It's the most wonderful time of the year! That's right: until November 26th, you have the chance to vote in the Goodreads Choice Awards. This is the tenth year of voting, and I look forward to it every year. Yes, I check out the winners in the end, but the best part for me is going through the nominees and finding books I want to read. Check out this year's look at the Goodreads Choice Awards and the Best Horror of 2018 to find your next read! Best Horror of 2018 Nominees Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage Craven Manor by Darcy Coates Flight or Fright, an Anthology e[...]
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0 As a visual and tactile learner, I judge books by their cover. And fifty percent of the time it works. Every time. Eric Smith's The Girl and the Grove was no exception. Since filming, I am halfway through the story and am happy to report that Eric Smith delivers what Jake Nordby's cover design promises. Tenfold. The Girl and the Grove is earthy, honest, and mysterious. And even though the bullies give me the jibblies, I have a hunch they'll get their comeuppance or redemption as I go. Special thanks to Eric Smith and Flux Books for donating this gem to o[...]
A friend recommended the Lockwood & Co. series to me. I bought book one: The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud. I started reading it and ran here to share this middle grade horror delight! Be happy. Be excited. Be prepared for the creepy. Blurb... A sinister Problem has occurred in London: all nature of ghosts, haunts, spirits, and specters are appearing throughout the city, and they aren't exactly friendly. Only young people have the psychic abilities required to see—and eradicate—these supernatural foes. Many different Psychic Detection Agenc[...]
As we close out week three of NaNoWriMo, we can see the finish line in sight. For some of us, 50k is easily within reach, and for others, there may be a few all-nighters ahead on the road to 50K. But no matter where you are on that spectrum, there’s a good chance that you’ve hit some creative lulls by now. You might even feel lost at this point in your story, stuck in a morass of half-formed ideas and feeling like your creative tank is empty. I know I’ve had days like this over the month, but I learned an important lesson from NaNos past that helps me turn[...]
The Scream by Edvard Munch I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to write YA horror. I suppose a lot of fiction that I like is horror but maybe not in the typical ways. I love Gothics of all kinds and am reading a book by Carol Goodman right now. In some places, it’s pretty horrific. People die. There’s constant tension over a really nasty villain. Even some of the good people are willing to kill over their beliefs. But I don’t think many readers consider The Blythewood series horror, but it’s very dark, dark in all the right places. So, I did so[...]
As 2015 begins, I can’t help but reflect on my favorite books of 2014. Probably one of the most influential was The Glass Casket by McCormick Templeman, a Gothic Horror wrapped very neatly inside the structure of a fairy tale. Like most Gothics, the story is set in an exotic place. Though we don't have the Gothic castle, we do have the snowy and isolated village of Nag’s End where our heroine, Rowan Rose, lives with her father, Henry Rose, and their maid, Emily. On the opening page, death has come to Nag’s End, when some strange beast attacks a group of sold[...]
Hey there, boos and ghouls! Halloween is a little more than a week away, and you know what that means. Yep, your local grocery store will soon be out of Reese's Peanut Butter Pumpkins. It's tragic, I know. But at least we here at The Midnight Society have another fun Halloween contest to help take your mind off of it! Here are the rules: * Carve a really cool jack-o-lantern * Like The Midnight Society Facebook page * Post a picture of your really cool jack-o-lantern to our Facebook. (If you don't have Facebook, you can still participate. Just comment here o[...]
Not too long ago, while on Facebook (the place where I find an absurd amount of creepy things) my eyes caught on a story someone shared. The headline gave me chill bumps. It read: Man Receives Facebook Messages From Dead Girlfriend. Have you guys read this story? I feel like you might have. Well, I knew it was fake, right. But that didn't stop me from clicking the link... and reading the insanely long story full of screen caps and semi-convincing pictures. I have to say, by the end of that story, my heart was pounding like a jackhammer on steroids. Just the mere[...]
My Daylight Monsters (Mary Hades, #0.5) started out as a standalone short, but after reaching the top of the YA horror amazon list, Sarah Dalton expanded her plans for the Gothic novella, birthing the Mary Hades series! While a lot of people will undoubtedly compare My Daylight Monsters to Girl, Interrupted, which is fair, the tone of the story reminded me of Donnie Darko. In fact, the day after reading it, I had to rewatch that movie (ahhh, I love it so!). I told Sarah Dalton on twitter, and she said that while she hadn't thought of the movie while writing it,[...]
Hollowland - the first book in the young adult dystopian series The Hollows... "This is the way the world ends - not with a bang or a whimper, but with zombies breaking down the back door." Nineteen-year-old Remy King is on a mission to get across the wasteland left of America, and nothing will stand in her way - not violent marauders, a spoiled rock star, or an army of flesh-eating zombies. The first line in this book is so awesome, that they had to put it right there in the book description. “This is the way the world ends; not with a bang or a whimper, but[...]