Winner of the MS "Hell in a Hand Basket" Linda Jacobi, of Nashua, New Hampshire
From left to right: Pembroke, NH residents Gifford Scanlon and Kayla Scanlon, who was dressed as Saya Takagi.
Zombie on a leash.
Author Kristi Petersen Schoonover posing with Star Wars' characters.
The NEHW tables.
A convention-goer checking out a book.
Shea dressed as Vriska from Homestuck.
Sian Thomas, an intern at Dandelion Studios.
It became official on Saturday, January 18, the New England Horror Writers’ first anthology is now a Stoker nominated collection.
Epitaphs is on the final ballot of the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Awards for works published in 2011. The Awards will be presented at a gala banquet on Saturday, March 31, at the World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City, Utah.
“It’s a great achievement for the NEHW to have its first anthology get this far,” Carbone, who is the editor of the collection, said on her Facebook page. “We all put in a tremendous amount of work in a short time to get this off the ground and I want to again thank the board and all the contributors.”
To purchase a copy of Epitaphs, click here.
Julia Jones at the Liberty Hotel (Photo by Jason Harris)
Actress Julia Jones has dabbled in television, movies, and plays, and this week she was in her home state of Massachusetts promoting the DVD release of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1 (2011).
Jones, 31, spent Thursday at the Liberty Hotel in Boston talking about the series. The latest chapter debuts on DVD this Saturday, Feb. 10. Jones portrays Leah Clearwater, who first appears in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010), the third movie in the popular series.
When Jones got the initial phone call to audition for the movie, she never thought about not doing the movie. She considers the series a “cultural phenomenon.”
Her friend, who is a huge Twilight fan, thought she would be perfect for the character of Leah Clearwater and this helped her with the “daunting” task of bringing the character to the big screen, Jones said.
“When you are playing a character based on a book, let alone a widely popular book, you are playing a character that belongs to the world.”
Jones was aware of the “Twihards,” who are die hard fans of Twilight, when filming the movies.
“One of the most unique parts of the experience is just being part of something that so many people feel so passionate about, and that’s an energy you take with you. It’s pretty powerful.”
The Twilight fans’ excitement “is palpable,” Jones said. “There is no way to know what you’re getting into because it’s such a unique thing.”
Jones recounted some fan stories. Recently, she started tweeting and a fan sent a picture of her daughter dressed up as Jones’ character.
“She was so cute,” Jones said about the fan’s daughter.
The craziest costume she has seen was a fan who dressed up in a nightgown and had bruises and feathers all over her. The fan was dressed as the ‘Morning After’ Bella from Breaking Dawn, Part 1.
Jones has been on the television series ER, and has an upcoming appearance on the series In Plain Sight.
“I got to do stunts and work with guns,” Jones said about her In Plain Sight experience. “It was really fun.”
ER was executive produced by John Wells and Jones would love to be on his new show, Southland.
“It would be so exciting to do anything that he’s involved with,” Jones said about Wells.
Jones said there are a lot of good shows on cable like The Killing and An American Horror Story, which are two series she would like to act on, she said.
Along with being on the silver and small screens, she has also performed on the stage. Jones likes “dabbling” in film, television, and the theatre, and it is one of her favorite parts, she said. She considers these separate venues like “having different jobs.”
“I think part of the reason I’m an actor because I couldn’t see myself going to a desk every day and doing the same sort of thing.”
Jones would love to work with actresses Jessica Lange (The Vow) and Marion Cotillard (Inception, Contagion) and directors Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction), Terrance Malick (The Thin Red Line), and Nick Cassavetes (John Q).
She met with Malick a few times when she was auditioning for a role in The New World and thinks “he’s magical” and considers Cassavetes an “actor’s director.”
Jones was “impressed to death” with Tarantino when she was working on Larry Bishop’s Hell Ride, for which Tarantino was the executive producer.
“I would do anything to work with him as a director,” Jones said about Tarantino. “Hell Ride was a trip.”
She considers her time in the three Twilight movies a “rewarding” experience.
“It’s kind of lucky in a way to be a supporting character in the franchise.”
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2 comes out in theaters in November.
On Saturday, Feb. 18, members of the New England Horror Writers’ organization will be appearing at the Queen City Kamikaze Anime and Video Game convention at the Manchester Memorial High School in Manchester, New Hampshire.
The NEHW will have three tables where authors’ Stacey Longo, Rob Watts, Tracey L. Carbone, K. Allen Wood, Kristi Petersen Schoonover, Alyn Day, and Scott Goudsward will be selling and signing their books. The Demonhunter a.k.a. Nathan Schoonover will be on hand to talk about being a paranormal investigator for almost 20 years.
Some of these members will be on two panels: Trends in Horror: From the Apocalypse to Zombies: Where is Horror Heading? and Women in Horror. These panels will happen from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. More information about who will be on these two panels will be announced soon.
The convention starts at 10 a.m. and runs into 7 p.m. For more information about the convention, click here.
Author and New England Horror Writer member, Craig D.B. Patton’s story, “Aftershocks,” appears in the new anthology, Future Imperfect: The Best of Wiley Writers 2. The collection is edited by Angel McCoy.
According to Patton’s website, the anthology “contains the best science fiction, horror, and fantasy work published by Wily Writers in 2010.”
Find out about the Wiley Writers on its website.
Future Imperfect can be ordered from Amazon. The e-book version of the book can be purchased through Smashwords.
The Scary Scribes' Skeleton
Scary Scribes, a new podcast created by author Kristi Petersen Schoonover to share horror stories written by horror writers, airs this Sunday at 6 p.m. on the Paranormal Eh? Radio Network.
Author Stacey Longo will be Schoonover’s first guest on this new monthly podcast. They will be discussing Longo’s “People Person,” which was published in the anthology, Dark Things IV, published by Pill Hill Press. Besides sharing the writer’s story, Schoonover will talk with Longo about the idea behind the tale.
According to Schoonover’s website, the thing that “will make Scary Scribes a bit different is it won’t be just an interview; listeners will get to hear some of the writer’s work first — in most cases, a complete short story.”
The new podcast is a collaborative effort with Canada-based Paranormal, Eh? radio’s Terry Konig. Scary Scribes will be broadcast on the last Sunday of every month. For more information, check out the podcast’s website. There is also a Facebook page for Scary Scribes.
Both Schoonover and Longo are members of the New England Horror Writers’ organization.
The second annual Author’s Night at the Zorvino Vineyards in New Hampshire on Jan. 20 features four New England Horror Writers’ members, who will be signing their books, at the event.
The members are Tracy Carbone, Roxanne Dent, Karen Dent, John M. Mcllveen, and Scott Goudsward.
There will be copies of the first NEHW anthology, Epitaphs, which was released last October and debuted at Anthocon in November, will be available at the event. The anthology was edited by Carbone and features stories by Roxanne Dent, Mcllveen, and Goudsward.
According to the vineyards’ website, there will be over 75 New England authors at this charity event that goes from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. This event will be “partnering with five New Hampshire Schools to help bring the joy of reading to all.” This year’s participating beneficiaries are the Timberlane District Elementary Schools. Each school, Pollard School (Plaistow), Atkinson Academy, Danville Elementary, Sandown Central, and Sandown North, will be holding a raffle, where the money generated will go towards reading in the classroom, the website said.
Everyone who signs up for the event on Zorvino’s website will be entered into a chance to win a “Private Wine Tasting and Tour For Up To 20 People,” which includes a cheese and cracker platter and a tour of their facility. Just sign up online, print your ticket and bring it to the book signing to be entered.
The event is free and there will be a cash bar at the event. The winery will be open all night for complimentary wine tasting as well. The vineyard wants people to be aware to bring cash since the authors won’t have access to a credit card machine.
For a list of the authors attending the event and their websites, check out Zorvino’s website. The vineyard is located at 226 Main St. in Sandown, New Hampshire.
The 2011 Steampunk Bizarre Exhibit at the Mark Twain House and Museum ends Sunday, Jan. 15 with a showing of Stream Driven: The Movie, and a panel of artists talking about their work being shown in the exhibit from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. The event is free and refreshments will be provided. Musician Eli August will be performing during this event as well.
A brochure at the event describes Steampunk as “an art movement inspired by great literature writers such as Mark Twain, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and Mary Shelley to name a few.”
The exhibit is curated by local Connecticut artist Joey Marsocci, proprietor of Dr. Grymm Laboratories to bring together 21 international Steampunk artists of all styles and mediums to celebrate one of the greatest writers and ‘inventors’ of time travel, Mark Twain,” the brochure said.
According to the Mark Twain House and museum website, “Dr. Grymm and the gang will offer one last chance to socialize among brass bolts, bubbling brain tanks, fantasy paintings, fantastic weaponry and backpack-borne Tom Sawyer fence-painting gear, all inspired by quotations from America’s bad boy author — you have to see it to believe it.”
The website quotes Steampunk aficionado Miss Kitty that “Steampunk is the future as imagined through the eyes of the past. It is mechanical gears and boilers, dirtiness mixed with the shininess of brass and copper with the deep red of cherrywood. It is a time for tea and gadgets, airships and ether.”
Mark Twain made out of Legos
"Fish Boy"
"Steampunk Zombies"
"Catherinette Rings - Canada"
Steampunk Boba Fett
"The Edgar Allen Poe Nightmare Inducer"
"Game Changer"
"Rumination"
For more information, check out the Mark Twain House and Musuem website.
The Horror Writers Association has announced the 2012 recipients of its Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Rick Hautala (photo courtesy of his Facebook page)
The two recipients of the award are NEHW member Rick Hautala and Joe R. Lansdale.
Hautala and Lansdale join previous recipients such as Stephen King, F. Paul Wilson, John Carpenter, Thomas Harris (no relation), Anne Rice, Charles L. Grant, Harlan Ellison, and Ramsey Campbell to name a just a few of the people who have been honored with this award.
Hautala, who recently had his first novel, Moondeath, rereleased by Evil Jester Press and is in the NEHW’s first anthology, Epitaphs, released last year, said that receiving the award was “unexpected.”
Lansdale’s novel, All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky and the e-book, Bullets and Fire, were released last year. His newest book, Edge of Dark Water, comes out March 25.
“Truthfully, I am more humbled than excited by it,” Hautala said. “There are so many other writers who, I think, are much more deserving. I feel like Carrie White at the prom.”
Lansdale “was surprised” and “maybe even shocked” when he heard about the honor, he said.
Joe R. Lansdale (photo courtesy of his Facebook page)
“It’s an honor to be given this award along with Rick,” Lansdale said.
According to the HWA website, “the Lifetime Achievement Award is the most prestigious of all awards presented by the HWA. It does not merely honor the superior achievement embodied in a single work. Instead, it is an acknowledgement of superior achievement in an entire career.”
A committee chooses the recipients for the lifetime achievement award instead of it being voted on by the entire associations’ active membership, the website said. By having an committee, it “prevents unseemly competition” and the “impression that there are any losers in this category.”
Hautala said, he will “accept the award with humility and — yes, a measure of pride.”
He feels better “sharing the stage with Lansdale, who has been a great friend” for many years.
“As Harlan Ellison says: ’Becoming a writer is easy. It’s staying a writer that’s hard.’ So this award should be an inspiration to young and aspiring writers everywhere … If you stick around long enough, eventually they have to notice you.” Hautala said.
Lansdale agrees with Hautala’s sentiment about having to be noticed when “you have been around long enough.”
“… I like to think we’ve contributed to the field of horror and dark suspense, and that there’s someone out there who became a fan, or writer of horror, because of something I wrote, or something Rick wrote,” Lansdale said. “Again, it’s a great and respected honor.”
The New Year is here. Have you started doing your New Year’s resolution or has it already fallen to the wayside? If you are still struggling with staying with your resolution then here is a link to an article on the Tipb website mentioning a few apps like Evernote and Weight Watchers mobile to help with those resolutions.
If you are looking for blogs to follow as one of your resolutions, NEHW member Rob Watts has a few suggestions of blogs to follow in an entry on his site. One of those suggestions is this site. I do thank him for the mention.
Recently, Watts was on the Sci-fi Saturday Night program discussing his book Huldufolk, Iceland, Cedar Grove and his Traffic Lights Soundtrack album.
His novel, Huldufolk, is a horror story set in both Iceland and Massachusetts and was published by Ocean View Press. According to the program’s website, Watts is also “a musician and songwriter for The Traffic Lights, an Icelandic Trance band whose music is integral to the book.”
You can download the podcast here: http://www.scifisaturdaynight.com/?p=5273.
Watts has also written album reviews and conducted interviews with musicians which can be found on the Ocean View Press website.
