Scary Books To Read This #Horrortober
It’s getting chilly outside and I see a smattering of brown crunchy leaves on the ground. That means it’s time to dive headfirst into the pile of books I curate just for the Halloween season, or as I call it, Horrortober. This year’s list may be a bit ambitious, but I think I can do it. That’s along with watching 1 horror movie a day and other decadent things. So, if you’re looking for a hot read when the nights are dark and our spirits colder, pluck one of these off the shelf…
THE NIGHT PARADE BY RON MALFI
First the birds disappeared.
Then the insects took over.
Then the madness began . . .
They call it Wanderer’s Folly–a disease of delusions, of daydreams and nightmares. A plague threatening to wipe out the human race.
After two years of creeping decay, David Arlen woke up one morning thinking that the worst was over. By midnight, he’s bleeding and terrified, his wife is dead, and he’s on the run in a stolen car with his eight-year-old daughter, who may be the key to a cure.
Ellie is a special girl. Deep. Insightful. And she knows David is lying to her. Lying about her mother. Lying about what they’re running from. And lying about what he sees when he takes his eyes off the road . . .
EAT THE NIGHT BY TIM WAGGONER
For Joan Lantz, it starts with a dream of a death-cult’s mass suicide in the jungle of Suriname thirty years ago, followed by the discovery of a hidden basement in her new house, where heavy metal music echoes on humid tropical air.
For Kevin Benecke, long-suffering employee of a mysterious organization known simply as Maintenance, it starts with the violent death of his co-worker at the hands of a madman who tells him, The Big Dark is coming for you.
Long-dead cult leader and former rock star Mark Maegarr has returned from beyond the grave, and Joan and Kevin have front-row seats to his apocalyptic comeback. Maegarr’s waited decades to finish what he started, and this time no one will stop him from putting on a killer show designed to hasten the universe’s end.
Rock on.
LOVECRAFT’S CURSE BY BRIAN LETENDRE
A horrific childhood incident cast a shadow over Fela Barton’s life for fourteen years.
Now a 20-year-old college student, Fela survived her first semester of living on campus and is finally ready put the past behind her.
Until the nightmares start again.
Fela’s dreams hold the key to the madness that has plagued her family for generations. But as she searches for answers, a terrible evil gets closer to finding her.
Only one person can help Fela now–and he’s been dead for over 70 years.
LITTLE SECRETS BY MEGAN HART
They’re not alone in the house.
With a baby on the way and a brand new house, it seems Ginny and her husband, Sean, are on their way to a fresh start. But strange occurrences and financial strain seem determined to keep Ginny and Sean stuck in the past. Ginny begins to believe the house may be haunted…or that her husband might be trying to trick her into thinking so. As Ginny researches the house’s former owner and the tragedy that happened there, it becomes clearer than ever that something is in the house with them. The question is, who…or what…is it?
CHELSEA AVENUE BY ARMAND ROSAMILIA
On July 8th 1987, in Long Branch, New Jersey, The Haunted House Pier and Murphy’s Law club fires destroyed not only local landmarks, but everything Manny Santiago found dear.
And it isn’t over.
The entity responsible for killing Manny’s family and wreaking devastation in the small seaside community has reappeared. Again. As it has every year since. And is growing in power.
Every July 8th it returns, as survivors of the fires, including Manny, are mysteriously led back to the now-vacant seaside lot on Chelsea Avenue, where the entity intends to finish what it started in 1987 once and for all.
TAR BY IAIN ROB WRIGHT
How do you go on living when you’re already dead?
The world has ended, yet a few places still cling to life, dragging out their final, dwindling moments until the last second. The United Kingdom is one of those places still left alive, but it is only a matter of time before it too is wiped from the face of the earth.
The Tar is coming, covering every inch of the globe. There is no escape.
It means the clock is ticking for Finn, who needs to find the monster that murdered his sister. The world might be over, but vengeance never dies.
By bestselling author, Iain Rob Wright, comes an apocalypse like no other. Follow a broken brother’s vengeance as he seeks to kill a man who is already dead.
Netflix Movies To Watch This #Horrortober
Today being the official start of Fall (even though it’ll feel like summer here), I’m as excited as a bat at sundown. #Horrotober, my month long celebration of the Halloween season, is just a week away. As always, I want you to revel in all things horror with me, which means filling our days and nights with scary movies, books, magazines and fun things to do.
So, first thing you need to do is line up movies to watch. I try to do 1 horror movie a day and always post them on twitter with the old #Horrortober hashtag. As a public service, here are some pretty good horror flix you can catch on Netflix to fill your schedule.
BASKIN
This rare Turkish horror movie starts out with five asshole cops sitting around a late night eatery. Kinda like Reservoir Dogs, except they’re not planning a crime and doling out funny names. They get called to a break in and then, my friends, all hell breaks loose. The visuals here are some of the most disturbing I’ve seen in years. This is high strangeness, a Clive Barker inspired fever dream with an antagonist that might make Pinhead shiver.
HUSH
I loved the movie Don’t Breathe, which was the second half of what I call 2016’s disability horror. Hush is a home invasion movie where a deaf woman in a remote cabin is put through hell by an absolute psycho. The fact that she can’t hear him as he moves about the cabin, breaking windows, or even know the sounds she makes as she tries to lurk around really amps up the tension. It’s a little movie that packs a big punch.
THE HALLOW
Being an Irishman, I can never resist any movie set in Ireland, horror or otherwise. In this little surprise, an arborist moves his family to the woods, settling into an old house with iron bars on all of the windows. Why? Oh, you’ll find out. Very cool creature effects abound in this taut bit o nastiness.
THE INVITATION
Man gets invited by flaky ex-wife to come over for dinner with their old friends and some new ones. He obviously doesn’t want to be there, but the new woman in his life urges him on. We know right away something bad happened between these two. But that’s not what makes this little shindig so strange. You can file this under slow burn but with a great third act. It’s one of my favorite movies of the year.
THEY LOOK LIKE PEOPLE
Another low budget indie horror that has to depend on story and strong performances by a cast of folks you’ve probably never seen before. I honestly had no idea where this one was going. A down and out dude gets taken in by his friend but maybe he should have been left to his own devices. Because he’s getting strange calls and hearing voices and is a powder keg ready to explode.
Okay, that’s my two cents. What movies would you recommend? I’ll go through your responses and pick some folks at random to win ebooks of I Kill in Peace or The Waiting.
Show Some Jersey Devil Love and Win a $25 Amazon Gift Card
Howdy Hellions, just wanted to let you all know there’s a fun little giveaway running over at Night Owl Reviews where you can win some cold, hard Amazon cash. It’s all to spread the word about The Jersey Devil. The giveaway runs until the end of September.
If you’ve read the book, please leave a brief review on Amazon. If you want to pick up a copy of the book, please buy it through the Amazon link in my bookstore. Both help a lot and keep me writing day and night to give you nightmares or make the little monster in you giggle just a tad. And thank you to everyone who has already gone to the deep corners of the Pine Barrens with me.
Just click the image below to enter the giveaway. Good luck! Hope a Hellion wins.
De-cluttering The Writer’s Life
I’ve been noticing a trend lately of people wanting to downsize (tiny houses) and get rid of all the clutter a lifetime accumulates. Even if your lifetime is only 20 years, it’s remarkable how much crap we surround ourselves with. Clutter equals mess. And when you’re wading through a mess every day, it’s very hard to get things done.
The same goes for writing. So, inspired by the bestselling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I’ve decided to delve a little deeper and address what anyone who wants to be a writer can do to pitch the useless crapola and make the writing/creative process flow like the mighty Mississippi.
1. THE TBR PILE – I have two golden rules for writing – Read and Write. You can’t do one without the other. I know many of you have massive To Be Read piles. I looked at mine a month ago and saw that it had grown to over 4 feet! And that’s not counting the ebooks on my Kindle. Plus, I keep adding books to the pile. I realized I was never going to make my way through it and in fact, it was giving me stress. So, I sat down and went through every single book and weeded out the ones that had been there for over a year. Let’s face it, if you haven’t touched it in a year or more, you really don’t want to read it. That got me down to 2 feet of books. Then I asked myself, “If you can only bring 5 books away on a nice extended vacation, which would they be?” Believe it or not, it was very easy to just select the five. I then did the same with my Kindle, moving any unread books that I wasn’t really going to read to different folders so they weren’t staring me in the face every time I turned it on. My next step is to get a local store to let me put in a bookshelf where I can relocate my old TBR books with a sign – “Read a Book, Leave a Book”. I hate to throw books away, so this is a great way to spread my love of reading, and it gives other free access to new and used books.
2. WRITING SPACE – Now, I have a very cool corner carved out in my house for writing, but I tend to write all over the place. We’re talking the kitchen, living room, in bed, the yard, my car. I haven’t tried the bathrooom…yet. But, my special writing space is also where I keep my notes, printouts, receipts, supplies, you name it. And over the course of a year, it becomes a repository for anything without a proper home. When I look at it, I get queasy, wondering if there are any unpaid bills or parking tickets under that mess. There’s a simple solution for that. Get a 30 gallon lawn and leaf bag, set aside 2 hours one day and just dive in. Also, be ready to make folders so you can organize the things that are truly vital. And pay those tickets!
This isn’t my desk, but you get the idea.
3. PODCASTS – I, like so many others, am a podcast junkie. Some I listen to for entertainment and others for inspiration or education. You’ll see me with my headphones on while I walk, clean the house, cook or do the yard work. I love them. Buuuut, I had subscribed to so many and felt obligated to listen to each new episode, they were eating into my time to write. I looked at my iPod. Holy moley, I was trying to keep up weekly with over two dozen podcasts! That’s just way too many. So like my TBR pile, I whittled it down to my 4 essentials, the ones I really look forward to each week. That would make it less than one podcast a day, which is perfect. Of course, I will allow for a 5th to be added from time to time, keeping that as a rotating slot, listening to an episode here and there if it interests me. What are my 4 essentials? It’s an interesting list – Gilbert Gotffried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast, Bloody Good Horror, Jim Harold’s Paranormal Podcast (and Plus Club) and Archaeological Fantasies. Right now, the 5th rotating slot flips between My Dad Wrote a Porno and Novel Marketing Podcast.
4. ORGANIZE YOUR WRITING PROJECTS! – Odds are, you have more than one iron in the fire when it comes to your writing. You may be working on a novel and some short stories, with plans for a novella and a cookbook down the line. After a while, your wish list of what you want to write can get a little daunting. It sure did for me. I sat back one day and realized I had 16 writing projects lined up for the next year. How the hell could I manage that? And more importantly, why did I agree to so many? I needed some way to be able to not only see them all in one place, but track their progress. As long as I was able to visually see things getting done, I might be able to cut back on the Xanax. So I went to Staples, bought the biggest cork board I could find, a stack of different colored Post It notes and some push pins. I then created strings of Post Its for each project, listing the title at the top and a Post It for each stage in the writing process. For example, with my upcoming Loch Ness Monster book, the string of Post Its went like this – LOCH NESS REVENGE – 1ST DRAFT – REVISIONS – BETA READERS – FINAL REVISIONS – SUBMIT TO SEVERED PRESS. As I got each section done, I removed the Post It note. I can’t tell you how good it feels to pull a Post It away. Kind of like finally going to the bathroom after holding in your pee for an hour. Bliss.
5. MOVIES, MOVIES, MOVIES – Most writers I know love movies, and just like books, we tend to buy a ton and hoard them. Movies are a great way to settle back and relax, inspire and recharge our brains. I could happily spend every minute of the day in my lounge chair watching movies. But damn, my shelves are now jam packed with DVDs, Blu Rays and even old VHS tapes. We’re talking hundreds and hundreds. No one needs that many movies. As a family, we’re going to go through them all and see what we can sell in a yard sale, donate or just toss (not sure why we have 3 copies of Fat Albert). And to stop ourselves from just buying more to replace them, we subscribed to Netflix and Amazon Prime. Odds are, 90% of the movies we watch we’ll only do so the one time. No sense owning a hard copy that will only collect dust.
6. CHORES – Now that you have all the things that help you write in order, you need to make sure you have the time to read, write, edit, market, etc. It’s easy to use chores as a way to avoid the business of writing. Look into hiring a maid service to clean the house. Hire the kid next door to mow the lawn. Hate food shopping? Farm it out to someone who loves wandering supermarkets, or use an online service to pick out your groceries and have them delivered. Outsource as many of the time sucking, irritating tasks as you can. Get rid of anything that aids in your procrastination!
Now go get organized and write!
The Hellions Store Is Now Open
Move over WalMart, there’s a new sheriff in town.
Okay, maybe the brand spanking new Hellions Shop isn’t quite as big as a box store, BUT, everything in it is geared toward you, my loyal Hellions! Show you’re proud to be a Hellion and pick up T-shirts, hoodies, stickers, glasses, magnets, key chains, tote bags wallets and so much more.
Just click Hellion Shop and do some window shopping. When you’re on the home page, if you want to visit the special back room chock full o’ cool stuff, click on the Hellion Swag image on the top left.
Big monster thanks to Jerry Mulcahy for designing everything. We’ll be adding some Jersey Devil goodies very soon.
Let’s band together and worry the normies. School’s back in session. Dress the kids to impress.
On another note, my latest Pinnacle release, The Jersey Devil, burst out of the gate as strong as a winning thoroughbred – or a very angry monster spawned from the depths of hell. Fly on over to Amazon or your bookstore and snag a copy. It will get you in the mood for the upcoming Halloween season.
Here’s just a smattering of reviews –
“Truly excellent horror!”
“A fast paced read that takes you away from it all. Lights on!”
“Popcorn munching fun!”
“A must for horror fans!”
“The master of monsters does it again!”
Meeting The Creature From The Black Lagoon at CT Horrorfest
Hellions, this man’s dream has come true! As most of you know, I LOVE The Creature From the Black Lagoon. I was lucky enough to meet Julia Adams at Chiller Theatre a couple of years ago. Her signed picture is the centerpiece of my horror collection.
Well, thank to the amazing folks who run the CT Horrorfest that took place in Danbury, CT, I was able to meet the beast end of the beauty and the beast tale, Ricou Browning. He was the man who donned the heavy suit for all three Creature films (and yes, there are 3 of them!). Ricou Browning is the last surviving Universal Monster, a living legend, the final tie to the greatest period of monster making madness ever.
Me and my Lagoon homey.
This was one of the few times I was a stuttering fanboy, but I managed to garble my way through. I even stood up in the crowd later to ask him a question during the Q&A. And I didn’t break out in Nixonian flop sweat.
Which then leads to what a great little con CT Horrorfest is. I can’t believe as a New Yorker, I haven’t been there before. There were great vendors, a cupcake stand run by the people who won Rob Zombie’s Cupcake Wars, authors selling books (yes, there were people who wanted to buy books there. I can’t say that about all cons), celebs, cocktails, scares and more. It really was a blast and I plan to not only go there next year, but get a table as well.
If you’ve never been to a horror con, my only question is, what are you waiting for??? You can even bring your non horror friend or spouse, because most cons also feature old time celebs from TV and music. You’ll meet fantastic, warm and friendly people (what my daughter and I call The Black Shirts, of which we are proud members), but also rare interactions with people you admired. Just off the top of my head, I’ve had amazing conversations that will last a lifetime with people like George Romero, Elvira, Meg Foster, Dawn Wells, Sid Haig, Doug Bradley (Pinhead), Dee Wallace, Ken Foree, Kevin Van Hentenryck (Basket Case), Barbara Crampton, the cast of Good Times and so many more. At one con, my family even walked Kristy Swanson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) through the process of setting up her table because she’d never done a con before. To thank us, she gave my daughters a signed wooden stake!
So if you live in the NY tri-state area, do yourself a favor and buy a ticket to the fest next year. And as I always do with cons, I’ll let the pictures below speak for themselves. See you all at Chiller Theatre next month!
Poor woman was left at the altar…to rot!
You can’t have a horror con without at least 1 Jason. It’s a federal law.
Ivy Shea learns that Christmas is not going to be so sweet this year.
I need to stop writing and make horror T-shirts. Busiest vendor of the day.
One of the ‘Stranger Things’ that happened that day.
THE JERSEY DEVIL IS HERE! Sneak Peek Time & Goodies For The Hellions
Man, it feels like I’ve been waiting forever for today to come. My latest foray into cryptid monster madness, THE JERSEY DEVIL, is finally here, available EVERYWHERE. It’s going to be a week long full court press, with lots of fun along the way. Think of it like shark week, only with a killer creature birthed in the primordial Pine Barrens 200 years ago. If you plan to purchase the book on Amazon, please do so through my store or the links on this page.
First up will be an interview on the Horror Happens Radio Show with my main man, Jay Kay. This guy loves horror and is one of the biggest advocates for the genre. I’m scheduled to be on tonight at 7:30pm ET. We’ll be talking JD and other crazy stuff.
Wednesday is the big Facebook live event where I’ll be live and on camera answering your crazy questions and Lord knows what else I’ll get up to. Hellions who participate will be eiligible to win awesome new swag, free books and more! I’ll be giving the store away as we mosey along. I think we’ll need to come up with a drinking game. The party starts at 7pm ET and goes until I end up face down on the keyboard.
Aaaaand, here’s a sneak peek at the first chapter of THE JERSEY DEVIL. Hope you dig it, join the fun and let’s get our monster on!
Jane Moreland couldn’t believe how heavy Henry was, now that he was dead weight and starting to ripen. She should have done this last night, right when it happened, but she’d needed a clearer head. Polishing off the bottle of Knob Creek and passing out on the kitchen table hadn’t helped matters much.
Well, no sense complaining. She’d been due a little me time.
She woke up after noon, unsure what had transpired the night before until she saw him, lying there beside the sofa, neck all twisted to one side and his face blue as a Smurf.
At least there isn’t blood all over the place, she’d thought. Just a little at the corner of his mouth. None on the carpet. One less thing she had to worry about.
There was no way she could get him in the truck during the day without anyone seeing. To kill time, she took a long, hot bath, washed and dried a load of laundry, drank three bottles of Coors that had been tucked away in the back of the fridge, watched a Jimmy Stewart movie on TMC and chain-smoked half a pack of coffin nails. The entire time, her eyes kept flicking to the clock then the window, waiting for the sun to check out. She found some old jeans and a .38 Special concert T-shirt, put on her scuffed cowboy boots and tied her blond hair in a high pony tail.
When it was half past six, she dragged an old throw rug from the garage, laid it next to her husband and turned him into it with a whole lot of grunting and sweat. She’d thought it would be as easy as rolling up a burrito. Back when she was in high school, she’d worked at a burrito joint owned by a pair of Chinese brothers with deep Southern accents. She’d never been able to reconcile the words coming out of those faces. It was a time before Chipotle, when a burrito was a mushy thing you got at a Mexican restaurant that tasted like crap. The job, and the place, didn’t last very long. In the two months she worked there, she became an expert at making burritos so fat, they were just about to bust out of their flour straitjackets.
A dead Henry, she learned quickly, was a hell of a lot more to handle than shredded beef, beans and rice. Once she’d gotten the rug around him and cinched off the ends with duct tape, she sat propped up against his cocooned body and laughed, wondering how many burritos it would take to equal Henry’s total mass. Logic dictated that she should have been distressed at this point, perhaps freaked out or even, daresay, remorseful.
“You didn’t earn my remorse,” she said to the rug-encased corpse, giving it a hard slap as she stood up.
Good old boy Henry was a righteous bastard, a redneck from some pissant town in South Carolina who’d made his way to New Jersey via a construction job when he was in his twenties. They’d met at Dingo’s Bar when she was still two years from legal drinking age. At first, she’d been entranced, as young, dumb girls will, by his sweet Southern accent. She’d heard him order a Jack and Coke over the din of meatheads and was immediately drawn to the rugged cutie with long hair and five day stubble. He couldn’t have stood out more if he had worn an alien mask and bikini.
They dated for six months, took a trip to Vegas and became a cliché. It took a whole year before the real Henry Moreland came out. He smacked her across the face in a drunken stupor one night because she didn’t hand him the TV remote fast enough.
The rest is the same sad story that too many women confess to at shelters or police stations. After a while, Jane didn’t know who she hated more – Henry for being an abusive asshole or herself for not having the guts to run away.
On nights she couldn’t sleep, she’d let her mind linger on all the different ways she could make him disappear. That was her happy place. Poison his dinner, cut the brake lines in his truck, loosen the top step going down to the basement, the possibilities were endless. Thinking about it always settled her down. But that’s all they were – private thoughts. Jane knew she was too chickenshit to actually do anything. Hell, she couldn’t even bring herself to jump in the car and just drive until she hit a border crossing, north or south. It didn’t matter.
And then he came home last night, so drunk he could barely stand. He’d parked his pickup on the front lawn, stopping just a few feet from the house. Jane had been reading in her favorite lounge chair – the one with the little head cushion- on the ground level porch. It had been a nice night and even the bugs tapping against the overhead light didn’t bother her…much. If Henry had applied the brakes just a hair later, he would have killed her.
This is a fine example of why you read to the end of a blog post. Starting September 1st, you can enter a contest on Night Owl Reviews to win a $25 Amazon gift card. Don’t say I never gave you anything!
