Wait No More…THE WAITING Has Arrived
I am thrilled to let you all know that my latest novella, THE WAITING, is finally here. This is my 5th book for Samhain and my first based on a true and very terrifying story. In a house outside New York City, the ‘solid’ apparition of a young boy is still seen by the couple depicted in the book. It is a haunting that defies logic or explanation. THE WAITING is my attempt at making sense of an exceedingly bizarre series of events that continue to this day.
The early reviews have been great. 4 stars from Night Owl Reviews.
“It has all the makings for a classic ghost story. If you enjoy being spooked by ghastly little children with sinister intentions, this novella is definitely for you. 5 Stars!” — Tim Meyer, Horror Novel Reviews
From Long and Short Reviews : “I stayed up late to finish The Waiting, although I wouldn’t recommend doing the same to anyone hoping to get a good night’s sleep. It’s much better to read this book in the middle of the day while ignoring any unusual shadows or heavy footsteps in the corner of the room.
So, what’s THE WAITING all about?
Clinging to life, haunted by the dead.
Newlywed Cassandra Pagano lies in a state between life and death, her body fed and preserved by the machines at her side. While she struggles, unaware of the world around her, someone waits—a boy. A phantom that appears solid, real, alive. Cassandra’s husband, Brian, sees him in the house, by her bedside, running down darkened hallways. The boy walks without sound, whispers words that can’t be deciphered.
Terror and tension are driving Brian to the breaking point. Why is the boy there, and what does he want with Cassandra…and her fading soul?
You can get your ebook of THE WAITING now for under $3.00 everywhere ebooks are sold. I guarantee you will never look at life and death the same way again.
Horrorhound 2014 Pictorial
I’m back from Horrorhound Weekend 2014. I survived the drive to Cincinnati and back, despite riding into a flash blizzard that caused 90% of the cars to slide off the road and having a piece of lumber fall off the back of a semi and nearly impale my car. Take that, fates!!
I heard that over 15,00o hardcore horror fans descended on the convention center. It made the news. Hell, I made the news. Yep, on Saturday morning I watched the Channel 5 news and saw the Samhain booth with me and author Russell James chatting up a potential reader.
And man, were there a lot of readers. You don’t alway get that at cons (don’t get me started on the state of readers today). The Samhain booth was loaded with authors this year. It was a blast hanging out and signing books alongside Mick Ridgewell, Russell James, Kristopher Rufty, Tim Waggoner, Jonathan Janz, David Searls and Quinn Langston in her full Steampunk gear.
My favorite part of any con is meeting new people and reuniting with old friends. Spoke to quite a few aspiring horror writers. The best part was that most of them were women. This genre needs more estrogen! I’m very grateful to everyone that came out and stopped by our booth to chat with all of us and buy our books. You’re what makes this whole writing thing worthwhile.
So, as usual, here is my Horrorhound pictorial. Get ready to do a lot of scrolling. If you think it looks awesome, because it was, get your tickets to their next con in Indianapolis in the fall! I’ll be there.
Revvin’ Up For Horrorhound
That’s right, I’m loading up the Monster Mobile and pointing it west, hitting the road like a demon on an unholy mission, armed with pepper beef jerky, liquid libations and a Brinks truck to pay for the gas. My destination : Horrorhound Weekend in Cincinnati. I wasn’t able to make any cons last year, so I need to make up for lost time. Hope you can join me and other great Samhain authors like Jonathan Janz, Russell James (I’m Russell James, bitch!), Mick Ridgewell, Kristopher Rufty, Tim Waggoner, David Searls and Quinn Langston. The Samhain booth will be front and center in the main expo room.
The legendary Bruce Campbell will be there, as well as members of The Walking Dead and some of the cast from my favorite movie last year, You’re Next. Horrorhound is the Mardi Gras of terror, so get it in gear and come party with us!
I’ll be in the booth all throughout the weekend signing books and acting the fool, when I’m not shopping for horror gear. I’ll be previewing my upcoming book, The Waiting, as well as my moldy oldies like Sinister Entity and Forest of Shadows. Knowing Samhain, folks who come to the booth may even get a discount code to pick up a copy of The Waiting. My assigned signing times are below, but you can bet I’ll be there much more:
Friday : 7:00 – 10:00 (with Jonathan Janz and Mick Ridgewell)
Saturday : 3:00 – 7:00 (with David Searls and Tim Waggoner)
Sunday : 11:00 – 2:00 (with Kristopher Rufty, David Searls and Mick Ridgewell)
Stop on by, talk some horror, get some great books and have a drink with me!
In Search Of…The Lizard Man
Anyone who has ever hung around my blog and chain knows I’m a cryptid fanatic. Just check out Swamp Monster Massacre if you don’t believe me. Or my upcoming book, The Montauk Monster. Or the one after that, Hell Hole. I recently had my fortune read by a traveling gypsy, and for the price of one silver coin, a lock of my hair and two drops of blood, she said I was once the leader of a clan of Bigfoots and that one day I would return to the wild. That explains everything.
I was an enormous fan of Lyle Blackburn’s debut book, The Beast of Boggy Creek. Here was a man I could tell loved Sasquatch as much as me. His book was one of the best researched and well written in the vast cryptid library (no offense to Loren Coleman, who is the king of the field).
When I heard Blackburn’s follow up book would be about the Lizard Man of Bishopville, South Carolina, I chomped at the bit to get my hands on it. I snatched up a copy when it came out in October, but with writing deadlines, I had to wait until now to read it – or to put it more accurately, plow through it.
I have a confession to make. With all my fascination with monsters and beasties, and having half my family live in South Carolina, I’d actually never heard of the Lizard Man. I intentionally avoided looking anything up before reading the book. I trusted Lyle to give me all I’d need, and I was right.
Back in 1988, when hair metal was in full swing and I was playing cards in the cafeteria more than going to classes in college, there was a series of encounters with a large creature that walked on two legs, attacked cars and people and generally scared the bejeesus out of an entire town. That town was Bishopville, SC, which, like the ol’ beast of Boggy Creek, was home to the Scape Ore Swamp, prime living quarters for the strange beast.
Descriptions of the cryptid varied, and in truth, after reading the book, it didn’t seem to be at all like an actual Lizard Man. I get the feeling that what folks were seeing was more in line with a Bigfoot, and I feel Blackburn leans in the same direction. No matter what it was, the town was gripped with Lizard Man fever for a long, hot summer.
Blackburn went down to Bishopville and interviewed the man who had been sheriff at the time, as well as some of the people who had come in contact with the unknown. The man does his homework. He even explored stories of reptiles and lizard men in other areas, pop culture and movies. In fact, he mentioned a few I haven’t seen and will seek out when I go to Horrorhound in Cincinnati next week.
I totally dug Lizard Man and it’s now sitting proudly on my special shelf of prized cryptid and ghost books. I don’t want to spill the beans on the whole book, so I highly suggest you pick up a copy. I did get the feeling that with the flap being so brief and reports not jiving with one another, Blackburn had to pad the book a little to give it some weight. No matter. The padding was just as good as the underpinnings of the story itself.
Let me finish with a personal request for Lyle. Come on up to New York and knock on my door. There’s a place in Orange County I can take you to that will give you enough fodder for three books. I’ll do the driving and buy the first round. Hell, I’ll even break out my cowboy hat.
The Waiting’s 4 Star Review, Book Deals, Best & Worst Movies and Horrorhound
As you can tell, I have more than a few things to share with the world today. So, let’s get right down to it.
We’re less than 1 month away from the release of my novella, The Waiting. It just got a new 4 star review from Night Owl Reviews. “The Waiting has a great plot, with an ending that will blow you away!” I’d buy that for a dollar. OK, I had to in light of that terrible Robo Cop remake.
My publisher, Samhain, is running a fantastic special right now on their trade paperbacks. If you order with the code listed below, you get 50% off any print title. You can’t beat that with a chainsaw. Get it now while you can and stock up on your summer reading.
I recently posted my favorite horror movies of 2013. The Monster Men decided to expand on it and make it an episode – our longest to date but I know you’ll get a kick out of it. Plus, I’m sure we’ll give you a few flicks to add to your wish list.
As a perfect contrast to the Monster Men, the guys at Splatter Chatter dished on their all time WORST movies. Really funny, and at times, scarily passionate. You have to check them out.
And last but not least, I’ll be appearing at Horrorhound Weekend in Cinicnnati in 3 weeks. The Samhain table is going to be at the entrance of the main exhibit hall. Come on down and have a beer withe me! Much more to come on this over the next few weeks, so stay tuned.
I’m A Bobble Head!
Well, kinda. Just shot fresh episodes of the Monster Men yesterday. This is how we kicked things off. Shockingly this was before I broke out the beer.
The Waiting Gets Its First Review
Hola from the land of ice and snow. I’ve been shoveling and chopping ice daily for a month now. Still not fed up with winter, even though we’re just a few inches shy of the all time record of 70 inches for a season. I think my parents adopted me from an eskimo family.
The good thing about being trapped in the house is that I have plenty of time to get things done, writing-wise. I’m going over the final page proofs for THE MONTAUK MONSTER, just handed in the sequel to SINISTER ENTITY and I’m on day 3 of working on my next thriller for Pinnacle. I’m hoping this one will induce palpitations and night sweats.
Amidst all this, I was thrilled to see the very first review for my upcoming novella, THE WAITING, over at Horror Novel Reviews. I think I have to put the reviewer, Tim Meyer, in the will or something. The book is a little over a month away, so this was a nice early surprise present.
Available April 1st as a Samhain Horror ebook.
Here are the tasty bits of the review…
The Waiting is one of Hunter’s best, most personal works to date.
…has all the makings for a classic ghost story.
Hunter’s style implants moving images in your brain that captures your mind, making his words nearly impossible to put down.
This novella has relatable characters, an engaging plot, and a creepy little boy I hope stays inside Hunter’s novella and the hell away from my house. Go read it!
To check out the entire review, click here.
And for those intrigued, here’s a picture of the actual where the phantom boy in The Waiting has been seen on and off for the past 20 years.
OK, time to buy Demi Lovato tickets for my daughter. Life can’t all be ghosts and monsters.
Horror-Paranormal Roundup for February
Ah, February. The month of love, thanks to Valentine’s Day. When I think of love, I think of the color red. And when I think of the color red, well, strange things come to mind.
The color red is seen quite often in werewolf movies. And sometimes, there is a bit of romance – think the shower scene in An American Werewolf in London. Scarily enough, it took the Monster Men 54 episodes before we dedicated an episode solely to the misunderstood werewolf. Click on the image below to watch the episode and transform yourselves…
Speaking of Valentine’s Day, are you looking for something special for the horrorhound love of your life? The folks at Horror Novel Reviews have just the thing. I can only imagine what kind of love letters are between the pages of their latest release.
What book do I plan to read this month that has me excited as a cracked-out roadrunner? Redheads, by Jonathan Moore. The praise for this novel has been loud and proud. Check it out.
A killer far worse than insane.
Chris Wilcox has been searching for years, so he knows a few things about his wife’s killer. Cheryl Wilcox wasn’t the first. All the victims were redheads. All eaten alive and left within a mile of the ocean. The trail of death crosses the globe and spans decades.
The cold trail catches fire when Chris and two other survivors find a trace of the killer’s DNA. By hiring a cutting-edge lab to sequence it, they make a terrifying discovery. The killer is far more dangerous than they ever guessed. And now they’re being hunted by their own prey.
If you’re looking for a pretty damn good ghost story, with a dash of gothic romance, you have to watch The Awakening. Somehow this had slipped under my radar. I stumbled upon it while perusing Netflix on-demand. Truly one of the better, creepier ghost movies I’ve seen in a long while.
Editing The Hell Out Of Your Book
From my understanding, hell is a place where bad people go.
First drafts are places where hellish sentences, plots and characters lurk. When you edit, you’re a manuscript exorcist. The power of revision compels you! The power of revision compels you!
As imperative as the editing process is, I’ve seen plenty of aspiring writers stuck in revision hell. I know people who have been editing and tweaking their first novel for over ten years. Then there are people who think a first draft is all you need, forgetting that when you say first draft, that implies there must come a second, third, yadda-yadda-yadda. We all can’t be Robert B. Parker who obtained legendary status as a writer who loathed rewrites. Let’s consider him the outlier, not the standard.
When you edit, you have to set tight rules. You want to polish that lump of coal into a diamond, but it has no value if you never get it out to an agent or publisher.
When 2014 ends, I will have published 8 books in 3 years. I’m always working on something, so I can’t let myself slip into editing hell. But, I also can’t scrimp on revising each novel and novella.
Editing, to me, is synonymous with the word rounds. Each book will require several rounds of revisions. And when I say round, I mean going from start to end, re-reading and rewriting like a person possessed. Here’s an example of how I edited my upcoming novella, The Waiting.
First Round : Also known as the first draft. My main concern at this stage was getting the story down. Occasionally I would go back and tweak what I wrote the day before, but the theme in this round is always onward and upward! Hell, what’s pouring out of me at this point may not even make sense, but somewhere in that mess is the backbone of the book. The key is to power through and get to The End.
Second Round : This is where the hard work comes in. I read every line from start to end, making changes, wiping out whole sections, adding more, tightening plot points, checking for grammar, punctuation, etc. Of all the rounds, this is the one with the most heavy lifting. This is where the story truly comes alive.
Third Round : I have several trusted people who are my first readers. For each book, I’ll select two of them to read the manuscript. One looks at it like a line editor, finding all of my many mistakes, checking for continuity and basically making it look like I passed English class with flying colors. Another reads it to give me feedback on the story itself. They make suggestions on how to improve the story. Some parts need to be placed in earlier sections of a book, others tossed into a deep, deep pit. They’ll also point out sub-plots that my conscious mind wasn’t aware of, affording me the chance to further explore them and make the overall story stronger. The feedback from my first readers has a value impossible to quantify. I’m eternally in their debt.
Fourth Round : In this round, I take the line edits from my first reader and correct all of the mistakes. For me, this is the easiest round since someone has already told me what to do. I just need to follow orders.
Fifth Round : Now another very hard part. Scrambling the pieces of the story around based on my other first reader’s feedback. This can be a heavy rewrite that can take weeks, or a little less punishing that may only take all my free time for a week.
Sixth Round : After I’ve retooled the entire book, I have to read it again, making more revisions as I go. This can be heaven or it can be hell. If it’s heaven, it’s ready to go once I’ve reached the last page. If it’s hell, it means another round of edits.
Luckily, for The Waiting, I was able to stop at 6 rounds. Double lucky was that it was a novella and only a hundred pages. Sweet. Now, when I wrote my thriller, The Montauk Monster ,a book that was just under 100,000 words, I believe I went as far as 8 rounds. Remember earlier when I said you have to set editing rules? That was essential for The Montauk Monster because I only had 4 months to write and edit the book. If your goal is to be a working writer, you’re going to be writing your ass off, year in and year out. There’s no time to be trapped in editing hell.
Don’t let the multiple rounds process scare you. Believe it or not, you’ll like the book more and more with each round. You may even grow to love it! The passion you felt on writing the first page will be rekindled. Honest.
I’m not saying this is the way you have to do it. It’s just the way I do it and it’s been working…so far.
Anyone out there stuck in editing hell? You have a revision trick that could benefit the rest of the class? Come on, let’s hear it. When it comes to writing, old dogs learn new tricks every day. I’ll send a signed promo copy of the cover of The Montauk Monster to the first 10 people in the U.S. who add to the conversation (have to watch that postage! if you live outside the US, I’ll find something else for you).
Happy editing!
Waiting for THE WAITING
Okay, another round of shoveling, another couple of Motrin. You will not defeat me, Father Winter!
I am comforted thinking about the release of my new novella, The Waiting, in just two months. In just 8 weeks, the snow will be history and I’ll be back in shorts and sleeveless shirts (ala Larry the Cable Guy, my fashion guru). With The Waiting, I’m diving right back into the world of ghosts, but with a twist. This time around the story is real. And it’s not one I got from secondhand accounts. This is the kind of stuff that turns people into insomniacs or ‘day sleepers’.
Intrigued?
Let me take things on step further. Here’s a sneak preview from chapter 13. You can pre-order a copy (it’ll be out as an e-book only) at Samhain, Amazon and B&N. Now turn off your EMF meter, bathe yourself in a protective circle of light and read on….
Alice worried constantly about her daughter, but it wasn’t until recently that she considered there might come a day when she would lose her. When she had first arrived at the house, she could feel the hope that crackled in the air. Like all energy, it had come and gone, morphing into something new, in someplace new.
Now the house felt cold and expectant. Her negative thoughts weren’t helping the situation. All of Cassie’s pain and their worry were building a cocoon of despair. Somehow, they had to find a way to break free of it.
Well, today she would try her best to dispel the negativity. Cassie was going to come out of it. Things always get worse before they get better. She knew Brian never left the house without making sure all of Cassie’s machines were pumping and draining away. That meant there was time for a shower before heading downstairs. Better to start clean and new.
When she was done, she wrapped a towel around her hair, put on a nice shirt and jeans and walked down the noisy stairs.
“Good boy,” she said when she saw the half-full coffee pot on the warmer. He made it a little weak for her taste, but beggars can’t be choosers.
Alice had bought a handful of gossip magazines at the bookstore. She wanted to make today a silly girl day, even if Cassandra couldn’t laugh or groan along with her. Then maybe she’d take a cue from Brian and pop in a movie and watch it with her.
As she walked out of the kitchen, she said, “Cassie, honey, you’re never going to believe who Brad Pitt is fooling around with.”
The mug slipped from her hand, bathing the floor and her feet with piping hot coffee. If there was pain, her mind was too stunned to register it.
A small boy sat at the end of Cassandra’s bed. One knee was bent and most of that leg was on the comforter. The other was locked straight, his foot flat on the floor. He looked at Cassie with beautiful, shining eyes and a round face with skin as flawless and smooth as fresh cream.
He didn’t look away, despite the crashing of the coffee mug and her sharp gasp of surprise.
The sun filtered through the window. It bathed him in a diffusion of soft, yellow light.
Alice’s heart raced and her hands began to tremble. She found it hard to keep her grip on the tabloids.
The boy moved with surprising grace, shifting off the bed and seeming to glide to the head of Cassandra’s bed. He bent forward, and Alice lost sight of him for a moment. When he straightened, he smiled, then reached out to the control panel of the infusion pump.
Part of her wanted to yell at him not to touch it. If she thought a real, living boy was in the room with her daughter, she would have.
But she knew what she was seeing was not an actual boy.
The certainty of what she beheld kept her mouth from opening and her legs from propelling her into the room.
She watched him turn his back and walk around the bed until he left the view within the doorframe. She was struck by how quiet the house was. The boy’s footsteps didn’t elicit a single tick from the cranky wood floor.
When he was gone, the infusion pump started to howl. It broke her trance and she walked over shards of ceramic, leaving coffee and crimson-colored footprints in her wake. She was not surprised to see that the boy had disappeared.
She was concerned about the warning chime on the pump. When she looked down, the floor by the bed was covered in a foul-smelling miasma of blood and clots of infected tissue. The drain tube in Cassandra’s stomach had slipped out. Her digestive acids must have flared up, spewing rot and gore from the open wound the surgeon had left until it spilled onto the floor.
The smell was overpowering. She clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from vomiting.
What do I do?
