🌻 So turns the Yellow Carousel 🌻

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?

🌻 🦌 Read it now for free 🦌 🌻

cosmic horror #cosmichorror #sunflowers #sunflower #weirdhorror weird horror #appalachianfiction west virginia rural horror #ruralhorror #cosmichorrormonthly

My first novel highlighted in the October edition of Publishers Weekly Indie Spotlight

Publishers Weekly just released their Indie Spotlight for this October, featuring When the Watcher Shakes as one of their spooky books to read from indie authors.

#publishersweekly #pw #publishersweeklyindiespotlight #pwindiespotlight #indiespotlight #october #whenthewatchershakes #wtws #appalachianhorror #westvirginia #wvwriters #smalltownhorror #suspense #fallreads

Read this Amazon-bestselling ghost thriller for a dollar

I haven’t run a special on my books in a long time. I guess later is better than never…

So, here you go! I’ve slashed the Kindle version of Little One down to 99 cents in the US and UK for a few days!

Look at those angry eyes! I never should have stolen her lunchbox!

Click here and buy now (US), or for my mates across the pond, click here for your 99p special.

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!)

#kindledeals #ghoststories #ghostfiction #amazon #bestseller #amazonbestseller #wvreads #horrorbooks #indieauthor #littleone #creepykids #westvirginia

THE CRICKET KING is finished!

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!

#amwriting #amwritinghorror #orthoptera #crickets #thecricketking #horror #horrorfiction #horrorbooks #wip #horrorwriters #wvwriters #amediting #ameditinghorror

In which Curtis M. Lawson interviews me on the Wyrd Transmissions podcast

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.

Listen to “Ep. 49 – Appalachian Horror with Timothy G. Huguenin” on Spreaker.

Stream here it using the embedded player above, or go directly to the episode page, or listen on Apple Podcasts (don’t forget to rate and review the show).

Continue reading

Interviewed by Gwendolyn Kiste

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.

Appalachian Horror: Interview with Timothy G. Huguenin

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.

99c End of Summer Kindle Sale on WTWS – Buy Now

I’m running an End of Summer Sale the rest of this month (and a bit into September) on [*When the Watcher Shakes*](https://tghuguenin.com/wtws/) — [get it on Amazon NOW](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IBZFNEI/) for **only 99 cents**. That’s **over 75% off** from the original ebook price of $3.99! Don’t miss out, get it today!

Click here to buy!

***The walls were meant to keep evil out—but they only hid the evil within…***

“A chilling entry in the small-town horror genre. Huguenin combines suspense, mystery, and action in page-turning style.” — Scott Nicholson, [*The Red Church*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/145150702X/)

 

99c kindle sale ebook horror suspense #99c #kindle #sale #kindledeals #buynow #endofsummer

Happy New Year: 2019 in review, and 2020 #amwriting goals

Boy, 2019 was rough for me, for reasons which I will not detail in this post. But ever since I’ve started this blog, I’ve done one of these year-in-review/looking-ahead posts, so here goes. Please forgive my lack of pictures and GIFs—the internet connection where I live is exceedingly slow and unreliable, and I must avoid that kind of thing unless I’m at the library or coffee shop or some other place with high speed internet that won’t poop out on me in the middle of my work.

2019

Last year I set some goals for 2019. I did not meet any of them (well, I sorta met one).

2019 goals:

  • Finish the Bigfoot novel – Nope.
  • Find a publisher for Schafer – No. (but to be fair, this is not completely under my control)
  • Write at least five stories – Yes…ish.
  • Plan a successful WV Writers literary event in my region – No longer the Region 2 Rep.
  • Pass the English Literature CLEP Exam – Haven’t taken it.

This Bigfoot story is becoming about as elusive as Ol’ Sassy himself (have I made that joke before? I feel like I’ve made that joke before). I did make some progress in the fall, after finishing a novella (more on that in a bit), but I ended up putting it off again. I came up with another book idea I was more excited about at the time. My wife and some other people also think it is a pretty good concept, so I decided to set aside Sasquatch in favor of this one while I have some enthusiasm and creative juices flowing (kind of a gross expression, right?). So, thanks especially to Emily and John Little for encouragement in making this decision and telling me there might be something special in my new idea. I’m already making quicker, steadier progress on that book than I had been on Bigfoot. I’m not totally scrapping that one, though. I have some really good writing already done for it, and if I can pull off the rest of the story well, I think it will be a good one. I’m just not ready to finish it, I guess. But I have a good feeling about the new book.

Still have not found a home for Schafer (a novel I wrote in 2017 about an evil hypnotist, though I have yet to hear back from a number of publishers, any of which I would be very happy to work with.

I had planned on writing at least five short stories in addition to finishing the Bigfoot book. This is the only sorta check-mark on the list. At the beginning of the year, I started on a short story that I just could not finish. While I wrote in fits and starts, and did not make quick progress on it, it continued to grow into something exceedingly strange, ungainly, and lovely. At last, in September, I wrote THE END on this little monster, which came out to 21,300 words. So, it’s the length of five short stories, even though it is a single novella.

This is actually kind of cool, as I have been interested in writing a novella sometime in the future—only I ended up actually doing it by accident. As my 2019 goals were otherwise unmet, I’m going to fudge this one and give myself the credit. A novella is cool, yo. I’m not sure yet when or how it will be made available to the public, but I have some ideas.

For a moment I was the Region 2 Representative for the West Virginia Writers, and had some plans for that which never panned out. Coincidentally, as of November, I don’t even live in Region 2 anymore.

English Lit CLEP exam hasn’t happened yet. Should be soon, though. Transportation issues are complicated at the moment.

I’m not going to get into all the reasons that 2019 was hard on me. One of them, however, was an unexpected job change for my wife and a move from Bartow to Parsons. Emily and I are glad we were able to stay in West Virginia (and we love being in Tucker County), but the last part of the year was extremely chaotic and stressful. I am surprised I don’t have any noticeable gray hair after all that happened (I did catch one or two strands during the ordeal, but they’re gone). We still don’t have it all figured out, but we’re getting used to our new situation, and are both extremely grateful to God for what we see as His quick provision in a very uncertain and desperate time. I try to use this website to focus on my fiction rather than religious commentary, but I feel I would be wrong if I did not briefly utter a quick word of thanksgiving here. Things could have looked much worse for us at the end of 2019. We are greatly relieved.

In fact, there were some very bright spots to 2019. I had a whole lot of fun at all the book events I attended. At the Lewisburg Literary Festival, I broke my total sales record for that event. Same at West Virginia Book Festival, where I should have brought more books—I sold out of Little One! I was honored to be guest at the Haunted Majestic this October, a haunted house boat floating on the Ohio River near Huntington.

And, like I said before, it felt good to write my first novella. It is a very weird story, though. Who knows what will happen with it.

I saw only one of my short stories in print for 2019, “The Puddle Girl of St. George” (ironically, my wife’s new job is located in St. George).

And while I only saw one story newly published, I received some really encouraging responses concerning other unpublished work about which I’m not ready to go into detail. Suffice it to say that I finished the year with greater confidence in my ability and the quality of my short fiction. I hope to have some more exciting, less vague-blogging news for you later this year.

2020

Honestly, while I do have some writing goals to set forth, there is some practical, real-life stuff which is going to have to take precedence over my writing. But related to my continued pursuit of a profitable fiction writing career, I reckon the following are worthy targets:

  • Finish the new novel (and maybe get a bit more done on the Bigfoot story)
  • Get Schafer published
  • Get the weird novella published
  • Attend Camp Necon

Yeah, I already put down my deposit on Camp Necon. It will be my first time attending, and I’ve heard great things. This year, it will be held in Salem, MA, which is pretty cool, because I don’t think I’ve ever been to Salem.

Other than that? I feel like I’m forgetting stuff that should be in this post. But I gotta tell you, I’m too tired right now to care. Have a happy new year, everybody.

one more thing

PS — I haven’t drawn up a “Best of 2019” list yet, and I don’t know if I will—even less likely to do a “Best of the Decade” list. But I wanted to quickly recommend Michael Wehunt’s newest novella, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Bad Can Ever Happen Here, published by Nightscape Press last September. You can click that link to buy it directly from the publisher, as a limited, numbered paperback, autographed by the man himself, Michael Wehunt, one of my favorite contemporary writers. Only 118 copies remain at the time of this writing.

OK that’s it. I gotta go make dinner. So long!