Write What You Love: The Joys of Genre Hopping

Adventures / Murder-Mystery / Reading / Writing

Back in November of 2015, I blogged about The Horror of Women . It dealt with the difficulties women have getting published in the Horror Genre. Though I still struggle with the reality of that whole situation, I’d much rather write horror than what I was initially published in, erotica.

For centuries women have been viewed by the publishing world as inferior writers. For that reason they have used more masculine or gender neutral nom-de-plumes . What many people may not know is that some of their favorite female authors have also written in multiple genres.

Judy Bloom, known best for her “Fudge” series took a walk on the trampy side with her novel, “Wifey”. Anne Rice took a side trip from her witches and vampires to explore kink with the “Sleeping Beauty” trilogy.  Joyce Carol Oats wrote gothic horror, murder and crime fiction, romances, historic fiction, fantasy, realism and surrealistic novels. All these woman are successful writers who dared step outside of their comfort zones and explore beyond the old adage of “write what you know”. I’m more inclined to write what I enjoy writing and I’ve had several different loves.

As a young adult I dreamed of writing Children’s fiction and even took college level classes in Children’s Literature and Illustration to pursue that goal. Somewhere along the lines for reasons that are unclear to me, my first novel turned out to be in the Fantasy genre. Beyond what was require of me in high school and the reading of The Hobbit, fantasy’s not my thing. On an awkward dare from a friend, I began writing erotica. I never saw that one coming (pun intended). Five published novels later, I’d had enough.

Having always loved murder-mysteries, horror, and anything to do with the paranormal, that was my next genre pick. This, I feel, is where I truly belong. Witches, ghosts, and bogeymen, oh my! In 2013 I saw my first paranormal murder-mystery published and was on cloud nine until, about six months later, my publisher announced they were going out of business. Now what? I already had another novel done and in the editing process for these people. Heartbroken, but knowing this was where I wanted my writing to go, I carried on and finished the second book and began the whole query, query, query, submit, submit, submit, rejected, rejected, rejected process all over again.

Had I messed up? Should I go back into the closet and return to the erotica where I was still seeing decent sales and a monthly royalty deposit in my account? Don’t get me wrong, the erotica was fun to write and I learned a great deal about some aspects of the publishing business, but my heart and writer’s soul wasn’t into it. No. I just couldn’t do it. I’ve never felt so creative and productive and pleased with my writing since making the genre hop. With fans of the first murder-mystery contacting me at least once a month over when I’d have another book out, I realized it was time to change tactics … again. The traditional publishing Gods were not with me. I was letting everyone down. I had to do something drastic and decided to self-publish.

Because of that, I had the pleasure of being invited to five author events in 2016. I’m hoping to do at least that many for 2017. It’s rather difficult to peddle your erotic-wares in public knowing your mother’s pastor is likely to walk by and say hello or you’re going to see old friends and teachers and try to explain how you know about “those sorts of things”.  It’s called research, people. As I’ve said before, I like vampire and murder-mysteries, too, but that doesn’t mean I believe I’m a vampire or that I’m going to go out and murder someone. Sex may sell, but not in a small town family-friendly community center or a privately owned bookstore. It’s a lot easier when it’s a murder-mystery or something about haunted houses or Shadow People or urban legends.

With three paranormal novels now out and another on the way later in 2017, I may not be raking in the dough as much as I one day hope to, but I’m having a lot more fun and I’m getting much needed exposure. I’m mingling, setting up displays, doing book talks and signing and, though I write under my maiden name, I’m not really hiding behind a pen-name anymore. I’m being myself and sharing my love of the macabre.

I’d still love to put out a Children’s book, too. Maybe I will one of these days.

If you’re considering writing something different than what you’d normally do, do it! Don’t limit your imagination to a single genre. You have a slew of successful female (and male) writers who have already dared to be different. Georgette Heyer, who is better known for her romance novels, has also dabbled in detective fiction. Children’s book author Sonya Hartnett wrote a rather sexually graphic novel that created a bit of a stir. You’re in good company no matter where you decide to let your writing take you, just don’t be afraid to explore.

Taking that step could very well lead you exactly where you want to go. Start walking!

Published by: 0

Playing Favorites

Barnesville Chronicles / Book Promo / Writer's Life

Over the past year, I’ve been asked the same question a number of times by people at my book signings. They are trying to decide which book to buy and almost always have asked, “Which one is your favorite?” As the saying goes, that’s like asking me who my favorite child is.

I don’t have a favorite. Honestly, I don’t. Each book is different. Like my children, each book has its own personality, its own reason for being, its own unique and special qualities that make it who and what it is and which makes me love it in a one-of-a-kind way.

I love Secrets of the Scarecrow Moon because it was the first book I ever wrote that invoked my love of a good, old-fashioned murder-mystery with the paranormal. It also let me delve into some early American history, both factual and fictionalized, and create some answers to some pretty weird happenings from my own childhood.

I love That’s What Shadows Are Made Of because it’s more complex than the first murder-mystery and I was able to get a little more involved with the who-done-it aspect of the genre. It also let me develop some characters from “…Scarecrow Moon” a little bit more. Though the books are stand alone stories, it was nice to have another go at looking into the lives and personalities of a couple of my favorite characters from the first book.

I love No Rest For The Wicked simply because it’s a very traditional type of ghost story, but I believe by giving my ghosts a strong narrative voice instead of only seeing the hauntings from the perspective of the living, I was able to create something quite unique. It’s not often you get to peak behind the scenes with the spirits and tune in to what they are thinking, why they are doing what they’re doing, and how they feel about each other, if anything at all.

I am currently deeply in love with the as-yet-to-be-released, Dark Hollow Road which deals with something that has fascinated me from a very early age, the stories behind abandoned houses. Around here, I drive by these kinds of places every single day. Why is that old place empty? What happened to the last people who lived there? Why doesn’t anyone tear it down or fix it up? Of course, being a horror writer, my mind automatically goes to the most horrific and ghastly events imaginable. I also love the characters and consider this the weirdest book I’ve ever written.

Those are the best answers I can give to the question of which of my books is my favorite. The only other option I can offer is to tell you to go to my website and check things out, read the reviews and the free samples offered on Amazon, and watch the book trailers that are posted. Decide for yourself which book most interests you and go from there. If you like that one, try another, and another.

 

Published by: 2

I’ve Got This Covered

Childhood fantasies / Writer's Life

I truly believe in the power of positive thinking and that visualization, in regards to your life and your dreams, works to make those things go in the direction you want them to. I have done it many times with many aspects of my life.

As a child dreaming of becoming a writer, I would draw and attach covers to my little story books. I’d make them as much like real life books as a ten-year-old could. Thanks to the foresight of my father, I still have a couple of those in my archives.

dscf3129 dscf3130

My first novel, The Pride, was not only given a cover, but I did some drawings of the characters, too.

dscf3128

Grolick and Rhyvek from “The Pride”

Apart from a handful of people reading it, it’s never seen the light of any sort of publishing world. I sent it out to a dozen or so places, but all rejected it. One place suggested I re-write it as a screenplay, which I rejected because, frankly, I didn’t have a clue then, nor do I have one now, how to do that nor did I have any interest doing that. It was tucked away and lost in the fast-moving madness of technology for many years until this past summer.

When the erotica titles came into being they too were given my version of a cover. I kept them pretty tame. The publisher had other ideas that I wasn’t always pleased with, but, who was I to quibble? I was grateful to have any say at all in how the cover looked given what I have since learned about how the publishing business works. The covers finally decided on didn’t matter so much as the ones I used to visualize and project my dreams on.

You need to see the end product as clearly as you can. Hold it in your hands. Flip the pages and read the front matter as if it’s not just your personal prototype, but a real published work. These facsimiles made it real in my head and eventually they would become real to everyone else.

I’ve done the same with every horror novel I’ve written, too. I have the vision of a cover in my head, create it in the most basic form, and attached it to the 2nd draft prototype I give to my Beta Reader(s). It’s my mental way of saying the work is done, even though it’s really not. I’ll be reading through that thing at least 2-3 more times. Even though I self-publish, the prototype cover seldom is the same as what we finally decide on putting out there.

dscf3126        shadows_cover

Inadvertently my graphics guy (aka The Husband) usually creates an image I like just as much, if not more, and we work on it until we come up with something we’re both happy with – most of the time. The exception is No Rest For The Wicked. The vision I had for that cover was just too strong for me to let go of or allow him to fiddle with too much. Though not identical to the prototype cover. They both feature the same picture of the same house.

Earlier this week I worked up a cover for Dark Hollow Road.

dhr_protocover

As I was returning from the printer with it attached to its 140,000+ word tome, I felt a great sense of closure. Once that cover is in place, a switch flips in my head that says it’s okay to stop thinking about this one for a while. It’s a bit like hitting the snooze alarm at 5:30 in the morning, a very long snooze alarm. For the next 3-6 months, the details of Dark Hollow Road will slowly fade from my mind. As they fade, other characters and their stories will start to come into focus.

In the meantime, I feel like I’m in some sort of Twilight Zone Limbo. Though the next book is in my brain somewhere, it’s being very elusive and what a weird feeling it is to not be actively working on a new manuscript.

C’mon, Nell! Get your act together and help me make sense of The Witch’s Backbone. (hint-hint)

Published by: 1

Author Appearances / Book Promo / Book Signing

Author Appearance & Book Signing

What would October be without a good, old-fashioned haunting?

Welcome to Greenbrier Plantation where every ghost has a story, but not all of them want it told. I’ll be at RIVEROW BOOKSHOP in Owego, NY TONIGHT from 6-8pm with my newest horror novel No Rest For The Wicked, along with my other two tales of the paranormal, Secrets of the Scarecrow Moon and That’s What Shadows Are Made Of, for purchase and signing.

I hope you’ll stop by and join me for a spell and a cookie.

 

 

Published by: 2

Horror Movies / Movie Reviews

Movie Review – Hunger (2009)

Movie Review – Hunger (2009) – Rated R – Directed by Steven Hentges. Starring: Lori Heuring, Linden Ashby, Joe Egander, Lea Kohl, Julian Rojas, and Bjorn Johnson

Five strangers wake up in an isolated cave with no memories of how they got there. With the discovery of large barrels of water, a makeshift toilet, and a scalpel but absolutely no food, they soon realize they are part of an experiment in survival, murder, and cannibalism.  Their captor watches from a series of hidden cameras, taking notes on every move they make. Through flashbacks we learn he survived an automobile accident as a child by eating the flesh from his mother’s corpse. This seems to be his motivation.

With the exception of the cave’s stone walls, that reminded me of one of my favorite childhood shows, Land Of The Lost, this movie was surprisingly good. The acting was decent and the plot kept me more than interested with some twists popping up that I didn’t see coming. Suspense built slowly but surely, in pace with the rising tension between the characters, their environment, and their kidnapper all the way to the very end.

The five hostage characters, three men and two women, were somewhat generic; Doctor, Voice of Reason, Paranoid-Whiner, Trouble Maker, and Outsider.  Their psychopathic captor remains calm, cool, and totally enthralled in the suffering of his subjects, like a cat watching the half dead mice its caught, but isn’t quite ready to put out of their misery just yet.

“Hunger” is one of the better low-budget (at only $625,000) movies I’ve seen on Chiller. It was part of the Fangoria FrightFest series which tend to be not so frightening and all too often, not so good. All things considered, not bad, not bad at all. Not GREAT, but certainly a nice little bite of horror to keep a person entertained on a dark and stormy October night.

3 out of 5 Ravens

Published by: 0

Horror Movies / Movie Reviews

Movie Review – The VVitch

Movie Review – The VVitch (2015) Directed by Robert Eggers – Rated R – Starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, and Kate Dickie.

As the 7x-great grand niece of Rebecca (Towne) Nurse, the 71-year-old woman accused and executed in Salem Village for witchcraft in 1692, movies and books dealing with the topic of witchcraft in New England hold a certain appeal to me.  The trailer looked promising anyway.

We begin with William (no surname), his wife Katherine, and their four children being banned from their Puritan village for reasons I was completely unclear about. They leave the village and go off and set up their own homestead some miles away. Their 5th child, a son named Samuel, is born shortly after and while under their daughter Thomasin’s watch, goes missing. It’s assumed instantly that the Witch of the Woods had taken him though William insists it was a wolf despite the unusual circumstances.  Next, their eldest son, Caleb, also gets lost in the woods only to return ‘bewitched’. The blame turns towards Thomasin when her youngest siblings, twins Mercy and Jonas, accuse her of being a witch. Thomasin returns the favor by accusing them based on the way they talk to and play with the family’s black Billy goat, Black Phillip.

This film is a very dark, both literally and figuratively. In that way it works well to convey an authentic atmosphere of what it may have been like to live during these earliest days of American history. You really feel that sense of doom, gloom, poverty, hardship, and religious fear. During the all too brief hours of daylight, hope tries to return, but with little success. The darkness comes again, night after night, and the light simply can’t penetrate the curse that hangs over the heads of this family and the evil lurking in the woods nearby.

What did not work was the use of the Old English dialogue and the tendencies of the characters to mumble their lines. It made the conversations difficult to follow and that’s why I was so unclear about why the family had been banned in the first place. There is indeed a witch in the woods, but there’s no kind of back story or understanding or rumors expressed by anyone along with way to indicate where she came from or who she is or why the family thinks she’s there to begin with; at least none that I caught perhaps due to the aforementioned dialogue. A lot of what happens goes unexplained like what happened to Caleb while he was with The Witch, why or how the twins communicate with Black Phillip, and Katherine’s encounter (dream??) involving a baby turned raven. At least Thomasin’s transformation at the end sort of made sense. Sort of.

It all left me scratching my head, feeling like I’d missed some sort of vital element to what was going on.

It wasn’t horrible. It wasn’t great. It was entertaining and atmospheric.

3 out of 5 Ravens

Published by: 0

Adventures / Horror / Reading

In Search Of… Horror.

Visited our local *Buns & Noodles store this afternoon. As we wandered the aisles I came to realize something I’d never noticed before and frankly, I’m annoyed.

We always seem to gravitate towards the YA section first so Jim can see if Cousin Scott has come out with something new we’re unaware of. He’s sneaky like that. This time I wanted to check out Book #3 of the Peculiar Children series. I’m in the middle of #2. It’s only available in hardcover now so I’m going to wait for the paperback. Sorry, I’m cheap like that.

After the Young Adult section, we’re on our own. They have the Children’s section, the Romance, and the Sci-Fi sections. There’s History, Mysteries, Cooking, and Self-Help. Manga and Graphic Novels have their own section as does Religion, Travel, and Crafting.  All of these are nicely labeled with big, bold signs over the tops of the shelves making them oh-so-easy to find. What they do NOT have is Horror section. WTF B&N!? If I want to find Horror I have to search through the ‘Fiction & Literature’ section. How much more vague can you possibly get?

I’m aware of a good many Horror novelists, but I sure as heck don’t know them all and those that I am most aware of, like Stephen King, Clive Barker, Dean Koontz, and Peter Straub have been around for decades and are maybe considered a bit Old School. If I’m looking for something or someone new, I’m rather clueless. Directing me to the ‘Fiction & Literature’ section isn’t going to be very helpful. And for as much as I love to browse a bookstore or library, damn it, at least let me be in the section I am most interested in so that I know that every book I pick up is a Horror contender.

I ended up getting Stephen King’s “Doctor Sleep” because I’ve heard of him, know he’s good, and know he mostly sticks to the Horror genre with a few exceptions. I’d love to have given a lesser-known writer some business, but pft … damned if I have the time to stand there reading every single back cover of very single book that looks like it might be what I’m interested in.

*Barnes & Noble and all you other bookstores, big and small, can you PLEASE create a Horror Section? I and so many others like me would truly appreciate it.

Published by: 2

Author Appearances / Barnesville Chronicles / Murder-Mystery

Author Appearance & Book Signing

Witches, Shadow People, and Ghosts, oh my! Just in time for Halloween!

On Friday, October 7th, I’ll be at Riverow Books for the final 2016 First Friday Artwalk event in Owego, NY from 6-8pm. I’ll have hot of the press copies of my latest horror release, No Rest For The Wicked along with copies of my murder-mystery titles, Secrets of the Scarecrow Moon and That’s What Shadows Are Made Of.

We’ll be signing, selling, and chatting it up for two hours and we may or may not have cookies.

Hope to see you there!

Published by: 2