Category: Blog Tour

Ten Ironclad Rules for Writing the Novel You Just Finished

Ten Ironclad Rules for Writing the Novel You Just Finished

By: Joel Dane

 

I published twenty-six books, most of them with the Big Five, before I managed to stop giving a shit. Then I wrote my passion project: a short, deranged, cozy postapocalyptic novel that I believe is about the necessity of miscommunication, though I can’t be sure.

 

THE RAGPICKER is the closest thing to horror that I’ve written, because the best horror embraces the unfathomable, the irrational, the unknowable. Instead of providing closure and comfort, horror offers lessons which don’t, to paraphrase Scarlett Thomas, teach us how to turn our lives into copies of stories.

 

The only person I’m qualified to teach about writing is me, and even that’s a stretch. Still, here are ten tips for how to write the book I just finished. (With apologies to James Carse, whose Finite and Infinite Games inspired some of this.)

(more…)

The Gauntlet Runner Blog Tour – Real AI

Real AI

J. Scott Coatsworth

 

With all the talk of Generative AI these days – ChatGPT, MidJourney and the like, I think we lose sight of what “real” artificial intelligence is.

 

Generative AI really isn’t intelligence at all, or at least not yet – some people think it could be a springboard for true intelligence at some point. But for now, it’s just an advanced version of the thing that powers your phone’s text predictor – that thing that shows the next word(s) it thinks you might be about to type based on what you’ve already typed so far.

(more…)

The Measure of Sorrow Blog Tour: Time and the deep, black lake: resurrecting a story you’ve given up for dead

Time and the deep, black lake: resurrecting a story you’ve given up for dead

Have you ever written a story you loved so much but just couldn’t get to work? A stack of pages (whether real or metaphorical) you look upon with pangs of regret each time you slide open your (real or metaphorical) desk drawer—that drawer where all the other trunkers lay, forsaken? Do you ever take it out to reconsider with a kind of conflicted longing, as you might think back on a past lover—a lover with whom things were both electric and ill-fated—wishing it would either reveal itself in all its naked glory, or stop calling and let you get on with your life? 

Some stories are just like that. And though it may be painful, to set them free we have to let them go. (Let them go, yes—but never, not ever, throw them away.)

I wrote the first draft of the title novella in my short story collection, The Measure of Sorrow, close on ten years ago. I wrote it in a white heat of ideas piling on ideas, of puzzle pieces attracted one to another that just fit, of sustained inspiration that took me deep down, away from the original story seed, and into places I’d never explored before. It was exhilarating. I loved it. But it didn’t work.

(more…)

The Merry Dredgers Blog Tour: Answering Your Writing-Related Questions

Answering Your Writing-Related Questions

by Jeremy C. Shipp

 

For the sake of this post, I decided to hop around from social media platform to social media platform, collecting writing-related questions from aspiring and established authors. I visited Facebook, Twitter, Mastodon, Hive, Mammoth, Swarm, Toilet Bowl, Void, Eldritch Cucumber, Flibbertigibbet, Tally-ho, Razzmatazz, the Other Void, Giant Brain, Giant Brian, Egg, the Lost City of Atlantis, the Found City of Atlantis, Cookie Jar, Dimension Number 8364883, Eldritch Pickle. Anyway, here are some of the questions people had for me, along with my attempts to answer them.

(more…)

Cover reveal: The new Robert P. Ottone novel is almost here!

It’s always exciting when we get to know, see or read something before it officially hits the public consciousness – it’s one of the perks of being part of the Horror Tree team. But sometimes that excitement brews and bubbles and is just about ready to boil over from how buzzing we are. The title, the writer, the cover – my word, that cover. Sometimes it all comes together perfectly. And this is one of those times.

Friends, countrypeople: we are gathered here today to launch the cover of Robert P. Ottone’s new tome, The Vile Thing We Created. You’ll need to open this article page to see it, but it’s worth it. It’s beautiful. 

Robert P. Ottone is the Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of The Triangle, Her Infernal Name & OTher Nightmares, and, now, The Vile Thing We Created, a suburban folk horror about becoming a parent. Robert is, of course, also the publisher and owner of Spooky House Press, and no stranger to our dark worlds.

TWF editor Lauren McMenemy got to chat with Robert about the cover, the book, parenthood horror and more for the HorrorTree YouTube channel. Watch the interview here, or read on for an edited transcript of the discussion.

(more…)

A Q&A With Stephen J. Wolf On His Upcoming Release ‘Kershin the Fire Mage’

Stephen J. Wolf earned his PhD in science education in 2006, and has worked as a science teacher since 2001. His passion for chemistry and physics was inspired by watching Mr. Wizard’s World as a child, and learning that many of life’s biggest and most fascinating mysteries could be explained through science.

When he isn’t helping his students discover logic and wonder in the classroom, Wolf enjoys spending time with his husband Kevin, and watching Doctor Who with their cats, Merlin and Monty. Wolf currently resides in New York.

(more…)

UK Readers – Enter Our “Children Of Time” Trilogy Giveaway!

Today, we’ve got another great giveaway to offer up to our UK readers! We have 1 paperback copy set of the Arthur C Clarke Award-winning Children of Time trilogy by Adrian Tchaikovsky to give away, and you have a chance at being the lucky winner! We’ve got a few easy entries to enter so get them in before December 16tth, 2022!

For those unfamiliar with the series:
Adrian Tchaikovksy’s award-winning novel Children of Time, is the epic story of humanity’s battle for survival on a terraformed planet.

Who will inherit this new Earth?

The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age — a world terraformed and prepared for human life.

But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind’s worst nightmare.

Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?

Enter here:
(more…)

‘Third Front’ Blog Tour – Inside E.M. Hamill’s Creative Process

Elisabeth “E.M.” Hamill is a nurse by day, unabashed geek, chocoholic, sci-fi and fantasy novelist by nights, weekends, and wherever she can steal quality time with her laptop.
She lives with her family in the wilds of eastern suburban Kansas, where they fend off flying monkey attacks and prep for the zombie apocalypse.

How long on average, does it take you to write a book?
(more…)