Jason Malcom Stewart, Sumiko Saulson, Trinity Adler, Emerian Rich (front), R.L. Merrill (back), Loren Rhoads, E.M. Markoff, Mercy Hollow

“The 3 types of terror: The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it’s when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm. The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it’s when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It’s when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there’s nothing there…” Stephen King

Thursday evening eight San Francisco Bay Area horror authors read samples of their stories (and poems, Sumiko Saulson) for the San Mateo Library Second Annual Tales of Horror, which was organized by author, artist and speaker Emerian Rich in collaboration with members of Horror Addicts.net and library staff. What a fun way to kick-off Halloween celebrations. Horror is not my genre but I find it a good occasional escape and certainly so at this time of year.

The evening was dominated by welcome and expected thrills and chills and more than a soupçon of laughter and sweet treats. I venture to say, it was enjoyed by all, fans and authors.

If you are reading this in an email subscription, you’ll probably have to link through to the site to view the slide show included here:

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We writers tend to be introverts, often resistant to the necessary survival skills of self-promotion and marketing. It’s always interesting to me to see how other writers are marketing themselves: imaginative business cards, fanciful post cards, small bound copies of an excerpt from a chapbook (Loren Rhodes), and little bags of Halloween tchotchkes along with a business card (Sumiko Saulson). Take note in the interview below: Emerian Rich leaves time in her schedule for marketing. Bravo!

EMERIAN RICH (The Official Website of Emerian Rich) is the author of the vampire book series, Night’s Knights. She also writes the Sweet Dreams Musical Romance Series under the name Emmy Z. Madrigal. Her novel, Artistic License, mixes both horror and romance. She’s been published in anthologies by publishers such as Dragon Moon Press, Hidden Thoughts Press, Hazardous Press, and White Wolf Press. Emerian is the podcast horror hostess of HorrorAddicts.net. She is the Editorial Director for the San Francisco Bay Area based magazine, SEARCH.

JAMIE: Have you always written in this genre and what is the attraction for you … and for readers?
EMERIAN: I have written in many genres. I love Horror because it just has a special calling to me. It’s like the whisper of a ghost in the hallways of my soul. I also write Romance under the name Emmy Z. Madrigal. I have a New Adult series called Sweet Dreams Musical Romance and I have a few Regency Romances out as well as a modern rewrite of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey coming soon.
JAMIE: What’s the special attraction of steampunk?
EMERIAN: I think people like the mixture of the past with new technology that could have been discovered back then had history taken an alternate course. It’s the draw of… What would our ancestors do if they knew what we knew? Also, the fashion is just cool.
JAMIE: Do you have a “day job”?
EMERIAN: I am a writer, artist, and voice actress full time.
JAMIE: What is your writing schedule/routine like?
EMERIAN: I get up and write/blog/market/network just like anyone with an office job, only I get to do it in my PJs most of the time. 🙂 However, I work harder than I ever did when I went to an office. I usually work from about 7am to 5pm every day – and on weekends. If I’m on deadline, I will work again from 8pm to 12am, or 2am, or whenever I am done or fall asleep on my keyboard. HA! I try to take one day off a week, but it rarely happens.
JAMIE: What is your best advice for aspiring horror writers?
EMERIAN: Write, write, and write more. Don’t dwell on one book for too long. Write a story and edit it, but don’t pin your hopes on one book. Once you get published you’ll have much less creative time and more demand for your work. It will be nice to have a closet full of books and stories available to pull out and tighten up.
JAMIE: Please tell us about HorrorAddicts.Net.
EMERIAN: HorrorAddicts.net is a podcast, blog, and publisher for Horror Addicts, by Horror Addicts. We strive to cover the whole lifestyle of horror fans. Not just movies and media, but also books, fashion, lifestyle, and news.
JAMIE: There are a lot of activities going on at Horror Adicts. When it comes to writing competitions or other calls for submissions, what qualities separate the wheat from the chaff?
EMERIAN: Last year we held the first ever Next Great Horror Writer Contest where the best new horror writers competed for the chance to win a book contract with Crystal Lake Publishing. It was a tough competition where the authors had to fulfill thirteen challenges and their accumulative score would win them a chance to be in the final and be published. It was great fun and we met a lot of new writers that have since gone on to brilliant careers.
Our winner, Jonathan Fortin, is off to a great start and I expect to see great things from him. He’s already been published in several anthologies and his novel will be coming out in 2019 from Crystal Lake.
We are deciding whether to hold another Next Great Horror Writer Contest next year in 2019. You can keep up to date with that by subscribing to our blog. We will make announcements as soon as we know.
Also, every year we publish an anthology. This year, it is titled Kill Switch and the theme is tech horror. The submission guidelines can be found online and it closes October 31st, so pretty soon we will have tons of stories to read! How we make the decision on who gets published is with a panel of submission editors. We read all the stories, giving them a score between 0-5. Those with the highest scores are considered in a second round and then we create a well-rounded anthology that our readers will enjoy. For a story to be chosen, it must meet the theme and submission requirements as well as being scary and telling us a story we haven’t heard before, or at least in a new and different way.

Horror Addicts.net Submission Call direct link HERE. 

“We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.” Stephen King

FOR HORROR LOVERS ONLY

This weekend in Sacramento, CA

For the horror genre lovers and writers among you, join HorrorAddicts.net and authors Mercy Hollow, Emerian Rich, E.M. Markoff, and J. Malcolm Stewart at Sinister Creature Con. Look for them at a vendor table in the Main Hall, 6151 H St, Sacramento, CA 95819

ABOUT

Poet and writer, I was once columnist and the associate editor of a regional employment publication. Currently I run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded.  I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers.

My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The River Journal, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman.

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