Tag Archives: Amazon

May 28 2013

Late Horror Writer’s Autobiography Released (updated 6/24/13)

51r1t+gVuXL__BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA278_PIkin4,BottomRight,-74,22_AA300_SH20_OU01_The Horror… The Horror: An Autobiography by Rick Hautala was released on Monday, May 27, by Crossroads Press. At the moment, it is only available as an e-book.

Holly Newstein Hautala, Rick’s wife, said that Crossroads Press will do a print edition since enough people have expressed interest in it for them to go ahead with it.

“I will assume at this point a POD trade paperback,” Holly said about the print version.

Rick passed away in March and Holly found the manuscript two weeks after his death.

“He had a ‘man corner’ in the living room, where all his war games and ‘to be read’ books were piled up,” Holly said. “I was winnowing down the pile and found a Manila envelope. Inside was the manuscript with his handwritten edits. I had no idea he was working on anything like this.”

Rick wrote his autobiography almost four years ago, she said.

“I searched his thumb drives and external hard drive, by title and phrases, and came up blank,” Holly said. “I can only assume that he wrote it, began editing it, and then decided in his Eeyore way that nobody would be interested and deleted it.  It really was the only secret he ever kept from me.”

She read it immediately and knew it was an important story, Holly said. It’s not only important for the people who knew and loved him, but also because it captures a chapter in the publishing industry.

“When Rick’s career began, publishers were still promoting and supporting ‘midlist’ writers, who might or might not have a breakout novel in them, but were modestly profitable.”

The tax codes changed and this doomed the midlist writers, she said. “There were no more tax advantages in promotion and in ‘growing’ authors – it was all about the mega-best sellers. With the advent of digital and on-demand publishing, the small presses came into their own and filled the vacuum left by the demise of the midlist, and Rick’s career got a second wind.  The Horror shows in a very personal way the carnage and redemption that the changes in publishing have wrought.”

“In addition, Rick’s advice on writing is solid and time-tested, [and] worth a close read by aspiring authors,” Holly added.
“David Wilson and Crossroads Press had the rights to e-publish Rick’s backlist,” Holly said. “I approached them first, thinking that The Horror probably had a fairly limited audience (the ghost of Eeyore, I guess).”
Wilson and Crossroads were glad to take it on as an e-book, so she typed the entire manuscript including Rick’s edits and sent it to them, she said.
“When I posted on Facebook about The Horror, the response overwhelmed me.  So I am hoping that maybe Rick’s story will take on a life of its own and be bigger than either of us imagined.  Certainly Rick was bigger and better-loved than he ever dreamed he was.  The world is a little darker without his kind and steady presence in the writing community.”
To purchase the e-book version of The Horror from Amazon, click here.
Editor’s Note: It was announced by Holly Newstein Hautala on June 24, 2013 that Crossroads Press will have a print edition of Rick’s autobiography out by the end of this week.
May 1 2013

Author Erin Thorne Promotes Latest Book at Four Places in May

new author picMassachusetts author Erin Thorne will be appearing at four places this month to promote her latest book, Behind the Wheel.

The first stop on her tour is the Westfield Athenaeum on Tuesday, May 14, from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. She’ll read from her latest work, Behind The Wheel. She will be signing copies of all of her books, which will be available for purchase. Her other books are Diane’s Descent and Deals Diabolical.

The Athenaeum is located at 6 Elm Street in Westfield, MA. This event is free and open to the public.

Her second stop is Books & Boos on Saturday, May 18, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. She will be reading from Behind the Wheel. Her other books will also be available for purchase at this event, which is free and open to the public.

The bookstore is located at 514 Westchester Road in Colchester, CT.

Her third stop is at Books & Beans on Saturday, May 25. She will be signing copies of all her books, which will be available for purchase from 10 a.m. to 1:45 p.m. This event is free and open to the public.

The store is located at 100 Central Street in Southbridge, MA.

Her fourth and last stop in May is at the Sutton Public Library on Thursday, May 30, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. She will read from Behind the Wheel and sign copies of all of her books, which will be available for purchase. This event is free and open to the public.

The library is located at 4 Uxbridge Road in Sutton, MA.

Please check out Erin Thorne’s Amazon page here or her Facebook page here where you can find out about her and her three books, Behind the Wheel, Diane’s Descent and Deals Diabolical.

Erin Thorne welcomes different types of speaking engagements and signings. Feel free to contact her by phone at (508) 347-3677 or (774) 757-7159. She can be contacted by email too, AuthorErinThorne@gmail.com

Apr 28 2013

Author Donating Story Sales to Brain Cancer Research

68d36afb2fcfda3ae627830b8e3ce9a5cfc6e322Author F.R. Michaels is donating the sales of his short story, “Pale Pink Walls and White Furniture,” to brain cancer research. It was published on April 26 and is available for $0.99 on Smashwords, which gives this description of the story a “man awakens to a series of disturbing disjointed illusions, revealing, piece by piece, a hideous truth that will blur the lines between consciousness and oblivion, sanity and madness, and life and death.”

Click here if you want to purchase the story from Smashwords or here from Amazon.

 

 

Apr 24 2013

Ghosts of the Past

Ghosts of the Past

The Lizzie Borden House Investigation

By Dave Cassenti

It’s a rhyme that many kids my age know from their childhood, especially if they jumped rope.

Lizzie Borden took an axe

And gave her mother 40 whacks

And when she saw what she had done

She gave her father 41.

The double murder of Lizzie Borden’s stepmother and father in 1892 was a huge story at the time, and if any house could be haunted, than SURELY it is the Borden house where the murder occurred 121 years ago, and there are a number of reports that the house IS haunted by Abby and Andrew Borden as well as numerous other ghosts, including children that were supposedly drowned in a well in the yard prior to the Borden family living in the home. This home was also one of the many paranormal locations that I was privileged to investigate with my students in December 2007, and the only one we were able to stay overnight in.

I had been teaching a class called Scientific Paranormal Research for about three years, and the TV show Ghost Hunters was popular on TV. The Lizzie Borden House had become a bed & breakfast a number of years previously, and I was interested in investigating it … Well, to be honest, I just wanted to STAY there, but my wife is squeamish, and so I had no chance. However, I had been looking for local places to investigate, and being in Fall River, MA, the house was an easy drive from our East Haddam school, and my class budget could handle a couple of rooms for one night. So, we booked the rooms in the most haunted locations available, gathered our equipment, and got underway.

After arriving at the house, we unpacked our gear, and the students were escorted to their rooms to unpack. I met with the owner and asked some of our standard questions about the house and any experiences that people have had. When the students returned to the parlor, we were taken on a tour of the home and the “hot spots” for activity. At this point, the kids were getting excited about the prospect of getting something on video or audio. The previous year, we had been to a number of supposedly haunted locations, a mansion in North Adams, MA., and a number of Civil War sites in PA, MD, WV, VA and DC, with NOTHING to show for it. At least, nothing that couldn’t be explained. But here we were in a place where a gruesome double ax murder had taken place and it was supposedly VERY haunted. We were SURE to get something!

That night, we had a séance in the parlor led by a psychic. This psychic started the séance with the statement, “We might not get anything since spirits don’t like to get ‘caught,’ so don’t be disappointed if nothing happens.” Immediately, it was apparent to me, as well as a few students, that she wasn’t a good psychic and was hedging her bets. This assessment was later verified when she couldn’t ‘sense’ the child spirits around my feet for a good 20-25 minutes after my feet got so cold they became numb. She only ‘saw’ them after I put my hand down near my feet to feel what could explain the cold temperatures (it turned out to be moving air coming from the vent in the floor). Later, during an EVP session my kids & I were running in the basement (another hot spot), the psychic ‘sensed a spirit moving around’ when she heard something in the basement. I had also heard it and, in tracing the source of the sound to the furnace, heard the furnace fire up after pulling oil into it so it could start. Needless to say, the ‘ghost’ was a 15-year-old oil furnace.

That night, the students used a Ouija board and ‘spoke’ to the spirits. However, once again, simpler explanations were often found for what occurred, and the postulate of Occam’s Razor (when multiple hypotheses exist, it is usually the simplest one that is most correct) held that the events were not paranormal. After that, everyone retired to their own rooms. So far, cameras and audio recorders had been going in all rooms, and these continued throughout the night.

In the morning, we had Johnny Cakes for breakfast, the same meal that the Borden family had on their last morning, and then packed up and went home. The next day, we began reviewing the hours of video and audio to find…

NOTHING

About the author:

Along with being a math and science teacher who has always had an interest in world religions, psychology, parapsychology, the supernatural and the paranormal. David Cassenti has taught high school classes about ghost hunting, vampires, demonology, and all sorts of strange and weird topics. David lives in Moodus, CT with his wife, Lisa, his kids, Sarah and Matthew, his dog, Leo, his cat, Ace, and all sorts of scaly creatures! He is also the author of For the Blood of the Lamb, which can be purchased in paperback or as an e-book on Amazon or you can buy a signed copy from Books & Boos in Colchester, CT.

Jan 11 2013

Amazon Kindle’s Censorship Policies

Amazon Kindle’s Censorship Policies

by David L. Tamarin

With the advent of e-readers like the Amazon Kindle and the ability of individuals to ‘self-publish’, many people have been talking about a ‘revolution’ in publishing. Supposedly, independent authors with difficulties getting published by traditional publishers can now use Amazon Kindle to self-publish their stories or books and sell them directly to the people, without the middleman of a publisher.

Unfortunately, this is not a real revolution because of Amazon Kindle’s policies regarding what they will publish. While they publish a lot of fetish pornography, including incest porn, and even have e-books containing scanned pornographic images. they recently told me that they would not publish my horror short story, “What Did You Do To The Children?” due to content violations- namely that the story is pornographic and/or contains inappropriate content.

I’m a successful non-fiction author, a regular contributor to Girls and Corpses and the website www.severed-cinema.com/uglyworld. I have also been published in Rue Morgue magazine, Scars, Verbicide, NewEnglandFilm.com, The Independent, Serial Killer magazine, Six Word Memoirs of Love and Heartbreak anthology, Butcher Knives and Body Counts (essays on slasher films), horrornews.net, Red Scream, and dozens of other magazines, websites and anthologies.

My fiction is potentially offensive, and has caused me problems throughout my career. I’ve been at the center of multiple controversies surrounding the content of his writing. Because of frustration with traditional publishers, I decided to release my stories on Amazon Kindle, but immediately encountered a problem when three consecutive companies that format books for Kindle for a fee decided they would not format my first Kindle book because of the extreme and offensive content. Since then, that particular story was accepted into an anthology, and published, and I learned to format stories for myself. Now I face my newest adversary to being published: Amazon. They have stated it will not publish the my story, nor will it provide the specifics of why it made its opinion. I have appealed to Amazon, asking them to reconsider their decision, and on December 30, 2012, they affirmed their decision that they would not publish the story.

I’m exploring other publishing opportunities.

Nov 8 2012

NEHW Members at Anthocon

The New England Horror Writers will be at Anthocon this weekend. The convention runs from Nov. 9 through 11. Here are the NEHW members who will be there this weekend: Michael Arruda, Tracy Carbone, Karen Dent, Roxanne Dent, Peter Dudar, Michael Evans, Timothy Flynn, Dave Goudsward, Scott Goudsward, Jason Harris, Chris Irvin, Jan Kozlowski, Stacey Longo, Bracken McLeod, David Price, L.L. Soares, Douglas Swatski, Erin Underwood, Vlad Vaslyn and Rob Watts.

The first Anthcon anthology, Anthology: Year One, will debut this weekend. It’s published by the Four Horsemen. Everyone in this collection participated in the first Anthocon last year. Quite a few NEHW members are in this collection. If you can’t make the convention, you can order a copy on Amazon by clicking here.

Aug 25 2012

Author Releases First Novella

Author and New England Horror Writer member Bob Stearns recently released his first e-book novella, The Harvester, on Amazon. It’s a dark fantasy/horror/sci-fi adventure story and fully illustrated. 

Here is the novella’s description, “In the distant future, when man has learned to live in balance with the forces of the universe. When greed and corruption are but a memory and cooperation has defeated competition. A small boy goes missing and is presumed to have perished at the hands of an ancient evil. Unconvinced of this, the boy’s older brother sets out to find him and discovers the machinations of an unearthly horror”

Stearns is an artist and art teacher.

Click here to purchase the novella from Amazon.

Aug 2 2012

Heads Up!

Heads Up!

by K. Allen Wood

If you’re an author with access to the Internet, you’ve undoubtedly been bombarded recently by other authors peddling their books or stories. We’ve all been exposed to this before, but until the past year or so most self-promotion from authors was done in a classier, more respectful manner.

Some still operate that way (and we’re grateful), but others have taken it to a whole new level.

I won’t sit here and tell anyone they shouldn’t promote their work or the work of their friends or authors they enjoy, but I will explain what typically happens on my end when authors do it incessantly.

What’s that smell?

If you follow me on Twitter, I will likely follow you. If you do nothing but post links to your book or books, I will block you and vow to never read your work.

If I connect with you on LinkedIn and you immediately send me a message or an e-mail telling me to check out your book on Amazon, I will “disconnect” from you and vow to never read your book—especially when, as happened yesterday and thus prompted this post, I sample it and there is a mistake three words in. No, thank you!

If we’re friends on Facebook and I’ve “liked” your author page—which is the page I expect to see writing updates generate from—and you go and post daily the same goddamn updates on your personal page, your author page, and every writing-related group you and I (sadly) belong to, even those that are not meant for such updates, I will block your updates, vow to never read your work, and find you to be a total wackadouche.

If you constantly post 5-star reviews on Amazon and then share those overblown, unhelpful reviews loaded with WHIZBANGPOW! adjectives and vague clichés like “it gripped me from the first word and didn’t let go until the last”—which are obviously meant to A) kiss the (undoubtedly more popular) author’s ass, B) hide the fact that you didn’t actually read what you reviewed, and C) use his or her book as a piggyback to your own shitty book or books—I won’t believe a word you’re saying and more than likely will never read that author’s book because your word can’t be trusted.

(That’s right, an absurd run-on sentence in a post where I criticize bad writing. Got a problem with that?)

The fact is, you’re not helping anyone, especially yourself. Most of us promote our work in some regard, but some of you are OUT OF FUCKING CONTROL! I won’t begrudge you your rights to be that way—that pushy, lying kind of self-promoter. You’ll surely fool a lot of dummies out there. But I won’t support you. And worse, I’ll find it very hard to support those other authors that are unlucky enough to be promoted by you. They’re the innocent bystanders in this whole thing. And some are probably damn fine writers, which is a shame.

In the grand scheme of things, the big picture, this post is just one insignificant opinion from a relatively insignificant dude … but rest assured, I’m not the only one with this opinion.

So do as you will, but remember this: You can’t push or lie your way to the top. You can push and lie your way to a top, sure, but it’s most definitely not the top.

Editor’s Note:

This blog entry originally appeared on K. Allen Wood’s website.

Jul 6 2012

Horror Writer Becomes a Children’s Book Author

One of the New England Horror Writers’ Co-Chairs has authored a children’s book.

This week Stacey Longo’s book, Pookie and the Lost and Found Friend, was published by Farmer’s Daughter Press. Within the book’s pages, readers will find out about Pookie and her friend, Jack, and the adventures they get into one night in the cemetery.Pookie and the Lost and Found Friend

Along with writing this children’s book, she also illustrated it. It is available at Amazon for $7. To purchase a copy, click here.

For more information about the author, check out her website, http://www.staceylongo.com/.

Jul 6 2012

‘Savages’ is Intense and Entertaining

‘Savages’ is Intense and Entertaining

by Jason Harris

Three-time Oscar-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone is back with a new thriller, Savages, which is reminiscent of one of his previous hits, Natural Born Killers.

Savages starts off with a voiceover by Blake Lively (Green Lantern), who portrays Ophelia, but has shorten it to “O” for a number of reasons. She states that she may or may not be alive by the end of her story, which was is a device used in American Beauty (1999). Except in that movie, the character of Lester tells the audience he’s already died.

O introduces Chon and Ben who are in the drug business. Ben, portrayed by Aaron Johnson (Kick-Ass), is the brains behind their superior marijuana and Chon portrayed by Taylor Kitsch (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) is the muscle that deals with problems that arise. Since he is an ex-Navy Seal and ex-mercenary, this makes him well equip to deal with these problems that make-up about one percent of their business. The other 99 percent is violence-free.

Savages

Chon, O and Ben live an idyllic life in Laguna Beach in a scene from Savages. Picture courtesy of Universal Pictures.

O, Chon and Ben make-up a post-modern family except in this family O is the girlfriend for both men. O states the men together make-up the perfect guy. The men have no problems sharing her. There is great chemistry between these three actors, which keeps you hoping that they are all alive at the end of the movie.

Their lives become endangered when their operation comes to the attention of the Mexican Baja Cartel, headed by the ruthless Elena “La Reina” portrayed by Salma Hayek (From Dusk Till Dawn). The cartel wants to form a partnership with Ben and Chon, who decline her invitation. This causes O to be kidnapped by Elena’s enforcer, Lado portrayed by Benicio Del Toro (Traffic), who brings a menacing demeanor and look to his role. Earlier in the movie, Lado is shown dealing harshly with a cartel lawyer whose client went to prison. By knowing how lethal Lado is, it puts O in a more precarious situation when she is his prisoner.

There were moments where Stone seems to have been inspired by Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill, Vol. 1). Those inspired elements are the picture going from color to black and white a few times and his choice of music. One piece of music, “Psycho Killer” by Bruce Lash played after a scene where Lado talked to Elena about killing Chon and Ben. Del Toro has the look of a killer and is only slightly held in check by his boss. Stone made an excellent choice in music for this scene, which is a talent Tarantino has.

The movie is based on Don Winslow’s best-selling crime novel of the same name that was one of The New York Times’ Top 10 Books of 2010. Recently, Winslow released The Kings of Cool: A Prequel to Savages, which is available in paperback on Amazon for $16.50.

Stone fills Savages with intense and funny moments along with a few action scenes. All together the movie is an entertaining thrill ride.