Elizabeth Saunders has been in TONS of awesome series and movies: Mary Kills People, Clarice, Disappearance at Clifton Hill, Orphan Black, The Strain, Murdoch Mysteries, Goosebumps, Forever Knight - you name it! But what you really want to see RIGHT JUST NOW, if you haven't already is the series FROM. Her performance as Donna is brilliant, and my friend Scott McCord also turns in an excellent performance. You'll see more of both of them, as well as the rest of the incredible ensemble cast in Season 2 next year! But while you're waiting for that particular terror, check out my interview with the lovely Elizabeth Saunders...

She's provided many a tale for my 12 Stories/Authors of the Holiday Season over the years, but I've never had her on my 13 Days blog. Now the situation is rectified...let's welcome Jen! Check out our interview below:

Here are links to Jen's books, as well as other books and movies we chatted about:

It's a ANOTHER repeat guest today! Let's catch up with Hamilton Ontario Indie & B-movie filmmaker John Migliore...check out our interview below:

Another grizzly horror author is on offer for you today! Let's get right into my chat with C. M. Forest, and get all the updates on what he's been up to since our first 13 Days interview 2 years ago...

C.M. Forest, also known as Christian Laforet, is the author of the novel Infested, the novella We All Fall Before the Harvest, the short story collection The Space Between Houses, as well as the co-author of the short-story collection No Light Tomorrow. His short fiction has been featured is several anthologies across multiple genres. A self-proclaimed horror movie expert, he spent an embarrassing amount of his youth watching scary movies. When not writing, he lives in Ontario, Canada with his wife, kids, three cats and a pandemic dog named Sully who has an ongoing love affair with a blanket.

Tell me about We All Fall Before the Harvest – What is it about?

We All Fall Before the Harvest is a cosmic horror/noir novella. It follows a career criminal named Owen who has just stolen the wrong thing: a cursed painting. The former owners, The Family, will stop at nothing to get it back. The longer the painting is in Owen’s possession, the more it alters reality around him.

What inspired the story?

I’ve long been a fan of both the cosmic horror genre, as well as hard-boiled noir stories. So, it was only natural to combine the two. I had no real inspiration for this one, other than I wanted it to be grim. Bleak nihilism all the way!

Excerpt:

My father was a farmer. He said it was hard work, but it made a man feel useful. Gave action to the hands. Gave purpose to his soul. I don’t know if that’s true, but I can tell you that if you don’t keep your hands busy, they’re liable to cause you some trouble.

He and my mom moved to the city shortly after I was born. He found factory work by the pier and put food on the table. But city living didn’t agree with him. He became restless. Violent. Some of my most vivid memories of my old man are him sitting at the kitchen table with an ice pack on his face; Mom trying to clean the mess he’d made of his knuckles. He usually couldn’t remember who he had fought or if it was with more than one person. I always thought that funny. How could you not remember? But now I realize it wasn’t that he couldn’t actually recall, but rather that he hadn’t cared.

One day, when I was ten—my dad was less than a year off from drinking himself into a whiskey-soaked grave—he sat me down and told me a story. It was something that happened to him on the farm. Before he spoke, he pulled a cigarette from a crumbled pack tucked into his pocket and lit up. He let the smoke seep out of his mouth, gray tendrils snaking up past his bushy eyebrows. I noticed the way he looked at me. It’s the way I expect those on death row look toward the priest when the holy man comes for absolution. He told me about the pigs.

A disease had snuck into the farm; something nasty. Something contagious. It spread like weeds through the animals. He told me how nobody could sleep at night because of the screaming hogs.

“They’d puke their guts out, Owen. Literally vomit up their stomachs. But,” he took a long drag of his cigarette, “it didn’t look like no offal that I’d ever seen before. No, their guts were all black and infected.”

I remember being horrified at the words. I could see the bloody viscera hanging from the poor creatures’ snouts as they spewed up their very organs. When I asked what happened, he just stared at me.

Finally, snuffing out the half-smoked cigarette, he shook his head and stood up. I thought he was going to leave the tale unfinished, but then he turned back and said: “To save the rest, we had to cull them. I never liked killing them animals, but I was good at it. I had a talent for the slaughter.”

I’ve been thinking about that story a lot lately. I don’t really know why. It’s just there, in my head. Even now, with somebody else’s blood slick on my fingers, I can almost see those sorry pigs falling to my father’s blade.

Welcome back, Conor! Always love having you on the 13 Days, whether on video or in text. Last time we chatted a couple years ago, your latest graphic novel series, The Last Witch, was going to drop mere months later. Please give us an update on that series and where it's at now!

It's a great time to check back in on Saoirse and The Last Witch. Myself, V.V. Gladd and Natalia Nesterenko are busy putting together the second book. The script is done, and Vee has drawn the first 40 pages or so, and Natalia has just started colouring.

Trying to be spoiler free for the audience, but at the end of Book 1, we left a Saoirse who had been changed by her adventures. She started our series as a headstrong, but joyful young woman, who wanted to prove she was special. Now, Saoirse KNOWS she is special, because of her ability to wield magic, but the power is weighing heavily on her.

In Book 2, Saoirse is going to have to continue to face down the coven in order to get to their Queen (the Cailleach), and only by facing down the Queen can Saoirse stop the coven from opening a door we do NOT want to see opened.

However, Saoirse is going to face grave challenges, not just from the remaining witches, but from herself, as she becomes increasingly seduced by her own powers - there's a chance that Saoirse could lose herself, and become one of "them" - maybe even... The Last Witch.

So we're going to have to really depend on her fellowship, of Brahm, her brother, Nan, her Grandmother, and Hugh, the half-faerie boy to keep Saoirse from succumbing to the power - but are they up to the task, and can we trust all of them????

So, lots of adventure, intrigue, and magical thrills still in store for this all-ages tale.

You also previously shared about an up-coming series called Trickster...where's that graphic novel series at?

Ah, TRICKSTER - weirdly ANOTHER Irish fantasy story - myself and Neil Gibson, the other writer, were working on that for almost a decade, and of course everything came together right around the time of THE LAST WITCH.
Trickster is basically my first super-hero book. It's about Rory, a master of illusions, who uses those powers to keep the people in his neighbourhood safe from crooks and bullies and con-men. He's basically Robin Hood -- if Robin Hood was a leprechaun.

We put the first giant sized issue out through a crowdfunding campaign, and, now with the whole first graphic novel finished, we're getting ready to put that out next year as well. Ideally we'll be putting one Trickster story out each year for the foreseeable future.

Where The Last Witch is a classic all-ages tale (think Pixar's BRAVE, but with Witches), TRICKSTER is more for teens and older. At times it's very silly and funny, but it also has some moderate gore and a few... twisted moments. Think Buffy The Vampire Slayer but Irish.

On this, the seventh day, into the first week of Halloween, I have for you another children's author with a terrific, Halloween counting book!

Welcome, Penelope! Tell me about yourself.

I've been a writer all my life--wrote stories as a kid, though none have survived. I worked for the government's SF Regional Training Center where I developed and taught training courses in personnel management, wrote case studies, handouts, and other training materials. I did training for supervisors and was the editor of three Navy installation newsletters and wrote articles about personnel (in the government personnel was H.R.) I also wrote training manuals, handbooks, instructions, regulatory guidance, letters, memos, and reports. I taught writing courses, too.

After I retired from the federal government, I got my teaching credential and taught K-8th grade, all subjects, and 7-12th grade English as a Second Language--since I'd taught ESL in Spain & Turkey. I retired from teaching to tutor and wrote my children's books (more below). Now I write short stories, memoir and poetry for anthologies of the California Writers Club Branches that I belong to.

Tell me about Ten Little Tricksters — what’s this picture book about, and when was it published?

Tricksters is a short and sweet Pre-K & Kinder reverse counting book, illustrated with 10 different Halloween creatures walking down the street as they're out Trick or Treating. It's a really cute chanting book and also features the "ee" sound. It was published in 2014 by Guardian Angel Publishing, whose publisher has since retired. Here's an excerpt:

Ten little ghosties out on Halloween.
Run ghosties! Run ghosties!
Scream! Scream! Scream!

Nine little goblins out on Halloween.
Run goblins! Run goblins~
Sneak! Sneak! Sneak!

Eight little monsters out on Halloween.
Run monsters! Run monsters!
Shriek! Shriek! Shriek!

Seven little ogres, six little black bats, five little zombies, four little skeletons, three little witches, two little black cats, down to one little pumpkin. Then it counts down 10-9-8-7... to Happy Halloween! The last illustration is of all the creatures sharing their candy.

What made you want to write a Halloween-themed picture book?

I had an image of the little creatures out on Halloween. What if they were all real--not little kids in costumes. Until the end, you don't know if they're in costume or if they're real. I like surprises at the end of my stories.

What inspired you to do a Spanish edition?

Living in California, we have a lot of Hispanic kids, and a lot of bi-lingual programs, so I thought kids and parents would enjoy this in both languages.

Tell me about some of your other books.

I have a five-book Magical series about Matthew, a boy who has magical powers to fix things, but he keeps it secret. Then he loses his magic and his little sister Mea gets it. Matthew was a do-gooder and Mea is a prankster. Then she loses her magic and then twin baby boys are born. Will they have magic? Spoiler alert, yes they do, but they know they'll lose their magic so they're working against time to make a special graduation gift. There's a surprise at the end of each of these books: Magical Matthew, Magical Mea, Magical Mea Goes to School, Magical Max and Magical Mickey, and Magical Max and Magical Mickey’s Big Surprise.

Then I have a rhyming book about two kids learning about friendship who are opposites: In and Out, All ‘Round About – Opposite Friends.

Then I have a book about Katy invited for dinner at her Nigerian friend's house. She doesn't know Nigerian food, so she asks her mom and her friends. There's a surprise at the end. It's in English and Spanish: What’s for Dinner? and ¿Qué vamos a comer?

Then I have a book about growing up with my two brothers and spending time at our grandma's house in the country. I have a coloring book, too: My Grandma’s Pink House, and My Grandma and Me Coloring Book.

Welcome to Day 5 of my 13 Horrifically Silly Days of Halloween...time for another HORROR WRITER! You gotta love these guys. Hello, Steve...please introduce yourself.

Hello, my name is Steve Stred. I’m a Splatterpunk-Nominated Author who writes predominantly dark fiction. I currently live in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, with my wife, son and our staffy, Cocoa.
I’m a proud co-founder of the LOHF Writer's Grant, and I’m an Active Member of the HWA.

Tell me about some of your novels...what are they all about and what inspired these stories? Where can readers find these books? And you can go into your novellas, too, of course.

The book people have probably most seen of my work, now, is the novel Mastodon, which came out in January of this year, 2022. It’s a novel that I wrote during the pandemic when I was laid off from my job for a few months. At its core, it’s fairly autobiographical, telling the story of a teenager trying to find something hugely meaningful in his life. In this case, it’s his father, whose plane has crashed in a mysterious spot in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The book was driven by my upbringing in a remote BC town (population less than 100) and just trying to find my way in the world. It’s essentially a novel that I’ve described as being my own Island of Dr. Moreau mixed with The X-Files.
I have a number of novellas out as well. The ones most people know are Wagon Buddy, The Girl Who Lived in the Trees, The Window in the Ground and my Father of Lies Trilogy, based on my time joining a cult on the dark web for four years for research. The third novella, Sacrament, was nominated for a Splatterpunk award, which was such an honor.
A lot of my work is inspired by isolation, the cinematic terror of the mountains and the understanding that just beyond where we can see, things exist that are waiting to rip us apart!
 
And what about scary anthologies you’re involved with?

I’ve been super fortunate to have a number of stories appear in anthologies. The most recent ones have been A Silent Dystopia: Stories of a Quiet Apocalypse – an anthology of stories based around Dave Jeffery’s phenomenal world, Something Bad Happened – an anthology edited by and compiled by Jennifer Bernardini, and The Horror Collection: Nightmare Edition from Kevin J. Kennedy. I have two more stories appearing in anthologies coming in the last few months of the year, as well as having written a foreword in one, which was very cool.

And genre books/stories for a younger audience?

I’m a writer who writes what I personally would want to read. So, I have some dark fantasy and science fiction out as well. Piece of Me was my first book in a dark fantasy trilogy. I have an ongoing series called The Empyrean Saga – three of the five novellas are out now. I also have some kids’ stuff out. I have one novel out called The Boy Whose Room Was Outside that was based around ideas my son, nieces and nephews gave me.

Is there anything coming down the pipe that you’d like to talk about? A bit of a teaser perhaps?

On September 9th, a collection of novellas is being released through Black Void Publishing. It takes four of my prior novellas that have been completely re-edited and revamped, as well as two novelettes and packages them together. Three of these haven’t been released in print before so that’s always exciting.
It is titled An Endless Darkness: The Novellas and features a stunning cover by Greg Chapman.
One of the novellas is a prequel style set up for The Empyrean Saga, and one of them is a prequel to Mastodon and my other novel The Stranger.
Otherwise, I’m working on several novels and novellas. I try to preplan. So, my normal routine is write, revisit, then polish and release. This is layered over three or four other books, and typically I’m set up for a few years in advance. So, my 2023 is set for what I want to come out – just final revisions, editing, cover approval and formatting, while I’m also currently getting my drafts finished up for my 2024 releases. And repeat!

Why are you a horror author? What is it about horror?

I’ve always been intrigued by the dark side of things. The things that go bump in the night and the emotional response us humans have in reaction to those events. Our brains are funny things and nobody really knows how we’ll react when something happens. I’ve always been a storyteller and have always been dabbling here and there. When my time ended as an athlete (I was previously in Track and Field and then with the Canadian Bobsled Team) I knew I needed to find something to really fill that passion aspect that my soul would be missing, and writing was it. Of course, it leaned towards the dark stuff and off to the races I went.