Lynn L. Clark's Blog: Writing in Retirement, page 12

Checking Out the Library Journal on Facebook

If you haven't had the opportunity to do so, you might like to check out the Library Journal on Facebook.

An article on free downloads of art books from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a feature on libraries as the epicenters for the discovery of new music, and a link to the cover reveal for Harper Lee's upcoming book, Go Set a Watchman, are some of its current items of interest.

To check out these and many other interesting articles and links, please see https://www.facebook.com/pages/Librar....

Themes of the 2015 World Horror Convention

This is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Wold Horror Convention to be held on May 7-10 in Atlantic, Georgia. These are the seven themes of the 2015 event:

The Weird South: "Why does the South provide such a rich playground for authors and filmmakers exploring the darker side of humanity?"

Pushing the Diaspora Darkly: Atlantic was the city at the centre of the civil rights movement. The convention will look at "diversity and an emerging global view of horror as it moves into the 21st century with a new generation of writers from different cultural backgrounds."

Terrifying Tropes and Deadly Definitions: "Classic monsters will still get their due, but we’ll be looking for new angles to challenge and inspire, as well as exploring sub-genre definitions and cross-pollination with other genres."

YA Rocks: Why is horror so popular for young adults?

The State of Horror, 1991: A look back at the founding of the WHC and the hottest horror topics and authors at that time.

The Art of Fear: An examination of the "latest trends in horror art, comics, artist spotlights, the business of art, and other media-related programming."

The Business of Horror: How "to maximize the latest developments in marketing and publishing."

For more information, please visit http://www.whc2015.org/ and http://www.worldhorrorconvention.com/.

Spring Horror Releases

Now that we've set our clocks ahead, here are some new horror books to look forward to in anticipation of spring:

March

Ellen Datlow (ed.) – The Doll Collection

An illustrated anthology featuring all-original dark tales of dolls from bestselling and award-winning authors, compiled by one of the top editors in the field. Among the writers featured are Joyce Carol Oates, Seanan McGuire, Carrie Vaughn, Pat Cadigan, Tim Lebbon, Richard Kadrey, Genevieve Valentine, and Jeffrey Ford.


April

Joe Hill – The Fireman

In a world overtaken by a deadly and dramatic new virus, the protagonist is determined to live long enough to deliver her baby. But when it only takes a spark to start a deadly blaze, she’s going to need some help from the mysterious fireman....

May

Sarah Lotz – Day Four

Four days into a five-day singles cruise on the Gulf of Mexico, the aging ship Beautiful Dreamer stops dead in the water. With no electricity and no cellular signals, the passengers and crew have no way to call for help. But everyone is certain that rescue teams will come looking for them soon. All they have to do is wait. That is, until the toilets stop working and the food begins to run out. When the body of a woman is discovered in her cabin the passengers start to panic. There’s a murderer on board the Beautiful Dreamer… and maybe something worse.

June

Christopher Golden – Tin Men

Economies are collapsing, environmental disasters are widespread, and war is the backdrop to life. In response the military has developed a force of elite soldiers to keep the peace. A force like nothing seen before … code-named Tin Man, soldiers are virtually transported to inhabit robot frames in war-torn countries.

Paul Tremblay – A Head Full of Ghosts

The lives of a normal suburban New England family are torn apart when the fourteen-year-old daughter begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia. To her parents’ despair, the doctors are unable to stop her descent into madness. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help....

Thanks to A Fantastical Librarian blog for the selection of new horror books. If you are interested in new science fiction releases, there are also many listed on this site at http://www.afantasticallibrarian.com/....

Horror, She Wrote

If you haven't already checked out the horror fiction of Ania Ahlborn, this might be a good time to do so. She has two upcoming releases:

Within These Walls - This supernatural thriller questions how far an individual will go for success, and what he'll be capable of if the promise of "forever" were real. (Release Date: April 21)

Brother - This is the tale of a teenager trying to break free of his family's deeply-disturbing traditions that involve missing young girls and screams in the night. (Release Date: September 8)

Ahlborn is a Polish-born author with a fascination for the "darker, mysterious, and sometimes morbid sides of life."

Her previous novels include Seed, The Neighbors, The Shuddering, and The Bird Eater.

Oscars for Horror

Now that this year's Academy Awards show has aired, I thought it might be interesting to look back at horror/suspense films that were nominated for or won Oscars. Maybe you'll spot some of your favorites.

Here goes:

Rosemary's Baby - Mia Farrow won the best supporting actress award;

The Exorcist - This movie was nominated for nine awards and was the first horror movie to be nominated for best picture. It won awards for best sound and best screenplay;

Jaws - This Spielberg movie was nominated in various categories, including best picture, and won for best editing, best score, and best sound;

Aliens - This movie, one of the all-time great science fiction films, won for best visual effects and best sound editing;

The Silence of the Lambs - This movie has the distinction of being the first and only horror/suspense movie to win the Oscar for best picture (as well as a slew of other awards);

Jurassic Park - This ground-breaking movie won Oscars for best sound effects' editing, best sound, and best visual effects.

To see other films of this genre that received a nod from the Academy, please visit http://horror.about.com/od/horrorthem....

Disaster(ous) Movies Just in Time for the Oscars

In honor of this evening's Academy Awards, I am reprinting a previous post of mine from the Behind the Walls of Nightmare blog.This post is about movies that will never be up for Oscars:

I have been watching some really bad disaster and horror movies lately: ones that are so bad that they're actually fun to watch. Many of them are made in Canada (because of tax breaks), and so Vancouver or Montreal usually doubles as the latest U.S. metropolis facing extinction from a natural or man-made disaster. Sometimes it's even funnier when they forget to edit out Canadian flags or mailboxes.

I've been trying to decide whether it's the dialogue, bad acting, or campy special effects that I enjoy most in these low budget, good bad movies, and I've decided it's one or a combination of all three. In one disaster movie I recently watched, a family is fleeing from a man-made catastrophe that could be classified under "misuse of science". The father is driving, the mother is a passenger in the front, and the teenaged son is in the back seat playing a Gameboy. The kid exclaims something to the effect of "Mom, mom, everyone's getting vaporized". The mother responds: "Play your game, dear".

Of course the stereotypes in the bad disaster/horror movies are also fun: the most obnoxious or incidental character will get killed first. Sullen teenagers will survive and bond with their parents. The pretty lead actress will no doubt survive the gorefest, but her not-as-pretty-and-perky girlfriend will expire. The handsome lead man will also usually survive, unless he is too cocky, in which case he may suffer the same fate as the other expendables in the movie. Women appear to fall down a lot in these movies, just as the bad thing/weather/vaporizer approaches, causing the hero to swoop in like John Wayne ("never mind, little missy") and save the day. And if it's a man-made disaster, there is the good "scientist" trying to get the attention of the POTUS, army, air force, or his ex-wife, while the evil scientist is like Scrooge McDuck, seeing only $$$ in the invention that has gone astray and is destroying the earth, but could nonetheless be profitable if anyone's left to buy it.

And just when I thought they had run out of meteorites, asteroids, space ships, and other stuff falling on the earth, my faith in endless bad movies was renewed. In the most recent one I watched, it was falling plasma destroying the earth, the acting and special effects were terrible, and the hero was a chubby and ordinary-looking video store owner who still managed to save the world!

More popcorn, anyone?

A Sense of Place

There is an interesting post in a British literary blog that I happened upon regarding Philip Marsden's novel Rising Ground: A Search for the Spirit of Place.

The author of the post quotes from the novel, which recalls the lyricism of Dylan Thomas, and speculates on her own childhood landscapes as she queries: What do we regard as "home"--our birthplace, the house we grew up in, or where we live now?

This is something I've often thought about. I have lived in Ontario, Canada, for much longer than in my birthplace (New Brunswick, Canada), so I tend to think of Ontario as my home. Every now and then, however, I catch myself referring to New Brunswick as home, and I feel a bit adrift because the house I grew up in--for many years my point of reference--no longer belongs to my family. Perhaps our mental landscapes are in fact a composite of the many places we've lived.

To view the blog and the lovely photographs posted there, please see http://dovegreyreader.typepad.com/dov....

Heart Awareness Month

Even if you're still young and feeling immortal, it doesn't hurt to know more about preventing heart disease and recognizing the signs of stroke and heart attack.

To identify the signs of a stroke, remember FAST:

F= FACE/ Is it drooping?
A= ARMS/ Can you raise both of them?
S= SPEECH/ Is it slurred or jumbled?
T= TIME/ To call 9-1-1

Learn to recognize the signs of a heart attack:

- Chest discomfort. Most heart attacks involve discomfort in the center of the chest that lasts more than a few minutes, or that goes away and comes back. It can feel like uncomfortable pressure, squeezing, fullness or pain.
- Discomfort in other areas of the upper body. Symptoms can include pain or discomfort in one or both arms, the back, neck, jaw or stomach.
- Shortness of breath with or without chest discomfort.
- Other signs may include breaking out in a cold sweat, nausea or light headedness.

CALL 911 to report the symptoms even if you're not sure it's a heart attack. TIME matters.

For more information in Canada on heart disease prevention and awareness, please see http://www.heartandstroke.com/site/c.....

In the US, please see http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/.

Please share this information with someone you love.

Everyone's A Critic

One-star reviews of the classics have been the subject of many blog posts, and one example you might want to look at, if you 'd like to share a laugh, is a column in Lit Reactor at http://litreactor.com/columns/the-top....

Of course, the classics such as The Great Gatsby and Ulysses are still very much assured of their good standing in spite of these one-star reviews and rant-like comments. But it's certainly difficult for emerging writers to swallow some of the low ratings and vituperative review comments directed at their works. (I recently came across an example where a reader had assigned a one-star rating to a book with no explanation. It was a newly-released book so this was the only rating it had received. What was so wrong with the book, I wondered, that it deserved such a fate? Hopefully, someone with a little more foresight has since written a helpful review of the book.)

There's a lot at stake when someone puts his or her work out there in an act of blind faith, hoping to connect with readers. (After all, few contemporary authors--unless they're delusional-- actually expect to get rich by writing.) And placing the onus on authors to grow a thicker skin doesn't really address the issue of the lack of accountability when every reader is a potential critic.

A couple of years ago, I came across the following guideline from an avid reviewer (http://booksandpals.blogspot.ca/p/gui...) that I think is very perceptive:

...A good review will give a reader an idea of whether they’ll like a book or not. How well the reviewer liked the book is secondary. Many 1-star reviews describe a book that sounds perfect to someone else.

What a positive and refreshing approach!

(This post was adapted from a previous one that I prepared for The Overnight Bestseller.)

Why We Like to Be Scared

Ever wonder why horror novels, television shows, and movies are so popular? According to a 2013 article in Today's Health, there is a science behind the scream. First, there is the adrenaline rush that accompanies being scared; second, there's the psychological thrill of experiencing the dark or forbidden while still feeling safe; and third we can release strong emotions that aren't part of our normal lives. For the full text of the article, please see http://www.today.com/health/why-we-be....

For an existential view of our love of horror, please see http://www.saybrook.edu/newexistentia....

I was surprised to learn from the above-mentioned article that haunted adventures are a billion dollar a year industry. Now, that's scary!