I know I just posted but there’s already some fresh news for you: my short story, “Animals” has been published in the Spring 2017 issue of Hello Horror. Head on over to their website to read the issue for free!
Hello Horror: Volume 5, Issue 22
Well hello! Didn’t expect to see you standing there next to my hole! Wow, doesn’t the sun hurt your eyes up here? So bright… I’ve been down there for so long, tunneling away…
I’ve been making good progress on my WIP. Today I passed the 50,000 word mark! And there is still plenty left in the story. I’m happy to be so sure that this will be my longest novel yet (When the Watcher Shakes is somewhere around 60,000 words, and Little One is around 55,000). At the beginning of this, I was really hoping that I would be able to make it to 80,000. Right now, I’m feeling that goal could become a reality in as little as a month! (And I still don’t have a good title! That’s okay, I usually don’t come up with one until after the story is finished anyways.)
But the real goal is not necessarily to reach a certain word count, but to tell a good story at a good pace.
In other news, I’m still competing in the Next Great Horror Writer Contest over at HorrorAddicts.net. I can’t say that I’m really doing great overall, at least so far, but I am glad to finally say that I won the most recent challenge, which was to create a short spoof radio commercial script for a fake horror-related product. The judges really liked mine. You can read the script here: https://horroraddicts.wordpress.com/2017/05/22/nghw-winner-of-commercial-spoof-timothy-huguenin/
If you want to read the top eight spoof commercials, here’s the link for that: https://horroraddicts.wordpress.com/2017/05/21/nghw-top-8-commercial-spoofs/
Alternatively, you can listen to their recent podcast episode, and hear my commercial acted out at the end!
Well, back to digging. I’ll see you again sometime soon, I hope.
A reminder to those interested: Little One will be released in July! You can mark your calendar and hope to remember—or you could just sign up for my email newsletter, and make sure you don’t miss it or any future publications!
Howdy! Most of you know by now I’m competing in the Next Great Horror Writer Contest by HorrorAddicts.net this year. As part of the application, I had to enter a 100 word horror story. You can go over to their website now and read all of the entries, including mine, “A True Artisan”.
Click on the banner below:
If you’re into podcasts, you can also follow the contest’s progress by subscribing to their podcast. Episode 1 of this season is up!
Check it out! I’ve entered The Next Great Horror Writer Contest! There are 15 of us who made it into the contest and each of us have been interviewed. Here’s mine!
Get to know the contestants of the Next Great Horror Writer Contest!
What do you love about horror?
Part of that has to do with the themes that can be dealt with in horror in a unique way, like death, the afterlife, the supernatural, evil, the darkness in human nature. It is true that I like to read and write horror to explore those themes, even though I don’t usually like stories that are simplistic and overly moralistic (I do love complex layers of meaning when you don’t notice until you really start mulling over the story after reading). I keep that answer ready for most people who ask because it’s easy to understand and package even if one isn’t really drawn to the horror aesthetic.
But honestly, I mostly like spooky, creepy books, for the same reason I like vanilla ice cream over chocolate, even though my dad thinks…
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My short story, “The Bald Man”, can be found only in The Crossover Alliance’s new anthology, Superheroes, which is out TODAY! You can order digital editions in almost any format directly from them, or you can find the paperback and kindle version from Amazon. Nook lovers out there, you’re not left out in the cold, either. Barnes and Noble has the epub, as well as the paperback, if you want to get it there.
Short on cash? Enter the rafflecopter giveaway, and you might win a free digital copy of this anthology, plus even more!
Like to listen to stories? The Untold Podcast has a free audio edition of one of the stories in this anthology, “The Trojan Initiative” by Clayton Webb.
For more information on The Crossover Alliance and what kind of books they publish, click on their logo below:
I’ve been accepted to be a contestant in the Next Great Horror Writer Contest being put on by HorrorAddicts.net. Stay on top of the contest’s progress by following it over at https://nextgreathorrorwriter.wordpress.com/!
At last! After months of submissions, judging, and deliberating, We have our top 14 writers competing in the #NGHW contest! Follow your favorite, cheer them on, and keep up with the show to find out who wins. For more information, subscribe to the #NGHW blog.
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I have a new short story that is planned to be published next month in The Crossover Alliance‘s Superheroes: The Crossover Alliance Anthology V3. The title of my story is “The Bald Man”.
Keep on the lookout for its release, expected to be March 28.
Guess what’s here? The cover to my upcoming novel, Little One! (Tip: newsletter subscribers have already seen an early version!)
Ben Baldwin is the fantastic artist who deserves credit for this one.
So here it is—Little One, coming July 2017:
I don’t know what will happen with this. I had been working on an idea for a novel set at the Moundsville prison, but this opening scene for a totally different story came to me the other day. I’m still keeping the prison novel in mind, but I think while this other idea has captured me I might follow it through and see where it leads. This is not part of my upcoming book, Little One, which I am currently finishing up and plan to publish in the summer. Soon I will share more of that. Until then, here’s the opening of—of what? A novella? Novel? I’m sure it will be longer than a short story. I don’t know where it will go and when it will end. Time will tell—or will it, if the watch is broken?
I mentioned in a previous post that I had a goal of finishing both The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway and Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales over the course of the year by reading at least two stories from each per week. So far I’ve read ten from Hemingway and eleven from Bradbury, so I’m ahead of my goal.
I’m not totally inexperienced with either of these writers, though I’ll admit to not having investigated their work as much as I should have. Before this year, I had read Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea, a handful of his short stories, and Ernest Hemingway On Writing, a book published posthumously collecting a bunch of quotes about writing he made over the course of his career. For Ray, it was Fahrenheit 451 (an inevitable favorite, as I’m a huge dystopian fan AND a huge book fan, so there you go) and Something Wicked This Way Comes (in which I was a little disappointed, I’m afraid).
The title of this post is “Hemingway vs. Bradbury.” Of course it really isn’t fair to pit the writers against one another, but of course going into a book you can’t help but have certain expectations. And one of those expectations I had was that Hemingway’s stories would be “better” literature than Bradbury’s, while Bradbury’s would be more fun to read. I was wrong (about the first assumption).
Hemingway is a master at inner conflict, human nature (emphasis on the man), and epiphany, of course, but none of his stories have floored me yet like Bradbury’s. “Lafayette, Farewell” and “The Rocket” nearly brought me to tears (okay okay, “The Rocket” really did bring me to tears…). Of course, to be great, a story has to do more than engage your emotions in some way, but it should do at least that, and while Hemingway’s whole shtick is melancholy and beautiful prose, Bradbury’s got ’em both in spades, as well as joy and the fantastical, whimsy and humanity. No disrespect to Papa, either, because he certainly deserves it. But I definitely went into Bradbury with my expectations inappropriately low. He’s amazing.
JONATHAN FORTIN
FEIND GOTTES