By Jason Harris
The Cast of The Monster Squad.
There will be a second post with pictures from Rock & Shock 2015 coming in a few days.
There will be a second post with pictures from Rock & Shock 2015 coming in a few days.
Rock & Shock begins this coming Friday. I have always enjoyed going to and taking pictures at conventions. This year I’m looking forward to seeing authors Jack Ketchum, Joe Knetter, and Stacey Longo again. They have all attended the convention in the past.
The celebrity, who hasn’t been to Rock & Shock in the past and the one I’m looking forward, is Samantha Mathis. I have been a fan since her first movie, Pump Up the Volume.
Lately, Mathis can be seen on the television series The Strain or the now canceled Under the Dome. You can find out about the other celebrities and events happening at Rock & Shock here.
Books & Boos will be sharing space with Fenham Publishing this weekend at Rock & Shock, which runs from Oct. 17 through 19. Publisher Jim Dyer will be representing Fenham Publishing and author Stacey Longo will be on-hand to sign her books (Secret Things, Insanity Tales) at the Books & Boos table. Longo is also a movie reviewer and writer for Jason Harris Promotions. She will be on the Writing panel with Joe Knetter at 12 p.m. on Saturday.
The 11th Rock & Shock is less than two weeks away and the organizers have brought horror fans another great line-up this year. Some names fans will recognize celebrities such as Tom Savini, Brad Dourif, Roddy Piper, Derek Mears, and Sid Haig. There are also new ones to the convention such as Sharknado and American Pie star Tara Reid and Jeffrey Combs (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Enterprise)
Celebrities who had to cancel their appearances last year are back on the guest list for this year and they are Andrew Divoff (Wishmaster) and John Ratzenberger ( Cheers and the Toy Story movies).
Check out the guest list here.
Once again, there will be authors, publishers, and bookstores at the convention. Authors include Bram Stoker award-winner L.L Soares, Joe Knetter, Stacey Longo, Tim J. Finn, and Bracken MacLeod. Knetter and Longo will be participating on a writer’s panel at 12 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 18, with a few other authors. Publishers and bookstores include Fenham Publishing and Books & Boos respectively.
Rock & Shock takes place at the DCU Center in Worcester, MA. from Oct. 17th through the 19th.
Author Joe Knetter started writing ten years ago after being a lifelong horror fan. His start came when he was online and found a publisher who was looking for stories.
“I thought it would be fun to give it a shot, so I wrote four and sent them in.”
All four of his stories were accepted, he said. Since then, he has written many more stories with interesting titles. His favorite title is “For the Love of Orson Welles’ Fat Black Ejaculate,” which can be found in his collection, Vile Beauty.
“It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever,” Knetter said about the title. “I was stoned one night. I just randomly said that. I can’t remember what about.”
He ended up writing that story for a gross-out contest. After submitting it and people started reading it, the contest organizers changed the rules so that his story was excluded, Knetter said.
“Vile Beauty is really nasty. It’s more for shock value and over-the-top stuff. The other stuff is a little more mellow. Zombie Bukkake is obviously pretty out there.”
There are times Knetter will come up with the title first, then work the story around it.
He has a new story, “Crack in the Sarcophagus,” appearing in Canopic Jars: Tales of Mummies and Mummification, which debuts this month at Anthocon.
“I think it’s going to be a fun book.”
He loves attending horror conventions, and attends quite a few. When he first started out, he would attend up to 14 a year. This year he has only been to three, including Rock & Shock.
“Being that there are so many shows across the country, it kind of gets oversaturated a little bit.”
At his first convention, his goal was to sell one book. At one of the many conventions he has attended since that first one, he met his girlfriend of four years, Sarah French.
“The goal is always to make money, but it’s just as important for me to network,” Knetter said about conventions. “The shows are fun. It’s great to meet people.”
He did have a fan come to a show once whom he later found out was disturbed. This fan later arrested for putting bombs in vibrators, which is what Knetter used in one of his stories, he said. The fan was caught before anyone got hurt. He would have felt bad if someone had gotten hurt, but realized that if the fan didn’t react to something he wrote, he would have reacted to someone else’s work.
“Lucky enough, he was stupid enough not to do it right. Thank god. Horror fans are good people generally. They’re not troublemakers.”
He did have another fan buy one of his books that was poorly edited early on in his career. This fan highlighted his mistakes in the book then brought it back and gave it to him, Knetter said. “That was pretty comical, actually.”
Inspiration strikes Knetter everywhere. He has used an old mental hospital his mother worked at as a setting in a few stories. He has also written about a haunted hotel his girlfriend lived in while growing up. His story, “Room 17,” describes what happened at that hotel.
“I had to change the name of the hotel by one letter. Legally, I’m good to go now.”
He has been inspired by the early work of Clive Barker and is a huge Stephen King fan. His work has been compared to Wrath James White and Edward Lee.
His advice to writers is to just write, but don’t expect to make money, because writers don’t make much.
“Write because you have to tell the story and hope that you get lucky enough that it finds someone who likes it. You have to keep writing.”
You can find out more about Knetter on his website, click here.
Another Rock & Shock has come and gone, the 10th one to be exact. It was another good one with even more vendors this year. The one thing that was lacking was attendees in costume. There just wasn’t a lot of people in costume. Here are pictures from the event.
From right to left: authors Robert Duperre, Kurt Newton, and Stacey Longo at the Sideshow Press and Shock Totem tables.
Authors Scott Goudsward, Joe Knetter, Jack Ketchum, Jack Haringa, and Bracken MacLeod on the Writer’s Studio panel.
The 10th anniversary of Rock & Shock seems to have been the year for booksellers having a presence at the convention. In previous years, there were only Shock Totem, Sideshow Press, and the New England Horror Writers at the event. Only the NEHW has been consistently representing its members there year after year for more than five years.
This year saw the NEHW joined by the returning representatives of Sideshow Press and Shock Totem, who both haven’t been at the convention in a couple years. The new booksellers at the event were Fenham Publishing and Living Dead Press. Click here to read a previous article on Fenham Publishing. There were also two authors, Jack Ketchum and Joe Knetter, in the celebrity area of Rock and Shock selling their books.