The Fear County Chronicle #29
Upcoming books and appearances for 2024, plus a few words of encouragement for struggling storytellers.
Howdy folks! I hope you’re doing well and dodging the sniffles, flu, frostbite, and such. Down here in middle Tennessee we got quite a few inches of snow (seven inches here in Brush Creek). That’s probably not much to you folks in Michigan and Maine, but down here it means icy roads, sheer panic, and a mad rush to Walmart for milk, bread, and toilet paper. This time was much better than it has been for the Kelly family in the past. I’m now retired, my wife works at him, and Bubba is homeschooled, so we really had no pressing reason to go anywhere… that is, if it’d even been possible to do that. Living down in the holler the way we do; both ends of the road leading the main highway are precariously steep and were completely iced over for well over a week. By the end of that time, we were all feeling the claustrophobic effects of cabin fever. So, it was isolating and irritating at times, but still beautiful out here in the sticks. Here’s a couple of photos of the creek across the road from our house.
By the way, if you’re wondering about the opening image of the ghostly child in the wintery forest, I was inspired by a story my Grandmama Clara Spicer told me when I was a young’un. It seemed that back in the late 1880s, a small girl wandered from her family’s cabin in the dead of a January night and was found frozen in a snowbank a few days later. It was said that, during the winter months afterward, her tiny ghost would haunt that stretch of Tennessee woods, calling mournfully for her mother and leaving disembodied tracks in the deep snow.
Upcoming RK books for the first half of 2024
I’ll have a few solo books coming out during the first six months of this year, as well as a shared collection.
Restless Shadows / The sequel to my first Zebra Books novel, Hindsight, will be released in paperback in early February. Restless Shadows has been available in ebook and audiobook for a while (and a limited hardcover from Thunderstorm Books back in 2014), but this will be the first time it will be available in a paperback edition. In Restless Shadows, a brutal copy-cat massacre identical to the one that took place in the old tobacco barn in 1936 brings Cindy Ann Biggs back to the rural town of Coleman. Having served as a police psychic for decades she hopes to solve the murder with the help of her granddaughter Beth, who also possesses the gift of second sight.
The Saga of Dead-Eye, Book Three: Man-Eaters, Mummies, & Murderous Maniacs / The third installment of my horror-western series finds zombie gunfighter Dead-Eye and Louisiana mojo man Job traveling across the deserts of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona on their quest to track down the renegade vampire Jules Holland and his hellish entourage, which includes Job’s wayward daughter, the dark witch Evangeline. During their travels they encounter a pack of dark demons with an appetite for human flesh, a tomb of reanimated mummies, and the blood-thirsty inhabitants of a town called Hellbound, where everyone kills or gets killed at the drop of a hat. Along the way, they come across the pugnacious Missy Slatter, a five-year-old girl left abandoned in the wilderness after the dastardly Baker’s Dozen kill her parents and still their horses.
Burnt Magnolia / First published as The Possession by Zebra Books in 1993, this novel of Civil War ghost has been available in ebook for several years, but this will be the first time it will be available in a paperback edition in 31 years. In Burnt Magnolia, romance author Laura Locke and her artist husband, Rick, buy and restore a burnt-out plantation manor in Tennessee. But, from the moment they move in, weird things begin to happen. Laura’s personality and looks change. Rick becomes obsessed with guns and the War Between the States. Only when it’s too late does the final piece of a terrifying puzzle fall into place and a chilling nightmare that began in the mid-1800s hurtles toward a horrifying climax!
Dark Tide Book 13: The Devil’s Backbone!
Last week, Crystal Lake Entertainment revealed the cover to the thirteenth volume of their Dark Tide collection series. In this collection, The Devil’s Backbone, I was honored to work alongside authors Laurel Hightower and Red Lagoe to present readers with three dark novellas of Appalachian Horror set in the fictional mountain range of the Devil’s Backbone, running from eastern Kentucky, through southern Virginia, and into east Tennessee. Here is Crystal Lake’s description of the collection:
Join three of horror’s finest storytellers on a journey through the dark heart of Appalachia…
AFOOT IN THE NETHERWILD by Ronald Kelly: When the children of Bowden Ayres mysteriously disappear in the woods near their homestead, he enlists the aid of Uriah Coldcreek, a seventh son and purveyor of mountain magic. Together, they travel into the deepest depths of the Devil’s Backbone, intent on locating a place known as the Netherwild… the realm of the Coveter, an otherworldly being who steals away the mountains’ youth for its own selfish needs.
SPIRIT COVEN by Laurel Hightower: For generations, Jude and her coven of witches have co-existed peacefully with the citizens of Arnett, providing them with remedies and top shelf bourbon, especially valued during the draconian days of Prohibition. But when too many townsfolk go missing and dead, trust is broken and the witches find themselves on shaky ground, facing threats from frightened families, from the mountain they protect, and the very magic they steward.
THE GATHERER by Red Lagoe: Gray Hollow lies at the foot of evil—a dark part of the forest home to The Devil’s Bathtub. Martin is skeptical of the local folklore warning of the dangers of dipping even a toe into its waters. However, after his brother leaves for Vietnam, more people fall victim to the water's summoning darkness, and Martin struggles to make sense of it all, determined to hold onto life's fraying reality.
To tell the truth this project has been secretly in the works since before this photo of me, Red, and Laurel was taken at AuthorCon in Williamsburg last year. So, it feels great to finally have it completed and fast approaching publication. Crystal Lake will be releasing it on February 23rd in ebook and paperback. Pre-order for The Devil’s Backbone will be announced soon. A special thanks to Crystal Lake’s Joe Mynhardt for giving us the opportunity to do this. I hope y’all enjoy it as much as we did writing and creating this shared-world collection of dark mountain tales!
2024 Appearances & Book Signings!
So far, these are the public appearances I’ll be making in 2024:
Barnes & Noble, Jonesboro, Arkansas, February 10th / If you’re in the Memphis/West Tennessee/Northeast Arkansas area, come see me at the grand opening of the new Barnes & Noble at Jonesboro Arkansas. I’ll be signing books there on February 10th, from 3pm to 7pm. The address is 2300 E. Highland Avenue. Hope to see you there!
AuthorCon 3 Williamsburg, April 12-14 / Once again I’ll be attending Scares That Care AuthorCon in Williamsburg, Virginia this year as a vendor. The weekend-long event features author guests such as Grady Hendrix, Paul Tremblay, Eric Larocca, Aron Beauregard, Daniel J Volpe, Carver Pike, Kristopher Rufty, and others, as well as dozens upon dozens of every pro and independent horror author imaginable. There will be panels and readings, and the authors attending will be selling and signing books all weekend. Check out the details here!
TBR Con 2024, Knoxville, Tennessee, September 6 & 7 / I’ll have a table at the first TBR Con (Tennessee Book & Readers Convention), organized by author Megan Stockton. Dozens of well-known authors from the horror community, as well as other genres, will be there. TBR Con will be held at the Knoxville Expo Center, 5441 Clinton Highway, Knoxville, Tennessee.
From the Rocking Chair: Keep On Keeping On!
Note: A few days ago, I made a Facebook post about persevering in today’s horror fiction market. I had seen numerous posts about the difficulties of the writing life and how it sometimes seemed unattainable and pointless. It seemed that a lot of new writers were down and hurting, so, being one of the old dawgs of the genre, I wrote a post passing on my experiences when I was a young writer, and how tenacity and hard work could provide positive results in the long run. I’m reprinting that post here, in its entirety, in case someone else out there — particularly unpublished, independent-published, and self-published writers — needed to read it.
Looking back, I sometimes feel a little sad that my tenure as a mass market paperback author for Zebra Books only lasted six years. Most are unaware that I had two more novels, Hell Hollow and Restless Shadows, already scheduled for 1997 and 1998, and was pitching ideas for a third three-book deal when Kensington shut down the Zebra Horror line, without warning, in October of 1996. At the time, I was an extremely prolific writer and had goals to join Zebra authors like Ruby Jean Jensen, Rick Hautala, William Johnstone, and J.N. Williamson as far as sustainability and popularity was concerned. But, alas, that never came to be. My eighth Zebra novel, Blood Kin, had only been on the book racks a couple of months when the horror genre implosion of the mid-1990s took place and those aspirations crumbled and fell apart. Devastated and desperate, unable to find a publisher who didn’t believe horror was dead and pure poison, I eventually grew bitter, disillusioned, and depressed. Riddled with self-doubt and unsure of my future as a saleable storyteller, I stopped writing or reading horror for ten years. Eventually, I returned to writing in 2006 and began penning and publishing my brand of Southern-Fried horror once again.
However, I did learn an important lesson from all that. That you can’t depend solely on others, particularly big-money conglomerates, to fully embrace your dream and grant you validity and success in the publishing world. Others may assist you with their influence and publishing know-how, but what you do with your talent, how you form and evolve your brand and body of prose, and truly offer it to readers… well, that’s strictly up to you. When I was coming up in the horror genre, there were really only two paths to take: publish short stories in the small press magazines of the day or go for the brass ring and strive to become a mass market author. When I returned after a decade of inactivity, independent publishers had begun to fill in the holes left by failed publishers like Zebra, Dell Abyss, Leisure, and Samhain. That legion of small publishing houses has only grown since then and, along with it, the option of self-publishing. Take it from someone who has worked with big publishers (Zebra, Berkley, Pocket, etc.) and forfeited books and stories to their possession and control… it is not the shining dream that you would imagine it to be. I would much rather work with indie publishers like Thunderstorm Books, Cemetery Dance, Crossroad Press, Dead Sky, and D&T, who love the genre and respect my work, than go back to the isolated, assembly-line world of professional publishing. Here, I have control over my content, my covers, my titles. For the most part, I publish what I want, when I want to. I see others, with much less history in the genre than I do, doing the same and thriving. It’s a good place to be right now. It feels like home.
Whether you’re fully into your horror-writing career or just beginning, I applaud you and urge you to press onward, even if it seems like a losing battle. Your best tools for this job are perseverance, a tough skin, and the ability to learn and evolve as you go along. If you haven’t already made your mark and captured your audience, it’s likely that you will, with time and tenacity. And sometimes it takes a heaping helping of both to make it happen. Don’t throw in the towel and give it up, like I did for ten years. The desire to write and create will still be there, hidden and hungry beneath your skin, devouring you from the inside out. You, and you alone, are instrumental at fulfilling your creative destiny. So, be thankful you are working in a publishing era with so many options and so much hope and potential for success. Now, y’all go on and get to it. Sit down and write.
Get 20% Off at RKHORROR for a limited time!
Through January 31st, get 20% off your order at RKHORROR by entering code JANFREEZE at checkout! Also, Zebra Books Alumni and Southern-Fried Horror t-shirts are still on sale! Head on over and grab yourself some winter reading and a spooky shirt to snuggle up in!
Well, that’s it for this edition of the Fear County Chronicle. I’ll be back early next month with more news, features, and Southern-Fried shenanigans. Until then, keep warm and Many Happy Nightmares, y’all!
Beautiful pictures, Ronald makes me want to put on my boots and explore the wilderness. I can’t wait to return to Williamsburg in April, it’s worth the long journey. Hope fully I can purchase a Hardcover copy of The Devil’s Backbone (3 signed books in one) all being well.
Quite enjoyable, Ron.