Grimm Mistresses: C.W. LaSart

Greetings and welcome to the first of a series of posts to introduce some of today's most splendid female horror writers. The new anthology Grimm Mistresses will soon be out and you are going to want to snag yourself a copy of this amazing book. First up is the amazing C.W. Lasart...

1.   1.What inspired your story?  A friend of mine asked me to do a story that involved the killing of cheerleaders. She’s always pressing me to battle clichés and give them my spin. I got to thinking about hazing, and how brutal it can be, even amongst cheerleading squads and I’d always wanted to do a twist on Cinderella, one where she wasn’t the victim, but maybe a bit of a monster herself.

2. As a woman in horror, do you find any added pressure? I don’t know if there’s any added pressure from the outside, but I certainly put some on myself. I don’t want to give the impression I’m trying too hard. I was once on a panel about Extreme Horror where I was the only female. My first impulse was to dress severely, to keep a professional look that would fit in with the guys. After much thought though, I decided to wear a floral skirt, pale pink blouse, and put my hair up in a very high ponytail. It went over very well. Instead of trying to camouflage the fact that I was the only female on the panel, I flaunted it. Life is too short to care about gender.

3. Name three things on your desk right now. A can of coke, a voodoo doll, and about five million pens.

4. Who are some writers that have influenced your work? I love to read. I love books of all kinds. I think every book I read influences me in some way, whether it helps me see what I want to be, or what I don’t. My biggest influences would definitely be Robert McCammon, Stephen King and Bentley Little. Love those guys!

5. Tell us what your future plans are? Any novels in the works? Ha. I hate this question. I’ve been quite the slacker lately, but I do have more than one novel in the first draft stage. Other than that, it’s mostly just short stories for now. I know the pressure is on to release that First Novel, especially since three years have passed since I released my collection, but I want it to be the right one. You only get one first, I won’t rush just to get something out there. I want it to be brilliant.

6. If I were your favorite dessert what would I be? I can only pick one? Cheesecake. Definitely cheesecake. With chocolate.

7. What would you tell writers new to the horror genre? Pick a different genre! No, I kid… Mostly. Horror is a small genre and very difficult to earn respect in (forget money). I often wish I wrote paranormal romance instead. That stuff SELLS. But I love horror, and it’s what I write. I guess I would tell them to keep writing, but don’t expect to make a living at it. Too few are so fortunate. Make sure you get paid to write, don’t give it away, but don’t quit your day job either.

8. Plotter or pantster? Pantster. 100% The closest I have ever gotten to plotting is writing a scribbled note on a napkin. If I write too many notes, the drive to write the story is satisfied and it never gets written.

Now an excerpt:

From Hazing Cinderella

As the last of the light left the sky, the woods came alive again with the sounds of night creatures. Katie hugged her arms to her chest, wishing she had a jacket and a flashlight. Hell, she wished she was back home in her room, or locked in the bathroom the girls shared, soaking in a warm tub and reading a book. Jamie could have the damned cheerleading squad to herself; Katie had never wanted any part of it. She wished they were back in South Carolina, where her mother had met Don while waiting tables at local Pub, or in New Jersey, where Katie herself had been waitressing in greasy diner. Or even in New Orleans where they’d slept in a one room shack and wondered where there next meal would come from. Anywhere would be better than sitting alone in the dark woods, waiting for Jaimie to deliver the punchline to her great big joke.

Something large moved in the forest to her left, nothing but a shadow in her peripheral vision. Trying to ignore it, Katie slid off her perch and turned so she kneeled before the rocks. Leaning forward with her hands before her, she began to pray.

A lifelong fan of all things horror, C.W. LaSart resides in Watertown, South Dakota with her family and a menagerie of rescue pets. Her stories have been published by Cemetery Dance Publications, Dark Moon Digest, Eirelander Press and many others. She is a member of the Horror Writer’s Association and also a member of the Bram Stoker Awards® Committee. For more information on her writing, go to CWLasart.com or drop her a line at C.W.LaSart@hotmail.com.

Asylum Release Day

Title: Asylum

ISBN: 978-1-77101-393-2

By Dana Wright

Heat Rating: 1

Word Count: 16435

Release Date: October 10, 2014

Blurb:

The voices of the past are alive behind the iron gates of Bremore Asylum. Can Rachel and Matt deduce its secrets before it's too late?

When Rachel agrees to take the job investigating the disappearance of a fellow ghost hunter at Bremore Asylum, she is totally unprepared for the sexy and stubborn psychic debunker Matt Rutledge to be a part of the package. Can these two opposing forces find the answers behind the asylum's crumbling walls before they become the newest victims to the asylum's grim history?

Excerpt:

Rachel narrowed her eyes. What little hold she held on her frayed temper snapped. Self-doubt flared, but she stamped it out as quickly as it came.

"What's that supposed to mean?" She stepped forward, hands clenched into fists, her foot brushing against the luggage. Her hoodie slid off the suitcase and flopped unceremoniously into the dirt.

"We haven't even started on the project and you're trying to displace me already?"

Rutledge stepped back, surprise clear on his lightly parted lips. Lips she apparently still wanted to kiss, damn his eyes. God, what was wrong with her?

"My friend almost died because of a mistake I made. But you're already aware of that, aren't you, Mr. High and Mighty? Listen to me and listen good. I'm here because my grandmother needs me. I'm a damn fine ghost hunter, which you would already know if you bothered to see beyond what happened to Jeannie." She poked her finger into his chest and had the satisfaction of seeing him wince.

Matt stepped back and held up his hands, a ruddy flush creeping up his cheeks. "Okay. I was out of line. Truce?" He bent down and carefully picked up her hoodie, handing it to her gingerly.

"Thank you, Mr. Rutledge." Rachel snatched the hoodie from his hands and tied it around her waist with a firm yank. She didn't want to chance it falling in the dirt again and it was going to be a long weekend. At the rate they were going, it was going to be a full-on ice storm between them.

A flash of humor crossed his face. "Do you think maybe you could call me Matt?"

"That depends."

"On what?" Matt cocked his eyebrow with surprise.

"On whether you can stop dissecting me like one of your frauds."

Buy Link:

http://www.breathlesspress.com/index.php?main_page=product_free_shipping_info&products_id=681

About the author:

Dana Wright has always had a fascination with things that go bump in the night. She is often found playing at local bookstores, trying not to maim herself with crochet hooks or knitting needles, watching monster movies with her husband and furry kids or blogging about books. More commonly, she is chained to her computers, writing like a woman possessed. She is currently working on several children's stories, young adult fiction, romantic suspense, short stories and is trying her hand at poetry. She is a contributing author to Ghost Sniffer’s CYOA, Siren’s Call E-zine in their “Women in Horror” issue in February 2013 and "Revenge" in October 2013, a contributing author to Potatoes!, Fossil Lake, Of Dragons and Magic: Tales of the Lost Worlds, Undead in Pictures, Potnia, Shadows and Light, Dark Corners, Wonderstruck, Shifters: A Charity Anthology, Dead Harvest, Monster Diaries (upcoming), Holiday Horrors and the Roms, Bombs and Zoms Anthology from Evil Girlfriend Media. She is the author of Asylum due out in October 2014.   Dana has also reviewed music for Muzikreviews.com specializing in New Age and alternative music and has been a contributing writer to Eternal Haunted Summer, Nightmare Illustrated, Massacre Magazine, Metaphor Magazine, The Were Traveler October 2013 edition: The Little Magazine of Magnificent Monsters, the December 2013 issue The Day the Zombies Ruled the Earth. She currently reviews music at New Age Music Reviews and Write a Music Review.

Follow Dana’s reviews:

Twitter: @danawrite

Author site: http://danawrightauthor.wix.com/danawright

Facebook fan page: https://www.facebook.com/danawrightauthor

 For fans of horror, make sure you check out the selfie campaign at: http://horrorselfies.com/

Enter for your chance to win tons of great prizes from tons of great authors!

A Visit with Patrick Freivald: Bram Stoker Nominee

Join me as I interview Patrick Freivald, Bram Stoker nominee and fellow HWA member. Welcome to Zombiegirl Shambling! Here's some lemonade...whoops. Sorry about that. Let me wipe the blood off that glass for you.

All better...now where did I put that tray of ladyfingers... Not real ones silly. Patrick, put down the chair. Look, I'm standing over here with a pen and paper. Perfectly harmless...Come on now. We have guests who want to know about your newest books...

The Interview:


1. How did you get started writing horror?

I've been writing for most of my life, but didn't really start writing with an intent to publish until 2008 or so, when my twin brother Phil said, "Dude, we should write a book." So we did. BLOOD LIST isn't horror per se, though it has some horrific elements to it. From there, my natural fondness for things that aren't quite right took over. Even when I don't write horror, things I write tend to have something dark about them.

2. What about YA do you enjoy?

The funny thing is that I never intended TWICE SHY or LOVE BITES to be YA. I mean, some really, truly awful things happen in both books--things a lot of parents wouldn't be all that comfortable with their kids reading. But I guess when your protagonist is in high school, or of high school age, it's YA, dammit.

As a high school teacher, teenagers amuse me--sometimes on purpose, often not. I have an over-developed sense of irony, and I very much enjoy my job. So go figure I'd end up writing about young adults in some of my work.

3. Music or no music?

While writing? Absolutely not, for two reasons: one, I enjoy music too much and would get distracted. Two, I use voice recognition to write, and the sound would mess it up.

Otherwise? I enjoy a lot of genres, but selectively within those genres. Lately I've been listening to a lot of Halestorm, Imogen Heap, Rodrigo y Gabriela, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

4. Name three things on your desk right now.

I don't have a desk. Which is to say I have two, but never use them for anything but storage. I write at either the kitchen or the dining room table, most of the time--and by "at the table" I mean while pacing back and forth. I rarely sit while writing, unless I'm in an environment too noisy to use VR, in which case I'll type like a normal person. Not to dodge the question, my current writing surface, the kitchen table, has a cup of tea (black, with my honey), a sleeping and very fat and fluffy white cat, and my laptop on it.

5. What kinds of characters do you most love to write about?

Well that's an odd question. I like to write characters, and they vary quite a bit. From serial killers to self-destructive teens to superhuman commandos to retired old men in witness protection through no fault of their own, each is fun to write in their own way. My favorite character of all time has yet to hit a published story, and that's a man who's convinced that he's dead and in hell, despite the fact that he's actually just a rather ordinary virtuoso violinist--it's fun to write scenes from his perspective, because of how he'll interpret the actions of those around him.

6. Tell us about your new book.

BLOOD LIST is about a serial killer trying to save his father's life. It's the first novel I wrote, but the most recently published (November). In May, JADE SKY hits Amazon--it's on preorder now--and it's a screaming-fast, brutal, modern fantasy thriller about superhuman commandos.

7. Hamburger or sushi?

Yes, please! I don't understand why people consider broccoli to be food, but other than that will eat almost anything and enjoy it. I like food, I like to cook, I like to eat!

8. What is one pet peeve you see in horror today? What would you like to see more?

Horror to me isn't a genre, it's an emotion. Lots of books can contain horror, but no books "are" horror. So in that sense, there are entire swathes of stories I have no interest in--mutilation porn like SAW, rape/revenge fantasy, etc. Generally, the things that try only to shock hold no interest for me. 

I read a lot of Z-fic for a while, to the point where I was writing reviews for BuyZombie.com, and with zombie stories there's a stagnation that really started to turn me off, where they're all about one of two scenarios: the apocalypse is happening and people are trying to survive, or the apocalypse has happened at some point in the past, and people are trying to survive. There are exceptions, or sufficiently good twists: Jonathan Maberry's introspective YA ROT AND RUIN series, Joe McKinney's things-are-mostly-contained THE CROSSING (and related stories), Dana Fredsti's Buffy-the-Zombie-Slayer PLAGUE TOWN, PLAGUE NATION, and I-can't-wait-for-it-to-come-out PLAGUE WORLD, David Moody's understated and almost calm AUTUMN...I'd like to think I nailed something pretty unique with TWICE SHY and SPECIAL DEAD, too! ...but these are the exceptions, not the rule.

What I'd like to see more of is the same thing that I think most everyone wants to see more of: quality stories that either make you think or entertain you so much that you don't care if you're not thinking too hard. Well written, well edited, character-driven stories that engage. Beyond that, what else could you want?

9. What advice would you give someone just starting out in the horror field?

Don't start out "in the horror field". Write what you write, and let other people classify it.

Other than that, my advice is the same as I've given to a lot of other writers: write a lot, make it the best you can, and use as few words as possible.

10. What is next on your writerly platform?

JADE SKY got picked up for a five-book deal, so I've got four more to write. I'm collaborating with Joe McKinney on a comic for Dark Discovery Magazine using JADE SKY's setting, just started collaborating with Brian Knight on an as-yet-amorphous probably YA novel, and would like to write at least six short stories and another novel on top of all that this year. We'll see how close we get!

Editing blog: http://patrickfreivald.blogspot.com/

Bio:

 Patrick Freivald is an author, teacher (physics, robotics, American Sign Language), and beekeeper. He lives in Upstate New York with his beautiful wife, two birds, two dogs, too many cats, and several million stinging insects. A book reviewer for BuyZombie.com, he’s always had a soft spot for slavering monsters of all kinds. He is the author of JADE SKY, BLOOD LIST (with his twin brother Phil), TWICE SHY, and the Bram Stoker Award(R)-nominated SPECIAL DEAD, as well as many short stories.

Links:
http://www.amazon.com/Twice-Shy-Patrick-Freivald-ebook/dp/B009UETM7O/
http://www.amazon.com/Blood-List-Patrick-Freivald-ebook/dp/B00GMICA70/
http://www.amazon.com/Special-Dead-Twice-Shy-Book-ebook/dp/B00DSS4KCK/
http://www.amazon.com/Jade-Sky-Matt-Rowley-Novel/dp/1940161436/


No authors or women's fingers were maimed or dismembered during the course of this post. Thank you Patrick for taking the time to answer my questions with minimal screaming.