The House That Threw Them Out: a guest post by Catherine Cavendish, author of "The Devil's Serenade"

The House That Threw Them Out
by Catherine Cavendish

My new novel – The Devil’s Serenade – mostly takes place in an imposing Gothic style mansion built by Victorian industrialist Nathaniel Hargest. When Maddie Chambers inherits it from her Aunt Charlotte, she soon discovers she has acquired far more than mere bricks and mortar. From the strange appearance of tree roots growing in the cellar to the manifestations, noises and a nostalgic wartime song played again and again, Maddie’s fears grow and intensify. What is going on here – and who, or what, is seemingly hell-bent on driving her insane?

Of course, my novel is just that – fiction. But, in real life, there have been numerous reports of houses cursed or possessed by demons. Sometimes these emanate from the ground on which the house was built. Other times, the builder of the house has somehow managed to impart his – or her – evil into the fabric of the place so that it becomes irrevocably woven into the walls.

Around five years ago, in Hollyhill on the north side of Cork in Ireland, a family fled their house after being terrorized by a supernatural force. They summoned exorcists to try and cleanse the house of its unwanted and uninvited ‘guests’.

According to Ritchie Hewitt and Laura Burke who lived in the house with their son, Kyle, the strange phenomena started off quite slowly with holy pictures and icons being thrown around. They heard screams in the night, and then their son was lifted off the bed and hurled to the floor while he was still asleep.

The family also reported seeing orbs flying around, in mid-air, from room to room.

They were left convinced that their house was possessed by an evil force that wished them harm. When they tried praying for it to leave, all they heard was the sound of furniture being moved around upstairs. Drawers were turned out, clothes tossed around the bedrooms.

They asked local people for any help they could give in tracing the possible cause of all the disturbances, but drew a blank. It seemed the house did not have any prior reputation for hauntings or poltergeist activity.

Mediums have reported strong impressions of a young man hanging himself in the house and they believe it is his negative energy that has infected the household. On stepping over the threshold, one such medium – John O’Reilly – had an instant impression of “Someone who is very angry.”

The house itself is owned by the local council and they refused the family’s request for a transfer. Neighbours were reported as having turned on the family accusing them of a “scam” – that the family’s claims were a ruse to get them moved off the estate and into more ‘salubrious’ accommodation. This is a claim the family have vehemently denied. Furthermore, they continued to pay rent on the property even after fleeing from their home to live with relatives.

As for the house itself, its previous owner, Adam Payton, lived there for 26 apparently poltergeist-free years prior to selling it to the council. Other people living on the estate said the property was empty for several months, during which time it had been frequented by gangs of youths. There were even reports of séances being held there, often involving Ouija boards.

A local radio station facilitated a visit by Shaman Paul O’Halloran who detected the presence of hundreds of spirits trapped within the house. These included children and famine victims.

The family have never returned there and the house has not been re-let. At the time of writing, it remains boarded up and empty.

Now, to give you a taste of The Devil’s Serenade, here’s the blurb:

Maddie had forgotten that cursed summer. Now she’s about to remember…

“Madeleine Chambers of Hargest House” has a certain grandeur to it. But as Maddie enters the Gothic mansion she inherited from her aunt, she wonders if its walls remember what she’s blocked out of the summer she turned sixteen.

She’s barely settled in before a series of bizarre events drive her to question her sanity. Aunt Charlotte’s favorite song shouldn’t echo down the halls. The roots of a faraway willow shouldn’t reach into the cellar. And there definitely shouldn’t be a child skipping from room to room. 

As the barriers in her mind begin to crumble, Maddie recalls the long-ago summer she looked into the face of evil. Now, she faces something worse. The mansion’s long-dead builder, who has unfinished business—and a demon that hungers for her very soul.

Here’s an extract:

A large flashlight rested on the bottom stair and I switched it on, shining it into the dark corners. There wasn’t a lot to see. A few broken bits of furniture, old fashioned kitchen chairs, some of which looked vaguely familiar, jam jars, crates that may once have held bottles of beer.

The beam caught the clump of gnarled and twisted roots that intertwined with each other, like Medusa’s snakes. I edged closer to it, my heart thumping more than it should. It was only a tree, for heaven’s sake! The nearest one was probably the willow. Surely, that was too far away? I knew little about trees, but I was pretty certain their roots couldn’t extend that far.

I examined the growth from every angle in that silent cellar. The roots were definitely spreading along the floor and, judging by the thickness and appearance of them, had been there for many years. Gray, like thick woody tendrils, they reached around six feet along and possibly four feet across at their widest point. I bent down. Close up, the smell that arose from them was cloyingly sweet. Sickeningly so. I put one hand over my nose, rested the flashlight on the steps and reached out with the fingers of my free hand to touch the nearest root. It wriggled against my palm.

I cried out, staggered backward and fell against the stairs. The flashlight clattered to the floor and went out. Only the overhead bulb provided any light, and it didn’t reach this darkest corner. Something rustled. I struggled to my feet, grabbed the torch and ran up the stairs. I slammed the door shut and locked it, leaned against it and tried to slow down my breathing. A marathon runner couldn’t have panted more.

I tapped the flashlight and it flickered into life, seemingly none the worse for its accident. I switched it off and set it on the floor by the cellar door. Whoever came to fix those roots was going to need it.

You can find The Devil’s Serenade here:

Samhain Publishing

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Kobo

And other online retailers

About Catherine Cavendish: Following a varied career in sales, advertising and career guidance, Cat is now the full-time author of a number of paranormal, ghostly and Gothic horror novels, novellas and short stories. She was the 2013 joint winner of the Samhain Gothic Horror Anthology Competition, with Linden Manor, which features in the anthology What Waits in the Shadows.  Other titles include: The Pendle Curse, Saving Grace Devine, Dark Avenging Angel, The Second Wife, Miss Abigail’s Room, The Demons of Cambian Street, The Devil Inside Her, Cold Revenge and In My Lady’s Chamber.

You can connect with Cat here:

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A Rude Awakening for Readers: an interview with Adam Howe, author of "Die Dog or Eat the Hatchet"

From Adam Howe, winner of Stephen King’s “On Writing” short story contest, comes three original novellas of hardboiled crime, graphic horror and pitch-black gallows humor.

DAMN DIRTY APES - Washed-up prizefighter Reggie Levine is eking a living as a strip club bouncer when he’s offered an unlikely shot at redemption. The Bigelow Skunk Ape – a mythical creature said to haunt the local woods – has kidnapped the high school football mascot, Boogaloo Baboon. Now it’s up to Reggie to lead a misfit posse including a plucky stripper, the town drunk, and legend-in-his-own-mind skunk ape hunter Jameson T. Salisbury. Their mission: Slay the beast and rescue their friend. But not everything is as it seems, and as our heroes venture deeper into the heart of darkness, they will discover worse things waiting in the woods than just the Bigelow Skunk Ape. The story the Society for the Preservation of the North American Skunk Ape tried to ban; Damn Dirty Apes mixes Roadhouse with Jaws with Sons of Anarchy, to create a rollicking romp of 80s-style action/adventure, creature horror and pitch-black comedy.

DIE DOG OR EAT THE HATCHET - Escaped mental patient Terrence Hingle, the butcher of five sorority sisters at the Kappa Pi Massacre, kidnaps timid diner waitress Tilly Mulvehill and bolts for the border. Forcing his hostage to drive him out of town, it’s just a question of time before Tilly becomes the next victim in Hingle’s latest killing spree. But when they stop for gas at a rural filling station operated by deranged twin brothers, Dwayne and Dwight Ritter, the tables are turned on Hingle, and for Tilly the night becomes a hellish cat-and-mouse ordeal of terror and depravity. The meat in a maniac sandwich, Tilly is forced against her nature to make a stand and fight for survival. Because sometimes the only choice you have is to do or die…to Die Dog Or Eat The Hatchet.

GATOR BAIT - Prohibition-era 1930s… After an affair with the wrong man’s wife, seedy piano player Smitty Three Fingers flees the city and finds himself tinkling the ivories at a Louisiana honky-tonk owned by vicious bootlegger Horace Croker and his trophy wife, Grace. Folks come to The Grinnin’ Gator for the liquor and burlesque girls, but they keep coming back for Big George, the giant alligator Croker keeps in the pond out back. Croker is rumored to have fed ex-wives and enemies to his pet, so when Smitty and Grace embark on a torrid affair…what could possibly go wrong? Inspired by true events, Gator Bait mixes hardboiled crime (James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice) with creature horror (Tobe Hooper’s Eaten Alive) to create a riveting tale of suspense.

Gef: What got the ball rolling on this collection coming together?

Adam: My debut collection, Black Cat Mojo, was promoted as being written by ‘the winner of Stephen King’s On Writing contest.’ Hey, you’ve got Steve King’s seal of approval, you’ve gotta use it, right? I’m not sure how many readers came to Black Cat Mojo expecting King-type stories, but I imagine those that did got a rude awakening. Of Badgers & Porn Dwarfs ain’t exactly The Shining. So my initial plan was to follow Black Cat Mojo with a more ‘traditional’ horror/crime story. Which seems funny in retrospect, considering how crazy the novella Die Dog or Eat the Hatchet turned out. By the time I’d finished Die Dog, I really didn’t know what I had, or if it even worked – I wasn’t hiding behind my humour so much, and it seemed so relentlessly dark. (Readers seem to like it, so it all worked out.) I thought I’d better cover my ass with a solid B-side story: Gator Bait. By this time, Black Cat Mojo had been released, and the readers who’d found it seemed to dig the offbeat humour. On the one hand, that was a huge relief. But now I started worrying Black Cat Mojo readers would expect more of the same. So I wrote Damn Dirty Apes for them… In other words, this collection came about due to my own insecurities and self-doubt. I figured if I threw enough shit at the wall, something had to stick.

Gef: You had previously released Gator Bait on its own as an e-book exclusive. Was that as an appetizer in the lead up to this collection's release?

Adam: Gator Bait was released in advance of the collection, at a reduced price, to lure readers to the rest of my work, particularly crime fiction readers, who might be otherwise leery of the horror stuff. (I find that a lot of crime fiction readers are ex- horror hounds who feel they’ve ‘outgrown’ the genre.) Gator Bait has some graphic horror/monster moments, but it is, at heart, a hardboiled crime piece. I envisioned it as James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice meets Tobe Hooper’s Eaten Alive.

The experiment seemed to work. Gator Bait reached a lot of new readers. For a limited time, it was available to download as a freebie, and charted at #1, making me one of those dubious ‘bestselling’ authors we see so many of on social media.

Gef: Parents swear they don't have a favorite child, but authors can't usually get away with that sentiment towards their stories. So which of the three stories is your favorite?

Adam: Thanks for the Sophie’s Choice, Gef… I’m proud of my work on Gator Bait, and dig that 30s pulp tone, which I’d like to revisit in future works. But the story I’m most fond of is Damn Dirty Apes. That was a lot of fun to write, and I think it shows on the page. I can reread that one and still get a kick out of it – which is rare for me; usually all I see are the glaring errors. (And oh, but they’re still there…) I enjoy the characters, especially my hapless hero, boxer turned strip club bouncer turned monster hunter, Reggie Levine. In fact, I liked Reggie enough that I’ve written a sequel, Tijuana Donkey Showdown. Depending on how readers like that one, I may even prolong Reggie’s misery to a third misadventure. We’ll see how it goes.

Gef: With Gator Bait, you had a fast-paced story, but is a faster pace necessarily inherent with novella-length fiction?

Adam: Depends on the tone of the story. A traditional ghost story, for instance, might call for a slower, more insidious pace. Personally, I like a fast pace, especially when reading on my Kindle, and for indie writers like myself, eBooks are mostly where it’s at. My pacing comes from my experience as a screenwriter, when you have enter scenes late, and leave ‘em as early as possible; there’s no time for filler in a feature film screenplay. I apply the same discipline to fiction, novellas especially, which makes for an intense, cinematic reading experience. My novellas aren’t screenplays adapted to prose, or movie treatments, but I want the reader to experience them as they would a movie. I’m a visual storyteller, at heart.

Gef: Die Dog or Eat the Hatchet has that psycho slasher vibe. Where did the influences for this one come from?

Adam: For sure, this one reads like a down n’ dirty retro slasher flick. If it existed as a film, it would have been banned during the UK’s video nasty craze of the 80s.

Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw is the biggest influence on Die Dog. Hooper, despite catching lightning in a bottle with Texas Chainsaw, is not a great filmmaker. But in his early pictures, he was unusual in allowing his camera to linger on and humanize his monsters, most effectively with the demented family dynamic of Texas Chainsaw’s cannibal clan. There are similar, albeit lesser moments in Eaten Alive and The Funhouse, where we see Hooper’s maniacs shambling around their decrepit environments, muttering crazily to themselves. That was something I tried to replicate with Die Dog’s Ritter brothers.

Hitchcock’s Psycho was another influence. In particular, I wanted to use The Psycho Switch as a plot device, shifting point of view from one character to another. So the character of escaped serial killer Terrence Hingle was my Marion Crane, running afoul of a pair of Norman Bateses in the Ritter brothers.

I was interested in pitting ‘urban’ versus ‘rural’ psychos. Ted Bundy vs. Texas Chainsaw’s Sawyer clan. Then I threw an innocent female victim into the mix, as the meat in the maniac sandwich, and stood back to watch the sparks fly… As I’ve said, when I wrote Die Dog, I didn’t have the collection in mind. This one written with an eye towards the ‘extreme’ horror market. It’s not gore for gore’s sake, but it is very graphic at times, and reader discretion is advised.

Gef: Damn Dirty Apes goes the cryptozoological route, and a skunk ape runs a different vibe than the giant gator in Gator Bait. Were you lookin' to write something from the deep south's folklore and this jumped out at ya?

Adam: With a story as bizarre as Damn Dirty Apes, it’s hard for me to claim any real method behind the madness. I’d learned about the ‘furry’ subculture – people cosplaying as animals – and the inevitable sub-subculture of ‘furry’ porn. Each to their own, I guess. From that I had image of a Bigfoot-type creature abducting a porn star during a backwoods porn shoot. I chose to use the skunk ape, rather than Bigfoot, because it fit the story’s hick-lit tone, and I felt that skunk apes had been woefully underused in creature fiction. I was soon to discover why.

During my research, I stumbled across an article in the Fortean Times about legendary skunk ape hunter Gerard Hauser, and his doomed final expedition in the Arkansan backwoods, in which an amateur cryptozoologist tragically lost his life in a hominid snare. Hauser became the basis for my fictional skunk ape hunter, the Ahab-like Jameson T. Salisbury. I then made the mistake of requesting an endorsement from Lambert Pogue, General Secretary of the Society for the Preservation of the North American Skunk Ape; I thought it might make for an unusual blurb, than the typical gushing praise by other writers.

Unfortunately, Mr. Pogue objected to my Salisbury character, recognizing him as a caricature of Hauser, and threatened legal action against me. My publisher’s Facebook page was besieged by angry hominologists, and I personally received death threats. It was an extraordinary situation. I’m convinced that the scarcity of skunk ape fiction is a direct result of the vigilance of the S.P.N.A.S.A. Rumor has it that they even picketed the offices of Hanna-Barbera, and prevented the skunk ape appearing on a first-season episode of Scooby Doo, Where are You!

Frankly, for all the aggravation caused, if I could do it all again, the creature of Damn Dirty Apes would be a plain old ‘squatch or Bigfoot, and not a skunk ape.

Gef: Is southern gothic something you see as a home base as far as your writing goes? Any other genres you're keen on diving into?

Adam: I do keep coming back to the South. As a reader, I enjoy Southern gothic/noir. I like the swampy locale, and the rhythms of the accent. As a British writer, for some reason, the Southern voice is one I can passably mimic. It’s not intended to be 100% accurate, just good enough to fool the ear and serve the story. Like a British singer adopting a twang to sing rock n’ roll. My stories exist in a kind of heightened reality that perhaps wouldn’t work if I was setting my stuff in recognizable big cities. In terms of genre, for the foreseeable future I see myself staying in the crime/horror wheelhouse. But I’ll take the band on the road eventually. I’ve got a ‘Nam story I’d like to write. And my long-delayed novel-in-progress One Tough Bastard is set in Hollywood. To be honest, I’m at the mercy of my muse, telling me: “Git r dun, git r dun!” These crazy Southern stories are the ones demanding to be written right now.

Gef: What else do you have up your sleeve heading through 2016?

Adam: My partner and I are expecting our first child in July – wish me luck – so all plans are on hold while we make the adjustment, or in my case, fall apart completely. But as I’ve said, I’m putting the finishing touches to Tijuana Donkey Showdown, the follow-up to Damn Dirty Apes. I’m hoping to have that one out by the end of the year. I’ll also have an original story in the upcoming Necro Press anthology, Chopping Block Party; a charming tale about the gentlemen’s pastime of ‘gerbilling.’ (If you’re unfamiliar with gerbilling – liar! – I assure you it’s perfectly safe to research on a public computer.) And Adam Cesare and I are collaborating on a crime/horror project we’re pitching as Michael Mann’s Public Enemies meets John Carpenter’s The Thing. But due to other work commitments, we’re behind schedule on that, so chances are it won’t see the light of day until next year.

Adam Howe writes the twisted fiction your mother warned you about. A British writer of fiction and screenplays, he lives in Greater London with his partner and their hellhound, Gino. Writing as Garrett Addams, his short story Jumper was chosen by Stephen King as the winner of the On Writing contest, and published in the paperback/Kindle editions of SK’s book; he was also granted an audience with The King, where they mostly discussed slow vs. fast zombies. His fiction has appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Thuglit, The Horror Library, Mythic Delirium, Plan B Magazine, and One Buck Horror. He is the author of two collections, Black Cat Mojo and Die Dog or Eat the Hatchet, plus the eBook single, Gator Bait. Future works include Tijuana Donkey Showdown, One Tough Bastard, and a crime/horror collaboration with Adam Tribesmen Cesare.

Find him on Twitter at @Adam_G_Howe.

Purchase Links

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A Brief History of My Hallucinations: a guest post by Nicole Cushing, author of "The Sadist's Bible"

How well do you know the people you chat with on a social network? 

Thirty-seven year old Ellie Blake is about to find out. Her Bible Belt community wouldn't dare accept her if she came out as a lesbian. Her husband, her pastor, and her neighbors would be scandalized by such a disclosure. But Ellie's desire for another woman's intimate touch grows stronger with each passing day, as does her desire to be dominant – to tell another woman just how to please her, to tie up another woman so that she'll never, ever leave. 

Ashamed of these feelings and hopeless of ever satisfying them, Ellie goes to a secret group on the social network and seeks out a partner for a suicide pact. There, she finds twenty-four year old Lori Morris--a woman who also claims devotion to death and lust. She agrees to meet Ellie in a hotel for an intense night of decadent sex and torture before suicide. But Lori has another agenda, too: to escape an oppressive force that might be God or might be the Devil. A force that even suicide may not allow her to escape. A force that wants Lori, Ellie, and all of humanity broken and brought to its knees.

A Brief History of My Hallucinations

By Nicole Cushing

When I was six years old, I attended my grandfather’s funeral. My mother took me up to see his body in the casket. I didn’t know it was taboo to touch him, so I gently patted his hand (as if to comfort him).

It was, of course, cold.

Very cold.

My brain tells me he couldn’t have been that cold. (He couldn’t have been any colder than room temperature, right?) But my heart tells me his dead hand was the coldest thing I’ve ever touched. In any event, this guest post isn’t about that particular moment. It’s about what happened afterward.

After touching his hand, I experienced this strange mental image of him falling endlessly through empty, black space. I say “mental image” but that doesn’t quite do it justice. It was more powerful and confusing than a mental image. My conscious mind didn’t create the image. It just arose involuntarily out of my six year old subconscious. It didn’t last very long (maybe only a few seconds). But here I am, writing about it over thirty-five years later. So it’s safe to say it shook me up.

I never mentioned it to my parents, because the image seemed to conflict with my Christian upbringing. I saw no clouds of Heaven. I saw no fires of Hell. I only saw blackness and oblivion. I’ve never considered this to be a genuine experience with the supernatural. At the time, I just thought of it as a weird, scary daydream that I didn’t want to dwell on--just a flash of an image that expressed my grief. And that’s still, basically, how I think of that vision. My neurons cobbled together an image to help me understand something that no six year old can ever fully understand.

That was the first such experience, but it was far from the last. Throughout my life I’ve experienced strange half-hallucinatory daydreams and vivid nightmares. When I was seven, I had an extremely strange, vivid nightmare about Hell that led me to wake up in a panic and run for my parents. (I still remember my mother saying my heart was “beating like a racehorse”.) When I was a teenager, I had another surreal nightmare (this one about the crucifixion).

The visions I’ve had in my adult life have touched on similar themes. They’re always disturbing and they’re often about metaphysical subjects. And I can assure you that none of these experiences have involved alcohol or drug use. I’ve had visions of strange, unholy chimeras and of saplings that bloom strangled fetuses. I’ve had nightmares about cosmic clowns.

All of these have served as inspiration for stories. Now, I should probably point out that visions and nightmares provide strong, emotionally resonant imagery but lack narrative structure. So it’s not just a matter of me getting a story zapped into my head by my subconscious. There’s a lot of work to do after getting the initial inspiration. I have to work out how the image relates to a fully-realized character and a compelling plot. But the inspiration is certainly fun. Even when the images shake me up, I can’t resist exploring them in fiction.

I used to think that every writer worked this way. (Or, at least, that many horror writers did.) Over time I’ve come to realize that I’m probably in the distinct minority. (And that may be an understatement.) Suffice to say: I’m not the kind of horror writer who can look at the hottest subgenres and plan my next three books accordingly. Pop culture tropes work for many folks (and if you dig them, fine). But, for me, visions and nightmares are where it’s at.

I think this is why my work is often described as “taboo”. When you’re working from visions and nightmares, you open the door to taboos. (As that’s where they routinely lurk, in all of us.)

Which brings me to my new novella, The Sadist’s Bible. This book was inspired by a vision I had while resting on a rooftop in New Orleans a few years back. What was that vision? Well, I don’t want to spoil things by revealing it. But I will say that it’s among the most vivid and disconcerting of the entire batch.

But this book isn’t just about a vision.

This is a book about two women who are, in their own unique ways, both brave and broken. It’s a book about sexual trauma and sexual repression. It’s about ugly institutional and interpersonal hierarchies and the groveling they inspire. It’s about the animalistic aspects of sex and spirituality. It’s about Heaven and Hell and that ugliest of all realms--Earth.

Intrigued? You can get it for $1.99 at Amazon.com, the Kobo Store, or directly from the good folks at 01Publishing.

Extreme Metal and the Moon: a guest post by Ty Arthur, author of "Empty"

There are terrors still waiting to be discovered in the vast emptiness of space. After millennia of travel through the void, man has convinced himself he is master of the stars. 

Down-on-his-luck, stuck performing punishment duty in the lower levels of the Penrose, Junior Engineer 3rd Class Hansen wants nothing more than to see the wreckage of a newly discovered ship dating back to man's earliest deep space explorations. 

The engineer is about to get his wish, and in the process come face-to-face with a long-dormant horror waiting patiently for the perfect vessel. What he'll uncover in the darkness will threaten to consume him, body and soul. 

TY ARTHUR'S EMPTY IS AVAILABLE AT AMAZON.COM

When I first started writing fiction, I spent a lot of time wondering how the creative process worked for the genre greats. What inspired Barker's unique vision in “The Hellbound Heart?” What experiences spurred on the fantasy-meets-terror of “Weaveworld?” Where did that wellspring of ideas for the weird cosmic horror of Machen and Lovecraft truly come from?

I suspect the answer would change drastically from author to author, and what's true for one would be false for another. A personal answer to that question eluded me as I tried, and failed, to draw the attention of a publisher for any of my work.

It wasn't until something outside my control well and truly rocked my whole world that I was able to find my voice. I can honestly say I've never known the same euphoric high as the first time we discovered my wife was pregnant. I discovered an equally new despairing low when our child died in the womb, with both of us utterly powerless to do anything about it.

As part of the grieving process, I wrote a story meant to make the reader feel as awful as I did, and to express a rage that had no healthy outlet in the real world. No one was ever particularly meant to read it, and I had no expectations of it ever seeing print. Nearly ready to give up after all the rejections, I sent that short fantasy/horror tale out on a whim.

That was the first story I ever submitted that publishers were actually excited about. It's a lesson I took to heart.

Everything I write now starts with a kernel of a personal experience, and my new sci-fi/horror book “Empty” is no exception. For the basis of this story I went way back to my youth and drew on the experience of being the only non-religious kid at a religious summer camp (which was interesting and eventful, to say the least).

The initial idea was to create a feeling of sleepless paranoia, where there's something inside the main character that could cause problems if discovered by those around him. Intending to go a more literal route, “Empty” started as a story about a kid at a camp who has been cursed with lycanthropy, and has to find some way to keep his transformation secret.

Beyond the diverging methods of authors finding inspiration for new stories, it's fascinating to me how many different ways a single idea or basic framework for a book can be expressed. While writing that original version of “Empty,” the words just weren't flowing particularly well, and I wasn't satisfied with anything that was hitting the page.

Rather than continuing, I decided to spend some time thinking about the overall ideas behind the story, and I kept getting drawn again and again to celestial bodies like the moon – a major component of any werewolf story. That's when it all seemed to click, and something about all that vast empty space in an uncaring universe (where man is far less significant than he thinks he is) suddenly seemed like the perfect setting for this story.

I'd never written anything in the sci-fi genre before, but it's really an amazing match for anything horrific. The classic “Aliens” is not, strictly speaking, a horror film, but has there ever been a better sci-fi/horror mashup on the big screen? “The Thing” and “Event Horizon,” while both taking their fair share of knocks from the reviewers, are still two amazing examples of Lovecraftian horror expressed in drastically different ways through the sci-fi medium.

With the setting picked and the characters and environments coming together, there was only one piece of the puzzle left - the mood. For that, I turned to my second passion: music. Extreme metal was a cathartic outlet for me as a kid, and it's remained so as an adult and even turned into a profession as I found myself freelancing for heavy metal sites.

A constant stream of the most discordant and avant-garde sounds fueled the writing sessions, along with some interludes into melodic and spacey territory for introspective moments (for those who are interested, a full listening playlist and my thoughts on why the music matches the book can be found here.

It's been a long and winding trek to finally seeing “Empty” completed and now released through Mirror Matter Press, and based on the feedback so far, the journey was well worth the effort. Hopefully those of you who take the time to give it a read will agree, and if I've done my job right, you'll find yourself more than a little disturbed by engineer Hansen's experiences being separated from the herd onboard the Penrose and the Thorne.

“Empty” is available digitally and physically through Amazon and I'm already well into working on the next book, which delves even deeper into the most disturbing reaches of the human condition. Can't wait to meet you all there!

- Ty Arthur

Memory and Embellishment: an interview with Lynn Rosen, author of "A Man of Genius"

Lynn Rosen is the author of A Man of Genius, out on April 11th, 2016 [Una Publications]. Born and raised in New York City, Rosen earned three graduate degrees at the University of Rochester, where she later served on faculty. She has lived in Japan, the Midwest, and the East Coast, and been published in The Texas Quarterly and Caprice.

A Man of Genius is available via Amazon and in select brick-and-mortar retailers as of April 11, 2016.

Find Lynn Rosen on Facebook, Twitter, and at www.unapublications.com.

Gef : What was the spark that made you sit down to write A Man of Genius?

Lynn Rosen: The spark was what I believed to be a good story that settled in my memory and, in time, was embellished – as most memories are. As my memory took new form it seemed to me that the ever- emerging story posed more questions than answers. What can be more intriguing than open-ended questions that beg many possible answers?

Gef: While the book centers around the charismatic figure of Samuel Grafton-Hall, it's done so in the wake of his death. How did you go about choosing the viewpoint character(s) through which to unveil the mystery of the man?

LR: The development of A MAN OF GENIUS demanded that the characters act in a manner consistent with their individual systems of moral obligation, while at the same time their actions had to authentically drive the plot-line. I don’t spend much time debating whether a novel is plot or character driven. What I do believe is essential is that plot and character are supportive, have an inner consistency and are complimentary.

Gef: Some of the reviews the book has garnered have used the word "gothic" in describing it. Was there a purposeful intent on your part to invoke a gothic feel for readers?

LR: I confess to admiring the gothic – whether central or ornamental. In the case of A MAN OF GENIUS the settings, the houses, the hovering secret driving a mystery – all contribute to describing the book as “gothic.” In addition – the one conceit attributed to the “gothic” through the ages is something I can only hope the reader experiences– that of the sublime. The sublime in literature translates into transporting a reader beyond the pages of the book into his or her own expanded imagination. I do hope the readers of A MAN OF GENIUS take that trip.

Gef: How long have you been toiling away at your craft, and how have you found your progression as a writer thus far?

LR: Until the writing of A MAN OF GENIUS I never came near to considering myself a writer. I’ve long thought of myself as a story teller. I think most of my friends would nod their heads in agreement to that statement. I’ve been scribbling stories since I was about nine years old. Given my current age of 84 that’s a very long time. It was during World War II when my father left for the Pacific theater of engagement, and I was left alone with my psychotic mother that I took to writing, as it seemed to me that there was no one to talk to. I don’t know what prompted me to do so, but I sent my short jottings to the NY Times and some were printed as Letters to the Editor. I kept on referring to what I wrote as Snippets. Later, with my late husband, I wrote a non fiction book - sent the manuscript to publishing houses – without an agent – and the bidding began. Then I wrote a short story that was published, jotted down my response to a popular book that was printed in a well known periodical. I even received some checks for these efforts. Yet I continued to think of myself as a story teller -never a writer - until A MAN OF GENIUS.

Gef: Who do you count among your writing influences?

LR: Whenever I think of my list of giants among writers I immediately think of Laurence Sterne and TRISTAM SHANDY. Every decade or so I revisit the work and I’m always awed by Sterne’s command of his material which is so unusual in manipulation of plot (or lack of plot) his character development within a static ,largely non-existent plot line, and the author’s total control of concept and all elements of delivery despite the novelty of the entire concepts. Sterne had few, if any, writers to draw upon as his influence.

As I have a keen interest in magical realism, I am attracted to the works of Isabel Allende and John Irving. When it comes to capturing and melding character and place I’d cite Virginia Wolf’s MRS. DALLOWAY. And I’m drawn and redrawn to Austin and her talents in character and place development. As an admirer of the gothic I’m particularly drawn to Northanger Abbey. The work displays Austin’s thorough understanding of the gothic – so thorough that she is able to apply its elements to a deceivingly satirical work..

Gef: With Samuel Grafton-Hall being an architect, how much emphasis do you place on setting as character in A Man of Genius?

LR: Settings are major characters in A MAN OF GENIUS. And, they and the characters that occupy the settings establish a symbiotic relationship. As the characters move through and about the settings their reactions and actions within their environment play a major role in propelling the plot forward ,

Gef: What's the worst piece of writing advice you ever received? Or what piece of writing advice do you wish would just go away?

LR: The worst advice I ever received, which cost me years of work and anguish, was that plot lines had to be resolved at the end of the story. The reader could not be left “dangling.” Which is exactly what I wanted to do in A MAN OF GENIUS. The story I wanted to tell had endless possibilities for resolution –possibilities that might find their way into the mind of each reader. It was my hope from the beginning that the work would stimulate thought and discussion because the end was not neatly wrapped up. If it had to be nearly wrapped up, I wasn’t the one to do the wrapping since I was never certain (and still am not) as to the story’s end.

I labored through draft after draft for years trying to live within the rule. When I finally gave up the ghost law and decided to do what I had wanted to do from the start, A MAN OF GENIUS truly came into being.

Gef: What kind of guilty pleasures do you have when it comes to books or movies or whatnot?

LR: I rarely read mysteries, but when I do I sneak a peek at the back pages – difficult to do on eBooks. My excuse is that I have to know where I’m heading to enjoy the trip. Hard to defend when I don’t sneak about in any other genre. As to movies, I admit that I sometimes go alone to movies to see what I term “chick romances” – the Kleenex application kind that is always accompanied by what might be described as “marshmallow music.” I always go alone and leave before the house lights go up. I live in a relatively small town. And I do confess to enjoying Broadway musicals with chorus lines and music you can go away humming. As to serious theater – I’ll travel anywhere to attend a well-reviewed production of a play.

Gef: What projects are you cooking up we can expect in the near future, and how can we keep
up with you?

LR: I have been playing with a memory that I find intriguing. Every time it comes to mind I have fun embellishing it…”and so it goes” (courtesy of K. Vonnegut). If it continues to expand and intrigue, it might end up as a novel

And – you can keep up with me on my website, www.unapublications.com. I still write those snippets - and, as I write new ones, you’ll find them there under “Musings.”

When the Shoe Is On the Other Foot: a guest post by Melanie Meadors, contributing author to "Champions of Aetaltis"

Champions of Aetaltis: More than three hundred years have passed since the fall of the Atlan Alliance, and the people of Aetaltis have finally brought order to their fractured world. Fledgling nations have grown into powerful kingdoms, thriving merchant states have re-established old trade routes, and the priests of the Enaros have rebuilt their great temples.

But in this time of hope, the shadow of an ancient evil has emerged from the darkness to threaten the world once again.

Discover a new world of adventure in this collection of pulse-pounding stories written by some of the greatest fantasy authors alive. From the vine enshrouded ruins of a lost jungle temple to the seedy back alleys of the villainous city of Port Vale, experience the thrill of heroic fantasy with these gripping tales of action and adventure.

AVAILABLE AT AMAZON.COM

When the Shoe Is On the Other Foot

by Melanie R. Meadors

As an author publicist, a big part of my job is to get venues where my authors can write guest articles, be interviewed, and otherwise show off their work. These usually happen the most around the time their most recent work is release, to get as many new eyes on that project as possible.

Now, one of my major publicity rules for my clients is "No push marketing." That means that while, yes, we are trying to attract new readers, we want to accomplish that by drawing them in rather than pushing stuff (in this case, books) out at people. All push marketing accomplishes, really, is to push people away. Too much becomes annoying. It’s a great way to lose social media followers. In order to be attractive to new readers, to draw them toward you, you want to establish yourself in their eyes as an expert in your field. And to do that, you need to provide readers with content. Not just any content, but content that both represents you and what your work is about AND that appeals to your target readership.

When I learned the release date for the Champions of Aetaltis, the anthology that contains my short story "A Whole-Hearted Halfling," I did what I advise my authors to do (and in many cases, what I do for my authors). I reached out to bloggers and scheduled what I thought was a reasonable number of guest posts and interviews. No spotlights, because while I recognize they are the easiest for the author, they are also the easiest for readers to just pass by in their search for actual content. I scheduled about fifteen. I thought that seemed reasonable. I mean, I've gotten some of my clients over twenty. Some of them even survived. I could do fifteen.

About a month beforehand, I knew I was in great shape. No rush at all. I would have plenty of time to write all of those articles AND finish the round of revisions I was doing on my current novel-in-progress.

Then, things started to happen.

Mind you, I'm very familiar with release-time...things. I mean, something inevitably happens. The author would get the flu, or get laid off, or go into labor, or...basically, if it could happen, it does. But I had prepared for this. I made sure I didn't have client releases around the time of my own releases, I made sure there were no other major projects going on in my house, no visitors. I cleared my plate.

But I couldn't clear the plates of other people, nor that of Fate itself.

A friend had some serious health issues. OK, I could handle that...it was distracting and worrisome, but I could handle it. I could still get all the things I needed to do done.

A client's release date slipped to be the same week as mine. Yeah, I can do that. I mean, there have been times where I've had three clients with the same release day, and it was actually kind of fun.

My son had his evaluations and we received his official autism diagnosis. We knew that it was coming. But I hadn't prepared for the emotional response I would have to seeing things in black and white on paper. Still, if that was the only thing that happened in that month before release, I could handle it.

My brother's family had a crisis (resolved a couple days ago) that lasted a week.

OK. Uncle. UNCLE!!!

One of those things, even two, would have been enough. I could have dealt with them. But ALL THE THINGS? No. I was not equipped to handle this at all. This meant that about four days before release, I started to write articles that were all due that week. And while I’m known for my fast writing and getting work done under pressure, I would definitely have preferred a less stressful approach.

And since I talk to my clients all the time, I thought I would try to commiserate a bit with one. “Wow, I have all these posts to do. And I have to come up with all these topics, still!” My client responded, “I have no pity for you.” I mentioned to friend and client Anton Strout (link to www.antonstrout.com), who is still recovering from some of the campaigns I arranged for him in the past, how much more fifteen articles seemed when one was on the writing side of the fence. “Hard to write your own book when you're doing that!” he said. I could feel the glare from hundreds of miles away, and I can’t say it wasn’t justified. While I maintain that it is important to get your name and content out there to readers, doing it all at the last minute is not exactly the best way to go about it.

So…Do as I say, not as I do. My experience has taught me that when I tell authors they should be working on building up a collection of articles between releases, even if it’s just four or five of them they can save for when release time comes, that I was spot on with my advice. Then they can send these articles to blogs and websites (or hire someone else to do so), and not be so stressed when they have so much other release stuff to worry about in addition to their personal stuff. The world is chaotic—don’t try to control it, because that would be futile. Just accept that stuff is going to happen and prepare as much as you can. As much as I hate to say it, whatever can happen has a tendency to…well, happen. Don’t let it get you down!

Melanie R. Meadors is the author of fantasy and science fiction stories where heroes don't always carry swords and knights in shining armor often lose to nerds who study their weaknesses. She’s been known to befriend wandering garden gnomes, do battle with metal-eating squirrels, and has been called a superhero on more than one occasion.

Her work has been published in Circle Magazine, The Wheel, and Prick of the Spindle, and she was a finalist in the 2014 Jim Baen Memorial Science Fiction Contest. Melanie is also a freelance author publicist and publicity/marketing coordinator for both Ragnarok Publications and Mechanical Muse. She blogs regularly for GeekMom and The Once and Future Podcast. Her short story “A Whole-Hearted Halfling” is in the anthology Champions of Aetaltis, available April 12, 2016.

Links:

www.melaniermeadors.com

www.theonceandfuturepodcast.com

www.geekdad.com/geekmom/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Melanie-R-Meadors-131520426908658/

Twitter: @MelanieRMeadors

http://www.amazon.com/Champions-Aetaltis-Marc-Tassin-ebook/dp/B01E0EO7P0/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1460214424&sr=8-2&keywords=champions+of+aetaltis