Posts Tagged ‘scary stuff’

Well, it took nearly a week, and the pages still aren’t linked yet (jeez Amazon, get your act together!). But it’s here. The paperback version of Rose is finally available. And not a moment too soon, if you ask me.

For those of you who don’t know (though at this point, I’m not sure there’s anybody reading this blog who doesn’t know), Rose is my fantasy-horror novel that was recently released by Castrum Press. I started it as a college thesis project and spent five years editing and rewriting it. The result is this novel, which is summarized down below:

Rose Taggert awakens in a greenhouse with no clear memory of the past two years and, to her horror, finds her body transformed into an unrecognizable form.

Paris Kuyper has convinced Rose that they are lovers and as Paris could not bear for her to die, he has used an ancient and dark magic to save her from certain death.

But the dark magic Paris has used comes at a price. A price which a terrible demon is determined to extract from Rose.

As Rose struggles to understand what is happening to her, she must navigate Paris’s lies and secrets; secrets that Paris will do anything to protect.

Pretty cool, right? And while it’s only been out less than a week, there’s already been a couple of reviews (I’ll post about those when there are a couple more to showcase). So far, people have been enjoying the book. And now that the paperback is out, hopefully more people will be able to.

So if you wanted to read Rose but were waiting for the paperback, the link is down below, as is the one for the e-book. And if you do decide to read the book, I hope you’ll let me know what you thought after you finish. Positive or negative, I love the feedback I get from reviews, and they help me out in the long run in so many ways.

As to which page to leave your thoughts on, I’d do whichever one you bought a copy of until the pages are linked (hopefully in a few more days).

Rose-Paperback

Rose-Ebook

And while I still have your attention, if you missed What’s Write For Me with Dellani Oakes yesterday, here’s the link so you can listen. On this podcast, authors get together and talk about their new books, as well as writing and their genres. It’s a great show with excellent writers and I would love for you to listen and maybe discover your new favorite book or author.

Plus we somehow managed to work the Avengers movies into the show, so it’s worth a listen just for that.

What’s Write For Me

That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I hope you have a good time if you decide to pick up Rose. So until next time (most likely Saturday, when I’ll post a new review), good night, happy reading, and pleasant nightmares!

As I said in my last post, I’m participating in a couple of podcasts to talk about and promote Rose. The first podcast, Arm Cast Podcast with author Armand Rosamalia, has just gone live. And I absolutely loved listening to it. Well, I loved talking to Armand and recording the podcast. He was a friendly guy and I think we hit it off.

Sadly, my voice still sounds kinda awkward and is full of pauses and hesitations and the repetition of “um” when recorded. That’s just how it is. It never sounds like that to my ears when I’m speaking, but maybe that’s just because I’m hearing it and you’re not me.

Anyway, I’ve hopefully embedded the podcast below. If it’s not embedded there, I’ll include a link so you can go to the website and listen there. But if it is there, please press the “Play” button and listen away.

Once again, that was me talking with author Armand Rosamalia on the Arm Cast Podcast, brought to you by the Project Entertainment Network. If the embedded link didn’t work, here’s the link to the website. And thanks again to Armand and the Project Entertainment Network for having me. It was a lot of fun and I’d like to do it again someday, if possible.

Arm Cast Podcast Link

Did that work? Good.

Also, tomorrow at 4 PM I’ll be on the What’s Write For Me podcast with my good friend and colleague, Dellani Oakes. We’ll be joined by Maya Tyler, a paranormal romance author, and Julia Byrd, a Gorthic romance writer. Here’s the link for that show below. Obviously, I will post the link again tomorrow about a half hour before the show gets underway, and I’ll post a link afterwards, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t post several reminders about it (I’m obsessive that way).

What’s Write For Me Link

I hope you enjoy listening to both podcasts and they interest you in Rose and anything else we’ve written. Goodness knows I have fun on these things.

And speaking of Rose, if you haven’t checked it out yet, please head over to the Amazon page and consider getting a copy. Yeah, we’re still trying to figure out why Amazon hasn’t loaded the paperback version yet, but the ebook’s there, so definitely check it out if you’re able to. And if you feel like doing so afterwards, please let me know what you think. Positive or negative, I love reviews and feedback, and I’d love to hear yours.

Rose Link

That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. Until tomorrow, pleasant nightmares!

Let me preface this review with a disclaimer: I’ve never been a fan of the Child’s Play franchise. I saw the original Child’s Play when I was too old to be scared of Chucky, and I never bothered to see any of the sequels. So I was not among the many people who raged at the thought of a redesigned Chucky, a new origin story for the character, or the concept of a reboot in general. However, I knew that there was a good chance this would fall under horror remakes we all wish we could forget would ever make. So I braced myself, bought a ticket, and went in.

Child’s Play follows Andi, a young deaf boy with trouble making friends. His mom finds him a used Buddi doll, a cross between your Alexa smart product and the worst of the uncanny valley, as an early birthday present. Unfortunately, neither of them realize that this particular doll was sabotaged by a disgruntled factory worker, and has all the limiters taken off. The result is a psychopathic stalker unhealthily obsessed with a little boy. And he’ll stop at nothing to make sure his best buddy stays his best buddy. Especially when he gains access to the network.

Okay, first off, I’m just going to say it. In what world does ANYBODY want THAT version of Chucky in their home? Give the original design its due, at least it looks somewhat adorable, something your child would want to play with. Take it from the guy who has a doll collection and his favorite is kind of creepy, this doll looks too creepy for the average family, let alone something people would allow into their home and pretend is their best buddy while at the same time handing control over their home devices.

There’s this thing called the suspension of disbelief. Don’t go too far with it, or nobody will believe your story.

Yeah, I wouldn’t trust this with my devices. Why would anyone?

And now that that’s out of the way, let’s just say it. Even if you can forgive all the changes from the source material, the Child’s Play remake is not very good. For one thing, it’s predictable. We’ve seen this story, the doll that comes to life and becomes too attached to its owner, again and again. Beyond adding the element of a doll connected to the cloud and the Wi-Fi and everything else, there’s nothing new to add. If you have a checklist for this kind of trope about what to expect, you can check every single one off and rate it as average at best.

I also disagreed with some plot choices. The worst was with Andi’s mom, played by Aubrey Plaza. She seems caring, but at the same time she’s like, “I could care less and want to go back to being a carefree teenager.” And then, in a scene where Andi displays some behavior that seems disturbing, she instead…takes him to work? How about a hospital to get his head looked at?

Oh, and talk about a waste of Mark Hamill. I totally forgot that was Luke Skywalker/arguable one of the best Jokers ever playing Chucky. The robotic voice mutes the actor’s distinct voice, making you forget who’s behind the character.

Was there anything good about this film? Well, the cast is okay. They’re not trying very hard, but they convince me anyway. Some of the sweeter, more heartfelt moments are decent at giving you the feels. And some of the moments of horror and dark humor are enough to terrify and gross you out. Especially with one scene in the basement.

But all in all, the Child’s Play reboot is a sad attempt at revitalizing a slasher franchise. On a scale of 1 to 5, I’m giving it a 1.8. Even if it somehow is a success at the box office (which, with a ten million dollars budget, could be done in a few weeks), it might not get a sequel just based on how bad it is. Only go if you don’t mind wasting two hours of your life.

Thank God it wasn’t a bad Friday the 13th reboot. Can you imagine how disappointing it would be if that happened? Oh wait, that did happen! And it’s still a shitty piece of filmmaking courtesy of Michael Bay’s toilet. That’s right, I found another opportunity to trash the Friday the 13th reboot! And I’ll keep trashing it until a better (or worse) Friday the 13th film is released, mark my words!

Pop the champagne! Or in my case, open up the apple-pie flavored honey mead. As of today, Rose is available for purchase!

So for those of you who don’t know, Rose is a story I started working on in 2014 as a college thesis project. Over the past five years and several rewrites and drafts, I’ve worked on and off trying to make Rose worthy of publication. Fifteen months ago in March 2018, Castrum Press accepted what was then Rose’s third draft for publication. Four rewrites/drafts later, and today the book was made available on Amazon.

Well, the e-book is, anyway. We’re still working on getting the paperback on there (Amazon is quirky like that, unfortunately). Don’t worry, I’ll post when the paperback is on the site.

And for those of you who are wondering what Rose is about, the short version is that it’s about a young woman who’s turned into a plant creature (and that’s just the start of her problems). The final draft of the long version can be found on the back of the book and on Amazon and goes like this:

Rose Taggert awakens in a greenhouse with no clear memory of the past two years and, to her horror, finds her body transformed into an unrecognizable form.

Paris Kuyper has convinced Rose that they are lovers and as Paris could not bear for her to die, he has used an ancient and dark magic to save her from certain death.

But the dark magic Paris has used comes at a price. A price which a terrible demon is determined to extract from Rose.

As Rose struggles to understand what is happening to her, she must navigate Paris’s lies and secrets; secrets that Paris will do anything to protect.

How does that sound?

And as I said, if you’re interested in checking out Rose, you can find it on Amazon in Kindle format, with the paperback version to come later. Just click this link. If you’d like to read a bit first before starting, here’s an excerpt for your perusal.

And if you do decide to read the book (which I highly encourage you to do), I’ll hope you’ll consider leaving a review. Positive or negative, I love feedback, and reviews help authors out in the long run in all sorts of ways.

In the meantime, thanks to everyone who’s been supporting this process. I’ve been dreaming for years of publishing a novel with a publishing company, and I couldn’t have done it without the love and encouragement of so many great people out there. Thank you so very much for keeping me going and making sure my vision doesn’t disappear.

Now if you need me, I’ve got about fifty different things to make sure the novel does well. And I have to make dinner on top of that! Wish me luck.

Until next time, my Followers of Fear, happy reading and pleasant nightmares!

Short post today, folks. Yeah, I know it’s not about Rose, but hopefully I’ll have something on that very soon. In the meantime, I was lucky enough to be a featured guest on Kendall Reviews, a website dedicating to reviewing and promoting works of horror and the horror genre. A while back, they were soliciting authors to submit essays on why they write horror, with the goal of having at least one essay a week to publish. You know me, I wrote one as soon as I could get on the computer, and I sent it in, requesting that they only publish it when I had a release date for Rose.

Well, given today is the 20th of June, and Rose is supposed to come out tomorrow, you can guess how that request went. Anyway, that essay, Why Do I Write Horror?, is live now, and if you’ve ever been curious as to why I write horror (and trust me, it’s a lot more complex than you’d think), you can read it by clicking this link.

Thanks again to Gavin Kendall and the team at Kendall Reviews for featuring me. I’m happy to have contributed to your site and I hope we get to work again together someday. Maybe they’ll review Rose?

That’s all for now. Until next time, my Followers of Fear, pleasant nightmares!

It’s finally here! With four days until Rose releases, we have a cover, made courtesy of The Gilded Quill. Take a look.

Now how about that? It’s very much influenced by fantasy, which is a big element of the novel. Though if you see this book in a bookstore and think it’s a typical fantasy, you’d be very much mistaken. In fact, here’s the blurb we’ve been using:

 

When Rose Taggert wakes up in a greenhouse, the past two years missing from her memory, she has no idea what is in store for her. Her body changes, transfigured into a new, plant-like form by Paris Kuyper, a student and her self-proclaimed lover who used an ancient family grimoire to save Rose’s life. While Rose is at first willing to trust Paris and work with him to recover her memories and the supposed love they shared, it soon becomes clear her lover is not all he seems. In a short time, she decides to put love and memories aside in favor of survival.

But a rose may be defenseless when a storm surrounds it. And Rose may only be able to stand for so long against the forces swirling around her.

So as you can tell, this is a lot darker than your average fantasy story. In fact, it’s fantasy-horror. And from what I’ve shared with people, they’ve responded well.

Speaking of which: advanced copies will end up being sent out Wednesday. Yeah, sucks. We were hoping to have them out today, but perfection can’t be rushed, and we wanted to make sure the book comes out as pristine as possible.

On the bright side, the book will still be released Friday, and preorder links and everything will be up as the advanced copies are sent out. It’s all happening rather fast, but I think it’s going to be magnificent once it does come out.

Well, I hope, anyway. Let’s see what the reviews say when those start popping up.

Anyway, that’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I’ve got to get started on dinner and get a lot more marketing work done before Rose is released. However, I might have another post, this one not Rose-related, out tomorrow, so keep an eye out for it.

Until next time, pleasant nightmares.

Their only relation is a Japanese influence. Nevertheless, it has to be used here.

Yes, that’s right. It’s only seven days till Rose is out. And ooh boy, am I getting all sorts of excited and nervous! This past week has been a flurry of emails regarding the novel. I’ve been emailing my publisher; my publisher has been emailing me; I’ve been emailing websites and bookstores; they’ve been emailing back. Plus a ton of final edits, planning for parties with coworkers and family members and friends, and a couple of anxiety attacks.

But as of right now, it looks like Rose will still be coming out on time next week, with the advanced copies being sent out on Monday most likely. And for those of you who don’t know, Rose is my first novel published with an actual publishing press. Castrum Press is set to release it on June 21st, 2019. Assuming I don’t do something to fuck it up between now and then (always a possibility).

As for what the book’s about, here’s a description:

When Rose Taggert wakes up in a greenhouse, the past two years missing from her memory, she has no idea what is in store for her. Her body changes, transfigured into a new, plant-like form by Paris Kuyper, a student and her self-proclaimed lover who used an ancient family grimoire to save Rose’s life. While Rose is at first willing to trust Paris and work with him to recover her memories and the supposed love they shared, it soon becomes clear her lover is not all he seems. In a short time, she decides to put love and memories aside in favor of survival.

But a rose may be defenseless when a storm surrounds it. And Rose may only be able to stand for so long against the forces swirling around her.

I really hope you’ll check out the book when it comes out next week. And if you do, please consider posting a review after you read it. It’s not necessary, but it would really help me out in the long run if you did.

And in the meantime, I hope to have more news about Rose in the future. Cover art should be finalized and sent to me at some point this weekend, and as soon as I get it–assuming I’m not fast asleep when I receive it–I’ll post that everywhere once I get it. And if I can arrange it, I’ll have preorder links up as well. And if any other developments come up, I’ll make sure to let you know.

Well, that’s all for now. It’s Friday night, so I’m making dinner, cracking open the beers, and relaxing with a couple of good movies. Until next time–which might even be tonight, for all I know–pleasant nightmares, my Followers of Fear!

I’m pooped. I’m exhausted. I’m…you know what? Instead of finding another adjective, I’m going to use this GIF to describe my state right now.

Horror GIFs. Am I right?

Anyway, I just finished doing the final edits of Rose and sent the newly updated manuscript back to Castrum Press. Twenty chapters, and nearly sixty thousand words edited (for context, the first Harry Potter book is around seventy-seven thousand words). I never want to do that much editing ever again. However, I think in the end it’ll be worth it. This is likely the last round of edits before the book is put out, and I think it really improved the book.

Rose is my forthcoming fantasy-horror novel from Castrum Press. The novel is set to be published June 21st, 2019, eleven days from today. Here’s the blurb we’re using right now for the back cover:

When Rose Taggert wakes up in a greenhouse, the past two years missing from her memory, she has no idea what is in store for her. Her body changes, transfigured into a new, plant-like form by Paris Kuyper, a student and her self-proclaimed lover who used an ancient family grimoire to save Rose’s life. While Rose is at first willing to trust Paris and work with him to recover her memories and the supposed love they shared, it soon becomes clear her lover is not all he seems. In a short time, she decides to put love and memories aside in favor of survival.

But a rose may be defenseless when a storm surrounds it. And Rose may only be able to stand for so long against the forces swirling around her.

What happens now? Well, hopefully I hear about cover art and marketing and everything else very soon. As news comes, I’ll be sure to update you all about it.

In the meantime, I’m ordering dinner and chilling for the rest of the evening. Until next time my Followers of Fear, pleasant nightmares! I’m sure I’ll have a few, as today’s my last day of vacation. I go back to work tomorrow!

So if you’ve seen some of my most recent posts, last night the Ohio Chapter of the Horror Writers Association, of which I’m a proud member of, held its first public reading event at Kafe Kerouac in the University District in Columbus. And you know what? It was a great program. We had a decent-sized crowd, and there were about eight or so different readers showing off their poetry, flash fiction, or short stories. I actually had a few ideas for stories listening to other people’s works. We even had an acquaintance of mine from one of my Facebook groups show up and read a short story he’s been working on.

Unsurprisingly, all of the stories and poems read to us were really good. Some were kind of funny, others were pretty dark. All were quite imaginative, and reminded me how many different kinds of stories can be written between a thousand and ten-thousand words.

Of course, when my turn came up, I read part of Rose to the audience. This was my first public reading of Rose, and I was really excited to share part of the story with an audience.

Now, for those of you who don’t know, Rose is my upcoming fantasy-horror novel from Castrum Press and is currently on schedule to be released on June 21st, 2019. The novel follows a young woman who starts turning into a plant creature (and that’s just the start of her problems). Just wanted to make sure everyone was on the same metaphorical page here.

And as promised in my last post, I did get my reading on video (thank you to Jennifer Carstens for holding my phone and filming this for me). It took about three or four hours to upload the video to YouTube from my phone, but in the end, I think it was worth the wait. Enjoy.

Now as I said in the video, what I read to the people at Kafe Kerouac won’t be the final version of Rose. In fact, after I got home last night I started working on the edits my publisher sent me. But you get the idea. This is what you can expect from the final novel. And I hope this intrigues you enough to check out the book when it comes out.

Thanks to Ohio HWA for putting together and hosting this event. Thanks to Kafe Kerouac for being an awesome venue for our first public reading. And thanks to all our readers–Lucy Snyder, Sarah Hans, Anton Cancre, Maxwell Ian Gold, Megan Hart, Jennifer Carstens, Rob Boley, and Mark Dubovec–for making the night so creepy and inspiring. I hope we can do it again sometime very soon.

Now if you need me, I’m off to do a ton of editing (while also spending time to celebrate my birthday). Until next time, my Followers of Fear, pleasant nightmares!

I know this won’t be relevant to a lot of you, but if you happen to be in Columbus, OH tonight, consider coming to Kafe Kerouac at 2250 North High Street at 6:30 PM. You know, instead of the Columbus Arts Festival or the touring production of Finding Neverland at whatever theater that’s playing at. Several members of the Ohio Chapter of the Horror Writers Association will be reading from their work. This includes yours truly, doing his first public reading for Rose. I expect a lot of people to run out of the place screaming their heads off while peeing their pants at the exact same time, but who can tell?

Anyway, I hope you’ll be able to come. And if not, rest assured I’ll try to get my reading on video so I can upload it to YouTube (I’m becoming a regular YouTuber these days, aren’t I?). That way anyone interested can get a sample of what to expect from Rose prior to buying the book (or reading the advanced copies).

Anyway, hope to see some of you there. And until the next post, pleasant nightmares!