Two questions with… Halloween Edition Blog Tour – Janet Walden-West

Our blog tour is back, and this time we’re doing it Halloween style!

It’s October, which means many creative minds are starting to turn toward the spooky, fanged, clawed, and winged. To celebrate, a small coven of writers has emerged from the darkness to share their harrowing delights with you. Each week, we will tour each other’s blogs and answer questions about our favorite spooky shenanigans.

Halloween is almost here, and I’m extra excited to host my CP bestie, the spellbinding Janet Walden-West… While Janet entertains you with her answers, I’m digging into those treats she brought!

 

Anne,

I’m thrilled to be back, this time talking all things dark and disturbing. I also brought coffee, pumpkin spice creamer optional. Ooh, and Halloween cheesecake. Because our pact forbids any discussion that doesn’t include coffee and cheesecake.

 

 

1. Which Horror Tropes do you love to twist/would love to see twisted?

I love flipping the script.

At the top of my horror trope wish list? Stories from the Bad Thing’s perspective. Especially when the MC stays a Bad Thing, but the writer can make you root for them anyway. If you can make me love any unapologetically monstrous MC, I’m yours. Bonus points if you can slant the narrative enough to turn them into a true anti-hero(ine) and get me to stop, think, and side-eye the supposed hero’s motives along the way.

 

2. Favorite October Food?

Pretty sure Anne snuck this question onto the list just for me. Somehow, food always pops up in my stories, no matter how dark and twisty the subject matter or inhuman the characters.

Let me just say, I have nothing against pumpkin spice, although I prefer it in an actual pie or pumpkin bread.

However, fair warning—we’re all hillbilly/all the time up in here, including a preference for Southern delicacies. The sweet, savory smokiness of slow-roasted sweet potatoes, and the tang of ripe wild muscadines, are my thing. Both are only readily available starting in late September, so they mean Fall to me. Bonus, muscadines are also often turned into a lovely dessert wine.

 

Janet Walden-West lives in the southeast with a pack of show dogs, a couple of kids, and a husband who didn’t read the fine print.  She has an unseemly obsession with dusty artifacts, great cars, and bad coffee. A founding member of the East Tennessee Creative Writers Alliance and The Million Words craft blog, she is also a member of Romance Writers of America member. She pens Urban Fantasy that escapes the neat confines of the city limits in favor of map-dot hillbilly towns, and inclusive Romantic Suspense and Contemporary Romance. A #PitchWars alum, her first short story, Road Trip, is included in the Chasing the Light anthology.

 

Find Me At:

Website: http://www.janetwaldenwest.weebly.com

Twitter: @JanetWaldenWest

Instagram: janetwaldenwest

Chasing the Light

 

 

Look for more harrowing fun at:

Pat Esden’s Mythmaker Blog

R J Theodore’s website

Ken Schrader’s It’s All In My Head

K Bird Lincoln’s What I Should Have Said

Janet Walden-West’s Blog

 

~Raven

Two questions with… Halloween Edition Blog Tour – K Bird Lincoln

Our blog tour is back, and this time we’re doing it Halloween style!

It’s October, which means many creative minds are starting to turn toward the spooky, fanged, clawed, and winged. To celebrate, a small coven of writers has emerged from the darkness to share their harrowing delights with you. Each week, we will tour each other’s blogs and answer questions about our favorite spooky shenanigans.

 

This week, I’m thrilled to host the ghostly K Bird Lincoln … Take it away, Kirsten!

 

Funny (Now) scary anecdote to share?

Real story here, or at least as real as my swiss cheese memory recalls. First, I have never seen a ghost or experienced something otherworldly. I am not psychic. I have never seen anyone else truly prove they are psychic. However…I also know there are things beyond my ken that can not (yet) be explained. I also believe, because of this one friend, let’s call her Rose, in high school that some people experience the world differently than I.

 

Okay, disclaimer done. I was a socially-challenged nerd as a freshman in high school. My major social outlet was the band. I sat clarinet second chair to this lovely girl, let’s call her Jane. Jane was not a loser. She wasn’t a popular mean girl, just one of those people who quietly, without fanfare, managed to talk to everyone in a genuine, engaging way.

 

One night, she was on a sleep over with other band friends. One of them, Rose, liked to play with an Ouija board. Rose often claimed she felt spirits or saw auras. I never really believed her. But who was I to claim she couldn’t? The story goes that at the sleep over, Rose brought out her Ouija board and they began to ask a spirit who showed up what each girl would be when they grew up, with Rose the medium through which the spirit spoke. One by one, Rose named each girl’s profession; ambassador, teacher, doctor. However, when she got to Jane, the little Ouija plank refused to move.

 

Rose turned pale and refused to speak. The other girls gathered around and wouldn’t let up teasing until Rose explained what the spirit showed her for Jane’s future.

 

“Nothing,” she said finally. “Just a great empty darkness.”

 

They laughed it off in band the next day, and everyone forgot about it until sophomore year. I walked into band one day and the band teacher told me to take first chair. Jane was home ill and wouldn’t be at school that day. The day turned into a week. The week turned into three weeks. Jane was in a mysterious coma. The doctors thought it was a virus. There was no explanation.

 

And then Jane died.

 

To this day, I am still not aware of any diagnosis. Rose still refuses to talk about that sleepover night. I still don’t believe in ghosts or spirits, but Rose’s reaction to a sleepover game can’t be explained away by electromagnetic impulses.

 

 

Which Horror Trope would you love to see die, and never return from the grave?

Unless you are exploiting stupidity for laughs, like that Geico Insurance commercial where the fleeing teens decide to hide in a garage full of chainsaws instead of the running car, I hate the trope where the young, nubile female is too-stupid-to-be-true in her choice of hiding places. Seriously. In this day and age, not even the most naïve high school student would run down the basement stairs of the abandoned house when spooked. We all know nothing good happens in basements. Now it throws me out of the story. Instead of ratcheting up tension, it’s so unbelievable I have to yell or throw snacks at the TV screen.

 

Make your character smart—and the monster smarter. Think how terrifying it would be if the heroine ran out of the cursed, abandoned house into the street and the monster got her anyway. That would make my skin crawl. Or, let’s have a muscled young guy run down the basement steps and get slaughtered instead of the girl. That would also work for me.

 

Thanks to Anne for hosting me! I’m K. Bird Lincoln, an author of Historical and Urban Fantasy who may or may not be too obsessed with Japan, chocolate, and coffee.

 

Bird Lincoln is an ESL professional and writer living on the windswept Minnesota Prairie with family and a huge addiction to frou-frou coffee. Also dark chocolate– without which, the world is a howling void. Originally from Cleveland, she has spent more years living on the edges of the Pacific Ocean than in the Midwest. Her speculative short stories are published in various online & paper publications such as Strange Horizons. Her medieval Japanese fantasy series, Tiger Lily, is available from Amazon. In 2017 World Weaver Press released Dream Eater, the first novel in an exciting, multi-cultural Urban Fantasy trilogy set in Portland and Japan. It happens to be on sale for 99 cents the month of October 2018 to celebrate the release of the sequel, Black Pearl Dreaming.

She also writes tasty speculative fiction reviews on Amazonand Goodreads. Check her out on Facebook, join her newsletterfor chocolate and free stories, or stalk her online at kblincoln.wordpress.com.

 

Koi Pierce dreams other peoples’ dreams.

Her whole life she’s avoided other people. Any skin-to-skin contact—a hug from her sister, the hand of a barista at Stumptown coffee—transfers flashes of that person’s most intense dreams. It’s enough to make anyone a hermit.

But Koi’s getting her act together. No matter what, this time she’s going to finish her degree at Portland Community College and get a real life. Of course it’s not going to be that easy. Her father, increasingly disturbed from Alzheimer’s disease, a dream fragment of a dead girl from the casual brush of a creepy PCC professor’s hand, and a mysterious stranger who speaks the same rare Northern Japanese dialect as Koi’s father will force Koi to learn to trust in the help of others, as well as face the truth about herself.

“Lincoln successfully mixes Japanese, Native American, and Middle Eastern mythologies in her modern setting, and Koi’s wry voice gives a new perspective on the problems of paranormal gifts.”
–Publishers Weekly

“DREAM EATER brings much-needed freshness to the urban fantasy genre with its inspired use of Japanese culture and mythology and its fully-realized setting of Portland, Oregon. I’m eager to follow Koi on more adventures!”
—Beth Cato, author of The Clockwork Dagger and Breath of Earth

 

Find it Online:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Books-a-Million
Goodreads
Independent Bookstores
iTunes/Apple iBooks
Kobo

 

 

Look for more harrowing fun at:

Pat Esden’s Mythmaker Blog

R J Theodore’s website

Ken Schrader’s It’s All In My Head

K Bird Lincoln’s What I Should Have Said

Janet Walden-West’s Blog

 

I’m so excited to be hosting the following authors on these dates:

October 1: Pat Esden

October 8: R J Theodore

October 15: Ken Schrader

October 22: K Bird Lincoln

October 29: Janet Walden-West

 

Stayed tuned for all the interviews!

 

~Raven

Two questions with… Halloween Edition Blog Tour – Ken Schrader

Our blog tour is back, and this time we’re doing it Halloween style!

It’s October, which means many creative minds are starting to turn toward the spooky, fanged, clawed, and winged. To celebrate, a small coven of writers has emerged from the darkness to share their harrowing delights with you. Each week, we will tour each other’s blogs and answer questions about our favorite spooky shenanigans.

 

This week, I’m thrilled to host the blood-thirsty (okay, not really) Ken Schrader… Take it away, Ken!

 

Thank you, Anne, for letting me Haunt *Kaff, Kaff* Post…yes, Guest Post on your blog today as part of our “Two questions with… ” The Halloween Edition.

For those of you that don’t know, my name is Ken Schrader. I write Science Fiction, Fantasy, Weird Westerns (though, not necessarily in that order).

 

So you’re here for answers, and answers you shall have.

Come, pull up a chair, and listen. Don’t mind the Trap-door there in the floor. The Moon is full, and the wind is in the trees…

Let us talk of monsters…

 

Question 1. Is there any difference between Horror and Thriller? If so, what is it?

I think that there is a difference between a Horror Story and a Thriller. For me, I think this ties in to how Horror is defined. If nobody is safe, that’s Horror. If you know the protagonist makes it out alive, regardless of what they go through, even if you can’t see how they could possibly make it, yet you know that they are going to indeed make it out, that’s a Thriller.

Alien was horror

Aliens was a thriller.

 

Question 2. What is your go-to scary/Halloween movie

Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. Easily one of the best movies in the Franchise, this movie was dark. Darker than usual. Out of all of the Elm Street movies, this one was crafted in such a way to make each death matter. It wasn’t random, Freddy was picking these kids off one at a time and they KNEW IT. They struggled together and fought together. By far my favorite.

 

BIO

I am a science fiction and fantasy writer, a shameless Geek, a fan of the Oxford comma, and I make housing decisions based upon the space available for bookshelves. I collect books, movies, and music.

I sing out loud when I think there’s no one around, and I try to get a blog post up once a week – one of which I have managed to do consistently for the past few years.

I love music of all kinds, books, the big sky off my front porch, Star Wars, Firefly, Blind Guardian (to which, I write almost exclusively), Rugby, star gazing, jasmine tea, and the smell of rain on the air.

My favorite flavor of ice cream is chocolate. My favorite food is a grilled steak, and I can suspend disbelief embarrassingly quickly.

I live in Michigan, am co-owned by several dogs (especially the Border Collie), and I am one of the rare breed of folk that enjoys mowing the lawn.

My short story “Haven” appears in the “Weird Wild West” anthology.
My short story “The Price of Power” appears in the “Trials” anthology.
My short story “The Intern” appears in the “Chasing the Light” anthology.

 

Website: www.ken-schrader.com

You can send me email here

Or follow me on Twitter @kenschrader4882

Or follow me on Facebook

I am represented by Dorian Maffei
(Dorian@kimberleycameron.com)
Kimberley Cameron & Associates

 

Look for more harrowing fun at:

Pat Esden’s Mythmaker Blog

R J Theodore’s website

Ken Schrader’s It’s All In My Head

K Bird Lincoln’s What I Should Have Said

Janet Walden-West’s Blog

 

I’m so excited to be hosting the following authors on these dates:

October 1: Pat Esden

October 8: R J Theodore

October 15: Ken Schrader

October 22: K Bird Lincoln

October 29: Janet Walden-West

 

Stayed tuned for all the interviews!

 

~Raven

Two questions with… Halloween Edition Blog Tour – R J Theodore

Our blog tour is back, and this time we’re doing it Halloween style!

It’s October, which means many creative minds are starting to turn toward the spooky, fanged, clawed, and winged. To celebrate, a small coven of writers has emerged from the darkness to share their harrowing delights with you. Each week, we will tour each other’s blogs and answer questions about our favorite spooky shenanigans.

 

This week, I’m thrilled to host the wicked R J Theodore… Take it away, R J!

 

Is there any difference between Horror and Thriller? If so, what is it?

 

While I think horror and thriller genres belong under the same umbrella, I do see them as attacking the reader in different ways. Many thrillers are spy novels, where the death and peril is dished out in a battle of competency. Who will win? The well-trained assassin or the many whose job it is to stop him? Who will win? The talented FBI agent or the serial killer she’s tasked with finding? Generally the protagonist prevails because they draw on some skill or life experience that answers the need of their particular situation.

In horror, often the antagonist is a supernatural force – whether a mind made unstoppable by a need for vengeance or an eldritch entity crawling out of the sea. Generally there is an expectation that the things that would kill a normal person won’t harm them, or at least wouldn’t stop them for long. The main character is attempting to survive, tripping and stumbling in their flight, until the fear is so overwhelming that it’s burned away, leaving nothing but an inner resolve to just live one more day.

In the thriller, the particular situation is generally settled and the protagonist achieves some advancement as the result of overcoming it. In horror, often the antagonist survives, or is reborn, either to hunt our protagonist for the rest of their life, or to choose a new victim.

 

Favorite October Food?

 

Once upon a time the answer to this would easily have been an apple cake recipe that we clipped out of a newspaper long ago. It’s a thin crumbly cake with slices of apple baked into the top and it was delicious!

 

Now, I’ve been sugar-and-grain free for three years, so I just enjoy a nice hot cup of coffee on the porch in the cool autumn mornings. Not that I don’t drink coffee all summer, but as the days grow shorter and cooler, I always enjoy it more.

 

R J Theodore is a graphic designer, illustrator, and author. Her first series of novels, the Peridot Shift series, launched in March 2018 with the publication of FLOTSAM through Parvus Press. A Science Fiction and Fantasy enthusiast of any format, she draws from a lifetime of SFF influences to craft stories with irreverent physics, irresponsible gods, and unforgettable characters. She writes both long-form novels and shorter works, including the ongoing self-published Phantom Traveler novella series which began with THE BANTAM and continues, one episode at a time, for her supporters on Patreon.

Mx. Theodore first began inventing worlds before she could spell the words it took to describe them. Her earliest stories were rendered in pipe cleaners, shoe boxes, and modified plastic milk jugs. There is, somewhere on a floppy disk in a landfill, a partially written Star Trek fanfic that the Parvus Press team would pay a bounty to retrieve. Of Mx. Theodore’s more recent story crafting, SFF author Jennifer Foehner Wells says, “R J Theodore is a fresh voice who will soon be on your must-read list!”

Mx. Theodore is fueled by coffee and churrasco.

 

WEBSITE: https://www.rjtheodore.com

TWITTER: https://www.twitter.com/bittybittyzap

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/bittybittyzap

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/groups/rjtheodore

PATREON: https://patreon.com/rjtheodore

 

THE BANTAM (A Phantom Traveler Novella): http://amzn.to/2mfNqxX

Ehli never expected much from her life. She’s an Iscillian, designed in a lab to serve as custodian for a Xendari merchant crew, with no future beyond the warranty of their starship. When she reads two previously overlooked lines in the ship’s operations manual that cast doubt on everything she thought she knew about her existence, the satisfaction she once found in her simple life dissolves into an unsettling obsession with learning the truth.

She is expected to report for duty, complete her assignments, and rest until her next shift. To put the needs of the ship and crew before her own. She knows better than to expect the oh-so-vertebrate Xendari to help her find the answers she craves, but every step she takes investigating her origins – and that of all Iscillian serving as bioaccessories across the galaxy – takes her further from the life she knew, and deeper into danger.

But she can’t ignore what she’s learned. She must know what secrets have been kept from her, and she’s willing to risk everything to uncover them.

 

Look for more harrowing fun at:

Pat Esden’s Mythmaker Blog

R J Theodore’s website

Ken Schrader’s It’s All In My Head

K Bird Lincoln’s What I Should Have Said

Janet Walden-West’s Blog

 

I’m so excited to be hosting the following authors on these dates:

October 1: Pat Esden

October 8: R J Theodore

October 15: Ken Schrader

October 22: K Bird Lincoln

October 29: Janet Walden-West

 

Stayed tuned for all the interviews!

 

~Raven

 

Two questions with… Halloween Edition Blog Tour

Our blog tour is back, and this time we’re doing it Halloween style!

It’s October, which means many creative minds are starting to turn toward the spooky, fanged, clawed, and winged. To celebrate, a small coven of writers has emerged from the darkness to share their harrowing delights with you. Each week, we will tour each other’s blogs and answer questions about our favorite spooky shenanigans.

 

This week, I’m thrilled to host the bewitching Pat Esden… Take it away, Pat!

 

Hi Anne, thank you for inviting me to be a guest on your blog today. Happy October! The countdown to Halloween has officially begun.

 

1. Which Horror Tropes do you love or would love to see twisted?

 

I love it when the tables are flipped and the scary person or creature in a book or movie turns out to be good—and the sweet, innocent one is revealed to harbor true evil. I’m even happier if the reveal is a twist that I didn’t see coming, but in retrospect is obvious.

 

It’s more a subgenre of horror than a twist, but I also like when the scary creature or element turns out to be a delusion. I especially enjoy it when the deluded person falls deeper into the insanity and becomes the evil themselves.

 

 

2. Favorite October Food?

I can’t just pick one. October brings so many of my favorite foods. I absolutely love fresh cider, apples, concord grapes . . . pretty much all autumn fruits. On the other side of the equation is candy. I openly admit to loving it. And, yes, that includes candy corn. What’s not to love about candy that can double as fake fangs.

 

BIO:

Pat Esden would love to say she spent her childhood in intellectual pursuits. The truth is she was fonder of exploring abandoned houses and old cemeteries. When not out on her own adventures, she can be found in her northern Vermont home writing stories about brave, smart women and the men who capture their hearts.

She is the author of the contemporary paranormal Dark Heart series from Kensington Books, and the upcoming Northern Circle Coven series. Her short fiction has appeared in a number of publications, including Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, the Mythopoeic Society’s Mythic Circle, George Scither’s Cat Tales Anthology, and the Fragments of Darkness anthology.

Website: http://patesden.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PatEsden

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PatEsdenAuthor/

BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/pat-esden

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/patesden

 

BLURB:

HIS DARK MAGIC (Northern Circle Coven series book 1)

Coming December 11^th

Its power is legendary. It can fulfill every impossible magical desire. But for one young witch seeking redemption, the Northern Circle coven will challenge her skills—and her heart—beyond measure.

One tragic impulsive mistake made Chloe Winslow an outcast to her influential magic family. As a medical student, she wants to combine science with sorcery to heal those she hurt and right her wrongs. But brilliant, charismatic Devlin Marsh re-routes her plans with a once-in-eternity offer: membership in the exclusive Northern Circle, a mysterious Vermont coven known for pushing the limits.

Enthralled by Devlin and their mesmerizing mutual attraction, Chloe makes a dangerous sacrifice to help the Circle’s high priestess awaken Merlin himself—and learn his timeless cures. But a foreshadowing soon causes Chloe to doubt the Circle’s real motives, as well as Devlin’s . . .

Now Merlin’s demonic shade is loose in the human world, while Chloe and Devlin’s uneasy alliance will pit them against ancient enemies, malevolent illusions, and shattering betrayal. And with the fate of two realms in the balance, Chloe must risk her untried power against a force she can’t defeat—and a passion that could destroy her.

Amazon: https://amzn.to/2KACQeT

Barnes & Noble: https://bit.ly/2OjNwB3

iTunes: https://apple.co/2vOVIRW

Kobo: https://bit.ly/2vsYbCa

Google Play: http://bit.ly/2OPIflC

 

Look for more harrowing fun at:

Pat Esden’s Mythmaker Blog

R J Theodore’s website

Ken Schrader’s It’s All In My Head

K Bird Lincoln’s What I Should Have Said

Janet Walden-West’s Blog

 

Stayed tuned for all the interviews!

 

~Raven