Live Horror U Class at StokerCon 24: “Catching the Reader by Surprise”

Live Horror U Class at StokerCon 24: “Catching the Reader by Surprise”

POST-CONVENTION UPDATE, 6/4/24: Unfortunately, this class will not be available online as a recorded lecture. If you attended the class at the con, know that the secret website for the course has been updated with extra materials! Just email me if you've forgotten it's location; otherwise, enjoy and stay in touch! Registration for my next Horror University course has opened up! "Catching the Reader by Surprise" will be a 2-hour online session covering strategies to keep your reader guessing, from building suspense in clever ways to crafting surprising plot twists, while taking the special considerations of the horror genre into…
New Class at Horror U: “Shifting Shapes”

New Class at Horror U: “Shifting Shapes”

Registration for my next Horror University course has opened up! "Shifting Shapes" will be a 2-hour online session focusing on strategies for depicting transformation. Visit https://horror-university.teachable.com or see my Events page for more details. The class runs LIVE online on 2/5/24 at 8pm est, but registrants can also view the recorded session and access secret shared materials afterward. (Look for my past Horror U sessions on "The Uncanny and The Abject" and "Treacherous Settings," while you're there! HWA members may qualify for discounts! DESCRIPTION: Hair sprouting from flesh, everywhere, as a man contorts into a terrifying wolf. Tentacles exploding from…
Raising the Dead Draft (& Other Fall Events)

Raising the Dead Draft (& Other Fall Events)

Take a quick gander at my events page, and you'll see that I'm lining up a number of readings, talks and writing workshops for the 2022 Harvest season... hope you're able to join me at one of them! I always love reading live. But here I want to highlight a one-hour writing workshop I'm running that is also part of an awesome book launch. From Oct 8th-10th, Raw Dog Screaming Press and AllAccessCon are hosting "Writing Poetry in the Dark" -- a unique event featuring a roster of top horror poets, all talking shop to help writers learn about the…
Kaiju Death Spiral: A Class Poetry eBook

Kaiju Death Spiral: A Class Poetry eBook

Happy National Poetry Month once again! This year, I'm sharing the work of students in my current undergraduate world literature course in Global Horror, where we're currently wrapping up the term at Seton Hill University. In that class, we studied everything from current folk horror novels to Serbian folk vampires. One week, we practiced Japanese poetic forms, inspired by our study of the Godzilla kaiju films, Junji Ito's classic horror manga, Uzumaki, and Jisei death poems. The results were so good, I compiled them into a fun and morbidly twisted ebook, called Kaiju Death Spiral, featuring a fantastic piece of…
Keep on Writing in the Dark

Keep on Writing in the Dark

If you came to this post looking for Instigation, you've got it. And there's a prompt at the very end. Today one of my favorite publishers, Raw Dog Screaming Press (the team who brought you The Gorelets Omnibus and 100 Jolts and others), announced that they are taking pre-orders for my friend Tim Waggoner's latest writer's how-to guide, Writing in The Dark: The Workbook. I want you to buy it (and when I get to teach horror writing at Seton Hill University -- where, incidentally, Tim has taught beside me -- you can bet I'll be assigning this book). It's…