Telling Tales Of Terror __ Damnation Books

Telling Tales of Terrors can be a great gift!

 

 

Telling Tales of Terror

 

 

Table of Contents

Introduction: Why Horror?

by James S. Dorr 1

What Scares You?

by Paula Johanson 5

Beyond Blood, Guts, and Gore

by Bob Nailor 14

Building the Invisible Bridge: Suspension of Disbelief

by Carol Hightshoe 24

Putting the Occult into Your Fiction

by Kathryn Meyer Griffith 33

Characters and Character Development

by Cinsearae Santiago 46

Adding A Sex Scene To Your Horror Fiction

by Mitchel Whitington 62

Dialogue

by Ivy Reisner 72

Don’t Lose Your Head: Maintaining Point of View in Your Writing

by Carol Hightshoe 87

Sticks and Stones: Accurately Portraying Action and Violence

by Kim Richards 93

“The End” Is Just the Beginning: Promoting Your Way to the Best Seller List

 

by Danielle Ackley-McPhail 99

Sisters are Killin’ it for Themselves: Women in Horror

by Lisa Morton 116

Setting and Mood

by Sèphera Girón 125

Creating Monsters: Breathing Life into Evil

by Cinsearae Santiago 133

Blood in the Water: An Essay on Publishing a Novel

by Jason Gehlert 138

The Publisher’s Panel 145

Contributor Biographies

Additional Resources


Telling Tales of Terror has hit the electronic stands with the print version due out any day now from Damnation Books.

As you can see, authors speak from the trenches about the various componants that shape a horror writers' career. From conception of an idea to landing that idea into other people's hands is a long, sometimes treacherous path that can be as scary as the book you're breathing into life.



 

Year End Writing Wrap Up

Well, after a bit of a slump, I guess I'm back! This is what I had published this year!

Most of these are anthologies and are packed with the creme de la creme of modern horror authors. If you're stuck on what to get that bookworm in your life, try some of these 2012 publications!

Slices of Flesh

 

Slices of Life is an anthology chock full of 90 creepy tales by the best of modern horror authors.

 

My story, "All Paths Lead to Psychopath."  In matters of the heart, what is truly right and wrong?

 

Unnatural Tales of the Jackalope

The Unnatural Tales of the Jackalope emerged from a bit of Facebook Tomfoolery. However, there are jackalopes doing all kinds of scary jackalope things in this book.

The Haunted Mansion Project: Year One

 

The Haunted Mansion Project is half fiction and half non-fiction.

 

My non-fiction piece called "Notes from the Haunted Mansion" is a series of notes about experiences and equipment.

 

"The Third Room is a tale about a modern day ghost hunter and her experiences in a haunted house.

The Birds and the Bees

 

My musings on the state of love and sex and birds and bees are contained in this fictional tale.

 

 

 

Borrowed Flesh from Necon Ebooks

 

Vanessa the witch is all grown up and still vain and selfish. She is the local tarot reader, horny and thirsty and obsessed with staying young and beautiful.

 

 

Eternal Sunset

 

We first meet Vanessa in Eternal Sunset. She's a young lady, wondering what life is all about. Off at university, she discovers a spellbook containing the secret to eternal life. The book is her journey to collect the ingredients for the spell.

Fifty Shades of Twilight

While I'm sitting here, half-watching a biography about Johnny Depp on a Saturday night and looking at people's Facebok posts, there's a lot of talk, as always of course, about the state of publishing.

Publisher's Weekly just gave great kudos to Fifty Shades of Grey for revitalizing the publishing and erotica industry.

There are a lot of very jealous authors and publishers.

 

 

I watch fades come and go, I'm that old now. Having been a vorcacious reader as a child and teen, and actually right up until my kids hit the school age, I always had my finger on the pulse of publishing trends. I read the paper every day, subscribed to a million magazines and read a book a day pretty much. Now I read on the internet, and rarely a whole book in a month as I'm always writing one when I'm not doing pr and looking for more work.

When some of us have been on the hamster wheel driven by the demon obsession of the fine arts, hoping that if we keep going and keep working hard enough, that we will eventually find success, it's not hard to dream that we will indeed be rewarded with a big karmic prize. We'll finally be able to pay our bills every month and own a home. We can buy our kids cars and education. So we keep trying and trying.

It doesn't matter which discipline you're in, I've heard from all art forms. People go to school and work and practice and hone their techniques and "pay their dues" and try to be in the right place at the right time for Lady Luck to smile on them. And they have some success but not enough to quit the day job...

Then along comes the superstar.

The flash in the pan.

The Next Big Thing

Sometimes they spring from nowhere and other times, they are hard working souls who finally found their ways off their own hamster wheels.

 

 

As they sell buckets of their work, people scream, "he has no talent," "she's a hack," "he's derivative," and so on. I've seen it over and over again.

Someone somewhere thinks they have something to offer. Millions, do in fact, and so the new flash is recognized and sometimes burns out quick. Others keep working and ride the wave of their instant fame as long as they can until the next wave comes.

Tornadoes are probably easier to predict than "the next big thing."

As jealous as I sometimes can be when someone manages to grab the super duper brass ring with far less blood, sweat and tears than most, I also say, "Good for them."

So what if I've written a bucket full of erotica. Obviously what I wrote didn't appeal to people in the way that Fifty Shades of Grey have caught people's attention.

I've written a couple of vampire books but none of them were about teenagers and it was teenagers the machine wanted.

We just have to keep trying.

 

I would say most of the people being published these days have some sort of talent. And as we know, sometimes talent or even a good looking product doesn't matter. Obviously they somehow resonated with their patron.

In the end, it's about your art filling a hole, filling a void in the market.

Like Pet Rocks, no one knows why it turns out to be THAT at this time but there it is.

Just keep running on that hamster wheel.

Maybe one day they'll buy what YOU'RE selling!

 All pictures are copyright by Sephera Giron and are not to be shared or copied without written permission from Sephera and the models.