The Fear County Chronicle #32
Thoughts on AuthorCon 3, upcoming 2024 releases, & looking back at my days with Zebra Books, one novel at a time.
Howdy folks! It’s been a while since the last edition of the Chronicle. To tell the truth, I’m still recovering from our trip to Williamsburg for the third Scares That Care AuthorCon. It seems like the older I get, the slower I get… and the longer it takes me to bounce back from a long trip on the road (along with an exciting, busy weekend like AuthorCon between the travel time). I also returned to a big queue of RKHORROR orders to be filled and shipped, mostly the newly-released The Saga of Dead-Eye, Book Three and Dark Tide #13, The Devil’s Backbone. So, the writing/publishing/selling biz got sort of hectic there for a span of a week or two.
AuthorCon 3 was a blast!
I always enjoy attending Scares That Care AuthorCon in Williamsburg, Virginia, whether as a guest author or a vendor. This year I opted for a table in the promenade outside the main ballroom and the location really paid off. It seemed that I got to visit with twice as many people and sell twice as many books as the year before. I got to spend time with some old friends and finally meet folks that I’ve never had the opportunity to meet face to face, like Corrina Morse, Kristen Vincent, Erica Terry, Grady Hendrix, Eric Larocca, Paul Tremblay, and Garrett Boatman, just to name a few. I also did a reading of my scary spider story “Come See Spider Cave!” (from my The Web of La Sanguinaire spider story collection) on Saturday afternoon of that weekend. Mrs. Joyce and I had a wonderful time at the Southern-Fried Horror table (Fear was my biggest seller this year, with 30+ paperbacks and hardcovers sold). I was so busy, I didn’t get much of a chance to get into the ballroom to mingle and visit with folks as much as I would have liked, but here are a few photos of some great folks I was honored to spend a moment or two with.
As always, a huge thanks to Joe Ripple, Brian Keene, and the board of directors and staff of Scares That Care for all they do and have done throughout the years to help cancer and burn survivors with the proceeds from this incredible charity event!
Upcoming 2024 Releases!
This summer, I’ll be releasing the following two books:
Vault of Southern-Fried Horror (Book 3 of the Southern-Fried Horror Tales series): In June or July, the third book in my EC Horror Comics-inspired series will be a collection of dark horror/suspense tales about serial killers, maniacs, and cold-blooded killers. As with the previous two editions, I will be including quite a bit of my artwork, as well as two pages of retro comic book advertisements in the back. Artist Alex McVey returns with another cool, nostalgic horror comic cover, this one reminiscent of the style of Berni Wrightson.
Burnt Magnolia: In August or early September, I will finally be releasing Burnt Magnolia in paperback. My Southern gothic novel of Civil War ghosts haunting a romance author and her artist husband in a restored plantation house in rural Tennessee was previously published by Zebra Books in 1993 under the title The Possession. This will be the first time it will be available in a paperback edition in thirty-one years! Cover art by Alex McVey.
The Zebra Years: Book One… Hindsight.
In the next eight editions of The Fear County Chronicle, I’ve decided to explore the progression of my career as a mass market paperback author with Zebra Books during the six-year period of 1990 through 1996. I will be doing this one novel at a time: the creative process and inspiration behind each book, as well as where I was professionally and emotionally before, during, and after their publication.
Some of you may have already read this series in my memoir Southern-Fried & Horrified, but many of you probably haven’t, so I’ll be offering these essays here in the coming months. As with any story, we will start with the beginning. It was my first and most emotionally personal novel, as far as my own family history is involved…
HINDSIGHT
Original title: THE TOBACCO BARN
Publication date: January 1990
Emotion: Bittersweet
After writing and publishing short stories of Southern-fried horror in the small press magazines for several years, I finally finished my first horror novel. It was heavily inspired by family history... two aspects in particular. First, my mother's life as a child during the Great Depression and her gift of second sight. And secondly, a brutal triple murder that took place in a rural barn during that time, one of the victims being my mother's teenage cousin. I had heard so many stories about the Depression, the murder case, and my mother's childhood from both my mom and my grandmother that the essence and place of time of the mid-1930s was fully accessible. I had no trouble whatsoever writing about rural life in that tragic and hardscrabble period in American history, since I had relived those times through their words.
I based that first novel on the youthful life of my mother and that brutal mass murder and titled it The Tobacco Barn, setting the massacre inside an abandoned tobacco-curing barn. I submitted it to my agent at the time, the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, and waited. It was a long wait. They must have submitted it to every publisher in the alphabet, from A to Z, because, two years later, it was finally accepted by Kensington Publishing for their Zebra Books imprint.
My reaction to the sale? A mixture of elation and worried apprehension. After all, this was Zebra Books... the dreaded red-headed stepchild of mass market horror publishing. I knew how my peers in the writing community regarded the big Z, with its hologram images, foil embossed titles, and -- heaven forbid -- those tacky skeletons. Even after I had become an established Zebra author, I still carried around the stigma of being a Zebra "horror hack". During the first World Horror Convention, before a panel on Regionalism in Horror, Charles Grant looked over at me and said, "You know, I've read your stuff. It's damn good. So... why the hell are you writing for Zebra?"
I guess the one that was most excited about that first novel sale was my mother. It wasn't because the book was loosely based on her life or that it was a dark tale of horror and suspense... her very favorite type of fiction. No, it was because it was something we both had been looking forward to for a very long time. She was my biggest supporter and to see this happen for her firstborn son was something she relished with great pride and joy. "You're doing it," she told me excitedly. "You're actually going to be a published author!"
Then, almost immediately after the sale, the bad times came. My mother was diagnosed with lung cancer (she had never smoked a cigarette in her life, but had grown up around smokers most of her childhood and in the Nashville textile mill she had worked in before marrying my father). A difficult surgery took place in February of 1989, and for a while, she seemed to recover completely. Then in the fall of that year it came back with a vengeance. She began to spend more time in the hospital than at home and her weight dropped away drastically. I urged her to read the typewritten manuscript of The Tobacco Barn (by then retitled Hindsight by the powers that be in the Zebra editorial ranks). But she refused. "I want to read it as a real book," she told me. "I want to hold it in my hands and smell the ink and paper and just devour it...knowing that it came from your imagination and your heart."
But, as it turned out, she never did. As September passed into October, she grew sicker and horribly frail. She went to the hospital for the very last time and never came home. The cancer that ravaged her body took hold of her brain in early November and she began to fade. Her last words to me before lapsing into a coma: "Look at all the pretty flowers!" Later, I would wonder if she had caught a glimpse of Heaven or had foreseen her own funeral... because every wall of that funeral home ended up covered with flower arrangements from the people who loved her the most, which were many.
A month after her passing, Zebra sent me copies of Hindsight several weeks before it hit the bookstores. It was the darkest and loneliest December I ever experienced. But I didn't forsake her memory or the things she loved best. I put up the Christmas tree as always and sat in the darkness, staring at the wink and blink of the colored lights.
In early January, Hindsight was released. To say that holding it in my hands was bittersweet would be an understatement. Then came the book signings and the fanfare, and the preparation of my next novel, Pitfall, which I had sold to Zebra six months earlier. In time, I learned to love that simple horror novel with the cover of the frightened child in the barn doorway and the disembodied eyes that leered at her from the darkness. And I would think of Mama and wonder if they had a Horror section in the libraries of Heaven.
NEXT TIME: My second novel turns out to be a roller coaster ride of a monsterfest that strays beyond the green hills of Tennessee and into the burning West Texas desert.
Get 20% Off at RKHORROR through May 15th!
Do you have some holes in your bookshelves that need to be filled? Maybe some wall space that could use some horror artwork, or an old ratty t-shirt that needs to be replaced with a new one? Head on over to my RKHORROR online bookstore and check out my selection of Southern-Fried horror books, art prints, and apparel. From now through May 15th, get 20% off your entire order by entering promo code MONSTERMAY at checkout. Grab some new RK horror releases like Restless Shadows, The Saga of Dead-Eye, Book 3: Man-Eaters, Mummies, & Murderous Maniacs (or a special bundle with the first three Dead-Eye books), and Dark Tide #13: The Devil’s Backbone, featuring three novellas of Appalachian horror by me, Laurel Hightower, and Red Lagoe. As always, all books ordered include a personal inscription and hand drawn RK artwork. The Devil’s Backbone collection will include a special bookplate signed by all three authors!
Well, that’s it for this edition of the Chronicle. Thanks for subscribing and giving it a read. If you haven’t subscribed yet, find that subscribe button above and give it a click (I swear, you’re not going to launch nukes or anything bad like that). Until next time, y’all be good, behave yourselves on social media, and Many Happy Nightmares!
Great to see you again at AuthorCon. Not sure how I missed Haunt 2 and your mid grade. Just ordered off your site. I’ll pick up the 3rd Haunt at AuthorCon V !!
Enjoyed getting to meet y’all at AuthorCon!