA to speak to the Diamond Valley Writers Guild. They did a presentation titled “Scaring Yourself Successful: The Horror Renaissance.”
“There are things that go BUMP in the night, but don’t worry| These writers bump back!
“You don’t have to be Stephen King or Anne Rice to have a successful career in Spookyville, USA. Learn how to explore the dark side of the literary world, have fun, and come back braver for it.
“This talk will cover everything from writing and selling horror short stories, magazine articles, and comic books, to screenplays and full length novels. These masters of the dark story-telling world will share all with you and just in time for Halloween! Find out everything about the genre that has taken over the Emmys, Oscars, and your local bookstore.”
The presentation went beautifully, and Tim, Mercedes, and the members of the guild went to lunch afterward to continue the conversation. New friends were made.
17 It was an interesting road trip. Tim and Mercedes left Vegas at 3 in the morning and made the 10-hour round trip drive in one day. That’s dedication.
18 San Diego Chapter Update
By HWAWeb | November 2018
Alexandra Neumeister
The San Diego chapter had a September meeting taking the form of a pool party and potluck, as well as a successful beta reading workshop.
Two of our members read their stories during the Horrorgasm 2018 Art Crawl.
Some of our members went on excursions to haunted house events in preparation for Halloween.
First, the Queen Mary’s Dark Harbor event in Long Beach. Highly recommended for quality-crafted mazes and a high- caliber of scare actors that make you scream so much it leaves a stitch in your side. However, there are tripping hazards and limited visibility in many places so bring comfortable footwear. If you’re in Long Beach next October and intend to visit, be sure to speak to the monsters and get clues regarding the hidden bars.
Then up in Orange County, Sinister Pointe’s Scary Place. Located in an abandoned Macy’s in the Laguna Hills mall, this haunted attraction provides not only terrifying mazes but also a full dark ride, musical performances and magic shows, and plenty of shopping kiosks for your Halloween accessory needs!
San Diego Chapter President at Queen Mary’s Dark Harbor
19 San Francisco Bay Chapter Update
By HWAWeb | November 2018 Ken Hueler
Attendees: E.M. Markoff, Loren Rhoads, L.S. Johnson, Ben Monroe, Chad Schimke, Brady Golden, Clifford Brooks. Anthony De Rouen (via Zoom)
E.M. Markoff led the meeting, and we were joined by new members Clifford Brooks and Brady Golden.
We discussed convention events for 2019 as HWA:
Sinister Creature Con 2019: Yes for next year. Yes as HWA. Everyone who attended was Meeting attendees: (L-R) Chad Schimke, Loren interested. SCC is usually 2 times a year. The first Rhoads, Brady Golden, LS Johnson, Ben Monroe, EM con will be June 15 and 16 at the Scottish Rite Markoff, Clifford Brooks Center in Sacramento, CA. The second one is usually held around October. We’ll post in Google Group and see which SCC would work best for everyone. FOGcon9: Yes for next year. March 8-10 at the Walnut Creek Marriott in Walnut Creek, CA. The idea is to submit the reading panel subject from 2018, the one Loren Rhoads and E.M. Markoff did. Everyone present seemed interested. Bay Area Book Festival 2019: Yes as HWA. May 4 and 5. Will work out panel idea in Google Group. Litquake 2019: Loren Rhoads will take point for submitting an event for SF-HWA. Other possible conventions to attend but not sell at for next year: Nebula Awards (Marriott Warner Center in Woodland Hills, CA, May 16-19), WisCon 43 (Madison, Wisconsin, May 24-27, 2019), and World Fantasy Convention (October 31-November 3, 2019), which gives out registration bags filled with book goodies, including items supplied by authors—no stocking fee!
20 Anthony De Rouen announced that submissions for the Death’s Parade Film Fest are officially open! The one-day horror film festival will be held October 5, 2019, in San Jose (https://www.deathparadefilmfest.com/ for more information). Interested filmmakers in the HWA can E-mail him their work. He is also seeking someone interested in being a festival host, as well as photographers and volunteers. If you are interested, E-mail [email protected].
We also discussed how to write better. Ben Monroe uses https://getcoldturkey.com as a tool to help from being Tales of Horror reading (in costume) EM Markoff and distracted while writing and loves it. Chad Schimke uses Loren Rhoads https://simpleblocker.com as a tool to help from being distracted and loves that.
Several members had mentioned using Scrivener, so we set aside time to talk about it. We may consider doing a live tutorial for a future meeting.
Loren Rhoads will be hosting NANOWRIMO writing sessions every Friday, 5-7 p.m., at Borderlands Books in San Francisco.
Member accomplishments
Loren Rhoads has an Alondra story, “Elle a Vu un Loup,” in Weirdbook #40. Alondra travels to Mackinac Island in northern Michigan to face a monster that has terrorized the close-knit community. http://weirdbook-magazine.com/. She also had a great reading (Cemetery Ravings) at San Francisco’s Lit Crawl.
Loren Rhodes and E.M. Markoff both gave readings at the San Mateo Library’s Second Annual Tales of Horror event.
E.M. Markoff was interviewed by the Unreliable Narrators Podcast, and included a passionate pitch for joining the HWA: https://bit.ly/2R8uuip. She also joined HorrorAddicts.net at Short stories by Loren Rhoads (Weirdbook) and Brady Sinister Creature Con. Golden (New Fears)
E.M. Markoff and L.S. Johnson made author appearances at Indie Author L.S. Johnson reads at SF Lit Quake Day at the Livermore Public Library. Both will also read at the Octopus
21 Literary Salon on October 31.
L.S. Johnson’s latest story, “A Harvest Fit for Monsters,” is out now in Nightscript IV https://chthonicmatter.wordpress.com/nightscript/. She also gave readings at San Francisco’s Litquake.
Ben Monroe’s debut novel, In the Belly of the Beast, released this month: https://amzn.to/2J8YQhX
Clifford Brooks has a new book, The Zen of Cat Walking: Leash Train Your Cat and Unleash Your Mind. https://amzn.to/2R7nhPC
Brady Golden’s story, “The Family Car,” appears in the 2018 British Fantasy Award- winning anthology New Fears. https://amzn.to/2PgdqcI.
Chad Schimke has a new cover for his horror/fantasy book, Midwinter, just in time for L.S. Johnson appears in Nightscript IV Christmas (it takes place Chad Schimke’s Midwinter during the Winter Solstice).
Anthony De Rouen completed his script, THE LAST SHOWING, with the amazing help of his HWA mentor. He’s looking for recommendations on who has used what company and what their experiences were. If Clifford Brooks’ The Zen of Cat anyone wishes to share, they can E-mail him Walking: Leash Train Your Cat and at [email protected]. Unleash Your Mind
22 HWA Colorado Update
By HWAWeb | November 2018
Larry Berry
Boulder
Event Organizer Dean Wyant had the honor of introducing four-time Bram Stoker Award®- Dean Wyant, HWAColorado Event Organizer for winning author Boulder, introduces Steve Rasnic Tem. Steve Rasnic Tem at his book launch event for The Steve Rasnic Tem reads from his new novel. Mask Shop of Dr. Blaack on Tuesday, October 9. This new mid-grade horror novel was published by Hex Publishers just in time for Halloween. The
23 book is getting great reviews.
The crowd was enthusiastic, and everyone received masks and candy. What a fun evening!
Denver
Event Organizer Larry Berry and most of the Denver Chapter attended Mario Acevedo’s reading and promotion of his anthology Blood and Gasoline, published by Hex Publications. It was a sold-out house and a great evening at the Denver BookBar. Holiday scheduling is underway.
Colorado Springs
Celebrating October and other fall news, Event Organizers Larry Berry and Mario Acevedo Carina Bissett and Hillary Raque Dodge sat down for a preliminary meeting to discuss the development of the Colorado Springs satellite of the Colorado HWA chapter. Future moves include plans to meet with core HWA members in the southern region, raise awareness of HWA membership opportunities for potential recruits, and to schedule future satellite
24 meetings and activities at central Colorado Springs locations. Stay tuned!
25 Wisconsin Chapter Update
By HWAWeb | November 2018
Chris Welch
Several HWA Wisconsin Chapter members participated in a horror literature panel at the Fox Cities Book Festival 2018 at the Kaukauna Public Library on Saturday, October 13.
Panelists were Sarah Read, James Lowder, Kat Kohler, and Chris Welch. The hour-long session had interesting insights and excellent audience participation that provided wonderful questions and comments.
Afterward, the panelists, along with Dave Rank and Book Festival intern and writer Tom Sielaff, enjoyed food and caffeinated beverages at the Kaukauna Coffee and Tea shop. Many topics were discussed, including writing in general, future projects that may or may not be started and/or completed, and Jim Lowder shared his dual experiences working in the publishing and gaming industries. By all accounts, the ginger meatball soup was delicious.
Here are two pictures from the event.
First, from left to right are Chris Welch, Dave Rank, Sarah Read (front), Kat Kohler (back), and James Lowder.
26
Second, enjoying lunch clockwise from left to right are James Lowder, Tom Sielaff, Kat Kohler, Sarah Read, Dave Rank, and Chris Welch.
Also, here is a press release about this year’s Pop Con Milwaukee Convention:
MEARS Auctions is proud to announce our third annual Pop Con Milwaukee Convention, the Midwest’s largest gathering of quality dealers, major celebrity guests, and specialized programming, on November 3 and 4. The con is sponsored by MEARS Online Auctions and its goal is to provide an affordable convention experience combined with the social aspect of collecting.
With the popularity and growth of online venues, collectors have lost the personal interaction associated with collecting. Pop Con Milwaukee recreates the personal nature of the collecting experience while providing convention goers the rare opportunity to personally meet celebrities from all fields.
The event will be held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel & Convention Center in Milwaukee, located moments from the Mitchell International Airport.
With the memorabilia and nostalgia of the 1970s being red hot in the collector’s marketplace, this year’s theme is the LAND OF THE LOST complete cast reunion. The show’s patriarch, Spencer Milligan, has agreed to make a very rare public appearance, his first and only one in 40+ years. He is reuniting with his LOST friends and enemies (the Sleestak) for this very special event. We have reunited the entire Pakuni family, Marshall family, Ron Masak, and several original Sleestak actors.
27 MEARS president Troy R. Kinunen serves as executive producer and plans on capturing this entire event for an upcoming documentary.
Also, Wizard World Madison will take place at the Alliant Center November 30-December 2. There are many celebrities and comic book industry professionals scheduled to appear this year. For more information on the event, visit online at https://wizardworld.com/comiccon/madison.
28 Pennsylvania Chapter Update
By HWAWeb | November 2018
Kenneth W. Cain
The Pennsylvania Chapter’s next meeting is scheduled for Saturday, October 27, 1-4 p.m. Additionally, our last meeting for the year will occur on Saturday, December 8, 1-4 p.m. If you would like to attend either meeting, please contact Kenneth W. Cain at [email protected] or through Facebook.
Member news
Chapter members T. Fox Dunham, Todd Keisling, Pete Molnar, and Kenneth W. Cain all read at the “Horror at the Fort” event in Philadelphia on Saturday, October 6.
29
Lisa Lepovetsky sold her short story, “Masks,” to the recently released Halloween anthology, Doorbells at Dusk.
Kenneth W. Cain edited Tales from the Lake, Volume 5, which is due out November 2. His fourth short- story collection, Darker Days, will be out on December 7.
Pete Molnar sold his short story, “Born Politician,” to the anthology, Tenebrous Tales, which will be published next spring.
Fox Dunham wrote an article, “Writing the Modern Ghost Story,” for the HWA October newsletter.
Allan Rozinski was asked to write a column for the HWA newsletter’s “Blood and Spades” section.
Todd Keisling sold books at the recent Merrimack Valley Halloween Book Festival in Haverhill, MA.
Fellow Pennsylvanian C.M. Crockford recently sold his short story, “Eyestalk,” to Vastarien and plans to use this sale to qualify for membership with the HWA.
Frank Michaels Errington has new reviews up at http://frankmichaelserrington.blogspot.com/.
30 NY Chapter Update
By HWAWeb | November 2018
Charie La Marr
The NY Chapter is having a very busy month of October. Sales of its charity anthology, New York State of Fright, are going along incredibly well. We are pleased that as of October 8, we have a Publishers Weekly review! Congrats to the 25 authors (including the late Jack Ketchum) who shared their work to benefit Brooklyn organization Girls Write Now. Here is our great review: https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-61498-227-2. Congratulations to all who participated. Congrats to all on a great review!
Several members of the chapter participated in Brooklyn Book Fair Brooklyn Borough Hall where they sold books and talked to people interested in HWA and all things horror. It was a great day, and the event was well attended.
HWA was once again represented at New York Comic Con 2018 with a booth where members spoke with potential new members and sold their books. Everyone had book sales, and our New York State of Fright anthology sold out! Thanks to all the members who participated—especially those who were there for the very grueling Sunday Kids Day event. It was packed!
Amy Grech, Trevor Firetog, Patrick Freivald and Steven Van Patten at the HWA booth at Comic Con 2018
Some of our members got into the swing of things at Comic Con by joining the thousands of fans at the show
31 by cosplaying. Charie D. La Marr cosplayed Janis Joplin and a character of her own creation, feminist character Allison Asunderland. Teel James Glenn did his version of a cyber Western riverboat gambler. Steven Van Patten gave us his Doctor Strange. And Marc Abbott wowed the crowds as Avengers Agent Nick Fury with his Tesseract. James Chambers ran into a person cosplaying Kolchak and got a chance to pose with them. As Janis, Charie also got a chance to visit with Joe Hill to talk about all things King and baseball for a few minutes.
Charie D. La Marr as her original Goth/Lolita character Allison Asunderland.
Teel James Glenn goes “Western” at the HWA BOOTH. Never play poker with that face!
On October 11, a very exhausted but enthusiastic group of HWA members participated in the third annual Genrepalooza. From its humble beginnings, this has turned into a huge event. We gathered with members of the NY Romance Writers of America chapter, the NY chapter of the Mystery Writers of America, the NY chapter of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and, for the first time this year, the Authors Guild, for an evening of conversation and sharing of ideas at the 1905 Lounge at HGU. Some of our members
32 were sporting our new Ouija board New York HWA tee-shirts designed by Teel James Glenn. Our thanks go out to all who attended for a wonderful evening, including Brad C. Hodson who was visiting from LA. We can hardly wait to see what groups join us next year!
Pictured: Front Row: Amy Grech, Charie D. La Marr and Carol Gyzander Second Row: James Chambers, Brad C. Hodson, Erik T. Johnson, Vincent Collins, Steven Van Patten and Teel James Glenn Back Row: Elizabeth Crowens
On the same night, chapter members Oliver Baer and Marc Abbott participated in The Care Bear of Death’s Geeky Goth Variety Show at the Sidewalk Café in Lower Manhattan. Marc read one of his short stories, while Oliver hosted the event, read, and appeared as some of his zany characters.
On October 11, Charie D. La Marr ventured uptown in the rain to see Dacre Stoker and J.D. Barker discussing and signing their new book, Dracul. It was good to catch up with Dacre, whom she hasn’t seen since Stokercon, and finally meet J.D. And the book looks great!
33 Charie D. La Marr with JD Barker and Dacre Stoker at the NY signing of their new book
Due to the efforts of member Jonathan Lees, HWA is now a supporting sponsor of the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, taking place from October 11–18. Jonathan does a terrific job with the Final Frame Short Film Competition Stokercon, and we know this will be an occasion not to be missed.
MEMBER NEWS
Erik T. Johnson is participating in an anthology to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the writing of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: Birthing Monsters: Frankenstein’s Cabinet of Curiosities and Cruelties. He appeared with Lisa Morton and several other contributors at Dark Delicacies in Burbank, California, on October 28 to sign copies. The book is available to order through Dark Delicacies. https://tinyurl.com/yanql3mz
Carol Gyzander was interviewed by Art Taylor’s The First Two Pages about the anthology she edited, Hideous Progeny; she also has a story in the book, as does Teel James Glenn. https://tinyurl.com/ybetvswa
Elizabeth Crowens interviewed Heather Graham for Black Gate. https://tinyurl.com/ydeukwa4
Slaughter Cin of The Horror Tour Guide did an interview with Carl Paolino. https://www.horrortourguide.com/single-post/2018/10/11/Carl-Paolino
Marc Abbott’s short story, “A Marked Man,” will be featured in the upcoming April Grey anthology Hell’s Heart. Marc is also working on a new illustrated project based on his horror short called Poohbear and Smokey which is due out in the spring. Our resident actor and filmmaker, Marc will be one of the stars of the upcoming horror short film ENDANGERED as part of the Theater of Terror trilogy as well as playing a cop in an upcoming episode of ZOMBIE HUNTERS CITY OF THE DEAD, available on Cable Channel QPTV. If you’re in New York, you can catch Marc on the third Wednesday of every month hosting the storytelling show “Maaan, You’ve Got To Hear This” at Precious Metal in Brooklyn.
34 Endangered – The madness in the woods scene from Endangered.
Steven Van Patten has had a very busy month. He was a presenter for the second time in two years at the 14th African-American Literary Award Show where April Grey was among those honored. Steven was a 2016 nominee in the category of Best Mystery/Suspense Thriller.
Steven’s new book, Killer Genius 2 – Attack of the Gym Rats (sequel to Killer Genius – She Kills Because She Cares) has been released with a book launch at Melba’s Restaurant in Harlem. He was interviewed by Bill Foster after he thrilled the crowd at the restaurant with a quick reading from the new book. https://tinyurl.com/yckj5ufm
Steven Van Patten shows off his latest book along with the first Killer Genius and his Brookwater series at his recent book launch
Steven was also recently inducted into the Delta Chapter of the professional arts fraternity Gamma Xi Phi. We are very proud of his accomplishments. He also recently shared his video version of his story, “The Reluctant Hitman.” This and two other videos of his work appear on his Web site and on Facebook.
We have started a Get To Know Our Members page, which will feature interviews of chapter members.
To see more photos of our recent events, please visit https://www.dropbox.com/sh/afrunajgtahqex0/AADMeUfFk21hiQaGrGI418xya?dl=0.
Later in the month, we have a meeting and a pre-Halloween reading program planned. No rest for the scary people!
35 Ad: Horror Island
By HWAWeb | November 2018
36 37 38 Fiendish Endeavors
By HWAWeb | November 2018
Erinn L. Kemper
Carina Bissett is thrilled to announce that her short story, “Tyger, Burning Bright,” will be included in the forthcoming publication of Gorgon: Stories of Emergence, which is scheduled for publication by Pantheon Magazine this fall. In other news, her poem, “Blood Works,” was included in the HWA Poetry Showcase: Vol. 5.
Bram Stoker Award®-winning author and professional soldier Weston Ochse has a new book: Bone Chase, in which a mathematician is suddenly embroiled in a secret society after his father is assassinated by rival forces who are desperate to keep a revelation of biblical proportions hidden in this chilling supernatural thriller. The novel sold to Joe Monti at Saga Press, for publication in summer 2020, by Cherry Weiner at Cherry Weiner Literary Agency (world). Rights: Deane Norton.
Amy Grech has been interviewed on the Deadman’s Tome podcast (https://www.spreaker.com/user/8056632/amy-grech) and on Horror Reviews (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJDypAx-c1E).
39 Independent Legions is pleased to announce its latest book releases: Monsters of Any Kind Anthology (released in October 2018), edited by Alessandro Manzetti and Daniele Bonfanti. Monsters are difference, change, defiance. Life force. If they want to survive, men need monsters. The book is available (print and Kindle edition) at Amazon. Tribal Screams by Owl Goingback was released in October 2018. Gathered together for the very first time, these often hard-to-find tales include “Grass Dancer,” a Nebula Award Nominee for best short story of the year. The collection includes the first four chapters of the forthcoming novel Coyote Rage, the first book in a trilogy featuring shape- shifters, talking animals, giants, Little People, and a horde of other critters and people from Native American history and folklore. The book is available (printed and Kindle edition) at Amazon.
Sheri White is thrilled to have a new story published on November 1 at The Ladies of Flash Fiction Project. “Exorcist Girl” can be found at https://ninadarc.wordpress.com/. Her story, “Halloween Night on Crybaby Bridge,” was accepted for The Sirens Call (http://www.sirenscallpublications.com/). And finally, Sheri joined Remy Flagg and Trisha Wooldridge as guests of Marsha Casper Cook and Elizabeth Black on Marsha’s Internet radio show, Michigan Avenue Media, on October 23. You can listen to the program here: https://tinyurl.com/y7ahh4em.
Alison McMahan‘s short story, “Kamikaze Iguanas,” appeared in the MWA anthology for middle-grade readers entitled Scream and Scream Again, edited by R.L. Stine (HarperCollins, 2018). She is represented by Gina Panettieri of Talcott Notch Literary.
Elizabeth Crowens interviews HWA member Heather Graham at blackgate.com.
40 Dark Rainbow: Queer Erotic Horror is the first volume of a short fiction anthology series edited by award-wining queer writer and editor Andrew Robertson. Just in time for a haunting Hallowe’en, Dark Rainbow launched October 18 from Riverdale Avenue Books and features many HWA members, along with writers from all over the world. It is widely available in both digital and print formats. Dark Rainbow is 15 tales of dark appetites, hidden fantasies, sex, and slashers, including new work from Angel Leigh McCoy, Jeff C. Stevenson, Sèphera Girón, Julianne Snow, Derek Clendening, Spinster Eskie, Lindsay King-Miller, and many more.
Congratulations to everyone. If you have a recent sale or upcoming publication, tell us about it. It’s publicity. It’s free. Send a tiger-tight paragraph to [email protected] announcing your fiendish endeavor.
41 Calendar of Readings and Signings
By HWAWeb | November 2018
Scott “Essel” Pratt
Remember that you can always find out what’s going on by visiting the calendar of events on the HWA Web site. If you submit your information late, that information will show up only on the online calendar. It is best to get your event information in early.
For all book-release announcements, please contact Lydia Peever for inclusion in her “Recently Born” column.
November
November 9-11: Weston Ochse will be attending TusCon; Tuscon Convention Center, Tucson, AZ.
November 17: 2-3:30 p.m. Weston Ochse will be at the Himmel Park Library, Tucson, AZ.
A reminder: This calendar is updated several times a week after information submitted about each event has been vetted for appropriate content. Appropriate content includes conventions, readings, signings, workshops, and other like events that HWA members may attend. It also includes deadlines for workshop applications and award nominations. It does not include solicitations for votes for awards/award nominations.
42 Blood & Spades
By HWAWeb | November 2018
Marge Simon
Only recently have I had the pleasure of making acquaintance with the amazing Sheikha A. and her hauntingly unusual poetry. We accepted one of her outstanding poems for Pedestal Magazine‘s genre issue this summer. Sheikha is from Pakistan and United Arab Emirates. Her works have appeared in over 100 literary venues so far, such as Star*Line Journal, Pedestal, Polu Texni, Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Eye to the Telescope, New Mystics, and elsewhere. She has been recently anthologized in Persian Sugar in English Tea, wherein her poems have been translated in Farsi. Her poetry has also been translated into Greek.
Having paid tribute to Van Gogh in poetry form in Resurrection of a Sunflower – Van Gogh anthology (Pski’s Porch Publishing), she wishes to do more such tributes, especially of surrealist artists. Her collaborated digital chapbook entitled Nyctophiliac Confessions is available at Praxis Magazine.
More about her can be found at sheikha82.wordpress.com. She can be contacted via E-mail as well ([email protected]).
* * *
Processing the Mystic(al)
Sheikha A.
Poets are fortune tellers. Isn’t reading a poem like opening a fortune cookie? – Sara Backer
We stop chasing sunflowers in the sunshine when we face the real dark. As I was reading Sara Backer‘s column about why she writes what she writes, I was reminded of the reason that pushed me toward a major shift from the unfiltered innocence of love and spirituality to darker (aspects of) arts and the fantastical, most especially the intermingling of the two because of my (primarily) earthed beliefs in the existence of the
43 former (whether contained or devoid) despite the latter as a result of some kind of toxic interference.
Sabotage is the weapon of greedy pursuits, and the universe is in a continual, perpetual war with the dark and light in this regard. I was awakened to the “grey areas,” the “shadow groins,” the “faceless assaulter,” the “spell and sorcery,” the “convex side of fairy tales” seven years ago. Until then, to me, the world was a place of good and bad, and people becoming victims of the bad, never assuming deliberate motive as the hidden perpetrating catalyst behind people’s actions.
My introduction to speculative arts came with dreams – nightmares – illusions – the cold-sweat nights and not knowing how to process the information I was receiving in these forms. I began writing them down (almost immediately in poem form) thinking I would retain memory of them if ever I wanted to go back to searching the meaning of the images I was seeing. Gradually, in time, my dreams became the main source of theme, topic, content, substance, or material that shaped my writing. A few years ago, sometime between the time frame of 2014-2017, I suffered intense dreams that later I learned were normal for people to receive, those who had been afflicted with voodoo.
These are talk of myths, as many dismiss(ed), but just as much as I knew of spells and magic and black or white craft as were presented in books, as the way I would enjoy them in their fictional capacity, as I would perceive them as a thing of the other (fantasy) world, I began to realise those stories that were written had stemmed from some type of real experiences by the writers—since all fiction is never really purely fiction, but possesses a subconscious level of reality and truth or a psychological manifestation of what the writer went/is going through.
I can’t remember what the first poem in the speculative genre was, but a poem that comes to my mind right now is one below:
Inertia
The woods tonight project a naughty tinge; from its norm bushel brown, gleam a moon’s whitely tints; I hear the crickets sing a human song: of quietude. On the wind’s enchanted wings, the pixies skip on sleepy firefly cribs; the twigs have shed off of a wizard’s wand spells of magic, harbingers of elusive bliss. But in these sleep induced heathen dreams, a blue light glints in low-rise whisperings; gleaning all of universe’s silence, streams of numbness flow through paralytic veins. The pixies louden as their Danse expands, into the brightly woods span Stygian hands.
(Previously published in ken*again)
I wanted to start out in the manner of keeping the dark topics as fantasy-propelled as possible, but when the Internet introduced me to a “foliage” of writers writing different genres, that is when I began seeing the limited scope in which I had been huddling myself. The main areas of my interests have always been love, spirituality, and the fantastical (with all the sister modems included, such as the metaphysical, the science, the maths, and even geography!).
44 These are some of the love-themed intermingling with the mystics:
Bouquet
She bloomed from the drops of his perseverance, the way home on a late night from stormy manifestations; it was the light from a soothing silence unfurling like the womb of a purple chrysanthemum discerning escape, she knew of the scents that clamoured his arms in a swirl of power— the kind she had seen on the sill laden with small pots that grew individual flowers. She was watered daily for her onus weighed lighter than the heaviest rose he willed her to become; where her uneven colour came together like winter equations – deep tropical blossoms reared in slow falling snow.
Mysticism
Some words are easy to wear, like “unstable”. His mind is a difficult organ to penetrate. Winter’s slush pile arrives too early as autumn, subjecting every moving leaf to crimson.
All I see are giant footsteps left from feet of migrating warm-region birds, leaving like the season fell less for mending. His feet are fog on a pane of glass; his hands are mist on the neck of a pine.
Linen voice on spread of logic: it is a hard battle to win.
(Previously published in Anti-Heroic Chic)
This is about how bad spirits visit women in their dreams to violate them:
45 The oath of silence
She’s turned off the lights; darkness hangs on the collar of the room the floors reflect on their jellyfish ceramics a man hanging at the ceiling, watching her face from the corner he’s hunched in, a blade of light slides through his vacuous retinas, she knows what it means and makes no haste in laying flat on her back, wishing for time to fall in thick liquid – her mighty powers moan like a cat’s lashes pulled off from their roots; her lids drop like a concubine’s robe; her body arches skywards.
(Previously published at Duane’s PoeTree)
And, then some of dark remedies:
Evil Eye
Cotton-wrapped camphor burns on the stove again supposed remedy for this – ward off the name, the spirit ward it off, don’t bathe on Tuesdays and Saturdays don’t go near sea water
46 on days you should sully prayers don’t step on stray garbage especially a shred of black cloth or a sealed envelope of lemon and chilli – ward them off cover your hair, don’t let them eyes fall on its beauty those that never praise the lord those whose tongues are spotted of curse those that summon premonitions, they who eat your soul in nibble-sized bites, don’t stare – don’t watch – don’t let a cat smell your blood and take away your womb
I have been recounting my steps as my hair falls out in full, undead strands what belief did I override for the spirit to escape the cloth that tried to ensnare it and return on the stove, gleaming red eyes through the fast burning camphor
Previously published in Fauna Quarterly)
I cut water with a knife held steadily to the centre of my palm, by a white strip of cloth wrapped around it ensuring the handle clung firmly; these elaborate precautions because you trusted the knife more than my hand.
Your hand can lose grip in high waves, and the knife must not be snatched away.
47 I asked by whom, and the old woman replied: from ill spirited waves. But why white? It is a colour pungent to evil.
Most people wouldn’t understand the procedures of warding off ailments. The old woman was a reader of auras, and she knew well of latching – these that despised the scents of salt, the abundance of which saturated the seas.
We boarded the dinghy meant to carry us to the centre of my cure – surreal medication – but old women generally knew better from having walked the planet longer; the one with me had walked several.
Tip the blade to the water as we go further, drive the blade deeper till the shaft is fully immersed. Cut the water like you would slice open a vein. Hold your hand steadfast fighting any urge to be pulled into the delusively pleading waves tugging at your hand and listen, instead, to the howling over the weeping.
A short while later drawing a neat slit across the face of what seemed like a broad sheet of sky holding goblets of white lies, I awaited the howl, the cry, the pine but all that echoed into the thinness were sounds of a whimpering motor, larking of gulls overhead, and humming of the sea in séance; silence from the blurring helm of the docks in the distance and the whitening of the old woman’s eyes
(Previously published in Mediterranean Poetry)
Ending with a darkly wish:
48 A moment of consequence when would the day become brave? when secrets no longer carry non-expiration dates? when words become sour but reek putrid of honesty and the tongues in us with courage find parity? when will the lilacs finally reveal their scent like a bird at night that tires from a day of pretend? when will the owl open its eyes to the stark day and the raven find a yellow dawn at indigo starlit bays? when the tides have retired, will they never again bask? nowhere is where the way falls by fire-steeled tracks. when will the bells sound by the man on the moon and on a plank of sharks, I can with blood festoon?
(Previously published at Duane’s PoeTree)
Note: All poems appeared in 2010-2011.
49 LA Chapter Update
By HWAWeb | November 2018
John Palisano
With nearly thirty folks in attendance (and a few for the first time), the October meeting was busy and packed with events. Our members are certainly active and doing a lot both locally and on the larger page.
In addition to the meeting being led by co-chair John Palisano, Kristen Gorlitz headed up a new section for our members called “Screenwriters Corner,” where we will help identify and share opportunities to our growing contingent of screenwriters and filmmakers. As we are in Los Angeles, we covered local events such as the American Film Market, The AFI Film fest, and Stage 32.
Den Shewman filled in for Eric J. Guignard, who still relayed his usual well-researched and vetted markets. Our spirited Round Robin showed just how busy and active everybody is. Inspiring and fun, it was a supportive and wonderful evening. Thank you all!
50 51 Brain Matter
By HWAWeb | November 2018
JG Faherty
What’s Wrong with Thanksgiving?
With Halloween over, most of us are already turning our sights toward the winter holidays: Christmas, New Year’s Eve, Hanukkah, Kwanza, even the Winter Solstice. Sure, we think about Thanksgiving, too, but only in the most general sense: big meal, family gathering, football, Black Friday sales.
Where’s the horror?
Do a Google search for Thanksgiving horror films, and you get schlock like THANKSKILLING (1, 2, and 3!), BLOOD FREAK, MOTEL HELL, and POULTRYGEIST. Not exactly top of the line fare. And when it comes to novels, all I found were Off Season and The Harrowing.
But there are a million winter holiday horror novels and movies, that’s for sure, everything from ghosts to manitous to campus killers to Krampus to yetis. Enough titles that you could probably read/watch from now until next December!
So why no Thanksgiving horror?
Some might give a snide laugh and say it’s because Thanksgiving is already the horror—all that family crammed into a small space, and then Uncle Al brings up politics … ugh.
Or maybe it’s because all of our attention goes to the Yule season and we, just like advertisers, skip right over poor old Turkey Day.
Is Thanksgiving the forgotten stepchild of the holidays? The kid never picked for sports in gym class?
If so, then it’s time to change that! I challenge everyone to write a Thanksgiving-themed story, novella, poem, or novel. I did it (a short story). Of course, I haven’t sold it yet. Maybe no one wants to read
52 Thanksgiving-themed horror, either.
But, c’mon! Think of the possibilities. Someone poisons the turkey. Someone gets fed up with Grandpa Mo’s racist comments. Someone finds out Aunt Greta murdered her husband back in ’97 and he’s been part of the stuffing recipe ever since. The aliens attack on Black Friday. The ghosts of all the turkeys butchered on turkey farms reappear and wreak havoc.
The opportunities are there. Who’s going to accept my challenge?
Let’s make Thanksgiving a real holiday, with lots of bloody horror goodness!
###
My next novel doesn’t come out until 2019 (Hellrider, from Flame Tree Press) so in the meantime why not catch up with things of mine you might not have read yet? You can find all my novels and novellas here, along with many short stories in anthologies and magazines: http://tinyurl.com/jgfaherty.
53 Recently Born of Horrific Minds
By HWAWeb | November 2018
Books Coming Out This Month
Lydia Peever
The treason of November, another in-between month. The weather is in between one season and another, and even the hobbies seem to be at loose ends. What does one even do in November? Read, of course, and this is what we can do: clean our shelves up after the haul of the haunting season, and get ready for the next month of lazy reading.
New Releases
Uncommon Miracles Julie C. Day PS Publishing 2018-10-01 https://stillwingingit.com Day’s debut collection is rife with dark and twisted tales. Whether set in a uniquely altered version of Florida’s Space Coast or a haunted island off the coast of Maine, each story in this collection carries its own brand of meticulous and captivating weirdness.
Jubilee Vic Kerry Pint Bottle Press 2018-10-01 http://www.vickerry.wordpress.com In a small Southern town, a father desperate to find his prodigal daughter meets three cash-strapped old maids with something to hide. Unbeknownst to them, a dangerous killer with an insatiable lust for blood has
54 started stalking the area as well.
Previously Released
Trickster’s Treats #2 – More Tales from the Pumpkin Patch Steve Dillon, editor Things in the Well 2018-09-29 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HLGYGVJ Another bumper crop of short Halloween fiction from the pumpkin-master himself, the Trickster! Our second collection of tales presents six new themes: Halloween House, Pumpkin Head, Trick or Treat, Haunted Forests and Trees, Bob Apple, and Fancy Dress. Thirty-four short stories with all proceeds going to the Community Women’s Shelters charity.
The Evil in the Tower Debra Robinson Digital Horror Fiction Publishing 2018-09-28 http://digitalfictionpub.com/books/the-evil-in-the-tower/ Obsession, possession, and a terrifying past stalk the present, and an unpunished evil triggers ghostly revenge in this supernatural thriller.
But Worse Will Come CC Adams KGHH Publishing 2018-09-17 http://www.kensingtongorepublishing.com/interviews-with-cc-adams/4594409849 Theodore Papakostas lives a normal life. Holds down a day job. Struggles with his weight. With women, he’s more “miss” than “hit.” He’s humble—a far cry from the bullying behaviour of his childhood. All those years ago, sunset was just the beginning. The worst is yet to come.
Scenes of Mild Peril David Court Stitched Smile Publications LLC 2018-09-10 http://davidjcourt.blogspot.com/2018/09/scenes-of-mild-peril.html Scenes of Mild Peril is a one-stop shop for anyone who enjoys stories with a twist. A cornucopia of twisted laughs and dynamic wit. You’ll encounter stories about possessed little fingers, sanity-defying factories, stranded astronauts and Lovecraftian librarians … all with a twist in the tale.
In the Belly of the Beast, and Other Tales of Cthulhu Wars Ben Monroe Petersen Games 2018-09-10 https://petersengames.com/the-games-shop/in-the-belly-of-the-beast In the Belly of the Beast is inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft and the epic tabletop game Cthulhu Wars, published by Petersen Games. Contained in this book are eight short stories and a complete novel. The short stories are all inspired by the factions and cults of the Cthulhu Wars game, and the Cthulhu Mythos of Lovecraft and his collaborators.
55 The Reckoning Stephanie Ellis Independently Published 2018-09-02 https://stephanieellis.org/publications A collection of previously published and new dark tales. A mixture of the traditional, gothic and folk horror to suit all tastes. From the horrors of the trenches of WWI to malevolent forces in the north of England and the folk traditions of the cider press in the South West, here are stories showing a full range of darkness.
Blood and Moonlight: The New Methuselah John Byron Createspace 2018-08-01 https://amzn.to/2OGMwYC Elaine Quartermaine was no stranger to violence. As a woman raised in the early 1800s, she understood well and good the meanderings required to survive those awful times, and survive she did! Well, until she crossed paths with Mary Shelley, that is.
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Thank you to all who listed, and please do share these free promotional listings provided to members each month. Make sure to fill out the New Release Form in the Members Only area of the HWA Web site by the 15th of each month to have your future releases posted in Recently Born of Horrific Minds! I’d love to include every book, but some were released too long ago to count as “recent,” so they may not be listed here, but appear on the “Members Books” section of horror.org/new-releases-2018/. Forward questions you might have using the form or regarding your forthcoming release to [email protected], and enjoy these fine reads!
56 Authors for the November KGB Reading Series
By HWAWeb | November 2018
Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel, hosts of the Fantastic Fiction at KGB Reading Series, present two readers for November.
The first reader is Leanna Renee Hieber, an award-winning author, actress, and playwright who has written twelve Gothic, ghostly Gaslamp Fantasy novels for Tor and Kensington Books (the Strangely Beautiful series, The Eterna Files, the Magic Most Foul trilogy and The Spectral City series). Her work has been featured in many notable anthologies and translated into many languages. A veteran of stage and screen, Leanna works as a Manhattan ghost-tour guide for Boroughs of the Dead. http://leannareneehieber.com
Cat Rambo will also be reading that night. Rambo is the author of two novels, the most recent of which is Hearts of Tabat, five collections, 200+ stories, several nonfiction works, and co-editor of one cookbook. A Nebula Award, World Fantasy Award, and Endeavour Award nominee, she is also a two-term President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and runs an online school: The Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers.
The readings will be held Wednesday, November 21, 7 p.m., at the KGB Bar, 85 East 4th St. (just off 2nd Ave., upstairs), New York City. For more information, please go to http://www.kgbfantasticfiction.org.
Subscribe to the mailing list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kgbfantasticfiction/.
57 Shrieking Crowds of Horror Fans!
By HWAWeb | November 2018
The HWA at the New York Comic Con 2018
James Chambers
The HWA sponsored a booth at the New York Comic Con October 4-7, marking our sixth year attending this amazing pop culture convention. With con attendance of upwards of 150,000 people over four days, our booth remained busy throughout the entire event. New York Comic Con encompasses not only comic books but also gaming, toys, cosplay, film, television, collectibles, and—most importantly—books! Many publishers, such as Dorling-Kindersley, Harper Collins, Penguin Random House, Scholastic, Simon and Schuster, Quirk Books, and others have a large presence at the show.
From left to right, Trevor Firetog, Ellen Datlow, Carol Gyzander, and Teel James Glenn.
Thanks to some help from the convention organizers, we received new placement on the con floor this year, right near the heart of the show, just outside the publisher’s zone, down the aisle from Tor Books. This put us in close proximity to other publishing professionals as well as readers heading to and from the main publishers’ booths. The new location brought tremendous traffic to our booth, which also featured a spectacular new banner designed by Greg Chapman to take advantage of our great location.
Our volunteer crew included Vincent Collins, Elizabeth Crowens, Ellen Datlow, Teel James Glenn, Amy Grech, Carol Gyzander, Patrick Freivald, Trevor Firetog, Carl Paolino, and Steven Van Patten. Everyone did a great job representing the HWA, connecting with attendees, observing the booth schedule, and keeping our presentation organized and professional. Interest in horror remains high. We spoke to readers, movie fans, writers, editors, artists, librarians, and many others, all of whom enjoy horror fiction in some form. A well-stocked cauldron full of Halloween candy made for a great ice breaker. We handed out
58 some leftover StokerCon 2019 pens and StokerCon 2018 tote bags to promote next year’s convention in Grand Rapids.
Amy Grech, Trevor Firetog, Patrick Freivald, and Steven Van Patten
Volunteers sold their books at the table, getting them into the hands of many new readers. A highlight for sales was A New York State of Fright, an anthology of New York horror stories by New York horror authors, which benefits a local, non-profit mentoring program, Girls Write Now. Almost all the contributors are HWA members, and many were on hand to sign copies. Die-hard New Yorkers and horror readers made it a sell- out by the last day of the show.
Banner designed by Greg Chapman
More than 150 people signed up to receive E-mails with information about the HWA and the benefits of membership. Many local writers inquired about joining the New York chapter. We also reconnected with fans and readers from past years and hope they will soon sign on for the group.
James Chambers wearing the Infinity Gauntlet made by Patrick Freivald
Recognition for the Bram Stoker Awards® is very high. They are often the first thing people connect with the HWA and create a lot of excitement. Several people mentioned using our Recommended Works list to find horror books to read. Many people were impressed to learn the HWA has chapters in several other countries
59 and is truly international. Other items that generated interest were the mentoring program and the scholarships. Several attendees enjoyed just chatting about horror movies and books with people who write in the genre. They had a lot of fun sharing their favorite stories, writers, and movies with us.
Overall, the show was very positive and productive—and proved horror is an extremely popular and influential part of the pop culture landscape.
The New York Comic Con came only a few weeks after the HWA NY chapter’s appearance at the Brooklyn Book Festival. This outdoor literary festival features an eclectic mix of major publishers, local literary organizations, specialty presses, and booksellers. Although the festival has a strong bent toward literary fiction, genre fiction’s presence has been growing there of late, thanks in part to the HWA and the local chapter of the Mystery Writers Assn. taking part. Our volunteers for the one-day fair portion of the event included Edward Cardillo, Teel James Glenn, Amy Grech, Erik T. Johnson, Carl Paolino, Kathleen Scheiner, and Steven Van Patten.
Edward Cardillo, Teel James Glenn, Amy Grech, Steven Van Patten, and Carl Paolino
October is always a busy month for horror writers, and those in our New York chapter certainly make the most of it by representing the genre and the HWA every chance they get.
Photos by James Chambers.
60 The Grumpy Grammarian
By HWAWeb | November 2018
What’s in a Song?
Anthony Ambrogio
It’s futile to try to fashion a grammar lesson out of popular-song lyrics because there are certain conventions in pop music; there’s such a thing as poetic license; and rules of grammar are much more lax when it comes to colloquial, everyday language, which these songs generally use.
(A word of warning: all of the examples used in this article may seem like archaeological artifacts to you, since they date back to the dim, dark days of my youth, well before many of you were born.)
Popular-music lyrics have a tendency to ignore the third-person-singular form of the verb do when used negatively. Hence, we get titles like “He Don’t Love You (Like I Love You),” which should be “He Doesn’t Love You (As I Love You)” or “He Doesn’t Love You (the Way I Love You).” And the colloquial ain’t has been a standard of pop songs since even before I was born: “Ain’t She Sweet” (1927), “Ain’t That a Shame” (1955), “She Ain’t Lovin’ You No More” (1966). (This last title illustrates that double negatives are another common feature of many pop songs—e.g., “Hit the road, Jack, and don’t you come back no more.”)
Most of these verbal tics can be overlooked and even forgiven—except for more egregious errors committed for the sake of a rhyme, like saying “for you and I” instead of “for you and me”—unfortunately, a not- uncommon error, although the only example I can come up with now is P.F. Sloan’s obscure 1966 tune, “From a Distance”—not to be confused with Bette Midler’s “From a Distance,” which yours truly was ignorant of. (This ignorance is not surprising, considering my musical IQ fell drastically sometime in the early 1970s; when someone talks about “Stairway to Heaven,” I don’t think of Led Zeppelin, 1971, but Neil Sedaka, who sang about a different set of steps, c. 1960.)
Sloan wrote the extremely popular “Eve of Destruction” for Barry McGuire (1965), Herman’s Hermit’s “(She’s a) Must to Avoid” (also 1965), and Johnny Rivers’ “Secret Agent Man” (1966). He sang “From a
61 Distance” himself. It’s a very lovely song with some very lovely imagery, damaged by this grating grammatical faux pas: “Have you ever seen a star from the sky? / From a distance, it looks just like heaven’s lost an eye. / … Now there’s one less chance for God / To see you and I.”)
And, speaking of pronouns, there’s a certain confusion of pronouns that can be found in popular music (and which mirrors many people’s similar problems in everyday speech). One example will suffice. (And you may even have heard of this one—may even have heard the song.)
In the Beatles’ “If I Fell,” John sings, “If I give my heart to you, / I must be sure / From the very start that you / Would love me more than her.” What he means to say is, “I want to feel certain that you will love me more than she [loved me].” As written/sung, what he is actually saying is, “I want the assurance that you will love me more than [you love] her.” (Of course, the ol’ “you-know-what-I-mean” business applies here, doesn’t it—and you’re probably saying, “C’mon! You know what he means, Anthony!”)
I majored in English in college, and one of the things that prepared me for critical analysis and close reading of texts was listening to rock-’n’-roll on the radio and figuring out what the lyrics meant—or what was the message behind the lyrics. (Usually it had to do with sex—which is what probably piqued my interest in the first place; these were the days when lyrics were a lot more subtle and you had to work to understand the writer/singer’s intentions.)
One example of the kind of shorthand subtlety that you found in popular songs of the period (1950s-1970s) had to do with the use of the terms want and need. Listen to enough of those tunes, and you’ll see that want always refers to sexual desire—so it frequently needs to be tempered by need, which implies a dependence based on something more, something that goes deeper: love, as opposed to simple lust. A perfect encapsulation of the difference between the two words can be found in the 1968 song “The Wichita Lineman,” wherein Glenn Campbell sings, “And I need you more than want you. / And I want you for all time.” Need is given precedence as the more honorable approach to his relationship with the woman he’s singing about—need more than want. But not only that—he makes clear that he wants her forever; i.e., his passion is not a fleeting thing. Very neat line.
I could talk about 1950s and 1960s rock music forever. But I see you nodding off already. So it’s on to a brief grammatical puzzle found in one pop song, and then I’m outta here.
The Case for “Lola”
As much as I would like language to be clean and clear, sometimes there’s an ambiguity there that you can’t get rid of, no matter how hard you try. Sometimes that ambiguity is deliberate, done for artistic effect to allow for a double meaning or multiple interpretations—or just to keep people guessing.
I’m thinking now of a once very popular song by the Kinks (of “You Really Got Me,” “All Day and All of the Night,” etc., fame): “Lola.”
At the time it came out, in 1970, “Lola” was an instant hit partly because most listeners decided (with a knowing wink about how clever and sophisticated they were for “getting” it) that it was about a big guy, dressed as a woman, who overwhelmed the singer of the song and captured him in a homosexual relationship.
I think that copyright rules prevent me from reproducing the entire set of lyrics here, so if you don’t know the song and are curious about them, you can get them online by googling “lyrics to ‘Lola’ by the Kinks.”
62 (Then I encourage you to go to YouTube and find a video or audio of the group singing the song because you cannot understand the true meaning of a tune without hearing it sung/played.)
But I think I can quote sections of the song for critical purposes in order to advance an argument.
Those people who were convinced that “Lola” was about a (homosexual) male in drag could point to lines like these:
“When she squeezed me tight, she nearly broke my spine” (indicating that Lola is very strong—and therefore implying that “she” must be a “he”).
“She walked like a woman but talked like a man” (giving the impression that “she”—with her “dark brown voice”—must be a man carrying herself like a woman).
“Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls” (suggesting that each sex pretends to be or acts like the other and therefore, by implication, that this “girl” Lola is a boy).
If those people are particularly savvy about the subtleties of poetry (and the best song lyrics can qualify as poetry), they could also point to the line about champagne that “tastes just like cherry cola”—indicating that things aren’t always what they seem, or that they can seem to be something else.
However, you cannot draw critical conclusions about a song or poem (or any work of art) without taking into account the entire work.
I, for one (and I was/am probably the only one), never believed that Lola was a man.
For one thing, the singer refers to Lola as “she” throughout—always uses feminine pronouns to describe Lola. (“But that’s so it won’t spoil the “surprise” at the end,” others may argue.)
And, in that verse about “girls will be boys, and boys will be girls,” the singer goes on to say, “It’s a mixed- up, muddled-up, shook-up world / Except for Lola” (italics mine)—which indicates to me, at least, that, while others may have some confusion about their gender or may play at being the opposite sex, Lola knows who she is; she’s not part of the muddled-up “girls will be boys, and boys will be girls” world.
What Lola is, in my estimation, is one dominant chick. And the singer is a male who comes, during the course of the song, to appreciate that, to accept that he is happiest when he allows himself to be dominated by this Amazon. (“I fell to the floor; I got down on my knees … that’s the way that I wanted to stay / And I always wanted to be that way for my Lola.”)
We learn that the naïve narrator has been on his own for a mere seven days and never even “kissed a woman before” (italics mine). Lola tells him, “Little boy, I’m gonna make you a man.” Now, a boy becomes a man in a number of different ways: when he turns 21, when he is bar-mitzvah’d (if he’s Jewish), and so forth—but “to be made a man” has one particular meaning, and that is when a boy has sex for the first time, when he loses his virginity. (I realize that this loss could occur in either a hetero- or homosexual encounter, but, as far as I know, it’s always in the context of a male having sex with a female that the phrase “make a boy a man” is used.)
The clincher—both for me and for all of those who claim Lola is a man—rests in the lines “I’m not the world’s
63 most masculine man, / But I know what I am, and I’m glad I’m a man, / And so is Lola.”
“There! You see,” they say: “‘I’m a man, and so’s Lola.’ They’re both men.”
“Not so fast, and au contraire,” I say: “He says, ‘I’m glad I’m a man, as is Lola.’ She’s glad he’s a man, too.”
Finally: here’s the ambiguity. “I’m glad I’m a man, / And so is Lola.” What does and so is refer to? I don’t know that there’s any way—short of elaborating with a lot more words that would destroy the rhythm of the song—to clarify what, exactly, the singer is saying here.
You need to look to the rest of the song in order to find the justification for your interpretation of those words—and, alas, there is enough “evidence” to support either interpretation. I’m quite convinced that the singer—while acknowledging that he’s no macho Superman/body-builder type—still knows that he is a man, and he’s glad to be one, and his girlfriend (his very dominant, semi-“butch” girlfriend) is glad he is, too.
Go listen and tell me what you think.
Thank you, and good day.
Anthony Ambrogio, [email protected]
64 Haunted Travels: Loftus Hall
By HWAWeb | November 2018
Rena Mason
Loftus Hall – Hook Head Peninsula, Ireland
Tina Callaghan
In Ireland, we live close to our myths and legends. We have a long history involving fairies (fierce warriors, not at all like Tinkerbell), headless horsemen, and cyclopsian monsters who have the power of death in their single, dreadful eye.
We also have a lot of haunted houses and spooky places. One of the most haunted is a mere 40-minute drive from my home in County Wexford. It is open to visitors, has a lovely coffee shop, and good parking. Oh, and it suffered an appearance from the Devil himself!
Loftus Hall looms on a stretch of the long, lonely Hook Head peninsula on the south east coast of Ireland. The end of the rocky, treacherous peninsula is marked by a lighthouse, which itself is the world’s oldest working lighthouse, with walls plastered in a mixture which included bull’s blood.
The Hall has lived many different lives. It was the family home of wealthy landowners originally. It housed an order of nuns (the little beach behind the house is known as Nun’s Beach). It was a hotel, until a young man
65 died of a heart attack on the stairs from, they say, seeing the devil himself.
The first castle was built on the site in 1170. The Hall itself was built by the Redmond family in the 13th Century to protect them from the Black Death. The Tottenham family were living in the Hall in the 17th Century, when the Hall’s troubles really started.
One terrible night, when the peninsula was being battered by a violent storm, a ship took shelter in the nearby harbour at Slade. A passenger took to horseback and rode through the storm to Loftus Hall, seeking hospitable shelter until the storm passed. He stayed with the family for several days. The handsome stranger compelled the young daughter of the house, Anne Tottenham, and the two were close for those few days, perhaps closer than her family would have liked.
On one particularly bad night, the family and their guests gathered together after dinner to play a few hands of cards. The room was warm and stuffy, and the players could hear rain lashing the windows. The back of the house was exposed to the prevailing wind, with only the coach house at one side to offer any protection. With nothing between them and France but the cold sea, it must have felt like they were at the very edge of the world, with no means of contacting anyone. Even the village was several miles away, as the Hall was deliberately located in a remote area.
The stranger was watching Anne, even as she shyly looked at him. Distracted, she dropped one of her cards. She leaned down to pick up the lost card and saw something that terrified her into madness. The well- dressed stranger had cloven feet. Anne leapt to her feet, screaming that the stranger was the Devil himself. Exposed, the Devil flew upward in a ball of flame, crashing through the ceiling and out through the roof of the house, leaving a hole that could never be properly fixed.
A local priest, Fr. Broaders, whose gravestone can be seen in the nearby cemetery, exorcised the house, but contemporary psychics and paranormal investigators have warned that the house contains many malevolent spirits to this day.
Anne Tottenham never recovered from the shock of seeing the cloven feet under the table. Mad, she was locked in one of the bedrooms and refused food. She remained sitting with her knees drawn up under her chin, watching the sea for the return of her dark love. She had to be buried in that seated position as her muscles had atrophied and she couldn’t be straightened. Her tormented spirit lingers still.
Loftus Hall is visible for miles along the straight peninsula. It can be seen across the wide, dangerous bay from County Waterford. Visitors can take a day tour, which is very spooky, or the night time tour which can make anyone scream, and laugh at the same time. If you are brave enough, you can take part in a paranormal lockdown, which lasts several hours and brings you through three stories of the house after dark. After these events, experts are on hand to cleanse participants of any evil spirits.
The house is full of furniture, paintings, and ornaments, left undisturbed. The last resident of the house ran it as a bar and hotel until it closed and her husband passed away. She stayed on, alone in the huge house for years, until one morning, with no notice, she fled the house, leaving all her possessions behind.
On my first visit to the house since it opened to the public, I was interested and slightly nervous. When we reached the famous Tapestry Room where Anne saw the Devil, we gathered in a circle around the walls while the guide told us the story of poor Anne and the handsome stranger. I had my back to the wall of the room. My partner was standing to my left, and I could clearly see him, although the room was dimly lit. To my right were strangers.
Then it happened. I felt a contact on my upper arm. It felt like someone was pressing the full length of their
66 finger against my arm, horizontally. As I stood there, the finger lifted and pressed my arm lower down, then my thigh, above my knee, and my calf. No one was touching me. At least no one visible.
On the way back to the car, I saw a playing card on the ground. The ace of spades. I did not stoop to pick it up.
Among the many strange stories connected to the hall is shown in one of the pictures.
During a tour, a visitor snapped a photo which was seen worldwide. The photographer accidentally caught the ghostly image of a girl in one of the windows. (Photograph taken by English visitor Thomas Beavis in 2014.)
Check out the Web site for tour information and a brief history of Loftus Hall, the most haunted house in Ireland. It’s definitely worth a visit! https://www.loftushall.ie
Photograph from http://www.loftushall.ie.
Tina Callaghan is a writer of supernatural fiction. Her first young adult supernatural thriller, Dark Wood Dark Water, published by Poolbeg Press, is available from bookshops and online in paperback or Kindle format.
67 Frightful Fun
By HWAWeb | November 2018
Donna K. Fitch
In this month’s column, rather than dealing with a specific game, we focus on a concept common to many horror games, magic. My guest writer is Scott Carter. Besides his skills in game design and dungeon mastering, Scott is pastor of Fort Wayne Baptist Church in Indiana and the author of Popping Pop Christianity. To keep his two red-haired daughters from being afraid of things under the bed, he and his (also red-haired) wife Janica taught them to answer this question: “What do we do with monsters?” “Kill them and take their stuff” was the appropriate reply. Find out more about Scott at scottgraycarter.com.
Magic, Games, and Horror
Scott Carter
In the last fifteen years or so, I have written more than thirteen supplements for table top role-playing games directly related to the practice of magic. I have done everything from rules for making golems to exhaustively researched tomes on Victorian magick, with the “k”. These rules fall into one of two categories. Magic in Dungeons and Dragons and most other fantasy games is basically a substitute for technology. Magic Missile is a gun that does not miss, Fireball is a bomb, Divination is a tricorder by another name. This is for games where the basic design goal is to kill monsters and take their stuff. It’s fun and fast and not worth a lot of thought.
The other kind of magic is something else entirely.
This is the magic of Call of Cthulhu and Unknown Armies, among others. Sometimes, it is learned from brutal experience and sometimes from ancient tomes. It is not like anything else. It is hard to acquire and hard to use. Most importantly it has a cost.
68 Herein lies the horror, and the fun.
In Call of Cthulhu, there is a clear mechanical trade off. The more you know, the greater the risk of losing your character, either temporarily or permanently from decaying sanity. Acting on that knowledge speeds up the process. Is the risk worth it?
My preferred system for horror, and a much more modern take, is Unknown Armies. In Unknown Armies (UA), magic is about obsession and where it takes you. Strongly influenced by Tim Powers’ works like Last Call and Expiration Date, UA is about power and what you are willing to do to get it. The character thinks the risk is worth it and then must deal with the consequences.
In games like these, horror really does not come from outside. No monster, not even Cthulhu, serial killer, or cackling sorcerer can provide more than a moment’s fear when you are sitting at a table with dice in hand. The horror must come from within.
The player comes to identify, at least to some degree, with the character being played. If a player can embrace the setting and the constraints of the game, they can begin to feel what the character might feel. There is an identification with its goals and values. The allure of magic is a temptation. The risk is not only to mental or physical stability but to morality and humanity. If I can sacrifice an eye, Odin-like, to gain knowledge, can I sacrifice a child’s eye for the same? Should I eat Ben Franklin’s lost copy of the Declaration of Independence to get enough power to strike my enemy from existence? Will I have sex with a nightmare to gain the ability to walk through dreams?
The horror comes in the question “If my character can do it, could I?”
Magic is about wish fulfillment. Horror is getting what you wish for and what it took.
***
In this column, I bring you reviews of horror board and roleplaying games, as well as interviews with writers and creators of such games. Please feel free to ask questions or give me suggestions of games I should review or writers you’d like to see interviewed. Contact me at [email protected].
Donna K. Fitch, MLS, is a long-time HWA affiliate member, Silver Hammer Award-winner, and HWA Newsletter Web Designer. She is the author of Second Death, The Source of Lightning, and The Color of Darkness and Other Stories. In addition to novels and short stories, Donna wrote a now-out-of-print RPG supplement on using cemeteries in d20 games, a gaming supplement called Sahasra: Land of 1,000 Cities based on a fantasy India, and a chapter of Scott Carter’s Imperial Age: Faeries. A former librarian, Donna works as a Web designer in the marketing division of Samford University. She and her husband and two black-and-white cats live in a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama.
69 Watchung’s Horror Watch
By HWAWeb | November 2018
Interpreted By Naching T. Kassa
Welcome, HWA faithful, to the Horror Watch. Watchung is angry. The STYFY network decided not to air PUMPKINS FROM PLANET P 1 on their network Halloween Eve. They said it was too artsy for their taste. Luckily, Pumpkin TV has offered to stream PFPP 1 on their channel. Watchung has been advertising on TV, radio, and in the newspapers to promote the movie.
While Watchung creates an ad for the HWA Newsletter, let’s see what he has for us this month.
TELEVISION
The second season of THE TERROR will take place during WWII. This time, the anthology series will follow a spirit from a Japanese-American community as it travels from Southern California to the War in the Pacific. The 10-episode season will air on AMC in 2019.
STREAMING
Season Two of CASTLEVANIA premiered on October 26th on Netflix. The animated series will consist of eight episodes and concerns Trevor Belmont’s battle with Count Alucard. Richard Armitage, James Callis, and Alejandra Reynoso star.
Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens: the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch will become a six-episode series written by Gaiman for Amazon Prime. It involves an angel, a demon, and a slipshod Armageddon. Michael Sheen and David Tennant will star. Look for it in 2019.
Now, on to movies! Watchung says, “Yippee!”
70 MOVIES
THEATRICAL RELEASES
SUSPIRIA—Friday, November 2, Rated R. Remake of the 1977 movie. Stars Chloe Grace Moretz, Dakota Johnson, and Tilda Swinton.
OVERLORD—Friday, November 9, Rated R. J.J. Abrams produced this film about two paratroopers who land in WWII Normandy and discover a horrible Nazi experiment.
THE CLOVEHITCH KILLER—Friday, November 16, Rated R. A boy discovers his father is a notorious serial killer. Stars Charlie Plummer and Dylan McDermott.
THE POSSESSION OF HANNAH GRACE—Friday, November 30, Rated R. An ex-cop becomes an intake assistant at a morgue and encounters the body of a woman named Hannah Grace. Hannah is the victim of an exorcism gone wrong and she is slowly coming back to life.
COMING ATTRACTIONS
The next installment in the ANNABELLE franchise, ANNABELLE 3, will star Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga! They will reprise their roles as Ed and Lorraine Warren in 2019.
DVDs
MARA—Tuesday, November 6, Rated R. A succubus menaces patients at a sleep paralysis clinic.
THE LAST SHARKNADO: IT’S ABOUT TIME—Tuesday, November 6, Not Rated. Fin resorts to time travel as he tries to prevent the first Sharknado and save his family. (Watchung thinks he should’ve gone back in time and stopped the first movie from being made.)
VOD
DEATH HOUSE—Tuesday, November 6, Rated R. Two federal agents are trapped in a secret prison called “Death House” during a power outage. Stars Sid Haig, Vernon Wells, Adrienne Barbeau, Dee Wallace, and Tony Todd.
PUMPKINS FROM PLANET P 1—Saturday, November 31, Rated R. A terrific film produced by the best producer ever, Watchung the Demonic Pumpkin. Stars lots of nobodies.
MUSICALS
BEETLEJUICE the Musical will premiere at the Winter Garden Theater on Broadway on April 25, 2019. It’s based on the 1988 film directed by Tim Burton, which starred Michael Keaton, Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin, and Winona Ryder. The play will be directed by Alex Timbers and will star Alex Brightman.
VIDEO GAMES
BLACK OPS 4: ZOMBIES came out on October 12. This multi-player, first-person shooter mode, comes with the BLACK OPS 4 game. It includes three different maps: Voyage of Despair, Blood of the Dead, and IX. Each map incorporates its own story and characters.
71 You can begin with Voyage of Despair, a shooter which takes place on the Titanic. The ship is sinking and your team has been informed of occult happenings aboard. Begin topside and work your way down to the engine rooms. Or you can start with Blood of the Dead within Alcatraz. Finally, play IX. Here you battle Roman gladiators, possessed tigers, and zombies in the colosseum.
BLACK OPS 4: ZOMBIES is available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One systems.
That’s it for this edition of Watchung’s Horror Watch. Our favorite demonic pumpkin would like to remind you of two things. First, no entertainment, not even the video games, could exist without writers. And, second, if there’s horror news out there, Watchung is watching!
Special thanks to the following Web sites: variety.com, wheresthejump.com, dreadcentral.com, bloodydisgusting.com, ihorror.com, thisishorror.co.uk, dvdreleasedates.com, promotehorror.com, dailydead.com, horrorfreaknews.com, collider.com, moviepilot.com, cinemablend.com, tvline.com, indiewire.com, ew.com, movieweb.com, joblo.com, nerdmuch.com, imdb.com, rottentomatoes.com, gamespot.com, screenrant.com, movieinsider.com, moviefone.com, telegraph.co.uk/gaming, eonline.com, gameranx.com, horrornews.net, and wikipedia.com
72 Voices {From the North}
By HWAWeb | November 2018
Michael Kamp
The Klabauter Man
Welcome to my new column, “Voices from the North.” I am your host, Michael Kamp, and live in the frozen mud plains of Denmark – Happiest Nation on Earth.
Scandinavian horror and horror writers are not really well known in the greater world, so I will try to cast some light on issues of interest. Folklore, ghastly traditions, Nordic events that affects the horror genre … I will try to cover them all.
Here for my first entry: the klabauter man or Klabautermanden as he is known in Danish.
Klabautermanden is well known among sailors around here. He is a creature of the sea. Often known as a “nisse” or a troll/goblin of sorts he was considered a helpful being. “Klabauter” is a twist on the German word for hammering or making noise, and it was considered a good omen at sea, if sailors could hear him hammer away.
It meant he was fixing the ship.
Should the ship be destined for ship wrecking, he would appear on the bridge to bid the captain farewell.
In later years, the perception of Klabautermanden changed, and he became a more sinister character. This is how I encountered his story.
My father was a teacher, and among his friends was a sailor called Tom Sømand (Tom the Sailor—for obvious reasons). Tom and a small handful of other sailors manned a ship by the name Hjalm. Hjalm was often used by the local schools as an event—taking the kids out to sea either for a daytrip or a few days.
73 He was also very interested in the occult and otherworldly things, so he was a constant source of strange stories.
My father had told me about Klabautermanden. That he was a bad omen. Looking like a drowned, half-rotted man, he would seek out unfortunate ships at sea and board them at night from the bow.
As everyone slept, he would drag his rotting body the entire length of the ship and descend back into sea by the stern.
That ship would then be doomed and tragedy would follow.
This is why you should never allow ropes or nets to dangle from the bow. Klabautermanden can use them to climb onboard.
In fact, the old superstition of the sea was so strong that sailors would not talk about Klabautermanden, and I was instructed to never mention him around them.
Of course, me being a kid I had to test it.
Next time we were on Hjalm to visit Tom I casually mentioned Klabautermanden to get a laugh.
The reaction took me by surprise.
Tom and my father got genuinely angry with me, and my father gave me a scolding. Not in jest. He was really upset with me. They did not consider it cute or naive; I had broken a real rule among sailors and they were not having it.
I think it was the first time I encountered old beliefs that still linger in the shadows.
Later I found several more, but that is for another time.
74 Entombed by My Long Boxes
By HWAWeb | November 2018
The Menace of Venom
Joe Borrelli
Welcome back to my creepy comics crypt, fellow horror heroes! This month’s mad monster is none other than the menacing Venom, who is currently shredding box offices around the world in the new film starring Tom Hardy. This nightmarish monster is one of Spider-Man’s most enduring villains and one of the most fascinating characters in all of superhero comics.
At its core, Venom is the result of a fusion between a vicious parasitic alien and a human host. The alien symbiote grants the user increased strength and stamina as well as the ability to extend its black plasma body in different ways, allowing the host to do anything from create clothing to swing between buildings to lash tendrils out at its prey. Many different humans have been host to the symbiote, some good and some bad, but the symbiote always increases the host’s aggression while whispering to them inside their minds.
75 Venoms experience this duality as a central part of their persona and refer to themselves as “we” rather than using singular pronouns.
Venom started out as Spider-Man’s alien black costume. During Marvel Comic’s Secret War storyline, Spider-Man’s original costume was damaged during a melee between heroes and villains in the alien Battleworld. He discovered a strange material that traveled up his arm and shaped itself into a new costume, complete with an infinite supply of webbing and the ability to change shape with a thought. Returning to Earth, Spider-Man discovered that the costume was actually an alien trying to bond with him and, with the help of the Fantastic Four, was able to separate the entity from his body.
The entity later escaped confinement and found an embittered former journalist named Eddie Brock who also had a grudge with Spider-Man. The two fused, shared their mutual hatred, and Venom was born.
Venom is somewhat unique amongst Spider-Man’s villains. First, many of Spidey’s major foes were either bandits with an animal gimmick (Scorpion, Vulture, Rhino, etc.) or masterminds with direct connections to Spider-Man’s personal life (Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, etc.) Venom was the first character to have both; his powers were very similar to Spider-Man’s—albeit more toothsome and gooey—and he knew Spider-Man’s real identity. That meant that most of Venom’s early appearances weren’t about robbing banks or running criminal empires. Instead, they were tense tales where he stalked Peter Parker and everyone he loved.
76
In this form, Venom was a monstrous and implacable opponent. The symbiote knew all of Peter Parker’s secrets and weaknesses, so it was able to keep itself hidden from Spider-Man’s danger sense, and the symbiote’s pain at being betrayed and abandoned made Venom pursue Spider-Man with all the fury of a jilted lover.
Eventually the two reconciled, first after Spider-Man helped Venom put down the serial killer symbiote Carnage, and then after Spider-Man saved Eddie Brock’s ex-wife. This began Venom’s slow transition from monster to monster who only eats bad guys.
Over the years, many different people have been hosts to the symbiote, some for good and some for evil, but the alien has always returned to Eddie Brock.
Comic continuity has always been a fluid thing. In some stories, the symbiote loves and protects Eddie, while
77 in others it is the demon on his shoulder and Eddie Brock is a weak man who has been corrupted by a vengeful alien monster. Either way, Venom is one of the scariest characters in the superhero universe.
That’s it for this month’s EBMLB. I actually did another essay on Venom for my Tumblr, if you want to read more on everyone’s favorite thick-tongued ghoul. I’m also on Twitter and Instagram at @JoeAverageSF, so feel free to slide into my DMs.
Happy Reading!
78 Tales From the Other Side (of the Atlantic)
By HWAWeb | November 2018
Tina Callaghan
Welcome to the Other Side! This column will introduce you to the mists and mysteries of Ireland.
Although the Emerald Isle is small, it has many places that were sacred in our history and mythology and are still known as important sites today. It is a matter of historical fact that druids, who were deeply connected to nature, held great sway over the people. To illustrate how far back our history goes, the ancient burial site of Newgrange is older than Stonehenge and the pyramids of Egypt. The people who built it were time keepers and had an understanding of astronomical events. Although Newgrange is not as famous internationally as Stonehenge, those in the know gather at the Megalithic passage tomb for the winter solstice, when the beams of the rising sun penetrate through the passage and light up the tomb. This brings those who experience it a deep connection to the distant past. Newgrange is 5000 years old.
In early medieval Ireland, we had a system of civil laws to govern society, known as the Brehan Laws. These were very much before their time. For example, they allowed for both man and wife to be valued as independents within marriage and to keep possession of their own property, rather than the woman giving up everything to her husband. There were laws to allow divorce, and for financial recompense to victims for crimes committed against them. Rape was recognised and subject to penalty. In fact, throughout both our ancient history and mythology, women were not only respected, but were often the leaders of their people. The Tuatha de Danann, mentioned below, were the folk of the mother goddess Danú.
Our mythology is incredibly rich and complex. It features four branches; the Mythological Cycle, the Ulster Cycle, the Fenian Cycle, and the Historical Cycle. There are other mythological texts and a large number of folk tales involving some of the great heroes from these cycles. Some of the best known tales are of Tír na nÓg (the Land of Eternal Youth), Fionn MacCumhaill and his warriors The Fianna, The Tuatha Dé Danann (beautiful gods), The Aos Sí/Aes Sídhe (supernatural beings thought to be the last of the Tuatha de Danann, who withdrew to the other world), CúChulainn (a fierce warrior who became a monster during battle due to a frenzy sometimes known as a warp spasm), the Children of Lir (who were turned into swans, Táin Bó Cúailnge (the great battle for the coveted bull owned by the magnificent Queen Maedbh), and the Salmon of
79 Knowledge.
As well as this wealth of pre-Christian history and mythology, we have many strange tales from mere hundreds of years ago. Medieval curses, battles between saints and druids, transformations into animals and many more. We had the Dullahan, a headless horseman who carried a human spine for a whip, the Dearg- Due, our female blood drinker, the famous Banshee, known to keen for the impending death of a loved one, and the dreadful Sluagh.
In the darker days around Halloween, or Samhain, a westerly wind may come howling, bringing with it the Sluagh, also called the Underfolk, or the Wild Hunt. In the past, people knew to shut all westerly facing windows when that wind came, especially if someone in the house was ill.
The Sluagh was worse than death. They were a host of the restless dead, and came looking for the dying or for anyone who was disturbed by sadness or grief to make them join their awful company.
Once the sun sinks and twilight takes over the earth, the Sluagh take flight in the form of a flock of huge dark birds, either inky black or deep red, wheeling and spinning against the sky before they descend for an attack. The story of the Sluagh is why many cultures still believe that black birds, especially ravens, are evil or unlucky.
It was thought possible to call the Sluagh to you by accident. One way was if you said the name Sluagh out loud after dark. Another way to attract their attention was if you had hopelessness in your heart. Either way, once the Sluagh had turned to you, the only way to escape was to put someone else in your place. Of course, if you were the sort of person who could sacrifice another person to save yourself, your unforgiven soul might still end up in the Wild Hunt when your time came.
The Sluagh would also take the souls of those who were happy and healthy, but it was much harder for them to do this. Just catching sight of the Sluagh was not enough to cause your doom. It was still possible to escape them. They could be evaded by staying indoors after dark and by not walking alone in quiet, lonely places like forests or empty streets. However, once a person was taken by the Sluagh, they were doomed to forever circle the twilight skies, looking for souls to steal.
The members of the Sluagh were once human. As part of the Wild Hunt, they became thin, ragged creatures with skin barely clinging to their bones. They had leathery wings held tightly against their bodies, which looked like a dark cloak at a glance. They had bony claws for hands and feet, and sharp, crooked teeth. It was hard for them to blend in with living people, so they mostly kept to the night skies.
So, the next time you see a large flock of dark birds flying at twilight, maybe you should look closely to see if they really are birds on their way home to roost for the night or if they could be something else. On second thought, maybe you shouldn’t look, and instead go inside, being careful to shut all westerly facing windows before the night falls.
Join me again next month for another Tales from the Other Side.
80 Ad: Out of What Crypt They Crawl
By HWAWeb | November 2018
81 82 83 Forbidden Words (And When to Use Them)
By HWAWeb | November 2018
Lawrence Berry
… from ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties And things that go bump in the night, Good Lord deliver us!
— traditional Scottish Prayer
The Festival Of The Dead
Most dictionaries skirt around any deeper meaning for Hallowe’en, defining it as the day before All Saints’ Day (November 1), a night of mischief and merry-making. In the Catholic faith, it is part of the three days of Allhallowtide.
Hallowe’en’s purpose in this definition is to serve as a night of vigil for the two days of remembrance to come. All Saints’ Day celebrates the lives and deaths of the saints. All Souls’ Day, in contrast, remembers faithful Christians who have died, most especially those suffering in purgatory for their deeds in life.
The incorporation of the Celtic Festival of the Dead began in the 8th Century and was an attempt by the Church to absorb the pagan holiday into conventional faith rather than attempt to ban it.
The Celtic and Druidic cultures celebrated Samhain (the progenitor of Hallowe’en) as a time when this world and the Otherworld of the spirit temporarily joined. The dead could pass the veil and return to earth, as could spiritual beings such as elves, pixies, and malevolent sprites.
84 By the 1500s, Samhain had become Hallowe’en, its celebration now constrained by All Saints’ Day and the rise of the Christian church. It remained for the Berwick Witch Trials of 1590 for Halloween, Witches, and Satanism to join into one common association. The forbidden acts of the witches put on trial allegedly occurred on Hallowe’en which was identified as a Witches’ Sabbath. After the 1600s, Hallowe’en became inextricably intertwined with the unholy and was sometimes referred to as “The Devil’s Birthday.”
Hallowe’en is the most resonant word in the vocabulary of horror because a thousand years of history have attached a lurid tapestry of connotations to the one truth that can found in its origins and evolution; Hallowe’en is now and has ever been, the day the worlds join and the living and the dead dance together.
Samhain: Most often used to refer to the Celtic Festival of the Dead celebrated on October 31; frequently associated with human sacrifice conducted in ritual fires and the manifestation of dead spirits and magical creatures. In use from prehistory to the 1500s when the term became obscure.
The Celtic Druids didn’t allow written records of the faith, so only witness accounts survive and these are suspect, with a tendency toward sensationalism.
Is it possible that observance has survived until the present day? In the haunted hills of the British Isles, there are remote areas that may still practice ancient ceremonies. As the Witchcraft Act was law in England until the 1950s, secrecy would have been a necessary requirement.
All Souls’ Day: A Catholic observance during which the faithful dead are remembered.
All Hallow’s Eve: An obscure name for Hallowe’en and reference as the vigil for the religious observance to come.
Martinmas: Its literal meaning is the Mass for Saint Martin, traditionally celebrated on November 11. Martinmas has little occult relevance and is essentially connected to the harvest season. The day on which new wine can first be served.
All Saints’ Day: The day following Hallowe’en when the lives and the deaths of saints are celebrated.
Walpurgis Night (Walpurgisnacht): Celebrated on April 1 primarily in Europe in a manner much like Hallowe’en. Often called “witches’ night. Most of its occult importance occurred after its use in the novel Dracula.
Haunted House (also known as “dark rides”): Originally an amusement park diversion used with great success in traveling carnivals. In the 1980s the haunted house became commercialized culminating in the Haunted Mansion, by Disney, and Knott’s Scary Farm, a haunted maze. The term now most often refers to local versions that spring up in most towns each October, part of a 6.5 billion dollar industry. Each year over 20 per cent of the adults in a community go to a haunted house. Haunted Amusements most accurately describes major thrills such as Universal’s Hallowe’en Horror Nights.
Hell House: A Christian-themed version of the classic haunted house amusement often involving theater showing the effects of sin on the believer.
Shadowfest: October 31 is one of the eight major Sabbats in the Wiccan faith, and the term is most often used in this context, as a holy day and celebration. While Hallowe’en staples such as pumpkins may be used, the festivities tend to focus on crystal balls, scrying mirrors, and other tools of divination in the hope of communicating with the dead.
Wraith and Fetch: When used in the context of Hallowe’en both words refer to a part of the living human
85 spirit that can be sent forward in time as part of divination to identify upcoming turns of fate, future spouses, and future hopes of love.
Note: While your columnist stayed with the most frequent uses, there are too many variants to catalog, and effective use of this word term will depend on sentence structure to shape the desired meaning. Hallowe’en is as much a prism for ancestral fears as it is a word.
Halloween And Divination
While not currently seeing popular use in America, for much of its history Hallowe’en was viewed as a night of divination in which a person could see into the future through the practice of different rituals. If one went to a crossroads and made their wishes known three times, they could hear the name of their future spouse in the wind, as well as the names of those people in the community destined to die within the year. A woman might see her future husband over her left shoulder if she looked into a mirror and brushed her hair in sequences of three. In most Hallowe’en rituals, spells must be chanted three times, and the number three is of special significance. The left hand and left shoulder are also of unique importance as this is the devil’s hand. There are a number of period artworks showing the Devil hiding behind mirrors while a woman practices divination.
Cauff-Riddling: The ancient custom of throwing chaff onto the floor in order to see future events.
Occult Divination: The practice of divining the future can be divided into four methods. Augury is the interpretation of natural or supernatural signs. Insight through Omens refers to interpretations of portents, both cosmic and through various means of casting. Direct Communication is sometimes believed to occur from dreams after sleeping in a crypt, or over a grave, on Hallowe’en night. Possession is giving over oneself to the dead through a voluntary trance in order for the spirit to share events that may happen in the future.
Apple Magic: The practice of using an apple in various ways on Hallowe’en night to ascertain who one might marry. If a woman peels an apple and throws the peel over her left shoulder into the water, she may read her future husband’s initials. If a group of single women hangs apples from strings over a fire, the order in which the fruit falls shows when each woman will marry.
There are many more examples. Any serious reading into the subject will uncover literally dozens of rituals.
Calling All Monsters
The act of “guising,” “mumming,” or “souling” makes an appearance in 16th-century Scotland, but more frequent use doesn’t appear in connection with Halloween until the 18th and 19th centuries in England.
In America, what we now view as normal behavior on Hallowe’en began in the 1920s and shows as having gained national acceptance in Disney’s animated 1952 short, TRICK OR TREAT.
While princess and superhero disguises have become common, traditional monster disguises remain very much vogue. Much of the beauty of Hallowe’en lies in what hasn’t changed since the Celts first raised huge bonfires at the conclusion of their harvest season and lit candles so that the dead might find their way home and sit once more by the family fire. The pranks and mischief so common to the season were blamed on mischievous elves, pixies, and sprites, who were offered sweet cakes if they spared the family home. Although this has become snack-sized Snicker bars and Jolly Rancher candies, the bargain remains unchanged.
Despite common sense (that most dread disease of the spirit) and the bright light of science, in the deepest
86 reveries of the human soul magic lives on. It is entirely possible that the dead may rise and return, accompanied by an army of magical beings, and the only defense to be had probably lies in apples. It may happen that a loved one, now passed, crosses the barrier to whisper an endearment not heard for many long months. And when the celebration is done, in the living room, lit by three candles, the rocking chair may rock on its own remembering an old habit.
It is an ancient word, Hallowe’en, the Festival of the Dead. Stronger than time or disbelief. Calling all monsters.
Attribution: The best and most complete history of Halloween is Lisa Morton‘s Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween, which has the added attraction of being immensely readable. David Pickering‘s Dictionary of Superstitions. Rosemary Ellen Guiley‘s Magic And Alchemy. Data courtesy of the National Retail Federation.
87 Straight to Hell
By HWAWeb | November 2018
88 Dead Air: Spookies (1986)
By HWAWeb | November 2018
Terence Hannum
“The story behind the making of this movie is better than the movie” – Frank Farel, Producer/Writer
If you were up late watching USA Network in the late 1980s or early 1990s, chances are you may have stumbled upon a surreal weird horror oddity that made absolutely no linear sense titled SPOOKIES (1986). It’s as if two, or three, films were mutated together in a lab of competent practical effects and every half- brained idea, and SPOOKIES has gained cult status for its absurdity as well as its special effects. On one hand, SPOOKIES is a film about a haunted house full of creatures, and, on the other hand, it is a film about a boy trying to find his birthday party and stumbling upon this house of horrors. The irony is with all of its disconnectedness and strange pacing, and torrid production, there is a surprisingly interesting soundtrack making SPOOKIES work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t63eyaVgciE
89 SPOOKIES was scored by the duo of Ken Higgins and James “Jim” Calabrese as their first major film score. In the liner notes for the LP (released for the first time by the excellent Savannah, GA based Terror- Vision), Calabrese and Higgins reflect that they should have known better about a film on its second director, and the new one had only worked under aliases in the adult film industry. This naivete placed the two newcomers into a studio with a Yamaha DX and an Emulator where they were given the explicit warning: “This is a really bad movie, and we are hoping the music will save it.” Lucky for everyone it did.
“What fools! They flatter themselves. What makes them think their lives are worth saving?” – Kreon in SPOOKIES
The history of the film has to be summarized first. The movie began as a longer film (TWISTED SOULS) directed by Brendan Faulkner and Thomas Doran starting in the summer of 1984 on the grounds of the Jay Estate in New York. However, it’s what happened after TWISTED SOULS was in the can, over-budget, and in post-production that the mythology of SPOOKIES blooms into absolute weirdness. After fielding multiple interests for distribution, the financial backer got outside opinions and then fired the two directors and hired Genie Joseph who went back to the Jay Estate to film more scenes and a second parallel story. The Dissolve did a great in-depth series of interviews with the major directors and producers of SPOOKIES, and I recommend checking it out.
However, Higgins and Calabrese’s soundtrack shows the depths of their excitement, even with very limited resources as they were brought into the fraught second half of the production of SPOOKIES. Holing up in the studio for intense 14-hour days, they remained true to their hiring, able to craft memorable tracks such as the “Opening Credit Theme,” “Spider Lady,” and “Zombie Theme (End Credits Music).” Given the track titles alone, the attention deficit of SPOOKIES is apparent with compositions dedicated to the “Catman” and “Attack of the Lizard People.” Yet Higgins and Calabrese were able to imbue each moment with something interesting, even when the script and story went out the window. https://terrorvision.bandcamp.com/album/spookies-ost
Despite all this lore and difficult filming history, SPOOKIES actually fits well into a surreal attempt at an Old Dark House picture. There is a boy, Billy, lost in the woods as he searches for his birthday party when he stumbles upon this abandoned house. Then there’s a crew of teenagers who discover the house and find Kreon, a warlock who needs human victims. The house is full of monsters, while outside there are monsters as well, from zombies to spider-women (who suck men dry) and—ahem—farting zombies. The Old Dark House genre has to involve some sort of comedy, even if it is incredibly black, and that could be the closest SPOOKIES could come to finding a niche. The Old Dark House films began as plays in the 1920s that were later turned into films such as THE CAT AND THE CANARY (1927), That set the template for most of Universal’s horror films, as did Lon Chaney‘s silent movie, THE MONSTER (1925), which also set the template for many horror films. In THE OLD DARK HOUSE film, a group of strangers stumble upon a dark house full of curious and terrifying oddities and scares that owe as much to the genre of farce as to horror. I think, within this light, SPOOKIES is an interesting, if flawed, film that contributes something to the extension of this early sub-genre of horror.
“My victims walk in the land of the dead. They are my children, and I am their ultimate lord …” – Kreon
Higgins and Calabrese did not go on to generate more scores for other horror films; in fact, it appears as if Ken Higgins may not have done any more work in music, while James Calabrese has had a series of successes as a song writer for Whitney Houston and played keyboards on Miki Howard and Lavine Hudson’s soul records of the late ’80s and early ’90s. The two men took a difficult situation and generated a small gem of a score with some memorable and interesting sounds for a film that has to be seen to be believed. SPOOKIES is still best viewed late at night on cable, floating in the ether, as a testimony to
90 disjointed narrative between midnight lawyer commercials and general nocturnal strangeness. Part dream, part mutant—and all spooky.
Terence Hannum is a Baltimore-based artist, musician (playing in Locrian and The Holy Circle), and writer. His novella, Beneath the Remains, was published by Anathemata Editions, and his novella, All Internal, was just published this year by Dynatox Ministries. His short stories have appeared in Terraform, Lamplight, Turn to Ash, SickLit, and The SciPhi Journal.
91 It’s a Strange, Strange World
By HWAWeb | November 2018
JG Faherty
You Are What You Eat
Everyone knows that people eat a lot of strange things, either intentionally or not. Forget about the chemical additives and pesticides we consume each day; forget about stomach-churning regional delicacies like blood sausage, tripe, and chocolate-covered insects.
The real surprises lie in the things we don’t even know about.
Here are some examples of gross food additives guaranteed to make you skip dinner and possibly cook up some weird ideas about stories centered around foods.
1. Beaver Anal Gland Secretions.
Mmmm mmmm good! Ever hear of castoreum? Probably not. But I’ll bet you’ve eaten plenty of it. Our toothy friends use it to mark their territory, but food scientists use it in vanilla, strawberry, and raspberry flavorings for sodas, ice cream, candy, and baked snacks. You’ll see it right on the label listed as a “natural flavoring.”
Surprise!
2. Hair.
That’s right, chemicals from hair, primarily L-Cysteine, are used in a wide range of foods as a preservative, including pizza, bread, and fried/frozen foods. Pretty gross, right? Wait, it gets better.
It’s not just human hair.
The primary sources are hog hair and duck feathers.
92 Bad news for you vegans!
3. Antifreeze.
For anyone with a background in chemistry or auto mechanics, propylene glycol is a familiar term. It’s a key ingredient in antifreeze. It’s also pretty common in cake mix, frozen dairy snacks, and pre-cooked baked goods, to prevent “clumping.”
Maybe, a piece of cake is the best thing to eat before going out on a cold winter day!
4. Beetles.
Specifically, cochineal beetles, which live on prickly pear cactus pads. These little critters are a big source of red food coloring, frequently listed on packages as carmine, E120, and Natural Red 4.
Red Velvet Cake, anyone?
5. Wood Fiber.
Everyone wants a little more fiber in their diet, but this might be going too far. Many manufacturers of breads, wraps, and tortillas add cellulose, obtained from wood pulp, as “dietary fiber.”
Sometimes eating healthy isn’t the best option!
6. Tert-Butylhydroquinone.
There’s a mouthful, and you’ll be getting a mouthful if you eat certain crackers, noodles, fast foods, candy bars, and frozen foods, including frozen fish. Frequently shortened to TBHQ, this chemical is an ingredient in gasoline, varnish, and biofuel, but it’s also a preservative for foods, especially high-fat treats, where it helps prevent the fats from breaking down. You can also find it listed as E319.
Remember that the next time you eat a Reese’s nutbar.
7. Wax.
No, we’re not talking about wax lips or soda bottles, like the ones you used to get in the candy store. We’re talking carnauba wax, the same stuff you shine your car with. Where can you find it? Glazed donuts, gummy treats, and other sweets.
Too bad it doesn’t give us shiny teeth.
8. Flame Retardant.
Until recently, brominated vegetable oil, a type of fire retardant, was used in sodas to prevent the flavorings from separating and floating to the surface. Even though it was shown to cause seizures, it took lawsuits against Mountain Dew and Pepsi to get companies to stop using it. But since that was only in 2014, odds are we’ve all sipped our fair shares of it.
Just Dew it!
9. Artificial Caramel Coloring.
This doesn’t sound so bad, right? A bunch of chemicals mixed up in a lab to give meat, soda, and cakes their
93 brown coloring. Well, here’s the bad news: it’s been shown to cause cancer, including cancer of the intestine.
But at least it doesn’t come from a beaver’s butt!
Until next time …
———————————
Stay informed on all my demented ramblings … http://www.facebook.com/jgfaherty, jgfaherty- blog.blogspot.com, and http://www.twitter.com/jgfaherty.
94 In The Spooklight
By HWAWeb | November 2018
Michael Arruda
TERRIFIER (2017) is the type of horror movie I usually do not like.
At all.
It’s also the type, in general, that tends to give horror a bad name and keeps a large audience away from horror movies. Why do I want to pay money to see victims brutally murdered? Gore for gore’s sake. No story. No point other than to kill off victims.
TERRIFIER is this type of movie—up to a point. It’s violent and sick, until it morphs into something more, something I found myself ultimately liking. A lot.
TERRIFIER starts off as the story of two friends, Tara (Jenna Kanell) and Dawn (Catherine Corcoran) out on the town for a night of drinks and fun. As they drunkenly return to their car, they notice someone watching them from down the street, a man dressed as a clown. When he follows them into a restaurant, Tara is understandably freaked out, but Dawn thinks it’s funny and actually flirts with and takes a selfie with the clown (David Howard Thornton).
Tara wants to leave immediately, but Dawn says no, that they should stay. You should have listened to Tara.
It turns out that Art the Clown is a homicidal maniac who goes about killing anyone and everyone in his path
95 in the most brutal sadistic ways. And, yes, he is definitely interested in adding Dawn and Tara to his victims’ list.
So, why is this movie better than just an exercise in mindless blood and gore?
For starters, before the killings begin, the acting by the principal players is pretty darn good. I really enjoyed both Jenna Kanell as Tara and Catherine Corcoran as Dawn. Kanell was good enough to be the strong heroine in a new series of horror films, and I was certainly interested in following her story and wanting her not only to survive but to kick Art the Clown’s butt.
But the filmmakers had other ideas.
Speaking of Art the Clown, he is one creepy clown. As played by David Howard Thornton, he is downright nightmarish. Thornton does a fantastic job at making Art the Clown completely unpredictable. At times, he stares at his victims with menacing homicidal eyes, and others he’s in his full clown routine, acting jolly and silly, and at other times he’s sad. He can unleash any of these personalities at any time, and once he attacks, he becomes a brutal insane killer.
Bottom line, he is terribly frightening, which is exactly what you want in a horror movie.
So, when this movie began, I thought, regardless of how it plays out, I like this clown.
Midway through, for me, TERRIFIER hit rock bottom. Suddenly Art the Clown becomes a killing machine, and deaths occur without rhyme or reason. Gore for gore’s sake. And yet, there was that creepy clown, still standing, still terrorizing.
And that for me was when the movie changed, when the realization hit me that this wasn’t the story of any of the victims at all. Instead, this was Art the Clown’s story. In this movie, nobody was safe, no matter how much the audience might like them, no matter how heroic their intentions, no matter when they first appeared in the movie. None of this mattered. They were going to have to deal with the clown, and most likely, they were not going to come out on top.
I thought this was a bold decision by writer/director Damien Leone to really go all in with Art the Clown and say nobody is safe, and because Art the Clown was such a captivating and menacing character, this decision worked here. The clown, as vicious as he was, carried this movie.
He got under my skin, and, as a horror fan, I’m glad he did. And when I realized that Damien Leone was not going to make any safe decisions with this one, that here was a time where evil was going to win out, I thought, this film is really working as an exercise in visceral terror.
And so while it may seem for a bit to be simply a gore for gore’s sake kinda film, it really isn’t. It really creates a cinematic monster in Art the Clown, this unstoppable insane killer.
This is not the first movie for Art the Clown. He first appeared in ALL HALLOW’S EVE (2013), another horror movie by writer/director Damien Leone, although the character was played by a different actor. I have not seen ALL HALLOW’S EVE, but after watching TERRIFIER, I intend to.
I enjoyed Leon’s work here, both as a director and a writer. TERRIFIER is chock full of suspenseful scenes, mostly due to the presence of Art the Clown, and the murder scenes are sufficiently bloody and grotesque. On the other hand, the dialogue and story are nothing outstanding.
Leone also wrote and directed a horror movie called FRANKENSTEIN VS. THE MUMMY (2017), inspired by
96 the Universal monster movies of yesteryear. I have not seen this one, either, but it’s now on my list.
Back to TERRIFIER. The crowning achievement here really is the creation of Art the Clown.
I would definitely see more movies about this character in the hope that somewhere down the line someone would be able to stop him, because it would take a very special and very powerful hero to take down such a murderer, and that’s a story I’d like to see.
I don’t usually rave about ultra-violent horror movies, but I thought TERRIFIER, in spite of its frequent bloody violence, fared better than most because it offered one of the creepiest clowns in the movies I’ve ever seen, and that includes Pennywise.
If you haven’t seen TERRIFIER, check it out. Be prepared to be creeped out and even grossed out, but I think you’ll agree that the presence of Art the Clown lifts this one to a level of satisfaction it has no business reaching otherwise.
97 Welcome to the HWA!
By HWAWeb | November 2018
James Chambers
The HWA extends a warm welcome to the following new and returning members who have joined in the past month. For any questions about membership, please contact [email protected].
Sean Woodard [email protected] Academic
Daniel Loubier [email protected] Affiliate
Janina Scarlet [email protected] Active
Sheila English [email protected] Affiliate
Beth Patterson [email protected] Active
Maureen Connelly [email protected] Associate
Travis Heermann
98 [email protected] Active
Tobias Wade [email protected] Active
ThomasJohns Richards [email protected] Supporting
Tatisha Booker [email protected] Affiliate
Jamie Dorn [email protected] Affiliate
Shannon Mahan [email protected] Supporting
Tyler Unsell [email protected] Associate
Julie Day [email protected] Active
Teresa Murphy [email protected] Supporting
Stephanie Ellis [email protected] Affiliate
Dustin Walker [email protected] Affiliate
David Haendler [email protected] Affiliate
Katherine Kerestman [email protected] Supporting
Scott Wheelock
99 [email protected] Supporting
Katherine Gomes [email protected] Supporting
Loura Lawrence [email protected] Supporting
Lee Harris [email protected] Associate
David Konkol [email protected] Supporting
Mary Webster [email protected] Supporting
Adele Gardner [email protected] Active
100 HWA Market Report #278
By HWAWeb | November 2018
Kathryn Ptacek
Nothing’s Sacred, Vol. 5—Jack of No Trades Productions; See Web site. “Projected Release Date: April 1, 2019.”
“Nothing’s Sacred is Jack of No Trades Productions‘ horror magazine. It is made up of original short fiction, poetry, articles, book reviews, two-sentence short stories, and comics. As said in the magazines’ namesake, nothing is off limits. The horror within can range from subtle to grotesque, psychological to physical, dark to full out terror so long as it is character driven. Theme-wise, Nothing’s Sacred is relatively open outside of distasteful stories of rape, the degradation and/or humiliation of women, and child porn of any kind.”
What we’re looking for:
Fiction: 3000 words maximum; pays 5¢/word.
Reprints: “Allowing reprints into Nothing’s Sacred is relatively a new thing for us. Nothing’s Sacred Vol. 4 saw the first reprint we’ve ever accepted into our layout. The situation was a special occasion, and made us wonder what else is out there. Therefore, we will accept reprint submissions but are limiting the number of spaces in our layout for reprints to 2 per magazine.” 3000 words maximum; pays 2¢/word.
Authors: “Make sure that you own the rights to your reprints prior to submitting your work. We will be checking.”
Articles: “Should be related to or about the horror genre.” 2000 words maximum; pays 5¢/word.
Poetry: “Three poems max per submission.” 250 words maximum/poem; pays $10/poem.
Two-Sentence Fiction: “Just as implied, these stories are extremely short. We will consider up to three submissions per author.” Pays $5/story.
101 Cartoons: “We first introduced comics into Nothing’s Sacred, Vol. 3 to include a humorous element to our layout. THIS IS AN ABSOLUTE MUST TO BE CONSIDERED! Cartoons should include elements of horror in them, and may be either a full-page or a banner-size (as you would find in your Sunday paper) strip.” Pays $90 (color), $55 (black & white)/cartoon.
Pay out for all material: “Upon publication.”
Rights: “Seeks North American Serial Rights (Reprint Rights where they apply), and Electronic Rights.”
Guidelines for Submission: “The following guidelines are intended to be used for all of the categories mentioned above. All submissions should be double-spaced and be typed in either Courier or Times Romans (preferably), 12 font. Submissions with multiple pages will be required to have page numbers after the first page.”
“To submit, E-mail material as an attachment with a description of the story in the body of the E-mail. Also, to ensure that submissions are not deemed as spam, please enter (Submission) after the name of your work in the subject field.”
“All E-mails should be sent to [E-mail address below].”
[E-mail: [email protected]; http://www.jackofnotradesproductions.com]. Deadline: 23:59 Est November 16, 2018.
ANTHOLOGY ROW
Untitled Bad Dream Anthology—Bad Dream Entertainment; See Web site. “For our first new anthology of short fiction after a two-year hiatus, Bad Dream is now accepting submissions of humorous dark fiction. Editor Brett Reistroffer is looking for original horror fiction with a strong sense of comedy, and most themes, subjects, and settings are welcome but standard genre tropes are definitely discouraged (vampires, zombies, werewolves, etc.). The comedic aspect can be goofy and slapstick or black and morbid, just as long as there are equal amounts of darkness and humor. Horror has always been fertile ground for that unique juxtaposition, and it’s exactly what we are looking for, so check out the specifics in the guidelines below and send in your best original horror humor.”
– “Stories should be between 1500 and 8000 words in length, a few hundred on either side is fine, but if you have something significantly longer then you should inquire first.”
– “Payment: 6¢/word and royalties, split evenly from fifty percent of the book’s gross sales profit.”
– “We’re not afraid of blood, sex, and bad words but we’re also not interested in purely exploitative work. If you’re using graphic material make sure it has a point and serves the story.”
– “Multiple submissions are allowed, but limited to a maximum of two. You can submit additional stories after receiving responses for current submissions.”
– “Simultaneous submissions are allowed, but please, please let us know as soon as possible if a submission is accepted elsewhere while still in our queue.”
– “We are looking for original fiction only, no reprints. First-time English translations are acceptable, however.”
102 – “Submissions should be in standard manuscript format, with contact info and word counts on the first page. File types should be in .DOC, .TXT, .ODT, or .RTF only. We don’t accept submissions in PDF format.”
– “Bad Dream Entertainment claims First Rights for electronic and print mediums (in English only). All authors included in the anthology will also receive royalties, split evenly from fifty percent of the book’s gross sales profit.”
– “Response times will be between two and four weeks unless the volume gets out of hand, and we will update everyone as necessary here [on the Web site] and on social media if that is the case.”
“Send submissions to [E-mail address below], and keep it creepy!”
[Submissions: submissions [at] baddreamentertainment [dot] com; http://wwww.baddreamentertainment.com]. Deadline: December 31, 2018.
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By HWAWeb | November 2018
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104