Archive for the ‘Progress Report’ Category

Is it just me, or is time moving so fast, it’s kind of crazy?

Anyway, as you’re likely well aware at this point, Symphony for Walpurgis is only three weeks away from being released! And if you’re not aware, Symphony for Walpurgis is my latest book, a collection of nine novelettes with a range of stories focusing on cryptids, malevolent spirits, and even a Jewish exorcism! And it will be releasing in exactly three weeks from today, on May 1st, 2025, AKA Walpurgis Night 2025 (for what Walpurgis Night is, click here).

To say the least, I’m really excited for this book to come out. Not only do I feel that the novelette-length story isn’t given enough love by publishers and readers (7,500-17,500 words, if you didn’t know), but I feel that these stories, some of which have been previously published and some of which are original, represent some of my best work and I’m looking forward to hearing what people think. Will they enjoy “The House on Lafayette Square,” which is my story about the Jewish exorcism? Or will people find “Mother of Spiders” and “The Parasite Man,” which both involve some literally skin-crawling imagery, terrifying?

Luckily, some of my advanced readers have already posted their reviews online, so I already have some idea on how people might feel about the book (one described the imagery in a couple of stories as disturbing, and another said it was a very imaginative book, which I appreciated). But, like every author working to get their stories into readers hands, I want more people to read my work and give me their thoughts.

And I hope those thoughts are pretty universal in agreeing that the stories are scary and that they like what they read.

I hope people read passages like this, and get chills up their spines.

Anyway, if you’re in the mood for a scary collection, if I’ve somehow persuaded you to check out Symphony, or you’d like to support me, I’ll leave links below the collection’s book trailer. You can read the reviews I’ve already gotten on Goodreads, or you can preorder a copy of the ebook. And don’t worry, more stores and a paperback edition will be available as we get closer to the release date.

And, after release day, if you like what you read, I would appreciate it if you would leave a review anywhere just letting people know what you think. Positive or negative, I love reader feedback, and it helps me out in the long run. Not to mention, it helps other readers out as well.

And that’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. Thank you for your support all this time and as we get closer to the release of Symphony for Walpurgis. I look forward to sharing this new book with you and hearing what you think. Until next time, good night and pleasant nightmares.

Was that an unseasonal chill in the air? Nope, it’s the warning that Symphony for Walpurgis will arrive in T-minus four weeks!

If you’re unaware, Symphony for Walpurgis is my new collection of novelettes, featuring stories of cryptids (“Famous”), malevolent spirits (“The Parasite Man”), and even a Jewish exorcism (“The House on Lafayette Square”). Yes, Jews have our own exorcisms, too. My parents tried to do them on me on and off throughout the years, but it never worked, so far as I can tell. Anyway, the new collection comes out on Thursday, May 1st, 2025, and today’s Thursday, April 3rd, 2025. Meaning we’re a month away from the book’s release!

I’m super excited for people to read this book. I tend to write stories that fall into the novelette range (around 7,500-17,500 words), but finding them homes are a challenge. Only so many presses and magazines accept novelettes, usually on the shorter side, and then the places that do accept them either only have so many slots available that competition is fierce, or they’re invite only. Hopefully this book brings out a bit more interest for novelettes. At the very least, people will be able to read a lot of them at once. Some of them have even been previously published, while the rest are original.

So yeah, I’m hoping to get a lot of people to read this book. And in the meantime, I’m doing everything I can to get people interested. Just this past week, I’ve been uploading graphics with quotes from the book’s stories, and I like to think people have been enjoying them, and even getting chills from them.

I mean, look at this one.

Brrrr! Spooky! I knew going for shorter, snappier quotes would be helpful.

Anyway, if you’re at all interested in a spooky collection this late spring/early summer, or if you’d like to support me, I’ll leave links below. Walpurgis is available to preorder as an ebook from a certain stores, but more formats and stores will be available as time goes on.

And if you like what you read, please leave a review. Positive or negative, I love reader feedback, and it helps both me and other readers out in the long run. In fact, I’ve already received some awesome reviews on Goodreads for Walpurgis, including a new one yesterday, and they’ve helped immensely. I’ll link to those as well.

That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. Until next time, good night, happy reading, and pleasant nightmares!

Time, for better or for worse, is moving along quite quickly. And that means we are a week closer to the release of my new collection, Symphony for Walpurgis!

For those of you who are unaware (though at this point, given how much I talk about it, I’d be surprised if you weren’t aware), Symphony for Walpurgis is a collection of nine novelettes I’m releasing on May 1st, 2025. The stories include tales of cryptids (“Famous”), malevolent spirits (“The Parasite Man”), and even a Jewish exorcism (“The House on Lafayette Square”). Yes, we Jews have exorcisms. Not often, but we do.

Here’s the blurb I wrote for the back cover:

What’s the difference between humans and monsters? Is there a fine line, or is it more gray and blurred? Rami Ungar, author of Rose and Hannah and Other Stories, explores this question in his latest collection, Symphony for Walpurgis. From legendary cryptids to malevolent spirits and from Ohio in the 1950s to modern-day California, readers will be treated to nine terrifying stories of the weird and macabre. So settle down and be prepared. For you have bought your ticket to Symphony for Walpurgis.

Neat, isn’t it? I think it gets the mood of the book across quite well.

Anyway, I’m very excited for this collection. Novelettes don’t have a lot of places you can submit to, and the ones you can often prefer shorter novelettes (for those who aren’t aware, a novelette is around 7,500-17,500 words). I tend to write stories in the novelette range, so I’m hoping if this book does well, more people will want to read and write stories in the novelette range, and maybe there will be more publishers for them.

At the very least, though, I would like this book to be successful. I really enjoyed working on these stories, about half of which have originally been published, and I want others to enjoy them. If I can, I would like to sell 500 copies within the first year. I’ll certainly work hard to make that happen.

Anyway, if you would like to check out Symphony, I’ll leave links below. It’s available to preorder now as an ebook, but there will be more formats and stores in time as time goes on. And there are even some early reviews, which you can find on Goodreads, also linked below.

And speaking of reviews, if you like what you read, please leave a review somewhere. Positive or negative, I love reader feedback, and it helps me and other readers out in the long run.

Also be sure to check out the book trailer I made. Is it the most amazing book trailer ever designed? But does it include hints of what’s in the book and gets its mood down perfectly like the book blurb? I like to think so.

That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I hope you’re as excited as I am for this new book. Until next time, good night and pleasant nightmares.

(For the first two quote filled posts, click here and here. You can also see all of them at once on the Symphony for Walpurgis page.)

Well, it’s that time again. As many of you know, I’ve been creating graphics with quotes from my upcoming collection, Symphony for Walpurgis, and posting them every couple of days. This is to hopefully generate some interest in the collection by giving people short previews into what’s inside. I usually go through graphics for all nine stories in just three weeks, then I make more. But first, I’m posting the most recent round of graphics here for you to enjoy.

Who knows? Perhaps you’ll see these quotes and be interested enough to want to read Symphony yourself.

I have to admit, finding the right quotes for these graphics, making sure I can fit the quotes in the graphic templates, and then finding imagery to match the quote, is not easy. In fact, a few times, it’s been kind of frustrating. You do not know how hard it is just to find a good demon image for “The House on Lafayette Square,” or the right quote to use from “Famous.”

Still, I’ve seen these graphics help attract readers, so I think I’ll stick with it for the next couple of weeks until the book comes out.

And in the meantime, if you’re at all interested in Symphony, you can preorder copies or read early reviews using the links below. The book comes out on May 1st, just less six weeks from now, and I’m very excited for people to check it out. I’m very proud of these stories, which include tales of cryptids, malevolent spirits, and even a Jewish exorcism! Yeah, those exist. They don’t happen often, but they exist.

And if you end up reading the book, I hope you’ll leave me a review. Positive or negative, I love reader feedback, and it helps me out in the long run.

That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I’ll probably be back soon, so be sure to keep an eye out. And until next time, good night and pleasant nightmares.

I’m at the point in my marketing plan where I get super annoying with reminders that I have a book coming out. But hey, can you blame me? If it gets one more person to read the book, then it’ll have been worth it.

So, if you’ve been living under a rock, I have a new book coming out on Thursday, May 1st, 2025. The book is a new collection called Symphony for Walpurgis. What’s Walpurgis, you ask? You can find out here. But back to the collection. This is a collection of nine novelettes, four previously published and five original, that I’ve gathered together because there’s just not enough publishers of novelettes out there these days. So, if you can’t find homes for them, make a home for them yourself and show the world how awesome they are!

At least, that’s what I’m hoping to accomplish, along with letting people read some amazing stories.

Here’s the back cover blurb for the collection:

What’s the difference between humans and monsters? Is there a fine line, or is it more gray and blurred? Rami Ungar, author of Rose and Hannah and Other Stories, explores this question in his latest collection, Symphony for Walpurgis. From legendary cryptids to malevolent spirits and from Ohio in the 1950s to modern-day California, readers will be treated to nine terrifying stories of the weird and macabre. So settle down and be prepared. For you have bought your ticket to Symphony for Walpurgis.

Sweet, right? And get this: the collection already has some reviews on it! Yeah, a couple of advanced readers posted their thoughts on Goodreads, and they really liked the collection. So much, in fact, they each gave it five stars! Considering that the book is not even out yet, that’s a really good sign of things to come!

And I really hope good things will come with this collection. I like sharing my stories with people, and I’ve noticed that short story collections tend to be very popular, especially at events. Maybe that’s because you’re getting several digestible stories in one package, rather than one gigantic story in a single package. If that’s the case, perhaps the release of this book will not only be well-received with readers, but will help me get closer to writing full time (that’s the dream, after all).

Careful, folks. There’s a lot of these beasties in one of the stories!

Besides, what horror fan could resist a collection featuring tales of several college-age kids waking up in a strange jail (“Blood and Paper Skin”); a teenage girl becoming an unwitting accomplice in a revenge plot using occult means (“Disillusionment and Trauma Sometimes Go Hand-in-Hand”); a Jewish exorcism (“The House on Lafayette Square,” and yes, Jews have exorcisms on occasion); a town filled with spiders and sordid history which is quickly catching up with the residents (“Mother of Spiders”); a Las Vegas performer who will do anything to make her mark on the world (“Famous”); an interview revolving around an unusual actress (“The Little Goddess of Horror”); a family under threat by multiple parasites (“The Parasite Man”); a young man who discovers a mermaid in his uncle’s basement (“Cressida”); and a campsite becoming ground zero for a new pandemic (“Natural Predators”)?

I couldn’t , that’s for sure.

And if you can’t, either, I’ll include links for the book, including its Goodreads page. Right now, it’s only available in ebook from a few stores, but more stores and a paperback edition will be available soon, so keep an eye out for that announcement.

And if you like what you read, please leave a review online. Positive or negative, I love reader feedback, and it helps me and other readers in the long run.

Thank you for your support, my Followers of Fear, and I look forward to sharing with you Symphony for Walpurgis. Until next time, good night and pleasant nightmares.

Pour the libations! Light the celebratory bonfires! Chant to the eldritch wonders that wait beyond our reality and offer them sacrifices! The sensitivity readers sent me their notes for The Shape of Evil! We are one step closer to my being able to pitch this baby at StokerCon in June!

Now, for those of you who don’t know, The Shape of Evil is a novel I wrote last year about a 3D Printer of Hell. I started it thinking it would be a long novelette or a short novella, but it ended up becoming a whole freaking novel of around 75,000 words. And as I got further along with it, the idea to pitch it to agents at StokerCon, which always has sessions for doing just that, came to me. So, for the past year, that’s what I’ve been working for.

And as part of that process, I had to find at least one sensitivity reader to look it over. You see, my protagonist is non-binary. And I, despite being bisexual, am only cisgender. So, I wanted to have someone who had firsthand experience look over my story and make sure I was being both respectful to the community and portrayed accurately.

As luck would have it, I managed to find two trans horror writers who agreed to look it over. And they both got through the second draft within days of each other, with the second one getting their feedback to me earlier today. This means I’m going to be ready to work on the third draft starting next month!

I’m incredibly thankful to my sensitivity readers for reading through the manuscript, finding issues and giving me their feedback, and doing so in such good time. I’ll do my best to incorporate their feedback and improve the manuscript. That way, when I pitch it to agents and editors, they’ll be that much more likely to want to help me find a home for it.

For now, though, I want to write a spooky short story inspired by Hamilton. Afterwards, I’ll start on the next draft.

That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I wanted to make sure you all knew that the next step in this book’s crazy journey is going to start soon, and I wanted to do it today, so I’m glad I got it done. Now, if you need me, I’m going to get ready to bed. Today I was totally drained, so I’ll need sleep if I’m going to get anything done tomorrow.

So, until next time, good night, pleasant nightmares, and be careful with your celebratory rituals tonight. Just Friday, I did one wrong, and my dad’s dog was turned into a cat. She turned back, but she’s still coughing up hairballs. Oops.

Yeah, I’m going to be extra annoying with this stuff for the foreseeable future. But hey, can you blame me? With a new book on the way, I have to do everything in my power to get people interested.

And that’s what these quote graphics are about. When Hannah and Other Stories was coming out the first time, these helped advertise the book far and wide. Obviously, I’m repeating this with Walpurgis, creating graphics for each story and releasing them three days a week on my social media.

Below are the latest round, which I’ve been releasing over the past three weeks. I hope they capture your attention.

I hope you enjoyed reading these. With these quotes, I made the fonts bigger so they were easier to read. With any luck, that will make reading them easier for people with vision issues.

If you’re at all interested in reading the previous quote graphics, you can check them out on Walpurgis‘s page on this website. And if you would like to check out the book itself, I’ll leave links below. It comes out on May 1st and is full of cryptids, malevolent spirits, and even a Jewish exorcism. Below is the blurb I’m using for the back cover.

What’s the difference between humans and monsters? Is there a fine line, or is it more gray and blurred? Rami Ungar, author of Rose and Hannah and Other Stories, explores this question in his latest collection, Symphony for Walpurgis. From legendary cryptids to malevolent spirits and from Ohio in the 1950s to modern-day California, readers will be treated to nine terrifying stories of the weird and macabre. So settle down and be prepared. For you have bought your ticket to Symphony for Walpurgis.

That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. Until next time (which hopefully won’t be another promotional post), good night and pleasant nightmares.

Saint Walpurga, an 8th-century saint who fought witches and whose feast day has inspired plenty of imaginations and plenty of fear.

You may have heard of Walpurgis Night, or a similar name, and wondered what it is, why it gives you such a chill, and how the heck you pronounce that name? With this blog post, I hope to answer a few of those questions.

First, the name. It’s pronounced “Wall-per-giss,” with the hard “g” sound, like “Garfield.” Important to get that out of the way first and foremost.

Second, what is this day? Simply put, it’s the feast day of Saint Walpurga (her name is also pronounced with a hard “g”), an eighth-century saint who was renowned for defeating pests, rabies, and witchcraft. Walpurgis Night, also known as Walpurgisnacht, Saint Walpurgis Eve, May Day, and Witches Night, is celebrated on her feast day, which begins on the evening of April 30th and continues through May 1st.

Celebrations for Walpurgis Night may include bonfires, doing various activities to ward off witches, and visiting Saint Walpurga’s tomb in Eichstatt.

Oh, and that part about witches? Yeah, Walpurgis Night is also believed in many places to be a night when witches meet for their semiannual sabbats. This is why it’s also known as Witches Night. Why? No idea, but I like to think witches either set their celebration day on Walpurga’s night in an act of defiance, or the Church put her feast day on the same date as when witches gather in hopes of weakening and fighting back against them.

And while its prevalence has fluctuated and changed over the years, Walpurgis Night’s influence has remained. It’s no coincidence that the Church of Satan was founded on Walpurgis Night 1966, and the very-separate Satanic Temple considers this day a solemn day to mourn the loss of witches, both real and accused, to superstition. In the movie Fantasia, the final sequence, Night on Bald Mountain, is explicitly stated to take place on Walpurgis Night, and in the anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Walpurgisnacht is the name of the most powerful witch in the show’s universe.

And now, the holiday is the inspiration for my latest collection, Symphony for Walpurgis, which I planned from the beginning to release around the end of April/early May. When I remembered a certain holiday occurred right around that timeframe…well, you can see why I did what I did.

And now we’re two months away from the release of Symphony for Walpurgis. This is my newest collection, containing stories of cryptids, malevolent spirits, and even a Jewish exorcism. If you’re interested, you can click on the links below to preorder or, if you click on the Goodreads page, read Walpurgis‘s first couple of reviews. Yes, there’s already a few reviews. Isn’t that awesome?

And if you do end up preordering the book and reading it, I hope you’ll leave a review. Positive or negative, I love reader feedback, and it helps me and other readers in the long run.

And with that explanation, that’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I hope you found this explanation helpful and are now interested in reading Symphony for Walpurgis. I, meanwhile, will do everything in the next two months to get more people interested in reading it. So, until next time, good night, pleasant nightmares, and happy countdown to Walpurgis Night/Witches Night. I hope you’ll celebrate with me when the time comes.

Good evening, humans. I hope you’re doing well. If you’re like me, you’re avoiding the Super Bowl (now if it was the Superb Owl, I would tune in). And I thought I would take this opportunity to share with you some updates on Symphony for Walpurgis, seeing as a lot has happened since I last posted about it. Which was…just six days ago? Damn, it has been a crazy week!

Anyway, for those of you who don’t know, Symphony for Walpurgis is my upcoming book, a collection of novelettes, some of which were previously published and others which weren’t. The book is set to come out on May 1st, 2025, meaning less than three months from now. I’m doing my utmost to get as many people as possible reading it once it releases. In fact, I’m hoping to sell 500 copies and get fifty positive reviews on both Amazon and Goodreads in the first year!

Anyway, let’s get into these updates, shall we?

Walpurgis has two reviews now!

It’s crazy to think, but Symphony for Walpurgis already has two reviews on Goodreads. And even better, both are five-star reviews! Both came from advanced readers and Followers of Fear, but they’re willing to criticize me if necessary. The most recent review, written by Louise Conway, starts with this:

Bravo! This might just be Rami Ungar’s best work yet. Offering tales of unearthly retribution, dark mysteries, vampires re-imagined and blood curdling entities, Symphony is a gloriously ghoulish anthology with something for almost every kind of horror fan.

“Best work yet.” I’m flattered. Of course, I aim to put out more and more work as time goes on, and to improve as well.

Anyway, this is good progress on my goal for fifty positive Goodreads reviews. I hope more of the advanced readers let people know what they think of the book, and that leads to plenty more readers when the book comes out. In the meantime, if you would like to read the full reviews, you can click below to check them out.

The author copies came in this weekend!

One of the most exciting moments for a published author is when the first batch of author copies comes in. That includes self-published books, and I felt that excitement this weekend when my author copies for Walpurgis came in. I designed the cover myself after a lot of trial and error, as well as the book’s back cover and interior. It was nice to see it had turned out so well!

And, being the kind of guy who likes to share every achievement, no matter how small, I filmed an unboxing video. Here it is, in all its cheesiness and beauty. Enjoy!

Hopefully, this is the first of many author copy deliveries. Like I said, five hundred sold copies in the first year, and most of those will likely come from live events. And I plan to find many homes for many copies.

The Book Trailer is Live!

Like with my last collection, Hannah and Other Stories, I sought to create a gripping book trailer for Walpurgis. This time, I wanted to have one out before the release date (that should have happened with Hannah as well, but life had other plans). And with a couple of hours of work this afternoon, I created what I think is an awesome book trailer for a collection of horror. Check it out.

Not bad, right? It’s nothing special, but I think it’s decent and conveys the horror of this collection well. If it gets even one or two people to read Walpurgis, I’ll be happy.

By the by, if you enjoyed these videos, please consider liking/commenting/subscribing. You know, all that usual YouTube shtick. You can find my channel here.

Book Quotes

One thing I learned from Hannah and Other Stories was how helpful releasing quotes from your book can be. Especially when you pair the quotes with interesting and relevant graphics. So, this time around, I’m creating graphics with quotes on them, and releasing them three times a week. Here are the first batch of quotes graphics, one from each story. Hope you find them exciting and interesting. They were fun to make.

I’ll post the next nine in a single post once they’ve been published on my social media. In the meantime, you can find each graphic as they’re uploaded on Walpurgis‘s page on this blog.

Final Word

Anyway, that’s all to say right now, my Followers of Fear. I’ll try not to overwhelm you with Walpurgis-related posts, though I do have to do my necessary advertising for it as we approach May 1st. And in the meantime, if you would like to preorder a copy of Walpurgis, I’ll leave links below. More stores and formats will be made available as we get closer, so keep checking back if you don’t see a store or format you prefer.

And if you like what you read, my Followers of Fear, then please leave a review. Positive or negative, I love reader feedback, and it helps me and other readers out in the long run.

Until next time, good night and pleasant nightmares.

Oh, happy day! It’s still only three months away, but Symphony for Walpurgis has its first review! And holy crap, it’s a five-star review! Everybody start dancing!

No surprise, this review, which I discovered on Goodreads yesterday, comes from an ARC reader. And not just any ARC reader, but from Priscilla Bettis, who is not just a fellow author, but has been a Follower of Fear for several years now. Since…I want to say before Rose came out? Anyway, she got the ARC of Walpurgis the other day and apparently got through it in a week before leaving a review.

Don’t be fooled, though: just because she’s a longtime Follower of Fear, doesn’t mean Priscilla isn’t willing to criticize a story when she dislikes it or finds something problematic. I should know, she’s beta read a few of my stories. So the fact that she gave Walpurgis five stars means she must’ve really liked it.

Here’s some of what she wrote:

Symphony for Walpurgis is a collection of novelettes, all horror. There are themes of money-power-arrogance (I should just say “corruption), abuse of nature and one another, grief, and (my favorite) insects.

Dragon bats … not a story title, but a thing. One of the best creatures Rami’s ever created. You’ll find them in “Disillusionment and Trauma Sometimes Go Hand-in-Hand.”

In “Blood and Paper Skin,” Grey, a college-aged man, and a group of his friends run into deadly trouble when out to buy drugs. It’s scary and tense, and Ungar makes it easy to like Grey and cheer him on. But there are twists. Other characters besides Grey come to the forefront. This is the twisty-ist story in the collection, great fun!

“The House on Lafayette Square” is a Jewish demon-exorcism story with freaky-scary descriptions. The story takes a left turn somewhere, so instead of everything being tied up in a neat bow, I was left DISTURBED at the end, maybe because I am a mother IRL. (Kudos to Ungar for that.)

Wow. I disturbed her. For a horror writer, that’s a serious compliment. Especially from someone who’s a big fan of horror.

And that’s only half the review! You should see the rest of it. In fact, I hope you do. Because I’m aiming to amass fifty (hopefully positive) reviews on Amazon and on Goodreads in the first year alone, so this is a good start! So, if Priscilla’s review gets you even a little bit interested in reading the book, then I hope you read the rest and then go preorder the book.

Here’s the back cover blurb for the book, which is out May 1st:

What’s the difference between humans and monsters? Is there a fine line, or is it more gray and blurred? Rami Ungar, author of Rose and Hannah and Other Stories, explores this question in his latest collection, Symphony for Walpurgis. From legendary cryptids to malevolent spirits and from Ohio in the 1950s to modern-day California, readers will be treated to nine terrifying stories of the weird and macabre. So settle down and be prepared. For you have bought your ticket to Symphony for Walpurgis.

I’ll leave links below in case you want to check the book out. And if, after the book is released, you read it and like it (or don’t), I hope you’ll leave a review. Positive or negative, I love reader feedback, and it helps both me and other readers out in the end.

Anyway, that’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I’ll be sure to check in with you guys when I have updates on Walpurgis or on anything else going on in my life and/or in my writing career. So, until next time, good night and pleasant nightmares!