Our friends at Crystal Lake would you all to take advantage of two free downloads on offer this weekend (5 day Amazon give-away.)
Fear the Reaper horror anthology, and Horror 101: The Way Forward.
If you already have copies of these books, please download them again or share the giveaway with your friends and colleagues. Enough giveaways will give these two books some well-deserved attention through Amazon’s popularity lists.
Fear the Reaper, for example, has an amazing story by the late Rick Hautala. And believe it or not, a vampire story by Joe McKinney!
Our friends at Crystal Lake Publishing are having their biggest SALE ever, and it will last till end of December. Be sure to pick your Christmas books now. Paperbacks will range between $6.99 and $11.99, and eBooks between 99c and $2.99.
And if you share your purchase on Facebook (remember to tag Crystal Lake Publishing or Joe Mynhardt) and you get to ask the author of one of our Single Author collections/novellas a question related to their book (characters, plot, motivation, etc.).
Plus, whoever invites the most people to our Facebook event (based on accepting the invite) will receive a Crystal Lake Publishing paperback of their choosing. Free eBooks to runners up who gave it a serious go.
Out this week from Crystal Lake Publishing is Horror 101: The Way Forward, 'a comprehensive overview of the Horror fiction genre and career opportunities available to established and aspiring authors.' For just 77p on Kindle, this is a must have!
Here's the lineup.
Foreword by Mort Castle Making Contact by Jack Ketchum What is Horror by Graham Masterton Bitten by the Horror Bug by Edward Lee Reader Beware by Siobhan McKinney Balancing Art and Commerce by Taylor Grant From Prose to Scripts by Shane McKenzie Writing About Films and for Film by Paul Kane Screamplays! Writing the Horror Film by Lisa Morton Screenplay Writing: The First Cut Is the Deepest by Dean M. Drinkel Publishing by Simon Marshall-Jones Weighing Up Traditional Publishing & eBook Publishing by Robert W. Walker Glenn Rolfe Toes the Line with Samhain Horror Head Honcho, Don D’Auria by Glenn Rolfe Bringing the Zombie to Life by Harry Shannon Audiobooks: Your Words to Their Ears by Chet Williamson Writing Aloud by Lawrence Santoro Ghost-writing: You Can’t Write It If You Can’t Hear It by Thomas Smith Ghost-writing by Blaze McRob The Horror Writers Association - the Genre's Essential Ingredient by Rocky Wood What a Short Story Editor Does by Ellen Datlow Self-Publishing: Making Your Own Dreams by Iain Rob Wright Self-Publishing: Thumb on the Button by Kenneth W. Cain What’s the Matter with Splatter? by Daniel I. Russell Partners in the Fantastic: The Pros and Cons of Collaborations by Michael McCarty The Journey of “Rudy Jenkins Buries His Fears” by Richard Thomas Writing Short Fiction by Joan De La Haye A beginner’s guide to setting up and running a website by Michael Wilson Poetry and Horror by Blaze McRob Horror for Kids: Not Child’s Play by Francois Bloemhof So you want to write comic books… by C.E.L. Welsh Horror Comics – How to Write Gory Scripts for Gruesome Artists by Jasper Bark Some Thoughts on my Meandering within the World of Dark and Horror Art by Niall Parkinson Writing the Series by Armand Rosamilia Running a Web serial by Tonia Brown Reviewing by Jim Mcleod Avoiding What’s Been Done to Death by Ramsey Campbell The 7 Signs that make Agents and Editors say, "Yes!" by Anonymous The (extremely) Short Guide to Writing Horror by Tim Waggoner Growing Ideas by Gary McMahon Filthy Habits – Writing and Routine by Jasper Bark A Room of One’s Own – The Lonely Path of a Writer by V.H. Leslie Do You Need an Agent? by Eric S Brown Ten Short Story Endings to Avoid by William Meikle Submitting Your Work Part 2: Read the F*****g Guidelines! by John Kenny Rejection Letters – How to Write and Respond to Them by Jasper Bark Editing and Proofreading by Diane Parkin On Formatting: A Concise Guide to the Most Frequently Encountered issues by Rick Carufel How to Dismember Your Darlings – Editing Your Own Work by Jasper Bark From Reader to Writer: Finding Inspiration by Emma Audsley Writing Exercises by Ben Eads The Year After Publication… by Rena Mason Writing Horror: 12 Tips on Making a Career of It by Steve Rasnic Tem The Five Laws of Arnzen by Michael A. Arnzen The Cheesy Trunk of Terror by Scott Nicholson How to be Your Own Agent, Whether You Have One or Not by Joe Mynhardt Networking at Conventions by Lucy A. Snyder Pitch to Impress: How to Stand Out from the Convention Crowd by RJ Cavender You Better (Net)Work by Tim Waggoner Vaginas in Horror by Theresa Derwin Friendship, Writing, and the Internet by Weston Ochse Buttoning Up Before Dinner by Gary Fry How to Fail as an Artist in Ten Easy Steps by John Palisano Writer’s Block by Mark West Be the Writer You Want to Be by Steven Savile Afterword by Joe Mynhardt
Indie Horror Blog recently managed to chase down the ravening monster that is Jasper Bark, award winning author and former co-reviewer of Zig and Zag on The Big Breakfast, and ask him a few questions in preparation for the eBook release of his novella 'Stuck On You' from Crystal Lake Publishing.
IHB: What first got you interested in writing?
JB: I was five years old and I saw a piece on the long forgotten BBC TV children’s show ‘Why Don’t You’ about kids, a little older than me, who were making their own comics. All you needed was paper, felt tip pens, a stapler and a little imagination. I had all those! I could make my own comics, MAKE MY OWN COMICS!!!
No idea has ever filled me with such excitement. From drawing my own comics I began filling stolen school text books with stories. The compulsion got so bad that the following Christmas my parents had to confiscate my pens and paper so I would come open my presents.
IHB: Do you prefer all out gore or psychological chills?
JB: I think that depends on the story you’re telling, the themes you’re exploring and the scene you’re concentrating on. Both have their place in any horror story.
What connects them for me is that they’re both about revealing the mysteries of the interior. Very few of us get a sustained and intimate look at what goes on inside our bodies. Few of us get to hold a beating human heart, to use sharpened steel to remove a vital organ or watch as the blood drains from a still warm body until it stops kicking and turns cold.
Few of us ever explore the truly damaging nature of an aberrant human mind. Few get deep inside a psychosis so destructive it will bend a human will to murder over and over again. Or find ourselves caught up in the maelstrom of a meme, like mob justice, that culminates in genocide.
Horror is important because it’s the one genre where we can take those parts of us that remain mentally and physically hidden and bare them to the light. So that in plumbing the depths of our bodies and minds we might chance upon our souls.
IHB: What attracts you to writing Zombie/Apocalyptic fiction?
JB: Although both those genres have become conflated thanks to Romero’s excellent Dead movies, none of the Zombie fiction I’ve worked on has been post apocalyptic. The appeal of each genre is quite different for me.
What I like about zombies is how malleable they are as a representative icon. As society trades old nightmares for new, with each advancing decade, the zombie keeps adapting and changing the things it stands for in our collective unconscious. In the 30s when the zombie was first introduced to western culture it stood for the western colonial fear of the nations it was exploiting. Over the years the zombie has come to represent mainstreams fears of everything from communism and terrorism to sixties radicalism and growing economic unrest. This makes it very appealing to writers like myself who have an interest in writing social commentary and satire.
The thing that appeals to me about post apocalyptic fiction, on the other hand, is that it allows you to study society as a whole in microcosm. As we view the shattered bands of survivors trying to rebuild their life in the aftermath of the collapse of civilisation there’s a huge opportunity to examine the everyday tensions and conflicts of our current society. The backdrop of a lost and ruined world allows us to view these opposing forces in a more naked and honest light, outside of the contexts and allegiances of our contemporary culture. This throws them into sharper relief and allows us a fresh perspective of the problems they’re causing us and the long term consequences of certain courses of action.
Plus err ... zombies are totally awesome. They eat brains, they never wash and they always, always win. Vampires and Werewolves might be in an eternal conflict but Zombies can kick both their butts. A vampire or a werewolf can bite a Zombie as many times as they like and it’ll still be a zombie. A zombie’s only has to bite them once and you’ve got a zompire or a werebie. (Is it just me or does a ‘werebie’ sound like a creepy undead furby fetishist?)
IHB: Why should people read your work?
JB: Because I need the money!
Also because they’ll discover imaginative, edgy and unexpected fiction that explores social and spiritual issues while pushing at the boundaries of what genre fiction can and ought to do.
Because I’ll take them to places they’ve never been before and will never get to visit again. That’s a money back guarantee.
IHB: Do you think horror has a purpose, above giving people a comfortable, entertaining scare?
JB: I really do believe it has. In my opinion the best horror stories use the weird and other-worldly as a metaphor for a deeper or more personal truth. I also think that the world is quite a scary place at the moment and because of this the tropes and motifs of horror are some of the best ways of addressing the contemporary world. A lot of the horror writers coming up at the moment seem to be interested in social commentary in the same way that the New Wave and the early Cyberpunk writers previously used science fiction as a vehicle for social comment.
Of course, we shouldn't hold Jasper's past against him, particularly this incident at a Joseph D'Lacey reading...
Scheduled for release from Crystal Lake Press on 25 January, 2014 is William Meikle's Samurai and other stories, 'tales of ghosts, many Scotsmen, a big blob, some holy relics, some unholy relics, a Mothman, a barbarian, some swordplay, a shoggoth and people that nobody expects.'
This collection by William Meikle brings together stories from the past decade in an exploration of the perils of exploring dark places, both external and internal.
Edited by Joe Mynhardt and Cover by Ben Baldwin.
Those fine fellows at Crystal Lake have once again offered us a free copy as a giveaway, so if you can't wait until release day, just leave a comment below to enter a draw and chance to win a free copy!
Draw ends on the 24th of January, so get commenting and tell your friends!
