Category: Blog Tour

Writing isn’t a popularity contest. Oh, wait – it kind of is. Oops, there – I said it.

The whole advent of social media and online reviews and ratings on sites like Amazon and Goodreads has resulted in the usual double-edged sword effect. You can publicise your work to a worldwide audience! But you can also lie! There’ve been a lot of articles written about sock-puppets (fake accounts created by people, often authors, to post good reviews under different names to boost their ratings and rankings) and how it’s possible to buy good reviews. This isn’t about that. This is about genuine reviews.

Nothing compares to the feeling of getting a good review. If I’m honest, it’s the reason I write (it certainly isn’t for the money!) The one thing that gives me more of a buzz than anything else is reading a few words from a complete stranger who happened upon my work and enjoyed it. Not that I don’t glow with fuzzy love when I read a similar review from a friend – it’s just that, my friends know me and as such I presume them to be biased in my favour. That’s why, in my opinion, you shouldn’t just review work by your friends. You should write reviews for authors you’ve never and will never met, especially if they’re new or self-published. If you enjoyed their book, don’t just tell your friends (well, DO tell your friends, definitely DO THAT) but tell them as well – the encouragement and tiny extra publicity push your review gives them could make a real difference to them. Even if they’re almost-famous, I imagine you’d be surprised (or maybe totally unsurprised if you’re a writer yourself) how little feedback authors actually do get. The nice part about this, especially if you’re an author yourself, is that often, dropping that note into a fellow author’s inbox on Goodreads can lead to making a friend, or at least expanding your creative network.

Of course, not everything you read will be great. If you’re compelled to leave a bad review for a book (and I’m increasingly taking the ‘if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all’ approach, but I suspect this might be down to my fear of receiving unreasonably bad reviews myself!) then by all means do it. Just, take a deep breath before you do, and make sure you’re honest. If something has obviously not been proof-read and is riddled with huge errors or lazy writing then I think it’s justifiable to warn other readers about it before they shell out their hard-earned cash on something they’re highly likely not to enjoy. If, though, you just don’t like the story or style then make sure you give that as the reason for your negative review. Some people WILL like the story and those people may be put off by a dozen ‘this book is plain terrible!’ ratings that don’t give an actual reason for their apparent loathing. Always say why. I once read a one-star review off someone who quite politely stated that they couldn’t finish the book because they hated reading first-person point of view. Perfectly legitimate opinion, succinctly stated – it might have been a bit harsh that it dragged the author’s overall star-rating down, but at least it wouldn’t put off too many potential readers checking out the reviews (unless of course they also hated first-person P.O.V. in which case – what a helpful review!)

Finally, be polite. It’s kind of an obvious one, but remember that everything you write about an author online, they’re likely to see (yes, we compulsively vanity-surf our own titles, don’t even try to deny it!) You can say pretty much anything you like about a piece of work, so long as you say it in the right tone. That goes for readers and authors both. If you’re a gracious, lovely author then it’s not going to hurt you in that big ol’ popularity contest of star ratings.

In conclusion, in the immortal words of Scooter: it’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice!

Die Booth is an award-winning horror writer from Chester, UK, who enjoys old things, ale, messing about and being nice. You can also read several of Die’s stories in the 2011 anthology ‘Re-Vamp’ (http://diebooth.wordpress.com/re-vamp/) co-edited by L.C. Hu. Die’s debut novel ‘Spirit Houses’, a supernatural tale of action, adventure and excellent Scotch, is out now. (http://diebooth.wordpress.com/)

Ebooks

• Kindle (US) – http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F53BVO6
• Kindle (UK) – http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spirit-Houses-ebook/dp/B00F53BVO6/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1379067559&sr=1-3&keywords=Spirit+Houses (how do I get a smaller link?!)

• Lulu PDF (readable on all e-readers) – http://www.lulu.com/shop/die-booth/spirit-houses-pdf/ebook/product-21179838.html
• Lulu E-pub (readable on most e-readers except Kindle) – http://www.lulu.com/shop/die-booth/spirit-houses/ebook/product-21170095.html

Paperback

• Lulu – http://www.lulu.com/shop/die-booth/spirit-houses/paperback/product-21196530.html
• LULU AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT – http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/diebooth

I wrote North Dark—a dark novella that weaves through genres like adventure, post-apocalyptic fantasy and horror—during a particularly dark winter in my life; my dog was dying, and I dealt with it by taking him with me to an isolated house in northwest Indiana and pretty much just writing every weekend for a couple of months. During this time, I also read and watched a lot of fantasy, a genre which was more or less new to me. The thinking was that North Dark would be a pure fantasy work, however, due to the nature of that particular season, the art I’d spent my life up to that point absorbing, or both, the content of the novella kept swerving back into horror—a genre about which I’ve been enthusiastic since I was probably way too young.

The first television shows I remember watching—actively watching—were old episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. If you haven’t seen the show, it is—as far as I can tell—pretty much another iteration of The Twilight Zone: three acts of vaguely-literary suspense/psychological horror bracketed by goofy and droll appearances of Hitchcock himself; this was totally captivating to my 7-year-old brain. As good art will do, Alfred Hitchcock Presents led me into the deeper and richer territory of horror including the Universal Monsters, Poe, Romero, and—later—Stephen King and Guillermo Del Toro. It was inevitable that the spirit of these influences would infect North Dark.

There are—in my view—two distinct veins of horror that run through North Dark. The first is Physical Horror, or as David Lynch fans might call it “Body Horror.” This is a subset of horror that I think gets an unfairly bad reputation. When someone dismisses “Horror” they’ll usually adopt the same voice someone might use to dismiss a “cheap thriller” or a “popcorn movie.” The thinking here, I guess, is that horror is easy to accomplish, not worthy, and of lesser value than other genres. That’s an easy argument to make and an even easier one to make against Body Horror—where the actual scare comes from the fear of or the execution of permanent physical harm, forced alteration or mutilation. This genre might have peaked in the 70s and 80s during the Cannibal trend in horror films (but maybe it hasn’t; look at Saw or Hostel).

In North Dark, the fear of evisceration is an ever-present threat to the characters because of the nature of the world they inhabit (an arctic Post-Apocalyptic society). Physical injury or gruesome death is all but an inevitability for these characters because the life they know is packed with roaming slavers, savage bandits, and grotesque predatory wildlife. Characters in this world will lose eyes and arms.

The main character of North Dark is a young lawman named Two Crows who, travelling by dogsled, embarks on a vengeance quest for the fugitive that crushed his family. As he travels across this vicious tundra, it becomes clear to him that he will have to commit very serious atrocities if he wants to find and defeat his prey. The threat of physical harm and appalling injury is not a joke, and is definitely not intended as a gross-out device, it’s meant as a simple and ever present truth about this world—it’s as factual and inarguable as sunrise and nightfall.

The second dimension to the horror present in North Dark is closer to psychological. Two Crows, early on, receives a grievous injury that changes more than his physicality. As his physical condition worsens—or toughens, depending on your point of view—his thinking become more hallucinatory, deranged, and erratic. Where this leads him and the reader is, I believe, just as frightening as the physical threats waiting around every bend of the dogsled trail.

I believe that the history of the horror genre is as rich and deep as any other, including naturalistic literary fiction. It’s compelling and, in its most successful forms, it draws out of each us something primal, truthful and completely basic. As a reader, what I respond to in horror is the reality that, at heart, we’re each just vulnerable storms of molecules guessing our way through life. No matter how powerful, in control, or self-assured a character in fiction may seem, the inarguable reality is that there exists some more powerful antagonist—either in the open world, or buried deep in the character’s head—waiting to inflict damage, to kill or change him or her. That thought, to me, has always been deeply horrifying. And, if I’ve done my job, that idea lives in every page of North Dark.

North Dark by Lane Kareska

Synopsis:

Set in a lonesome and barbarous failed state, North Dark is the story of a lone man traveling by dogsled across a frozen wasteland in pursuit of the fugitive who destroyed his family.

Haunted by predators both physical and spectral, the musher’s journey takes him across a deadened tundra, tortured cities and the remains of civilizations long-lapsed into madness. All the while, his enemy slides in and out of striking distance, always one step ahead, always one act of violence away.

Purchase Links:

Amazon: US, UK, Canada, Italy, Germany, Spain, France, Brazil, Japan, India

CreateSpace

Smashwords

Author Bio:

Lane Kareska was born in Houston, Texas. He studied writing at Columbia College Chicago and his MFA is from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where he was also awarded a Fellowship to live and write in Ireland. Lane traveled Europe and South America to research his graduate thesis. He teaches creative writing and works in technology and new media. His fiction has appeared in Berkeley Fiction Review, Sheepshead Review, Flashquake and elsewhere. Lane currently lives in Chicago and can be followed on Twitter @LaneKareska as well as reached at [email protected].

FOCUS

Hello, and welcome to the fifth stop on my Piece of Cake Blog Tour. As a regular visitor to the Horror Tree, I’d like to thank Stuart, for giving me this platform to promote my debut novella, Cake, which was released on Monday.

At each stop along this tour, I’ve asked my host to provide me with a topic to speak on, deftly weaving a subtle plug for the book into the narrative. Today, Stuart asked me to pen a few words on staying focussed whilst writing, which I was more than happy to…ooh, look! A squirrel!

Sorry, where was I?

Ah yes – focussing.

It’s a difficult to do, no question. I’ve wanted to be a professional writer for as long as I can remember; certainly as far back as 7 or 8 years old. Yet, here I am, over a decade and a half later, and I’ve only just released my first book, and a novella, no less! What happened to that young kid with fire in his belly, and why has it taken him becoming a middle-aged man to get something published?

Well, as you may have guessed from the subject matter, it’s mostly because I am (or, rather, I was) an incredibly lax writer, more than happy to put off until tomorrow that which should really have been completed today.

Sometimes this was justified – over those twenty-something years, I’ve moved house four times, got myself married, changed jobs a bunch of times, and had two kids. I’m sure even the most committed author would agree that taking a couple of days off following the arrival of your firstborn (or, indeed, your second) is perfectly acceptable.

It only became a problem once the reasons for pushing the writing to one side became less easy to justify to myself. After all, it’s one thing to avoid your story for the night, when you’re out on a stag night, or perhaps taking your kids to see Guy Fawkes being burned in effigy; it’s quite another to do the same because there’s a Simpsons omnibus on the television, and you might not have seen all of the episodes.

I’ve tightened up my game. These days I write for at least an hour – every…single…night. The word count doesn’t concern me too much, as I’m in this for quality, rather than quantity, but that time must be spent either writing, or editing.

It works, too. Often I’ll extend that hour to two, or even three, only retiring for the night when my eyes get too heavy to pay attention to the words on the screen. In the last couple of years, I’ve written longer and harder than I have managed over the rest of my life, and it has paid dividends. I’ve penned just under one hundred stories, over half of which have been published in anthologies, magazines, and on websites around the world. Hell, one of them has been published in a Canadian textbook – that’s me, corrupting the youth of the world, one student at a time!

I’ve also edited 13 horror anthologies over the last eighteen months, for Cruentus Libri Press. Granted, this was a decision that severely cut into my writing time, causing me to be somewhat less productive as a result, but I stand by it. In reading and editing the hundreds of stories submitted to the various books that I helmed has improved my skills as both an author and an editor of my own work, beyond all measure. That’s before you take into account my exposure to so many other writers, of whose work I would otherwise have been ignorant.

This is all well and good, you may be thinking, but it doesn’t cut to the heart of the matter – where has my new-found focus sprung from? That’s an easy one to answer, as I simply cut myself off from anything resembling human contact.

It sounds like a joke, but it’s the truth. My WiFi connection was the first to go, supplier of that triumvirate of distractions – Facebook, Twitter and writing blogs (sorry, Stuart). I always used to have my internet running in the background, excusing its presence, by labelling it a research tool, but that was only a half-truth. Of course it can be essential, but I have found it more productive to make such enquiries that I need to advance my story before I settle down for an evening’s writing, jotting my findings down on a notepad. This helps me to condense my research into something more manageable, which is also conducive to a tighter style of writing, and leaves less time to waste looking at amusing cats.

Once the internet was out of the way, all I had to do was get rid of my family…no, wait. I mean, of course, that whilst I love my wife and kids beyond all measure, and they are the reason I write at all, I cannot write with other people around me, and I find it hard fathom those who can. You know that cliché of a wannabe writer tapping away at a laptop in their local Starbucks? I would end up beating a barista to death with a wooden stirrer for breathing too hard.

I don’t have my own office in our house, and I want to spend as much time with my family as possible (just another of those daily juggling acts that the would-be writer has to account for). The solution was elegant in its simplicity – I waited for them to go to bed. It was a win-win situation – I get to be a good dad, and an attentive husband, plus I get to sort out my various administrative duties outside of my precious writing zone.

That means that the hours I spent at my craft, post-midnight, could be dedicated to being the best writer I could be. Such a simple solution – no internet, no television and no company – and the word count just rocketed.

So, I guess that’s my advice – cut yourself off from the outside world, and just get to writing.

In fact, what are you even reading this for? You’ve had the tip, now go turn off your internet connection, shoo your loved ones out of the room (they’ll thank you for it later) and get to writing.

Still here?

Shame on you.

This guest post has been contributed by: Kevin Bufton
Author of the just released ‘Cake‘
Kevin G. Bufton is a thirty-something father, husband and horror writer, in that approximate order. He lives in Birkenhead, on the Wirral, with his wife and two kids.

He has been writing horror fiction since January 2009, and has been published in magazines, anthologies and on websites, the world over.

Cake marks his debut release as a solo author.

Kevin hopes, one day, to be able to scare people for a living.

About ‘Cake’

In May of 2053, forty years following the Separation of Wirral from the mainland, there is but a handful of people who remember what life was like before.

Geraldine Waters is one of the few.

In a land ruled by gang law, and horrors beyond mortal imagination, Geraldine lives in a perpetual nightmare, from which she knows she will never wake.

Her story is one of hatred and desperation, of living shadows and dying hopes.

It is a story about family…

It is a story about cake.