Archive for Editorials
Happy Thanksgiving
Posted by: | CommentsThese are strange times. The economy is stumbling and looking like it might take a leap off a ledge. The publishing industry is going through a technological transition that will eventually change the way we access and read printed matter. The unfolding social media structure is making communication to strangers easier than ever and making it more difficult than ever to talk to people face to face.
It’s all scary.
As the unknown often is.
But this is a time to be grateful for all the good things in our lives. We’re fortunate to live in a country where we can create our own lives, even in the tough times. We’re fortunate that people are still reading and that accessing books is easier than ever. We’re fortunate that we have more ways of keeping in touch with those we love than we’ve had before.
Take this day to be grateful for the little things in your life, for your family, the food in your stomach, the morning sunrise, the unlimited possibilities that today and tomorrow and the day after might bring.
Thank you for all the time you spend on this site. I hope you feel it’s time well spent. I hope we’re entertaining you, informing you, and making the genre ever more accessible for you. And I hope you won’t hesitate to drop us a note and let us know how we do an even better job.
Thank you for your loyalty to Hellnotes.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Dave
Support Our Advertisers
Posted by: | CommentsPlease take note of the publishing companies that help support Hellnotes. This blog is provided for free due to the support these publishers lend it. In return, we hope you’re supporting them.
These are uncertain times in the publishing and book marketing industries. There are new shifts occurring all the time and no one has a clear picture of how everything is going to play out. However, many people believe small press publishers will play an important role in providing high quality hardcovers and paperbacks in the future, long after the New York publishers have disappeared.
Support our publishers today so they can continue to deliver the best of horror in the future.
Bad Moon Books
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The Wild Hunt
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Jared Sandman’s Blogbuster Tour 2011 runs from July 1st through August 31st. His novels include Leviathan, The Wild Hunt and Dreamland, all of which are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords. His latest book, The Shadow Wolves, has just been released. Follow him on Twitter (@JaredSandman) and be entered to win one of several $25 Amazon gift cards. See rules at Jared Sandman for eligibility.
My second book, The Wild Hunt, is a holiday horror novel, which for the average person may sound like an oxymoron. After all, isn’t Christmas a period for sharing and caring? But if one peeks under the tinsel and trappings that modern society has placed on the holiday, one finds darker roots. Strip away Jesus, Santa and the rest to reveal its pagan origins. Long ago the yuletide was a time of darkness and ghosts, when the deceased returned to visit loved ones from beyond the grave.
Obviously this is fertile territory for terror and gave me the opportunity to combine my love of the cursed-town-with-a-dark-secret story with my interest in mythology, specifically Nordic and Germanic. When I first came across the notion of a spectral hunting party, I saw its potential to be used for horror.
The Wild Hunt itself is led by the Lord of the Hunt, a fearsome figure who commands the Furious Host, a murderous posse of the dead and the damned. These ghoulish horsemen are only allowed entrance to our world during the twelve nights of the yule, from Christmas Day through the fifth of January. While the Lord of the Hunt has been utilized before in a few high fantasy books, no author had yet used the Wild Hunt or the Furious Host as malevolent antagonists in a horror novel.
I weaved personal Christmas traditions into the narrative as well. When I was growing up, each Christmas Eve my family gathered for dipapegreta. At midnight we partook a pauper’s feast of stale bread and a modest hunk of meat. This was to remind us of those less fortunate around the world who needed the help and charity of strangers like us. As I researched the book, I couldn’t find anything about this particular custom. While not certain of the spelling, I’ve started to suspect it’s not a European practice at all.
At its heart The Wild Hunt is about secrets, both those we wish to keep from others and those we try to hide from ourselves. And though we can evade them for a time, no one’s able to outrun his or her sins and secrets forever. History has a way of catching up with people, and nowhere is that truth more evident than in the Minnesota town of Wodanfield.
Christmas horror novels have been written before, from over-the-top (Robert Devereaux’s Santa Steps Out) to tongue-in-cheek (Jo Gibson’s Slay Bells). One of my all-time favorite stories, A Christmas Carol, epitomizes the holiday. Dickens’s classic has become the yardstick by which all other Christmas books are measured. While his is a heartwarming ghost story of redemption, mine showcases homicidal revenants for whom there’s no chance of salvation.
Summer Scares 2011 – Reminder
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Just a reminder. The Summer Scares Book Review Project is up and running. Originally proposed by Dylan at Monster Librarian (he’s the one who keeps it going), the book review project teams up a handful of horror related web sites all offering a variety of horror book reviews for readers to enjoy for free.
This time out, our very own Sheila M. Merritt reviews The Prodigy by Noel Hynd. Rolf Geiger is a rock star among classical musicians: young, handsome, gifted and possessed by genius and in love with a beautiful woman. But when Isador Rabinowitz, the greatest concert pianist of the 20th Century passes away, his ghost lingers long enough to threaten everything Rolf has ever loved or ever wanted to be.
Below the review, you’ll find links to other reviews provided by other horror web sites. All for your reading enjoyment.
Here’s where to get started: The Prodigy
Apologies
Posted by: | CommentsOur apologies for our recent absence. It’s been a crazy week, but everything’s been worked out and we’re back again. We’ll make a couple of new posts tonight and be back to our regular scheduled tomorrow.
Thank you for your patience.
Take Your Child To A Bookstore Day
Posted by: | CommentsThis was passed on to me by Paul F. Olson, and I wanted to pass it on to you. This Saturday, December 4th is the very first Take Your Child To A Bookstore Day. What a wonderful opportunity to share the joy of reading with a child. The doors that open in the lives of those who are turned onto reading early in life are many. Here are just a few.
1. Reading is an active mental process
2. Improves your vocabulary
3. Improves concentration and focus
4. Builds self-esteem
5. Improves your discipline
For a more comprehensive list of the benefits of reading, follow the link below. Call your friends and tell them that this Saturday, you are taking a child to a bookstore. If you don’t have a child, maybe there’s a parent you know who would love to go along with you to your favorite bookstore.
Whatever Happened to You?
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By Scott Nicholson
Haunted Computer
[Editor's Note: this is a guest post as part of Scott Nicholson's blog tour. Enjoy!]
“Whatever happened to you, man?”
That innocent question came from my friend Mark Justice, early in our podcast interview last year for Pod of Horror. I was silent for a moment, considering the implications of the question. To many outside observers, particularly those who primarily knew me from my six supernatural thrillers that came out in mass-market paperback, it looked like I had disappeared. I haven’t listened to Mark’s recording yet, but I was probably a little uneasy and defensive, as if I had somehow failed at something.
Of course, if you measure me as a “horror writer,” because of what was stamped on the sides of the books, then maybe I had disappeared and failed. There are plenty of reasons, both internal and external, but the truth is, even during that era that I now consider Act I of my career, I was writing in many different formats and genres. Those paperbacks were just the most visible artifacts of the era.
Even the “horror” thing seems a little odd to me. In the last few years, I have become less interested in the more unsavory elements of the genre, particularly the violence commonly associated with the graphic movies that come out under the banner. I see the genre as broad enough to hold both supernatural suspense and brutality, and I’d never stop anyone from getting the reading material they want, as long as it doesn’t directly harm someone. But I want more than a cheap thrill.
So what happened to me? Well, life changes, career changes, passion changes.
I’ve been working on comic books, screenplays, and children’s books, as well as some mystery, fantasy, and humor. Some of it is scary and has paranormal elements. Some of it is so unlike what people think of as a “Scott Nicholson book” that they probably won’t believe I wrote it. Which is exactly how I like it. Something like As I Die Lying is billed as The Worst Novel Ever Written. New York turned it down 117 times, just like in the book. And now it is out. “No” didn’t work. The book happened.
The era has changed so much that getting published in mass-market paperback is nearly the worst possible way to reach readers, and certainly one of the most time-consuming, clumsy, and least rewarding. And readers are now paying $8 or $9 for the privilege, which seems unfair for a disposable pulp product that was designed to be carried in a purse or back pocket.
So the new era means I can publish everything, and I can do whatever I want without worrying about branding or platform or market or genre label or store category or all the other publishing considerations of Act I. All I have to worry about now is you.
If I give you what you want, you can give me a few bucks. Not much in between us.
What happened to me? Forever Never Ends, a revision of my 2003 paperback The Harvest, is now in the author’s preferred edition. Speed Dating with the Dead. Drummer Boy, a coming-of-age story about the misfit kid in all of us that just happens to use supernatural elements.
These days, I just want to leave something lasting for my kids, important messages and lessons that will help them deal with the world. Sure, the world is scary. But it’s also a world where you follow your dreams, and you move on from people who hinder or darken the dreams.
More than three years after my last mass-market release, I have more books out than ever before, all available around the world at any time. I’m working on multiple translations to get stories to more people. Three years after I looked dead, I am shambling back like a zombie with a typewriter, cooking up a witch’s brew of strange fiction that has me giggling, disturbed, and satisfied, yet eternally hungry for more all at the same time.
What happened to me?
Everything.
Read me and see.
[Editor's Note]
Scott Nicholson is author of The Red Church, The Skull Ring, and 10 other novels, five story collections, four comics series, and six screenplays. A journalist and freelance editor in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, he often uses local legends in his work. This tour is sponsored by Amazon, Kindle Nation Daily, and Dellaster Design.
To be eligible for the Kindle DX, simply post a comment below with contact info. Feel free to debate and discuss the topic, but you will only be entered once per blog. Visit all the blogs on the tour and increase your odds. Nicholson is also giving away a Kindle 3 through the tour newsletter and a Pandora’s Box of free ebooks to a follower of “hauntedcomputer” on Twitter. And, hey, buy his books and put him in the Top 100 and he’ll throw in another random Kindle 3 giveaway. Thanks for playing. Complete details at: Nicholson Blog Tour
