Mini-horror Festival at Massachusetts library

By Jason Harris

On Saturday, February 25, the Ashland Public Library held a “Mini-horror Book Festival” where six authors spoke and signed their books.

The aurhors attending were Errick Nunnally, Paul Tremblay, Eric LaRocca, Kayla Cottingham, Gretchen Felker-Martin, and Christopher Golden.

Author Paul Tremblay.
Author Christopher Golden.

Pictures from the Halloween Book Festival

By Jason Harris

 

Author Christopher Golden, the organizer of the event.

Author Christopher Golden, the organizer of the event at the ACT Theatre in Andover, MA.

The Childhood Horrors panel: (from left to right) authors Thomas Sniegoski, Mallory O'Meara, Paul Tremblay, Scott Goudsward.

The Childhood Horrors panel: (from left to right) authors Thomas Sniegoski, Mallory O’Meara, Paul Tremblay, Scott Goudsward, and Holly Newstein Hautala.

The Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Horror panel: (From left to right) authors Christopher Golden, Dana Cameron, Leigh Perry, Rio Youers, and John Langan.

The Seize the Night: New Tales of Vampiric Horror panel: (From left to right) authors Christopher Golden, Dana Cameron, Leigh Perry, Rio Youers, and John Langan.

The New England Horror Tradition panel: (left to right) authors Jason Ciaramella, filmmaker Caitlin Kittredge, Jack M. Haringa, John M. Mcllveen, and Glenn Chadbourne.

The New England Horror Tradition panel: (left to right) authors Jason Ciaramella, Caitlin Kittredge, Jack M. Haringa, John M. Mcllveen, and Glenn Chadbourne.

The Anatomy of Horror: What is Scary? panel: (left to right) authors Errick Nunnally, Myke Cole, Sarah Langan, and Kelly Link.

The Anatomy of Horror: What is Scary? panel: (left to right) authors Errick Nunnally, Myke Cole, Sarah Langan, and Kelly Link.

We Get the Horror We Deserve panel: (left to right) authors Mary SanGiovanni, Brian Keene, Joe Hill, Izzy Lee, and Bracken MacLeod.

We Get the Horror We Deserve panel: (left to right) authors Mary SanGiovanni, Brian Keene, Joe Hill, director/writer Izzy Lee, and Bracken MacLeod.

Writer/Director Izzy Lee holding her short film, "Innsmouth."

Writer/Director Izzy Lee holding her short film, “Innsmouth.”

Author Leigh Perry/Toni L.P. Kelner.

Author Leigh Perry/Toni L.P. Kelner.

Me with author Joe Hill.

Me with author Joe Hill.

Authors Brian Keene and Mary SanGiovanni.

Authors Brian Keene and Mary SanGiovanni.

The NEHW at Rock and Shock

The New England Horror Writers will be appearing at Rock and Shock this weekend. There will be plenty of members manning the booth all weekend. They will be selling and signing their books.Epitaphs is one book in particular which will be on hand. It’s the first anthology produced by the NEHW. This Saturday marks the one-year anniversary of this collection being published. Here are the authors who have stories in Epitaphs that will be at the convention this weekend: Mike Arruda, Scott Goudsward, Stacey Longo, Paul McMahon, Kurt Newton, L.L. Soares, K. Allen Wood, and Trisha Wooldridge. Tracy L. Carbone, the editor of the anthology, will also be on-hand.

Other NEHW members, who will be at the convention, are Ashleigh Homon, Adam Cesare, Bracken Macleod, David Price, Gene Munson, Jason Harris, Jack Haringa, Jan Kozlowski, Kelli Jones, Kristi Petersen Schoonover, Matt Bechtel, Patrick Rahall, Rebekah Murphy, Rob Watts, T.J. May, Paul Tremblay, Bob Booth, and Jennifer Yarter-Polmatier.

They will also be four panels that the NEHW members will be involved in. This is the second year the organization has been on different panels. This year on the Women in Horror panel members , Carbone, Longo, and Wooldridge will be joined by Heather Langenkamp of Nightmare on Elm Street fame and Lisa Marie of Sleepy Hollow and Mars Attacks! fame.

The other panels will be “Breaking into the Biz” with Harris, May, Bechtel, and Schoonover, and “Horror in the Movies” with Harris, Longo, Soares, and Macleod.

‘A Good Turnout’ for ‘Swallowing a Donkey’s Eye’ Reading

‘A Good Turnout’ for Swallowing a Donkey’s Eye Reading

by Barry Dejasu

Author Paul Tremblay reading from Swallowing a Donkey’s Eye. Photo by Barry Dejasu.

About 15 people attended author and NEHW member Paul Tremblay’s reading of his newest book, Swallowing a Donkey’s Eye, at the Brown University Bookstore Wednesday evening.

Tremblay mentioned to his listeners that his book’s title came from a song by Neutral Milk. While writing Swallowing a Donkey’s Eye, he didn’t limit himself to any particular direction for the book, but rather let the story unfold on its own.

During the Q & A, there were a number of questions about his craft, both for his current novel and for his writing in general. Two of the questions asked of him if he intentionally took inspiration for certain characters and plot devices from works by Pynchon and Flannery O’Connor, which he hadn’t.

At one point, Tremblay talked about how he is drawn to creating empathetic characters, rather than sympathetic ones, which incited a projected conversation with some would-be naysayers.

“I didn’t like that book, because I didn’t like the main character, ” one naysayer said before ending their statement with an expletive.

There were several other authors in attendance including Paul DiFilippo, Jack Haringa, and John Harvey to support Tremblay.

A number of his books sold including No Sleep ‘Till Wonderland.

Author Reading at The Brown University Bookstore

Author and New England Horror Writer member Paul Tremblay will be reading from his newest novel, Swallowing a Donkey’s Eye, this Wednesday at the Brown University Bookstore.

Tremblay’ Swallowing a Donkey’s Eye was published last month by Chizine Publications. According to Cinema Knife Fight writer Barry Lee Dejasu, who also works in customer service at the Brown University Bookstore,  describes Tremblay’s book as a “strange, dystopian novel, [where] a man fulfilling his six-year time at Farm learns that his mother has dropped out of contact back in City and he begins a personal journey to try and find out just what happened to her.”

According to Amazon, “join Farm today! It’s only six years of your life! Farm is the mega-conglomerate food supplier for City, populated with rabidly bureaucratic superiors, antagonistic and sexually deviant tour guides dressed in chicken and duck suits, and farm animals illegally engineered for silence. City is sprawling, technocratic, and rests hundreds of feet above the coastline on the creaking shoulders of a giant wooden pier. When the narrator’s single mother, whom he left behind in City, falls out of contact, he fears the worst: his mother is homeless and subsequently to be deported under City to the Pier. On his desperate search to find his mother, he encounters ecoterrorists wearing plush animal suits, an election that hangs in the balance as the City’s all-powerful Mayor is infatuated with magic refrigerators and outlaw campaigns, and a wise-cracking, over-sexed priest who may or may not have ESP, but who is most certainly his deadbeat dad. Whether rebelling against the regimented and ridiculous nature of Farm life, exploring the all-too-familiar and consumer-obsessed world of City, experiencing the all-too-real suffering of the homeless in Pier, or confronting the secrets of his own childhood, Swallowing a Donkey’s Eye’s narrator is a hilarious, neurotic, and rage-filled Quixote searching for his mother, his own dignity, and the meaning of humanity.”

Tremblay, who lives outside of Boston, is the author of the novels The Little Sleep and No Sleep Till Wonderland. He has also authored the short story collections Compositions for the Young and Old and In the Mean Time, two novellas, and his essays and short fiction have appeared in the Los Angeles Times,  Five Chapters.com, and Best American Fantasy 3. He is the co-editor of four anthologies including Creatures: Thirty Years of Monster Stories (with John Langan).

Check out Tremblay’s website by clicking here.

The reading starts at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 12, at The Brown University Bookstore, which is located at 244 Thayer Street in Providence, RI  02912. The store’s phone number is  (401) 863-3168 if you have any questions.

Readercon 23 Begins Thursday

Readercon 23 starts tomorrow and runs until Sunday, July 15, at the Boston Marriott Burlington.

There will be four New England Horror Writers’ members, Don D’Ammassa, Craig Shaw Gardner, Jack Haringa, and Paul Tremblay, at the convention. For a list of other guests, click here.

Tremblay mentions his Readercon schedule on his website, which you can click here to see it.

Guests of Honor include authors Peter Straub and Caitlín Kiernan. The memorial guest of honor this year is author Shirley Jackson.

If you have a smartphone, you can download the Guidebook app then have the Readercon program at your fingertips during the entire convention.

If you tweet about Readercon, the official twitter account for the convention is asking people to use the hastag, #Readercon.‪

Online Horror Writing Workshop Begins Soon

NEHW member Paul Tremblay is one of four horror authors teaching a four-week online horror writing workshop, Master the Elements for Constructing a Better Horror Story. The other three teachers are authors F. Brett Cox, John Langan, and Sarah Langan.

The workshop is from June 4 through 30. The price is $397. There is a 15 student maximum for the workshop.

The authors, who are currently members of the Shirley Jackson Awards’ Board of Trustees, are donating their proceeds to support the Shirley Jackson Awards.

For more information about the teachers and the course or to sign-up, click here.

The Atavist

This entry originally appeared on New England Horror Writers’ member, Paul Tremblay’s website.

The Atavist

by Paul Tremblay

Last month I saw journalist turned boutique publisher Evan Ratliff give a live talk/presentation of his impressive new venture,  The Atavist:

“The Atavist is a boutique publishing house producing original nonfiction stories for digital, mobile reading devices. We created a new genre of nonfiction, a digital form that lies in the space between long narrative magazine articles and traditional books and e-books.”

So, yeah, long form non-fiction published digitally. The hook (besides well-written, well-researched, thoughtful pieces) is–if you have an iPhone, iPod touch, iPad–their unique digital platform. The multi-media that accompanies each piece truly enhances the stories. Embedded pop-ups include maps, personality histories, side bars, audio clips, images related to the story, video, and on and on. Watch the YouTube video below for a demo. It’s impressive stuff, and for the first time, I feel like I’m seeing digital reading taking full advantage of the medium’s possibilities. (The publisher app is free, then each story costs $2.99 ; you chose whether or not to purchase)

Thus far, I’ve read Lifted, a story about an elaborate government bank heist in Sweeden (the story includes, as it’s stunning prologue, actual surveillance footage from the break in–clips included in the YouTube clip below) and Baghdad Country Club (animated prologue included below), a story about a bar set up in the Green Zone during the height of the Iraq war.

Speculative Fiction Fest Kicks Off Thursday

News item written by Kristi Petersen Schoonover.

If you’re in Providence, Rhode Island and looking for a spectacular way to kick off your Halloween festivities, NEHW member Paul Tremblay (The Little Sleep, In the Mean Time) will be part of The Brown Bookstore’s First Speculative Fiction Fest this Thursday through Saturday (Oct. 27-29). The event will feature readings by several popular speculative fiction authors, films, and panels.

Paul Tremblay

The event kicks off at 4 p.m. Thursday with a showing of Val Lewton’s film classic, Cat People (I am assuming this is the Lewton film and not the 1980s remake, but I could be wrong) followed by readings from authors Daniel Pearlman (A Giant in the House and Other Excesses) and Paul DiFilippo (Harsh Oases).

On Friday, author Brian Evenson (Fugue State) will read; at 6 p.m., there will be showing of the 2007 film Peur(s) du Noir (Fears of the Dark).

Saturday’s offerings being at 2 p.m. with a talk on Graphic Fiction and the Comic Form; at 4 p.m., the writers will offer a panel discussion on the Speculative Fiction genre. At 5 p.m., authors Tremblay, John Langan (Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters), and Laird Barron (The Imago Sequence and Occultation, both of which won the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Collection) will read from their work.

For directions and more about Brown Bookstore, visit here: http://www.shopbrown.com/. For the event’s official flyer, visit here: http://bookstore.brown.edu/fictionfest.pdf.