HorrorAddicts.net 231, Annabel Lee
Christmas Love Story – Regency Style
Super Update! Emz slept most of Fall. -.-
Omg… I caught COVID about the 16th of October and then got COVID rebound. So, basically, I was really sick for about a month and my brain didn’t come back for a bit longer. I *think* it’s back now. O.o We’ll find out! Hahaha!
Totally missed all the fun stuff at Halloween time and tons of stuff happened while I was sick and I didn’t have time to shout it out. So, here is a recap of everything you may have missed.
September 13th
Horror Curated: Halloween landed on Etsy mid-September and what a great addition it would make to your Halloween library! This puppy is 48 full-color pages featuring interviews with: Musician Destini Beard, Writer Jeff Strand, Artist Dan Brereton, and Maker Holding Aces.PLUS! *An Excerpt of Halloween Nights *Halloween Poetry *Once Upon a Time on Halloween *Halloween on the Air *Creepy Crawly Pumpkin Topiary *The Trouble with Most Haunted Lists *5 Spooky Places for Halloween *Session 9, A Journey into Psychological Horror *Creepy Clown Sightings of 2016 *The Man Who Killed Halloween *Trick or Treat Bingo *Book and music reviews. All curated by: D.J. Pitsiladis, Daphne Strasert, Kate Nox, Lionel Ray Green, Mark Orr, Courtney Mroch, R.L. Merrill, Chris Ringler, J.S. O’Connor, Megan Starrak, Russell Holbrook, and Emerian Rich.
October 21st
The Season Finale of HorrorAddicts.net aired, hosted by me and two studio guests (Ari & Cam). It featured Rosetta Yorke’s awesome tale from Manor of Frights, “Come Find Me, Mummy” and the band Metamorph. We also had cameos from Loren Rhoads, R.L. Merrill, D.J. Pitsiladis, and Rish Outfield. There was the announcement of the Best Band (Congrats Vision Video!) and Best In Blood (Congrats J. Malcolm Stewart!). As well as a fun craft and the announcing of all the coming horror flicks that might tide us over until 2024. I was super sick during the editing of this show and only vaguely remember posting it out and then passed out and did not rise for days. Ha! But it was such a good show. If you missed it, please check it out. This airing marked the end of Season 18 and wow… I can’t believe I’ve been doing this so long. 2024 will mark Season 19 and a whole new theme…wouldn’t you like to know what that is?! There is a clue on the show. *hint, hint* Listen and you shall know!
October 25th
The 25th, as I struggled to rise from my slumber, something else rose up! Rise, a queer SciFi flash fiction book went live, featuring my story “3x,” a polyamorous horror story set in…the graveyard! Mwhahaha… Rise features 300-word speculative flash fiction stories from across the rainbow spectrum, from the minds of the writers of Queer Sci Fi and you may find some names there familiar like… Editor J. Scott Coatsworth, Sumiko Saulson, Kim Fielding, Rie Sheridan Rose, and many other awesome writers I’ve not had the pleasure to meet in person yet. It was tons of fun to be involved in this project and you can hear me and several other authors read our works in the video below. Thankfully, this recording was recorded before my plague set in.
November 12th
Word Horde Emporium of the Weird and Fantastic brought me back to civilization and although I was still recovering, this magical place went a long way to boost that Emz energy! A great little store in Petaluma, CA, this is a place you gotta see! I could spend tons here with all the cool stuff there is to read, wear, squeeze, and roll–yes, the dice fanatic bought dice. They’ve got not only books but tons of horror and weird-themed merch. Along with B.F. Vega and R.L. Merril, I hung out, read some zombie fiction aloud, and chatted with customers. The owner, Ross, was so friendly and kind to us. He’s really a small business owner you want to support because he’s a fan just like us! 🙂 Definitely check them out if you live or happen to be up there and follow them on Instagram for updates about their store and to see a video of me talking about the event.
Thank you for reading all the way to the end. I hope you’ve found a few things to listen to, read, and purchase! Have a great Holiday Season and happy reading!
~Emz
HorrorAddicts.net 229, Michael Fassbender
HorrorAddicts.net 228, Ollie Fox
Writing Tips I Wish I’d Know by J. Scott Coatsworth
I Wish I’d Known
From J. Scott Coatsworth’s forthcoming book
for indie writers Suck a Little Happy Juice (2024)
Every writer has a list of things they wish they’d known when they started. Writing is a craft, like any other, and each mistake teaches us something new. Here are a few things I would tell my younger self it I could, knowledge that would have made my writing journey a little easier.
Rejections Happen. Don’t Let Them Stop You: If you give up being a writer just because you received a few rejections, you’ve already lost the game. You may be awful at writing, or you might be the best writer who ever lived. Either way, you will be rejected, sooner or later (and probably a lot). It may not have anything to do with the quality of your writing, and even if it does, you can work on your skills and become a better writer. Most likely, your story just didn’t connect with that editor at that particular time. I got rejected by ten big publishers when I was twenty-seven, and I let it derail my writing career for almost two decades. Don’t do what I did. Believe in yourself and forge ahead.
It Doesn’t Need to Be Perfect the First Time: Another newbie writer error is trying to make sure the story is perfect in its first draft. The perfect really is the enemy of the good. If you spend more than a week tweaking one page of your book (unless it’s the first one and you’re angling to snag an agent or big publisher with it), you’ve probably fallen into this trap. Let it go and keep writing. You can fix any issues in later drafts.
The Muddy Middle is Real: Many writers get bogged down in the story somewhere around the middle (for me it’s usually two-thirds of the way through—what I call the “muddy middle”). What once seemed fresh and daring now seems hokey, trite, and overdone, and you can’t ever see yourself selling the cursed thing. But take heart—maybe it sucks, maybe it doesn’t. But it’s all fixable. Stick to your goal, move on, and finish the story. Leave it to your future self to determine if it’s really bad as you think. You might be surprised once you have a chance to get a little distance and perspective.
Start Out In The Market You Want To Be In: When I began writing seriously in 2013, my first submission was to some anthologies in the Romance market. Romance wasn’t my first love—that would be sci-fi/fantasy. But publishers I knew about in that market had openings for stories that I knew how to write, and so I took a chance. While I don’t regret my decision—I’ve made some amazing friends and published a bunch of great stories through those channels—I ended up spending years moving from the Romance market to the sci-fi/fantasy market. Figure out where you want to be, and focus all your efforts there.
Learn The Rules: There are a lot of rules to writing—and a lot of strong publisher and editor preferences, backed up by the various style guides. Since I’ve come back to writing, I’ve learned that double spaces between sentences are out, that I should never use semicolons and rarely use adverbs. Writers no longer underline italics, and rarely use “he said” or “she said.” So learn the rules first. But here’s the thing, once you know them, you can break them. You just need to know why you’re doing it, and for what effect.
Write What’s In Your Heart: There’s always some new, hot trend in the market. Werewolves, Mars, vampires, RPG, zombies, etc. But very few people are able to chase the market successfully—by the time you get there with your story, it has already moved on to something new. In the long run, you’ll be happier writing the thing that makes you happy, even if it doesn’t make you tons of money. And when you write what you like, your enthusiasm shines through your work, making it that much more likely that you will find success with it.
Make Friends—Lots and Lots of Friends: Networking is the lifeblood of this market. And while having lots of friends doesn’t guarantee your success, it does give you connections and options. Identify editors, successful authors, and others in your specific niche and get to know them. Offer to help them with their own needs, sharing their work, beta reading for them, etc. and they will most likely return the favor. Build bridges, not walls.
Don’t Read Your Goodreads or Amazon Reviews: Or if you do, bring along a friend and a bottle of whiskey to buffer the pain. We writers are notoriously thin-skinned. We wear our art on our sleeves, and one nasty review can obliterate ten five-star ones. Be very careful checking your reader reviews, especially at first. The writers who quit their craft after reading a single horrible review are legion. Don’t be one of them.
Don’t Be Afraid To Sell Yourself: You’re an author. It’s probably because you feel a deep-seated need to write—you have stories in your soul that need to be told. Be proud of it. How many people say they want to be writers and actually follow through with it? How many people actually put out a first book, or a second, or a third? You are a rare breed. Don’t be afraid to promote yourself and what you do. There’s a whole audience out there waiting to find you.
Don’t Be Afraid Of The Tech: This one’s especially important if you are indie publishing. The ability to indie pub has become so much easier in the last few years, but it’s still daunting. When I published my first indie author book a couple years back, I bit my nails down to the quick, worried sick I was doing it wrong. But here’s the good news. Remember all the friends I made you make above? Well, I’m betting at least one of them knows how to do each and every one of the technological things you’ll need to learn, and is willing to help. So dive in, and call those lifelines when you need them. You’ll figure it all out—I have faith in you.
Don’t Expect to Become an Overnight Bestseller: Does it happen? Sure! Sometimes an unknown author strikes gold on their first try with exactly the right idea, decent writing, and the right contacts, all at the same time. But most of us slog along for years before we have anything approaching an overnight success. So it’s nose-to-the-grindstone time. Write as much as possible, learn to be the best writer you can, and see where it takes you. Effort is often destiny.
Always Doubt Yourself: Okay, so I know this sounds weird. But I mean it in a good way. Be humble and remember that you can always improve your craft. I had the fortune to not hit it big with my first novel. It’s easy when you find great success to start believing in your own mythology and writing ability. But a healthy streak of self-doubt keeps you striving to be better.
Support Your Fellow Writers: If you have a blog, offer it up for announcements of your writer friends’ works, especially those who have audiences that overlap with yours. Cheer your fellow authors on when they have triumphs and console them when they fall. Build the community you want to be a part of—in the long run, it will pay you back.
Be Kind: Over your career as a writer, you’re going to meet a bunch of wonderful people. You’ll also meet a motley assortment of fools, assholes, jerks, and folks who are just happening to have a crappy day when they cross your path. Be nice. It costs you nothing, and over time will become a part of your brand and will be reflected in the way people treat you back. And when you do run across someone who makes you feel small, don’t return the favor. Be kind to them. Have a couple of close friends you can vent to privately to blow off steam. And if someone persists in being a jerk, don’t be afraid to block them from your social media. After all, “be kind” doesn’t mean “be a pushover.” It’s just means putting out into the world what you want to see more of—a little light.
Celebrate the Wins: You’ll have enough heartache and disappointment in your life as an author. So when you sell a book, or have one come out, or get a great review, stop and savor the moment. Get yourself a chocolate bar or glass of champagne. Go out to dinner with your honey. Take a long bubble bath and don’t skimp on the bubbles. Do whatever makes you happy—you deserve it.
There are others I could share—particulars about how to manage backlist, where to distribute your books, etc. But starting with the basics will help you with your long-term plan, whatever challenges you end up facing.
Define your own success.
Scott lives with his husband Mark in a yellow bungalow in Sacramento. He was indoctrinated into fantasy and sci fi by his mother at the tender age of nine. He devoured her library, but as he grew up, he wondered where all the people like him were. He decided that if there weren’t queer characters in his favorite genres, he would remake them to his own ends. A Rainbow Award winning author, he runs Queer Sci Fi, QueeRomance Ink, and Other Worlds Ink with Mark, sites that celebrate fiction reflecting queer reality, and is the committee chair for the Indie Authors Committee at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).
Check out Scott’s new release:
A GUARD AND A THIEF. WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
Aik has fallen hopelessly in love with his best friend. But Raven’s a thief, which makes things… complicated. Oh, and Raven has just been kidnapped by a dragon.
Now Aik is off on a quest of his own, to hunt down the foul beast and make them give back his … friend? Lover? Soulmate? The whole not-knowing thing just makes everything harder.
Meanwhile, the world of Tharassas is falling apart, besieged by earthquakes, floods, and strange creatures no one has ever seen before. Aik’s ex, Silya has gone back to Gullton to do try to save her people as the Hencha Queen, and Aik’s stuck in a caravan with her mother and a damnable magical gauntlet that won’t let him be. He has to find Raven, before it’s too late.
Things were messy before, but now they’re much, much worse.
Author Website: https://www.jscottcoatsworth.com
HorrorAddicts.net 227, DW Milton
Manor of Frights: An Excerpt by Lesley Warren
Manor of Frights
Imagine a Victorian house where every room is cursed with a frightful existence. Are monsters in the halls? Ghosts left to fester in the library? Or are the rooms themselves enchanted with malevolent energy? What was summoned long ago and what doorways were left open? Manor of Frights is a collection of tales all set in different rooms of the same house.
With authors: Judith Pancoast, Daphne Strasert, Loren Rhoads, Mark Orr, Michael Fassbender, R.L. Merrill, Sumiko Saulson, Ollie Fox, Barend Nieuwstraten III, Rosetta Yorke, Amanda Leslie, Lesley Warren, BF Vega, DW Milton, D.J. Pitsiladis, Jason Fischer, and Emerian Rich.
An excerpt from Manor of Frights
Bye, Baby Bunting
by Lesley Warren
The Nursery, 1900
After leaving her to grieve in private for a socially acceptable amount of time, Cora Billington decided she would call on Ida Wells.
Ida had sent a telegram to say that was fine. After all, she’d been doing precious little in the weeks since her husband’s death—receiving and attempting to comfort family guests, arranging the funeral flowers in vases, sitting around in her widow’s weeds, thinking of nothing save how slowly the time seemed to pass.
“Indeed,” she told Cora, “I’d rather welcome the company.”
Perhaps that really was how she felt, but she wasn’t altogether sure. She was no longer sure of anything.
In truth, she had found herself caught in something of an emotional straitjacket since Frank’s untimely passing. For the two short years of their fairytale marriage, he had always made the decisions, and left alone, she was rudderless and numb. He had been the one who wanted the baby, and that as soon as possible. Her sentiments toward children were decidedly cooler, but she was more than willing to fulfill Frank’s expectations. He always knew best. Or at least, he had…
Automatic tears welled up in Ida’s eyes, although the vessel of her soul remained empty. She swallowed them and painted on her sad widow’s smile.
In the sitting room, she let herself fall into her best friend’s rustling embrace, jealously taking in her new blush-pink crepe dress and the matching feather in her jaunty hat.
“This is just a little something I found in town for your little angel,” Cora said coyly, placing a blue corduroy rabbit in Ida’s lap and smugly rearranging her own lacy skirts.
“Why, thank you, dear, he’s ever so sweet.” An invisible foot clanged against Ida’s ribs, making Ida and the rabbit jump.
“Oh!” Cora said in delight. “Baby knows we’re talking about it!”
“Yes,” Ida said, encircling the globe of her stomach with her arms and trying to appear unruffled. “If it has an ear for gossip, it must be a girl.”
“How precious!” Cora cooed. “Let’s say she has your perfect skin and your thick hair. Do you think she’ll have Daddy’s eyes?”
Ida thought of Frank’s amber eyes and the way they’d made her insides turn to honey that night at the dance. How she’d melted for him when he asked for her hand, soft and sweet. She closed her eyes on the memory, so that unlike a photograph, it could never fade.
***
That night, after she had eaten dinner, the pains began.
When the doctor settled the blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms several hours later, Ida was tired but pleased. The labor had been relatively short, the birth uneventful. Baby Minnie—the pretty name had sprung to Ida’s mind instantly—had thick black hair, Ida’s grey eyes, and plump little lips like two pouty rose petals. She was without a doubt already the most attractive child in Ida and Frank’s circle of acquaintances, just as Ida had foreseen. It was so satisfying to be proven right.
Once Ida was alone with the baby, she promenaded her around the nursery, proud of the cozy nest she and Frank had made for their precious fledgling.
“If only Daddy could see you now,” she said tenderly and was surprised at herself, the sudden onrush of emotion breaking down her heart’s defenses.
Tucking Minnie and the corduroy rabbit into the cradle, she sang gently into the tiny shell-like ear.
“Bye, baby Bunting,
Daddy’s gone a-hunting,
Gone to get a rabbit skin,
To wrap the baby Bunting in.”
Yet motherhood was not entirely idyllic. The first time Ida attempted to feed the child, she had a nasty surprise. She had spent a long while propping up pillows and carefully arranging Minnie in her arms, her breasts throbbing and heavy with milk. When the little red mouth opened, though, she shrieked. It was as though a ring of red-hot needles had pierced her flesh. She held the child at arm’s length and exclaimed. Inside the newborn’s mouth were the tiniest of teeth, fine and pointed and savage—like those of some small animal. Such wicked teeth for a baby who was otherwise a porcelain doll. Its grey eyes huge and glassy, stared out from her elfin face.
Ida persisted in trying to feed her, but the more she tried, the more bruised and bloodied her breasts became, and the less milk she produced. Eventually, her mere presence at the cradle seemed to upset the child. Ravenous Minnie wailed pathetically and screamed like a banshee by turns. When a single drop of pinkish milk appeared at the tip of the nipple after fruitless hours in the nursery, Ida buried her face in the baby’s bedclothes and admitted defeat.
To read more, go to: Manor of Frights
Emz Newz 