Halloween Haunts: How the Application of Corn Starch Prepared Me for Novel-Writing by David Annandale

Halloween taught me the virtue of suffering for one’s art. Right. That sounds insufferably pretentious. That’s because it is. But there is a grain of pragmatic truth I’d like to try to tease out of that statement, if you bear with me for a little bit. Horror stories and monsters have been part of my life...

Halloween Haunts: Fight for Your Right to Halloween by Jennifer Harlow

As I’m sure all of my fellow HWA members can claim, Halloween is my favorite holiday. Horror movies on every channel, pumpkin seeds roasting in the oven, slutty cats and nurses trolling the street galore, and those are my least favorite things about the holiday. (Hello? Candy! Children!) But once I went to...

Halloween Haunts: Specialty Press Award Spotlight–Derrick Hussey and Hippocampus Press

Derrick Hussey and Hippocampus Press received the 2011 HWA Specialty Press of the Year Award. 1. How would you describe Hippocampus Press? We are a small press specializing in the works of H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and their circle. Each member of our team brings their experience and enthusiasm to...

Halloween Haunts: Three Ways Anyone Can Have an Awesome Halloween by Lincoln Crisler

Halloween can be a galvanizing time of year for some. People who don’t go to church except maybe on Christmas and Easter suddenly RISE UP! against the blasphemous evil nature of the holiday. Others, who may be fairly apathetic though the rest of the year awake from their walking slumber sometime around...

Halloween Haunts: Fort Fear–Writing the Origin Story for a Haunted Attraction by Adrian Ludens

“We want to build a haunted attraction and we’d like you to write a back story for it.” An origin story for a spook house? What a novel idea! More of a short story idea, really, but still an inviting challenge. One I readily accepted. Four summers ago, I sat in an Irish pub in Rapid City, SD with the...

Halloween Haunts: Halloween Mom by Nancy Holder

For many years, I dreamed of having a daughter, but no daughter came. When Belle finally showed up, I couldn’t imagine anything better—except that she missed being born on Halloween by three days. I thought that would have been perfect. But turns out that Belle and I share a lifestyle that includes...

Halloween Haunts: Could Vampires Be Real? by Carole Jahme

Dr Paul D Stewart (http://www.paul-d-stewart.co.uk) is a zoologist and multi award-winning wildlife filmmaker. After reading the new Darwinian vampire novel Worth Their Weight in Blood, by Carole Jahme, Stewart emailed, intrigued to know more about Jahme’s biologically credible vampires. Subject: from Paul...

Halloween Haunts: Famous Monster (Hunters) of Filmland (and Beyond) by Ed Erdelac

The leaves yellow up and the pumpkins sprout faces, the monster movie marathons begin and the spooky books get their own prominent section up front in the library, where they’ll quickly be supplanted by the Turkey Day and Christmas selections, like a rapid succession of Billboard number one singles....

Halloween Haunts: Stoker Spotlight Interview with Linda Addison

Linda Addison is the recipient of the 2011 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Poetry for How to Recognize a Demon Has Become Your Friend. 1. How would you describe How to Recognize a Demon has Become Your Friend? A science-fiction, fantasy and horror collection of short stories and poetry that...

Halloween Haunts: A Kiwi Halloween by Marty Young

Growing up in Hastings, New Zealand, we never really got to enjoy Halloween. It existed—for me, anyway—as some kind of weird holiday I got to see on TV and in movies. Halloween was so far removed from my world that it might as well have been as make-believe as the shows I was watching. It sure looked like...

Halloween Haunts: The Gift of Fear by Rebecca Cantrell aka Bekka Black

Halloween is about scaring the crap out of kids and then giving them sugar. Tricks. Treats. Making little lions and Spidermen and pirates and kittens happy while giving them nightmares. It’s my favorite holiday. This year we’ve moved, but last year and for the ten years before that, we were a little insane...

Halloween Haunts: Dead Mann Talking by Stefan Petrucha

In an initial draft of the first book of my zombie detective series, Dead Mann Walking, a group of peacefully protesting undead, pushed too far by the living, go feral, fulfilling the zombie stereotype. As dead-detective Hessius Mann helplessly watches the mess, he broods on the fictional history of the...