Jeff Strand's Blog, page 8
September 22, 2022
September 22
Late last year I wrote about the experience of playing a dead body in the short film “Moonlight Sonata, With Scissors,” written and directed by Chris Ethridge and based on the short story by Darrell Grizzle. Having seen the film, I can say that my performance is so convincing that you’ll probably wail “Noooooooo!!! He’s really dead! What a loss! What a loss!” But I assure you, I was merely acting dead.
It’s going to start making the rounds on the film festival circuit very soon, starting with the Nightmares Film Festival in Columbus, Ohio. (I’ve been to that one a couple of times, and it’s freaking awesome.) You can check out the trailer here:
Meanwhile, check out this very short interview with author Steven Stred, where I share, among other things, who I’d want to play me in the movie of my life:
https://stevestredauthor.wordpress.com/2022/09/20/3qs-special-jeff-strand-doesnt-care-about-accuracy/?fbclid=IwAR2-pgO4fgQMq6WviZ6YvB7PPBrSJphxOyXHwtIpEaFASgNP-gelBZypOZUYesterday was a super duper productive day on my novelization. Will today be just as good…?
September 21, 2022
September 21
Woo-hoo! Literally Dead: Tales of Halloween Hauntings is now available! This one contains my story “Ghosts of Candies Past.” Get it HERE.
Monday was supposed to be a gigantic news day here, where I found out if __________ was moving forward….but it passed without a peep. As did Tuesday. The movie biz is cray.
I’m now hard at work on my next book, which is the novelization I’ve been teasing for a while. I’m not adapting an upcoming film, or even a recent one. What could it be….?
September 20, 2022
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!
Freaky Briefs: 75 Short Absurdities, is now available in a Kindle and paperback edition!
I won a Bram Stoker Award!!! My novella Twentieth Anniversary Screening won in the Long Fiction category at StokerCon 2022! Available in Kindle and paperback editions!
Deathless, the sequel to Pressure, is now available in paperback and Kindle editions!
My first non-fiction book, The Writing Life: Reflections, Recollections, And a Lot of Cursing, is now available in Kindle and paperback editions!
(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!
Join my Unofficial Fan Club on Facebook!
Friend me on Goodreads!
Subscribe to my newsletter at MailChimp! A brand new story in every issue!
September 8, 2022
September 8th
Wooooo!!! It Watches in the Dark is done! So much hot giant killer scarecrow action!
Now I can get back to updating my blog on a semi-regular basis and finally send out another newsletter!
August 30, 2022
Borderlands Boot Camp
Over the past twenty years, the Borderlands Boot Camp has become a legend. Writers have called it a life-changing experience, a single weekend that brings their writing to the next level.
After running it for two decades, Tom Monteleone and F. Paul Wilson have passed the torch.
No, not to me! That would be ridiculous. I can’t run a boot camp for writers. It’s Brian Keene and Mary San Giovanni running it…but I’m an instructor!
Yes, along with Brian, Mary, Maurice Broaddus, Norman Prentiss, and John Urbancik, I am one of the instructors at the 2023 Borderlands Boot Camp. This time it’s associated with the Scares That Care charity, and its March 29-31 dates (in Williamsburg, Virginia) will immediately lead into the Scares That Care: AuthorCon convention that weekend.
It’s intense. It’s honest. It’s not for authors who aren’t willing to take a VERY close look at their writing.
Registration is now open. Get all the details right HERE.
August 23, 2022
August 22, 2022
August 22
I know, it’s been a while! I’ve been traveling. Since my last update, I went to Williamsburg, Virginia for Scares That Care. Then to Austin, Texas for KillerCon, with a stop in New Orleans on the way back. Then down to Orlando, Florida for Fantasm. I’m now back in Chattanooga with a book deadline hurtling toward me like a bullet train.
I’ll share details of the trips later (spoiler: I won a Splatterpunk Award for Best Short Story for “Next Best Baker.” The book it appeared in, Baker’s Dozen, won for Best Anthology). For now, my travels are over for a bit, excluding Ron Kelly’s book launch party on September 3rd, which doesn’t count because it’s only a couple of hours away!
July 26, 2022
July 27
I figured I’d respond to this comment from Hans Curtis as a full post, in regards to the new book(s) announcement:
“As a reader and not a writer or publisher, I don’t know exactly what this means for you, or how big this news is? idk Sourcebooks Young Readers or what ‘world rights’ means for you? If this is a debut, how is it different from your other young reader titles like The Greatest Zombie Movie Ever or Stranger Things Have Happened?”
Technically, books like The Greatest Zombie Movie Ever are classified as “Young Adult.” It Watches in the Dark is classified as “Middle Grade.” Honestly, my YA novels, excluding A Bad Day For Voodoo, have been on the low end of YA, and in fact the Scholastic editions of those books were part of the Middle Grade Book Club, so there’s some blurring of the lines here. But Sourcebooks called the other five novels I published with them “Young Adult” and this one is “Middle Grade,” so it’s my middle grade debut!
“World rights” just means that Sourcebooks acquired the rights to sell the book to all territories around the world. There’s a Dutch edition of A Bad Day For Voodoo!
As far as “how big” this news is…well, the deal is for my sixth and seventh books with this publisher, so it’s not MONUMENTAL HUGE GIGANTIC news. But it’s noteworthy in that these are horror novels, not comedies (I get called a “YA Horror Author” on a regular basis, but all five of those books are pure comedies), and I’ll have new stuff in bookstores for the first time in a few years. Focusing on self-publishing is what let me quit my day job, but it’s still pretty cool to see your books on the shelves!
FUN FACT: I keep calling the book It Watches At Night even though it’s called It Watches in the Dark. Hopefully I’ll get over that by the time it’s published. My title was Scarecrow Square.
July 26
I’ve been sitting on this news for a few months, but:
I’ve been waiting for the Publishers Weekly announcement for a couple of weeks, so I was thrilled to see it, and horrified to see that they used an ancient author photo. So social media is a mix of congratulations and roasting. Gahhh!!!
July 24, 2022
July 24
Technically July 25, but only by a few minutes…
Well, Necon is over. I’m seriously bummed to have missed it, but it seems like everybody had a great time even without me there to add a sense of merriment and delight to the proceedings. I’m feeling totally fine and I’m long out of the contagious stage in my COVID adventure, so I’ll be at Scares That Care this weekend.
Wrote a new story today: “Y2K” for the anthology American Cannibal. Cannibalism is not uncharted territory for me in my work, although the only actual book I’ve written on the subject is Bad Bratwurst, which was just a chapbook. Will I ever do a full-on cannibalism novel? Maybe. I pitched one to Leisure as my third novel, after Dweller, but they weren’t on board with the idea and I wrote Wolf Hunt instead.
Finishing up “Y2K” officially clears out every short story that I owe. (Well, actually, I owe three chapbooks to Death’s Head Press, but that’s more of a trio of novelettes than short stories.)
Tomorrow: screenplay rewrites.
