Category: Werewolves

And Now for a Few Updates on My Work in The Coming Months

8/15/2014

I'm going to be polishing Water Like Crimson Sorrow some more today, which means you'll be seeing it out on the market in another month or two. For fans of ELBF when it was a self-titled book, this will be the 2nd half of that book and will feature it's very own well-deserved cover. Once that's out, I will be submitting book 3 (which will be the first new book for you folks that read the first ELBF before we split it) Cool Green Waters. CGW features quite a bit more about three characters that had less focus in the first book. Mateo, Zero and Michael become far more interesting and detailed here and we also get a bit more about Raven and Katja, of course! Expect a lot of action, suspense, dark happenings and some elements that are a little more on the sexy side of things (Mateo happens to run an S/M club) as well.

I have a wee bit of book four to work with too, but it will be a bit before it's ready. That book, titled Hollow Black Corners of the Soul will hopefully be completed in the next year or two, so don't worry! I also have a few ideas in mind for book five which also features some surprising return characters. By the way we'll be calling this series Shades of Midnight, rather apt considering each title features a color, eh?

I will have a short in the JEA horror collection Rejected for Content and will again be taking part in a collaborative 666 project, this one, called Lycanthroship, will feature werewolves and is set shortly after WWII. Both of these books should be working toward completion and are hoped to be out this Fall.

Apocrypha is still in the works, with Robert Lyons working on his, I might just put together a few more for that too. I also have a couple of other books to work on finishing up like Other Dangers, Jodie, one that's barely developed called The Farm and another which will have dark, posssibly YA fantasy themes and doesn't have a title yet. Long story short there will be a great deal more to expect in the coming years and I do hope you'll enjoy them all as they do. In the meantime, please look into my 3 latest releases below:

0 Comments

Interview with Catt Dahman Author of the Virgil McClendon series and CEO of JEA

7/8/2014

0 Comments

Bio: Catt Dahman has been writing for more than 30 years, has taught in public schools, private schools, home school, and college. Her B.S. and M.S. degrees are from Texas A & M. Her areas of study were: Criminal psychology, art, and English. She is a native of North East Texas, has lived all over the US, (and tries to claim Jamaica as a second home) but is currently back in the Fort Worth, Texas area where she lives with her husband, David (a retired Marine), son Nic, cats, a ferret, and dog. She has also been a public speaker, artist, director for a charity, dabbled as a PI, and more. When not working, she enjoys SCUBA diving (PADI), reading, ruining movies for her family by pointing out mistakes, collecting Tarot card sets , playing Legos with her son, and growing herbs. She now writes full time, has zombie series of nine books, short stories, and several books of horror. She is available by e-reader and paperback.

Links:

Website: http://www.cattd.com/
J Ellington Ashton: http://www.jellingtonashton.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CattDahman
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cattdahman
Wikipedia: http://zisforzombie.wikia.com/wiki/Z_is_for_Zombie_Wiki
Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/cattdahman
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B007N5843K
Blog: http://www.cattd.com/catts-blog

1.You’re writing a great serial murderer series about a character named Virgil McLendon, could you tell us a little about the character and what he’s facing in your books?

The Virgil McLendon books have grown. I think they are stand alone books, but Virgil began as a small town deputy (book 1) and was teased a little because of his “weird” ways at looking at crimes. He still solved the crime, because of his quirks and not despite. He thinks of music and logic when he sees a case, and he notices things that don't fit and asks why. And he doesn't know it, because it is way back in the 1970s before law enforcement accepted new techniques, but he uses basic psychology. He listens to people and watches them. He looks for what is out of place and asks why. He never forms a theory but lets the facts stand alone. Because he is so unusual, he goes from deputy, to sheriff, to special agent in the FBI and to then one of the founders of the BAU division, and still doesn't understand why others can't see things just as clearly as he does. My favorite part is when a sheriff asks Virgil if it isn't a little unthinkable to have two serial killers acting in one town at the same time. Virgil is flummoxed. He can't imagine why there wouldn't be! Anyway, he is facing the changes of a country and in crime....

As the series go, we know the characters and sometimes some issues are not resolved. Virgil's entire family is in law enforcement and there are a few family secrets, so besides the legal work, Virgil has a beautiful wife who wants a family and career, friends who are sometimes in danger, and his own fears of failure.

2. These are based on real serial killer cases, was it difficult doing the research? Was it hard reading into some of the more brutal crimes?

It should be, but I guess I have become calloused to the cruelty. That said, one case I can't read about is the Adam Walsh murder, that is the one that gets to me, mainly because there is nothing worse than a killer that brags brutal details- it makes me physically ill. I read a lot, I began in criminal investigation, and even did some work as a private investigator, so I think I've seen a lot and learned to turn off the emotion for most cases. That said, I do have issue with the cases never solved or those that are so confusing that I have to pull court records and sift through before I understand them. One such case occurred close to where I live and for years I was torn on whether the person was guilty. I finally wrote about it and let “Virgil” look at it. I came to a partial conclusion, but not one I feel at peace with. Those cases..the ones where there is doubt...those bother me.

3. Of Blood and Water starts the series and right away you’re tackling some seriously brutal stuff, child murders during the 1970s. Was it difficult to cover that territory or did you feel the subject matter made the book that much more compelling?

That case hurt. After research and writing, I feel the wrong man died for the crime, a guilty man walked free, and I reflected that somewhat in the book. That was supposedly one of the first times that profiling was used, but it was- in my opinion- used without sound experience. It was more that I was using it to fit a scene than allowing the scene to dictate the parameters. It was hard to describe the deaths of the children, and I did try to stay with most facts, but I have done the same for the entire series and it never gets easier. The California Killer was horribly brutal and there was a man who fed victims to alligators...so they are all rough. I read and research the real cases before twisting them and making them a little more difficult to solve . I do feel the reality makes me stay more honest to the real evil that resides in the killers. While some cases are never really resolved (as opposed to solved), in my books, the killers generally meet a bad end. My good guys win. Mostly. There are a few who will be taken care of in later books...it was just not time to let them be punished yet.

4. Criminal profiling was very new during the era McLendon is utilizing it, was it interesting researching how it worked when it was first used? Is it much different than it is today?

People treat Virgil as if he uses magic. People think it's crazy, that he can tell so much from a crime scene and profile a killer because it just wasn't done back then. Virgil uses more of what we use today...he's way ahead of his time. But people are shocked at his logic. I get a kick out of having Virgil smarter than the others. Because of the changes in the 70s, we saw new things. Back then, it never dawned on us that a killer might be a female or a normal person. We still thought it had to be a crazed killer or the drifter or the black man. Virgil is aware that it is never the outside element and that mostly, it is someone very much like the victims as far as race and experiences. I have enjoyed allowing the first female and African American FBI agents to work with Virgil and hope that shows the changes of the country and changes in thinking.

5. Book two Of Lions and Lambs focuses on a male serial killer attacking young men and mutilating them, Of Guilt and Innocence takes place at an institute for the criminally insane, Of Lost and Found takes place at a huge house known for disappearances and book five Of Truth and Lies is about a killer who helps McLendon solve a copycat killer’s case. This is a series that covers a lot of ground! Was it hard coming up with great cases to base McLendon’s cases on?

Unfortunately, there are many brutal crimes available to take from. Of Guilt and Innocence is probably the one that doesn't fit because it is almost fully made up and not based on a crime per se. (The people incarcerated there have committed crimes we may be aware of or have heard in urban myths) but it's really about secrets related to Abraham Lincoln and the research I did is solid, but it's almost over the top as far as believability. Yet, the facts are pretty strong to support my “case”. The stories keep coming because there are so many mysteries out there and I get to combine them with my murder cases. The famed Winchester House appears, but I was able to reinvent it as something far worse. I guess real cases give me a seed, but I take the stories in new ways and tangle them so nothing is ever easy or how it seems. I wouldn't even say the books are about what they look to be. The first is about family traditions (bad ones). I love to tackle that topic and have done so in several books. The second is is more about people being seen as female, black, gay, whatever...as individuals in a changing world. I have dealt with forced religion and it taking ominous meanings, and more. I think I take social situations...injustices or changes...and show this with mysteries. In a new book, I am delving into rape and blaming the victim instead of the offender, but it looks like a simple murder mystery. I don't think I will ever run out of wrongness to write about. (oh...I have a new tag line???)

6. You’re known for taking risks with your writing and enjoying unusual subject matter, tell us a few of your more interesting stories/books and why you like to seek out the unique.

I probably take far too many risks. I don't set out to, and generally have an idea like...”what if some girls took revenge and then”....and from there it gets weird because I find connections and I let the characters control the action and there is always far worse than what we think. To me, there may be a fin at the surface, but I know that down deep, there will be a school of hungry sharks and probably someone who likes the bloodshed and a horrible back story. But isn't that normal? If we see a lady with a black eye, did she really run into a door? Or is there a terrible story there? I think I am all about the secrets and hidden stories because they are truth. I am one of those truth-seekers. No matter how bad it will be, I like to know. And as Virgil would say, why wouldn't there be all kinds of scary things going on behind the normal? We all once were innocents, but we lost that...maybe with Vietnam.

7. You also took part in a collaborative book called Feral Hearts due out from your publishing house J Ellington Ashton very soon, did you enjoy the project? Is it tougher to work with a mixed group of writers than it is to work alone?

I loved the story and the process. I loved working with such a talented crew that challenged me. But, that said, it was hard and I would have failed if not for Edward Cardillo. I tend to write myself into corners and blaze my way out; that wasn't workable for this project. Ed saved my bacon and made my work far more reader friendly. It's a great book and very, very unusual with the writers having to work off a single premise, but the other writers were far better at this than I was. In my defense, I am not a short-story writer ( a handful at most) and I am character heavy, so it killed me to have random characters that might do things I didn't expect! I have tons of respect and admiration for the rest who did so well. On the other hand, I am thrilled that Ed and I could collaborate (a nice word for his work to save my butt). And by far, it was harder to write with others; I don't play well in a group. I think I do better when I am sent to the corner alone so I don't bother others. :)

8. Tell us a little about Feral Hearts and what we can expect from your collaboration. What was your favorite part of working on it? Were there any major elements you really liked about it?

Going into FH, I was the weak link because I don't write short stories, don't delve into vampires, and had never collaborated. Even with that, my fellow authors are so strong that they covered my weaknesses and ran with the character I created. Designing “Jenna” -the OCD saturated nut of the bunch- was more than fun. I had a ball with her, adding little hints and secrets here and there, and giving her a life of her own. I feel like she stands as a strong character and frankly, that's all I do -develop characters and let them run amok. I like how others embraced my little monster, but that shows professionalism in their work. Again, I claim weakness, but the rest and editor Ed Cardillo are what makes FH a strong book. The voices are distinct and the action is solid. I think readers will get a favorite book out of this because of the diversity. They will at least get a shock!

9. Lycanthroship is currently in progress and utilizes some of the same authors as Feral Hearts, could you tell us a little about the premise? What makes the book unique from it’s siblings FH and Fish Tales?

It's (Lycanthroship) a looser type book...as far as the set up....I threw out a set up and said , “RUN!”. That works for me. FH was more controlled. One type isn't the better of the two...we get very different results with these and they can't be compared. I think FH with vampires, has some expected rules and twists, but with werewolves like in Lycanthroship, we get turmoil and confusions. Werewolves are just such messy beasts! What is interesting is that the authors don't replicate characters; they go in very different ways than in FH. Again, it shows that the authors are solid writers and not only think outside the box, but see no box at all! Fish Tales is a collection of frightening stories that are related ONLY by water. Lycanthroship and FH are stories set within a defined universe, a time and place in common and the characters interact.

10. As the CEO of JEA you have to make a lot of tough decisions about which authors to pick up. What are the biggest things you look for in an ideal author?

Sometimes, I can “smell” when a book is right. Sometimes, I don't know, but have a feeling. I know for a fact we have passed on several books that were fantastic and if I were to go back in time, I'd grab them. At the time, maybe a word threw me or we had something similar, or I was distracted by something else. I make mistakes. I never know how we decide something isn't right, except that we get a lot of subs and can only take a few. I have taken a few as favors, I admit that. I have taken some before because the pitch and the credentials were amazing. I'm impressed when a sub meets the exact requirements we ask for!

I took Keith Milstead as an unfinished sub, (that's unheard of) but his voice shocked me. I did ask for a few changes, but the story was rock solid. It's worth waiting for. Andy Bove was an author I asked to sub to us because his pose was virtually perfect. Sometimes I speak to an author and feel a connection and see their wit (Tabitha Baumander).

There is no ideal author. We have missed a few, but the most ideal ones I know are those with us. They are amazing. Those who want to be with us and who are....those are ideal because they believe. Mark Woods may be the most ideal. He was shy and quiet about his writing, took the swift kick in the rear I gave him, and came out selling like a monster! Anyone can say he is a great writer, but I take notice when I see that someone is and yet that person is humble. Still water runs deep...always has. I see authors boast about sales and waving hands and jumping around, and they generally don't impress me. I think the strongest writers are the ones who let their work say it all.

0 Comments

Interview With Susan Simone Author of Morning Song

4/25/2014

0 Comments

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

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.

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.

0 Comments

Interview with Jim Goforth Author of Plebs

4/17/2014

1 Comment

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.

1 Comment

Under Twisted Moon Will be Free January 18th!!!!!

1/16/2014

0 Comments

On of my favorite authors is having a free day for her novel Under a Twisted Moon this Saturday January 18th! It's a really great PNR/Urban Fantasy novel and I hope you'll take a look! Here's my review of it if you want an idea of what it's about:

Under a Twisted Moon by Susan Simone
4 of 5 stars
Recommended for: fans of Rose Madder, werewolves, drama and romance
Read from May 17 to 26, 2013 — I own a copy, read count: 1

Amelie is trapped in more ways than one.

A long time ago when she was a young girl she was forced to hide away a part of herself that she did not yet understand. She changed to make her parents happy and for a time things stopped being so hard. Eventually she grew up and now she's the wife of Rick McConnell a soldier in a secret branch of the military. It's a life she knows and understands, she loves being a teacher and while things aren't always the best she thinks she's got a handle on her life.

Nothing is out of the ordinary until the day that one of her students gets lost in the woods and the part of herself she thought she'd left in her past comes back.

Hounded by the police, reporters and her abusive husband Amelie feels like everything is falling apart. She never wanted for the monster inside her to ever get out again and now all of the things she thought were so simple are becoming far more complex. What will she do to adapt?

Amelie is a heroine that grows over the course of her ordeal. After years of abuse she's learned a rhythm that can help her avoid her husband's wrath and when it can't the ways that she can deal with the least amount of punishment. When her past is revealed however, it becomes harder and harder to hide from what she is and what she must do to have a life. She must begin to see her inner strengths and accept that she can change the place where she's been held prisoner all these years. While she's aided by some unexpected allies it is SHE who must make the changes she needs in her life.

Under a Twisted Moon is my favorite book by Simone so far because it manages to do so much with it's 490 pages. Amelie could easily have been another PNR heroine or hallmark lady of tragedy. Instead she's a real person dealing with very real problems and not all of them were generated by her husband.This sense of realism offers you a chance to see into an abusive relationship and how it destroys both people from the inside out, especially when the root of that relationship is founded in two different pasts. We never know if Rick's abusive personality comes from his top secret military service but it does seem to have increased as the violence of that role has escalated. Amelie is in a relationship with Rick because he was an escape from her abusive parents but we often seek out that same sort of relationship when we try to set out on our own.

Amelie is confronted by the monster within. A part of herself that was villianized by her parents and hidden away by Amelie to stop their abuse. This inner monster then becomes Amelie's salvation when she finds that it's one of the many things that could have offered her strength if she had held on to it instead of locking it away. The monster then is really her freedom, her sense of independence and confidence. Her parents push this side of her away and effectively neuter her spirit, making her a victim who can then be victimized by her spouse when he comes along. The cycle of abuse not only makes people into victims of the abuser it sets the scene for other abusers to take on that same role for the victim and later the potential children born of that relationship.

Amelie's inner monster is at first broken and flawed, it has been marred by her abuse and because of this she fears it as much for the pain it causes her to address it. Over time and with the guidance of others she is able to repair the abuse and it's revealed that it was the way she chose to mangle and hide away the monster that made it hurt her.

Real life victims of abuse face the same sort of flawed outlook and rationalization for their staying in the relationship. They see the parts of themselves that could be their strengths as weaknesses, things to be avoided and buried inside, they become damaged for lack of that element of their spirit and only they can bring it back to the surface and reassemble it in a healthy way.

Clearly Simone's message here is that abuse can only crush a spirit if it is unwilling to see the strengths hidden within and wield them to gain back control of self. Amelie was always strong she only needed to see it.

0 Comments

And Now for a Few Updates on My Work in The Coming Months

Interview with Catt Dahman Author of the Virgil McClendon series and CEO of JEA

Interview With Susan Simone Author of Morning Song

Interview with Jim Goforth Author of Plebs

Under Twisted Moon Will be Free January 18th!!!!!

Amanda M Lyons

Archives

Categories