Jeff Strand's Blog, page 70

Halloween Horror Picture Show!

Last night, Gave Up The Ghost played at the Eerie Horror Film Fest. I wasn’t there [insert bellow of primal anguish here] because it was up in Pennsylvania and I’m down here in Florida, but director Gregory Lamberson reported that it got a great response.

Tomorrow Gave Up The Ghost is playing at the Halloween Horror Picture Show, which I have attended as a fan every year since its inception in 2003. It’s at the Tampa Pitcher Show in Tampa, Florida from noon until 5:00 PM, and consists of a block of twelve shorts, followed by the feature Die Die Delta Pi. Admission is a mere $8.

It’s also the WORLD PREMIERE of Lynne Hansen’s Chomp. Can any more awesomeness be packed into a single day’s movie viewing? I think not.

Check out the official website at http://www.thehalloweenhorrorpictureshow.com/

WOLF HUNT 2 Available For Pre-Order!

Yes, the hardcover limited edition of Wolf Hunt 2 is now available for pre-order from Dark Regions Press! That edition is schedule to ship in February 2015, but if you pre-order, a free advance copy of the trade paperback edition will be on its way to you within three business days, so you still get to read it before everyone else! Hurry, hurry, hurry! Click, click, click!

http://www.darkregions.com/books/wolf-hunt-2-by-jeff-strand

Welcome to Gleefully Macabre!

Welcome to my website! Whether you were brought here by interest in my work or a Google search gone terribly wrong, I encourage you to hang around and start clicking away!

The hardcover limited edition of Wolf Hunt 2 is now available for pre-order! Get it from Dark Regions Press.

My new novel, Kumquat, is now available! Get the Kindle edition or the print edition from Amazon!

My new young adult comedy, I Have A Bad Feeling About This, is now available at the brick-and-mortar bookstore or online retailer of your choice! Being a young adult is not a requirement to read the book.

My second short story collection, Dead Clown Barbecue, is now available! Twenty-nine stories! 90,000 words of material! Get the Kindle edition for $3.99 or the paperback/deluxe hardcover editions from Dark Regions Press.

My novella Kutter is now available for your Kindle or Kindle app. Enjoy the delightful tale of a serial killer and his Boston terrier from Amazon.

(P.S.: People who leave reviews on Amazon deserve great big hugs!)

Friend me on Facebook ! Follow me on Twitter ! Like my Facebook Fan Page! Friend me on Goodreads!

Chomp, Chomp!

I’m an Associate Producer on the short film “Chomp.” This important-sounding credit (unless you’re actually in the film biz) covered such prestigious tasks as:

Doing the clapboard
Keeping track of the sound takes (mostly accurately)
Making delicious cookies for the cast and crew when they came over to do some makeup tests, although they were just those Tollhouse pre-made blocks of dough that you put into the oven
Carrying lots and lots of boxes and other assorted items from one place to another, and then back
Driving downtown to pick up one of the actors and drive him to the set
Buying stuff for the craft services table, and making even more delicious cookies
Contributing to the joint bank account that funded “Chomp”
Wiping up fake blood from the garage floor so that nobody would slip on it and generate real blood
Set design, in the form of writing funny/insane stuff on the maps that lined the walls
And the font used in the credits and on the promotional material comes from my handwriting

“Chomp” will have its world premiere on Sunday, October 19th, at the Halloween Horror Picture Show. Leading up to that, writer/producer/director Lynne Hansen is posting interviews with all of the cast and crew members.

Read my interview RIGHT HERE.

Read  my

Update on Writing Stuff (October 11 Edition)

What better way to share the unspeakably exciting life of a writer than by updating my website at 10:53 PM local time on a Saturday night?

Not a lot of variety in this week’s writing projects. I’m deep into the second chapter of my stand-up comedian novel, which may be called Flop Sweat or it may be called Riding the Light or it may be called something completely different. It’s pretty filthy, and for that I apologize even before I’ve finished the second chapter. I will probably wuss out on the first couple of paragraphs at some point, but for now, they stand as written.

And today I wrote the first 1000 words (of 4000) of Alien Face, a short story that will be a chapbook for the awesome White Noise Press. A few years ago they published Funny Stories of Scary Sex, which continues to get me the most website hits, and it’s guaranteed to be one snazzy looking product. The story isn’t due until the end of November, so the fact that I’ve even opened a Microsoft Word document for it is insane.

Meanwhile, I got a “So, how’re things going on _______?” message, so I’d better get back to work on that…

Four Chances To See “Gave Up The Ghost”

Creepers, the horror anthology film that contains “Gave Up The Ghost,” is available as a limited edition Blu-Ray right now, but if you want to see it on the big screen, here are four film festival opportunities:

October 19: Halloween Horror Picture Show. Tampa, Florida.

October 19-21: Eerie Horror Film Festival. Erie, Pennsylvania. 

November 7-14: Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival. Buffalo, New York.

December 4-7: Tampa Bay Underground Film Festival. Tampa, Florida. 

What To Order When!

Almost all at once, Creepers, Wolf Hunt 2, and Facial are all available or up for pre-order. Here’s the deal on all three.

Creepers is the horror anthology film with segments based on stories by Joe Lansdale, Edgar Allan Poe, Lacfacio Hearn, and me. My segment, “Gave Up The Ghost,” was directed by Gregory “Slime City” Lamberson. The individual segments will be playing at various film festivals, but the full film is currently available in a 200-copy limited edition Blu-Ray. Once those are sold out, you won’t be able to buy Creepers until it gets official distribution. If it never does, you can sell that Blu-Ray for a fortune on the secondary market.

You can order it directly through the official website, or they’re set up as a third-party vendor through Amazon.

Wolf Hunt 2: This novel will be available as a 300-copy numbered hardcover edition, a 26-copy lettered super-deluxe hardcover edition, a trade paperback, and an e-book.

Both hardcover editions will be available for pre-order on Tuesday, October 14th, from Dark Regions Press. These editions will actually ship around February 2015. HOWEVER, if you pre-order the hardcover, you’ll be sent a free copy of the paperback within three business days of your order, so you still get to read it first.

Both hardcover editions will contain the bonus 10,000 word story “My Werewolf Neighbor,” which won’t be published anywhere else until 2018! Some people will be dead by then.

If you only want the trade paperback, that’ll be available in mid-November.

The e-book edition will be available sometime in December.

If you’ll scream in rage and shake your fist at the heavens if the hardcover sells out before you order your copy, be sure to follow the Facebook event.

Facial: The hardcover edition is a DarkFuse Book Club exclusive, so this one is more straightforward. The digital edition is available for pre-order now, and will be delivered to your reading device on December 16th. You don’t have to worry about the digital edition selling out, obviously, but if you pre-order you can save 50 cents and get it for $2.99. Order it HERE.

Fun With Book Titles

So I’m writing a novel about a stand-up comedian. As of right now, it’s called Flop Sweat. That may not be the final title, or even the title by this evening, but for now, I kinda like it.

Just for fun (my fun, maybe not yours) here are the origins of my book titles:

How to Rescue a Dead Princess was originally Pointless Quest. Then I got an agent who said, “If it’s pointless, why should anybody read it?” I said that people who felt that way probably weren’t the target audience for this particular novel, but he insisted that we change it to The Quest. I thought that was an awful title and sent a long list of alternates. He said, no, no, it’s gotta be The Quest. I said I could accept Quest! (with an exclamation point in the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker style) but I preferred my alternate title of How Do You Rescue a Dead Princess? It ended up being marketed with the awkward double title of Quest! or How To Rescue a Dead Princess. It never sold, and when I had the opportunity to pick the title myself, I went with How to Rescue a Dead Princess.

Out of Whack was originally Off Balance. An editor sent me a very kind rejection, saying that he absolutely loved the book but couldn’t publish it, and suggested calling it Out of Whack instead. Well, duh. I changed it immediately.

Elrod McBugle on the Loose was originally just called Elrod McBugle. But I wanted something that sounded more comedic, and something that sounded like it was part of a series. If there’d been a second book, it would’ve been called Elrod McBugle In Your Face.

Graverobbers Wanted (No Experience Necessary) always had that title. For the second book, I was reluctant to continue the “macabre personal ads” format because I figured that if I was cranking out one or two Andrew Mayhem books a year I’d quickly run out of ideas. Then I changed my mind. At one point, Single White Psychopath Seeks Same was going to be reprinted by a publisher whose cover designer was so uninterested in anything but a paycheck that not only did the cover look like it had been put together with Colorforms, but it bore the title Wanted: Single White Sociopath. If there’s a fifth Andrew Mayhem novel, it may or may not be called Increase Your Chainsaw Size.

Mandibles was set to be published as Infested in October 2011. But right after 9/11 I didn’t think it was appropriate to have a tongue-in-cheek book about people trapped in a burning building, even if most of their problems were ant-related, and I asked the publisher to push it back a few months. The publisher agreed, and then ended up going out of business before the new publication date. Then I heard that a killer fly movie called Infested was coming out, so I changed the title to Mandibles.

Pressure was always kind of just meant to be the working title, and to be honest, I didn’t truly warm to it until I read Michael Prescott’s foreword to the book, which described how it was the perfect title.

I originally wanted the title of Dweller to be the name of the monster, and after some time spent going through lists of first names, I came up with Owen. But, just to be sure, I spent more quality time with the thesaurus, and came up with Dweller, which I decided was the better choice.

The Sinister Mr. Corpse came from a screenplay that I abandoned after maybe three pages, called The Horrifying Tale of Mr. Corpse. I kind of wanted the book to be called The Amazing Mr. Corpse, but decided that The Sinister Mr. Corpse had a nicer ring to it.

Benjamin’s Parasite had the very early working title The Piranha Effect. I can’t remember how I came up with Benjamin’s Parasite, but I was thrilled when I did.

Wolf Hunt was pitched to the publisher as Dogcatchers, with the disclaimer of “I know you’re not going to publish it as Dogcatchers.” I suggested Werewolf Hunt and Where the Wolfbane Blooms (the latter of which I was briefly convinced was the PERFECT title, even though it’s clearly not). The publisher said they were calling it Wolf Hunt. I still wish it was Werewolf Hunt, although I guess I like Wolf Hunt 2 better than Werewolf Hunt 2.

Fangboy was written as Fangboy, and then at the last moment I decided that The Adventures of Fangboy was a better fit for the tone of the novel. The publisher said, no, it’s going to just be Fangboy. When I sold the German rights, I forgot to change the title from The Adventures of Fangboy on the manuscript, and the title translates to Fangboy’s Adventure. 

Stalking You Now is the perfect title for that novella, with an ever-fluctuating meaning (Stalking YOU Now; Stalking You NOW)…and yet it came very late in the writing process. Writing something called Untitled Stalker Novella for so long was driving me insane.

I KNOW I had another title for Gleefully Macabre Tales, something longer, but I can’t remember it.

Dead Clown Barbecue was originally 31 Dead Clowns. The problem was that we needed a final title before we had a final manuscript, and I was still tweaking the table of contents, so I wasn’t sure if it would have 29, 30, or 31 stories. I didn’t want to get locked into a story count just because of the title, and came up with Dead Clown Barbecue, which is way, way better.

I wanted to use Another Damn Vampire Book, but Joe Konrath wanted to call it Suckers. His title was better. However, my tagline of “From The Guys Who Wish They’d Written Twilight” was better than his “Finally A Vampire Book That Doesn’t Suck,” so it evened out.

Joe Konrath and I co-wrote a story called “Cub Scout Gore Fest” where a little kid refers to a vampire as a “dracula.” Joe decided that a novel called Draculas needed to be written. And it was.

The Haunted Forest Tour came from a concept I called The Fantasy Tour, wherein tourists got to ride a tram through the setting of a fantasy novel. Then I changed it to a science fiction landscape. When Jim Moore and I were asked to co-author a novel with a Halloween theme, I switched it again, this time to a haunted, monster-filled forest.

Kutter is the name of my mom’s dog. That it’s the perfect name of a dog owned by a serial killer is coincidence.

Faint of Heart was, in the very early stages, called Being Fearful. I changed it because I liked Faint of Heart better, though I should have changed it simply because Being Fearful is a lousy title.

A Bad Day For Voodoo came from an abandoned non-YA book called A Bad Night For Voodoo. Most of the book actually does take place at night, but it starts with a really bad day.

I was really upset to find out that Bad With Faces had already been used, and at a time when I was actively promoting a young adult novel, I wasn’t sure if I should really call my book Facial. But, obviously, I did. The title has multiple meanings in the book, including the one that made me question using that title.

I didn’t have a title for I Have a Bad Feeling About This, but the publisher came up with Camp Doom, which I really liked and is the title on the contract. Then they changed Camp Doom to I Have a Bad Feeling About This, which I did not like, and I countered with This Can’t End Well. Sometimes you lose. (The book went right into a second printing, so I’m forced to concede that the marketing department might have known what they were doing.)

Kumquat came from me eating a kumquat for the first time and saying “Ha ha, Kumquat would be a funny title for a book!” When I started writing it, I wasn’t actually planning to use that title, but by the time I was finished, I still liked it. I’d swiped plot elements from two previous works-in-progress, Cosmic Joke and Spoiler Warning, and all three of those were potential titles. I did a quick Facebook poll, which had support divided amongst all three titles, so I went with Kumquat. Some people love it and some people hate it. I’ve seen it described as the best book title ever, and also described as “unfortunate.”

“You’re not really going to call it Wolf Hunt 2, are you?” a friend asked. I’d considered trying to come up with a completely different werewolf-themed title, but ultimately I decided, hey, it’s a direct sequel to Wolf Hunt, and the target audience is people who liked the first book. I was actually calling it Wolf Hunt II, but Lynne Hansen had a cover concept for the digital edition with a wolf face in the number 2, so I changed it to Wolf Hunt 2, though the signature sheets for the hardcover edition say Wolf Hunt II. It always kind of bugged me that the box art says Evil Dead 2 but the movie itself says Evil Dead II, but I got over that and I’ll get over this.

Will my next book actually be called Flop Sweat? Tune in to this website to find out…

Update On Writing Stuff (October 1st Edition)

In my last exciting update, I mentioned that I had to finish two stories by the end of the month. And, yes, both “The Sentient Cherry Cola That Tried To Destroy The World” and “Deformed Son” were finished and mailed off to their respective editors on time. Both tales are at the high end of the silliness scale.

I thought the release of Creepers was further away, but apparently the Blu-Ray will be available next week, October 7th! Keep your face glued to this website for ordering links and more information.

Those two short stories hogged up all of my writing time, so no progress on the new novel this week. Next week I won’t have an excuse!

 

 

Update On Writing Stuff (September 24th Edition)

Yeah, it’s been ages since I did one of these posts. I’m going to try to get back into the habit of doing them sort-of weekly. This first one is gonna be long. Anyway, here’s what’s going on:

COMPLETED BOOKS THAT AREN’T OUT YET…

Wolf Hunt 2 is done, as is a 10,000-word bonus story, “My Werewolf Neighbor,” that will be exclusive to the hardcover limited edition from Dark Regions Press. This edition will go up for pre-order in mid-October. I’m not 100% sure when the book is going to ship yet, but we’ll know that before we take your money. A digital edition will follow before the end of the year.

DarkFuse has a long lead time, so my novella Facial has been completed and edited for several months. This will be out in mid-November. It’s a weird one, kiddies. (Actually, kiddies shouldn’t read it.)

COMPLETED SHORT STORIES…

“John Henry, Steel Drivin’ Man” will be in Out of Tune,  edited by Jonathan Maberry and published by JournalStone. It’s up for pre-order now and should ship in November.

“The Fraud” will be in Madhouse, edited by Benjamin Kane Ethridge and published by Dark Regions Press. An Indiegogo campaign for this one just started, with all kinds of cool perks, so check it out.

“Beware! The! Beverage!” will be in Redneck Zombies From Outer Space, edited by Michael Knost and Jonathan Maberry. There is not, to the best of my knowledge, a scheduled publication date yet.

“Apocalypse of the Yard Gnome” will be in Yard Gnomes of the Apocalypse. I actually just, in the middle of writing this paragraph, e-mailed the editor to ask for an update.

“Death to Trees” is in Widowmakers, which just came out and will get its own blog post soon.

MOVIE STUFF…

The screenplay for Pressure is done…for now. Somebody very cool but very busy wants to read it, so right now it’s a waiting game…

STUFF I’M WORKING ON…

I have to finish two short stories this week. Well, not technically THIS week. Early next week. One’s due on September 30th and one’s due on October 1st, so there won’t be much lollygagging for the next few days.

I’ve got a “three chapters and a synopsis” proposal in for my next young adult novel and am waiting to hear back. It’s a comedy about a young filmmaker.

I’m writing the wraparound segment for a horror anthology film. I wrote the first third, then got pulled away with other projects, but once I clear out the short stories I’ll dive back into it.

I’m about 6000 words into a novel about a stand-up comedian. It may, in fact, finally be the novel where I use the title Cosmic Joke that I’ve had for a couple of previous projects. Or not. I’m not QUITE far enough into it to say, “Yes! This is my primary writing project!” but it’s looking that way, unless something crazy happens with the young adult novel proposal. It’s another non-horror comedy in the vein of Kumquat. 

I never really did much of anything with the script for issue #1 of Town of Turmoil, a comic book I wrote just for the fun of it. I should probably send it somewhere.

Until next time…