Aug 20 2013

Rock & Shock to Include Performances by Danzig and Twiztid, Plus a Special Screening/Q&A with Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes

MassConcerts is pleased to announce that Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes, Danzig and Twiztid, along with a myriad of very special guests, will be taking the Worcester Palladium stage as part of the 10^th annual Rock & Shock event!

On Friday, October 18, Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes will be bring their famed characters Jay and Silent Bob, to Rock & Shock with a viewing of their new animated film – Jay and Silent Bob’s Super Groovy Cartoon Movie. Having brought the characters to life in several of Smith’s renowned films such as Clerks, Mallrats and Dogma, the legendary best buds from Jersey are back to dispense weed and wisdom, this time in cartoon form. Audiences will have the opportunity to watch the new movie with its stars and then participate in rip-roaring Q&A and podcast recording afterwards. Both general admission and VIP tickets will be available for this event.

On Saturday, October 19, legendary rockers Danzig will continue celebrating the 25th anniversary of their 1988 debut album, Danzig, with a performance at Rock & Shock. Danzig’s former Misfits bandmate Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein will be joining him as well as special guests Otep, Butcher Babies, Texas Hippie Coalition, Stolen Babies, New Years Day and A Pale Horse Named Death.

Sunday, October 20, the convention wraps up when the terrifying twosome Twiztid take the stage alongside Blaze, Madchild and Aqualeo. Bringing along their patented brand of sinister, painted faces and wicked lyrics, the horror-core rap group will wrap up this year’s festivities with what is guaranteed to be an unforgettable performance.

Tickets for both the convention and the live performances will go on sale this Friday at 10am through the Palladium box office, tickets.com and select FYE stores, while convention only tickets will be available at Ticketmaster, and both the DCU Center and Palladium box offices. For complete event and ticket details, visit http://www.rockandshock.com.

Previously announced Rock & Shock 2013 guests include Robert Englund (Nightmare on Elm Street, Hatchet), Robert Patrick (Terminator 2: Judgment Day, The X-Files), Michael Rooker (The Walking Dead, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer), John Ratzenberger (Cheers, Motel Hell), Katharine Isabelle (Ginger Snaps, American Mary), Jordan Ladd (Cabin Fever, Death Proof), Lew Temple (The Devil’s Rejects, The Walking Dead) and IronE Singleton (The Walking Dead) .

Rock and Shock is a three day horror and music convention featuring celebrity signings, movie screenings, vendors, concerts, panels and more. Now in its tenth year, Rock & Shock has played host some of the biggest names in horror and rock. This year’s event will be taking place October 18-20, 2013 in downtown Worcester, Massachusetts at the DCU Center (http://www.dcucenter.com) and The Worcester Palladium (http://thepalladium.net). Tickets are available online at http://www.rockandshock.com.

Aug 20 2013

NecronomiCon Providence Starts Thursday

The H.P. Lovecraft inspired convention officially starts Thursday, but there have been events going on all week and some a month. These events include movies and art shows. According to organizers, the convention happens in eight different locations.

Some of the movies and short films being shown include The Ancestor, The Thing on the Doorstep, and Dagon. Movies are being shown at the Black Box theater, located at 95 Empire Street and the RISD Auditorium, located at 7 Canal Walk, and they have already begun being shown. Click here for the movies and the times and theaters they are being shown at.

The convention will also have panels. Panelists include filmmakers and authors such as Stuart Gordon, C.J. Henderson, and Darrell Schweitzer. A complete list can be found here.

Check out the convention’s website here for details on what’s happening and where.

The Providence Journal has written about the convention. You can read the article here.

Aug 16 2013

Getting to Know Author Georgina Morales

By Jason Harris

Georgina Morales started writing when she was nine.

“I wrote poems in Spanish, mostly, and never thought I was any good. I got busy building a career in medicine and forgot about writing for 15 years. After some insistence from my husband, I started writing fiction 4 years ago, and I’ve never been happier.”

Since she started writing fiction, Morales has published a horror novella, Perpetual Night, which has been described as YA even though the subject matter may be a bit dark. She has also written, “Francis,” a short story published in the horror anthology, Isolation. Her most recent published work, “Broken Promises,” appears this month in Heater magazine. It’s her first endeavor into crime/mystery writing, which she finds exciting.

Morales’ not resting on her laurels, but instead is working on two short stories at the moment. The first one, “Tamam Shud,” is a noir mystery scheduled to be part of the anthology, Lucky 13, which will be published by Padwolf Publishing. It’s about an old man who becomes disenchanted with life after the death of his wife, and his kids pay the price.

There is an unnamed horror story Morales is working on for a themed anthology that she won’t name so as not to jinx it, she said.

She is also working on a paranormal mystery, Deliverance. “I’ve been working on it for some time now, but it is still far from completed, thanks to my recent commitments to write other pieces.”

Morales is grateful for the commitments, even though they have kept her from working on her mystery.

She does have a few habits when she starts writing.

“I usually sit at my desk in my office about 10 or 11 a.m., I answer emails and play—I mean, promote—on Facebook for about an hour, and from then on, I’m a mean writing machine.”

She stops around 3 or 4 p.m. so she can go pick up her girls from school. She tries to stick with this schedule because she finds that without specific goals she’s less productive. The use of sticky notes reminds her of these goals, she said.

Morales belongs to a critique group and must post at least 1500 words every Sunday, which is what keeps her “ass in line” and “very productive.”

“Deadlines are gold for me.”

The best advice she has received covers writing and editing.

“Don’t edit while you write or you’ll never move forward. When you write, write. When you edit, edit. I don’t remember where I read that but it speaks to the quintessential need of a writer. We want our words to be gold from the moment we set them on paper. If the sentence is not perfect, if the feeling is absent, if the atmosphere is not exactly what we envision, we don’t move forward. We tend to correct ourselves every second, but the truth is that all first manuscripts are shit.”

She doesn’t use the word “shit” for shock value, but that first manuscripts are that, Morales said. “This is why writers edit and edit.”

As writers should, Morales reads whenever she isn’t writing or taking care of her family.

“I read a lot of horror and try to read at least a couple of new or modern voices in the genre every other month.”

For the last year, she’s been focusing on the true classics of horror, but not Bram Stoker or Mary Shelley. She’s been reading Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Daphne Du Maurier, Algernon Blackwood, and Thomas Ligotti.

Morales hates procedurals and isn’t quite a fantasy girl, but is trying the Harry Potter series. She isn’t above the Twilight books, but not the movies, she said.

“I grew up reading Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King, so you will see a lot of their influence in my stories. However, I love Latin American literature. I strive to achieve a personal style similar to the poetic prose of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or the bluntness of Paz, the yearning of Federica Garcia Lorca. All of these great voices have formed me, and that is why my style is different from other horror writers. Or at least, it will be; one never stops to improve.”

She doesn’t have any promotional events coming up, but is working to change that. Until that happens, visit her blog, her Goodreads page, her Facebook page, or her Amazon page.

Editor’s Note:

Here is Heater magazine’s Facebook page.

Aug 13 2013

‘Cheers’ Star and the Voice of Pixar Coming to Rock & Shock 2013

Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name and sometimes you want to go to where horror and music reign supreme. Luckily at Rock & Shock 2013 you’ll get a little bit of both! We are proud to announce that Cheers star John Ratzenberger will be among our many celebrity guests at this year’s event!

TV audiences will remember Ratzenberger’s face from the seminal television classic Cheers, while movie fans will recognize his voice from all of the Pixar movies. As the only actor to appear in all of Pixar’s film, Ratzenberger was most notably heard as the voice of Hamm the Piggy Bank in the Toy Story films, The Abominable Snowman in Monsters Inc. and most recently as Gordon the Guard in Brave. Ratzenberger has also appeared on screen in such films as Motel Hell, House 2: The Second Story, The Empire Strikes Back and Superman 1 & 2.

Ratzenberger will be joining previously announced Rock & Shock guests Robert Patrick (Terminator 2: Judgment Day, The X-Files), Robert Englund (Nightmare on Elm Street, Hatchet), Michael Rooker (The Walking Dead, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer), Katharine Isabelle (Ginger Snaps, American Mary), Jordan Ladd (Cabin Fever, Death Proof), Lew Temple (The Devil’s Rejects, The Walking Dead) and IronE Singleton (The Walking Dead) . For a complete list of attendees and up-to-the-minute announcements, visit http://www.rockandshock.com.

Rock and Shock is a three-day horror and music convention featuring celebrity signings, movie screenings, concerts, panels and more. Now in its tenth year, Rock & Shock has played host some of the biggest names in horror and rock. This year’s event will be taking place October 18-20, 2013 in downtown Worcester, Massachusetts at the DCU Center (http://www.dcucenter.com) and the Worcester Palladium (http://thepalladium.net). Tickets are available online at rockandshock.com.

Aug 12 2013

‘The Tenth Witness,’ An Intriguing and Heartbreaking Mystery

By Stacey Longo

Leonard Rosen’s The Tenth Witness is an intriguing and at times heartbreaking mystery surrounding the family history of both our protagonist, Henri Poincaré, and his new girlfriend, Liesel Kraus. The book takes us through the twisted path of their relationship and Henri’s search to learn more about the life of a man he considered an uncle, Isaac Kahane.

The Kraus family will make you as uncomfortable as they make Henri. With an estate populated with artifacts stripped from history, references to “superior bloodlines,” and a warehouse in Dachau, there’s enough here to make any visitor uneasy. When Henri attends Isaac Kahane’s funeral and learns a little more about Isaac’s years during the Holocaust, he decides to investigate. The problem? Isaac was once forced to work as a prisoner under horrific conditions at a steel mill owned by Otto Kraus, Liesel’s father.

As Henri digs deeper into the history of what really went on Drütte, a steel mill and concentration camp, he finds a record of slave labor and cruelty. This goes against an affidavit published in Otto Kraus’s biography, signed by ten Drütte prisoners, affirming that Kraus was a good man. Henri begins tracking down these witnesses, only to find that they are dying off at an alarming rate. Evidence that Nazi Germany was still flourishing during the late ‘70s arises throughout the novel, and the reader can empathize with Henri’s despair and disgust as he recognizes the evil in his fellow man and even himself.

The Tenth Witness will capture your curiosity from the first page. A captivating, compelling mystery, you’ll find yourself riding shotgun with Henri Poincaré, a bit afraid of what you might find out next, but unable to stop until you unearth the whole truth, no matter how disturbing.

Editor’s Note:

The Tenth Witness is scheduled to be released on Sept. 13.

Aug 11 2013

Issue #2 of ‘The Uninvited’ is Available

The second issue of The Uninvited magazine is now available. It contains the stories “Chokepoint” by Jonathan Maberry (Rot & Ruin) and “Double Helix” by Amy Grech (Blanket of White). Click here to download the issue.

Aug 9 2013

Getting to Know Author Rachelle Bronson

By Jason Harris

Author Rachelle Bronson started writing when she was very young. It was around the age of 6 or 7.

“I would fill those school notebooks full of drawings and stories. I’ve always had a good imagination, and seeing those ideas turn into reality struck a chord.”

Her newest work, Frozen, was released last month.

“It’s about a group of scientists that trek high into the Himalayas to dissect a newly discovered breed of humanoid,” Bronson said about Frozen.

Her previous story, “Lulabelle,” was published in the Hersham Horror Books anthology, Alt-Zombie. This collection includes stories by William Meikle and Joe McKinney.

The story was shortened from its original version, Bronson said. She would like to see the whole story published someday.

Before she begins writing, she does a lot of research. She also makes sure to have well-developed character and plot outlines before beginning.

“I like to know where I’m going, which helps me avoid writer’s block. Many times however, the characters and story take on a life of their own and always surprise me in the end.”

Her published short stories aren’t the only works she has written. She has a few unpublished novels, Legends: The Bleeding Door, which will launch next year, and Tarzwell, which doesn’t have a release date at the moment.

Her first novel, Legends: The Bleeding Door, is based on an urban legend she researched and turned into fiction. It was conceived when she was in high school. Legends is what got her involved with Invictus Films, who wanted in 2007 to turn the novels into a television series after her pitch was received favorably by NBC and HBO. Unfortunately, the recession in 2008 killed the project’s momentum.

“I reacquired the rights in 2012 and am planning to launch the series, as intended, in book format, with The Bleeding Door being the first of a series of 13.”

Outside of the Legends series, she also has her novel, Tarzwell, which takes place between 1992 and 1996 and is based on actual events.

“Talk about a confusing time, going through high school and living in a house that has paranormal activity. It was a tough time for everyone. My mother was ill, my father was forced to work out of town to support us, so I was there many times alone, taking care of my mother, dealing with teenage angst and spirits. I never believed in ghosts until I lived in this house. It changed me profoundly.”

She considers living in the house “a major learning experience” and considers herself stronger for it.

“It definitely reminds you that life is about mind, body and spirit.”

The best writing advice she has ever received is to “never quit.”

“There are many obstacles to becoming published. But if you want it bad enough, hone your craft, lick your wounds and just keep going. Oh, and get yourself a good editor. They can make or break you.”

She is currently the chief reviewer at The Novel Blog website, which was conceived in 2008 by Daniel Boucher and Peter Mark May. She joined shortly after that and they have had a blast publishing news, reviews and interviews of authors ever since, she said.

“We wanted to do a book review site, one that included both up-and-comers and established authors to help get out awareness of their works and grow the community. It also gives authors of other genres that may not be in the fiction literary mainstream a place to get the word out about their work.”

Bronson doesn’t have a website, but she hopes to remedy that by the end of this year or the beginning of 2014. She does have a Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/?ref=tn_tnmn#!/rachelle.bronson.9?fref=ts) and a Twitter account (@rachellegagne).

She and her publisher, Hive Collective, are looking at different promotional opportunities for her, which she will announce on her two social media accounts.

She loves reading the classic authors such as Stephen King, Agatha Christie, Robin Cook, and H.P. Lovecraft. She also has had great pleasure exploring new writers such as Kane Gilmour, Daniel Palmer, JT Ellison, Jonathan Maberry and Peter Mark May.

Bronson looks up to all writers, who stay true to themselves and their craft, but doesn’t want to emulate them.

“I want to be me, being original and trusting in my own pool of knowledge and creativity in order to produce something new, entertaining and inspiring to horror fans everywhere.”

Aug 6 2013

Freddy Krueger Himself, Robert Englund, Slashing His Way Back to Worcester for Rock & Shock 2013

Rock & Shock may be a dream come true for horror and music lovers alike but this year, the nightmare returns. We are pleased to officially announce that Freddy Krueger himself, Robert Englund, will be slashing his way back to Worcester, Massachusetts as part of Rock & Shock’s 10^th annual event.

Englund is bestknown for the groundbreaking horror role of Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street series; having brought the role to life nine times on the big screen as well as in countless TV, video game and even musical performances. In addition to his iconic role, he has most notably appeared in the films Eaten Alive (1977), Strangeland (1998), Urban Legend (1998), Hatchet (2006), Behind the Mask: the Rise and Fall of Leslie Vernon (2006), Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer (2007) and Inkubus (2011), which held it’s premiere at Rock & Shock two years ago. His latest work,Sanitarium, recently won the Audience Award at the San Antonio Film Festival.

Englund will be joining previously announced Rock & Shock guests Robert Patrick (Terminator 2: Judgment Day, The X-Files), Michael Rooker (The Walking Dead, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer), Jordan Ladd (Cabin Fever, Death Proof), Katharine Isabelle (Ginger Snaps, American Mary), Lew Temple (The Devil’s Rejects, The Walking Dead) and IronE Singleton (The Walking Dead) . For a complete list of attendees or for more information about this event, visit http://www.rockandshock.com.

Rock and Shock will be taking place October 18-20, 2013at the DCU Center (http://www.dcucenter.com) and The Worcester Palladium (http://thepalladium.net) in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Aug 5 2013

The Excitement of Boston Comic Con 2013

by Jason Harris

The Seventh Annual Boston Comic Con happened this weekend at the Seaport World Trade Center. It was originally scheduled for the weekend April 20 through 21 at the Hynes Convention Center, but was postponed because of the lockdown following the Boston Marathon bombing.

The convention organizer’s expected this year’s attendance to be 15,000. There were artist and event panels. There was also an Independent Film Festival on Saturday and a Zombie Film Festival on Sunday.

Boston Comic Con’s biggest celebrity guests were Laurie Holden of The Walking Dead and Kristen Bauer of True Blood. The other guests included Aidan Turner and Dean O’Gorman, who play the dwarves Kili and Fili respectively in The Hobbit movies.

Laurie Holden of The Walking Dead talking with a fan.

The convention had many comic book artists such as Mark Bagley and James O’Barr. It had celebrities for the reading crowd too such as authors Joe Hill, Christopher Golden, and Steve Niles, who have all written comic books.

Illustrator Gabriel Rodriguez and author Joe Hill.

Author Christopher Golden.

There were authors there that are not involved with comic books.

Author Estevan Bagley signing a book for a fan.

Author Estevan Vega signing a book for a fan.

Author Estevan Vega isn’t new to big conventions. He was meeting fans and signing books at last year’s Rhode Island Comic Con.

If you went to the convention to see what attendees were dressing up as then you weren’t disappointed.

Captain America and Wonder Woman.

Loki.

Futurama’s Turanga Leela, Philip J. Fry, and Dr. John A. Zoidberg.

Green Lantern.

Princess Leia and Darth Vader.

Batman talking with a mermaid.

The X-men

The Transformers’ Bumblebee with some con attendees.

Dr. Doom.

Harley Quinn and the Joker.

Thor.

Mr. T and Bane.

Bane and Mr. Freeze.

Wonder Woman.

Pictures of the crowds, vendors, game players and groups at this year’s Boston Comic Con.

The 501st New England Garrison.

The 501st new England Garrison.

The Ghostbusters of New Hampshire.

The women of Sci-fi Saturday Night.

Author Stacey Longo with Sci-fi Saturday Night’s The Dome.

Boston Comic Con is over, but I’m looking forward to the 2014 one.

Aug 3 2013

Pictures from the 2013 New England Author Expo

By Jason Harris

The New England Author Expo and Book Sale organized by Christopher Obert and Pear Tree Publishing took place at the Harborview Ballroom in the Danversport Yacht Club in Danvers, MA. on Wednesday, July 31.