David Baldacci among writers headlining the Lewisburg Literary Festival for 2024
Lewisburg, one of my favorite WV small towns, is home to cute little shops, art galleries, caves, restaurants, an indie bookstore, and, every August, the Lewisburg Literary Festival, one of my favorite events. This year, come out on August 2nd–3rd for this totally free festival that brings nationally known authors in to speak—past authors include Garth Stein, David Sedaris, and Jeannete Walls. This year, the featured Mainstage Authors are Ronni Lundy, Patrick Bringley, Victoria Christopher Murray, and David Baldacci.
Get ready Charleston, it’s one of the best weekends of the year—the West Virginia Book Festival! This Saturday (Oct 21), from 8:00 am to 6:oo pm, come meet WV authors (including me) for a day of book-buying, presentations, and hearing from the headline featured authors. It’s free to attend. As usual, I’ll be there, selling my books and some new mugs. So make some space on your calendar this Saturday for the West Virginia Book Festival, held at the Charleston Coliseum. For more information, go to wvbookfestival.org.
It was a warm September evening in High Point, West Virginia, when Silas first saw the Yellow Carousel.
Early September is upon us—summer’s last gasp, anticipation of autumn, maturing sunflowers… And, for a certain retired surface miner and his wife, the Yellow Carousel’s arrival.
Though squash vine borers have decimated my wife’s acorn squashes, zucchinis, and delicatas this year (still holding out hope for a couple of pumpkins that look okay), it’s been a good year for the rest of the garden, including our sunflowers.
Sunflowers are my favorite flowers. I’m big on Russian Mammoths, but we tried some new ones this year to add more color and variety in size. Can’t help smiling whenever I see them. How can those big, bright petals bring a person anything but joy?
Say a giant sunflower-shaped carousel sprouts suddenly in your back yard. Weird, sure. But would you really think it such a bad thing? You can forgive a lonely old guy like Silas if he’s not overly wary when it happens to him. But beauty is often as dangerous as it is alluring.
If you haven’t yet read my story “The Yellow Carousel” (Cosmic Horror Monthly #35, May 2023 – read online for free), September is the perfect time. Take it out on the back porch after work, while the evenings still have a touch of late summer heat. If you have a sunflower garden like me, plop your chair right there among their heavy heads nodding in the breeze. Maybe make yourself a cup of tea to sip as you read, to fight off that chill when the sun goes down behind the pines.
And if something strange appears in your lawn, or in the playground across the street, or your neighbor’s backyard…
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Silas and Emma have settled into a quiet retirement in High Point, West Virginia. There’s nothing so peaceful as a September sunset painting the pines that edge their field. From this magic twilight emerges the Yellow Carousel, as if planted and grown just for Silas. Why shouldn’t he climb its sunflower petals and mount its undulating deer?
If you like ghosts, creepy kids, houses in disrepair, and people stranded in a blizzards (you cold-hearted soul), you’ll love this haunted house novel, which in 2018 hit #1 in three different Amazon categories for Ghosts and Paranormal fiction, as well as climbing to #84 overall in the Kindle store. Since then, it’s accumulated over 130 ratings and reviews on Amazon, averaging 4.4 stars. Publishers Weekly gave it a great review, and if you can’t trust PW, really, who can you trust? Your Uncle Carl from Jersey? Yeah? Well, he likes it too, so I guess you’re out of excuses.
Hurry, though. This sale will only be around until, like next Tuesday or Wednesday or something. These discounts are always based on weird time zones that confuse me. If you’re gonna get this book, don’t put it off and trust me to know the exact day it returns to full price. Just get it now while it’s a dollar. You can’t even get a crummy gas station coffee for a buck anymore. This will last you much longer than that, and it won’t make you crap your pants while you’re on the highway. (Unless it makes you crap your pants in TERROR!!! OOooooOOoooOOooo!)
Well, sort of. The first wife-readable draft is done, which is a huge weight lifted (looks like you have some new reading material, Emily).After my initial editing pass, I discovered a pretty upsetting plot hole. But today I finally got it fixed, and I can take a break from thinking about this book. In its current version, it clocks in at 78,700 words. That will, of course, change by the time it is in its final form (the very roughest draft finished at around 81k), but it’s a respectable length, even though it won’t quite come in over 80k like I had hoped.
I don’t know what to say except that I am very relieved to have got the book to its current state. I suffered many assaulting doubts while I was writing and while I was editing. Even though it is not yet in book form, it is a great relief to have finished the hardest part of the work, and I am very proud of it so far. I look forward to sharing it with you sometime in the hopefully-not-too-distant future.
All my novelist friends: keep on writing! Work through the doubts! Trust the process! Keep on chirping!
Fresh feasting for your famished earholes, hot off the audio griddle. Curtis M. Lawson, host of the podcast Wyrd Transmissions, has interviewed me. Listen to us chat a little about my writing and a lot more about other stuff.
Okay, this is over a week late, which translates into about three months in Internet years, but I would be remiss if I failed to direct any interested parties toward Gwendolyn Kiste’s interview of me on her blog.
If you’re at all curious about my influences, inspirations, and my thoughts on recent and upcoming works (primarily my recently released novella, Unknowing, I Sink, and my upcoming novel, Schafer), you’ll want to take a look.
While you’re over there, please peruse the rest of Gwendolyn’s website. She is an incredibly talented and accomplished horror and dark fantasy writer, having won the Bram Stoker Award(R) three times, if I recall correctly. Her works include the Stoker-winning novel The Rust Maidens and her new novel, Boneset & Feathers, which I am currently reading.
It was quite an honor and pleasure to chat with her and talk about my humble writing.
Independent Legions has finished the cover for my upcoming novella, Unknowing, I Sink:
I’m excited for the release, which will be sooner than anyone planned. Originally planned to be published in November, now I’ve received word that the novella will come out as early as next week! Prepare yourself for unfathomable nightmares…
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