Monthly Archive: June 2020

Articles / Interviews

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The Horror Tree Presents… an Interview with Zach Friday and Nate Vice

Ruschelle: Welcome to your Horror Tree Interview. This is my first tag team-INTERVIEW…well except for my brief stint in jalapeno jelly wrestling. But that’s not important so let’s get this party started, shall we? You both teamed up to edit the anthology, Ghost Stories for Starless Nights. How did that come about?

Zach & Nate: We’re both pretty involved with the company and working to release the finished product. Ghost Stories for Starless Nights was already set to be a bigger project so we felt it would be best to tackle it together. 

 

Ruschelle: What can you tell us about the publishing company DBND? Is it run by the Illuminati? Please say it’s so.

Zach & Nate: All we can say is [REDACTED]

 

Ruschelle: How many authors submitted to this particular anthology? 

Zach & Nate: We had about 175 authors submit for Ghost Stories.

 

Ruschelle: What was your story selection process and how long did it take?

Zach & Nate: The selection process is always really fun. We try to keep up with stories as they come in, but it’s easy to fall behind. We like to read the stories separately and then meet up to bounce stories off of each other and see if we agree on them. For the most part, we’re working through the selection process from the first story hitting our inbox to about a week before contracts are sent out. 

 

Ruschelle: I’m sure all the ones you chose were favorites, hence they made it into the anthology. But which ones really resonated with you as horror writers and readers?

Zach: Of the stories selected, Unwritten Songs by Tim Jeffreys is the one that really stuck with me. I found myself thinking about weeks after I’d read it, it has a unique and interesting take on ghosts and what they want from the other side. 

Nate: The Ink of Inspiration by Jeremy Megargee is one that still sticks with me, without spoiling anything, what the character goes thorough hits home for me in a lot of ways…except for the ending of course. Text Messages from the Problem Solver by Justin Zimmerman is another one because it deals with one of my biggest fears when it comes to death. 

 

Ruschelle: As editors, what is the toughest part about working with writers? What would you love to tell authors who might be considered for publication?

Zach & Nate: The toughest part is not being able to publish stories we love and want to because they don’t necessarily fit what we’re aiming for on a project. One of the most important things to us as editors is to not come in and drastically change a work. If we feel it needs major changes to be included in an anthology, we’ll usually pass. We don’t want to be the editors that dismantle a piece with a red pen just to end up with something the author isn’t in love with. 

What would we love to tell authors? Submit and keep submitting, get your work out there as much as possible. Every story has a home, you just have to find it. 

 

Ruschelle: You are longtime friends, sorry your secret is out. Did you find this an easy, natural project to work on together, or did it make you relive moments as kids when you wanted to throw down behind the school dumpster? 

Zach & Nate: Haha no, we work together well. We’ve known each other for the majority of our lives, so for the most part we do a decent job respecting our differing opinions. 

 

Ruschelle: Have either of you had any actual cryptozoological or supernatural experience?

Zach & Nate: We’ve both had our fair share of strange experiences. One we shared together in middle school led to us hiding in a creek bed from something chasing us through the forest. 

 

Ruschelle: Fun question- If you could meet any cryptid or famous spook, which one would it be and why?

Zach: Shadow people. Someone needs to stop those bastards. It can be me.   

Nate: Oh, Bigfoot easily. I’ve been obsessed with the subject since I first saw the Patterson-Gimlin film as a young child.  

 

Ruschelle: From the little bit of creeping I was able to do, Zach appears to be an author. And a, ‘humor/horror’ author to boot. Yes! A writer after my own little black heart. What makes a good, solid story frightful yet funny?

Zach Friday

Zach: I think horror and humor fit together very well. Humor is a way that people deal with stressful, frightening, and horrific situations, so it feels natural for humor to seep through in dialogue and situations while keeping the tone and backbone of the story dark and horrific. I think that’s the main thing that lets a humorous horror story work well. I’m also a fan of juvenile humor worked into clichéd horror tropes.

 

Ruschelle: Which horror authors do you gravitate towards when reading for your own enjoyment? 

Zach: Lately, I’ve worked my way through Grady Hendrix’s books and I really wish there were more. I’m also always on the lookout for any new horror authors from small presses. 

Nate: Well, my dad is an English teacher, so I’ve always had Edgar Allen Poe works surrounding me. Stephen King isn’t so bad himself. 

 

Ruschelle: NATE, I was reading somewhere on the not so dark web that when you were a kid, you met Pennywise in a storm drain out in the middle of the woods. Maybe it wasn’t Pennywise. The not so dark web doesn’t always get the facts straight. Care to give The Horror Tree the exclusive?

Nate: Haha! I can’t say I’ve ever run into Pennywise himself, but when I was a child, I woke up to a family member watching the original IT tv miniseries. The first thing I saw was Pennywise sucking a child through a sewer drain… so that didn’t help my love for clowns for sure. Also, I’ve never been able to bring myself to read that particular King novel. 

 

Ruschelle: Has your creativity been inspired by books, movies or television? Fair warning, there may be a wrong answer. Lol

Zach: I guess I would have to say all three. I think it’s impossible to not be inspired by other mediums (I hope that’s not the wrong answer). I think it’s important to be in the know with what’s popular, to know what others are doing so that your creativity can go its own way or follow suit with a unique spin.  

Nate: I would have to agree with Zach. All three of those mediums have provided inspiration. I would even throw in horror video games like Silent Hill and Resident Evil. They capture the horror imagination well. 

 

Ruschelle: Alien invasion, chupacabra invasion or insect invasion? They all sound like a good time, I know, but you can only pick one to live through. Which one and why? I took a break from inquiring about zombie invasions. You’re welcome. 

Zach: Alien. No telling what they’ll be and that’s exciting. Unless they’re giants and they just squish us all immediately. Or millennia ahead of us and smite us. But that’s the fun of the gamble.   

Nate: Chupacabra. Only because it increases the chances of Bigfoot being real haha.

 

Ruschelle: What projects are you both working on that your newfound fans should look out for? 

Zach & Nate: We have some exciting things with DBND that will come out over the next year. We’ll be reworking our pay for authors, novel and collection submissions will be opening, and we have a few things under wraps that we can’t quite mention yet. We also have open submissions for some new anthologies that will be coming out this year and more on the way, including Halloween Horror: Volume II. And we’re very excited about that! 

 

Ruschelle: Zach- where can your newfound fans find and connect with you?

Zach: Twitter @ZachAFriday and email are usually the best ways to reach me and see what I’ve been up to. 

 

Ruschelle: Nate- where can your newfound fans find and connect with you? 

Nate: Email. Or Facebook. 

 

Ruschelle: Thank you both for chatting with me here at The Horror Tree! It’s been a pleasure. 

Zach & Nate: Thank you for the great questions, this has been a lot of fun! 

 

 

Articles / Guest Post

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Friday Update: Pandemic Book Launches

Pandemic Book Launches and Hot Off the Indie Press  18.06.20

In addition to Jim McLeod’s Pandemic Book Launch group on Facebook – go here for more infomation – Joe Mynhardt has set up a collaborative Facebook group for the independent presses: Hot Off the Indie Press. This one carries all sorts of posts from indie publishers to ‘promote sales, sales and opportunities for authors’ amongst other things, if you want to see what they’re up to and what’s available, check it out here.  

If you buy, please also consider leaving reviews for the authors and even dropping them a line on twitter or their websites to have a chat with them about the book.

Pandemic Book Launches 

 *** Charity Anthologies ***

     Diabolica Britannica, ed Keith Anthony Baird. Raising money for the NHS. More details soon!

 

 

 

 

June 2020

1st June 2nd June June
12th June16th June 22nd June

24th June

 

July 2020

 

8th July 20th July 20th July

 

August 2020

4th August10th August

 

18th August 28th August

 

 

Future Releases (note: dates not always available)

Happy reading.

Steph

 on behalf of Stuart and the Horror Tree Team

 

Trembling With Fear

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Unholy Trinity: There’s Something On Your Face by Catherine Berry

Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.

I

She could hear the voice whisper in the dark. Sibilant hisses. Deep growls. Reedy whines. The words echoed in the trees around her. Things had seemed so safe with her friends; now she was running.

Her arms and legs were covered in stinging, slowly seeping cuts. She’s stumbled over roots, scrambled up rocks, dodged and ducked around trees; but the voice kept repeating. Kept following.

Fingers slid around her throat and clamped down. Her feet shot out from under her. Something wet and sharp pressed against her cheek. A breathy chuckle next to her ear.

“There’s something on your face.”

II

“There’s something on your face,” the woman next to Emily hissed, pressed against the side of the elevator.

“Where?” Emily brushed her hands over her skin. “Is it still there?”

“It’s wriggling!” the woman squealed.

“Could you get it?” Emily stepped closer.

“Don’t come near me!”

“Okay,” she soothed, “I won’t.”

Phone set to selfie, Emily’s face looked normal. She eyed the trembling woman, inched towards the doors, and smiled awkwardly. The elevator stopped and Emily rushed to reception.

“Excuse me, I think someone’s having a psychotic episode.”

The receptionist flinched, stare fixated on Emily. “There’s something on your face.”

III

The date had been going well. When Lee brought Amy home she’d invited him in.

“Where were we?” she purred.

“Here,” Lee whispered.

Kissing her was intoxicating. Dizzying. Hands trembling, heart thudding, chest tight. Lee pulled back; his bones ached like the flu.

Amy licked her lips, pupils blown wide. “Delicious.”

Lee stroked his thumb along her cheek leaving a thin, red scratch.

“There’s something on your face,” he mumbled, rubbing gently over the mark. Amy’s skin bunched and ripped revealing glistening red tissue underneath.

“Kiss me,” she demanded, clenching Lee’s head painfully in her hands. She swallowed his scream.

Catherine Berry

Catherine Berry lives in Michigan, sings with her dog, and loves potatoes.
Her work has been published in Horror Tree’s Trembling With Fear and in the anthologies Trembling With Fear: Years 1 & 2.
More of her work can be found at www.caterinaberyl.blogspot.com

Articles / Blog Tour / Guest Post

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The Attic Tragedy Blog Tour: “She’s alive!” – OR – Can a character really take over your story?

“She’s alive!” – OR – Can a character really take over your story?

By: J. Ashley Smith

I once read an interview with crime writer James Ellroy, who spoke bluntly when asked if his characters were flesh and blood. He said it was disingenuous for writers to say they had no control over their creations. The choices about their behaviour, their actions and reactions, did not arise independently – each was an artistic decision, made by him.

The Oscar-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin holds a similar, albeit more extreme position, describing the tendency of some authors to impute independent agency to their characters as ‘magical thinking’ – a politely belittling alternative to calling it ‘bullshit’. To Sorkin, there is no character beyond the words on the page. Characters do not ‘live’ beyond the individual choices that he, as author, makes for them; the specific traits or behaviours or actions that he chooses to show. If a character likes to drink warm lemonade, or is a hoarder with an obsession for dog-eared National Geographics, it is because room temperature soda and thrift store magazine collections are intrinsic to some dramatic purpose of Sorkin’s design. They exist on the page, in service to the story. 

In this model of the author–character relationship, the author is a god, the character a figure made of clay into which the illusion of life is breathed.

Some part of me (the part that doesn’t balk at hard-boiled materialism) knows they are right. I know it. And yet— (more…)

Trembling With Fear

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Serial Killers: On the Origin of the Species (Part 2) by Avital Malenky

  1. Serial Killers: On the Origin of the Species (Part 1) by Avital Malenky
  2. Serial Killers: On the Origin of the Species (Part 2) by Avital Malenky
  3. Serial Killers: On the Origin of the Species (Part 3) by Avital Malenky
  4. Serial Killers: On the Origin of the Species (Part 4) by Avital Malenky

Serial Killers are part of our Trembling With Fear line and are serialized stories which we’ll be publishing on an ongoing basis.

Alien life forms found on planets with liquid water on their surface were proving to be quite a problem to the new colonies. That life actually wiped out almost all of the colonies from the second wave of the Great Migration. The interaction with most local wildlife was short and bloody and whole settlements died within hours from disease or sudden and violent attacks.

These deadly attacks were sometimes commenced by the alien life, no one was denying that, but sometimes it was conceived by the settlers themselves. It was believed some settlers of the second wave saw it as a necessary eradication method to rid the colony of alien infections, or maybe they got sick somehow and turned mad, inflicting pain and mayhem on each other without a logical reason. Either way, very few of the settlements survived the first meeting of the species prevalent on the second wave of The Migration.

The ones that did, had to wipe out the exotic life as much as they possibly could in order to survive. In their rage and hunger for life, the colonists might not have extinguished all alien life they encountered, but they certainly tried.

The Migrant fleet spaceships that bore the humans all across the skies were magnificent beasts. A few kilometers long, hundreds of meters wide, they filled the ice fields turned into space fields of the old world. The best of human technology, their last hopes for the future, each spaceship held thousands of people on each trip off of The Earth.

There were hundreds of spaceships on each of the waves and their numbers grew as more and more were being built for each wave off the ground.

The fleet traveled through countless light-years and peppered the settlers in droplets of survival pods on their new planets. The new settlements had means of communication, construction, and medicine built into the pods themselves. The little pods were everything a human being could need on a new planet, except for a way back.

Hannah and Itzhak studied their whole lives to be admitted to the colonizing fleet and had left the earth on the Fourth Wave heading for the vegetative world LV-420 aptly dubbed by its new colonizers as “Dryad”.

Hannah was an A&E nurse while in the fleet and promoted to head nurse a few years later when they dropped. Itzhak was a botanist and worked in the greenhouses aboard the migration ship when they dropped he harvested and studied local fruit in the jungle.

They were happy. Edith was one of the first babies born in the colony and their firstborn. Itzhak had built a round cot for his daughter, it fitted the roundhouses they all lived in. The cot was made from vine and local wood, the same as the houses. The buildings sat on heavy stilts trying to escape the ever damp soil of the jungle and Itzhak made the cot with tiny stilt legs to match.

It was that round homemade cot that Hannah saw turned upside down one morning as she came in to feed her daughter. Edith was still in it, thankfully, quiet and completely terrified. When Hannah ran towards her bleeding daughter and picked her up, she jolted little Edith into sudden heartbreaking sobs. The cot, as well as the stilted houses, were not enough to keep the monsters out.

Edith’s back was cut with three long scratches, deep and ugly, they would leave her scarred for life. The house camera when played back showed a single talon, curved and cruel, pulling the bedding off the cot sometime before dawn.

The creature accidentally hooked its nails on her daughter’s back as it went through the cot. Like a piece of leaf stuck to a shoe, or an annoying bug you want to shoo, the animal violently shook Edith off its talons, tossing the baby to the side of the room. It was out the window in seconds and gone into the night.

The Watch started searching for the creature right away. The Watch was just a small after-work detail up until then, after the attack however, Hannah saw them recruiting everyone. Even Hannah joined the searches eventually, when she thought she could leave Edith for a few hours.

After those early weeks in which Edith seemed to be recovering well enough, Hannah felt she had to do something more to vent her rage and helplessness and went out into the jungle with The Watch, determined to find the animals that attacked her daughter.

Hannah hadn’t been much outside the colony, being mostly buried in her lab, but she still wanted to experience her new planet for herself.

Hannah loved Dryad, she just didn’t know it all that well until her own daughter was attacked. Hannah didn’t mind the water clogged air or the high humidity and its wet heat. Sure, it was uncomfortable most days, but every time she stepped outside the air-conditioned lab, Hannah would stop still and let the heat soak back into her once-again frozen bones.

Hannah and everyone else who was born on earth was born into the forming new reality of the human race in an ice age. That meant hunger, death, and most of all, the cold. Hannah has never been warm for a day in her life before she came to Dryad. However hot and uncompromising the weather was, it was above all and finally, hot.

The colonists decided to name their planet Dryad after a tree goddess in ancient Greek mythology. Hannah walked down the center trail of the colony and off the road into the silent canopy. The green of the exotic vines swallowed her whole and Hannah realized they had picked the perfect name. 

Avital Malenky

I grew up in an ultra-orthodox community in Israel but left that life very young. Having traveled all over the world after my Military service in Army Intelligence, I settled with my husband and son in England. I battle PTSD daily and am caring for my son, recently diagnosed with autism.

Anthology / Events / Flat Amount

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Taking Submissions: The Other Side: A Horror Anthology

Deadline: August 30th, 2020
Payment: $20
Theme: Must include some aspect of death, “Ghosts, ghouls, possession, ritual, cultural beliefs, the paranormal, monsters, the occult” etc

Death. What would horror be without a little sprinkle of death?

Yet it’s not the act of dying that creates the evergreen mystery surrounding the finality that comes with loss of life, it’s the enigma that follows the question: what comes next?

The Other Side is a horror anthology which explores the great beyond. We’re looking for stories that tackle the world beyond the living. Ghosts, ghouls, possession, ritual, cultural beliefs, the paranormal, monsters, the occult, this anthology will collect the greatest stories that answer the age-old question:

When we breath our last breath, where do we go?

Submission deadlines: Sunday 30th August, 2020

Word count: 5,000–10,000 words.

Payment: $20

Submission Guidelines

A submission Word template is available for download HERE.

  • Stories slightly over or under the word count will be considered

  • Stories must be saved as a Word document, PDFs will not be accepted

  • Times New Roman

  • Size 12 font

  • 1.5 paragraph spacing

  • Place your name, the title of the anthology for which you are submitting, and your preferred contact email address in the header of the document

  • Sex, violence, and coarse language are accepted as long as they serve the story

  • No hate speech or fan fiction

  • Multiple submissions welcome

  • Reprints will be considered

  • Payment for accepted stories will be made within 7 working days of confirmation of entry.

Failure to adhere to submission guidelines will result in immediate rejection from the anthology.

Via: Devil’s Rock Publishing.

Reviews

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Epeolatry Book Review: Arterial Bloom, ed. Mercedes M. Yardley

Disclosure:

Our reviews may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something through the links in this article we may receive a small commission or referral fee. This happens without any additional cost to you.

Title: Arterial Bloom
Author: Various, ed. Mercedes M. Yardley
Genre: Horror
Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing
Release Date: 3rd April, 2020

Synopsis: Crystal Lake Publishing proudly presents Arterial Bloom, an artful juxtaposition of the magnificence and macabre that exist within mankind. Each tale in this collection is resplendent with beauty, teeth, and heart.

Edited by the Bram Stoker Award-winning writer Mercedes M. Yardley, Arterial Bloom is a literary experience featuring 16 stories from some of the most compelling dark authors writing today.

With a foreword by HWA Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient Linda D. Addison, you are invited to step inside and let the grim flowers wind themselves comfortably around your bones.

There’s just something about an anthology. While a novel pilots a long, deliberate ribbon of highway, an anthology is all side streets and dark alleys. A good anthology offers myriad opportunities to get lost, to disappear into a new tale. Arterial Bloom mostly delivers on that front.

Arterial Bloom is a deep dive into the macabre heart of humanity. It is a collection free of an overarching theme, and the tales are as diverse as the writers who pen them. In this collection there’s everything from body horror to post-apocalypse to the delightfully and cosmically weird. This is a large palette of styles and subjects, and the diversity helps to keep the book fresh. You never know what you’re in for with each new blood-soaked tale.

Like any anthology, there are hits and misses. Some of the stories, although crafted well, tread worn and overly-familiar ground. Instead of surprising me, they rehashed standard apocalyptic tropes and horror clichés. Despite the overused plot and themes, the writing was, generally, solid enough to pull me through.

The biggest issue I have with Arterial Bloom is the too-frequent embrace of the current trend of ambiguity. Ambiguity can be a fantastic device, but it’s a difficult trick to pull off. If you don’t stick the landing, the ambiguous intention becomes muddled and confused. A few of Arterial Bloom’s stories lead to a narrative which got lost in the weeds of style over substance. Leaving aspects of the plot up to my imagination is fine. Substituting vagueness and labyrinthian prose for a structured and coherent plot is a horse of another color. When you sacrifice the telling of a focused story on the altar of a stylistic trend, you’ve done a disservice to your own talents as a writer. 

Though a solid collection of tales overall, several stories stood out. “The Darker Side of Grief” by Naching T. Kassa is a taut, tense slice of supernatural action where I learned there’s nothing more terrifying than a mother’s love. “Welcome to Autumn” by Daniel Crow is a surreal and strange tale of an artist with an otherworldly secret. I’ll admit I saw where it was headed, but that still didn’t keep me from enjoying the ending. “Happy Pills” by Todd Keisling features a medical experiment run to madness. I’m not normally a fan of body horror, but this story is executed well enough that it swept me along for the ride. “Mouths Filled With Seawater” by Jonathan Cosgrove is as a creeping example of ambiguity done right. “Blue Was Her Favorite Color” by Dino Parenti is a hallucinatory puzzle, and the dark highlight of the collection for me.

Arterial Bloom is a good anthology collection, with enough terrifying and bloody tales to keep you reading well past the midnight hour. So what if it was a bit uneven; this is common of many anthologies, and doesn’t detract from this satisfying stable of dark horror from a diverse collection of authors.

3.5 stars

Available from Crystal Lake Publishing, Book Shop, and Amazon.

Trembling With Fear

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Trembling With Fear 06/14/20

This bit is going to stay here until the pandemic is over. Thank you to all keyworkers who continue to keep us going during the pandemic. As the UK and Europe moves out of lockdown, I really hope that eventually we can get some sort of normal going around the world.

Five weeks to go! Having continued to go into work, mainly to rebuild and order my library, I find I am now looking forward to the summer holidays! Strange that I would say that during the lockdown but my workload during the day has continually been solid and my writing load in the evening equally so. I must admit I am tired but I’ve just come to the end of a long stint getting my latest novel ready to submit – the last stage being the deletion of overused words. It is however, a horrible feeling seeing your word count go down as you delete all these! I don’t know whether I killed them all but I gave it a good go. Hopefully, I’ll get to the stage where I don’t use such words in the first place! This is one of the places where beta readers are worth their weight in gold as having that distance from your work, they spot overuse immediately.

This week’s Trembling With Fear starts with Irritable Bird Syndrome by Christian McCulloch.  This is a story somewhat different to our usual horrors. In fact, it is not so much a horror story, as an eco-commentary. Will we be missed if we’re not here on the planet? I think we have part of that answer as on walks during the lockdown we saw nature reclaiming its world. The birds sang louder, the animals ventured further, the waters were clearer. Would it be a horror story if the human race disappeared? Going by what crept out, probably not in those terms. A pity we can’t adapt our ‘new normal’ to retain that more peaceful aspect. In terms of writing skill, this author created some wonderful imagery, in particular with his use of the sense of sound. He doesn’t just use it to build the setting, but also to deal with the fundamental issue of man’s inability to listen.

Kiss it Better by Jack Deel is works really well with its second person POV. Direct, sympathetic, supportive even – or is it?

Spring by G.A. Miller sets the scene perfectly in its description of life using all the senses. With this one, you could actually change the last line to reflect those first weeks of lockdown – eerily prescient.

The New Boyfriend by James Bates is another drabble relying on the last line to twist the direction of the story and make you look at it in another light. In such a small form, this sort of misdirection is often key.

Take care

Steph

 

Stephanie Ellis

Editor, Trembling With Fear

Whew, what a week. 

I ended up finding a couple of errors on the site. The contact form was ‘working’ but not displaying the box around where you can type and was very confusing. This has been fixed. Secondly, it was pointed out that post author names aren’t showing up on the main page (though are in individual posts.) There isn’t (currently) a setting in the theme to fix that but will be in an upcoming upgrade. If time permits (hah! time?) I’ll try to code this in as we want to support our writers as much as possible by making it as clearly visible as we can as to who worked on what.

Next on the list, new swag! We’ve recently added a new shirt and new tote to our store. These both feature the new site logo. We’ll likely be adding a hoodie and potentially a few other items down the line as well. 

As for Trembling With Fear? We’re almost fully caught up on reading and, as always, are open to more drabble, Unholy Trinities, and Serials! (Shorts as well though we’re pretty backed up at the moment.) Anthologies are still in process. I’m sorry. I really was hoping for an update this week on them. 

I hope you all enjoy the latest fiction that we’re providing this week! Please, do leave a comment to let the authors know your thoughts if possible. 

Stuart Conover

Editor, Horror Tree

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