The Horror Writers Association is proud to announce Ramsey Campbell as our first Guest of Honor for the Bram Stoker Awards™ Weekend 2013, to be held in New Orleans from 13-16 June 2013. HWA President Rocky Wood said, “Ramsey is a truly a legend in horror. As one of our Lifetime Achievement Award winners we couldn’t be more pleased to confirm him as our first Guest of Honor for the Weekend. He has kindly agreed to participate in all aspects of the Convention, including a one-on-one in-depth interview; panels; our mass signing and presenting during the iconic Bram Stoker Awards Banquet. It is also pleasing that we continue our expanding international focus with a major British Guest, building on such innovations as hold the Awards Banquet in England in 2010, Canada in 2007 and significant membership growth in countries such as Italy and Australia.”

Among Ramsey Campbell’s novels are The Face That Must Die, Incarnate, Midnight Sun, The Count of Eleven, Silent Children, The Darkest Part of the Woods, The Overnight, Secret Story, The Grin of the Dark, Thieving Fear, Creatures of the Pool, The Seven Days of Cain and Ghosts Know. Forthcoming is The Kind Folk. His collections include Waking Nightmares, Alone with the Horrors, Ghosts and Grisly Things, Told by the Dead and Just Behind You, and his non-fiction is collected as Ramsey Campbell, Probably. His novels The Nameless and Pact of the Fathers have been filmed in Spain. His regular columns appear in Prism, All Hallows, Dead Reckonings and Video Watchdog. He is the President of the British Fantasy Society and of the Society of Fantastic Films.

Ramsey Campbell lives on Merseyside in the UK with his wife Jenny. His pleasures include classical music, good food and wine, and whatever’s in that pipe. His web site is at www.ramseycampbell.com.

She made “improvements.”

At age 12, reading Stephen King’s The Stand for the first time, one memorable summer, it occurred to her that people really did write books for a living. That’s when she decided to become an author.

Megan began writing short fantasy, horror, and science fiction before graduating to
novel-length romances. In 1998 as a stay-home mom, Megan took up writing in earnest, attending her first writing conference and getting her first request for a full manuscript. In 2002 she saw her first book in print, and she hasn’t stopped since.

Published in almost every genre of romance fiction, Megan also writes fantasy, science fiction, women’s fiction, horrifyingly awful screenplays, and continues to occasionally dabble in horror.

Megan’s goal is to continue writing the kind of books she’d like to read. She spends too much time playing the Sims. Her dream is to have a movie made of every one of her novels, starring herself as the heroine and Keanu Reeves as the hero. Megan lives in the deep, dark woods with her husband and two monsters…er…children.

Tell us a little about the kinds of things you write.
Under my real name I write mainstream, romantic and erotic fiction as well as short horror. My current project, The Resurrected, is an indie release with six parts released to date and more to come. I also write young adult horror under the pen name Em Garner. Velvet is about a world in which contaminated diet drinks leave a large portion of the population suffering from uncontrollable rage — causing the government to not only slaughter large numbers of civilians before realizing they are not, in fact, zombies. Eighteen months later, the Contaminated are being returned to their families complete with lobotomizing collars that keep their homicidal urges under control, but when a new wave of contamination looms, everything begins to fall apart again. It will be released in January 2013 from Egmont books, and I’m very excited!

What was your most recent publication?
My most recent release was my indie short, The Resurrected Part Six. With each part acting as a complete short story yet creating an overall story arc, I’m really enjoying discovering and telling the stories of new sets of characters (some who show up in later stories too!) Part Six features two characters I really like a lot and can’t wait to feature in Part Seven.

Which grammatical error do you make most often that you wish you didn’t?
Hmm. I can’t do that/which. I just can’t.

What #1 piece of advice would you give to a new writer?
Nothing you write is gold the first time a

What is it about horror that draws you to the genre?
I’ve always loved horror, ever since I was a little kid. I started writing horror when I began writing. I love the scare!

Find Megan here:

• www.meganhart.com
• www.twitter.com/megan_hart
• www.facebook.com/megan.hart
• www.readtheresurrected.com

Christopher C. Payne, President of JournalStone (http://journalstone.com/) said, “It is both an honor and a pleasure to support the HWA. The members and Board have been instrumental in supporting JournalStone‘s fledgling endeavor as a new publishing company. I can only hope that we as a publisher continue to live up to the expectations of the HWA and all of its members.”

HWA President Rocky Wood welcomed JournalStone’s support: “This sponsorship from genre publisher Journal Stone is greatly appreciated by HWA, and I am sure by all our members. Journal Stone has proven to be a highly professional and innovative genre publisher, with a strong horror line, at a time when the publishing industry is in flux. We look forward to welcoming them in New Orleans.”

There are a number of other sponsorship opportunities for the Weekend available – for more details contact president@horror.org.

Author: Richard Davis
Publisher: David Sutton’s Shadow Publishing

David Sutton’s Shadow Publishing is pleased to announce that The Female of the Species & Other Terror Tales by Richard Davis (1935-2005) will be published late Spring this year. Richard never saw a collection of his stories publishing in his lifetime, and this book will include all of the author’s short stories, culled from as far back as 1963 and ‘The Fourth Pan Book of Horror Stories’ up to the 1980s. The collection will include an introduction about his life, the fiction and anthologies, including his work as story editor for the BBC’s Late Night Horror series. The book will also feature two rare articles and an interview with the author, from the late 1960s.

Publisher: Shadow Publishing
Release Date: 30 April 2012
ISBN_10: 0953903249
ISBN_13: 9780953903245

Christopher Conlon bills himself on his web site as a writer, poet, and editor. He has written a number of prose works, including many short stories and two novels, Midnight on Mourn Street And A Matrix of Angels (he has adapted the former into a two-act play). Some of his short stories have been gathered into two collections, Thundershowers at Dusk and Saying Secrets: American Stories.

He has published many poems in various magazines as well as in four collections of verse: Starkweather Dreams: Landscape with Figures, Mary Falls: Requiem for Mrs. Surratt, The Weeping Time: Elegy in Three Voices, and Gilbert & Garbo in Love: A Romance in Poems. Each of these collections is a cycle of poems telling a story.

As an editor, he assembled three anthologies: He Is Legend: An Anthology Celebrating Richard Matheson, Poe’s Lighthouse: All New Collaborations with Edgar Allan Poe, and A Sea of Alone: Poems for Alfred Hitchcock. He has also put together two collections: The Twilight Zone Scripts of Jerry Sohl and Filet of Sohl: The Classic Scripts and Stories of Jerry Sohl.

He Is Legend received the 2009 Bram Stoker Award for superior achievement in an anthology, And Midnight on Mourn Street was nominated for the Stoker Award in the first-novel category in 2008.

Chris has an M.A. in American Literature from the University of Maryland. He teaches English to grades 9 to 12 at a private high school in Maryland. His classes include courses in the literature of the 1920s and 1950s, an advanced course called Studies in Literary Genre (science fiction one semester and horror the next), and a course called Fiction Into Film, in which students read novels and study the classic films based on them. Big emphasis there on Hitchcock and film noir.

HWA: After publishing many poems and short stories, why did you decide to try your hand at a novel with Midnight on Mourn Street? Was that the first novel you’ve written?

CC: Ron, Mourn Street, my first published novel, was actually a revision, written some seven or eight years later, of the second novel I ever wrote. (The first, a massive literary novel called The Unspoken, has never been published either, though I continue to hope that someday it will be.) Anyway, novels were always the goal for me. I started out writing short stories, as most apprentice novelists do, and started maybe ten novels that petered out on me over the years. In
the meantime I gained a reputation as a poet, which was nice but a little odd—poetry is very important to me, but as a writer it was always secondary to prose and, in particular, secondary to the novel. More than anything else I intended to be a novelist. But it’s not an easy game.

HWA: A Matrix of Angels was written in the first person from the point of view of a female. Was it difficult writing a first-person story in the character of the opposite gender?

CC: Not really. I’ve often jumped the gender line in my writing, whether in first person or a very limited, intimate third. All my books of verse have poems from female points of view—Mary Falls, about the convicted co-conspirator in the Lincoln assassination, Mary Surratt, is almost completely from her perspective. It’s not something I seem to have a problem with, unlike many male writers. Part of it may stem from the fact that in my own life I’ve always preferred the
company of women, really. I’ve been told by a number of women that I have a highly developed “feminine” side, which I think I do. I grew up with very stereotypically feminine interests—art and poetry and so on. Anyway, for me the gender of a narrator isn’t that important in terms of the writing—what matters is if I can inhabit her psychologically, if I can understand how she thinks and what she’s trying to say to me. I’ll admit, though, that every once in a while I do ask my wife for a “girly” detail or two I can put into a story.

HWA: Which writers have influenced you the most?

CC: Poe was the seminal influence. Without doubt. The absolute beginning of everything for me. My life changed when I first read “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado” in fifth grade. Poe was the first writer whose work seemed to speak to me, to me personally, and seemed to somehow reveal to me aspects of my own self I hadn’t known anything about or understood. “Annabel Lee” was a transformative experience. I read it over and over again until I memorized
it. After Poe, Rod Serling and the Twilight Zone writers were central to me for a long time. Finally, in my early twenties, the theater of Tennessee Williams and the early Gothic stories of Truman Capote. All these writers were, for me, far more than entertainment. They helped me to live, to feel, to see.

HWA: You’re a big fan of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies. How have his films influenced your writing?

CC: I would have mentioned Hitchcock before if you hadn’t specified “writers” in your previous question, Ron. Oh, Hitchcock too. Most definitely. Right up there with Poe, Serling, Williams, Capote. Psycho is a central work in my life. Even when I was a kid I recognized that it was far more than just a “scary movie.” As with Poe, I recognized bits of myself in Hitchcock’s films—I came from a family of secrets, where things weren’t talked about (in my family’s case it was the
alcoholism of both my parents), so the world of Norman Bates seemed very familiar to me. The fear, the alienation, the inability to feel strong or safe even in your own home, with your own mother. But despite what I said about my feminine side a minute ago, Ron, I’m sorry to have to tell you that I have never dressed up in my mother’s clothing.

HWA: You’ve told me that you have over 3,000 books in your home. Which of these do you return to most often to re-read, either in whole or in part, or simply for inspiration?

CC: I don’t re-read a lot of horror books—most of my choices would be on the more literary end of things. But I go back to Poe often. Williams and Capote always. Lots of poets. The early Bradbury. Lovecraft. Beaumont and Matheson. H.G. Wells—and not just the early science fiction everybody reads, but his great mainstream novels too. For sheer entertainment, Robert Bloch and Clifford D. Simak. And I’ve read Gary Braunbeck’s In Silent Graves three times, always in awe—as far as I’m concerned it’s one of the greatest horror novels ever written.

HWA: What effect have your Peace Corps experiences had on your writing?

CC: Well, I don’t know, really. I’m not sure it had much direct effect except that I did write a lot of poems about Africa when I was there—I served in Botswana, 1988 to 1990—and they became my first professionally published verse. Other than that I haven’t written a lot about the experience. But of course it affected my writing, even if I don’t actually know how, because it changed me deeply as a person. You know the old cliché, “He went off a boy and came back a man”? That pretty much sums it up.

HWA: What were the challenges of adapting a novel, i.e., Midnight on Mourn Street, for the stage? Any news on a possible production of the work?

CC: The challenges were mostly structural. The novel already had a very small cast of characters and a fairly limited number of settings, mostly interior, so it was a natural for stage adaptation. The problem was honing down a novel that has, I believe, twenty-nine chapters and God only knows how many scenes, to something that could be smoothly playable in a theater. It involved a tremendous amount of streamlining and telescoping of events, which I accomplished with the help of some theatrical pros at the Quotidian Theatre in Bethesda, Maryland, who took me on as a kind of special project. I was pretty happy with the final script—I ended up with two acts consisting of a total of, I think, seven scenes. It was given a professional staged reading at the Quotidian in 2009, and the script was brought out by Creative Guy as a very nice little paperback last year. I’ve yet to secure a full production. I’m still looking.

HWA: Tell us about your latest novel, A Matrix of Angels.

CC: Matrix is narrated by Frances Pastan, a moderately successful author of children’s books who is haunted by a brief but intense friendship she had as a twelve-year-old with a girl named Lucy Sparrow, who at the height of their relationship was murdered by a serial killer. Frances relives the past with Lucy in memory while simultaneously searching for information in the present day about what happened to her friend and why. There are some thriller elements to the book, and I do think the climax is pretty intense, but Matrix is really a story about the fierce closeness two children can share, and the nature of friendship between young girls.

HWA: Tell us about your upcoming publications.

CC: I’m not sure how specific I can be about some of these things, Ron, but by the time people read this, word may be official about the publication of my next novel, Lullaby for the Rain Girl, which at 125,000 words is by far my longest novel so far and the first to have a supernatural theme—although it’s not a “scary” book in the usual sense. That should be out next year, from a great press everybody in this field knows. There will also be a little collection of my short-short stories, Herding Ravens, coming along in 2012. At the moment I’m in the middle of writing another novel, Savaging the Dark, which is already under contract to a fine specialty press, as well as a new sequence of poems—the first true “horror” poems I’ve ever written. Lots of things coming down the line, I’m happy to be able to say!

HWA: Why did you join the HWA and what benefits are you looking for from your membership?

CC: In general, Ron, I’m not a “joiner.” This is the first writers organization I’ve ever been part of, and in a way I’m sort of surprised to be here. I really haven’t been a huge fan of the HWA in the past, particularly in the way the Stoker Awards worked—or didn’t work, sometimes to a cringe-worthy degree. But it meant a lot to me when I won a Stoker last year for my Matheson tribute anthology He Is Legend—won it, that is, with no campaigning, no free gifts, no begging people on message boards everywhere to vote for me. I wasn’t even a member of HWA. I did absolutely nothing for the award, and neither did my publisher. Members simply decided, apparently, that I was worthy of it, so they gave it to me—which is how such things should work. So that impressed me. The other thing was when I learned of the new half-jury system, which sounded pretty ingenious and may be exactly what the awards need. A few months ago Norm Rubenstein asked me to be part of this year’s Anthology jury, so I decided to join HWA so that I could say yes—which I did. As for benefits, well, I’d like to get to know more people in this field, and that’s already begun to happen. My wife and I attended the Stoker Awards on Long Island in June and had a very nice time. It was our first convention ever. I ran a poetry workshop, sat on some panels, and we spent time with friends old and new—Norman Prentiss, Lisa Morton, Kurt Newton, Marge Simon, Bruce Boston, Mike Arnzen, the estimable Ron Breznay, others I’m no doubt forgetting at the moment. It’s nice to be able to attach faces and voices to folks who have mostly, until now, been only names in my email in-box. I hope for more of that in the future!

HWA: (Blushing at the compliment.) Thank you, Chris, and welcome to the Horror Writers Association.

Final Deadline for Accepting HWA Bram Stoker Awards™ Jury Submissions:

The Bram Stoker Awards™ Juries require a reasonable cutoff date for accepting submissions, in order to read them and deliver their Recommendations for the Preliminary Ballot by 15 January of the following year. Therefore the Bram Stoker Awards™ Committee has set 11:59PM (Pacific Standard Time) on November 30th each calendar year as the cutoff date and time for all Jury submissions. Juries will not consider submissions received by the Jury Chair later than that deadline.

Advice for authors and publishers:

If you expect your work to be published in December you should submit a PDF or MS of the work to the Jury Chair prior to 30 November (any work that will be published in December will certainly be at least in a manuscript form that the Jury could review).

This Ruling does not impact on the separate ‘Members’ Recommendation’ process. Works can still be Recommended by individual members using that process until January 15th of the following year.

Author: Connie Corcoran Wilson

“The Color of Evil” has been awarded the Gold Medal (1st place) in the 2012 E-Lit awards.

Tad McGreevy has a power that he has never revealed, not even to his life-long best friend, Stevie Scranton. When Tad looks at others, he sees colors. These auras tell Tad whether a person is good or evil. At night, Tad dreams about the evil-doers, reliving their crimes in horrifyingly vivid detail.

But Tad doesn’t know if the evil acts he witnesses in his nightmares are happening now, are already over, or are going to occur in the future. He has no control over the horrifying visions. He has been told (by his parents) never to speak of his power. All Tad knows is that he wants to protect those he loves. And he wants the bad dreams to stop.

At Tad’s eighth birthday party (April 1, 1995) in Cedar Falls, Iowa, the clown his parents hire to entertain Tad’s third-grade classmates is one of the bad people. Pogo, the Killer Clown (aka Michael Clay), is a serial killer. So begins 53 nights of terror as Tad relives Pogo’s crime, awakens screaming, and recites the terrifying details to his disbelieving family. The situation becomes so dire that Tad is hospitalized in a private institution under the care of a psychiatrist–who also does not believe the small boy’s stories.

And then the police arrest Pogo, the Killer Clown.

Flash forward to the beginning of Tad’s junior year in high school, 8 years later. Tad is 16 and recovered from the spring of his third-grade year. When Michael Clay was caught and imprisoned, the crime spree ended and so did Tad’s bad dreams.

Until now, in the year of our Lord 2003, when evil once again stalks the land.

This is a terrifying, intense story of the dark people and places that lurk just beneath the surface of seemingly normal small-town America. As one reviewer says, “Wilson nails the darkness beneath the surface of small-town Midwestern life with an intense story based on fact.”

Tad must wage a silent war against those who would harm the ones he loves…a battle to the death.

“‘The Color of Evil’ is old-school psychological horror, artfully blended with new-school shocks and twists…Bravo!” —Jonathan Maberry, New York Times best-selling author, multiple Bram Stoker winner.

“Connie Corcoran Wilson is a born storyteller! Her new novel ‘The Color of Evil’ is total entertainment. Wilson’s got a winner here!” —William F. Nolan, “Logan’s Run,” Living Legend in Dark Fantasy

“Connie Corcoran Wilson’s ‘The Color of Evil’ is a scary, entertaining novel. Dealing with a young person’s supernatural powers, bringing Stephen King’s ‘Carrie’ to mind, Wilson introduces us to Tad, a young man who can see people’s auras. A haunting childhood experience has already taught him the color of evil…With first-rate writing, a strong story, and believable characters, ‘The Color of Evil’ is a winner. Highly recommended.” —Pete Giglio, “Anon,” “Balance”

Publisher: Quad Cities’ Press
Release Date: 1/11//2012
ISBN_10: 978-0982444856
ISBN_13: 978-0982444856

WHC2013 will be part of the stand-alone Bram Stoker Awards™ Weekend in New Orleans from 13-16 June 2013.

HWA also announced that the Convention will be held at the recently renovated and historic Hotel Monteleone in the French Quarter. This Hotel, and iconic New Orleans destination, is a fitting venue for the conference as it is an official literary landmark (one of only three such hotels in America); and is reputed to be haunted!

Both WHS and HWA are very pleased that we are able to combine this event. Currently, HWA holds its iconic Bram Stoker Awards Banquet in conjunction with WHC in even numbered years and stages its own stand-alone Convention in odd numbered years, so combining the event in 2013 is seen as beneficial to the whole horror community.

The event will be billed as the Bram Stoker Awards Weekend incorporating World Horror Convention 2013, with a website at: www.stokers2013.org/. The World Horror Convention (WHC) programming will primarily be held on Friday 14 June, with the normal WHC components including the Art Show, Artists’ Reception, Dealers’ Room, Mass Autographing (which is also a feature of HWA Weekends) and Grandmaster Award featuring over the weekend. The Convention membership fee covers both HWA and WHC events, excepting the Banquet and any special events such as writers’ workshops, which are charged separately.

HWA programming will concentrate on Saturday 15 June and will culminate with the Bram Stoker Awards Banquet that evening. Other HWA programming will feature on the Thursday and the Sunday. Guests of Honor will be announced as they are confirmed.

Greg Herren is Chair of the Organizing Committee for the Weekend and HWA will also shortly announce a Chair for the WHC component.

Membership sales will begin in the second half of 2012, as will voting for the WHC Grandmaster Award. Hotel bookings will be available shortly, and the Organizers have negotiated rates for extended dates before and after the Convention, so that attendees can enjoy some of the many benefits New Orleans has to offer.

HWA President Rocky Wood commented, “This is the first time that HWA has hosted a World Horror Convention and we are pleased that we are able to do so within our own convention, the Bram Stoker Awards Weekend, which we hold every odd numbered year. And of course in 2013 we are in the historic, haunted and literary city of New Orleans, Louisiana, affectionately known as NOLA. This is a win-win for the horror community if ever there was one.”

WHS spokesman, Mike Willmoth said: “The World Horror Society is pleased to be working with HWA on WHC2013 next year in New Orleans during the Bram Stoker Awards Weekend. We look forward to a fabulous combined event.”

The Horror Writers Association (www.horror.org), the peak group for horror writers, is a worldwide organization promoting dark literature and its creators. Started in 1985, it has over 700 members writing professionally in fiction, nonfiction, videogames, film, poetry, comics, and other media.

The World Horror Society was formed in 1991 by Maureen Dorris who was the Chair of WHC1991 and WHC1992 in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Since then World Horror Convention has been held annually in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. More history, details about bidding, and a current list of board members can be found at www.worldhorrorconvention.com.

Further IMs and Announcements will be made about Hotel Bookings, how to volunteer for the Organizing Committee, the Dealer’s Room, Guests and so on. Keep an eye on www.horror.org also. Any immediate queries may be sent to president@horror.org.

Author: Dan Dillard

A computer programmer follows his obsession with the occult to a dark place. Visions of a domineering father drive him beyond the help of a best friend, a loving girlfriend, and even his dog, Slobber, to look for answers to questions we all wonder about. At first, it’s a hobby, but after meeting a woman who claims she was haunted as a child, Ethan becomes entranced.

When the entity first visits him, he is energized, but quickly becomes tortured and spirals away to a place where no one can reach him to help. He battles back with everything he has, and some things he’d never trusted in before.

Does he find his answers? Does he really want them?

Publisher: Self
Release Date: 2-14-12
ISBN_10: 1470135195
ISBN_13: 978-1470135195

Authors: Thom Brannan & D.L. Snell

WEREWOLVES

Dr. Crispin has engineered the saviors of mankind: Pavlov’s Dogs, a team of soldiers capable of transforming into fearsome beasts. But when Crispin and his team welcome a new talented neurotechnician to the island, Dr. Crispin quickly realizes his masterwork has fallen into the hands of a man he does not trust.

ZOMBIES

Back on the mainland, Ken Bishop and his best friend Jorge get caught in a traffic jam on their way home from work. There’s a wreck up ahead. And something worse. The first sign of a major outbreak and Ken and Jorge are stuck in the gridlock. They quickly realize that they not only need to escape, but they also need to save as many people as possible on the way.

ARMAGEDDON

Now Dr. Crispin and his team must make a terrible decision. Should they send the Dogs out into the zombie apocalypse to rescue survivors? Or should they listen to the new neurotechnician, who would have them hoard their resources and post the Dogs as island guards?

PAVLOV’S DOGS has it all. Genetically-engineered werewolves, hordes of flesh-eating zombies, and enough action to give you a heart attack. Grab this with both hands! —Jonathan Maberry

With PAVLOV’S DOGS, Brannan and Snell have staked their claim to survival horror s top spot. Relentless in its pacing and violence, crazed in its inventiveness, spontaneous in its humor, PAVLOV’S DOGS is a horror adventure of the highest order…a masterwork. Prepare yourself, because Brannan and Snell are about to get your heart racing! —Joe McKinney, author of FLESH EATERS

Publisher: Permuted Press
Release Date: April 6, 2012
ISBN_10: 1618680218
ISBN_13: 978-1618680211