Took a little longer than I expected, but I finally finished this book tonight and, as promised, I’m writing a review.
Jumping back and forth between the late 1990s and 2019, The Dissonance follows Hal, Athena, and Erin, who, along with their friend Peter, discover that they have mysterious powers. Powers that, according to Peter’s grandfather, stems from the Dissonance, a magical energy that stems from the gap between our broken world and the world as it should be. They start learning how to harness their powers, but tragedy strikes during their senior year of high school. Twenty years later, they return to their old stomping grounds as forces begin to throw the world out of whack. And in the midst of it all, a great evil descends on their hometown, dragging a closeted gay teen in tow…
I’ve heard this book called a cross between The Magicians and IT, and while I’m only vaguely familiar with the first one, I have to say, the comparison to IT is apt. Not only does it hop back and forth between past and present, but Hamill does a great job showing the characters as hormonal teens trying to navigate friendship and their lives in the past, and trying to deal with cosmic shift and their broken lives and relationships in the present.
As for the story, it’s definitely more in line with dark fantasy than horror. For example, the Dissonants conference feels more Harry Potter than The Craft. Still, it’s got some horror elements. The magic itself, which requires tapping into the pain and misery of life, is pretty dark in and of itself, and plenty of aspects of the novel are of the cosmic horror vein.
If there’s one thing I would have liked to see more of, it might have been more of the character Owen. I get that the focus was more on Athena, Hal, and Erin, but Owen was a relatable character and I would have liked to see the kid have a bigger role.
Well, if there’s a sequel, that might be a possibility. The book does present the possibility of being the jumping off point for a shared universe, like The Hobbit was for Lord of the Rings, but with more in common with the Cthulhu Mythos than Tolkien.
But getting back to the review, I award The Dissonance by Shaun Hamill a 4.5 out of 5. It’s an engaging dark fantasy novel with great characters and worldbuilding and a magic system that feels right for this wrong world. Grab a copy, tap into your deep well of inner pain, and prepare for a twisty, magical ride through hell.
That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. Until next time, good night, pleasant nightmares, and only 61 days and one hour till Halloween!
So, I just heard that Fangoria Entertainment is going to make a whole bunch of movies based on Junji Ito’s work. They mainly will adapt stories from his collection Smashed, but I hope Remina or Madonna get adaptations as well, as they are great stories (see my reviews for Remina and The Liminal Zone, respectively). In the meantime, a new collection of Junji Ito stories got translated, so I’m here to review it.
As I say, Junji Ito can be hit or miss with me, but this one was entertaining enough.
My favorite story was probably “Town of No Roads,” which follows a teen girl who goes to live with her aunt after her parents and brothers react the wrong way to a stalker breaking into her room. As if that’s not stressful enough, her aunt’s home has been swallowed up by a giant structure where nobody has any privacy. It’s weird, but you really start to empathize with the main character and the themes of the necessity for privacy really do resonate.
Other stories really struck a chord with me, which was nice. “”The Ward” is a creepy body horror story about several women in a hospital ward who start acting funny, while “Blessing” is a tragic love story with a great twist in the end. “Mold” just grossed me out (as a homeowner, I felt the main character’s pain, especially when it comes to cleaning one’s home). And “Descent” was a weird but engrossing story with a great hook and a mysterious resolution.
Of the rest, they were mostly decent. The titular story, “Alley,” has a great idea, but I feel like there’s too much exposition, which is followed by an ending that could have been a few pages longer. “The Inn” has a great idea and some terrifying art, though the ending kind of puttered out on me, and “Smoker’s Club” has a great idea about tobacco and smoking that would put anyone off cigarettes, though it also could have used more pages for its story. And “Memory” has a great story, though not enough scary art for me (it still would make a great movie).
The only bad story was “Ice Cream Bus,” which other than a reminder about why stranger danger exists, wasn’t much better than its animated Netflix adaptation.
Overall, I think I would give Alley by Junji Ito a 3.8 out of 5. There’s some decent horror in there, so if you’re looking to get into his work, this might be a good choice for your second or third read of his (I recommend picking between Remina, Uzumaki and Tombs for your first and second reads).
That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. Until next time, good night and pleasant nightmares!
Okay, this isn’t the kind of barker I meant, but can you blame me for using it? The pup’s so cute!
As many of you know, my fellow HWA Ohio members and I had a booth at the Columbus Book Festival last weekend. A few days later, when I met online with my critique group, one of the authors who was at the festival with me mentioned that I was like “one of those guys at a fair. What do you call them? Oh yeah, a carnival barker!”
I did not disagree. After all, that’s what I was going for. Throughout the weekend, I was calling out to people who were passing our tent, trying to get them in and to check out our books. I must’ve introduced myself with “Welcome to the Ohio Horror Writers Association! My name is Rami Ungar, how are you today?” and called out “Come in, come in! We don’t bite…not unless asked” a thousand times. And you know what? That worked. People came in, they checked out our wares, and they bought stuff. By the end of the weekend, I’d managed to sell out.
I’m not trying to brag or anything. I’m just relating one of the hard lessons I’ve learned over the years of writing and doing events: people won’t just discover you and they won’t just gravitate towards you without good reason. My first few events, not wanting to make a fool of myself, I was mostly quiet and did not go out of my way to get people to buy my work. At most, I would wait for someone to get close or to make contact and just say, “Hi.”
The result? Not a lot of sales. Not a lot of new readers. I learned then that, unless you’re a big name like Stephen King (or if you’re at a paranormal convention, a well-known name in the community), you can’t just hope people will find you and show interest. You need to put yourself out there. You need to be a bit of a carnival barker.
This isn’t just my opinion. A lot of authors and a lot of articles have suggested that, at events, readers are more likely to get an author’s book if, unless they already know the author or their work, they are drawn to the author. In other words, if the author themselves makes a good first impression. If that happens, the reader is more likely to check out the author’s work, either by buying at the event or getting it online later.
I guess it’s a good thing I’m already a talker and I like to be the center of attention.
A picture of a barker from Wikipedia. I try to be more animated than this photo suggests.
Now, if you’re not the type who likes to put themselves out there like that, I have some good news. You don’t have to do this at events. Some events are better for networking than for selling books, so if you would prefer to interact with other authors and just talk to the occasional reader that comes your way, please do. And hell, you don’t even have to do events! If you prefer not to go out there, don’t. Stick to podcasts, or blogging, or YouTube, or just writing. Every writer is different, and every writer’s goals are different. If yours don’t involve putting yourself out there to sell books, don’t feel pressured to do so.
However, if you do go to the events with the intention of selling books, and if you put money down on the table to do so, I would put in a bit of work to ensure you get your investment back, plus returns. After all, that’s what worked for me.
Well, that’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I wanted to also go into some other things I’ve noticed help with book sales, but I think I’ll leave that for another post devoted entirely to that subject. In the meantime, I just want to let you know that I’ll be using this method of reaching people at events this coming weekend, July 26-28, at Motor City Nightmares in Novi, Michigan. If you’re available to come, I’ll be selling books and doing Tarot readings and would love to see you there. You can find out more from the website here.
And if you can’t stop by but still want to support me, or you’re still looking for your next scary read, check out my books using the button below. You’ll find most of my works there, including some free stuff. And if you like what you read,, please leave a review online so I know what you thought. Believe me, it helps me and it helps the readers that come after you.
That’s all for now, my Followers. Until next time, good night and pleasant nightmares!
My copy of Horror Movie, surrounded by some of the horror movies on my shelves. Because how could I not?
I was not a fan of Tremblay’s last novel, The Pallbearers Club (see my review here), but when I first heard of his new book and saw its cover, I wanted to read it! And when I got my copy from the library, I got even more excited. You can’t tell from the photo I included, but the pages have red borders, which coupled with the black cover, makes it look like a restricted video from the age of VHS tapes and Blockbusters. So, almost as soon as I finished reading You Like It Darker (see that review here), I started reading this.
Hoo-boy, did I get on a rollercoaster ride.
In 1993,* a small team of amateur actors and filmmakers come together to make a movie tentatively titled “Horror Movie.” However, tragedy strikes on the last day of filming, preventing it from ever releasing. However, scenes, stills and scripts from the movie have made their way online, and as many of the original cast and crew die under mysterious or tragic circumstances, an air of mystique gathers around the mysterious film. In the 2020s, a reboot is in the works and the studio brings on our narrator, who also played the original film’s villain the Thin Kid and is the only surviving member of the cast and crew, to both co-produce and reprise his role.
Thus begins a journey through the past and the present that will answer a question the narrator, and many of us, ask often: why do people do terrible and fucked up things?
First off, this novel is incredibly well-written. Tremblay takes the unique storytelling he used in The Pallbearers Club and applies it here like an art. Jumping between the production of the original film, the process of creating the reboot in the present, and the script of the original, you essentially get two different stories woven together. I have to applaud Tremblay for writing both a script for a very scary and fucked up film and then writing a very personal story around the script and the movie that was supposed to come about from it.
I also really liked the narrator, whose name I can’t really remember because I’m not sure if it was ever mentioned. It’s easier just to call him by his character’s name, the Thin Kid, and that sort of makes sense, as another major theme of this novel is the blending of reality and fiction. Where does our narrator end and the Thin Kid begin? Is there even a difference? It kind of reminds me of Perfect Blue,** one of my favorite horror movies, and how that movie explored how quickly reality and fiction can combine under the right circumstances.
Anyway, our narrator doesn’t have a high opinion of himself, but he’s likable. Once he commits to the movie, he commits to it–the character, the reputation of the film, and its reboot–even at the detriment to himself. Towards the end, I wondered if maybe he might be an unreliable narrator, because some of what he describes both feels like something he would do and something he might make up. It’s just amazing to read his story (which he’s narrating as an audiobook or podcast), and I had a hard time putting the book down.
If I have one thing I didn’t like, it’s that the foreshadowing sometimes worked against itself. Since the narrator is technically speaking to an audience that presumably knows about the history of the titular film, he refers to things that have happened and kind of expects his audience to know. However, the audience in the real world doesn’t, so once or twice, he refers to something that appears to be common knowledge and I’m like, “Wait, did I read that and forget? Or is it something we haven’t read yet that he’s alluding to?”
It probably did not help that I could not remember if he mentioned the narrator’s real name (I think it was David, but don’t quote me on that), so that only heightened my confusion.
All in all, however, Horror Movie is an excellent novel and well worth the read. On a scale of 1 to 5, I give it a 4.8. Horrifying, entrancing and full of twists, you’ll find yourself hanging on as you discover not only why people do terrible and fucked up things, but how much reality and fiction can blend in the worst ways. Just grab a copy and see for yourself!
*The year I was born, by the way. Coincidence? I think not!
**BTW, if you have not checked that one out, I highly recommend it.
Some of you may remember prior to COVID a rather unusual novel called A Cosmology of Monsters, about a family in the business of haunted attractions and the entities that seem to haunt them through the generations (see my review here). You may also remember my interview with the author, Shaun Hamill (which you can read here). Well, Shaun’s got a new novel called The Dissonance coming out soon, and I got him to sit down with me to discuss the new book and what went into writing it.
So, without further ado, let’s do an interview!
Rami Ungar: Welcome back to the blog, Shaun. Can you tell us what you’ve been up to in the past five years since Cosmology came out?
Shaun Hamill: Like everyone else, I’ve had a crazy few years! I’ve moved from Alabama to Texas (and then moved three more times to different living situations in the last 3 years). I haven’t written as much as I would have liked, but I managed to write The Dissonance, and I have just turned in another novel I can’t talk about yet.
RU: Tell us about The Dissonance. What’s it about, and what inspired it?
SH: The Dissonance is a dark fantasy novel (with a dash of horror), about a type of magic that feeds on negative emotions: pain, depression, and the like. The only people who can use it are usually “broken” in some way—traumatized or mentally ill or the like. The story focuses on a group of friends who discover this power as teenagers, and how it shapes their lives in good and bad ways. It was inspired during COVID, when I couldn’t see any of my friends in person. I missed them terribly, so I wrote a novel about friendship.
RU: Can you tell us a bit more about the novel’s themes and influences?
SH; As previously mentioned, friendship is a huge theme of The Dissonance. So is trauma, and pain, and regret. It was influenced mainly by Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and Lev Grossman’s The Magicians. Some reviewers are also comparing the novel to IT (it deals with a group of friends and has a split timeline between their adolescent and adult lives), so that’s in the mix, too!
RU: Nothing wrong about being compared to IT, especially when it’s favorable. So, do you think your writing style has changed at all since Cosmology?
SH: I’m not sure. When I started The Dissonance, I set out to write a more accessible book, with characters who were a little easier to love and root for. I also wanted there to be more action and excitement. Whether that means a change in style? I couldn’t say. Maybe I’ve gotten a little less pretentious? I’ll be curious to see what readers of Cosmology think.
RU: I’ll be sure to let you know. Now, I’ve noticed based on Cosmology and on the description for The Dissonance, but you seem to have a thing for cosmic horror. Can you tell us your thoughts on cosmic horror and what about it you like?
SH: Yeah, I’m a cosmic horror nerd for sure. I think it stems from growing up religious (although I’m not a believer anymore). I was always fascinated by the awe and wonder that came with believing in something bigger than myself, and when I discovered cosmic horror (relatively late, in my early 30s), I found something more in tune with my personal feelings about the universe: a dark wonder, and the sense that reality is bigger and more complex and strange than any of us can ever comprehend. The best we can hope for in this life is a peek behind the curtain. Weird fiction is all about that curtain.
RU: It also seems this book will be delving quite a bit into witchcraft and the occult. Do you have experience with magic and witchcraft, or did you do a bunch of research and then make up the rest?
SH: I have an ex who practiced a bit of witchcraft. I’ve partaken in a couple of rituals (which I found as boring as church), and have spent my fair share of time in wiccan shops, browsing books of spells and baskets full of crystals and whatnot. In The Dissonance I employ a little bit of that knowledge, but mostly stick to made-up stuff, where I get to make the rules. My novel doesn’t discount the idea that pagan beliefs are valid, but it doesn’t engage with them much, either.
RU: Changing gears a bit, in our last interview, you mentioned at one point cutting down Cosmology from 250,000 words to about 100,00. Did you have to do something similar with The Dissonance?
The cover for The Dissonance.
SH: Actually, it’s the opposite! I worked hard to turn in a draft of The Dissonance at about 100,000 words. When my editor bought the book, she encouraged me to open up the world and story, and we ended up adding almost 50,000 words to the novel. Just like the cuts were appropriate for Cosmology, I think the additions ended up helping The Dissonance. The early drafts of the novel were very fast-paced—a little too fast. We needed to slow down (just a little) and give the characters time to breathe and feel between the action beats. We needed to show them having fun in addition to getting into trouble. The resulting novel is almost 50% longer than Cosmology but I have yet to hear anyone complain about the word count, so I think we got it right!
RU: Before we wrap up, are you working on anything new and spooky right now? And do you have any exciting future plans?
SH: I just turned in my third novel (which I can’t really talk about yet). It’s definitely on the spooky end of the spectrum. I’m also in talks for a fourth book (which I also can’t talk about), and have given my agent outlines for two possible other novels. So I’m going to be quite busy for the next few years! Hopefully I’ll be publishing more than once every half-decade from now on.
RU: Final question: what are some horror stories you’ve read recently that you’ve enjoyed?
SH: I loved Rachel Harrison’s latest novel, Black Sheep, and Clay McCloud Chapman’s What Kind of Mother. I’m really excited for Gabino Iglesias’s House of Bone and Rain. I haven’t been reading as much horror recently (because of the fantasy edge of The Dissonance, that’s been most of my reading), but I need to get back into it!
RU: I hope you do! It’s an amazing genre, after all. And thank you again for joining us once more.
If you’re interested in checking out The Dissonance, it comes out July 23, 2024 and is available for preorder from most retailers. And if you want to follow Shaun Hamill, you can follow him using the links listed below.
I hope you’re as excited as I am to read this book, my Followers of Fear. And until next time, good night and pleasant nightmares!
I was not a fan of Stephen King’s last collection (you can read my review here). However, I am ever the optimist when it comes to King’s work, and the sound of his latest collection, You Like It Darker, got me excited. I mean, it even had a sequel to Cujo in it! Why wouldn’t I check it out?
And tonight, on the night before it’s due back at the library, I finished it. So, what did I think?
I think this is a much better collection and a finer example of King’s storytelling than If It Bleeds was.
The strongest stories in the collection are four of the novellas. “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream,” possibly my favorite of the bunch, is a tense thriller about a man’s life unraveling after he has a nightmare and he does a good deed based on that dream. Honestly, it’s hard not to fall in love with the lead and want to find out if things get better for him or go further downhill. “Rattlesnakes,” the sequel to Cujo, starts out slow but quickly becomes a freaky ghost story that I thoroughly enjoyed once it got going. “The Dreamers” feels like an updated version of HP Lovecraft’s “From Beyond,” and I would love to see a movie version of it.
As for the final novella and the final story of the collection, “The Answer Man,” it’s King’s fantastical literary style of storytelling at its finest, and (surprisingly) left me with a warm feeling in my heart.
As for the short stories, “On Slide Inn Road” is a fun tribute to Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (and delivers on the “darker” part of the book’s title), and “The Turbulence Expert” feels fresh while also like classic King. “Laurie,” which I’ve read before, is a fine story about grief and finding new life, and “The Fifth Step” and “Willie the Weirdo,” while not anything amazing, had some fun twists I enjoyed.
Unfortunately, the book has some duds. “Two Talented Bastids,” the opening novella of the collection, was a total letdown for me, which is sad because it had a strong start. The short story “Finn” felt like a crime thriller that never got around to thrilling anyone, and “The Red Screen” felt like it needed a few more pages to deliver on its premise.
However, like I said, You Like It Darker is a much better collection of King stories. On a scale of 1 to 5, I give this collection a 4.2. If you don’t mind the duds, you’ll probably enjoy this one, and feel like you’re reading one of King’s older collections again. So, if you haven’t already, go out and grab a copy.
In the meantime, I’ll be picking up my next read from the library tomorrow. It might even be my next review. And from what I’m hearing, it’ll be worth reading…
That’s right, it’s another sale! This is what happens when four out of my books came out during the same three month period!
So, if you’re unaware, Snake is the oldest of my published novels (as well as the longest at around 500 pages). The story follows a serial killer hunting mobsters in New York City. Think John Wick, Taken, and Friday the 13th got smooshed together into a novel.* And on June 10, 2024, this novel will turn ten years old.
Which, if you don’t have your calendar nearby, is a week from today.
And in honor of the occasion, Snake will be on sale from Amazon (and a few other places as well). If you would like to check out the story and for a great price, you can do so between June 10 and June 17! I’ll be sure to include links.
And if you like what you read, please leave a review for me to find. Positive or negative, I love reader feedback, and it helps me out in the long run as well.
Anyway, that’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. Until the sale next week, good night, pleasant nightmares, and–hold on, is that a masked killer right behind you? RUN!
*Fun fact: John Wick came out four months after this novel did. However, I was unaware of John Wick until maybe around 2015 or 2016, and I didn’t see any of the films until the third one was already on home media. I was really surprised by the similarities between the two works, but weird shit like that happens all the time (check out Ronald Malfi’s The Night Parade and then see which famous video game came out the same year to see what I mean). Now I use it to get people interested in the book. And you know what? It works!
The other day, I posted about my frustrations with the progress I was making in my career and how ParaPsyCon helped me realize what successes I was having and what progress I was actually making (you can check it out here). Now, I want to post about a revelation I had regarding one of my writer anxieties.
Every writer wonders about their work and worries the same thing: am I good enough? For fantasy writers, they’re wondering, is my work fantastical and exciting enough? For the romance writers, it’s something like, is my work enough to make your chest flutter and make you root for my characters? For the literary types, they wonder, is my work saying something profound about the human condition? (At least, I think that’s what they think. I could be wrong.)
And for horror writers, the majority of us wonder if our work is scary enough. And sometimes, that thought can be crippling enough to make us wonder if what we’re working on is even worth continuing with.
I almost had a moment like that last night. I’d just finished making excellent progress on the 3D Printer from Hell story* and was thinking of the scenes that were to come later. And then I had a thought: is this really that scary?
That thought made me pause. And yeah, I wondered if maybe it wasn’t scary enough. That maybe as I had it planned, it would be really weak sauce. That’s what I thought at that moment: could this story be weak sauce? Will it really leave a reader afraid like my early brushes with horror left me?
That thought scared me. But then I remembered something: horror isn’t just about scaring the pants off your reader. Sometimes, it’s about what you include in the story that makes it horror.
For example, there’s this one story I read in an anthology about a year or two ago. I can’t remember the title, but let’s call it “The Worst Vacation.” The story follows a family who go to this island for vacation, and just about every horrible thing imaginable happens while they’re there: they get ticketed for something rather minor, they watch a waiter get arrested because some blowhard didn’t like how he was being served and then have to watch the waiter’s kid, the daughter loses her eyeball when she tries to feed the local animals at the beach, etc. It’s just an escalation of bad events, and not once was I as a reader ever scared. I’m not sure many readers would be, though they might be appalled and grossed out at certain points.
However, it was still horror. The family was experiencing all these terrible things, and their reaction was definitely one of horror. A strong sauce horror story that was quite memorable to me. And this one tale isn’t the only example. Hell, there are entire subgenres like this! Quiet horror and grief horror, for example, don’t always aim to scare people, but to explore really dark issues of human life. And cozy horror, while it is a subject of debate, is still horror, even if it is keeping the horror at a safe distance from the reader.
So maybe my 3D Printer from Hell story won’t leave people shaking in their shoes. Maybe it will. However it turns out, it can still be strong sauce if the tropes are used right and the horror is conveyed in the right way. And while I’m writing it, I’ll be aiming to make it both entertaining and maybe even very scary. So long as people enjoy it and think at the end of the day, “Damn, that was a good horror story,” I’ll be satisfied.
That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I hope you’re having a wonderful day, and I’ll be seeing you all again very soon. Until next time, good night and pleasant nightmares!
*Which, BTW, I’m now calling The Shape of Evil on the suggestion of another writer. Given the subject matter, it fits. And it’s going to look awesome on a book cover someday!
So, it’s been more than a week since my last post. And I have some things I wanted to talk to you about. Problem is, none of them are enough for a blog post on their own, so I’m doing an updates post. Because let’s face it, those have worked before! Anyway, here’s what I’ve been up to lately:
I’m Writing about a 3D Printer from Hell
You know how after the Great Editing, all I wanted to do was work on some new stories and not edit for a while? Well, I’ve been doing just that, and have so far written one short story, one novelette, and two novellas. Only the short story has been edited and is being shopped around, while the rest are waiting on their second drafts.
The current project is what I hope will be a novella about a 3D printer from Hell. Most likely, it’s going to end up a novel and I’ll be like, “Rami, what did you do?” But if it ends up being that long, so be it. I’m going to care more about the quality of the words instead of the quantity of the word count (though that is important).
Anywho, right now this project, which doesn’t have a title yet, is still early in the first draft. I’m trying to work on it every opportunity I get, and I hope to get further along before too much time passes. After that, I plan on working on a few more (hopefully much shorter) tales. And after that? Well, I think I’ll go through editing all these stories and then finding some of them homes.
Ongoing projects
So, before you ask: yes, I am still planning on getting back to my mummy novel Crawler. It’s just that I wanted to work on a bunch of other stuff and not commit to another huge project for a while. Granted, that might have blown up in my face, with the 3D printer story possibly going the same route as The Pure World Comes (God, I was so naive to think that would be a novelette). But I still plan to get back to it before the end of the year and finish the first draft.
In the meantime, I’m also putting together two new collections. Yes, you read that right: two new collections. All I can say about them is that one will be made up entirely of novellas, and the other will be made up entirely of novelettes. How many in each, and which stories will be in it, I’ll let you know when the projects are a lot further along. But let me be clear: I am working on these, and will update you when it’s appropriate to do so.
Finally, I’ve also started research on a new essay. Won’t say what it is yet, but it’s going to be horror focused, and it’s also going to revolve around one of my favorite things. Like everything else, I’ll keep you updated on any developments.
Important anniversaries are coming up!
So, I realized yesterday that three of my books have anniversaries coming up and these are going to be important ones. First, The Pure World Comes will be celebrating its second anniversary since being released in paperback and ebook on May 10, 2024. Feels like it’s been out a lot longer, but yeah, I counted to be sure. Two years.
Then, Snake will celebrate ten years since release on June 10, 2024. Yeah, the big one-oh. Kind of snuck up on me, didn’t it?
And finally, on June 20, 2024, Rose will celebrate five year since it was first released. I know, I know. Hard to believe, right? It amazes me too that that book came out just before the pandemic!
With all these anniversaries, I’ll be doing something to celebrate each, so be sure to stick around. And if you haven’t read those books…well, if you need some reading material right now, go check those three out. They’re scary and awesome, if I do say so myself. You can check them out using my Book Links and Excerpts page, which is linked to the button below.
Well, I’ve been busy with HWA Ohio stuff. As a chapter, we’re really growing and getting noticed in all the right ways, so as Chapter Coordinator, I’ve been busy with that and making sure we all get more exposure and readers. With any luck, some of us may even be able to take our careers to brand new heights.
Also got some events I’ll be going to soon, which I am looking forward to (see my last post about those). Hope you’re looking forward to and maybe stopping by some of those as well.
I’ve been putting up a lot of stuff on my YouTube channel, including some writing advice videos I’m proud of. Definitely check those out and consider subscribing to my channel.
And…that’s about it. I mean, I could talk about work stuff, or the fact that it’s Passover, but I don’t feel like it. Also, it’s getting late, and I have to go into the office tomorrow, so might as well stop here.
Until next time, my Followers of Fear, good night and pleasant nightmares. I hope whatever you’re doing, it’s working out well for you.
So, I have a few new events I’ll be attending this year, as well as one I had to cancel. Thus, an update post. If you’re able to come out and see me, please do so. I would love to see you, and even sign your books or give you a hug if you want.
The first event on the horizon is actually this coming Saturday! HWA Ohio will be an official partner at the Ohioana Book Festival this Saturday, April 20th, 2024 at 10:30 AM – 5 PM at the Downtown Library in Columbus, Ohio. In addition to having several of our members there as featured authors, HWA Ohio will have a booth where we’ll be telling people about our chapter and what we provide for writers and readers. I’ll be volunteering at the HWA Ohio booth for most of the day, so please stop by if you can. Click here for details on the festival.
After that, guess what? I’m going to jail! ParaPsyCon will be occurring on May 17-19, 2024 at the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio. I’ll be selling books and doing Tarot readers both days, so please stop by and check it out if you’re in the area. Entry fee is the same price as a self-guided tour of a prison (ten bucks, if I remember correctly), and it’s an amazing place, so why not stop by, see the prison and check out one of the biggest paranormal conventions in the Midwest? Further details can be found on the ParaPsyCon website.
June I’ll have the month off, but then July gets busy. First, HWA Ohio will be having a booth again at the Columbus Book Festival.The festival will be taking place on July 13-14, 2024 at the Downtown Library and at Topiary Park in downtown Columbus, Ohio (don’t worry, one’s right in front of the other, so it’s not a long walk). We’ll be having a larger booth this year and likely more authors and books, so definitely come out and check it out. Further details can be found on the festival’s website.
And after that, I’ll have another big festival on the way! Motor City Nightmares will be occurring at the Novi Sheraton in Novi, Michigan on July 26-28. This is a huge horror convention, and has had horror luminaries like Bruce Campbell (Ash in the Evil Dead movies) and Kane Hodder (played Jason Voorhees four times) as special guests! And the lineup for this year is also looking pretty awesome, so I’m very excited to join this convention. Further details can be found on their website and Facebook page.
Unfortunately, I will not be attending the Indie Author Book Expo in Terre Haute, Indiana in August. Something came up, and I won’t be able to travel out that week. Sucks, but sometimes that’s just life. Apologies for any fans of mine in Indiana who were looking forward to seeing me.
And finally, HWA Ohio will be hosting a Super Saturday event on October 26, 2024 at the Downtown Library in Columbus, Ohio. Super Saturdays are events the library holds once a month to bring in more adult audiences for the library’s events. What exactly we’ll be doing is still not finalized, but we have a date and the library is excited to collaborate with us. More details will be available as we get closer.
And that’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I’ll do another update post when I have some more news to share. In the meantime, if you would like to attend any of these events, please do! And if you can’t stop by, please consider supporting me by purchasing, reading and reviewing my books. I’ll leave a link below for my Books page so you can check them out, including some free stories.
I especially hope you’ll check out Hannah and Other Stories, my new collection from BSC Publishing Group. Hannah has been out for six and a half months now, and I think there’s a good chance it’ll finally get a paperback edition, but it’ll need your help to accomplish that. So, if you like scary short stories–especially ones with ghosts, serial killers, or carnivorous horses–be sure to check this book out using the links below.
Until next time, my Followers of Fear, good night and pleasant nightmares!
Rami Ungar The Writer 