I didn’t think I’d complete a new story this month, what with all the traveling. But somehow, I pulled it off. And without sacrificing any lives or limbs in the process, might I add. Good for me.
“Agoraphobia” is a short story I started before I left on my trip to Iowa and South Carolina earlier this month. The story follows a man with severe agoraphobia and social anxiety, to the point he never leaves his home. Which is a problem, because he lives in hurricane country and one’s bearing down on his area, forcing him to have to consider evacuating with everyone else. And that gets a bit more complicated when it appears the storm lets something into his house. Something that aims to do him harm.
So, this was pretty different from my normal fiction. It ended up being more literary horror than what I originally intended. Even so, I think it came out pretty well. Whether or not it’s good enough to publish is anyone’s guess, but I think with some feedback from the right beta reader, it could improve considerably.
Also, fun fact: I actually finished this story late Tuesday night. But during the writing, I started writing the story with a particular idea for the second half, only to change that idea midway through writing the first draft. So during these past few days, I’ve been going through it to cut out the parts that were written when the goal was the original ending.
Anyway, I’m going to see if I can find a beta reader for “Agoraphobia.” After that, I’m going to likely start work on my next story. Yes, that’s right, I already know what I’m going to write next. Let’s hope that story will be worth something when it’s done as well.
Until next time, my Followers of Fear, stay safe, avoid summoning demons into your home, and pleasant nightmares!
From left to right: Monica Ware; Harlie “Harlie Quinn” Jones; myself; Charles Naylor; and Joleene Naylor. Photo taken by Joleene’s brother, Chris Harris, offscreen.
This morning I received a message from the mother of Harlie Jones, the teenager who joined us for the investigation. Apparently Monica was filming the dowsing rods session, but unlike mine, there was a lot of static and white noise in her recording. And she was using a cell phone, too. Not saying this is a ghost or definitely paranormal, but it is strange and unexplained.
If Monica ever posts that recording of the event online, perhaps some intrepid editor with a better grasp of digital editing than you or me can find something within the static and white noise. Perhaps an electronic voice phenomena (EVP)? Or an odd shape in the static?
Speaking of strange and unexplained, let’s start Part 2 of the recap with some unexplained weirdness. After dinner in town and after taking the above photo in front of the house, we reentered the house. And because of the house’s history, I thought it was a good idea to go through the house with a poker to make sure there wasn’t any killers hidden in the structure (fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…). All was normal until we reached the children’s room on the second floor. And realized the door to the closet, the one we’d locked Joleene in temporarily and which we’d left open when we’d left, had closed on its own.
Here’s a video clip of our reaction to finding that. BTW, the guy in the Hawaiian shirt is Chris Harris, Joleene’s brother.
So yeah, that happened. And we’re still not sure how that happened. The second-floor air conditioning unit is in the parents’ room at the other end of the floor, and there’s no way the breeze from that could’ve pushed the door closed. That, and there was no breeze or draft up there. So how did it happen?
As it was getting late, we decided to do one more dowsing rods test, this time in the attic of the house, where the killer supposedly hid while waiting for the family to return. This time, we got Josiah Moore to answer our questions. And…the results were unexpected. Turn up the volume on your computer or phone to hear the full audio.
So if you watched the whole thing, Josiah Moore somehow made a dog outside the house bark. I’m not sure how a spirit can be in two places at once again like that, but I’ll go with it. What do I know about the afterlife?
Now that I think about it, maybe Josiah was answering, and it was one of the other spirits setting off the dog. His wife, for instance.
Also, some weird things happened when I asked about the killer. Josiah said his spirit was still with them, but then flip-flopped on whether the killer was in the room with us. Assuming that the rods aren’t manipulated by tiny movements in my hands and arms (and the copper cylinders around the rods are supposed to prevent that), why the change? Did the killer’s spirit only manifest in the room then? Or is it just a residual haunting? Not the spirit of a person, but a spiritual imprint or recording that, under certain circumstances, gets played back? That would be my guess, though as I said, I’m no expert.
Soon after that experiment, and some discussion with Joleene and the others, I recorded one final video. This time, a vlog in the children’s room about why it was so quiet in the house.
If you didn’t watch that video in full, I speculated the reason why the house wasn’t more active was because the Moores and the Stillinger girls only did enough “haunting,” so to speak, to let us know they were there. I also included Joleene, Charles, and Chris’s observations regarding the house feeling “creepy” and whether or not people were there.
Soon after recording that, I went to bed. Monica left at some point because she had work in the morning, and Chris went home as well. Harlie was told she could go back to the Naylor’s at any point she wanted, but she ended up staying the whole night, as did Charles, Joleene and I. And while nothing directly out of a horror movie happened, some weird things did occur:
On my end, I often found myself waking up in the middle of the night with my fingers interlaced on top of my chest. Not only is that unusual for me to sleep like that, but it’s also similar to how the Moores were posed after death by the killer. That, and at one point I thought i heard a whispered conversation, which I now believe was coming from the closet in the downstairs bedroom. However, at the time I woke up, around 4:30 in the morning, I wasn’t sure where it was coming from. I even poked my head out into the main living room to see if anyone was talking, but nobody was. Harlie, who had been sleeping on the couch, noticed me there and confirmed that nobody had been speaking near her later when I asked about it.
Speaking of Harlie, she had some experiences of her own: as she told me that morning, while she was sleeping on the couch, she felt something like a finger trace down her back. Yeah, creepy. She turned over to avoid being touched like that again, especially since she was alone in the room. Not too long after that, she saw me poke my head out.
And some time during that early morning, she saw a shadow figure walk from the door into the kitchen towards the stairs. Yeah, she saw that! I’m so jealous.
Maybe it’s because she’s been around the same age as the children haunting the house both times, or maybe she’s born for ghost hunting. Either way, Harlie could do this as a hobby, if not a career.
And if you’re wondering what Joleene or Charles saw, they say they didn’t have any experiences. At least none that they noticed.
I survived the Villisca Axe Murder House!
In the morning, we woke up and figured out what had happened to us (or hadn’t happened). We then got our stuff together, made sure we left the house in a state similar to how we left it, did a sage burning to ensure that nothing attached to us and followed us home, and returned the keys to where we were told. Not too long after that, Chris gave me a ride back to Des Moines for my flight to South Carolina. Thus ended the investigation into the Villisca Axe Murder House.
So what are my final thoughts on the Villisca Axe Murder House? Well, I do believe it’s haunted. I do think the Moores and the Stillingers are still living there, with residual energy from the killer. And I think that the Moores and Stillingers prefer to keep to themselves. They’ll let you know they’re here, but unless you’re a kid like Harlie, they’ll only let you know in the hopes you’ll leave them alone. They suffered at the end of their lives and stuck in the house in the afterlife. Can’t be easy having a bunch of random people appearing in the house at least once a week.
Still, I recommend you visit if you want. Daytime tours are available, and of course if you’re willing to go the extra mile, you can stay overnight. Depending on the how the spirits are feeling and your luck, you might catch a thing or two. Hopefully not an axe to the head, though.
And with any luck, you might also run into Fish the cat, a friendly stray who likes to hang around the house and with the people staying there. Charles spent a lot of time with her and she spent some time on my lap, as you can see.
Me hanging with Fish the cat.
That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I’ll be back to post on other stuff, including the South Carolina part of my trip, sooner than you think. Until next time, pleasant nightmares!
From left to right: Monica Ware; Harlie “Harlie Quinn” Jones; me; Charles Naylor; and Joleene Naylor. Photo taken by Joleene’s brother Chris Harris, offscreen.
You’ve been waiting patiently for this post. Now here it comes. My recap of our amateur investigation of the Villisca Axe Murder House! Or at least part one of it (what can I say, a lot happened in two days!).
Now, a little refresher for those of you not up on your macabre American history. In June 1912, the Moore family–Josiah Moore, Sara Moore, their three sons and daughter–plus two friends of their daughter were murdered overnight at the Moore residence with an axe. The crime is currently unsolved and is Iowa’s oldest cold case. The house where the murders happened still stands, and is available for tours and for overnights, and is reputed to be haunted.
The Villisca Axe Murder House has been on my list of haunted places to visit since 2015, and my friend/colleague Joleene Naylor lives right by the house, so it was inevitable that I would someday visit. And when an opportunity afforded itself earlier this year, we reserved the house for a night with the hopes of experiencing paranormal activity.
Before we visited the house itself though, Joleene and Charles showed me around their hometown of Villisca. And I have to say, it’s a beautiful little town. There’s a central square where most of the town business and activity takes place. Some buildings are closed down, but others are in the process of being remade into new businesses, even in the midst of a pandemic. What really surprised me, though, was the business on one of the main streets.
Yeah, you’re seeing that right. That’s Needful Things, as in the shop from the Stephen King novel of the same name. Trust Leland Gaunt to find a town with dark history to set up shop in! Joleene, if you and Charles are reading this, your family better be prepared to save Villisca from itself!
After that, we headed out to the town cemetery to see the actual graves of the Moores and the Stillingers, the two girls who were murdered alongside the Moores.
Front entrance to the Villisca Cemetery.
The Moore family tombstone.
The Moore children’s tombstone. Many people leave toys and, for some reason, coins on the graves.
Me at the Stillinger girls’ graves.
Yeah, sobering reminder that the only reason this house is known is because of a grizzly murder. One involving six children. Doesn’t stop me from wanting to find ghosts and interact with them, let alone the ones in that house, but it’s something to think about before you go into that house.
We also passed by the Senator’s House, pictured below. Named after its famous former owner, Senator Frank Jones, who was rumored to be involved somehow in the murders. It’s a beautiful old house, though one with a history. Which might explain why it’s currently unoccupied, if I remember what Joleene and Charles told me.
The Senator’s House
After seeing those sights, we went through the suburbs of Villisca, allowing me to see my first view of the Axe Murder House, and Joleene’s beautiful home, featured below. I loved seeing the many homes in Villisca. Most of them are beautiful Victorians, the kind of home that I would love to live in (no surprise there). And apparently it’s very affordable to live in Iowa, which tempted me to buy a house or at least put down a down payment. I had to really think about that before I did, though.
Hilariously enough, Joleene said many people prefer the ranch houses, which I saw fewer of but were present in the neighborhood. I don’t know why. Yeah, Victorians are a lot of work to maintain, but they have such beauty and history!
Now, onto the investigation of the Axe Murder House! Joleene, Charles and I arrived a little before four o’clock, and our guide came by a little while later. And after I signed the papers and set up my new GoPro, we got started on the tour, which you can find in this video.
Yeah, I figured out how to turn the video off. And I don’t know if you noticed, but there are a ton of coins around the home. I know the parents’ room was rather dark, owing to my GoPro not having night vision, but they were there too. We think that might be from people hoping the ghosts will knock the coins off surfaces or move them. Nothing like that happened while we were there, but other stuff did.
More on that in a bit. First, let me make a few observations about the house. As I said, it’s a lot smaller than I expected. But it differs in other ways from expected. I think part of me expected it to be like the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast, recreated to look very close to what it looked like back in the day, though with a few modern amenities. In actuality, it’s been mostly preserved in the same state it was in when the house was turned into a museum. In addition, the house is also full of toys, dolls and other knickknacks. It feels more like it was decorated to be more pleasing to the spirits living there, especially the children. And you know what? I kind of like that.
Also, it’s not a bed and breakfast, and the only amenities are the air conditioning units on both floors.
After the tour guide had left and we got settled into the house, we decided to pass the time waiting for our two other companions for the night, Joleene’s friend Monica Ware and her stepdaughter Harlie Jones–the little girl mentioned by Joleene at the end of the video–by doing a dowsing rods session in the girls’ room. You know, the room where those two girls were killed and where a dude stabbed himself a few years ago?
Here’s that video for your viewing terror.
We cut the session short because Monica and Harlie arrived and we wanted to get them up to speed. After another quick tour through the house, during which Harley refused to check under the bed where, as a toddler, she saw those “weird kids,” we had a little fun locking Joleene in the upstairs closet.
Yeah, we’re still laughing about that one a week later. Especially now it’s on the Internet forever.
After the fun and games were over though, I somehow managed to convince Harlie to do a dowsing rods session in the girls room downstairs. I figured that since she was around the same age as the older girl, Lena Stillinger, and had seen the kids’ spirits when she was younger, she might have better luck than me in communicating with the spirits. And although she was a little too freaked to actually ask the spirits to manifest (understandable, I guess), she did a very good job drawing them out and asking questions.
Forgive how dark the video was. We were working with what daylight we had, and it appeared brighter when we were filming. Also, if you’re wondering why we didn’t explore the basement of the house, it’s because while we could access it, the door needed repairs, and we didn’t want to worsen that.
After that session, Joleene’s brother Chris, who took the photo at the top of this post, arrived. We then locked up the house and left for dinner in town, unaware of what would occur while we were gone.
But that will have to wait until Part 2 of my recap.
That’s Part 1, my Followers of Fear. I’ll hopefully have Part 2 up very soon. Until next time, pleasant nightmares!
Some of you may remember I reviewed the novel Perfect Blue: Complete Metamorphosis, the inspiration for the anime horror film I’m a huge fan of. Turns out the novel had something of a sequel, an anthology of tales by the same author, Yoshikazu Takeuchi, about idols being stalked by obsessive fans. I’ve been meaning to read it forever, but only just got my paws on a copy recently. Hoping it would compare well to the original novel, I read it in about a night.
Um…I’ve read better.
The anthology has three stories inside, a short story called “Wake Me From This Dream;” a novella called “Cry Your Tears;” and a novelette called “Even When I Embrace You.” Yeah, they all sound creepy just from the titles. However, the quality ranges from story to story.
“Wake Me From This Dream” follows one fan’s strange experience when he actually gets to be with his idol (after a fashion). It’s kind of creepy in how it approaches its premise, as well as hard to look away until the end. The story actually reminds me of Stephen King’s quote about short stories, about it being a kiss in the dark from a stranger. It’s especially true of this story, though the author seems to confuse social anxiety and laziness in a less-than-helpful way.
“Cry Your Tears,” the longest story, is a standard celebrity stalker story. Guy is obsessed, in love with his favorite singer; his idol is creeped out by his intrusion into her life; a bloody climax ensues. Meanwhile, our heroine whines about how hard her life is. Like I said, it’s standard and doesn’t really do anything to pull itself away from the other standard stalker stories.
“Even When I Embrace You” is probably the weirdest story: a new idol singer who isn’t even sure being an idol is what she wants to be as an entertainer is pursued by a guy in a bunny costume. The premise is interesting, I’ll give it that, and it’s nice to see a heroine who’s a bit more rounded and doesn’t mind fighting back when she has to. However, the supernatural element to the story isn’t well thought out, and the bunny costume just sounds like another impractical movie killer costume.
On the whole, Perfect Blue: Awaken From a Dream is probably best left to the die-hard fans of the original novel and/or the movie. On a scale of 1 to 5, I’m giving it a 2.3. Outside of that first story, the rest feels run of the mill and uninspired, though they are well-written.
Yeah, not the best book. But I did get an idea for a novel from something the author said in the afterword, so that’s a plus.
Until next time, my Followers of Fear, stay safe, pleasant nightmares, and STOP TRYING TO FIND OUT WHERE I LIVE! I mean come on, do you know how dangerous that is? You might as well walk into the tiger enclosure at the zoo (and you’d probably have a better chance of survival while there).
I’ve never reviewed a true crime book on my blog before. As you well know, I tend to specialize in horror of the fictional variety. But for a while now, since first hearing of the Cecil Hotel (which made one of my lists of haunted places to visit) and the death of Elisa Lam there in 2013, I’ve wanted to learn more than what I could glean from a ten minute YouTube video or from reading the Wikipedia page. And earlier this year, someone finally released a book about the case. Despite mixed reviews, I decided to buy a copy, and read it over the course of my vacation.
Here are my thoughts.
Gone at Midnight focuses on the case of Elisa Lam, a Chinese-Canadian student who disappeared in early 2013 in Los Angeles. Several days after her disappearance is reported, she is found dead in one of the water tanks of the infamous Cecil Hotel, a location known as “The Suicide” for its history of violent deaths and even having serial killers as residents at certain points. The incident is only made weirder by the release of footage from a hotel elevator showing Elisa acting strangely on the night she disappeared. Author Jake Anderson traces Elisa’s path over the last two years of her life, as well as how the case took a viral life of its own with websleuths on the Internet and the many problems with the police conclusion on the case.
I have to say, Anderson does a very good job of writing a convincing narrative. The book could easily have gone into the deep end a la The Mothman Prophecies by John Keel, with talk of synchronicity, paranormal happenings at the hotel, and theoretical physics, among other subjects. However, he keeps the narrative on track, only bringing up the weirder aspects as they relate to the case of Lam’s death and his own investigation into the case as a journalist. Anderson also does a terrific job of laying out the various problems with the police’s conclusion, and offers several alternative possibilities about what may have happened.
His reconstructions of what Lam may have been thinking during her final years (something I’ve found in a lot of true crime I’ve read), based on her many blog posts, also has an eerie authenticity to it. And his examination of the websleuth community, the pros and cons of the movement and how it all relates to Lam, is quite interesting. I wouldn’t be surprised if this book is used later for a sociological study into websleuthing.
There is one major criticism I have, and it’s one I share with a lot of other critics of the book: Anderson spends a lot of time on his own mental health. And while in some places it’s relevant to what we’re reading about, at other times it’s distracting. I understand why he did it: like Lam, the author has his own mental disorders, and his struggles strengthened the kinship he felt with Lam, despite having never met her. I too feel a strange kinship with Lam: not only was she a little older than me when she died, I also have my share of mental struggles, and enjoy writing and blogging like she did, among other things.
However, as I said, it’s distracting at times, and I feel like Anderson’s struggle with his mental state, while relevant, should have been kept in a foreward or afterward to the book, or maybe even in an essay published separately from the book.
All told, Gone at MIdnight: The Mysterious Death of Elisa Lam by Jake Anderson is as of this moment the definitive book on the Lam case, and deserves to be so. On a scale of 1 to 5, I’m giving the book a 4.3. After reading this, I’m going to be doing a bit more research into the case, but Anderson might have me convinced on his take on the Lam case.
Grab a copy, take a deep breath, and jump right in. You’ll find yourself on a roller coaster that may, as it did for me, hit close to home.
That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I’m finally back from my trip, so I’ll be posting quite a bit over the next two weeks (especially since I’m quarantining myself to make sure I didn’t catch anything). Keep an eye out for more reviews, breakdowns of the paranormal activity I encountered, the places I visited, updates on my writing, and so much more.
Until next time, stay safe and pleasant nightmares!
For those of you who are unaware, Slasher is a Canadian-American TV series that’s like American Horror Story, with a different story and cast every season, but more bent towards slasher horror. I’ve reviewed the first two seasons (see my reviews here and here), and have enjoyed watching the evolution of the show from a so-so derivative AHS knock-off to a very thrilling and bloody murder mystery in the second season. And while it took me a while to get to it, I finally got around to the third and final season. And what a season it was!
Subtitled Solstice, the story begins with the murder of Kit Jennings, a bisexual party boy who is violently murdered at his apartment building by a masked murderer known as the Druid. A year later, all the residents living at the apartment building at the time of the murder are still living there, and start to die under horrific and bloody circumstances. As the police rush to find the returned Druid killer, the apartment residents will have to watch their backs. Because everyone has a connection to Kit, everyone has a secret, and everyone is a target.
I don’t know if the third season was intended to be the final season, but in a way, I’m glad it was. There’s no way they were going to top this season.
For one thing, I love how they manage to take these diverse characters, flesh them out to make them feel real, and then weave a narrative around them. It could have easily come across as hard-to-believe, or silly, or dumb, but the writers made it believable and truly thought out every aspect of the story to make it thrilling. I also like how the emphasis on this season was on connections and community. There’s a lot of commentary on how people are united and divided in a community, both online and offline, people can be. You have white supremacists living next to Muslims, straight couples living by LGBT families, caring people living beside monsters. All that gels together in a way that feels organic and believable, and I loved it.
And speaking of the cast, I don’t think I’ve ever found a horror story where I wanted so many despicable characters to get murdered! The white supremacist; the white supremacist’s prejudiced, slutty daughter; the housewife who believes sharing everyone’s pain across her gossip vlog is real journalism;* the creepy teenager who thinks bringing up people’s trauma is funny. Each one of them is written and played so well, and I only hope I can portray such characters so well in my own work.
Finally, this season contains some of the most brutal kills in a slasher story I’ve ever seen. Kid you not, I cringed more than I normally do with these kinds of stories, and that’s saying something. If you decide to check this season out, be prepared. This season goes the limits.
If there’s something I didn’t care for, I would’ve liked to see more of protagonist’s, Saadia Jalalzai’s,** parents and family. They leave for a trip at the beginning of episode one and then are pretty much gone from the season. I honestly would have enjoyed seeing a bit more of them and their reactions to everything that occurred within the course of the season.
All in all though, Slasher‘s third season is a gory, terrifying delight for any slasher fan. On a scale of 1 to 5, I’m giving the season a 4.7. Get on Netflix, settle in for eight episodes and, if you live in an apartment building, thank whoever that even your worse neighbors probably aren’t as bad as the ones in this show.
That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I wanted to get one more blog post out before I left on my trip tomorrow, and I’m glad it was this one. Don’t know when my next one will be, but I’m sure whenever it is, it’ll be the first of several. And in the meantime, if you’re in Des Moines this weekend, come by the Valley West Mall for the 5th annual Indie Author Book Expo. I’ll be selling books and doing Tarot, so I hope to see you there!
Until next time, stay safe, beware of machete-wielding maniacs, and pleasant nightmares.
*BTW, if I ever get as addicted to my online following as that woman or some of the other characters in that show, please break my phone and slap me silly. I’ll need it.
**And yes, I was reminded a bit of my character from the Reborn City series, Zahara Bakur, but I’m pretty sure they just share an archetype.
Today is a very special occasion. Yes, it’s Father’s Day, and I’ve already put something out on Facebook about that. But on a personal level, it’s important to me because one year ago today, on June 21st, 2019, my novel Rose was released. It was my first novel with a publisher, and a story I spent more time on than I had any other story, so it was a huge deal seeing it come out.
And since then, quite a lot has happened. Reviews, the audio version, readings and book events, COVID-19, and so much more. And today, June 21st, 2020, I’m celebrating the first anniversary of the book.
For those of you who don’t know, Rose follows Rose Taggert, a young woman who undergoes a stunning transformation into a human/plant hybrid. As those around her react to her transformation, some aren’t all they seem to be, leading to a desperate fight for survival. It’s a dark, Kafkaesque fantasy-horror story, and it’s been well-received by readers, averaging a 4.5 stars out of 5 on Amazon (and that’s just the US site).
Obviously, I’m doing quite a bit to celebrate the one-year anniversary (besides breaking out the beer, I mean). First off, there’s a sale for Rose going on right now, and I’ll get into that more in a bit. But also, as many of you know, I invited readers to submit questions for a Q&A I would be filming and posting to YouTube. I filmed that video a few days ago, and it premiered this morning (which I slept through despite my best efforts. God, I was tired). If you would like to check out the video, I’ve embedded it down below.
What did you think? I did a few new things with this video, including adding background music at certain parts and filming the video in small sections so as to make filming and editing a bit easier.
Anyway, I hope you’ll join me in celebrating the one-year publishing anniversary of Rose. As I said, and as this nifty little banner from Castrum Press, Rose‘s publisher, makes clear, the book is on sale. Specifically, the e-book is on sale through Tuesday. So if you would like to download the e-book, now’s a really good time to do it. Of course you can always check out the paperback and audio formats, those are still available as well.
And if you do end up reading Rose, please leave a review and let me know what you think. Positive or negative, I love reader feedback, and reviews help me out in the long run by encouraging new readers to maybe check out the book.
That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I’ll leave links down below for those who want to check out Rose. In the meantime, I’ll hopefully have a few posts out later this week not related to Rose but still just as interesting. Until then, happy reading, stay safe, and pleasant nightmares!
Don’t worry, this is only the second-to-last post to remind you this is on the way. I promise.
Many of you already know this, but the one year anniversary of my fantasy-horror novel Rose being published is on June 21st. If you’re unfamiliar with Rose, it’s the terrifying, Kafkaesque horror story of a young woman turning into a plant creature (and that’s just the start of her problems). And with the one year anniversary just around the corner, I wanted to do something special to mark the occasion. That’s why I’m hosting a Q&A on my YouTube channel. And guess what? You, the Followers of Fear, get to submit the questions! That’s right, you!
All you have to do is send an email to my email address, ramiungar@ramiungarthewriter.com, with your name, where you’re from, and up to two questions. Send it in before noon on Wednesday, June 17th, and your questions will end up in the video.
Not only that, but if you’re from the US or the UK, you may be eligible to win a download code for the Rose audio book! Doesn’t that sound like reason enough to enter?
Anyway, you guys have a week, so better start thinking about what you want to ask. I have a busy day ahead of me, so I’ll check in with you all later.
And in the meantime, if you haven’t read Rose yet but the above description and that beautiful cover makes you want to, I’ll post the links below. Or you can buy a signed copy from yours truly by sending me an email. And if you do read the book, please let me know what you think in a review. Positive or negative, I love reader feedback, and it helps me out in the long run.
Until next time, my Followers of Fear, pleasant nightmares!
And I’m back to this again. But then again, consistency and visibility are the keys to marketing. I think.
So if you’re unaware, my novel Rose was published nearly a year ago, on June 21st, 2019. The story is a fantasy-horror novel that follows a young woman who wakes up in a greenhouse, only to turn into a plant creature. As those in her life react to the change, some of them are not who they seem to be, leading to a horrific fight for survival.
It’s weird, it’s scary, and it’s one-hundred percent me.
As I said, the one-year anniversary of Rose‘s publication is June 21st. As that’s a big milestone with any book, let alone with my first novel with a publisher, I’m doing something special to celebrate: a Q&A on YouTube, with the questions submitted by you readers! You can send up to two questions to my email address, ramiungar@ramiungarthewriter.com, with your name and where you’re from. And if you’re from the US or UK, you could be eligible for a download code for the Rose audio book!
Just get your questions in before June 17th, 2020 at 12:00 PM and your questions will be included in the Q&A.
That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I look forward to receiving your questions, especially since I’m still taking a break from writing after finishing The Pure World Comes, and could always use something else to capture my attention.
Also, if you’re interesting in reading Rose, I’ll include links down below. Or you can send me an email for a signed copy sent directly from me to you. And if you do read the book, leave me a review and let me know what you think. Positive or negative, I love getting feedback, and it helps me out as an author in the long run.
Until next time, stay safe, pleasant nightmares, and if you find a sword with a blade the color of the night sky, let me know. It’s probably cursed, and I could use a weapon like that.
Well, I didn’t think I could do it. But I did. At almost exactly 10:45 PM on May 31st, 2020, I finished the latest novel from my twisted imagination, The Pure World Comes.
If you aren’t aware, The Pure World Comes is a story I started writing back in April. It’s a culmination of all my love of and research into the Victorian era. The story takes place in 1894 and follows a maid who goes to work at the estate of a mad scientist. It’s part historical fiction, part Gothic horror, and part gaslamp fantasy (a subgenre I need to write an article about one of these days), with some slight elements of science fiction. All in one crazy story.
And with this story, I’ve actually broken a few personal records. First off, with Toyland back in March, this makes two novels finished in a single year. That has never happened before. Not to mention I wrote this novel in less than two months, another record. And today, I finished the novel by somehow getting forty-five hundred or so words down in one day. Yeah, forty-five hundred words. And none of these records I expected to beat until I beat them.
Am I bragging? Sorry about that. I just thought I’d mention them.
Anyway, onto the page and word counts. In terms of Microsoft Word pages, 8.5 inches by 11, with double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman font, the novel is 214 pages. And, in terms of words, the novel is 59,333 words. Yeah, I know I used to say novels are sixty-thousand words or higher, but it’s recently come to my attention that most publishers and contests put the cutoff from novella to novel at around forty thousand words. Therefore, I’m caving into peer pressure just this once and will designate this a novel.
So, what’s next? Well, normally I would celebrate the completion of a novel with a huge party. Mead, pizza, heavy sugars, a movie or several episodes of TV. But it’s late, and tomorrow I have a busy morning, so I’ll delay the partying till tomorrow. After that, I might take some time to recharge creatively before I attempt so much as another short story.
In the meantime, I’ve already sent the first draft of The Pure World Comes to someone who has agreed to take a look at the first draft and give me feedback. With any luck, they’ll give me some advice which will allow me to eventually get this story published.
So glad to finally finish this story, a distillation of my love of Victorian England.
I sense there are great things on the horizon.
That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. Remember, there’s still plenty of time to send in a question for my YouTube Q&A for the first publishing anniversary of my novel Rose. Just email a question with your name and where you’re from to ramiungar@ramiungarhtewriter.com by June 17th at noon, and your question will show up in the video. And if you’re from the US or UK, you may win a download code for the audio book for Rose.
And of course, if you want to read Rose but don’t want to go through Amazon or Audible, I’m selling signed copies directly to readers. Send an email to me, and we’ll discuss the details.
Until next time, my Followers of Fear, stay safe and have some pleasant nightmares.
Rami Ungar The Writer 