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Interview with Illustrator and Artist David McGlumphy

4/29/2014

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Bio:

My name is David McGlumphy. I live in East Texas which is a good hot bed for artists, a lot of chances for good pictures and places that I can use as inspiration for my art. I have done two book covers so far and I have a children’s poem book under my belt with Trevor Smith. Right at the time of the release of the poem I was offered full time with JEA and I have not looked back, I love working with the company and I enjoy seeing what the future brings.

My style of art is mostly horror related, but I look to expand on that as I get better. I am a beginning artist but I have confidence I can go far with digital art, it’s the medium most art is going to for book covers and illustrations, I am always available for any commissions for covers and or illustrations.


Links :



Website:  http://davidmcglumphy.weebly.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Art-of-David-McGlumphy/463325813798898

Deviantart: http://dmcglu82.deviantart.com/





1) What are some of your major inspirations as an artist?

Growing up, my older brother was always drawing or sculpting, I took most of my inspirations from him, I also look at other artists work and practice drawing using techniques I see they are using in their works.

A huge influence on my work is William Stout he has done production designs for movies such as: Return of the Living Dead and Invaders from Mars. I watched an interview with him and he gave a piece of advice I live by “As an artist if you are doing a work and you can’t give 100% then perhaps art is not for you” I have a lot to learn with art yet, but I take each inspiration I get as a stepping stone for bettering myself. 
My girlfriend has been my biggest fan and inspiration for my work, she has been the one to keep me focused. 

2) How long have you been working with digital art and design? 


Back in 2005 there was a show called Screen Savers on Tech TV and on occasion they would have Photoshop tutorials to do at home, I would go to the website and follow them, I always had fun with it. Then in 2013 I took a huge interest in digital art. I saw how some very cool pieces of art could be made on the PC, so I looked into what I needed. For my birthday last year my sister bought me my first drawing tablet and I haven’t looked back, I am a beginner learning new things all the time.

3) You started as an intern at J Ellington Ashton Press, has it been a good experience?



It has been a great experience, I work with some amazing people, and Susan Simone -its amazing working with her, her knowledge of digital art, and drawing in general is amazing. Working with the authors to get them a solid and amazing cover is a dream, I have to thank Catt Dahman for seeing my art and giving me a chance at this I have always dreamed of working for a company doing art.

4) What sorts of covers have you done as a JEA cover artist?



Let see, my first cover I did was for TL Decay for Piecing Undead, a simple looking cover with many aspects to it. I have also done the cover for Lucky Ducks by Trevor Smith it is a children’s poem book, I did all the illustrations inside. I am in the process of working on a cover for Daniel Durrant’s The Preta Pathogen. Making a cover is a fun but stressful process. In the end seeing your art on a book cover is a exciting and sometimes emotional feeling, seeing your name in a book for the first time makes it really sink in that you have done it, made a dream come true.


5) Has it been challenging transitioning from intern to artist? 



It has a bit, as a intern I made digital images taking people’s photos and making them into zombie or other horror creatures. My first true test- in my mind -was when I did the Piercing Undead cover. I knew that if I failed then my chances of making it were done so I worked hard on that one and the end result is what I think springboarded me into getting the artist tag.


6) What are some of your favorite pieces from your own work?



It's hard to pick one. I am not one to say my art is amazing because I see flaws in it every time I look at it, but I would have to say the Zilla I drew, based on Godzilla. I found it on a website and I decided to try to draw it myself- that’s how I better myself if find drawing and try to do it myself. My other favorite is a female punk zombie I drew not too long ago, I have both of them posted on my art page on Facebook and Deviantart.


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Interview with Sharon L. Higa

4/28/2014

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Bio: At six years old, Sharon L. Higa became obsessed with the supernatural, compliments of an older cousin who fascinated her with stories of hauntings and horror.  Travelling the world with her family, the fascination grew, resulting in creating and telling her own stories. She wrote intermittently for a number of years, but it was after she and her husband moved to East Tennessee that her family and friends convinced her to write and publish her works. She is a newly published author with one novella, ‘The Dam’ and two novels, ‘Number 6’ and ‘Rose & Steel’., as well as four short stories in the Anthology ‘Midnight Remains’,  all published by JEA Press. She also has one short story in an anthology, ‘Mental Ward: Echoes of the Past’ with Sirens Call Publications – with many more stories bubbling on the mental burners.  She now writes full time. She resides with ten cats, one dog and Mark, her patient and loving husband of twenty two years.



Links: 

Website: http://www.leapingunicornliterary.com/
JEA: http://www.jellingtonashton.com/sharon-higa.html
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7303130.Sharon_L_Higa
Twitter: https://twitter.com/elf126



1) Your Debut novel #6 is a murder mystery and revenge tale revolving around a woman who is murdered. Can you tell us a bit about the book and why you wrote it?


I wrote #6 after hearing about an actual murder which occured over thirty years ago when I was living in California. A nurse was kidnapped by two men who then drove her out to the Los Angeles National Forest, took turns raping her then slit her throat. The girl' body wasn't found for one year, but it actually was another year later before the men were caught committing a totally different crime. The younger of the two men confessed to her killing, implicating his partner as well. He said the reason he was confessing was because 1he kept seeing her everywhere he looked and he couldn't handle it anymore. The lawyers, police and media put it down to a guilty conscience, but there was always the thought in the back of my mind that she could have been truly haunting him. And that's how the idea for #6 was born.



 2) It’s been called a brutal tale because of some of the darker elements related to both Ida Moreno’s (the main character) death and the crimes she is involved with trying to solve to catch the killer. Do you agree or is it just what the tale needs to be? 


The tale is brutal because the crime committed against Ida is brutal. This is what the tale needs in order to carry out the dark theme throughout the story. I don't like gore or sadism for 'window dressing' - I believe it needs to apply to the story and carry the plot otherwise it has no place being in there. Then you are simply relying on shock to carry the reader to the end and that does not always work.



 3) Do you often write dark horror fiction or is it one of a few different genres you like to work in?


I like to work with horror, thrillers, mysteries, dark comedy, and fantasy/action. I'm definitely not a girly-girl - give me a good action, adventure or ultimate horror and I'm as happy as a clam! To quote from the horror specialist Stephen King, "Write what you know" is my guide - and I guess I know through life experiences these genres very well!



 4) Rose and Steel is your newest book and features an investigative agency that utilizes supernatural powers to solve their cases. Do they all share the same powers or are there a few different types in the company?


Each one of my characters all share the ability to transform into wolves, but they also have talents of their own as well. Shane, our main character, can read minds as well as send messages telepathically; Travis, our youngest and most timid of the group has the ability to become invisible and is very adept at medical aid which is discovered in book two (yes, I have a second book prepped!) and the others have special gifts as well. The key to the story is that they can combine each one of these gifts and help solve every case they are given.



 5) The main story revolves around a series of crimes that leave children abandoned without any clear cause and human traffickers that are taking children. Was it a difficult subject for you to tackle? 


That was the interesting thing about this story. It basically wrote itself. The 'children' who are abandoned (my 6 gifted characters) is explained using another fact of history - that many times children who were considered by some societies to be mentally deficient/insane or adults too old or sick to benefit the society would be abandoned in desolate areas to basically die. This story gives the fact a little twist which inevitably encompasses the major case they end up working on.



 6) What other projects do you have in progress or due to come out soon? Tell us a little bit about them.



I have my own anthology of 13 short stories coming out soon. The title is "Horrors & Occupational Hazards" and - as you can guess from the title - each little story revolves around a regular job that has a 'twist'. The style, my wonderful editor, Mark Woods says, is very 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents'. I am also collaborating on a novella whose title is 'Z-REGEN (Zombie Regeneration Project)' which is not really your typical zombie story. It is about a CDC researcher who is looking for a cure to the 'Zombiefication Plague' which has hit the planet in the year 2031. I'm also working on a dark comedy novel called 'One Night in the Eternity Of......' -about an Asian vampire with narcolepsy. Not to mention the little shorties I'm coming up with on the side. I guess my plate is pretty full at this time! I would truly be lying if I didn't say I'm lovin' every minute of it!

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Interview With Susan Simone Author of Morning Song

4/25/2014

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Bio: Susan is a writer and artist by day, a child and pet wrangler by night, and occasional crazy person on the weekends. She lives in a place where new hybrid cars, beat up farm trucks, and Amish horse and buggies meet in fast food parking lots for coffee.

Susan grew up in central Wisconsin, only to move to rural Ohio in adulthood. She's a country girl through and through with progressive and optimistic ideas of nation and society. A heathen by faith and major sci-fi fan she is an eclectic person and welcomes as much diversity into her life as she can to feed her fertile imagination. She lives by the motto, "Let your freak flag fly!"

Susan is the author of "Silent Heart", "Under A Twisted Moon", "Morning Song", and other titles forthcoming. Susan also has her one and only zombie short in the JEA anthology "All That Remains".   In addition she has published articles on the Yahoo! Contributor Network in a wide variety of subjects such as the validity of deity in the American government and the use of easy to find herbs.

Susan is the Executive Editor with J. Ellington Ashton Press as well as a graphic design student at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh Online Division.  She does a large portion of the cover art with JEA and has worked with businesses in the past for logo creation and event announcements.



Links: 


Website: http://susansimone.weebly.com/
Yahoo Contributor Network: http://contributor.yahoo.com/user/1652160/susan_simone.html
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6941373.Susan_Simone
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SusanSimoneFanPage
Publisher: http://www.jellingtonashton.com/index.html


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1)    Morning Song is a great story about a wise woman and hedge witch facing her fears and owning her strengths to find that life has a great deal in store for her and the strange man she meets near the beginning of the book. What inspired Morning Song? 


It started with a name.  I know that sounds odd.  I wanted to write a BBW heroine and started thinking about how that would work.  There was this idea of calling her Morning.  It was almost surreal.  With that one thought I could see her in my head so clearly.  I was actually the biggest snob picking a model for the cover because I knew what Morna (Morning) looked like to me.  I started with the opening scene and that was the last part of that book I wrote consciously.  The rest just poured out.  It was as if Morna and Arrick existed in another realm or dimension and they were simply telling me their tale. 

Yes, writers really are that insane.  We have to explain all those extra voices somehow.

2)    Was it difficult writing a post-apocalyptic fantasy romance and handling the midwifery and herbal magic Morna uses in the book?

Post apocalyptic was harder because I’m not used to it.  I had to think how the country would be broken up.  What parts were important?  I had this very clear idea of music.  As a singer myself, I’ve picked up all kinds of folk music, madrigals, classics, contemporary.  I played with this idea of what music would stand the test of time and turn into folk songs over the years.  The music I chose was not a prediction, but more of a secondary idea of getting people to listen to the music and understand how it enhanced the scene.

Midwifery and herbals were much easier.  They are subjects I have a fascination with.  I do have some midwife skills, but I am not currently licensed because of the direct entry laws.  The state I live in won’t let me apprentice under a midwife, I have to have an RN to practice which is another eight years of school.  However, I still love it and I’m one of those very annoying people who hand out random unasked for advice when around pregnant women. Lol

I do the same with Herbs. “Oh you’re sick?  Try this, this, this and this, but watch out for that, and only use this at this time of day.” That is only an amateur study for me, though.  I ascribe to the American Indian belief that everything we need to live happy, healthy lives, and dispel illness grows somewhere on the planet.  With doctors and scientists help we need to use it.


3)    Under a Twisted Moon also deals with a heroine discovering herself and growing stronger for it. In this case she learns the part of herself she hid was really her strength. Do you feel that many women find themselves in a position where other people cause them to fear their strengths?

That’s a deep question.  I think any *person* of any gender or orientation who finds themselves in an abusive situation, regardless of the abuser or type of abuse, is there *because* their fears have been berated and their strengths twisted to weaknesses.

Some of Amelie’s experiences with Rick were based on things I lived through.  I kept that under wraps for a long time, and even came up with politically correct answers to the inevitable questions.  In a way, watching Amelie survive and thrive opened the door to a lot of conversations we need to have as a culture.  Yes, we all know abuse is bad.  We all know abuse comes in many forms and can sneak up on you, but until you’ve lived it, it’s very hard to understand how you got there. 

The worst thing I hear is, “Why does she/he stay?”  I want to shake people when I hear it.  Fear.  Fear of the abuser’s reactions.  Fear that all the things they told you to keep you down were really true.  A very real fear of society taking over the abuse and victimizing you when you just want to live in peace.  Fear of being alone because you’ve been beaten down so hard you won’t ever have a normal relationship with anyone ever again, like an abused animal is never normal again. 

“Why does he/she put up with it?”  Because it’s not clear.  Before you all scream at me, listen for a moment.  It sneaks up on you.  The line of the initial abuse is blurred.  You can’t see it clearly from the inside. It doesn’t start with violence.  It starts with an unreasonable argument.  A personality disorder.  A little niggling in the back of your head that makes you wonder if they really were being that manipulative or if they were having a bad day.  Then there are more bad days.  A lost job, or a fight with a friend.  Oh of course they’re having a bad day.  They don’t mean it.  Pushing away your friends and family, slowly one by one.  Life is really hard right now.  He/she needs me.  The line is blurred and by the time you realize it’s been crossed you’re so far over you start to believe all the lies you’ve ever been told.  You worry about staying for the sake of kids, forgetting that by allowing it you’re teaching them that it’s normal or okay.  Eventually you find yourself alone; facing things that you know may end your life.


4)    You write about strong female characters that are grounded in the real world. Do you think this gives your book a leg up on books that feature women in more unrealistic or unhealthy fantasy relationships?

I think that was on accident.  I’m always interested in the psychology of it.  Why do people do what they do?  How do people get into these situations?  But that’s on behavior alone.  I do think it important to reflect women and men who are real, flawed.  I pick characters because their flaws are interesting to me.  I can’t stand the perfect blond bombshell types, or the overdone hardcore, but really sensitive and sweet deep down types.  Everyone is a jumble of all that.  No one is perfect, and society’s ideas of how genders should act or what they look like is nothing but a construct created thousands of years ago by a few that were insecure with their own image so they had to spout their way was the only right way. (That was *not* a religious diatribe, btw.)

5)     You write about some tough subjects in your books, how do you approach these? Catharsis or characterization?

Courage?  For me and many other writers, the characters are like living people with their own separate lives.  I don’t control them.  I’ve had several die or get into relationships completely without my approval.  I write the hard stuff instead of glossing over because I am honoring them and all the living people that have survived the same things.  It’s a disservice to cut it out or gloss over because it’s ugly or makes me cry.  In reality my characters may be fictional, but real people, myself included, live these things.  There are no tasteful cutaways, or suspenseful music.  The world did not stop moving just because your life as you knew it is forever changed.  If we are to grow as a society, *that’s* what needs to be known.  That’s what needs to be said.

6)    Under a Twisted Moon is a very strong empowerment piece about owning your strengths and coming out of a place where things had been very bleak. In a very real way while one of the male leads helps her to start out on her path to self-discovery it is she who must stand up and take up the reigns of her own life. Is this a message you hope will help others to do so for themselves?

Absolutely.  No one can walk your path.  It is entirely unique to you.  Sometimes you need a little love or a loving kick in the rear, but you still have to be the one to stand up and be counted. 

7)    While there are some very involving dramatic pieces there are also lots of humorous and endearing ones too. Was it difficult to write humor into Silent Heart, Under a Twisted Moon and Morning Song or does it come naturally to you and your stories?

I’m one of those dorks that laughs at her own jokes.  I’m even snickering as I write this.  The humor is very organic.  I’ve noticed my dialogue follows my moods.  The jokes, the tough conversations, the arguments reflect what I was feeling at that time.  Sometimes I’m slap happy and everything in the world is hilarious.  I’m also a horrible smart ass, and I think my own natural voice comes out a lot.  The things I really want to say but often just laugh to myself about, or the things I wish I said at the time.

8)    Silent Heart was your first book and you’re currently at work on a new cover for it(See the new cover for Silent Heart and Under a Twisted Moon below). Is it hard to go back and try to think of a new way to represent your books after they’ve been in print?

Sometimes, covers make me want to cry. Lol  When I did the original cover for Silent Heart, I was new to graphic design and still had a lot to learn.  It was not a good cover.  So right now I’m revamping a few covers, Silent Heart among them.

I had this perfect image in my head.  Red and golds.  This layout involving a band of color over top of a pivotal scene in the book in which Paige, a talented artist, takes back some of her power by doing this charcoal drawing on leather of her love.  I even managed to make the perfect model for Stone look like it was a charcoal drawing.  I was so proud of it.  Thought it was great, (I still love the hell out of that image).  I showed it off for feedback, which is very important for any work of art.  Survey said?  No.  It was a cool image, but just didn’t work.  It didn’t peak anyone’s interest to read the book.  Well fudge.

So I slept on it and tried something else the next day. That finally worked.  I grudgingly admit it’s a better cover.  It fits the genre, but stands out from the crowd, which is what you want.  That kind of redo and version after version is really normal for cover art.  Never settle for the first thing an artist shows you.  Push them and get something great
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9)    You’ve been a cover artist and executive editor at JEA for a long while now. You’ve even trained a few interns and earned an award for the cover of A Fish to Die For in the 2013 Predators and Editors competition. Do you feel like you’ve learned a lot since you first started out?

Yes.  Each cover is learning something new.  Finding this tool I hadn’t used in quite that way before.  A new layout or idea.  It’s amazing to take a concept from an author’s mind and turn into a picture for all to see.  I love seeing how excited they get.  I even love the tough ones that make me go through 10 versions before it’s right.  The end result is always amazing.  Every once in a while, something will happen, a new thought from one of my classes, a certain request I’m unfamiliar with, and it’s like someone flipped a switch and my work is never the same after, always moving forward.

10) In recent months you’ve also branched out from providing covers for JEA to becoming a freelance cover artist for other writers. What kind of services do you offer and how can people reach you to ask about their projects?

The best way to contact me is through my website.  I have a contact form on the artwork page.  I offer original design and full rights to the author.  In other words I won’t get angry at you down the road and say you can’t use my art anymore.  I also do something new that I want to make industry standard.  I provide the client with documentation of where the images used on their cover came from.  There is so much image plagiarism out there it’s rather insane.  Covers on some sites are lawsuits waiting to happen.  I’ve personally had to replace covers done by so called “professional” artists because they used a video game screen shot or stole one small part, like a hand, from a major piece of art and blew it up, both of which are illegal. I want to put out such a high standard that it forces authors to demand it from others and other artists to adhere to it.

11) Will you stick to the romance genre or do you think there are some other genres you’d like to explore?

I never intend any specific genre.  I just write where the story takes me, following along in its wake attempting to capture the important parts.  I get an idea in my head and I run with it.  Sometimes that’s romance and sometimes not.  I’ll figure out the classification when I’m done.  I’m the same way with length.  I don’t believe in word lengths based on popular books in the genre.  I just write until the story is told.  Sometimes that’s longer, sometimes shorter.  If I need to flesh something out, I’ll worry about that later.

12) Do you have anything in progress you’d like share?

I have this one I call, Kiss of Luck.  It’s a dystopian society with alien mind control and young adults, still teens really, that want out and stage daring escapes.  I’m kind of careful with my ideas.  I know more than one person that has had ideas stolen.  Kiss of Luck, is a special one for me.  I dreamed it one night, start to finish, the entire plot line.  I’m just filling in details as I go, but it’s going to be really cool.


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Interview with Samuel Reese Author of the Upcoming Immolation

4/20/2014

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Bio: 


 Samuel Reese is 32, married and has 2 dogs and a cat who live with him in Tennessee. He loves reading, writing,  music., horror movies and stories, sci-fi/fantasy, philosophy, world religions, and anything that is dark. 

Reese writes fantasy and horror. His style has been likened to Stephen King with the snarkiness of David Sedaris and Lovecraft utilizing Neil Gaiman's imagination. 
Immolation is his first book.


Links: 

Author Blog: http://samueladamreese.wordpress.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sam-Reese-Author-and-Adventurer/140116649427941?ref=hl




1) Immolation is the story of a girl who discovers she can wield pyrokenesis, where did the idea come from?

I honestly can’t remember where the idea for the pyrokinesis came from. It’s likely influenced by all the comic books I read as a kid and young adult combined with a fascination I’ve always held towards fire in general. Fire is a destructive force that also cleanses and purifies when wielded properly. I wanted to tell the story of a girl who was abused and mistreated by those who should have protected her, and the idea of Lydia came from there and sort of grew into this monster if you will. Stephen King says that when he writes, he feels like the driver of a car and that the characters are the navigators telling him where to go. I write like that, and once Lydia started telling her story through me, the pyrokinesis just sort of became part of who she was.


2) Lydia is no Charlie McGee, can you tell us a little bit about her powers and the darkness that causes them to awaken?

As stated above, Lydia is pyrokinetic which means she has the ability to control fire with her mind. She can shape it into creatures of flame, wield it as a weapon, envelop herself within a cocoon of it, and even cause herself to levitate by using her own thermals. Think the Human Torch and you have a decent idea, except that she has to have fire present, not just yell “FLAME ON!” and hope for the best. The powers come from a family curse that was placed on a distant relative during the American Civil War. Every woman on her father’s side of the family has had the ability to control fire, though not every one of them used it. The ability itself only manifests under extreme circumstances, and is a catalyst for revenge for those who feel they have been wronged. Unfortunately, most of them find that revenge ends up with results far different than originally envisioned.

3) The story is a powerful one about a victim facing their abuser and the darkness that inspired the abuse. What did you want to say to readers about those facing these sort of situations and the choice between embodying that darkness and choosing to forgive?



First off, I wanted to tell a decent story. But I won’t sit here and lie by saying I didn’t have some kind of an agenda. The story of Lydia is unfortunately the story of too many people-male and female-who are abused and neglected by those who are supposed to be their shelter and protector. Many of these people don’t feel as if they have a way out and wind up either becoming abusers themselves, taking their own lives, or simply not living their own lives. Lydia has the ability to destroy all those who have ever harmed her, and the power is seductive. But I want my readers to understand that many times the greatest revenge is being a better person than your tormentors and that forgiveness is not always about the ones that have wronged you, but rather about beginning the healing process internally. The only one who can begin to heal yourself is yourself, and oftentimes forgiveness is the first step towards healing. 
I also hoped to show through Frank, Lydia’s father, that those who abuse are often battling their own demons as well. It’s easy to see abusive people as monsters who deserve a bullet to the head and a shallow grave, but human beings tend to be much more complex than that.


4) There's some really beautiful imagery in Immolation, even in some of the darker sequences. Are there any scenes you're fond of from the book? What makes it stand out to you. 

My favorite scenes to write are the ones with Lydia and Michael and the ones where Lydia goes to her happy place with various figures from literature. I really like the simple scenes, the ones that make her seem like a normal girl just trying to make sense of the world. Visually though, I think my favorite scene is a tie between the very first time she uses her powers and the final confrontation with her father.

5) How do you feel about going from indie publishing to being an author at a traditional publishing house J Ellington Ashton Press?


I’m pretty excited honestly. It feels good to know that someone other than my mom, my wife, and my best friend think I have potential. Being a writer is a lonely and oftentimes disheartening thing, because writers write alone and tend to think everything they do sucks cheese through a straw. To know that people who have no real reason to tell me my work is good actually tell me that not only boosts my own self-esteem, but it inspires me to write more. It’s difficult to be self-motivated. Having people tell you, “Hey, we like this and we want to publish it” goes a long way towards making you feel like you might actually have something that resembles talent.


6) Could you tell us a little about other projects you might be working on or some ideas that you were thinking of starting?


I write like I read: Too many things at a time. Currently, I’m working on a young adult story about Dwarves and a human prince with a friend of mine. I’m also working on a haunted house novel (my absolute favorite horror genre), a crazed story about a guy who meets an imp and his mute muse and sets off to stop Loki and Lucifer from doing something pretty awful alongside his dead grandmother, Odin, Thor, and Tyr. Titania and Oberon get thrown in there as well, along with Frigga, Sif, a few of Frigga’s handmaidens, and some other people from various mythologies. I lovingly refer to it as Neil Gaiman with a meth problem. I’m also working on a collection of short stories that take place in Sherman’s March, Georgia, the fictional town that Lydia resides in. There’s also another YA book that I’m co-authoring with a lady about twin girls, a prophecy, and demons. It’s kind of like “Twilight” with demons, but hopefully better written and less romantic. Other than that, not too much, but you never know what I’ll wind up running into.




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Immolation is coming soon from J Ellington Ashton Press. Here's an early look at the cover!

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Interview with Jim Goforth Author of Plebs

4/17/2014

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Bio: Jim Goforth is a horror author currently based in Holbrook, Australia. Happily married with two kids and a cat he has been writing tales of horror since the early nineties.
After years of detouring into working with the worldwide extreme metal community and writing reviews for hundreds of bands across the globe with Black Belle Music he has returned to his biggest writing love with first book Plebs published by J. Ellington Ashton Press.
Jim also has a couple of collaborations due out later this year, involving other notable authors, and appears in the heavy metal horror themed anthology Axes of Evil  from Diabolus in Musica, an imprint of Chupa Cabra House.
At present Jim is working on a host of full length novels and a handful of short stories with a variety of ideas for anthologies in the works. 




Links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JimGoforthHorror
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jim_goforth
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7777382.Jim_Goforth
Website: http://jimgoforthhorrorauthor.wordpress.com/
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Jim-Goforth/e/B00HXO3FRG/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1
Other: https://www.facebook.com/PlebsHorror
Plebs on Amazon http://smarturl.it/Plebs
Axes of Evil on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Axes-Evil-Heavy-Metal-Anthology-ebook/dp/B00JAQ1F72/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397204394&sr=1-1&keywords=axes+of+evil
J. Ellington Ashton Press http://www.jellingtonashton.com/jim-goforth.html




1) Plebs is an intense thrill-ride of a novel likened to classic grindhouse slashers and it’s earned you quite a few 5 star reviews. What do you think of the response to your first published novel?

I’ve been pretty damn thrilled by the overall response to Plebs so far, the reviews have all been exemplary and there have been some wonderful things said. Having the work likened to some of the names that have been mentioned in various reviews is quite awe-inspiring and extremely flattering. I’m anticipating that a book like this isn’t going to be exactly everybody’s cup of tea and inevitably some folk are going to hate it, and I’d be rather interested to see what sort of negative response would be garnered from someone who didn’t particularly like it. I’m constantly saying that a bad review can generate as much attention, if not more than a good one, but so far it has been awesome feedback as a whole.

2) The plot centers around a band of men looking for a good time and via a group of lovely ladies allowing themselves to run afoul of a group of people called Plebs. Can you tell us a little about them?

Corey Somerset, Lee Hunter and Tim Hayworth are the young men still out celebrating after a friend’s birthday celebrations, making the unwise choice to wander a little further afield than they might have otherwise done if they weren’t under the influence of too much alcohol. They’re basically good guys, just somewhat prone to making bad decisions and not thinking a great deal of how much trouble some of those choices are going to land them in. Various circumstances in each of their lives have led to them being fairly shiftless slackers who lack any real motivation to find purpose; one is an idle rich kid, one is a bullied stoner and the other is a big brash ladiesman.

Their random intoxicated stumblings bring them into the domain of a group of mysterious women who are all fugitives from one thing or another, and who carry a host of killer secrets. These women share the domain in which they reside in an uneasy co-existence with the freakish creatures from which the book takes its name from, the Plebs themselves. Fundamentally, these entities were once upon a time human, now morphed and warped into bloodthirsty subhuman mutants courtesy of the experimentations of a disgraced scientist and through their encounter with the dangerous band of women, the three drunken adventurers come face to face with these horrors.

From then on in, things go to hell in a rush.


3) Unlike some of the old slasher films Plebs is a novel with a solid plot that pulls you along at breakneck speed, according to many reviews the 600 pages fly by. Would you tell us a bit about the writing process for the novel?

Plebs wasn’t actually supposed to turn out as a novel, much less one that clocked 180k words and spanned out to 600 pages. When the original idea occurred I was aiming to write it as a short story, with a similar premise to the events that occur in the first ten chapters or so, albeit probably with less happening than what I ended up with. The more I wrote though, the more I realised there was a whole lot more that was meant to happen with this story, the more I grew fond of building the characters and tossing them into horrendous situations. Ideas kept coming, new characters emerged to stamp their indelible mark on the thing and ultimately it had to become a full length, though even then I didn’t envision how lengthy it was going to be. I used to write all of my stories with trusty old pen and paper, shorts and novels alike, and Plebs was one of those that was entirely written that way, and I’m not talking notebooks, I’m talking pages upon pages of blank A4 printer paper. I have two prior novels which were written in notebooks, but with this one meant to be a short story I figured I would have it wrapped up with a handful of sheets of paper. Wrong. I’d be writing and writing in lunch breaks at work, on the train to and from work and all kinds of things. It was a staggered process and even at the time I was writing it, I wasn’t essentially writing to publish, I was writing to get the story out of my head and down on paper. I wrote it around a host of other things I was doing at the time and it was actually on hiatus unfinished for a while at one stage. It was written from start to finish without jumping between scenes or writing sections out of order, and then of course when it was finally complete I had to type the whole damn thing up from a stack of paper probably comprised of several small forests. I submitted it as a first draft, nothing was changed or altered from the very first write, and I’m pretty happy to say, even after a couple of rounds of edits, there was still very minimal alterations and absolutely nothing which changed the integrity of the story at all.

4) Has the length posed you any problems with editing or sales?

In terms of editing no, there were no problems at all. As I mentioned, the amount of edits required were so minimal that it was no issue going through any suggestions, or minor sentence restructurings or anything of the sort. I was more than impressed with the work done by the brilliant editors who presided over Plebs and have high praise for them. As a general rule I just write and almost never agonise over changing things, scrapping parts or worrying about how the story is coming out as I’m telling it and consequently I might underuse commas or overuse superfluous works. The editing process of Plebs has been more of a benefit to me than anything, it has definitely taught me a few things on honing my craft.

Plebs is certainly selling so I can’t say there are any problems there, though as a first book, I don’t really have anything to measure it by. I have the ability to track sales through Amazon and do so, but I know it’s selling elsewhere in places like Book Depository and Barnes & Noble which I don’t personally have the means to track.


I suppose the length may be somewhat daunting to some and in this day and age where ebooks are a massive industry, and a 20 page quick read can be published as a standalone work, a giant book may not be a reader’s first choice when there are so many shorts/novellas etc becoming available every day.
On the other side of the coin, there are those people who want to read a big book, who want to be immersed in a story that isn’t over in the blink of an eye, but instead is something where they can become fully involved with the characters and their fates. I love to read epic books that you don’t really want to end and have the ability to hold interest throughout, and I love to write them as well, and it would seem that other people are digging that too.

5) Before you decided to get back to your writing recently you were involved with reviewing and promoting extreme metal bands. Do you think the experience has given your work an interesting edge?  

Most definitely. I’m a massive extreme metal aficionado and being involved with the scenes on a global scale in terms of reviews and interviews and promoting, and putting on gigs and metal shows locally has given me all kinds of interesting insights into a wide array of things. This isn’t confined to mere music itself, but the people who make it, the people who follow it, all sorts of perceptions of human nature and behaviours, some good and of course, some hideous. It is a veritable wealth of fodder for not just horror fiction like I write, but fiction and in fact non-fiction, in general. Some pretty ugly character traits can surface in there as they can in any given scene, which works fine for me, I have some rather ugly characters in my work.

On the upside, I always maintain that horror and metal go hand in hand, and the pair often intersect supremely successfully, the types of metal I most often choose to listen to are the dark varieties, black and death metal. If extreme metal was a fiction genre it would slot easily into horror or dark fiction realms, and vice versa.

Courtesy of the lifelong passion I’ve had for metal which parallels the lifelong obsession I’ve had with horror, I frequently incorporate elements of music into stories, even to some points where the music I love is a key facet, or in fact something a whole written piece may revolve around. Since many have referred to Plebs as a grindhouse/splatterpunk opus, I’ve taken to adopting that as an easy way to describe the way I write, adding in the fact that it is grindhouse horror driven by heavy metal.

6) You've got a story in Axes of Evil: The Heavy Metal Anthology, tell us a little about it and your experience working on it.

The story I have in Axes of Evil was not a story that was specifically written for that particular anthology, it was actually one written quite some time ago, well before I’d even started to write Plebs, but when the idea for the anthology came up I figured this piece Sinister Cavan had the requisite elements to fit the bill there. As with plenty of my writing it is a meld of heavy metal with some horror and so I submitted it and managed to score a spot in exactly the type of metal driven horror I’m stoked to be a part of.

Basically the story revolves around a morals crusader with a history of stamping out mediums (music, film etc) he considers to be evil and corrupting influences attempting to prevent a blasphemous metal band from playing a show in his hometown and the lengths he is prepared to go to when he finds he isn’t able to prevent it, in opposition to many of the things he’s closed down in the past. The underlying theme is primarily revolving around a juxtaposition of what people consider to be evil.

Because it was written a fair few years ago, it possibly isn’t something that can be considered a great representation of where my writing is at today, but in the vein of Axes of Evil it seemed rather appropriate.

It is around the 11k mark and was written very quickly when I had a whole slew of different ideas for short stories and was writing a bunch of them. The beast that eventually became Plebs was also among those seeds of ideas though it didn’t start to come to fruition until a little while later.

7) You also took part in Feral Hearts a cooperative novel with 5 other JEA authors, have you enjoyed collaborating and taking part in anthologies?

The Feral Hearts collab (and the Lycanthroship project as well) was an enormous amount of fun and I’m massively proud of being part of it with five truly excellent authors who are at the top of their game. Each of those involved has brought their own unique touches to the novel and the amount of variety and talent exhibited in this work is phenomenal, and it is something I cannot wait to see unleashed on the world.

Having never been involved with something of this magnitude, or indeed any form of collaboration with other authors I was extremely interested to see how I would work by stepping outside my own usual writing processes and having to adhere to certain guidelines and premises as was the case with these collab projects. I found it very much to my liking, incredibly challenging as well, but so much fun I would be keen to be part of something like it any time at all, the enjoyment I derived from it was immense. I’d never previously considered that I would be the type of author who could thrive in writing to specifics, or collaborating and working to a rule set, but now having done so, I can safely say I loved it.


8) Do you have any other novels or short stories in the works? Tell us a little about your ideas.

I’m almost always working on something, and more often than not it is multiple projects. This is my main method of dealing with anything that resembles writers block striking me, if that happens then I shift from the problem child work to another project and write on that either until I knock it over, or recharge inspiration for the other one.

The chief reason I have myriad things on the go at any one time though is because I’m always being inundated with ideas and concepts to write about, most of them, wildly dissimilar and unable to be all used in one specific story, so I have to get them all out, even if a few have to wait while I work on others.

Right now I am concentrating on one full length novel, after clocking 180k words on another one which I’m going to have to look at making into a couple of books in two parts since even at 180k it is only partially done.

The one I’m investing the majority of my writing time is my first exploration of the oft-travelled route of the undead, albeit with my own interpretation of a few things. Referring back to the remarks about my past experience with extreme metal and passion for the music, this book draws plenty from that since it revolves around various scenes of black and death metal, and a bunch of aficionados and band members who find themselves up to their necks in flesheating undead ghouls. Like Plebs, this book was actually supposed to be a short story which was going to form part of a series of shorts/novellas.

The other book, which is essentially complete if I decide it’s going to have to be two books was one that was always going to be split into two parts (I just didn’t imagine it would expand into such a giant monster in the first part alone). This revolves around a host of disgruntled ex-employees of a quaint rustic little carnival/circus creation who find themselves unceremoniously fired when their good natured old boss abruptly vanishes and is replaced by a sinister soul intent on turning the place into something entirely different. Not content on taking this indignity lying down, these suddenly jobless folk cook up some plans for revenge and discover there is much more to the apparent blueprint to turn their beloved former place of work into a new modern horror park than appears on the surface.

Aside from that I currently have a collection of short stories in with JEA and between writing on the novels I’m always writing an assortment of other novellas/shorts of all kinds of horrific things. I have a series of other music related horror tales I will be getting together at some stage, so when I’m not dedicating writing time to bringing that undead expedition to a conclusion, I’m writing on these.



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Interview with Tabitha Baumander Author of Warriors

4/13/2014

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BIO


Tabitha Baumander is a novelist screenwriter and playwright with five books published and a lot more to come. She is divorced with adult twins and lives in Toronto Canada which she is currently populating with aliens, monsters and fairies. Well, why not.















Links:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Tabitha-Baumander/e/B00F6GJCZ2

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TabithaBaumanderCanadianWriter

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tovha

Website: http://tabithabaumander.yolasite.com/




1)      Warriors is about a group of very special warriors who must protect our world from inter-dimensional beasties, Where did the idea come from?

To begin with Pope John Paul had just died. I wondered, as a fantasy writer might, what the death of someone who is supposed to be a very good person would do and where I could take that. The inter-dimensional aspect comes from a desire to stay away from theology as much as possible and ground the villains in a kind of explainable context.

The origin of the warriors oddly enough actually does come from the bible. I’ve used it before in another work.

"There were Nephilim on the earth in those

          days; and also after that, when the sons

          of God came into the daughters of men, and

          they bare children to them, the same became

mighty men which were of old. Men of renown."


That’s from the King James bible genesis. Some people like to think its proof of alien incursion on earth. I started playing with the Nephilim simply because Hollywood was beating the end of the world 666 Antichrist plotline into the ground with a big stick.

These characters are sometimes called Watchers and were been used in a Hollywood movie a few years ago. It was called The Adjustment Bureau.                

2)      You clearly know action and humor, Warriors have it in spades. What are your favorite action scenes in the book?

I’m not very good at naming favorites of anything. I suppose the group of battles around the Vatican at the end is good. Then there’s the very big snake, can’t lose with a very big snake.

3)      Darius and Angela are our leaders, were they inspired by anyone? 

Darius is the leader Angela is a new member and not a leader. She does have a lot of input because that is the stuff she brings to the team. Visually I guess I based Darius on my son. Angela is completely fictional created because that is the sort of person I needed to fill that gap in the story.


4)  It's not all about the warriors, there's also a very strong story about a bishop and his assistant facing off with another bishop and his associate. Neither battle is any less important. How did you keep the pace so strong for both aspects of the plot?

     Someone once told me I was an “instinctual” writer. I don’t think they were intending to be complementary either but they were accurate. For me pacing is about feel. I move through the story and I tend to think “mmmm about time we checked in with this other bit now”.

     On a side note I have a papal conclave in this. It is total fiction in that I have stuff happening that would never happen in a conclave. But I’m hardly the first writer to play games with Vatican protocol.


5) Warriors is an interesting blend of b movie action, humor, romance and a healthy dollop of modern fantasy. How would you describe your books to someone who hasn't given them a look?

Two ways depending on how I feel at the time.

     I take fantasy and action and set it on as real a background as possible. A dragon in middle earth isn’t that remarkable. A dragon in the middle of down town Toronto now THAT is interesting.

     Someone who had read some of my short stories once described me this way. Reading me is like walking through a park along a path. Sooner or later you step off the path and bam the park disappears and you are somewhere else completely.


6) Many of your ideas start out as screenplays. I think there's a good chance that's part of what makes the action and drama so intense in your books. Is it hard to make a script into a full manuscript?

It depends on the story. Several have not got up to normal novel length which I think of as around 80 thousand words. They have ended up as novellas or perhaps I should think of them as books for a YA audience and as such an acceptable length.

     This one did start as a screenplay. I adapted it for two reasons. For one thing I needed a writing project and this was the only one that popped up on my radar. More importantly when I was writing the script a box load of detail wanted to push through onto the page and that simply isn’t permitted in screenplay format.

A script compared to a book is like a skeleton. A director takes it and adds camera stuff. Then the actors take it and “make the words their own” to use actor speak. Then all the other departments that go into making a film add their two cents and you end up with a film. It’s generally not what you were picturing unless you’re really lucky and had input but it’s a film.

     A book is the whole deal and you have control. So, when I wrote this particular script I had to use a lot of restraint to keep all the extra bits out of the mix which I eventually put into the book.



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Warriors

Coming Soon from J Ellington Ashton Press

A good man has died a natural death.  In that death he leaves a hole in reality and through that hole come monsters.  Defending reality are people who if the world knew of their existence might be called monsters themselves.  They are far stronger and smarter than any full blood human could be and they exist to fight with monsters.  The problem is this time they might not win because the monsters are getting help.



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Check out these other great releases from Tabitha Baumander!

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Interview with Kody Boye Author of His Touch of Ice and a review of the book

4/10/2014

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Author Bio: Born and raised in Southeastern Idaho, Kody Boye began his writing career with the publication of his story [A] Prom Queen’s Revenge at the age of fourteen. Published nearly three-dozen times before going independent at eighteen, Boye has authored numerous works—including the short story collection Amorous Things, the novella The Diary of Dakota Hammell, the zombie novel Sunriseand the epic fantasy series The Brotherhood Saga. He is represented by Hannah Brown Gordon of the Foundry Literary + Media Agency.
 







Links:
 
Facebook: http://facebook.com/kody.boye
Twitter: http://twitter.com/kodyboye
Google+: https://plus.google.com/b/107542350868675752132/+Kodyboyewrites/posts
Website: 
http://kodyboye.com





1) What inspired you to write His Touch of Ice?
 
When I initially wrote the story that would eventually become His Touch of Ice some years later, I was responding to an anthology call requesting dark romance stories with supernatural creatures. I'd initially intended to write a vampire story, but wanted to try something different (hence the more sensual aspects of the feedings that take place within the story.)
 
After releasing the completed manuscript online and then abandoning it, I came across it via the torrents seven years later and got to thinking about how a re-envisioned version would be. I'd learned from download counts when it was listed on Smashwords that people were interested, and that they continued to read despite the juvenile writing, so I figured, Why not? Paranormal romance has been big, and given that erotica has surged as of recent, I wanted to see how it'd be received. 

 
2) There are some very strong characters in this book, did they come to you easily or did you have to spend a lot of time crafting them?
 
My characters usually come very naturally to me. Sometimes I give them aspects of myself (Jason's aspirations to become a Literature professor or possibly an English teacher was born out of my false desire to gain approval; Guy became the enigma that everyone loves, but isn't shy about his affections.) Some people (like the villains in the book) were lost even to me, which is why I'm eternally grateful to my editor for helping me shape them into stronger, more three-dimensional characters. Some characters come out fully-formed. Others have to hatch and then develop.

 
3) His Touch of Ice features a few mythological beings, did you have to do much research to write about the Howlers and Kaldr?
 
The Howlers are no different from Werewolves, nor are the Sanguine to the Vampires. I decided early on that I wanted to keep the 'traditional' monsters locked in their 'traditional' aspects (though I did maintain an infection-based transference of power to their human thrall/victim.) The Kaldr were born out of my fascination with Norse mythology. The 'Nordic Mountain Man' mythos was intriguing to me, but I wanted to expand upon the idea of men and women who lived in frigid climates and create something supernatural. In that regard, I first had to create them as supernatural creatures, then give them a reason to be placed outside of Europe. I did a lot of research on Viking conquest in conjunction with certain parts of blossoming Norway. Because of that, I gave the creature a name I felt suiting for their species. Svell means Ice in old Norse, as Kaldr means Cold. So, effectively, the Svell Kaldr are The Ice Cold. A few other words come up throughout the novel, but all can be pinpointed back to Nordic language.

 
4) Why did you choose to set it in Texas?

I set the story in Texas because I got tired of seeing the same-old vampires in California thing (which is ironic considering I set the story in California when I initially wrote it.) After moving to Austin, and living here for almost four years, I decided to pay tribute to the state and city that liberated me from religious fundamentalism by setting the story here. The geographical settings are something to behold. Long, winding roads, some of them lined with beautiful fields of flowers and blue bonnets; apple orchards that stretch as far as the eye can see; areas where there are absolutely nothing at all. Few people tend to recognize the scope of this state (or that you can fit parts of Europe in it several times over.)

 
5) How hard was it to go back and rewrite the original story?
 
I maintained only the skeletons of the original novel His Touch is of Ice, but even then they were broken and repurposed to suit the needs of the story. My juvenile aspirations as both a writer and person really affected the story in terms of scope and depth. I didn't know anything about the area it took place in, I gave vague impressions for plot points that should have been connected, and the nature of the Kaldr was so transparent I could've taken them out. I was barely fifteen and had no concept of the world. So, for that, I decided to keep only the basics. It kept my trajectory clear and didn't hinder me from creating a new universe.  
 
6) Do you think you might write sequels to it or is the open ending meant to be as it is?
 
The open ending is meant to be exactly that. I wanted to be able to end the come to a halt where it still felt satisfying, yet at the same time left me in a position to where I could easily continue in a second novel should I ever get the inkling. So far, I don't have plans to continue. I'm not even sure what happens beyond that point

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Review:


His Touch of Ice is the story of Jason a former college student who's been down on his luck ever since he was kicked out after being falsely accused of plagiarism by another student. Tired, anxious and alone he spends time in chat rooms seeking a connection. On a whim he meets up with a man he's sure will turn out to be just another jerk and finds that there's a lot more to Guy Winters than he had at first bargained for. Despite his better judgement he follows tall, handsome and intriguing back to his place. Going home afterwards turns out to be less than appealing, especially when it turns out the eviction notice and belated rent payment have finally come to bite him. 

Guy , who's turned out to be a very mysterious but seemingly trustworthy hook up offers to let him stay at his place and Jason soon takes him up on it. Things are fine for a while but one evening a break in changes that and the pair finds themselves on the run. It seems Guy is more than he at first appears and Jason was right to be uncertain. Lost in a world he doesn't understand Jason is quickly swallowed up in Guy's world, swept along in a battle he may not be able to handle.

His Touch of Ice is a surprisingly quick read and a very satisfying one at that. Boye's characters are very likeable and we instantly relate to Jason's life and concerns. It's been a while since I got into a PNR book and this one is a fresh new take on the usual PNR tropes. I really liked what he did here with the Kaldr (distant relatives of the ice giants in norse mythology) and Howlers (a different take on werewolves)who are enemies battling it out in Texas. Fans of m/m romance and erotica will enjoy this book immensely and find a lot to interest them. 

There are a few typos and certain elements might do well with some fleshing out, but I found these things did little to distract from the plot. I'm hoping we'll get to see a bit more about this world and it's characters as many elements of the book leave it open for at least one more story. Boye has a lot to offer his readers and I for one will be seeking out other books from this author
.  



Four Stars  ****

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Writing Process Blog Chain Hop – Four Questions, Four Answers

4/7/2014

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Many thanks to Gisela Hausmann  for tagging me in this blog chain hop on March 30.

Gisela Hausmann is the author of nine books, including award-winning "Naked Determination, 41 Stories About Overcoming Fear". Her first book "Vienna - Aerial Panorama" was selected as a gift for President Clinton, when he visited her hometown Vienna.

These days Gisela writes funny life skills books, telling her adventures and pointing out what pivotal approaches helped her to succeed. Born to be an adventurer, Gisela has also co-piloted small planes, produced movies, and globe-trotted almost 100,000 kilometers.  She now lives with her cats Artemis and Yin-Yang in Greenville, SC.

Blog               http://nakeddetermination.blogspot.com

Amazon       http://www.amazon.com/Gisela-Hausmann/e/B000APN192

Google+      https://plus.google.com/103171286110985123907/posts

FB                http://www.facebook.com/pages/Naked-Determination-The-Book/102636899881653




1. What am I working on?


I'm currently working on a short horror collection called Apocrypha with my brother Robert, we hope to be submitting that in a month or so. There's some really great stories in it and I'm hoping people like it. Feral Hearts (a collaborative novel with several other authors at JEA) and the re-release of Eyes Like Blue Fire are also on the agenda this year. I have some other novel I'll be working on completing as well such as the sequel to ELBF. Cool Green Waters and othe titles like Jodie, Other Dangers and The Farm. Plenty to work on between those and the editing work. There could always be other projects along the way as well.


 2. How does my work differ from others of its genre? 

I think of my writing as literary horror. I want you to care about the characters, as much as I want you to be scared by the elements of the story I also want you to be moved, to remember it for that. I can also throw in elements from other stories, little snatches of fantasy, sci-fi and other bits that make things a little different.

3. Why do I write what I do?

I don't think I'd be me if I didn't write and horror has always fascinated me, gotten my imagination going. My imagination brought me here and it's gotten me through a lot too. I'm working through a lot of things with my books and stories, little moments where things went wrong. It helps me get through them and I like to think it can help others as well. Mainly I love to write and fear often overpowered me for many reasons. 

 4. How does my writing process work?

I get an idea-and they can come from anything, just crazy ideas- and then I write it down thinking over how to go about it for a long while before I sit down and try to write it out. I get a good bit of it down and if it's a good first draft I let it rest for a bit before i come back to it. If not I keep working on it trying to make it better before polishing it up and filling it out a bit more. After a lot of work and
 read through I submit it an let my editors tell me if there's anything else that needs finished. 




                                                                   Susan Simone


Susan is a writer and artist by day, a child and pet wrangler by night, and occasional crazy person on the weekends. She lives in a place where new hybrid cars, beat up farm trucks, and Amish horse and buggies meet in fast food parking lots for coffee.
Susan grew up in central Wisconsin, only to move to rural Ohio in adulthood. She's a country girl through and through with progressive and optimistic ideas of nation and society. A heathen by faith and major sci-fi fan she is an eclectic person and welcomes as much diversity into her life as she can to feed her fertile imagination. She lives by the motto, "Let your freak flag fly!"
Susan is the author of "Silent Heart", "Under A Twisted Moon", "Morning Song", and other titles forthcoming. Susan also has her one and only zombie short in the JEA anthology "All That Remains".   In addition she has published articles on the Yahoo! Contributor Network in a wide variety of subjects such as the validity of deity in the American government and the use of easy to find herbs.
Susan is the Executive Editor with J. Ellington Ashton Press as well as a graphic design student at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh Online Division.  She does a large portion of the cover art with JEA and has worked with businesses in the past for logo creation and event announcements. 



Website: http://susansimone.weebly.com/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6941373.Susan_Simone

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SusanSimoneFanPage
JEA: http://www.jellingtonashton.com/index.html


                                                         



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Interview with Michael Fisher Author of the Upcoming DC's Dead

4/5/2014

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Bio:
Michael Fisher, Fish to his friends and family, has worn many hats in his long life including US Navy Hospital Corpsman, club DJ, security specialist, psychiatric technician, painter, and currently, father, Mason, author and tattooer, not necessarily in that order. He has a love of hats and ugly Hawaian shirts. He also bears a passing resemblance to Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski. His work has been previously published in The Tall Book of Zombie Shorts from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anthologies as well as winning Honorable Mention for Short Story of the Year 2013 for The Return of the Devil Fly in the Midnight Remains anthology from J. Ellington Ashton Press. His first novel, DCs Dead will be coming out from JEA Press in 2014. He is also an editor with JEA Press




Links:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MichaelFisherAuthor

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Fisher/e/B00JARA3CE/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_4

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7808408.Michael_Fisher

JEA: http://www.jellingtonashton.com/michael-fisher.html




1) DCs Dead started out as a story you hit a block on, has it become more of a nostalgia trip now that you’ve been able to complete it or a learning tool that helped you get back into writing? Both? 

DCs Dead was the beginning to a long road that, I hope, will continue stretching into my old age.
I would definitely say that it qualifies as both. It is very much a nostalgia trip because the people in it are not only friends that I have not seen in over a decade, but also a time and place that I hold very dear. This was before that world change for America as it was pre-9/11, an era when we still had our illusion of safety. A time when people were more trusting and accepting, when soon after, the entire populace became paranoid of strangers while, simultaneously, welcoming of those that were like them. 
It was also a learning tool. When I started writing it, I knew very little about writing and story structure outside what we were taught in school. For this reason, the version of DCs Dead that appeared in the Tall Book of Zombie Shorts is quite different from the final version. That ten year block was quite frustrating. I think part of the reason that I gave up for so long was I felt that no one would ever see it and that I really had no reason to continue it. It started as a way to fill time during very slow days when I wasn’t making much money. It turns out that all it took was someone reading it and seeing potential, however rough it was. When I was told that it was good and needed to be finished, it spurred my imagination into action and now, a year or so later, it won’t stop. 

2) Do you think the many hats you’ve worn over the years have better prepared you for being an author, artist and editor now than you were when you first started writing? 


I think my varied experiences have helped my writing all around. I have seen many different areas of this nation and encountered so many different types of people in all walks of life. These experiences have given me seeds from which my story elements can sprout. Most of those experiences happened in my twenties. Now that I am well into my forties, it can look back on them both fondly as well as giving them a critical appraisal. There are so many things I have done that I look back on them and ask myself, “Were you an idiot or something?” They say that hindsight is 20/20, but it can also be hilarious.
In my almost twenty year career as a tattoo artist, I have seen more than my share of odd people and heard their stories. Add that on top of eight years working as a psychiatric tech, I am never surprised by the colorful eccentricities this world contains.

3) All of your current and upcoming releases have been in the horror genre, do you think you might write in other genres later on or is horror your primary interest as a writer? 


I have a deep love of the horror genre that goes all the way back to my earliest memories. I have vague recollections of watching the Bela Lugosi Dracula with my mother when I was four years old, then running around the playground at Montessori the next day, pretending to be Dracula. Needless to say, the nuns that ran the school were not happy about a tiny blond boy chasing the girls, screaming “I vant to suck your blood!” My parents were not restrictive at all when it came to scary movies. I saw Dawn of the Dead in ’78when I was eight years old, only a year after falling in love with Star Wars, and Phantasm and Alien in ’79, which were the last two movies to give me nightmares as a child. So, back to the main question, yes, I do plan to work in other genres. A novel I am currently working on has more in common with shows like CSI and all the other alphabet shows (CSI, SVU, NCIS, XYZ) than they do with Nightmare on Elm Street. While they are genres ones that may have some aspect of fear, I will always return to my old lover, the scary story. 

4) Has becoming an editor changed the way you look at your own work and the work of others? 


Sadly, I think I was invited to become and editor because I was already spotting issue with other author’s writing. Sometimes, it would be simple things like typos that made it past other editors. Other times, I would find error where the original author did not do thorough enough research. I sincerely hope that when author’s get my recommendations, they do not get offended by them. I try to make suggestions without changing the author’s voice. 
I am my worst critic when I am editing my own works. I have had many occasions where I found something that flowed well in a later part of the story, but realized it hadn’t been mentioned or explored earlier in the story so I would have to go back and figure out where it belonged and expound upon it. 
There was a case where I found a consistent misspelling of a creature from the Cthulhu Mythos in a story. As an HP Lovecraft nut, I knew the spelling, while not a proper English word, looked wrong. So I went back and consulted the original author’s spelling and saw it was something as simple as an E replacing an O. Most of the readers likely would not have noticed, but I felt that it should be changed, both out of respect to the original writer as well to make the story fit well into the established Mythos, something the die-hard fans would immediately recognize.

5) Feral Hearts was a collaborative effort; do you think you’ll pursue more projects like it in the future?

 
I had a hell of a lot of fun with Feral Hearts, just letting go and running with the character of Barry the Needle. I think I will wait to see how it is received before diving headfirst into another one though, as I have quite a few other projects I am working on. Of course, that is what I say now but I have a hard time saying, “No.” You can ask my wife. 

6) The novel length version of DC’s Dead and Feral Hearts are due to come out later this year, do you have any other works in progress?


I am working on a story that is currently titled It Always Bites You in the End which is the police procedural/murder mystery with a supernatural element. It should easily be my second novel. I have a short story I am writing to submit to the upcoming heavy metal horror anthology Axes of Evil II. I hope it will be accepted as well. I also have another zombie story in the very early stages, this one set on a cargo freighter en route to South America from Miami. As it passes through the Caribbean, it gets more than it could want. I also have a short story that I wrote for a specific anthology, and was passed on, which I am currently reworking in hopes it can get released later this year or early next year. Finally, I have my ongoing editing work for J. Ellington Ashton Press, just trying to help us release the best stories we can.





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 Interview with Michael Kanuckel Author of Agent White

4/3/2014

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Author Bio: 
Michael Kanuckel lives in a small rural town in the middle of Ohio with his two sons. He has been writing since he was in kindergarten, and always knew that he wanted to be an author. He has published short stories in various science fiction and fantasy magazines. He's the author of Winter's Heart, Small Matters, Grunge Childe, Agent White, Quatro and the upcoming  Trollbreaker.







Links:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Kanuckel/e/B00F1PTRSA

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michaelkanuckelauthor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MichaelKanuckel

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7264569.Michael_Kanuckel



1) Most of your books are set in a classic fantasy world, was it tough getting into the noir tone of Agent White? 


   Not really. I’ve always loved the old pulp fiction detective stuff, like Mickey Spillane and his ilk, and there was a real revival of that when I was a teen, with Sin City and other graphic fiction. I just moved that into my world.

2) Ezra is a strong noir character facing some unusual truths about his world. What do you like about him and his story?   



 What I like the most about Ezra is that he’s a no-nonsense kind of guy. He says what he means and does what he says. Even when faced with the fantastic, he never really loses his head. He’s goes into it with his same old attitude: how do I fix what’s wrong here?

3) Are there any scenes that you admire from the book? 



  I was really proud of the sequence that shows Ezra getting his first glimpse at the world behind his world. I also really liked his scenes with “Stillfield” Liam Connelly, who is a pool hustler, and the old man Owen, who draws him into this business in the first place. And there’s a character named Denthel Halfhill who I really enjoy. Really, I had a lot of fun with the whole thing.

4) Like Winter’s Heart Agent White is populated with great characters, do they come to you fully realized or do you feel that you’ve crafted them? Who’s your favorite? 



  Characters develop as the story develops. At first they just are characters- templates that you moved around on a soundstage. But then they begin to take on flesh, and a history, and characteristics that make them who they are. Then they aren’t characters- they’re people. I think my favorite character in Agent White (besides Ezra Beckitt) would have to be Boggle the gnome. He was just a lot of fun.

5) Your books are set in the same world but in differing ages, what age is Agent White set in? 



 Agent White is set in the Third Age, which is basically like our own near future. Vondellius is a place very much like our own country- the flavors of everything are just a little different, just enough that if you were there you would feel a bit strange.

6) Do things always play out the way you expect with your books or are there some big surprises as you go along?



  No, things never go the way I think they will- especially with this book. I had no real idea how I was going to end it until I got there myself.


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    Amanda M Lyons

    Ms. Lyons is an author of fantasy, horror, and an avid reader of all genres.

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