Horror novels are a genre of literature written to create a sense of fear in the reader. Horror novels often feature ghosts, demons, and other supernatural elements.
They also often feature scenes of murder and violence. Horror novels often include a ‘shock ending,’ which is meant to surprise the reader.
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Title: The Burning Boy And Other Stories
Author: Denver Grenell
Genre: Horror
Publisher: Beware The Moon Publishing
Release Date: August 2021
Synopsis:
“A funnel of thick, black smoke rose from his body, billowing through the trees, another chimney expelling its fumes into the bitter night. The heat of the fire melted a perfect circle in the snow around him. His eyes radiated white-hot light, and they were looking straight at me.”
After a tragic accident on Guy Fawkes Night, three teens are haunted by a spectral figure burning for revenge. Can they make amends before the burning boy comes calling?
The Burning Boy & Other Stories, the debut collection from Denver Grenell, delivers twists, turns, and a myriad of dark delights. Among the fifteen original tales that are sure to terrify and thrill: a young girl inherits a deadly legacy; a medical experiment goes cosmically wrong; a cruel boss finally pushes the wrong employee too far; and a watery end is just the beginning.
Whether you are a seasoned horror fiend or are venturing into dark fiction for the first time, these stories will scare you, surprise you, keep you on the edge of your seat, and won’t let you go until they’re done.
Title: To Bring Him Home and Other Tales
A plotter or a pantser? Oh, definitely a plotter. Before I can start, I have to know where the story is going to end. This doesn’t have to be very specific at all. For example: at the beach, what beach, and how they got there, to be determined. Or, in the White City. Where the White City is and how they got there and why they went, something I will learn as the story progresses. I also have to be a beginning in which I can feel the flag drop, so to speak. Here, at this place, this point in time, the story moves forward, it begins. I also find myself dropping up time lines of significant events to be sure the continuity works and as a part of world-building. Most of the time I prepare an outline, knowing it will change, but the outline gives me a shape and a structure within which to tell my story.
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**People often talk about the holidays, the beauty, the family traditions, the sadness that can linger there underneath tinsel, and turkey dinners. Truthfully, I am not a big fan of any of the holidays, except of course Halloween. In order of spooky season, frights, fears, griefs, and guilts—I bring you all a short personal essay. **
The Oxygen Kiss: A Magic Show
by Jennifer Anne Gordon
The dark red velvet jacket brushes the floor with each step, a swish, swish, swish, swoosh like blood pumping in my veins. The silk lining is ripped a little at the back, the heel of my boot catches in it if I am not careful, it pulls it apart a little more with each careless step. Whatever is in between the silk lining and the velvet turns to dust, to ash.
Memory.
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A preview of ‘Tortured Willows—Bent. Bowed. Unbroken’
Angela Yuriko Smith
Tortured Willows—Bent. Bowed. Unbroken
Poetry by Christina Sng, Angela Yuriko Smith, Lee Murray, and Geneve Flynn
I’m delighted to present Tortured Willows, a collaborative collection of 60 poems exploring otherness, expectation, and tradition.
What began as a deepening of the conversation based on the multi-award-winning anthology Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women became a discovery of a culture silenced and traded. This series of poems opened up a Pandora’s Box for me. I began by writing about how my grandmother lost her name (Yuriko) because Caucasians couldn’t pronounce it. As I scratched the surface of what it means to be Okinawan, or more accurately Uchinanchu, my world pivoted. This is not about a woman losing her voice, but a culture—a people—losing everything.
Last month we shared 5 Overused Horror Movie Clichés To Avoid In Your Writing and now, for those of you who missed it or prefer video format we’re revisiting the post! These came in from reader Emily Henry who really gave some solid ideas to share with everyone.
I’m sure you can guess a couple of them, though I will let you know ahead of time that these aren’t just rehashing the rules of the ‘Scream’ franchise even though that might be something we think about taking a creative look at in the future!
…I’ll be right back!
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A preview of ‘Tortured Willows—Bent. Bowed. Unbroken’
Christina Sng
Tortured Willows—Bent. Bowed. Unbroken
Poetry by Christina Sng, Angela Yuriko Smith, Lee Murray, and Geneve Flynn
Tortured Willows is a collaborative collection comprising 60 poems expanding on the themes of otherness, expectation, and tradition that were introduced in our multi-award-winning anthology Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women (Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson Awards).
I am a fourth-generation Singaporean-Chinese. My paternal grandparents were Peranakan and Teochew-Cantonese, while my maternal grandparents were Hakka and Cantonese. In Tortured Willows, I write about the horror stories and mythologies I grew up with from a unique blend of multiculturalism, modernism, and tradition.
How Do You Start a Chapter in a Horror Novel? 10 Examples
Writing scary scenes is more than just picking a good horror or thriller premise. How you write your story determines how scared your readers will feel. Great horror stories rely on a mixture of proper pacing, refreshed tropes, twisty endings, and line breaks that have been placed strategically to build up the scary stuff. Whether you want to craft a small horror story or an amazing horror novel, the tips that we are going to share with you in this article will help you achieve your writing goals.
Starting a chapter is one of the hardest writing tasks to work on. Keep in mind that the first draft is yours. Therefore, you should spill out everything that comes to mind. However, after revising the draft, you’ll need to cut the entire information that you’ve put in the first chapters. Don’t delete any info. Instead, save it since you might need it later.
After this process, you’ll end up with opening chapters that are different from what you started with. And this should be it. Most of your original first chapters are the ones you’ll have to kill. To start the best first chapter in your horror history, you need to:
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