Google Search: How Do You Edit an Anthology?

 

Another quality post brought to you by Steve! 

Hey, kids!  It's my turn to do a Google search post, and there has been only one thing on my mind for the last six plus months, so naturally I typed in:

That's right!  In case you didn't know, my erstwhile writing partner Wile E. Young, Across the Board's own Kayleigh Marie Edwards, and myself are putting out our very first anthology this October.  It's going to be THE PERFECTLY FINE NEIGHBORHOOD, consisting of stories set in the world of Wile E. and my own THE PERFECTLY FINE HOUSE.  Kayleigh, Wile E., and I brought on some real heavyweights in the form of Jeff Strand, Candace Nola, and Brian Keene for the invitational portion of the anthology.

And for the back half, we put it out to you, the writing world, for over the transom submissions.  And you did not disappoint!  Now, Google has been of little assistance to me, but here are some things I learned from personal experience (and from asking our very own Mary Fan, who has edited, like, seventeen anthologies at this point.)

1.)  Set your Kickstarter goal low.  

This was a piece of Mary advice.  Kickstarter will fund precisely nothing if you don't meet your goal.  So the best way to get funding for something like an anthology is to set a low goal, then offer stretch goals.

2.)  No matter how clear your instructions, people could fuck up a glass of water.

I'll admit: the rules of our open call are a bit esoteric.  We weren't doing vampire stories here or, god forbid, a truly open submission.  But even so.  I got some very, very strange ones which I will not mention here because it would be unkind to the authors, but definitely ask me the next time you see me drunk at a convention.  I also got plenty of "Dear Editor" even though we asked people to choose one of our names, a number of works attributed to William Hope Hodgson (since that was the famous author I used for the template), and I even got a submissions that weren't Word docs.  Yeah, those will be fun to edit.  I'm flexible, but some of these departures from the call rules, or even just basic business professionalism were very, very peculiar.  That's all I'll say about it.

3.)  Everyone will submit on the last day.

We received almost exactly as many submissions on the last day of the open call as we did in the entire preceding six months.  I don't know why this surprised me.  I've never submitted to an open call sooner than twenty-four hours before closing myself.  And it certainly happened this time.

4.)  Selecting a TOC is haaaard.

This anthology turned out to be a mish-mash for us.  I wanted to do double blind submissions, since there were three of us and it was doable.  But we also wanted to actively encourage diversity among our submitters.  And then, coming in at the last minute, a few authorial heavyweights outside of the invitational pool showed up with submissions.  So we are now attempting to balance quality, marketability, and diversity, a very difficult proposition.  It's going to be impossible to do it fairly, if fair even has meaning in the literary world.  But we'll try out best to balance out our three priorities, and I know I'll have a newfound respect for anybody who has ever put together a TOC before.

I could go on, but I want to hear your thoughts.  Have you ever edited an anthology?  What lessons did you learn?  Let me know in the comments below!

Interview with Kit Power

Kit Power has been one of my favourite indie writers ever since his debut novel, GodBomb! I've been yelling at everyone about him for years, because he's one of those writers that should have an enormous audience, major book deals, and movie adaptation rights galore. He's such a talented writer with such great fiction ideas, and then just to add an extra kick, he also excels with non-fiction. He's also a sincerely kind person, which makes supporting his work just that little bit extra delightful.

Disclaimer: throughout this article/interview, you'll find sales links to Kit's work wherever they're highlighted. Kit didn't ask for this, I've just gone ahead and taken the liberty of linking things for your ease if something takes your fancy and want to check it out.

Between his fiction and his My Life in Horror article series on Gingernuts of Horror, he's been entertaining me with his word-wizardry for years. Some might call me a bit of a superfan.

After taking him off-guard by pouncing from a tree like a flying squirrel and taking him hostage... er... I mean, asking nicely, he agreed to this interview with me, and I'm thrilled to present it to you fine folk!

 

Kayleigh: Do you have a book/story that you're most proud of?

Kit: Oof! That’s a really tough question; whilst I never quite buy the thing some writers talk about where they equate stories or novels to children, it’s true that I had to care enough about a given story to want to write it in the first place. So while I do think some were more successful than others, in terms of getting at what I was trying to get at, I do have some level of emotional connection to all of them. And of course, I’m still trying to get better every time I sit down to write, which tends to weight my preferences towards more recent works.

All that said, I’ve still got a lot of affection for GodBomb! - my debut and so far only novel. I still think the core idea was/is a solid one, and I still think it contains some of my best writing. And I know it was the best version of the story I was capable of telling at the time, which is all you can really ask.

In terms of short stories, I still don’t think I’ve topped 2018’s Fish Hooks, which appeared in New Fears 2 and Years Best Dark Fantasyand Horror 2019 (Paula Guran). That was my first pro-rate short story sale. I sat down with the express intention to write the best short story I’d ever done, and I think I succeeded. Why I don’t do that every time is a perfectly reasonable question I’ve avoided asking so far…

And out of my novellas, I think I have to pick The Finite. I remember being at FantasyCon in 2015 when Adam Nevill won best horror novel for No One Gets Out Alive, and in his acceptance speech, he talked about how writing novels like that felt a bit like chipping off a small piece of his soul, and thinking ‘come on mate, that’s a bit much!’ Then I started working on The Finite, and by the end of it, I knew exactly what he meant. I doubt I’ll ever write anything that personal again. I certainly hope not. I’m very proud of that one, but it was not fun to write.

 

Kayleigh: The Finite is a truly excellent piece of work, and my personal favourite of your books to date. Which piece of your work did you enjoy writing the most?

Kit: Hands down A Song ForThe End, my most recent novella for Horrific Tales. I’d always wanted to write a pulp horror longform piece in the style of Herbert’s The Rats, utilising that brilliant format of ‘meet someone, see them die horribly, meet someone else, they survive (probably therefore the hero), meet a second person, whoops, they're dead’. No idea if Herbert came up with that first, of course, it’s just the first time I can remember reading it. And while A SongFor The End doesn’t follow that formula to the letter (and doesn’t contain murderous critters, for that matter) I found the core concept almost as funny as it was horrifying, making it a blast to write.

Kayleigh: A Song For The End is tremendous fun (and my favourite subgenre!). Do you enjoy the editing process after the first draft? How many drafts do you typically write, and do you also use an editor? Typically, do you tend to add to or cut your word count, or does it stay about the same?

Kit: I definitely don’t enjoy editing as much as writing. I try and follow King’s advice in On Writing, meaning that as much as possible I bury my inner critic/editor while writing the first draft, because I can't get anything done if I’m endlessly second guessing myself. But that can make the second draft a bit of a painful process, as (hopefully after a gap of a month or two) I switch roles to give the piece a critical look. As to how many drafts, for a short story, typically three or four; sending the second draft out to critical readers, then using that plus a further edit pass to tighten things up before sending it out, with a potential fourth draft if a commissioning editor likes it but wants changes. Anything longer will take longer (my novel Godbomb! ran to eleven drafts in the end, I think), and yes, for self published works like my first short story collection or My Life In Horror, I always pay someone for professional editing services; even though I’ve edited other peoples work for anthologies, I never feel comfortable doing that with my own work; it’s always too easy to read what I meant to type rather than what I actually did.

As to cut or grow wordcount, I’m always aiming to cut - King’s advice in On Writing is that your second draft should always be 10% shorter than your first, and I think that’s a good thing to aim for, especially in a short story where every word counts - but for longer pieces sometimes I’ve discovered that I actually need a third act (A Song For The End) or that a secondary character should actually be the co-lead (a recently co-authored novel, unpublished), so sometimes I end up adding a lot more. In either case, what I’m hopefully doing on that pass is working out what the thing is actually about, and making changes to reflect that (on a first draft, I have no idea what any of it is about - that’s why I’m writing it!).

 

Kayleigh: You put a lot of work into your writing and redrafts, and it shows! Next question - you're published in several anthologies. Do you prefer to work to a theme, or to have complete freedom?

Kit: I really enjoy both. As a kid, one of the few things I enjoyed about school was English tests when I’d be given a list of 5 or 6 titles and asked to write a short story about one of them; themed anthology calls take me right back to that mode of storytelling and I enjoy the challenge of that. It also sometimes makes me think about narrative in different ways - when I was invited to contribute to Ebb Tides, the brief was that the story had to be set in a location where the land meets the sea. Part of the initial negotiation was making sure that the authors picked different locations, so I went for sea caves, because that felt like it had the most dramatic potential for the kind of horror I like to write. So then the whole story evolved from ‘how, exactly, does a person end up stuck in a sea cave?’ Which was great fun.

At the same time, I’m constantly worrying at various short story ideas, and have a half a dozen or so that are close to submittable. I’ve yet to have a pre-written short story fit snugly into a themed anthology call, but I live in hope.

 Kayleigh: Can you tell me a bit about your writing process?

Kit: I tend to fly by the seat of my pants, most of the time; I realised relatively recently the common thread that unites my fiction and nonfiction work is that, for me, writing is an act of exploration, a way to try and understand to make sense of something I don’t fully understand. That’s where the juice is. To that end, I try and shut out the world as best I can - I have ADHD, so that can be quite a challenge at times - and I’ll usually use music to do that. Generally speaking, I need to find an album that matches the feel of the piece I’m working on; music is such a fundamental, important part of my life, it makes sense that it also acts as fuel for my creative processes.

 

Kayleigh: As I'm sure you know, Stephen King doesn't keep a notebook because he thinks it's the best way to immortalise bad ideas. Do you keep one? (I do!)

Kit: I did for a while but I kept losing them (did I mention ADHD?). There’s probably stray notes on my phone/in my Google docs, but given I don’t know for sure, and therefore don’t revisit them at any point, I guess by default I’m more like King (Springsteen was a notebook guy for decades, but I think more recently has come around to King’s way of thinking - mind, that guy used to write a song a week for the first couple of decades of his career, so).

Kayleigh: Can you talk a little bit about books/films/music that has inspired you?

Kit: I don’t think we have that kind of time! Also, the My Life In Horror series does a pretty good, if incomplete, job of listing many of my big influences, so just check out the ToC there for a list. For more on that, the podcast series I have with George Daniel Lea (called What The Hell Is WrongWith Us?) covers other early influences alongside some more recent works that have gotten our attention.

Kayleigh: Note for the readers: Both My Life in Horror and What The Hell Is Wrong With Us are absolutely worth your time - enjoy!

Your MLIH series on GNOH is the stuff of legend, and many people loved those articles. What prompted it? And why did you decide to compile them into books afterwards?

Kit: The idea came out from a series of conversations between Jim and I back in 2014. He was looking to expand the number of regular contributors, and I’d just written what became a somewhat infamous piece about RoboCop that he’d really enjoyed. And after a bit of back and forth, we came up with the idea of a series about childhood horror influences. The idea was that it’d be part review, part essay, all personal; I’d hit some of the big 80’s tentpole horror franchises (the Elm Street and Hellraiser movies) but I’d also talk about novels, albums, TV shows… I knew from early on that part of what I wanted to do was expand the definition of horror a bit, find it in some more mainstream and also unusual places, rather than sticking with what the marketing teams tell us is horror. And Jim, bless him, went for it with both feet, even when it meant he was running essays about 50’s biker movies, old rollercoasters, or Bruce Springsteen albums. He really had faith in what I was doing, right from the beginning, and I’ll always be grateful for that.

I think I’d worked out there was at least one potential book in the project quite early on, but it came into focus in a hurry in 2019. I was at EdgeLit in July, talking with Neil Snowdon (of Electric Dreamhouse Press) about Stokercon, which was due to be coming to the UK for the first time in April 2020, and at some point in the conversation he made me realise it would be the perfect place to put out a My Life In Horror book. And of course, I’d let it too late to pitch to publishers (did I mention ADHD?), so the Volume One crowdfunder came out of that. And once that manuscript came into focus, I realised thirty essays made for a good length book, and made for a natural halfway point for the blog project, which in turn made a final Volume II inevitable.

Kayleigh: You write characters extremely well, particularly in the first person - is the writing process different at all when you do this as opposed to writing in the third person?

Kit: That’s an interesting question; obviously the process must be different, but it doesn’t feel much different. I think my love of first person goes back to my youth theatre days; for me, acting was mainly about trying to get my head inside somebody who wasn’t me, feel out their thought processes, their view of the world, then put that out there, using the script as a map or guide to the characters interiority. So when I’m writing in first person, I slip back into that mode, seeing the events of the story entirely through that perspective. And what I enjoy about that is the degree to which first person allows me to play with voice, using syntax and sentence structure to give psychological clues as to the thought processes of the narrator, and also the capacity for subjectivity and surprise (there’s no such thing as a reliable narrator, after all).

That said, the attractions of third person are obvious; it’s more cinematic, allows for multiple perspectives, and ups the ‘risk factor’ in terms of the vulnerability of the characters - after all, with a first person narrative, you know the person telling you the story is still alive to tell it (well… most of the time). I like going 3rd close, so I still get to play with interior thoughts and aspects of perception and physical experience, but with just that half step remove. But ultimately, which approach I take depends entirely on the type of story I'm trying to tell.

Kayleigh: Are there any topics you absolutely will not write about?

Kit: Nope. Some I’ll approach with more trepidation, and where I think it’s helpful, I’ll employ sensitivity readers as part of the critical reader/editorial process, but nothing's off limits, I don’t think.

Kayleigh: A Warning About Your Future Enslavement deserves to be studied in writing classes. The format and the framing device is so unique and clever - can you remember coming up with the idea? It's really difficult to thread everything in a collection together like that and you pulled it off so well. I'm wondering if you had difficulties along the way, whilst putting it all together?

Kit: Oh, wow, thank you - yeah, A Warning was actually kind of a nightmare! I thought, when I initially came up with the concept, that it was really just a relatively simple/fun framing device for my first short story collection (plus a way to sneak in a couple of early essays that I liked and wanted to reprint); it wasn’t until I started putting it together that I realised I’d created a monster! I think it then became an interesting combination of sunk cost fallacy and ego/bloodymindedness. I remember Dion, who worked on the editing of that for me, was absolutely invaluable, in terms of helping me assess what pieces were really earning their keep; but, of course, once a story or article is shuffled/replaced, there was a ripple effect on the bridging material that would then require a rewrite. I’m glad I hadn’t appreciated what a pain in the arse the entire thing would be, because I honestly don’t know if I would have started the process if I had! But I am pretty happy with how it ultimately came out, and I do enjoy the positive, if often slightly baffled, reviews. That said, I really can't imagine trying anything like it again :D

Kayleigh: Note to the readers - by Dion, Kit means Dion Winton-Polak of 'The Fine-toothed Comb' editing services.

What's your favourite genre to read in horror (and can you please name some favourite books)?

Kit: I like most if not all kinds of horror (and also crime, and once in a while sci-fi, historical fiction, fantasy, biography, history… books are good, basically). But my favourite subgenre of horror is non-supernatural horror; novels like Manhunter and Silence of the Lambs, Misery, The Wasp Factory (though I suppose that last is technically debatable), and short stories like King’s The Ledge and Lumleys The Viaduct. King I think is especially effective on the rare occasions he goes full-on non-supernatural; I recently reread Mr Mercedes, purely on a whim, and while I recognise it’s not without flaws, I loved the whole experience.

Kayleigh: I loved the Mr Mercedes trilogy and thought the real-world aspects were the strongest parts, for sure.

If you're working on something at the moment, can you tell us a bit about it?

Kit: Having written two novellas that bring the end of the world to Milton Keynes (The Finite and A Song For The End), the trilogy will be completed (if I ever get back to it, recent life events have conspired to keep me away from the blank page) with Millionaire's Day. I’m currently twelve thousand words in, and rounding the first hour of the day in question, and one of my POV characters is about to kick a door down, behind which something incredibly dramatic will occur. What? I’ve no idea. I should really go find out…

 

Kayleigh: Consider my interest piqued!

Can you tell us a bit about your podcasting?

Kit: Man, you nearly got out clean! Yes, sure. Umm. I do a lot of podcasting. I have my own show, Watching Robocop with Kit Power, which I think is probably explained by the title. That show is on an extended hiatus, but if you go to the feed (see the next answer) you’ll see that I’m using it to broadcast some of my other podcast work, with George Daniel Lea where, in a project not dissimilar from My Life In Horror, we have extended conversations about the works that messed us up as kids - mainly books and movies, but there’s the odd album and even video game thrown in the mix from time to time, alongside the occasional guest.

Also with George, we’re working our way through Clive Barker’s Books Of Blood collection (which, to my shame, I’ve never read before, though George is an enormous Barker fan). That series, along with what The Hell Is Wrong With Us? is on his YouTube feed.

Over on Patreon, I have two exclusive, occasional shows that I’m working on. One features Jack Graham and Daniel Harper, as we read through the Sherlock Holmes canon in order, and another where I’m embarking on a read through of the Discworld series with my 13 year old daughter.

Finally, back on my Robocop feed, I recently launched yet another new series, which will involve taking on the entire studio album catalogue (plus a few carefully selected live recordings) of the legendary Bruce Springsteen, in the company of the equally legendary James Slater Murphy. We recorded the pilot (covering late career masterpiece Wrecking Ball) a little while back, and I can’t wait to get back on mic to talk about 1973’s Greetings From Asbury Park.

Because, clearly, I don’t have nearly enough to do.

 

Kayleigh: Gimme all your links for everything so I can point people in your direction!

Kit: All of it?!?!

Okay:

Patreon (just $1 a month gets you something new every week)

Newsletter (an email a month, featuring pet pics alongsideauthor/podcast news) 

Podcast feed: https://talkingrobocop.libsyn.com/watching-robocop-with-kit-power

Amazon UK author page

Amazon US author page

Black Shuck page (publishers of The Finite and Voices)

- The Finite

- Voices

The Sinister Horror Company (publishers of GodBomb! And Breaking Point): 

- GodBomb!

- Breaking Point

George’s Youtubechannel:https://www.youtube.com/@ExaggeratedElegy/playlists

Gingernuts of Horror

Twitter: @KitGonzo

Facebook

And here are the links to Kit's other work not listed in the batch above:

My Life in Horror: Vol 1

My Life in Horror: Vol 2

(Due to a massive technical nightmare, Kit's My Life in Horror articles are no longer available on GNOH, but you can find the articles of Kit's successor, George Daniel Lea there (and they're awesome!)

A Song for the End

A WARNING ABOUT YOUR FUTURE ENSLAVEMENT THAT YOU WILL DISMISS AS A COLLECTION OF SHORT FICTION AND ESSAYS BY KIT POWER

Tommy (Midnight Movie Monographs)

Underused Monsters in Film

So, I love a good Creature Feature. My favorite kind of horror movie involves something of the predatory kind attacking humans in the scariest and most savage ways. I guess it's because I'm an animal lover, and people are just kind of...meh. 

There are all your classic monsters: werewolves, giant snakes, killer sharks, rabid dogs, and even aliens, but there are a few monsters on my list that have yet to see a decent portrayal on the big screen, and I'm here to bitch about it. I know there are movies out there involving these monsters, but there simply just aren't enough, or they're not very good. These are the monsters I want to see in more movies.

 

The Loch Ness Monster

Sure, there are a few Nessie movies out there. Most of them involve kids and a friendly misunderstood beastie of some sort. I have been wanting an updated, more viscious version of Nessie all my life. When I heard they were making Steve Alten's book 'The Loch' into a film, I was ecstatic. They have yet to deliver, and I'm still waiting...kind of like how we're still waiting for a good lake monster photo.

The Fae

I know what you're going to say, 'Leperchaun' is technically part of the Fae category. There have been several movies involving evil fairy-type creatures out there. We had 'Maleficent' a few years ago, and more than enough variations of the Tooth Fairy. I want one that is based on the real lore of the Fae folk, preferably based in Appalachia. I want a fairy movie that will make you forget all about 'Fern Gully'.

Ice Age Animals

I hate to say it, but I'm burned out on dinosaur movies. There are so many dinosaur movies. Most of them are low-quality. The one and only exception is the Jurassic Park franchise. Dinosaurs are as played out as sharks. We don't have any mainstream movies involving creatures from the Ice Age. Sabretooth cats, beardogs, dire wolves, the list goes on. There are a myriad of terrifying ancient mammals out there just waiting to rip into some tender human flesh. With today's advances in CGI, a Jurassic Park quality film involving Ice Age animals would be great right about now.

I've got more. I've got PLENTY more. Call me, Hollywood!

 

Stay Weird.

In Praise of Filler Episodes

Hey everyone! Mary here, writing from green, green Vermont, where I am decidedly NOT getting any work done on my novel... I don't know why I always kid myself into thinking I'll get some writing done (beyond blog posts) on vacations. For whatever reason, I've fallen absurdly far behind on my work in progress, and I'm struggling with motivation. I think I'm a little burned out... it's happened before. Hopefully, it'll resolve itself soon.

So what have I been doing instead? Well, lately, I've been watching a lot of Star Trek. As in I rewatched the entirety of Voyager and am pretty far through my rewatch of Deep Space Nine. The current Trek kick started with the third season if Picard, which brought back the Next Generation crew for one last grand adventure, and also introduced a new character who (spoiler alert) turns out to be Jean-Luc Picard's son.

After action and twists galore, show builds up to a big final father-son scene where Picard has to convince his son to come back to the light side... basically, the ending of Return of the Jedi, except with the generational roles reversed. Despite the two actors emoting their hearts out and all the dramatic background nonsense a prestige show can give, the scene... didn't really hit for me. And after watching the finale, all I wanted was to go back and nostalgia-watch the Next Generation and the other shows from that era (I spot-watched a few old Next Generation faves before moving onto my Voyager and Deep Space Nine rewatches). Despite connections to the classic characters, none of the new characters from Picard really got me to care for them the way I'd cared about the casts of those older shows.

And I realized the reason was because Picard, like most shows in the streaming era, is designed for breakneck pacing and "mind-blowing" twists, to generate shock and buzz and, therefore, attention, views, and whatever metrics the execs want to present to investors. There are much, much fewer episodes, and each one is in service to a larger story arc. There are certainly shows that benefit from this "leaner" style of TV (Severance comes to mind), and the older shows definitely put out some stinkers while trying to fill a 26-episode season.

Yet while watching the Next Generation-era shows, especially when I was picking and choosing old favorites (before I realized that resistance was futile and just did a straight-up rewatch), I found myself gravitating toward the "filler" episodes... the self-contained, sometimes low-stakes tales that aren't "necessary" for any larger story arcs. And I noticed that even episodes that were part of a larger story arc (particularly on Deep Space Nine) often contained a character-centric B story that was light on plot but added to the characters' personal lives.

The result of all these "filler" episodes and scenes was that we got a chance to get to know these characters as people, not just players in a twisty-turny-attention-grabby plot. And that's what makes them linger, like old friends, in one's memory, and makes you invested in seeing what happens to them next. It gives a chance for their personalities to shine through, and make them seem more human.

Because none of us have a single, straightforward plot to our lives. I doubt even the most focused person in the world follows just one mission every waking moment. Yet we've been trained that characters in a "tightly" written story should do just that, and any "filler" in between ought to be cut. Something is definitely lost when that happens, though, something that makes it hard to feel invested in a fictional character.

Elsewhere in the Trek world, Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks have returned to the episodic format of yore, complete with filler galore. And they have been very well received by fans (personally, Lower Decks is my favorite of the New Treks.) I think as time goes by, these are the shows that will remain with fans... at conventions this year, I've seen plenty of Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks cosplay, but none for Picard (though, of course, Next Generation cosplayers will always be populous). 

I know I've been guilty of trying to make my stories "lean," perhaps at the expense of some characters and world building. Maybe it's time to try pulling back a bit, and every so often, letting characters just be.

Buffeted by the Buffet

Is there anything more glorious, nay, more AMERICAN, than the all you can eat buffet?

No, there is not. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. 

I find buffets to be a delight. The endless array of food, the options, the sheer indulgence in display, it's breathtaking. It makes you want to stand and salute. 

It's a fantastic metaphor. Foods from all around the globe getting plopped together on a heated table, side by side, while hungry customers scoop them up and devour them. 

Uh, I may have lost the thread. I'm a little hungry. 

Really, it is America in a nutshell. Abundance. Plenty. Over-indulgence. Greed. And all for about $20.

Recently, Kim and I went to the largest buffet in the USA. It's in East Earl, PA, only about a 2.5 hour drive from New York City. 

Welcome to the Shady Maple Smorgasbord.

Located in Pennsylvania Dutch Country, you'll see signs on the way in warning you to share the road with the Mennonites driving horses and buggies. And it's a little odd, seeing this monument to over eating in the midst of beautiful rolling farmland. (There's also a casino right when you get off the highway. America! Land of Contrasts!)

You walk in to the giant restaurant and you are greeted by a massive lobby and a wide array of three-dimensional folk art. 

Old man with Amish Wagon

Once you've paid for you're buffet and are seated, the sky's the limit. There are signs encouraging you to remember that it's all you CAN eat, and please don't waste food. Ha! They're funny like that in Amish Country. Get your plate and start in!

And you are honestly not prepared for just how much food there is. Steak, pierogis, fried ravioli, ribs, wings, brisket, kielbasa, meats of all kind, and a lot of it locally sourced. (Please don't get the idea this is some kind of French Laundry farm-to-table deal. This is all about consuming mass quantities, and there just happen to be some local farms.)

There is also a long salad bar, sitting there, very optimistically. Be polite and get a carrot stick or something so it feels included whilst you gorge on your third NY strip steak. 

Vegetable? Is that a kind of table or something?

Now, I know what you're asking. Sure, there's a lot of food, but is it good?

And the answer is, yes! Mostly!

The salad (Kim insisted) is very fresh. There is farm cheese that is great. The freshly baked rolls and cornbread is awesome. The brisket and kielbasa are exceptional (although the piece we had was maybe a little too fatty.) The apple dumplings are also delightful. 

Some items may have been on the serving tables a little too long. You can go ahead and try the heat rack pizza, I'll pass. 

Save room for dessert! There are miles of pies and cakes and ice creams. And fruit, if you're into that kind of thing. 

The whole place is a lot of fun. There is an enormous gift shop featuring a lot of Amish quilts and furniture (as well as more affordable items like t-shirts and keychains) And there is a great farmer's market attached that has an amazing selection of local jams and produce. (I have never seen a more diverse selection of apples than I did here. Apples of every variety you can think of!)

It's well worth a visit if you're in the area. And if you have a car, take a day trip! Just leave time for a nap afterwards because those 4000 calories can make you sleepy. 

And watch out for buggies!

Victor Catano lives in New York City with his wonderful wife, Kim, and his adorable pughuaua, Danerys. When not writing, he works in live theater as a stage manager, production manager, and chaos coordinator. His hobbies include coffee, Broadway musicals, and complaining about the NY Mets and Philadelphia Eagles. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @vgcatano and find his books on Amazon

Book Review: Do Not Disturb 3 - Goldbrush

"Do Not Disturb 3: Goldbrush" by Jon Athan. I was sent my copy in exchange for an honest review. 

This story follows twenty year old Angelina whose returned to her hometown of Goldbrush, Nevada. Her relationship with her family is tumultuous at best, and it's been quite a while since she's stepped foot back in town. Unfortunately, for Angelina and unbeknownst to her and her family, she couldn't have chosen a worse time to come home. 

First things first, I absolutely love this cover. It really gives life to the killer clowns inside the story. This third installment in the Do Not Disturb series is a great mix between the first two stories with some of the most brutal death scenes to date. The cactus, the "fleshlight," and the scene between Pipsqueak and Flora were specific scenes that will definitely stick with me. The scene with Flora was one of the hardest to swallow as I wasn't expecting such extreme brutality. I'm really hoping that Athan will continue to expand on this series as I REALLY want to read the ideas he suggested in his authors note!

Stokercon 2023 Autopsy

 

Another quality post brought to you by Steve! 

Hey, everybody!  

I was supposed to do an interview this month and there was somebody I was hoping to interview about this year's StokerCon, but I couldn't quite get it together in time.  So, instead, you just get me, which should be more than enough for anyone, like a cupboard full of lembas bread.  

So, StokerCon is sometimes described as the "Oscars of Horror," where the Bram Stoker Awards are given out.  The convention itself is more of a professional than a fan con.  I've never been to StokerCon before, but this year it was in Pittsburgh, only a few hours' drive from my home, so it would have been foolish not to go.  (Although, considering it was being hosted in the dirtiest, most godforsaken city in the country, it was still kind of a toss-up.)  I was excited to go to a con I've never attended, and see old friends I haven't seen in a while, and other authors that don't run in the same circles I normally do.

Wesley Southard and I departed at 6:00 am on Friday morning, with the intention of picking up Wile E. Young from the airport in Pittsburgh.  (Oh, a disclaimer: as always, I will not mention non-public figures out of respect for their privacy, and if I fail to mention you and we had a lovely time together, please forgive me as this blogpost could simply be a list of names if I had to mention everyone I saw.)

Unfortunately, Wile E.'s plane was delayed, apparently because his pilot was from Texas and was too busy yelling "Yee-haw" and firing his six-shooter at oil derricks to show up for work, so Wes and I headed directly for the venue.  It's a good thing we did, because as soon as we arrived I was pressganged into serving in Mary SanGiovanni's stead on two panels.  Mary, you see, was blessed by the bounty of a Marvel Comics contract a few days before StokerCon and so could not attend.

At 11:00 am I sat on the military fiction panel, a perennial favorite of mine, and one I often suggest.  I got to hang out with Michael Arnzen, Brian Keene, Dacia Arnold, and others to swap war stories, which is always a good time.  

The Cosmic Horror panel

At noon I got to sit on "Evolutions in Cosmic Horror," about which I know virtually nothing, but about which Mary San is, of course, the uncrowned queen.  But worry not, gentle reader, I will be getting her back for this "favor" later this week when I introduce her to scrapple, that most redoubtable of central Pennsylvania delicacies.  I did enjoy being sandwiched between Jim Chambers and Amanda Headlee, and my favorite moment of the panel was when Jim said, "Well, William Hope Hodgson predicted a lot of things.  For instance, with 'The Ghost Pirates'..." and all I could think of was that he was going to say, "Our current spate of ghost pirate attacks."  He was actually talking about virtual reality, though, for those who were willing to sit through the entirety of the sentence before getting confused.

Patrick Freivald and myself in the dealer's room 

Thankfully, Wile E. showed up shortly thereafter and we met in the dealer's room.  Then at 2:00 pm I had my actual scheduled panel on short and microfiction, where, again, I felt wildly out of my depth, as I've thrown together some microfiction pieces in my time on this planet, and my fellow panelists were luminaries in the field and editors of microfiction magazines and the like.  Ah, well.

The short fiction and microfiction panel

After that, I got to meet up with Aaron Dries, who flew all the way over from Australia and was nominated for a Stoker Award, so you know who I was rooting for hardest.  I also got to hear Aaron and Wile E. compare the finer points of crocodile/alligator hunting, which sounded rather complicated.

At 6:00 pm came the mass signing and I'll admit, I was worried about whether to even bother bringing books to a professional con.  However, the doors opened and a young lady came hurrying up to me and told me I was her first stop and the top of her list, thanks to the recommendation of the inimitable Becky Spratford.  That has never happened to me before, so for that alone, the entire con was worth it.

Me and Laura H., a Kozeniewski superfan and soon-to-be-household name

From the signing Wes, Wile E., Keene, Amanda, and myself headed out for a truly authentic Italian meal at a Pittsburgh institution: Bucca di Beppo.  Fucking Pittsburgh.  Still, the company was lovely.

We returned to the bar where I made a special effort to spread my wings, and I'm glad I did because I sat down next to a young lady and introduced myself, where, to my surprise, she said, "Yes, I know you.  I'm good friends with Kayleigh Marie Edwards."  That's right...our very own ATB's Kayleigh.

She turned out to be Alexa K. Moon from Haifa, which I learned from her is the only nice city in Israel, a point which Keene later agreed with.  I find that hard to believe, but unless StokerCon decides to do next year in Jerusalem (that's a little Passover joke for you) I'll just have to trust the folks who have been.

In any case, Alexa and I bonded deeply over our pitch session the next day.  She was pitching a genderbent version of "Sweeney Todd."  I was pitching my next major novel, CANCELLED WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE, which you may have seen me talk a bit about on Twitter.  How did our pitches do?  Well, you'll have to read on to find out, dear reader!

My pitch went great and so did Alexa's.  Ha, I just completely dismantled your expectations of reading a cliffhanger, didn't I?  That's just a small sample of the sort of convention breaking you'll find in CANCELLED WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE.

I don't want to completely jump over the rest of Friday night, so here's a picture of me with Wile E. Young and Todd Keisling.  We drank C.W. Briar's Scotch.  It was great.

I probably spent too long at my pitch session, which was noon on Saturday, because the organizers kept coming to wring their hands and ask me and the agent I was pitching to move on.  So, I did, and, fortunately, we got to catch up for a few hours that afternoon, along with Craig Brownlie, who you may remember from my STC post, and a few others.  I actually got to meet Craig's entire family that evening, so that was great as well.

L to...I dunno.  Wes, me, Bridgett Nelson, Jeff Strand, wow, this is really fucking hard the way the photo is framed, Wile E. Young, C.W. Briar, who I've now mentioned twice in captions, because he is awesome, but I feel bad about not mentioning him in the general narrative yet

 

Saturday evening was the Stoker Award banquet, so naturally my cheap, schlubby roommates all decided to stay in their rooms and eat pizza rather than get up off a buck for once in their lives.  So, we ended up hanging out with Keene, who was presenting, and Candace Nola, who I'm sorry to report is a native of Pittsburgh, and therefore couldn't simply leave this armpit of a city at the end of the weekend.

Still, I'd never been to a Stoker Award banquet, so I asked around and apparently the hoi poloi can sneak in after dinner time if they stand in the back quietly.  Aaron did not win (boo!) but a bunch of other people did, and, in true Oscars fashion, it ran about an hour and a half late.

Then the bacchanal began.

I think it started with Lesley Conner and Jason Sizemore in Keene's suite, and ended up with Eric LaRocca at about 5:00 am in the lobby.  I think I finally got to speak to Jessica McHugh for more than two seconds somewhere in between those, and I also seem to recall being put "in charge" of the party, although very few people respected my erstwhile authority.

And that, my friends, is more than you probably ever wanted to know about StokerCon 2023.  Oh, also, C.W. Briar was an RA in college.  Do with that information what you will.