My New Werewolf Story!

I have a brand new werewolf horror story from Hagstone Publishing!

I'm stoked. They're a very cool publisher, and I think they did a great job with one of my creepier offerings.

Happily Destroyed: My Sci Fi Fairy Tale YA Mash-up

Welcome to THE HAPPILY, a paradise dimension where everyone is royalty… where every meal is a feast… where your loyal subjects burst into song at pre-scheduled intervals… where you can never, ever return.

Rose and her sisters live a life straight out of a fairy tale. Well, the crappy first-half of a fairy tale, anyway. They work and sweat and go about their days, always hoping that something terrible will happen. Maybe a troll will steal them away. Maybe a sorcerer will turn them to stone. Heck, maybe a beast will whisk them off to his dark, nasty castle. Wouldn’t that be great?

You see, if something bad happens, that means that someone will rescue them. And if someone rescues them, that means they just bought a one-way ticket to THE HAPPILY. Bing bang boom. Paradise.

Slowly, the sisters get into trouble. Slowly, they get rescued. Slowly, they achieve their happily ever after. That just leaves one sister: Rose. She’s too spunky and independent. She’ll never get rescued, which means she’ll never transition into THE HAPPILY. She’s stuck in the real world, with all the witches and ogres and dragons.

But what if she sneaks into THE HAPPILY? And what if she gets caught? Or worse, what if THE HAPPILY isn’t as great as everyone says? Well, there’s only one way to find out…

Nostalgic 90s: Shadow Zone

 
Goosebumps cast a long shadow. For the bulk of the 1990s, R.L. Stine's middle grade horror series was ubiquitous, raking in millions via books, backpacks, pogs, and all sorts of ancillary materials. (Remember Curly, the skeleton with the purple hair? He never appeared in any Goosebumps book proper, but he was the bony face of the brand for much of the 90s.)

Of course, with great success comes a flood of rip-offs. We've already talked about my love of Bone Chillers. The same can be said for Spooksville, Deadtime Stories, Graveyard School, Strange Matter, and Spinetinglers. All of them carved out their tiny niche-within-a-niche. And they've all more-or-less been forgotten within the last two decades.
 

 
Because I've got nothing better to do on this long winter night, I thought I'd pay tribute to one of the many series that time forgot. In this case, it's the 13-issue Shadow Zone. Like Graveyard School and Spinetinglers, this series was written by a rotating band of for-hire writers. (Their collective pen name: J.R. Black, which is slightly less tongue-in-cheek than Tom B. Stone or M. T. Coffin.) Because of this, the house style was a little loose. Everything from chapter length to (over)use of cliffhangers changed from book to book.

So without further introduction, here's the full list of books:
The Ghost of Chicken Liver Hill
Guess Who's Dating a Werewolf?
The Witches Next Door
The Undead Express
Good Night, Mummy
One Slimy Summer
Bite of the Living Dead
Alien Under My Bed
Scream Around the Campfire
My Teacher Ate My Homework
Skeleton in My Closet
Attack of the Mutant Bugs

  
The two novels that stand out are The Undead Express and My Teacher Ate My Homework, both of which were adapted into TV movies for Showtime. (The latter stars Shelley Duvall as the kooky teacher. She's great, even if the movie isn't.)
  
This series was always an also-ran for me. I only read five of them (from what I remember), and none of them really sunk into my memory banks the way that certain issues of other books series did. (Deadtime Stories had the truly terrifying Invasion of the Appleheads, for example.) Instead, Shadow Zone gave us fun, inconsistent mini-thrillers that seemed to cater more toward female readers.

There was nothing overly strange or trashy about these, especially compared to the gloriously wacko Bone Chillers. Instead, the Shadow Zone series represents the blandest possible mid-point for mid-90s horror. If you're interested, though, check out both of the TV movies. They're endearing.

Gretchen the Mouse Girl

So I'm working on a top secret young adult project. This is a little teaser. Try to guess what the book will be about...

Halloween Night: Trick or Treat

Graveyards, spirits, witchcraft, black cats, candy, and haunted houses.

Strange things happen on Halloween. All Hallows Eve is the single night where the veil between the living and the dead is opened. And now spirits, monsters, and candy will collide!

 

Seventeen authors and illustrators set out on a horrific journey to set the record straight. What really happens on Halloween night? Trick or Treating is not all fun and games. There are more tricks than treats scattered through these pages. Sure, All Hallows eve can be a scream. But sometimes, it’s straight-up murder.

Halloween Night: Trick-or-Treat is a middle grade and young adult horror anthology that falls on Halloween night. And right now, it's only 99 cents! You can be terrified for less than a dollar!

Read if you dare! You're in for a scare!