Horror reading lists by author, series and subject

This month Gary A. Braunbeck, an Ohio based horror writer, teams up with Horrorworld to make a special limited time presentation just for you. The novella called In Seeing: A Story of Cedar Hill will be serialized in three installments this month.

In Seeing: A Story of Cedar Hill
Click here to read it at Horrorworld

• Part One runs from July 1-11.
• Part Two runs from July 11-21.
• Part Three runs from July 21-31.

As the next part is published on the website, the last part is archived if you’re a johnny-come-lately, you can still read the entire story between the 21st and August 1st when it disappears.

Cedar Hill is . . . a town where the supernaturally weird happens . . . a lot

Yes, that’s right, after July 31, it all goes away, possibly for good! At this moment there is no word about future publication of this story. That decision seems to rest with Horrorworld owner and manager Nanci Kalanta. I’m sure a strong showing on the website (i.e., a lot of people drop by and read it) will improve its chances to see print publication.

What is Cedar Hill?

Cedar Hill is Gary Braunbeck’s the fictionalized Ohio town based loosely on Newark, Ohio and a few other places where he lived. It is a town where the economy is depressed, industries are failing and “getting out” is almost an impossibility.

It’s also a town where the supernaturally weird happens . . . a lot. Some people live their lives surrounded by the weird. Others find themselves catastrophically touched by it only once — but once is enough. Many people fall between the extremes.

Gary has over a hundred short stories and novellas as well as four novels set in Cedar Hill. His novel Keepers introduces you to the mysterious bowler hat wearing people (are they people?) called the Keepers, which you meet in the first installment of In Seeing.

The latest novel Coffin County is the story about how the supernatural came to Cedar Hill. The next novel, slated for publication in 2009, promises to be the story of the final fate Cedar Hill and the supernatural forces that inhabit it.

In the meantime, read and enjoy In Seeing and pop over to the Cedar Hill Story Cycle List on the sister-website … With Intent to Commit Horror for a list of the books that chronicle Gary’s beleaguered town.

(Cross-posted on OhioWriters.net and The Lair of the Undead Rat)

This week on DearReader.com’s Horror Club, we are getting the first section of a book called The Taken by Sarah Pinborough.

The Taken	The Taken Author: Pinborough, Sarah Format: Mass Market Paperback Type: Novel Page Count: 323pp. Pub. Date: April 3, 2007 Publisher: Leisure/Dorchester Links: Sarah Pinborough: Author of Supernatural and Horror Fiction Book List for Sarah Pinborough
She’s a beautiful little girl, only ten years old with pretty blond curls. Why, then, does she strike such terror into all who see her? Because she died thirty years ago — a horrible, agonizing death in the middle of a raging thunderstorm. Tonight the storm has returned . . . and so has she. She has returned from a shadowy realm unseen by the living to exact revenge on those responsible for her death. One by one she will make them pay. There is nowhere to hide, no way to escape. It is only a matter of time before her ghastly vengeance is complete . . .

Interested in The Taken?

It’s not too late to sign up for the DearReader.com’s Horror Club, and get this week’s e-mails with the first section of The Taken. Read the beginning for free and decide for yourself if you like it. And if you’re joining in the middle of the week, you can click on this link to get the first e-mails you missed or look at the top of your very first e-mail for instructions.

If you find you want to read more of The Taken, you can check with your local bookstore, library or purchase it on-line through one of the links provided in the gravestones above.

For the past couple of months, most intensively over the last three weeks, I’ve been involved in a special project for the library where I work. Now I can tell you about it.

The Grand Announcement

On July 1st, 2008, the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Public Library will unveil a brand new website. One of the biggest changes in the website is the creation of a series of blogs by my fellow RATS!

Yes, the RATS are hopping onto the internet to talk with you about books.
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I’m behind on my e-mail and weeks are going by without tracking. I’ve been involved in a big project — which has caused me to draw heavily upon everything I’ve learned in the last two years or so. And this project that I’m spear-heading is but one part of a major overhaul in the way my library interacts with the internet. I hope to have a big announcement about that soon.

In the meantime I missed the last DearReader.com book and we’re over half way through this week’s book. However, as always, if you’re interested in a book and you want to join — your first e-mail will have a link that will allow you to get missed copies of this week’s book AND the last book as well.

This week, DearReader.com’s Horror Club features The Freakshow by Bryan Smith. Interested? Take a look:

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Last Thursday saw the launch of a new small press publisher entering the field of horror. Underland Press books’ website went live on May 29th.

Underland Press itself has several authors already under contract with the first book expected in the winter of 2009. However, you don’t want to wait until then before you visit their website because, if you hurry, you just might catch the first chapter of their wovel.

Yes, I said wovel.
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I’m still trying to recover from the huge loss of files from my flashdrive so I am running late with this post. However, DearReader.com’s Horror Club features Brian Lumley’s Necroscope: The Touch. Interested? Take a look:
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Each month I list the new booklists that have been added to my website . . . With Intent to Commit Horror.

Another challenging month as I lost a lot of work and have to reconstruct many partially finished pages and posts (like this one). Furthermore I discovered that all my theme booklists are gone so I am trying to update the copies I have and post them as quickly as possible. [Read more →]

I must say that this has been one of the roughest weeks in recent memory.

I lost months of work off my flashdrive and discovered I had not been backing up properly. My wife and son have had several doctors appointments and tests. My wife in particular has spent the last six weeks or so sick and in a lot of pain. And Cleveland water and sewer are trying to kill me off via coronary by each sending bills inflated over twelve times the cost they’ve been for the last two years. That’s well over one thousand dollars for the month of April.

And yet, in the midst of all that unpleasant chaos, some really wonderful things happened. My wife and the kids gave me several special birthday presents.

The Presents:

They gave me The Hides by Kealan Patrick Burke. It’s book two of the Timmy Quinn Series (which means I now own the entire series to date). My wife also hunted down and acquired an out-of-print heretofore impossible-to-find copy of The Girl in the Basement and Other Stories by Ray Garton which I have wanted for a long time.

Finally, the present that totally blindsided me with happiness and joy was The Complete “Little Books” series published by Borderlands Press. A few weeks ago there were only five sets remaining. Now all the complete sets have been sold and you can only get individual little books that haven’t been sold out yet. I am stunned.

Does my wife love me or what?

Finally, as a bit of an extra birthday present, this website received 120 hits according to WordPress.com Stats which is the first time it has gone over 100. That is a really nice gift. I hope you, my visitors are finding the things you’re looking for.

Last but not least — The Contest

Raven Bower donated three eBook copies of her novel Apparitions on CD-ROM to me for this contest. Everybody who left a comment on the website this month went into a hat and I drew three names. John, Mick and another John are the winners. You will be contacted by e-mail tomorrow to arrange delivery of your prize.

Thank you to everyone who left a comment and an extra special thank you to Raven Bower.

Despite the headaches and the panic attacks, this was a really wonderful birthday.

All this weekend I’ve been promising a post about the three horror book clubs to appear on Monday. I had the post almost complete as of Sunday evening. Monday afternoon I plugged in my flashdrive where I keep all of my website files and the folder is empty. A bunch of folders are empty.
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And so it came to pass that I summoned the great Shoggoth to devour the heads of the cable people and consume their souls. For they had offended me by coming out, replaced a connector outside and called the job done, and verily it failed once again just minutes after they departed.

Shoggoth stood in my home office, head tentacles scraping plaster down from my ceiling. There it silently regarded me as I pointed the way to the cable corporate headquarters.

Then it bent over and tightened up a couple of cable connections where upon the internet sprang back to glorious life and I . . . I felt many beads of sweat trickling down my forehead. I won’t go into detail about what happened next — suffice to say you do not want to be my offspring . . . ever.

Next I upgraded Wordpress and tidied up a bit. Tomorrow I hope to resume posting again.

In the meantime, check out my contest and leave a comment or two — even if its just to say “Hi”.