Category: The Art of Writing

Horroraddicts.net Publishing has recently published our 4th anthology called Once Upon a Scream. Remember the Fairy tales that you grew up reading? Well they are back again with a horror twist. Once Upon a Scream includes 18 tales that are fantastic and frightful. One of the authors in this anthology is Charles Frierman and recently he talked to us about his writing:

What is your story in Once Upon A Scream called and what is it about?

My story is called, “Nothing to Worry About.” It’s about a man who fears “nothing” in a weird sort of way.

What inspired the idea?

Well, when I saw the anthology title, “Once Upon a Scream,” I knew I had to write something because it sounded like the greatest anthology title ever. I was so inspired that I immediately sat down and started writing just trying to keep up a creepy fairy tale feel…

How to Write Like Chekhov, Advice and Inspiration, Straight From His Own Letters and Work.

Edited by Piero Brunello and Lena Lencek

Book Review and Commentary   May 31, 2016

Reading the letters of authors is often an eye-opening experience for writers. In correspondence we can find an intimacy that a writing craft book fails to provide.  In How to Write Like Chekhov, editors Brunello and Lencek give us an experience with Chekhov that goes beyond a technical craft book. And for this, I truly appreciated getting to know Chekhov’s thinking and values as he digs deeply into expressing himself as an artist and a man. Chekhov wrote 568 short stories, numerous novels, and plays. Tolstoy called him an ‘incomparable artist—an artist in life.’

How relative is his advice from over 100 years ago? Well, if you are looking for a mentor who understands the transformative power of art, this…

 Bad Egg by Sumiko Saulson

Press Release: Demon with a Comb-Over

Excerpt :

Sirens Call Publications is pleased to announce the open call for the 27th issue of The Sirens Call…

For this issue, we’re looking for your best horror stories falling under the theme of

Horror-ific

Go psychological or slasher, creature or paranormal – as long as it falls under the umbrella of horror, we’re open to it. Make your tales creepy, kitschy, funny, romantic, or sci-fi – get creative and send us the kind of skin-crawling, bone-rattling story you’d want to read.

Your only limiting factors are your own imagination and the word count!

Submission Deadline: June 1, 2016

Short story word count: 1,000 – 2,500

Flash fiction word count: 300 – 1,000

Poem length: minimum 10 lines; maximum 50 lines (with a limit of five poems per author)

Drabbles: 100 words (limit of five submitted per author)

Reprints are acceptable as long as you currently…

Writing is a solitary act, but being a writer is not.  We live in the Real World with everyone else, and our lives are just as full and noisy and chaotic as the next person’s. We have friends and family to care for and enjoy. We have day jobs (with meetings and emails and conference calls) and households to manage (via negotiation and sometimes bribery). We are subjected to the same onslaught of news, social media, and sundry other local and global communications as every other non-luddite member of this hyper-connected human race.

What makes writers different is that our lives include another layer that exists, sometimes above and sometimes below, everything else: the world of our writing. And, unlike the activity-powered Real World, this other world of stories and ideas and dreams is brought to life by stillness and solitude.

··• )o( •··

When I was a kid, I spent a…

Join us at BayCon 2016!

May 28th, 2016

1pm PST

Connect 1

Once Upon a Scream Release Party

Favors, door prizes, autographs, readings!

Come join us.

EXAMINATION

Liver gets a bad rap. It says a lot about a meat that folks typically cover up their poorly prepared liver with something as strong as onions.

However, with the right preparation and sauce, liver is more tender and just as delicious as any cut of beef. Leave it to Hannibal Lecter to suggest to us a fine pairing of liver with fava beans served with a nice Chianti wine.

ANALYSIS

Servings: 2

Ingredients

8 Tbsp butter, divided
1/2 cup diced pancetta or bacon
1/2 cup diced white onion
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 lb fava beans, shelled and peeled if fresh
1/2 cup chicken stock
1 lb young beef liver, which should provide 2 slices
1 cup flour, seasoned with salt and pepper
1/2 cup red wine, Chianti preferred

Apparatus

• Saucepan
• Skillet

Procedure

1. In a saucepan, melt 2 Tbsp of butter over medium-low heat then add the pancetta…

Steering the Craft, A 21st-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story  by Ursula K. Le Guin

Book Review and Commentary  May 17, 2016

Are you a storyteller? Have you been writing for a while now? Steering the Craft is a comprehensive but short guide for writers who are not beginners, but those who need direction about their narrative prose. Ready to target some of your writing weaknesses?

Filled with lots of exercises (I’m not big on writing exercises but these are better than most), this book can function as you own private writing workshop. There’s a wealth of examples of writing achievements by authors like Alice Walker, Jane Austen, Dickens, Grace Paley, Virginia Woolf.

In Chapter One, Le Guin asks you to listen to the sounds of your writing. Listen to the forward movements, pace, rhythms, the silences. How does the changing sentence rhythms express the emotions of the…

Join us

Friday, May 20th, 2016

7pm-9pm PST

on Twitter for a LIVE Tweet event!

To celebrate the release of Once Upon a Scream, we’ll be watching our favorite fairy tale movie and live tweeting during it. Join us by watching your favorite fairy tale and including @horroraddicts13 and #OnceUponScream.

Don’t miss a minute of the fun, follow us now:

@horroraddicts13

@emzbox

At 11pm on the night of March 28^th 2016, Crystal Connor, sat down to watch a slasher film that used a small California town located in the Mojave Desert as a back drop. With the coffee table piled high with popcorn and snacks, with her small dog nestled by her side she picked up her remote and pressed play.

This is the unedited journal chronicling the harrowing experience of her screaming, crying, and expletive outburst that her neighbors were forced to endure as she watched Riley Woods 2011 The Victorville Massacre.

Reader discretion is Advised

Entry 1: Last line of the movie: “Never had a serial killer in this town.” Ummm…

Complaints: I think watching horror movies should be an ‘interactive’ activity (which is why I watch them alone) and the more I yell at the people on the screen the more fun I’m having. I’m a…

Our featured author for episode 125 of the HorrorAddicts podcast is Mark Taylor. Mark recently answered a few questions for us about his work:

What is your story for episode 125 about?

The excerpt comes from ‘Total Entertainment’, a short story from my collection ‘Strange’, published in 2015 by Eleventh Hour Literary Press. It is a dark dystopian telling of a future where employ is everything, and where dreams have become a commodity in the entertainment industry. Dreams are sold as interactive simulations.

The story has been so well received that my publisher has contracted me to turn the short into a novel, which will be coming out later this year, entitled: ‘A Night at the Dream Theater’.

What inspired the idea for using dreams as a virtual reality game in the future?

I was thinking about where the next stages of entertainment were coming from. With virtual reality now…

I always get stuck at around 30 thousand words. I have been thinking about why, and this is my thoughts on it at this point in time.

Let’s open a story.

He entered the hidden room, returning to confirm his suspicions, not expecting an occupant. The lady was there, standing with her purse gun in her hand, her eyes welling with rage. He ducked out. She shot. The bullet ricocheted off the wall shredding a shower of debris into the dark hallway, filthy and cold, where he crouched on the floor fumbling on the shoulder holster, hanging empty and limp, for his gun that was not there.

This is pretty much a typical opening for me. Being a pantser, I just pile on events after an opening and see where the story goes. But we don’t know who “he” is or who “the lady” is at this point. We do…

Sirens Call Publications is pleased to announce a new open submission for a horror anthology titled Alone With Your Fear!

The Call:

Isolation… not just physical, but psychological, emotional; it plays with your mind, drags out your deepest fears, makes them larger than life and far more sinister.

For this call, we’re looking for stories that pit the main character against their own greatest fear. It seems deceptively simple, but be warned – it isn’t. We want the fear to be the overarching theme, so make sure your story contains a hefty dose – if we don’t feel it, the readers won’t either.

Perhaps the best place to write this tale is Alone with Your Fear…

Deadline: September 1, 2016

Word Count: 4,000 – 8,000 words

All submissions MUST be submitted to: Submissions@SirensCallPublications.com

Reading & Evaluation Period: Two to three months after close of the deadline

NO REPRINTS WILL…