Alan Baxter's Blog, page 28
December 22, 2015
End of year publishing news.
I thought I should catch up on a few bits and pieces before we roll over into 2016. There’s been a bit of stuff going on.
I mentioned before that the Alex Caine series is getting new covers from Harper Voyager and we finally have release dates for the trilogy in paperback. Well, I’ve seen the new covers, they are truly awesome and I can’t wait to share them with you. I can hopefully do that soon. And all three books in the trilogy will be published together in July next year. So you can buy the whole set all at once. In print. Finally! So very exciting.
For the Americans and everyone else, Ragnarok Publications have acquired the rights to the trilogy and they should reveal their covers before too long. We should see a release from them in the autumn of 2016.
Incidentally, if you’ve enjoyed the Alex Caine books, or any other book for that matter, and you have a few minutes to spare, please take a moment to leave a rating and/or honest review at Amazon, Goodreads, iBooks, or anywhere else you frequent. It really does make a difference!
In short fiction news, a few books have been released recently featuring stories by me. It’s been a quiet year until now, then suddenly everything at once.
I have an original story in an amazing new anthology which is available now. Blurring the Line, featuring my story, “How Father Bryant Saw The Light”, is out in the world, edited by the award-winning Marty Young. Learn about that here. I’m currently running a blog series where I’ve asked each fiction contributor the same five questions. This is the first of those.
Also out now is the new dark urban fantasy/horror anthology, Bloodlines, and that features another new story from me, “Old Promise, New Blood”. And another award-winning editor for this one, the awesome Amanda Pillar. Get the skinny on this book here.
And another new horror story by me was recently published. “Reaching For Ruins” is in Review of Australian Fiction (ed. Matthew Lamb) Vol. 16, Issue 3, for November 2015. RAF has two stories every two weeks from Australian authors and it’s more a lit mag than a genre mag, so I’m very happy to have landed a horror yarn there. Check that out here.
And as for new short stories yet to be published, there’s:
“Under Calliope’s Skin” which will be in the SNAFU: Future Warfare anthology (ed. Geoff Brown and A J Spedding, Cohesion Press) due out in Feb. 2016, and a novelette called “Served Cold” coming out in the Dreaming in the Dark anthology (ed. Jack Dann, PS Publishing) due some time in mid-2016. I’m very excited about both those books.
There’s very exciting new project on the horizon for next year too. Clan Destine Press are releasing And Then… which is a massive two-volume collection of fantastic SF and fantasy adventure yarns. It’s packed with amazing writers, including me. My story, “Golden Fortune, Dragon Jade”, is a novelette featuring a Shaolin monk, a powerful geomancer, a stolen jade dragon and the Australian gold rush. I had heaps of fun writing it and can’t wait for people to read it. The books are being partly funded by an indigogo campaign where you can pre-order both volumes in ebook for AU$20, or both volumes in print and ebook for AU$50. There are loads of other perks available at the campaign too, so to get on board with that, head over here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/and-then-the-great-big-book-of-awesome–2#/
And lastly for now, I’m happy to report that editor Simon Dewar has got the go ahead for Suspended In Dusk 2. He asked me to contribute again and my story, “Crying Demon”, will be in the book, due out around mid-2016.
Happy holidays, whatever type you may or may not celebrate. Eat, drink and be merry, all the time not just in December. Be nice to each other.
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December 21, 2015
Conflux 12 Guest of Honour!
Now this is a big one! Certainly a career milestone for me, and I’m chuffed to be able to talk about it now: I’m going to be the Special Guest at Conflux 12 in Canberra next year, across the long weekend September 30th to October 3rd, 2016. The official site is here: http://conflux.org.au/
I’m stunned that I’ve been invited to be a Guest of Honour at a con. I’ve always seen it as something famous people do! Conflux was the first convention I ever attended and it’s always had a special place in my heart. To go again in 2016 as the Guest is just mind-blowing. So I hope that any of you who can get to Canberra next year will come along!
The Red Fire Monkey theme should be pretty cool – I’m still not entirely sure what that entails, but I know that among many other things, I’ll be running my Write The Fight Right workshop there. The first place I ran that workshop was Conflux many years ago, so there’s a nice synchronicity there. I need to get myself a Monkey Magic costume organised for the ball.
I’m still pinching myself. More news on all that as it gets more organised over coming months. But put the dates in your diary!
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Blurring The Line: Annie Neugebauer
Blurring The Line is the new anthology of horror fiction and non-fiction, edited by award-winning editor Marty Young, published by Cohesion Press. You can get your copy here or anywhere you normally buy books (the print edition is coming any day now).
To help people learn a bit more about it, I’ve arranged for each fiction contributor to answer the same five questions, and I’ll be running these mini interviews every weekday now that the book is available.
Today, it’s:
Annie Neugebauer
Annie Neugebauer (@AnnieNeugebauer) is a short story author, novelist, and award-winning poet. She has stories and poems appearing or forthcoming in over fifty venues, including Black Static, Fireside, DarkFuse, and Buzzy Mag. She’s an active member of the Horror Writers Association, the webmaster for the Poetry Society of Texas, and a columnist for Writer Unboxed. She lives in Texas with her sweet husband and two diabolical cats. You can visit her at www.AnnieNeugebauer.com for blogs, creative works, free organizational tools for writers, and more.
1. What was the inspiration/motivation behind your story in Blurring The Line?
A few years ago I read the nonfiction book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. In it, the author very briefly mentions The Mellified Man, or human mummy confection, a purportedly true practice in ancient Arabia cited by sixteenth-century Chinese pharmacologist Li Shizhen. This was the custom of elderly people sacrificing themselves by consuming only honey until death, so their bodies could be turned into a medicinal substance believed to heal all sorts of ailments when ingested.
The claim was bizarre enough to catch my fancy, and off I ran. When Cohesion Press announced this anthology asking for stories that blurred the line between fact and fiction, I knew “Honey” was the perfect fit. I took the supposedly true legend and put my own spin on it, bringing it into modern times.
2. What does horror mean to you?
Do you want the 1,000 word answer or the 50,000 word one? Kidding, sort of. This is a topic I’m incredibly passionate about. I’ve blogged about it several times, both for the Horror Writers Association and on my own website. “Thoughts on IT by Stephen King, What it Takes to Enjoy Horror, and Why I Write It” is my most popular, thanks in large part to Anne Rice sharing it with her followers. I also have “What Is Horror?,” “Why Horror Should Be Its Own Genre,” and “Reclaiming Horror.”
But I’ll give you the shorter answer. Defining horror, for me, comes down to fear. Fear is subjective, so it doesn’t have to scare me personally (although that’s ideal), but it does have to be written with the intent of unsettling, unnerving, frightening, or disturbing the reader. There are a lot of politics and prejudices that go into labels, so some of horror’s best works often evade the descriptor “horror,” but at the end of the day, that doesn’t change what they are. Horror is an emotion, and to me, anything written with the intent of creating that emotion is horror, from Mary Shelley to Jack Ketchum to Franz Kafka.
But maybe you mean what does horror mean to me, personally? That’s tricky to answer, because it means so much. Horror is the nostalgia of staying up late on Sunday nights to watch The X-Files with my dad. Horror is hearing “The Raven” read aloud after looking up all the vocabulary words and allusions. Horror is seeing Halloween for the first time with my best friend in high school. Horror is the thrill of walking through a haunted house. It’s trick-or-treating. It’s scaring my friends with my own stories. It’s the first short story I ever had published. It’s what inspires me to sit down every day and work until my wrists are sore and my eyes burn. Horror is the torch and the darkness both – it’s the unconquered nightmare I walk through to prove to myself that I can. It’s my livelihood, my passion, my boogie man, and my friend. Horror is my life.
3. What’s a horror short story that you think everyone should read?
My first answer is “everything by Poe,” but since most people have at least read Poe’s classics, I’ll go for something I think less people are familiar with. One of my favorite horror shorts is “The Tooth” by Shirley Jackson. It doesn’t have the big bang ending that her more famous story “The Lottery” boasts, but it has a subtlety and quiet eeriness that left me absolutely unraveled. I think Jackson is a master of literary horror, and I’m honestly not sure why more people don’t talk about her.
4. What horror novel should everyone read?
Stephen King’s The Shining is famous for a reason, so I always suggest people start with that. It’s my personal number one as far as “scary” goes. Less known and more modern, Bird Box by Josh Malerman absolutely knocked my socks off. And I’m a hardcore fan of House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, but it’s admittedly not for everyone. You really have to love literary fiction and long, complex, experimental works, but if you do, this one might just become your favorite book. It’s one I know I’ll reread many times in my life.
5. Name something that you think just might be real, or might not…
Hm, that’s hard. I’m a pretty grounded realist; I don’t believe in ghosts or spirits or anything supernatural. (Ironic, I know.) So I guess for me the “might or might not” things are those which we haven’t disproven but that we also haven’t discovered, like aliens or various animals living in the few underexplored parts of our planet. The unknown creatures that swim in the deepest parts of the ocean inspired my poem “The Hadal Zone,” for example. My fancy is always captured by the real, unknown things that might still be out there, waiting.
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Previous posts in the Blurring The Line interview series:
Marty Young
Tom Piccirilli
Lisa Morton
Tim Lebbon
Lia Swope Mitchell
Alan Baxter
James Dorr
Peter Hagelslag
Gregory L Norris
Steven Lloyd Wilson
James A Moore
Alex C Renwick
Lisa L Hannett
Kealan Patrick Burke
Brett McBean
Kaaron Warren
Paul Mannering
Charles L Grant
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The post Blurring The Line: Annie Neugebauer appeared first on Alan Baxter - Warrior Scribe.
December 20, 2015
Blurring The Line: Charles L Grant
Blurring The Line is the new anthology of horror fiction and non-fiction, edited by award-winning editor Marty Young, published by Cohesion Press. You can get your copy here or anywhere you normally buy books (the print edition is coming any day now).
To help people learn a bit more about it, I’ve arranged for each fiction contributor to answer the same five questions, and I’ll be running these mini interviews every weekday now that the book is available.
Today, it’s:
Charles L Grant
Unfortunately, Charles died in 2006, but it’s a real treat to have one of his stories in Blurring The Line. In lieu of an interview, here’s his bio, and follow the links to find more of his work.
Charles L. Grant was well known for his “quiet horror” and for editing the award-winning Shadows anthologies. He received the British Fantasy Society’s Special Award in 1987 for life achievement; in 2000, he was the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association. Other awards include two Nebula Awards and three World Fantasy Awards for writing and editing. He wrote in many different genres under assorted names (many with a water reference). His numerous novels are being brought out in e-book format from Crossroad Press and Necon Ebooks.
Charlie died from a lengthy illness on September 15, 2006, just three days after his birthday. He lived in Newton, NJ, and was married to writer/editor Kathryn Ptacek for nearly twenty-five years.
Here are some links to some of Charles’ work:
Symphony (The Millennium Quartet Book 1)
The Pet
The Bloodwind – An Oxrun Station Novel (Oxrun Station Novels)
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Previous posts in the Blurring The Line interview series:
Marty Young
Tom Piccirilli
Lisa Morton
Tim Lebbon
Lia Swope Mitchell
Alan Baxter
James Dorr
Peter Hagelslag
Gregory L Norris
Steven Lloyd Wilson
James A Moore
Alex C Renwick
Lisa L Hannett
Kealan Patrick Burke
Brett McBean
Kaaron Warren
Paul Mannering
.
The post Blurring The Line: Charles L Grant appeared first on Alan Baxter - Warrior Scribe.
December 17, 2015
Blurring The Line: Paul Mannering
Blurring The Line is the new anthology of horror fiction and non-fiction, edited by award-winning editor Marty Young, published by Cohesion Press. You can get your copy here or anywhere you normally buy books (the print edition is coming any day now).
To help people learn a bit more about it, I’ve arranged for each fiction contributor to answer the same five questions, and I’ll be running these mini interviews every weekday now that the book is available.
Today, it’s:
Paul Mannering
Paul Mannering is an award-winning writer living in Wellington, New Zealand, where he lives with his wife Damaris and their two cats.
Author of the Tankbread series, published by Permuted Press and the Drakeforth Trilogy, including book 1 “Engines of Empathy” published by Paper Road Press
Stalk Paul on Facebook at his author page https://www.facebook.com/NZPaulBooks
1. What was the inspiration/motivation behind your story in Blurring The Line?
‘Salt On The Tongue’ came about from so many inspirations. I grew up in a rural farming community in New Zealand’s South Island. The west coast of the South Island was a place we visited regularly and the coastal bush is a primal and dark temperate rain forest. Wet and lush, the Coast is a place that can be incredibly rugged and wild. Inspiration came from thinking about outsiders coming into the remote and isolated communities that can exist in such places. People who live normal lives and yet find themselves in places and situations that they can’t quite comprehend.
Motivation was that unending compulsion to explore an idea or a feeling and see just how a story will play out when it is dragged into the light and autopsied.
2. What does horror mean to you?
Horror is the stories that I can never forget. Novels, short-stories, films, radio-plays – that all come flooding back in perfect detail when I know it’s perfectly safe to walk down the dark hallway to the bathroom in the middle of the night. At the same time knowing that I wouldn’t walk that dark passage for a million bucks.
Horror is the thrill of the unseen and the arrogance of reminding ourselves that it’s just fiction. It’s the fairy tales where the witch eats Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood dies screaming with the wolf’s hot breath on her throat.
3. What’s a horror short story that you think everyone should read?
“The Strong Will Survive” by John Everson (published in his outstanding collection, “Needles and Sins”.) It is a story that you read once and then realise that you need to read it again, just to understand what you have witnessed. It is the most poignant, moving, and utterly horrific story I have ever read. The remarkable thing is that this is a very gentle tale in a collection with stories containing graphic violence and horrific scenarios.
4. What horror novel should everyone read?
“The Hellbound Heart” by Clive Barker.
In terms of length it is more a novella, but on a scale of epic – it’s greater than King’s Dark Tower series.
What totally clinches this novel as the greatest horror novel I’ve read is the beautiful poetry of the prose. Barker is a master of really disturbing horror and yet he delivers it in a way that makes it seem like a Shakespearean sonnet.
5. Name something that you think just might be real, or might not…
Amazon royalty cheques – I mean I’ve heard of them but I’ve never seen one.
Seriously though, ghosts are the one thing that I can’t entirely dismiss. I’m quite certain that 99.9% of ghost sightings and photographs are either pareidolia, or simple wishful thinking. I have only had two experiences with what might have been ghosts but they were so entirely impossible that I’m pretty sure they were legitimate.
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Previous posts in the Blurring The Line interview series:
Marty Young
Tom Piccirilli
Lisa Morton
Tim Lebbon
Lia Swope Mitchell
Alan Baxter
James Dorr
Peter Hagelslag
Gregory L Norris
Steven Lloyd Wilson
James A Moore
Alex C Renwick
Lisa L Hannett
Kealan Patrick Burke
Brett McBean
Kaaron Warren
.
The post Blurring The Line: Paul Mannering appeared first on Alan Baxter - Warrior Scribe.
December 16, 2015
Blurring The Line: Kaaron Warren
Blurring The Line is the new anthology of horror fiction and non-fiction, edited by award-winning editor Marty Young, published by Cohesion Press. You can get your copy here or anywhere you normally buy books (the print edition is coming any day now).
To help people learn a bit more about it, I’ve arranged for each fiction contributor to answer the same five questions, and I’ll be running these mini interviews every weekday now that the book is available.
Today, it’s:
Kaaron Warren
Bram Stoker , twice-World Fantasy Award Nominee and Shirley Jackson Award winner Kaaron Warren has lived in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Fiji. She’s sold almost 200 short stories, three novels (the multi-award-winning Slights, Walking the Tree and Mistification) and five short story collections including the multi-award-winning Through Splintered Walls. Her latest short story collection is Cemetery Dance Select: Kaaron Warren
You can find her at http://kaaronwarren.wordpress.com/ and she Tweets @KaaronWarren
1. What was the inspiration/motivation behind your story in Blurring The Line?
A New Scientist article and elsewhere, about a ‘grave-sniffing device’ that helped investigators locate graves. I wondered if it worked like a metal detector, and how it would feel to hear the device beeping in ordinary places.
New Scientist 7 August 2010
http://lists.asc.asn.au/pipermail/asc-media/2010-August/004159.html
http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/hand-held-detector-sniffs-out-hidden-grave-sites
2. What does horror mean to you?
I recently heard someone saying that horror began with the invention of fire, because that’s when flickering shadows appeared in the corner of your eye. To me horror is the shadows; movement, concealment, the unexpected. It’s the irretrievable and the irreversible.
3. What’s a horror short story that you think everyone should read?
Norman Prentiss, “In the Porches of My Ears”
4.What horror novel should everyone read?
Alan Ryker, “Dream of the Serpent”
5. Name something that you think just might be real, or might not…
That we live another life while sleeping, and in that life our moral compass shifts.
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Previous posts in the Blurring The Line interview series:
Marty Young
Tom Piccirilli
Lisa Morton
Tim Lebbon
Lia Swope Mitchell
Alan Baxter
James Dorr
Peter Hagelslag
Gregory L Norris
Steven Lloyd Wilson
James A Moore
Alex C Renwick
Lisa L Hannett
Kealan Patrick Burke
Brett McBean
.
The post Blurring The Line: Kaaron Warren appeared first on Alan Baxter - Warrior Scribe.
Guest Post – Donna Maree Hanson, Dragon Wine
Dragon Wine Book 1: Shatterwing by Donna Maree Hanson is free in e-book for a short time. As part of spreading the word about Shatterwing, Donna is doing a blog tour and offering a give away of a hard copy of Shatterwing. Winners will be drawn from people who comment during the blog tour. So leave a comment to be in to win.
Dragon wine could save them. Or bring about their destruction.
Since the moon shattered, the once peaceful and plentiful world has become a desolate wasteland. Factions fight for ownership of the remaining resources as pieces of the broken moon rain down, bringing chaos, destruction and death.
The most precious of these resources is dragon wine – a life-giving drink made from the essence of dragons. But the making of the wine is perilous and so is undertaken by prisoners. Perhaps even more dangerous than the wine production is the Inspector, the sadistic ruler of the prison vineyard who plans to use the precious drink to rule the world.
There are only two people that stand in his way. Brill, a young royal rebel who seeks to bring about revolution, and Salinda, the prison’s best vintner and possessor of a powerful and ancient gift that she is only beginning to understand. To stop the Inspector, Salinda must learn to harness her power so that she and Brill can escape, and stop the dragon wine from falling into the wrong hands.
Dragon Wine Book 2 :Skywatcher, the follow on book is also available in ebook and print.
http://momentumbooks.com.au/books/shatterwing-dragon-wine-1/
Thank you for having me on your blog, Alan. You asked me to talk about my inspiration in world building for Dragon Wine.
The inspiration behind the world building in Dragonwine (Shatterwing and Skywatcher)
Dragon wine was probably the first book I worked on where I did quite a bit of deliberate thinking , planning and worldbuildiing. One of the main things I did was have a good think about the fantasy novels I loved and why I loved them. What came to me was that I loved the backstory and ancient technology in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. I liked it more than the front story. So I knew then that I wanted to create a world steeped in history, in old machines and mysterious people who are only known by their relics. I also wanted something alien in there too, like a people who were legend but still existed. I love fantasy stories that have magic and bravery and love so I knew my story had to have those elements. At the same time, things were happening in this world that made me question life, people and what it means to be human. Those things joined in with my creativity to establish a nasty, dark element to the story. Sad that it is reality that gives Dragon Wine its dark focus. Those things like terrorism continue on to this day and I still don’t know how it will all end in reality and in the story. I think the resolution hangs in the balance.
The other consideration for me is that I wanted to create an unusual world something different from the norm. That meant moving away from a pastoral, medieval type setting. I also love science fiction so I created a world that has strong science fiction setting with some SF tropes. The world is dominated by a fractured moon that is in now a dispersed field called Shatterwing. As the people are living in a post-apocalyptic world and have lost their technology and sciences, Shatterwing dominates their mythology. It seemed to me that this thing in the sky would be a source of wonder, fear and superstition. This is further strengthened by the fact that bits of Shatterwing fall down to the planet on a regular basis.
Of course, Dragon Wine has dragons. I can’t really explain why I did put dragons in there. They were just a result of the workings of my mind. I didn’t read other dragon novels and I guess that helped me create something a bit different in the dragons. I did some research into dragons and how they are represented in a number of cultures. My influences for the dragons would have to be film and in my formative years, Godzilla! Also, there is some technology on Margra but it’s a remnant of a former time. Going further back, I have alien technology that’s quite unfathomable and then there is the Hiem. I guess they are kind of space elves when you think about it, but maybe not. However, I love that abandoned city, lost civilisation trope immensely. I remember reading Alan Dean Foster’s Flinx novels when I was young and that’s what I loved about that. The sense of the alien and its impact.
Dragon Wine also has three different distinct forms of magic. There is the magic of the dragons. Their life force is so strong that when grapes are grown in their dung the magic seeps into the wine made from the grapes. It is that wine that keeps the humans from dying off completely. The second type of magic is the magic of Salinda’s cadre. The magic grown from the minds of people that has been passed down since the time of moon fall. It is likely that that magic has a technological basis that has grown over time into something more. The third type of magic is that used by Skywatchers, particularly Garan, to shoot down meteors. The Skywatchers use crystals to focus their power which gives off powerful heat beam to blow up meteors. Why three different types of magic? For me they all represent different things. The dragon magic for me comes from their majesty as beasts. There is probably more to it than that, but that’s the inspiration. Salinda’s magic or the magic of the cadre is something that has evolved over time and it comes from the bearers of the cadre and what part of their essence they contribute to it. I consider this more a ripening of power over time and it’s just coming into its own. The power of the Skywatchers is more earthy. It’s something in them although they think it’s a talent that’s in the crystals themselves.
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The post Guest Post – Donna Maree Hanson, Dragon Wine appeared first on Alan Baxter - Warrior Scribe.
December 15, 2015
Blurring The Line: Brett McBean
Blurring The Line is the new anthology of horror fiction and non-fiction, edited by award-winning editor Marty Young, published by Cohesion Press. You can get your copy here or anywhere you normally buy books (the print edition is coming any day now).
To help people learn a bit more about it, I’ve arranged for each fiction contributor to answer the same five questions, and I’ll be running these mini interviews every weekday now that the book is available.
Today, it’s:
Brett McBean
Brett McBean is an award-winning horror and thriller author. His books, which include The Mother, The Last Motel and Wolf Creek: Desolation Game, have been published in Australia, the US, and Germany. He’s been nominated for the Aurealis, Ditmar, and Ned Kelly awards, and he won the 2011 Australian Shadows Award for his collection, Tales of Sin and Madness. He is a member of the Australian Horror Writers Association, where he has twice been a mentor in their mentor program. He lives in Melbourne with his wife, daughter and German shepherd. Find out more at: brettmcbean.com
1. What was the inspiration/motivation behind your story in Blurring The Line?
My story deals with the horrific crime of child abuse and murder, specifically about a fictional children’s entertainer who’s at the centre of a paedophile ring. The idea stemmed from the various cases that have recently come to light of well-known public figures who have been accused of child molestation. These are entertainers I grew up watching on TV and it’s shocking to learn about the monster lurking behind the seemingly innocuous facade.
I also based my story largely on ‘The Family Murders’, a group of socially-elite men who kidnapped, sexually abused and murdered an untold number of boys during the 1970s and ‘80s in Adelaide (other than Bevan Spencer von Einem, an accountant charged with the murder of a 15-year-old boy, none of the other men have been named).
It’s often terrifying what goes on behind closed doors; worse when it involves children. Especially when those perpetrating the crimes are people in a position of trust. I wanted to write a story that deals with that kind of betrayal of trust, of a man responsible for inflicting both joy and pain in children; someone capable of using his hands to create as well as destroy. So, in a way, it’s about the destruction of innocence.
2. What does horror mean to you?
Horror is life. Every horror story, whether it be short story, novel or movie, is a reflection and examination of our fears. We didn’t make up the bogeyman; the bogeyman already exists in our collective and personal fears under various guises. We use storytelling merely as a vehicle to help us come to terms with these fears, to better understand why we’re afraid of the dark, death or spiders. Also as a way to deal with these fears in a safe way. Reading a horror story or watching a horror movie is a catharsis. So you could also say horror is comfort.
3. What’s a horror short story that you think everyone should read?
“The Lottery”, by Shirley Jackson
4. What horror novel should everyone read?
I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson
5. Name something that you think just might be real, or might not…
Zombies. In Haiti there’s a long-standing belief that the dead can, and often do, come back from the dead through the power of witchcraft. There are many tales that supposedly confirm the existence of zombies, including a famous story told by American adventurer and writer, William Seabrook. He claimed to have met three zombies working in a cotton field in the 1920s. He observed: ‘The eyes were the worst. They were in truth like the eyes of a dead man.’
Then there’s the account of well-known anthropologist and author, Zora Neale Thurston, who said, after travelling to the Caribbean country in the late 1930s: ‘I saw the case, and I know that there are zombies in Haiti’. If you’re curious about the case she’s referring to, look up the name Felicia Felix-Mentor. There’s even a photo of the alleged zombie, and if you’re not convinced about the real-life existence of zombies after reading the story of poor Ms Felix-Mentor, then surely seeing the unnerving photo will.
Or maybe zombies are really just people whose minds have been badly distorted through use of the zombie cucumber, coupled with an ingrained fear and belief of local superstition…
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Previous posts in the Blurring The Line interview series:
Marty Young
Tom Piccirilli
Lisa Morton
Tim Lebbon
Lia Swope Mitchell
Alan Baxter
James Dorr
Peter Hagelslag
Gregory L Norris
Steven Lloyd Wilson
James A Moore
Alex C Renwick
Lisa L Hannett
Kealan Patrick Burke
.
The post Blurring The Line: Brett McBean appeared first on Alan Baxter - Warrior Scribe.
December 14, 2015
Blurring The Line: Kealan Patrick Burke
Blurring The Line is the new anthology of horror fiction and non-fiction, edited by award-winning editor Marty Young, published by Cohesion Press. You can get your copy here or anywhere you normally buy books (the print edition is coming any day now).
To help people learn a bit more about it, I’ve arranged for each fiction contributor to answer the same five questions, and I’ll be running these mini interviews every weekday now that the book is available.
Today, it’s:
Kealan Patrick Burke
Born and raised in Dungarvan, Ireland, Kealan Patrick Burke is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of five novels, over a hundred short stories, seven collections, and editor of four acclaimed anthologies. He has worked as a waiter, a drama teacher, a mapmaker, a security guard, an assembly-line worker at Apple Computers, a salesman (for a day), a bartender, landscape gardener, vocalist in a grunge band, and, most recently, a fraud investigator. He also played the male lead in Slime City Massacre, director Gregory Lumberton’s sequel to his cult B-movie classic Slime City, alongside scream queens Debbie Rochon and Brooke Lewis.
When not writing, Kealan designs covers for print and digital books through his company Elderlemon Design. To date, he has designed covers for Richard Laymon, Brian Keene, Scott Nicholson, Bentley Little, William Schoell, Tim Lebbon and Hugh Howey, to name a few.
In what little free time remains, Kealan is a voracious reader, movie buff, videogamer (Xbox), and road-trip enthusiast.
A movie based on his short story Peekers is currently in development through Lionsgate Entertainment.
www.kealanpatrickburke.com
www.elderlemondesign.com
1. What was the inspiration/motivation behind your story in Blurring The Line?
I have a peculiar fascination with door-to-door salesmen, having done the job myself for a whole day before quitting in absolute misery. I don’t think we always need to refer to the supernatural for our horror. Sometimes it can be found in the awful things we are asked to do as humans in order to survive, and as far as I’m concerned, being a door-to-door salesman is a job that should be listed in the Ninth Circle of Hell. Take that fascination, add in a dash of Glengarry Glenross, and now imagine the worst kind of house to find yourself in while trying to ply your wares, and you have “Hoarder.”
2. What does horror mean to you?
I’m going to quote myself on this one, as I don’t think I’ve ever put it more succinctly than I did on this occasion:
“[Horror] tackles our darkest fears, whatever they may be. It takes us into the minds of the victims, explores the threats, disseminates fear, studies how it changes us. It pulls back the curtain on the ugly underbelly of society, tears away the masks the monsters wear out in the world, shows us the potential truth of the human condition. Horror is truth, unflinching and honest. Not everybody wants to see that, but good horror ensures that it’s there to be seen.”
3. What’s a horror short story that you think everyone should read?
“Sticks” by Karl Edward Wagner.
4. What horror novel should everyone read?
“Bird Box” by Josh Malerman.
5. Name something that you think just might be real, or might not…
Aliens.
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Previous posts in the Blurring The Line interview series:
Marty Young
Tom Piccirilli
Lisa Morton
Tim Lebbon
Lia Swope Mitchell
Alan Baxter
James Dorr
Peter Hagelslag
Gregory L Norris
Steven Lloyd Wilson
James A Moore
Alex C Renwick
Lisa L Hannett
.
The post Blurring The Line: Kealan Patrick Burke appeared first on Alan Baxter - Warrior Scribe.
December 13, 2015
Blurring The Line: Lisa L Hannett
Blurring The Line is the new anthology of horror fiction and non-fiction, edited by award-winning editor Marty Young, published by Cohesion Press. You can get your copy here or anywhere you normally buy books (the print edition is coming any day now).
To help people learn a bit more about it, I’ve arranged for each fiction contributor to answer the same five questions, and I’ll be running these mini interviews every weekday now that the book is available.
Today, it’s:
Lisa L Hannett
Lisa L. Hannett has had over 60 short stories appear in venues including Clarkesworld, Fantasy, Weird Tales, Apex, the Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror, and Imaginarium: Best Canadian Speculative Writing. She has won four Aurealis Awards, including Best Collection for her first book, Bluegrass Symphony, which was also nominated for a World Fantasy Award. Her first novel, Lament for the Afterlife, was published in 2015.You can find her online at http://lisahannett.com and on Twitter @LisaLHannett.
1. What was the inspiration/motivation behind your story in Blurring The Line?
The main inspiration — though it makes the story sound much more political than it really is — was the recent and continuing (appalling) treatment of asylum seekers in this country. That was the spark (which, I can pretty comfortably guarantee) isn’t a theme blazing across the narrative. Instead, it launched my mind into other directions, which included thinking about how some people’s intentions are good (in their minds, at least) but the outcome of these intentions can be horrifying. How in trying to “protect” some people we can end up hurting others. How opinions and behaviours — good and bad — are initially formed not on a nation-wide scale, but much closer to home..
2. What does horror mean to you?
For me, horror isn’t gore or murderous revenge narratives or films with nasty surprises that make you jump or creepy clowns living in the drain of your shower. (Okay, maybe that last one counts…) Horror is “normal” made uncomfortable. Horror is unrelenting dread. Horror means not pulling punches in fiction: it’s going there, where things are awful and often hopeless, and leaving your characters to deal with it, and maybe not coming back for them. Horror is putting people in situations where magic can solve everything except what they want solved. Horror is not knowing. Horror is getting unwanted answers. Horror isn’t unfathomable mysteries cloaked in darkness and occult trappings. Horror is made up of regular, everyday miseries that hold your face so tight you can’t look away.
3. What’s a horror short story that you think everyone should read?
There are two I come back to time and again, so I’ll cheat and mention them both: ‘Apotropaics’ by Norman Partridge, which was (I think) published first in the early ’90s but was subsequently reprinted here: https://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2008/fiction_apotropaics_by_norman_partridge; and ‘A Rose for Emily’ by William Faulkner.
4. What horror novel should everyone read?
It’s a tie between The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson.
5. Name something that you think just might be real, or might not…
Ghosts. Maybe. Maybe.
___________________________________
Previous posts in the Blurring The Line interview series:
Marty Young
Tom Piccirilli
Lisa Morton
Tim Lebbon
Lia Swope Mitchell
Alan Baxter
James Dorr
Peter Hagelslag
Gregory L Norris
Steven Lloyd Wilson
James A Moore
Alex C Renwick
.
The post Blurring The Line: Lisa L Hannett appeared first on Alan Baxter - Warrior Scribe.
