Aaron Polson's Blog, page 17

Market Deaths

Murky Depths, Crossed Genres (the magazine--not the publishing company), and all forthcoming anthologies from Library of Horror Press are dead. I'm sad in the case of Murky Depths (but glad to have "Shoes for the Journey" published before its demise--it was a beautiful mag) and Crossed Genres (which published my longish-short "Down There" earlier this year). The Library of Horror situation rankles a bit. I had two stories slated for future publication from LoH, one in Witchology and the other in Made You Flinch, Again (again?).

This--the frequent death of short story markets--more than anything, puts me off writing more shorts. Markets come and go--even after you've signed a contract. If I'm running my writing life as a business, I'm not sure it makes much sense.

But then again, I'm not sure anything I've done in my writing career makes much sense. I tend to follow my heart:

Halloween Spooks

Halloween completes the triumvirate of my favorite holidays. Along with Christmas (keeping messy theology out of the mix, there are plenty of presents for everyone) and Independence Day (when I make things explode), this is the good stuff.  Ghosts, spooky stories, butchered pumpkins... Ah, yes. Don't forget: Today is the last day to enter my October contest.


And fun reading material--

Editor K.V. Taylor of The Red Penny Papers is kind of enough to publish my second Sons of Chaos serial novella. Head over and read part 1 of The Sons of Chaos and the Desert Dead. Nothing like a good evisceration on Halloween. It's going to get weird.



(Can you believe jack-o'-lanterns used to be made from turnips? Turnips!)

Say Hello to My Little Friend

My Kindle helps me edit.

It's an idea I've borrowed (er, stolen) from Alan Ryker. Throw your manuscript on Kindle (don't worry about formatting--any old mobi will do), and then turn on text to speech.  What a bonus. Seriously. I've found many areas I want to fix only after hearing "someone else" read my book.

One funny little bit--the robo-voice pauses longer for commas than periods. It makes for strange phrasing at times.  Not to mention the humor of hearing an expressionless voice say phrases such as:

"...we can't call snow-plows-r-us..." or "We'd be fine if dipshit hadn't landed us in the ditch."

Need a mobi? Save your manuscript as a filtered web page (from the drop down menu) and convert with Calibre. I like to follow along on-screen as the robo-voice reads.

What does all this mean for you, dear readers? In the Memory House is that much closer...

Coffin Hop: Mastering Suspense

Alfred Hitchcock earned many names in his time as a filmmaker, including The Master of Suspense.

Suspense is vital to most writing--every story depends on at least a little emotional tension or there is no story. (Thumb your nose, guardians of the avant-garde.) Horror, thriller, and mystery fiction relies on suspense.

I showed my classes this wonderful clip from The Birds. While Rear Window, North by Northwest, and Psycho may have been better films from start to finish, this snippet reveals Hitchcock's masterful touch (and is pretty damn creepy, as well).


Suspense is all about waiting. You know something bad is going to happen, but the master makes you wait for it.

WIP Wednesday: The Best Little Editing Book (Ever?)

I'm going through In the Memory House and purging unnecessary language. Not the f-bombs, oh no. Although I've been criticized before, if my characters need to vent, they need to vent.

I'm using suggestions from the late Ken Rand's book, The 10% Solution , to cull unnecessary words from the book.

The ctrl+F (find) feature is a writer's best friend. I've already made an adverb pass (searching for "ly").  I'm currently limiting "of"'s appearances. (I almost wrote "appearances of of"--see how it works?)

What editing tricks do you use to prepare your manuscripts?

Coffin Hop Day Two: Ghost Floats (and a new story)

Head over to Every Day Fiction to read "The Long Walk to Never" today. As always, comments and ratings are appreciated.

Here's another blast from the past, Coffin Hoppers: Ghost Floats, a fun drink with a spooky pedigree. I offer it word for word as it was in the original text, The Little Witch's Black Magic Cookbook by Linda Glovach.

20 minutes / 2 servings

You'll need a blender, measuring spoon, measuring cup, and glasses.

Ingredients:

1 cup prepared powdered milk (fresh milk won't work)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup diet soda

Ask your mother to get the blender out of the cupboard.

Put the milk and the vanilla in the blender. Slowly add the soda.

Blend at medium speed for two minutes. Pour into two glasses and put them in the freezer for ten minutes.

When you take the drink out of the freezer you will see the ghosts floating on top. This is a great drink fro mother witches on diets because it has only 57 calories*. And the little witches who are not on a diet can use regular soda.

*Yeah, I know. WTF? But the book was published in 1972. A whole helluva lot of witches were on diets back then. Or something like that.

Do you remember any recipes or special Halloween treats from your childhood?

Coffin Hop Kick Off: Halloween Past

I'm excited about this week's Coffin Hop. Head over to the main site for a massive pile of other sites to visit. As many of you know, I'm running a contest for October, and all Coffin Hoppers are elligible to enter.

Today's challenge, ghouls and ghosties, is to name the band for which the artist who recorded the following song is most famous:




I know all it will take is a little poking around on the interweb, but hey, that's the beauty of the 21st century. I listened to the vinyl version of this song (and accomanying story) about a million times when I was a kid. Feed me, Seymour--and look what happened.

So you can enter by sending an email to aaron.polson(at)gmail.com with the subject line "coffin hop". All those who submit correct answers will also be eligible for an electronic ARC of In the Memory House, my forthcoming not-exactly-haunted house novel.

Happy hopping!

Sample Sunday: from Darker Matter

[image error] from "Penance" a previously unpublished short story included in Darker Matter :

During Brother John's final round through rows of sleeping flock, he found prisoner AA23 dead in his stasis tube. John pressed his palm to the canopy, flinching slightly at the cold, smooth surface, and uttered the last rites. His gaze swept over the rest of the flock, assured of their relative peace. Twenty-five blinking green dots responded in broken rhythm.

Another death. Three inside of a month. Five all together. Something must be wrong with the chambers—but no malfunctions of this magnitude had ever been recorded. Not while the Order operated the penance ships. John fumbled with his thick robes, drawing them close about his throat. The tips of his fingers found the com-link. His mouth dried. He moved his tongue around, trying to find courage and words. Maybe half an hour left on his meditation. Glass tubes stared back at him, tubes offering the ghost image of their human occupants. The hold of the Corpus Christi frightened him. So big. So empty and cold save for the sleeping murderers and rapists locked away for their penitent flight.
He pressed the black com button, and the device crackled in response.
 
"Yes. What is it Brother John?"

"Brother Matthew," he said. "We've lost another."


My little e-book of dark "science fantasy" is now available for Kindle. A Smashwords edition is coming soon, I promise. Buy the Kindle edition of Darker Matter for only $0.99.

Hosting a Halloween Drive-In: Top 10 Public Domain Horror Films

It's more of a "sit in" because we host in our backyard. Tonight, we're watching It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown and risking a wrist slapping from the copyright police (since we have no permission to display the movie to the "public"*--shhhhh).  
If you want to host a drive-in, you'd be safer (and more legal) showing some of these horror goodies from the public domain vault (at least I think these are all in the public domain). All text is from IMDB. 
You can also stumble over to www.horrortheque.com for a whole browser window full of free horror goodies.  Tis the season!
10. Dementia 13 1963, Francis Ford Coppolla
John Haloran has a fatal heart attack, but his wife Louise won't get any of the inheritance when Lady Haloran dies if John is dead. Louise forges a letter from John to convince the rest of his family he's been called to New York on important business, and goes to his Irish ancestral home, Castle Haloran, to meet the family and look for a way to ensure a cut of the loot. Seven years earlier John's sister Kathleen was drowned in the pond, and the Halorans enact a morbid ritual in remembrance. Secrets shroud the sister's demise, and soon the family and guests begin experiencing an attrition problem.
9. Phantom of the Opera 1925, Rupert Julian
At the Opera of Paris, a mysterious phantom threatens a famous lyric singer, Carlotta and thus forces her to give up her role (Marguerite in Faust) for unknown Christine Daae. Christine meets this phantom (a masked man) in the catacombs, where he lives. What's his goal? What's his secret?
8. The Last Man on Earth 1964, Ubaldo Ragona
Dr. Robert Morgan (Vincent Price) is the only survivor of a devastating world-wide plague due to a mysterious immunity he acquired to the bacterium while working in Central America years ago. He is all alone now…or so it seems. As night falls, plague victims begin to leave their graves, part of a hellish undead army that's thirsting for blood…his!
7. The House on Haunted Hill 1959, William Castle
Millionaire playboy Fredrick Loren hosts a party for his 4th wife Annabelle Loren at the "House On Haunted Hill," a house that has seen seven murders, Fredrick invites 5 guests: Lance Schroeder,a pilot, Ruth Bridges, a journalist, Watson Prichard, the owner of The House On Haunted Hill, Nora Manning, a worker for one of Fredrick Loren's companies, and David Trent, a psychiatrist. Fredrick will offer each of them $10,000 to spend a night in The House On Haunted Hill. They all want the money. At midnight, the caretakers lock to doors, and the terror begins!
6. Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde 1920, John Robertson
Based on the story by Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Henry Jekyll believes that there are two distinct sides to men – a good and an evil side. He believes that by separating the two men can become liberated. He succeeds in his experiments with chemicals to accomplish this and transforms into Hyde to commit horrendous crimes.
5. The Cabinet of Dr Caligari 1919, Robert Wiene
A horror film that surpasses all others. Alan relates the story of traveling magician Dr Caligari and Cesare. Their arrival in a town coincides with savage killings. Secretly Caligari was an asylum director who hypnotizes Cesare to re enact murders. But the final reel contains something, which will leave an audience shattered. It blows away all your moral certainties and beliefs. This is the true power of its horror. To leave you vulnerable and uncertain of what you feel was secure and certain.
4. The Most Dangerous Game 1932, Irving Pichel & Ernest B. Schoedsack
An insane hunter arranges for a ship to be wrecked on an island where he can indulge in some sort of hunting and killing of the passengers. 
3. Nosferatu 1922, F Murnau
An unauthorized production of Bram Stoker's work (The legal heirs didn't give their permission), so the names had to be changed. But this wasn't enough: The widow of Bram Stoker won two lawsuits (1924 and 1929) in which she demanded the destruction of all copies of the movie, however happily copies of it were already too widespread to destroy them all. Later, the Universal studios could break her resistance against this movie. Count Orlok's move to Wisburg (Obviously the real "Wismar") brings the plague traceable to his dealings with the Realtor Thomas Hutter, and the Count's obsession with Hutter's wife, Ellen the only one with the power to end the evil.
2. Night of the Living Dead 1968, George Romero
The dead come back to life and eat the living in this low budget, black and white film. Several people barricade themselves inside a rural house in an attempt to survive the night. Outside are hordes of relentless, shambling zombies who can only be killed by a blow to the head.
[image error]

1. M 1931, Fritz Lang
A psychotic child murderer stalks a city, and despite an exhaustive investigation fueled by public hysteria and outcry, the police have been unable to find him. But the police crackdown does have one side-affect, it makes it nearly impossible for the organized criminal underground to operate. So they decide that the only way to get the police off their backs is to catch the murderer themselves. Besides, he is giving them a bad name.


*The public being our family and a few friends. 

Coming Soon...

Sunday.