Blog

Long Overdue Updates

11/6/2019

It's been a wild and crazy few years for me ( losing my mother this summer chief among them) and so updates have been a little inconsistent from me. I'm sorry for that and I hope it will be getting better now that I have a bit more breathing room between myself and some of the hectic parts of my personal life. So, that being said, here are a few of the things I have going on at the moment. First of all, if you haven't checked out The Hungry Season: Three Stories for Hungry Hearts, which came out recently, now would be a great time to see what you think! It contains Wendy Won't Go, Love Like Blood, and Cold Comfort and works as a great introduction to my writing as well as a nice little collection of what I like to think of as my Dark Mother stories. I'm currently working on the final edits for Other Dangers: This is How the World Ends (which is book two of Other Dangers) and working on my colaborative novel The Abyss Within with R. E Lyons with hopes to be doing some more work on both Jodie and Night is Falling in 2020.

On the audiobook front ( if you haven't seen them yet, I've got Eyes Like Blue Fire, Water Like Crimson Sorrow, Sacrum Umbra: the Gothic Tales of Amanda M. Lyons, Wendy Won't Go, and Other Dangers: Slipped Through out already on Audible) I have two more books currently in production, In Ventre Tuo: Tales of Gore and Madness from Paul Burt (who did a wonderful job with Sacrum Umbra and is doing a wonderful job with In Ventre Tuo as well ) and The Hungy Season from Chris Koprowski, both of these narrators do impeccable work and do my collections so much justice! I couldn't recommend them or Sara Jane Rose, J. Ross Wilson, or Andrew Reyes more, they've all been wonderful to work with and listen to! Look for both audio books this winter, and hopefully Cool Green Waters will be along soon enough too.

If you have any questions for me feel free to reach out and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

Check out these Audiobooks from Audible!

7/27/2019

In the dark heart of our imagination, and the haunted corners our past there are places we fear to tread. As much as we might try to outrun them, as much as we might try to deny their truths, we are owned by their shape, molded by their claws. The story of our being, they form a Sacrum Umbra, a sacred shadow of improbable origin - our own dark heart.

Katja has long spent her life buried in the pain and sorrow of her past, a vampire abandoned to her fate for over 300 years, she never expects to meet another who could hel
p her reclaim her existence. Raven, a poet and fellow lost soul, could be the one to spur her on, but in order to have the future she has only begun to grasp, she must uncover the truth about her origins and the awful event which left her alone centuries before. If she cannot face her past and reclaim her strength, she will lose everything.

Henry is a man with trouble on his hands. Setting out for this weekend getaway wasn’t even his idea, and now he’s woken up from a terrible car crash to find himself in a strange place where nothing is as it seems. Now, his whole life has changed, and nothing he knew to be true seems to matter, not when the world is filled with horror and still other dangers waiting in the shadows.
Worse, his wife is hurt, and there’s only one woman who can help them get home, a woman who is more mystery than truth and holds the road map to a world without rules...a map that comes in the form of a book hidden in the depths of the backpack in her possession. A book that calls his name. The woman shows him she would do anything to keep it out of anyone else’s hands.

Billy and Sara are living a life of fear. Every day and every night since Sara was small they have been haunted by a terrible apparition. She is cold and she is cruel, strange and frightening. Her name is Wendy, and no matter where they go and no matter what they do, Wendy won't go.

You can get the very gothic audio book version of Sacrum Umbra Soon

7/16/2019

Please check out this little promo for the Sacrum Umbra audio book put together by Paul Burt :)

Sacrum Umbra, In Ventre Tuo, and The Lesser Apocrypha: Three New Short Horror Collections of My Work

6/4/2019

Hey, have you been wondering what's up with me and my writing? Well there have been some changes and the news is good. It's been a busy few years and unfortunately my writing and releases took a hit for all the chaos, but now there's going to be a lot more room to breath and grow. I had to make some changes in my life, sort some aspects of things with my family, and leave my job as COO/Assignment Editor at J. Ellington Ashton (no ill will, it was just time to make some changes for myself) to arrive at this point, but things are already a lot more balanced and geared toward where I want to be going. I'll be continuing my freelance editing and promotional work for authors and the blogs I write over at Scorpion's Labyrinth while taking some more time for my writing and getting things out the door that I've been working on over the last five years or so, among them titles like Jodie, the next two Other Dangers books, a collaborative novel with my father called The Abyss Within, Night is Falling, and hopefully that fourth vampire novel Hollow Black Corners of the Soul for the Shades of Midnight series.

The other new information I have for you is that I've finally managed to get all of my short stories together and make a few themed collections so that it'll be easier for you to find the ones you like all in one place. I was very happy to find that there were so many to work with after all this time and that they had a nice little home in their given areas by the time I was done sorting and arranging them, I hope you'll enjoy them and consider giving them an honest review once you've gotten to work your way through them. In case you were wondering about my already released titles, rest assured you can still find my novels Eyes Like Blue Fire, Water Like Crimson Sorrow, Cool Green Waters, Other Dangers: Slipped Through, the mosaic novel Feral Hearts, the novella Wendy Won't Go, and numerous short stories and anthologies at J. Ellington Ashton. I'll keep you updated on where things are with new releases and hopefully you'll be seeing more new projects from me in the near future!

In the dark heart of our imagination, and the haunted corners our past there are places we fear to tread. As much as we might try to outrun them, as much as we might try to deny their truths, we are owned by their shape, molded by their claws. The story of our being, they form a Sacrum Umbra, a sacred shadow of improbable origin- our own dark heart.

In Sacrum Umbra you were treated to tales from the shadows, the literary darkness that lives within all of us. Here you will find tales of another sort, the type you might find in the less wholesome end of the collective unconscious and the very depths of the gut. From stories of childhood gone horribly wrong to sex and madness with an impossible cost, this is where you'll find the more gruesome end of the spectrum.

While Sacrum Umbra showed us the darkness of our own shadow, and In Ventre Tuo the guts of our inner monster, The Lesser Apocrypha is still another beast altogether. Meant to gather together the stranger stories, it contains some of the more surreal and ephemeral stories, the ones that just are without much rhyme or reason. Stories like an odd moment in the park, the strange child who won't stop haunting you, an alien invasion that gets very personal, an AI born of a lolcat, monsters in the woods, and a spell gone terribly wrong.

The Transmutation of Trauma: Realizations of an Author in the Process of Healing

2/9/2019

I'll be clear here and say that there are some ways I'm not certain this will be of interest to the casual reader, but I think it will be of interest to those interested in exploring the writing process and the psyche in relation to creative expression, they genuinely go hand in hand as creative expression is effectively the subconscious becoming conscious in order to be known. If this is not your thing, fret not, there will still be more of the more relaxed posts as well, dear reader.

I'll also note here that there are ways in which I discuss some of this process in a post on my psychologically centered self- exploration blog Scorpion's Labyrinth: A Blog About Being Present for anyone curious about these realizations ( I'll also crosspost this there for any readers there who might not know that this blog and it are written by the same person and find it interesting). You can find that post, A Terrible Beauty: The Dissociative Dance of the Healing Creator's Psyche, which is about the connection between dissociation and expression here :

https://scorpionslabyrinth.weebly.com/home/a-terrible-beauty-the-dissociative-dance-of-the-healing-creators-psyche

If you like that post there are several others there as well, please feel free to follow me at both blogs. In many ways I think its long overdue that I make it clear these blogs are from the same individual and should be interpreted to be as intersected in their understanding as my own interest in, and connection with, both creative expression and the mind via psychology and sociology. I've kept them separate as a way to allow myself space to explore these differing worlds, but I should long ago have understood that for me these things are as intermingled as the whorls of my own mind. With that I want to be clear there may be far more blended posts like these here as I decompress and own who I am as opposed to dividing myself for polite consumption as I've done in the past.

There are a lot of ways in which I knew and had often discussed the fact that I was working through fears and others elements of the psyche with my writing in the past, but I don't think I truly understood it with any real depth until I finally had that little turn of the key when I was listening to my partner talk about some interesting insights the podcast The Wizard and the Bruiser had in relation to the comic book character Wolverine.

Let me give you a little context for this. Wolverine is a pretty widely known antihero of the superhero group The X-Men, a broken and mysterious man, he represents quite a lot of things for people, many of them based in an understanding of manhood that is contested between being potentially toxic masculinity and protective and directed aggressive behaviour justified by what is seen as a man standing for what is right. He has a healing factor that allows him to quickly recover from any damage to his body, he's even come back from total destruction of his brain, and also has an indestructible adamantium skeleton complete with retractable claws, all of it wielded by a man with an intense personality known for his ferocious anger and willingness to do a great deal of damage to others. As a result Wolverine is an important figure for those who grew up reading comics, particularly men who grew up or were teens in the 90s, for whom he was a major formative figure in their perception of self and what it is to fight for what you believe is right. In fact, I think for some women of the same generation he was likely a formative figure representing what they might encounter in a protective masculine partner regardless of how healthy or unhealthy that is.

The Wizard and the Bruiser is a pop culture podcast that deals with major themes of what they term "nerd culture" , so they'll pick a theme and then discuss their takes on why it's important. If you want to check them out, go here:

https://soundcloud.com/wizbru

On this particular episode a discussion point was brought up to the effect that Wolverine is actually something of a vampire, a being trapped in a cycle of rebirth that leaves them an outsider that is regenerated by a seemingly supernatural power but remains dependent on the rest of humanity to feel whole. Wolverine's vampirism is unique in that it makes him a living embodiment of the fact that those who experience trauma face a complex process by which the mind may not record a memory as it is intended to do and instead stores away a broken memory and/or an incomplete sense memory which dictates the way a person behaves in relation to a similar experience because the typical cognitive function has been rewritten to work from a trauma conscious directive tied into fight, flight, and freezing as a first response to preserve stability at all costs- even the loss of relationships and potential harm to the self. This is deeply discussed by the very insightful and well researched Bessel van der Kolk MD in his book The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma which I highly recommend to anyone interested in the phenomena or who experienced trauma themselves.

Keep in mind I had heard all of this secondhand rather than listening in myself ( I struggle with listening to podcasts because there is no body language to follow as a grounding element of what's going on. It's one of my things, so Todd will often talk me through interesting episodes. ) so some of this discussion is also affected by Todd's own personal insight on their discussion and my own understanding of trauma and trauma psychology which has also informed how he speaks with me about related topics. All of that being said, here is the point of bringing up Wolverine: All of these elements intrigued me enough to think it would certainly make for an interesting take on vampires and other monsters in horror fiction, a way in which psychology could be introduced into the narrative in a very subconscious and nuanced way to make the premise its own animal- except it dawned on me that this is what I had been doing with my own fiction since I had begun to write!

Not only was this the case, I had been doing this so naturally that I didn't even get it until I began to consider these ideas in relation to the character Mateo from my vampire series Broken Shades, on whose personal narrative I had been blocked for years. I had begun to consider how I could write something based on the premise when I realized that Mateo was and had always been my Wolverine, a broken and damaged soul so entangled in his trauma that he can't differentiate it from who he is and so cannot define himself as a complete person either as a separate entity or as a conscious identity. Fundamentally broken, the victim of several incidents of mental, physical, emotional, even what one could consider soul violence, his memories- in effect his mind- and his body exist as nearly separate states, each new recovered form he has over the course of his life more and more detached from the one before, so much so that he has been a new and severed person at each point in his life- a terrible butterfly of pain processed through metamorphosis into a darker and darker version of himself. As we know him in Cool Green Waters he has become a monster who destroys in a physiological response to the nightmarish things he has lived through, a victimizer to Aremia, the vampire whose story begins in the same book, with whom he is locked in a devilish dance that plays on her own trauma- a living embodiment of codependency between an avoidant and anxious attachment pair in relationship.

Soon my mind slipped from Mateo to the villain of Eyes Like Blue Fire and Water Like Crimson Sorrow, Marie Gaston, who abused him in one of those periods and was herself the living embodiment of a narcissist both in her nature and the gifts she wielded like weapons, both to be a monster within and hold dominion over others via her ability to make zombie minions. From there I also thought of Anton, Trudeau, Delamorte, Raven, and Katja who is the central protagonist of the series and herself a figure through which I had always been seeking myself. All of them have certain gifts and self identifying elements that embody some form of mental illness- and then I got it. I hadn't only been talking about my fear and exploring little elements of struggle between people, I had been talking about so much more- my trauma, mental illness, and the cost of all of it had been written down in the shifting forms of my vampires.

Todd and I discussed it briefly as I worked through the process of understanding came out in the fits and starts of discussion I tend to have at such times and I sat with it a bit longer afterward. Between our two perspectives I soon realized I had cleared some blocks in relation to my writing, my connection to psychology, and the trauma I had personally experienced in the past. As the subject came to mind over the course of the last few days I soon began to see that this narrative was not only present in Broken Shades but also many of my other short stories such as Wendy Won't Go and All That Remains which have their own dialogues about trauma, loss, and the destructive nature of relationships which have been marred by trauma.

I had been having a subconscious dialogue with myself and my readers about what it was to be affected by trauma and mental illness. I was unknowingly having a narrative of how it all defined and informed everything we did in a way I did not consciously understand on virtually any level before I finally understood that I suffered from Complex PTSD back in the spring of 2016 and began a solo exploration through healing myself as a result in the ensuing years and months since.

I'm not sure I'm conveying the sheer enormity of that here quite as clearly as I felt it when it finally became that defined in my mind. Allow me to be clear, I knew I was in pain and that it limited me, I knew that well enough that I had been an occasional student of psychology and sociology via books from the likes of Mary Pipher MD and Brenda Rabkin among others. I was informed enough to understand that I likely had anxiety and been through post partum depression after the birth of my son and the loss of our first daughter, but I had not been aware I was talking myself through my trauma on this level all along- even as a teenager when the first two books were originally written and psychology was a vague thing I had only just begun to be aware of at all.

The resulting understanding has allowed me to realize quite a lot about what it is that I have been working to do with my writing and the path I intend to take over the course of the rest of my life on multiple levels. Having a clear understanding that I am not only working to tell a story - essentially my own and that of others- I am working to heal myself and others through written works that seek to seed a depth of understanding that allows healing to occur also allows me to see why it is that I also seek to be engaged with this same process through becoming a trauma counselor. Two potential careers that I struggled for a long while to choose between have become quite clearly the same path all along, allowing me to in effect become whole in my purpose.

Death Dance in the Woods: A Review and Interview with Author Jeff O'Brien

12/15/2018

Author Interview with Jeff O’Brien

Where did the idea for Death Dance in the Woods come from; did it turn out differently than expected? – Death Dance was started so long ago I couldn’t possibly tell you where the idea came from. I started writing it almost three years ago, but due to other projects taking priority or complications in life, I ended up putting it on the back burner a few times. Finally, just a couple of months ago, I decided it was time to write a non-comedy horror story, and committed to finishing it. I think it helped that not long before that I read KILL FOR SATAN! by Bryan Smith, and it really inspired me. It’s probably the most, fun, straight-forward non-pretentious horror book I’ve ever read, which is pretty much exactly what I go for with writing horror. Just plain old fun. After reading that I felt like I could finally tackle horror again.

Where did Candy and Kendall come from? Is there a hero here, or just a pair of people tackling unexpected events? – Funny you should mention heroes. Since Death Dance is by far the most conventional story I’ve told, perhaps the ONLY conventional story I’ve ever told, I wanted to make sure it wasn’t generic. It’s not really for me to decide whether I accomplished that goal or not, but writing a story without a hero was something I kept in mind the whole time. I suppose you could say that “The Sisterhood” were heroes in their own way, but whatever. I had no intention of making Kendall the knight in shining armor.

You’re known for a few themes in your writing, goth girls, strange and irreverent plots, and antiheroes among them, what makes Death Dance stand out from your other books? – It’s the farthest I’ve strayed from absurdism. I never thought I’d write anything more serious than The Night Manager, which is a flat-out comedy, so I guess the serious tone that I keep throughout almost all of Death Dance sets it apart from the rest of my work.

Do you find it difficult to work humor into horror themes? Why or why not? – I find it difficult to do it in a way that I find satisfactory. Humor in any story is very much about balance. If a story is slapstick, it’s gotta be slapstick all the way through. When slapstick starts happening in a lighter comedy, it throws off the whole balance of the story and turns me off completely. So when writing humor, I’m scrutinizing every single detail.

Which of your books is your personal favorite? – Definitely BigBoobenstein. I think it’s probably my defining work. Lots of my books are a result of me trying something new, and sort of flying by the seat of my pants. When I wrote BigBoobenstein, however, I felt like an expert. Almost like I was telling my own life story, because I just knew what I was doing for once.

You’ve had some really great covers for your books, any tips for helping the cover artist create something that represents a book well? – Both of my regular cover artists: Kendall R. Hart and Justin T. Coons, receive my sketch of what I want the cover to look like before they start work on it. I send them a drawing that looks like something your toddler would scribble on the wall in crayon, and give them my best explanation of what I’m going for. The two of them have an uncanny ability to turn my scrawlings into gorgeous art.

Who are a few of your biggest influences for your work? Would you say your ideas are far removed from those who inspired them? – My influences are countless, and come from all over. Piers Anthony is a big one, as far as writers go. But I get just as much inspiration from watching awful low-budget movies from the 80s and 90s. Random things like abandoned malls and urban legends are big for my brain too. Conspiracy theories, alternative history, concepts like a Flat Earth. I don’t even know how to categorize the things that get my imagination working. I think my ideas are very much the actual things that inspire them, if that makes sense.

What are some other projects we can expect to see from you in the future? – Up next I’ve got a short book called John Titor is an Asshole which is kind of a sequel to Journey to the Edge of the Flat Earth. And I’ve got about 20 unfinished manuscripts I can pick up at any given time. I kind of like not knowing what my next move is going to be until it happens. So we shall see.

Jeff O'Brien has been self-publishing since 2013. He lives in New Hampshire. He loves death metal and basketball. You can find more about Jeff and purchase his books here:

https://www.amazon.com/Jeff-OBrien/e/B00B12WAM2/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1

Please continue to my review of Death Dance in the Woods below!

Review: Death Dance in the Dark Woods by Jeff O'Brien

Four out of Five Stars

Candy is a woman with a lot on her plate. She's been a stripper for a while, a good one, and she's gotten used to a lot of things being not so great in her life, her abusive boyfriend Rhino among them. She thought maybe she'd finally unloaded it all when she took a chance and ran off in her car, but then she hadn't intended to wind up in a sleepy little nowhere spot like Hollows Point tackling a very weird night that just keeps getting weirder.

Kendall didn't have it much better. He thought he was on the straight and narrow, trying to make good as an accountant after he left his death metal career behind him years ago, but then he lost his job and a bought of listless depression set him out on a meandering drive with no real destination in mind. That night he wandered into Hollows Point on foot expecting life to get quite a bit worse after even his car failed him- instead he met Candy and the pair of them came together to face the strange little town and the open road ahead of them together.

The thing is, can anyone really be prepared to tackle a place as weird as Hollows Point?

Do you know how some of the most interesting and genuinely engaging films are the ones you come across late at night when you least expect to really find anything that can grab your attention? Those flicks, say something like Halloween: Season of the Witch, that you aren't sure about until you start to link into the plight of the all too familiar characters and the events unfolding around them? Death Dance in the Woods is very like those movies, quietly engaging, funny, and interesting. You find yourself really liking the characters and moving along through the plot wondering exactly where it's going to come out with all the shifts and turns, and coming out in some interesting territory.

Highly recommended to b movie horror fans who like a mix of horror, humor, sex, and blood.

Of Aliens, Ancestry, and the Crazy-making of Writing Literary Horror

7/10/2018

I've had a breakthrough with my novel Night is Falling:

I had originally been planning on setting this book firmly in the area of Crater Lake and featuring the Klamath tribes who live in the region, I've even collected quite a bit of info about them, their culture, and the legends surrounding the Crater Lake over the last year or two I've been fiddling with this book. Why? Well, this book is about aliens and isolation, a feeling of separateness and desperation that overcome a person when they're watching their people disappear one by one. An isolation made even larger by never having belonged in the first place and not knowing how to make the others see that you are trying to help them see the danger looming all around them.

However, I've always struggled with how out of place it felt and been concerned if I was going to screw it all up both in terms of representing the culture and region properly and truly feeling at home in the story if I couldn't be sure of those elements. I'm also a person who can appreciate a good couple episodes of X-files or movies featuring aliens but who also really never saw them as being a real thing in our actual world, so can I really believably convey a book about invasion and aliens that doesn't come off like what everyone has already read or rolled their eyes at? More importantly, can I make it have a serious impact that makes it both emotionally moving and chilling? Between all of that and the moving around we've been doing in the last year and change I've been yanked in and out of working on the book. Can you believe I thought this book was going to be one of my easy ones with minimal planning?

Well, last night we were driving and talking about all sorts of things, as we always seem to do when we're in the car, and I came to thinking about some of my own past and ancestry because we were talking about that funny little region around Chillicothe/Waverly/Peebles where my paternal grandparents and some of our other family originally settled down after leaving Kentucky. A place where some of our family still live today. This got the gears going about so many things, the poverty levels of the region, the broken down people dependent on the factory industry that seemed to come and go and change so often over the decades, the history it still represents even now, and the native population who saw fit to have built the Serpent Mound there a very long time before all of it- the natives to whom my own DNA is connected.

What is this Serpent Mound?

I understand if maybe you haven't heard of it, its a regional thing, I grew up with it, and if memory serves, I even walked around the place when I was small with my eldest younger brother and possibly also brother number two ( I am the eldest of 5 kids, 3 of them brothers) when I was small enough for it all to be faded to a lot of sunshine and green hills that felt "happy" while I walked around with my family.

Well, here's the basic info for you. Once, a very long time ago in 1000 B C, the Fort Ancient culture (which later became the Adena and later at least influenced the Ojibwa and Anishinaabe cultures) saw fit to build this serpent shaped mound on a spur of rock which overlooked Ohio Brush Creek near a massive crater created by an asteroid that hit about 300 million year ago- needless to say, this was a sacred space for them, an axis mundi between Spirit and earth. Due to a very curious man named Francis Ward Putnam's "research" (lets be honest here, most of these dudes were digging in people's sacred burial sites with very little understanding of the damage they did) between 1886 and 1889 (his research made this the first archaeological preserve in the US btw) here in Ohio and the work of many others in other states like Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Kentucky and parts of New England a great deal was found out about what were labelled the "Mound People" of ancient post glacial shift North America and a whole hell of a lot of legends were started about "star people", magic growth properties of seeds which were in the presence of the mounds, and a whole host of other mysticism and other "mysterious goings on" Peebles itself has all sorts of legends rolling around- including crop circles and a supposed hidden air force base.

Yeah, I think you know where I'm headed here.

OMG why was I so oblivious as to not think of using what I know and genuinely have a personal link to instead of something so far away from me I might fuck it up? I have a genuine chance to talk about my weird little Irish/Scot /Welsh and Native (Blackfoot, Cherokee, Anishinaabe, and possibly Mandan, most of whom are linked with the Adena in some fashion) blended Appalachian roots through my character and use it as a way to more deeply connect with my ancestral history! That is sooo something I've been open to the idea of exploring like this! Anywho, I'm changing the premise to suit this region and people, and I feel way more grounded in it now, even genuinely excited about the idea again!

Author Etiquette: Professionally Seeking Reviewers

5/5/2018

Hi folks :) Today we're doing something a bit different on the old blog!

I asked Meghan Hyden, aka The Gal in the Blue Mask, to write a guest post explaining how authors can best go about asking for reviews and otherwise conducting themselves with book bloggers. She wrote a great post on the subject (Meghan is awesome and absolutely earned all her followers both author and reader) and I hope you find it as useful as I did :)

Amanda

Running a book blog is nothing like running an author blog, even if you do post some reviews for the things that you are reading, even if you do take on some review requests. It is so much more than that. I’ve heard fellow book bloggers describe it as a second full-time job, and I agree with them completely. It’s not just the time that we put in to reading your book (and all the other books on the list), but it’s the hour or so that goes into just setting up the blog post (we need photos and descriptions and specifics and links, a lot of which are not provided to us by the author, so we have to go in search for them), the hours it takes writing the review (yup, hours), and the time we take sharing that link anywhere and everywhere we can. That’s not even including the reposting of the review on such sites as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, and BookLikes. There’s the time we put into reading and responding to emails, scheduling, and all the business behind-the-scenes things that a blogger does every day. There’s the other blog posts we do, the research we do on those subjects, and the networking we take part in.
I tell you all of this, not as a complaint, but to show you just how much we love what it is that we are doing, and how much work goes into it. I feel that some people don’t realize all that we do on a daily basis… and this is while holding down full-time jobs, having a family, and attempting to have a life.

I’ve spent a bit thinking about the different things I wish every author knew before contacting me, and hopefully this will help make your connecting with us a little easier (on both of our parts) and run a little smoother.

1.Know who you’re talking to… and I’m not just talking about the horrible slip-ups where I’ve been called by the wrong name or addressed as Mr.

I always suggest that you take a moment to “get to know” the blogger or reviewer that you are reaching out to. Look around their blog for a little bit, check out any social media links that they have there, look them up on Goodreads and Amazon. This gives you a chance to see how they review, and allows you to write a message that is a little more personable.

It may take a little more time, but it is definitely worth it, and can be the difference between having your email sent to the trash (or worse, marked as spam) and creating a relationship with the blogger that will assure you reviews on all of your future releases. (That’s the big picture right there. Do you just want one review on this book, which is at the forefront of your mind right now, or do you want a blogger that you can go to when you have another release, or when you want to get yourself out there a little more? A lot of us do interviews and other things that can help you with your marketing.)

Be careful, though. If you go with the compliment route when you’re reaching out, make sure it’s a sincere one. (I had someone tell me that they loved my review once, but when I asked which review, they never emailed me back. We’re a curious group, and like to know what we’re doing right, and which of our reviews or posts are catching people’s eye enough that they contact us.) I’ve had several authors catch my attention by pointing out an exact quote from a review that they especially liked (and one who I will never forget who quoted the book description from Amazon as if I had written that myself). If you see that they reviewed a book similar to yours, that’s a great way to start a conversation, but make sure it’s actually a similar book. (I had an author offer me an erotica book based on it being similar to a gardening book I reviewed. I’m still not sure how that works.)

2.Take the time to look for the blogger’s Review Policy. (Another “time consuming” thing that is totally worth it.) You’ll find a lot of important information here i.e. the “terms” they have on reviewing (you know, what you’ll be getting is their honest opinion on your book, that they reserve the right to not review it at all, and that they can’t promise a specific time frame), whether they are still taking review submissions (be polite and respect their wishes if they are not), what kind of books they will and will not read, and the pertinent information they need in order to make the decision on your book. That last one is VERY important, because there are bloggers that will completely disregard your email, no matter how interesting the book sounds, if you don’t give them the information they require (no, a picture of the cover and a link to Amazon will not do).

I can’t tell you how annoying it is to receive an email that is just a bunch of gibberish about a book, especially when it is obvious that it is just cut and pasted from different places (the different sizes, fonts, and colors are a big clue). It may be just me, but I take my blog very seriously, and it bothers me to no end when people reach out to me for something on a professional basis without even trying to look professional. It’s nice that y’all are very proud of the good reviews that the book have received so far, but we don’t need to read them in our emails. (Personally, I don’t read other people’s reviews before I read a book I’m accepting as a review, but if I wanted to read that, I would go in search of the ones that you aren’t really proud of.)

Say hello. Introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about you as an author. Give us the information on your book i.e. title, place in the series (if applicable - and if it’s not the first, be willing to send those books to the blogger as well), genre (be specific), publisher and publication date, page count (this is one of my requests, as it helps me figure out how long it will take me to read the book), and book description. Include the cover photo, the link to the book on Amazon, and the link to your blog/website so that we can get to know you.

3.Here’s a few don’ts:

Don’t just send the book. I’ve never really been able to figure out what the point of this is, but I had an author tell me once that this is his way of doing things because it “forces” the blogger to review the book now that it’s in their hands.
Don’t expect your book to be the very next thing that the blogger reads. Most bloggers have a schedule already created. If you have a specific time frame that you would like the book reviewed in, feel free to discuss that with the blogger, but know that they may not be able to do what you specifically want.
If a blogger says that they only read a specific genre (i.e. romance) or books directed to a specific group (i.e. young adult), don’t send them a review request for a book that doesn’t fall within that genre, or even worse, send them one in a genre that they specifically say they will not read (i.e. erotica or horror). (I talk a little more about genres below.)
Don’t reach out to them on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or in Messenger unless they specifically ask you to do so. Most bloggers either have their email address there or a form for you to fill out. Those other places, even if they are used for blog business as well, are there personal spaces, and shows them from the start that you are not professional and you do not see them as professional either. (I would like to note that, once there’s a rapport, this “don’t” may change.)
Don’t argue with the blogger if you don’t agree with their review. As I said before, the review is an honest one based on the blogger’s opinion of the book. Arguing with them won’t change the matter, and will not make you look good. (You would think this wouldn’t be something necessary to state, but it seems that it is. I’ve not only seen it happened to a few bloggers I know, but I’ve been attacked several times by authors as well.)
Don’t assume that a 3 star review is a bad one. Personally, that’s my middle ground. I hardly ever give anything below that, and I use my 3 star reviews to offer constructive criticism, and to point out what I did and did not like about the book. Not only is constructive criticism helpful to the author (if you take the time to read it and take it in), but it’s also helpful to future readers (some may love the things that I did not like or vice versa).

4.And here’s a few dos:

Utilize genres, especially sub-genres. This is one of my number one pieces of advice as an editor, and that’s mainly from what I learned being a blogger. Ya see, I loathe romance books, and will not read erotica. But there are ways around this.

Erica Lucke Dean is an author who writes romance, and she will get me every time with her romance malarky (haha). Not only is she a fantastic writer (no, she didn’t pay me to write this), but her characters grab you every time, and it’s hard for me to turn down anything that she offers me. Her way of convincing me to read the first book of her Flames of Time series was telling me that it’s a romance, but so much more. If you look her series up on Amazon, you’ll see that the genres are “Romance > Time Travel” and “Romance > Paranormal > Witches & Wizards.” Instead of putting just romance, she made sure to let readers know that there is a lot more going on in the books than just the sweet lovey-dovey stuff that some of us just can’t stand, which opens you up to more readers. If your book falls into several different genres, and they read at least one of them, make sure you share this information with the blogger, but remember that they may need a bit of convincing. (Notice I said “convincing” and not “arguing.”)
Contact them on a personal level. In other words, treat them like a human, and not like a machine.

I’m going to use Erica as an example again here. Whenever I speak to her, she asks me how life is going, or asks me about something she either saw me post on Facebook or something we had discussed previously. She’s always very sincere, and turns the request into a conversation, not just a “here, read my book.” I especially love that we’re able to discuss the books that she sends me, and that she is honestly interested in my opinion on them. (She says that it’s even more so since I dislike romance haha.)

Now, some bloggers may not be very open to this, and if they are not, you’ll get all the cues, but it never hurts to try “making a friend.” It shows them that they are more than just a vessel to read your book, and helps to increase that “future relationship” I discussed earlier.
Say thank you. Even if you didn’t request that we review your book - that means we spent our money on it, or borrowed it from the library, or received it as a gift - we did take the time to read it and review it. Go to the blog and say thank you. Go to Amazon or Goodreads, or wherever you found the review, and like it.
Share those links everywhere you can, and often. This is always something that leaves me puzzled. An author asks for a review, or participates in an interview, or takes part in a guest post on my blog - and then they never share the links. Why? You’re not sharing the links for me (though I do appreciate it), but for yourself, and you should have enough respect for yourself and what you do to share those links on all your social media, write posts of your own sharing the links, even have a space on your blog that sends readers to the different reviews that have been written on your blogs, as well as the interviews and such that you have done. That helps YOU with marketing. We, honestly, can only do so much.

I wish you luck in your reaching out to bloggers and your relationship building. We’re a great group of people, and definitely ones you want on your side.
            Thanks, Amanda, for having me on today. This was a lot of fun (and my first EVER guest post on someone’s blog - not as scary as I thought it would be haha).

BIO:
My name is Meghan, and I’m “The Gal” from over at The Gal in the Blue Mask, a rather eclectic (and awesome, if I do say so myself) book blog, even if it does sometimes look like I read way too much horror haha.
            I started The Gal in the Blue Mask back in 2014 because I wanted a place where I could be myself and have my own rules, a place where I could not only review the books that I was reading, but help my readers learn more about the authors behind those books. To be honest, I never thought anyone, other than my mom, would be looking at it, which is probably why it was so easy for me to just jump into it. After a couple of months, I realized that I was getting a bit of notice, and was super pleased that my mother would go through all the trouble of coming back to my site several times on a daily basis to make me feel good about myself. It wasn’t until I received my first email asking for a review that I realized other people were actually reading it, and that maybe all those views weren’t just my mom.
            When I’m not reading and book blogging, I’m most likely editing (Hyde ’n’ Seek Editing), hanging out at Disney World or swimming in my backyard, cooking up some recipe that makes WAY more than two people can eat, cuddling my occasionally sweet kitties (and posting pictures on Instagram of their cuteness), watching more British TV than an American should, or being snarky on Facebook. I like meeting new people, so don’t hesitate to reach out.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/M.S.Hyden
The Gal in the Blue Mask on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheGalintheBlueMask/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Raiyine
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/raiyine/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/13212231-meghan
BookLikes: http://raiyine.booklikes.com

Interview with Ed Cardillo About his Latest The Dark is Full of Monsters

4/15/2018

Edward P. Cardillo, a member of the Horror Writers Association, is an author of horror, science fiction, and dark fantasy. He is the winner of 3 Readers Favorite International Book Awards, JEA Writer of the Year 2013, and is in the Facebook Zombie Book of the Month Club Hall of Fame.

By day Cardillo is a clinical psychologist working with children on the autism spectrum, geriatrics, and adults with Down Syndrome. By night he concocts tales to terrify his readers...

He enjoys both jobs immensely.

Check out his website to view his books, interviews, awards, etc.: edwardcardillo.com

For the uninitiated, Edward P. Cardillo is an author who is rather fond of telling us about what’s going on in the dark. The author of some very popular books dealing with the dead such as the I Am Automaton and Creeping Dead series he’s had a lot to say on the subject.
Ed, could you tell us a bit about what we’ll find in The Dark is Full of Monsters?

This is a deeply psychological horror tale. The main characters all find themselves in an unfamiliar setting, bringing the baggage that comes with severe trauma. And I’m not even talking about supernatural trauma. I’m talking about real live trauma inflicted by monsters of the human variety. However, it is the trauma and how each character deals with it, that prepares them for facing a preternatural horror stalking the woods of a sleepy town in upstate New York. It’s raw and visceral, yet deeply symbolic.

Oh, and there are zombies…but this isn’t a traditional zombie tale. Don’t expect a clone of The Walking Dead, or The Creeping Dead for that matter. This is a completely different animal.
What inspired you to write it?

I love upstate New York. I love the woods. I could just get lost in it all, leaving society and any problems I may have behind for a bit, finding peace in nature. However, some people from the city (like my wife) have a way of projecting their innermost fears on the great unknown of the wilderness, using it as a blank canvas. It’s very Freudian. It’s dark, vast, foreign, and unsettling to them. I wanted to tap into that fear. I wanted to explore it. I wanted to show how strong individuals cope with their demons by facing their fears head-on.

Dark deals with the nature of fear and how it affects life for its characters. In particular it’s a crucial element of how our lead, Mark Rivera, who suffers from PTSD, is living. What did you want to convey about both fear and PTSD with this character?

Fear is a visceral thing that is hard-wired into our evolution and physiology. It is a useful emotion that is crucial in self-preservation, but unchecked, it is a detrimental force that can ruin lives. I wanted to convey that fear is universal, although the nature of it is specific to the individual and that individual’s experiences. As a psychologist who helps people wrestle with anxiety of all kinds, I also wanted to show that it could be faced and overcome. Mark has to confront his personal trauma and feelings of helplessness to face a monster of the non-human variety. A psychologist himself, he knows what he needs to do, but since he’s right in the middle of his own personal hell, he finds it hard to be objective. It’s one thing to advise others and guide them through it. It’s another thing entirely to walk the walk yourself, to feel the paralysis of terror overriding rational thought.

How much do you feel his PTSD changed how he responded to the events going on around him and how he adapted to the changes that come to make such drastic changes for him and his wife Wendy?

Something very traumatic happened to Mark when he lived in the Bronx. He struggles to cope with the aftermath and decides (pretty unilaterally) to get away from it all by moving way upstate. His PTSD makes him very hypervigilant, and it paralyzes him, invoking feelings of helplessness and loss of control. It’s like that dream that most of us have, where there’s a monster chasing us, and we turn to run, but our legs won’t move. We cannot run, we cannot fight, and the monster is closing in on us. Part of his growth or arc as a character is to overcome this feeling, particularly when the people he cares about are in danger. Is his concern for his wife and friends enough to override the paralysis of fear? Can he regain some sense of self-mastery?
Wendy, his wife, gives up her career as a teacher and makes the move with Mark. She doesn’t necessarily agree with his decision to move them upstate, but she wants to be supportive. She’s out of her element, and she is torn between advocating for her own mental well-being and her husband’s. It is her great sense of empathy, however, that establishes a link with the monster stalking them. She forges a unique connection with the horror lurking out in the dark, channeling its great sense of malice and bloodlust, a sensation that terrifies and disturbs her.

Laquan, who is one of the boys living in a facility for troubled kids in upstate New York, is another central character. Can you tell us a bit about him and his motivations as a character?

Laquan is a kid who grew up in a rough area and got into trouble, but for things like shoplifting and other minor mischief. He’s not someone who hurts others. He’s just trying to survive the monsters in his life, whether it be his mother’s abusive boyfriend or those in his neighborhood who do hurt people. Like Mark, he’s a transplant from the Bronx, a fellow fish-out-of-water. It’s something over which they immediately bond. At the William Scott School for Special Children, Mark deals with all kinds of troubled youth who have run afoul of the legal system. Recognizing that Laquan isn’t a violent offender, but rather a victim of trauma, Mark identifies with the boy. He quickly takes a liking to him.
Laquan is now trying to survive up in this school for delinquents in the middle of the woods. In particular, he’s become the target of a rather nasty bully named Jason, a sadistic kid who has no compunction about hurting other students, or even staff. Additionally, Laquan is the first in this story to have an encounter with the monster in the dark. He and Mark discuss it symbolically in their sessions, and the monster becomes a metaphor for their struggle with their demons. Little does Mark know that it’s more than a metaphor…

Would you like to tell us a bit about the monster in Dark? What inspired you to use it here?

Without revealing its exact nature here, I will say that it is the ultimate boogeyman. Epitomizing fear itself, it is that malicious presence that stalks the darkness, dwelling on the edges of civilization, as old as time itself. It feeds off of the terror it inflicts. It is why we fear the dark, the unknown, the vastness of the eldritch wilderness.

Why do you feel Wendy had such a connection with the creature? Why is her adaptation so different from her husband’s?

It is Wendy’s empathy for her husband’s plight that makes her particularly susceptible to the creature lurking in the dark. Having abandoned her job and home in the Bronx, she too is a fish-out-of-water, which makes her vulnerable to the monster’s manipulation. Feeling like a spectator on the sidelines of her husband’s struggle with PTSD, her connection with the monster puts her on the playing field, where she now feels she can make a difference. Her empathy empowers her to become a change agent. She wants to be more than a supportive hand to hold. She wants to get in there and kick some ass.
What are some other projects you have in the works or coming out in the near future?
I’m currently working on a dinosaur thriller/adventure novella for Severed Press, to be released this year as well.

Interview with Pembroke Sinclair Author of Humanity's Hope

4/12/2018

Pembroke Sinclair is a literary jack of all trades, playing her hand at multiple genres. She has written an eclectic mix of fiction ranging from horror to sci-fi and even some westerns. Born in Rock Springs, Wyoming--the home of 56 nationalities--it is no wonder Pembroke ended up so creatively diverse. Her fascination with the notions of good and evil, demons and angels, and how the lines blur have inspired her writing. Pembroke currently lives in Columbus, Nebraska, with her husband, two spirited boys, a black lab named Ryder, two fluffy Corgis named Floki and Siggy, and a rescue kitty named Alia, who happens to be the sweetest, most adorable kitty in the world! She cannot say no to dessert, orange soda, or cinnamon. She loves rats and tatts and rock and roll and wants to be an alien queen when she grows up.

You can learn more about Pembroke Sinclair by visiting her at:
http://pembrokesinclair.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/jessicarobinsonauthor
https://twitter.com/PembrokeSinclai
https://plus.google.com/102808614523341154478/posts
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3522214.Pembroke_Sinclair

Tell me a little about your book Humanity's Hope, what can we expect to find in this one?

Humanity’s Hope is the first book in the Saving Humanity series, and it follows the story of Caleb, who is trying to find normalcy after losing his family and friends to zombies. He struggles quite a bit with this because he has PTSD. He then finds out that he’s immune to whatever makes a zombie a zombie, so in addition to his mental issues, he becomes a pawn in someone’s game—and he has to figure out what that is.

Tell us about Caleb, what makes him different than other zombpoc protagonists?

Caleb is different from a lot of other zombpoc protagonists because he isn’t your typical tough guy. One of the things zombie stories do really well is show how heroes can rise to the challenge and fight against the undead and whatever evil entity rises along with the creatures (usually some type of power-hungry human). Caleb can rise to the challenge, but it’s often reluctantly and he second guesses his actions all the time.

Your books fall pretty squarely among YA novels, what do you like to feel you add to what's already out there?

I feel like I add another fun story with zombies that young adults can read and enjoy. I also hope to introduce a character that isn’t always strong and that struggles with issues that someone can relate to.

How does the apocalyptic experience differ for teens as compared to adults? What struggles do your characters in books such as Humanity's Hope and Life After the Undead have that might not be as direct an issue for adult characters?

The different between teens and adults in an apocalyptic situation is the amount of experience they have. Teens are incredibly resourceful and flexible, but they lack world knowledge and experience, so they might struggle a little bit with surviving. However, on the other side of that coin, unlike adults, most teens aren’t jaded and set in their ways, so they have the ability and opportunity to rebuild society in ways that adults may have never considered.

You've got quite a widespread field of experience in genre fiction, favoring darker horror favorites like zombies and demons but also covering topics such as romance and science fiction. Would you say there is an overall theme across the board?

There’s a darkness in all of my writing, even in the romantic and science fiction stories. My characters often find themselves in uncomfortable positions, such as the end of the world or trying to discover who they are, and those are pretty scary topics. But I believe that through fears and uncomfortable situations, my characters can discover who they truly are or who they want to be.

What sort of stories do you prefer to write? Across all genres or in each type?

I prefer to write young adult stories. I like having characters that are naïve because then they can learn from their mistakes and be angsty. Adult characters can do the same, but it’s a little more annoying when they are whiny.

Are there character arcs that you like to cover in different ways or do you like to change them around consistently to change things up?

I try to change them up because each character is a unique individual and has their own story.

What else can we expect to see from you in the near future?

You can expect lots in the near future! The third book in The Ifs series (middle grade books), Undead Ifs, will be coming out; the second audiobook in the Life After the Undead series (Death to the Undead) will soon be available; and the second book in the Saving Humanity series (Edge of Humanity) will be available.