Thursday, December 31, 2015

End of Year Wrap Up



Well, this is a year that I'll be sad to see leave. DH and DS both settling well into their various pursuits, which left me feeling more settled as well.

I missed Lunacon (which was cancelled) but made it to WHC down in Atlanta. The Steampunk World's Fair was also great.

I sold Finding Perdita to Damnation Books which then was bought by Caliburn Press and it will be published sometime next year.

I "finished" Griffit City but then have it out to get critiqued because I'm not yet happy with the ending.

And I edited a new project, Hell's Grannies. Please check it out. I'm very proud of this anthology of just incredibly gifted writers all giving their take on Cronehood.  You can find it on Kindle and Smashwords.

My first project of the New Year will be formatting HG for Createspace.  Then back to Griffit City.

I have a few projects to finish after that and I'll be writing about them as they near completion.

Wishing you all a Happy and Creative New Year!


Thursday, December 24, 2015

It's Live!

Hell's Grannies is available for you to download on Smashwords (Kindle and Createspace to come).

E-book version
Click to purchase your copy!



Friday, December 18, 2015

Cover Reveal!


Ten Talented writers share their visions of the Crone.


Eurydice - Patricia Cochrane
The Pensioner Pirates of Marine Parade- Jonathan Broughton
Exile- April Grey
Watchers of Old- Judith Rook
Fresh Finch- Amy Grech
Kin - Rayne Hall
Burning Michelangelo - Annamarie Pederson
To Thy Self Be True - Alp Beck
Freewheeling Free Association and the Theme Park Rangers of Death - Phillip T.Stephens
The Artist and the Crone - Mark Cassell





Aging is not for the faint-hearted, yet there is little choice in the matter. You can take good care of your health, your finances, your loved ones and still life will throw a curve ball.
In this anthology you will find tales of courage, of women who rise to the challenges of time in many different ways.
Some stories are of women aging gracefully but their tales are still kickass because they have a lot to overcome. Other stories are humorous, because if you can’t age gracefully, then by all means age disgracefully.
And there are a couple of very dark tales as well.
I think you will delight in these stories as much as I do. 
Cover Artwork by the amazing Dirk Strangely -  

E-book will be available after December 23rd!

Saturday, December 5, 2015

Krampus the Christmas Demon



I wrote a guest post on this a while back and think it's quite apt for today being Krampus Day! And with a new movie on the topic just come out!


And what is Krampus Day, you might ask?

Well, in the evening of December 5, the eve of St. Nicholas' Feast day, young men in Austria, Southern Germany and Northern Italy celebrate a very old custom. They get dressed up as St. Nicholas' demonic servant, the Krampus, and then go running about the town (called a Krampus run). They warn the children to be good because St. Nicholas is on his way.

You can head to You Tube to see a little of a  Krampus Run .

I chose to feature this folkloric creature in my novel, Chasing the Trickster. When anthropology professor Pascal Guzman puts on a Krampus mask he comes away with a little surprise. He finds himself host to an ancient entity who has been living in the mask.

My interest in the Krampus was first tweaked when I saw a book by Monte Beauchamp,The Devil in Design and learned about Krampus folklore. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were many Krampus day postcards sent around Europe. These postcards were collected in a book by Mr. Beauchamp. Some of the demonic images are quite humorous as one of Krampus' sidelines was to chase buxom women. As well as having horns, he's--well--rather horny.


This and a few other ideas came together to create the plot and characters of my urban fantasy, Chasing The Trickster.



 Chasing the Trickster

1. From my college studies in Japanese Noh theatre (I was a theatre geek long before I thought of being a writer) came the idea that a mask can have a soul or being living inside it.

2.  Then there is the idea of where do gods go when no one believes in them anymore. It is thought that Christians took Celtic gods such as Cernunnos, the stag god, and represented them as devils. Then what if the Krampus was originally a fertility god who then was represented as a devil?  And what if when he lost his followers he felt he has no choice but to join with St. Nicholas to have whatever crumbs of worship he could garner?

3. I had seen a Jim Carrey movie many years ago called "The Mask" wherein a person wearing the mask would develop great powers but also lose all inhibitions. What if such a spirit could come out and permanently stay in a host.

Thus we have our hero, Pascal Guzman, possessed and plagued by an ancient entity, who is constantly nagging him to go out and Par-tee! The results are tragic, humorous and risqué.

I hope that you will take the time to find out more the Krampus, and also read my novel, Chasing The Trickster.


Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Philcon 2015 - See you there!

I just got my schedule, looks like fun--

Philcon

Fri 8:00 PM in Plaza III (Three) (1 hour)
WHERE DO WRITERS SERVE THEIR APPRENTICESHIPS? (2119)

    [Panelists: April Grey (mod), D.L. Carter, Jim Stratton]

    Writers used to be able to be bad in relative privacy, mostly by
    publishing in the fanzines and then regretting it. What other
    systems are writers using today


Fri 11:00 PM in Plaza III (Three) (1 hour)
EROTIC CHTHULHU, AND OTHER UNSPEAKABLE THINGS. [18+] (2162)

    [Panelists: Richard Stout (mod), Stephanie Burke, Maureen O. Betita,
    April Grey, Bernie Mojzes]

    What is it about unutterable horrors that gets our motors running


Sat 1:00 PM in Executive Suite 623 (1 hour)
BROAD UNIVERSE RAPID-FIRE READINGS (2243)

    [Panelists: Elektra Hammond (mod), Danielle Ackley-McPhail, April
    Grey, Roberta Rogow, Sally Wiener Grotta]

Sat 7:00 PM in Plaza III (Three) (1 hour)
USING REAL LIFE IN FANTASY (2132)

    [Panelists: Michael Swanwick (mod), A.T. Greenblatt, April Grey, Ken
    Altabef]

    Is the way writers of fantastic fiction use their life experiences
    in their work inherently different from the way mainstream writers
    apply it


Sat 10:00 PM in Plaza VI (Six) (1 hour)
WHEN WEIRDS COLLIDE: THE NEW WEIRD VS THE OLD WEIRD (2161)

    [Panelists: April Grey (mod), A.C. Wise, Siobhan Carroll]

    How do they differ? Has the current crop of writers spawned a new
    Lovecraft yet


Sun 11:00 AM in Executive Suite 623 (1 hour)
AT 11:00, AND AT 11:30 (2349)

    [Panelists: April Grey (mod), Hildy Silverman]

Sun 2:00 PM in Autograph Table (1 hour)
AUTOGRAPHS: DINA LEACOCK AND APRIL GREY (2369)

    [Panelists: Dina Leacock (mod), April Grey]

Thursday, October 22, 2015

Just in Time for Halloween!

A Terrific Collection!



Available from Amazon.com Tomorrow, Oct,23rd!

Includes my story, Mother Mine!

Thursday, September 17, 2015

Savvy Authors Summer Symposium!

Yep, yours truly will be sharing her experiences with DIY publishing





DIY Collections and Anthologies, with April Grey
Do you have what it takes to put together your own collection of short stories? How about the editorial chops to create an anthology to promote your work and your favorite writers’ work. It's not for everyone and it’s definitely not for the faint-hearted. Let's investigate whether this sort of promotion could work for you!


Also, on Sunday, September 20th from 1 to 2 pm EST I'll be chatting about this topic.

Hope you can join me!

Friday, September 11, 2015

Exciting News!

You remember my novella, Perdita? I put the first chapter down below. Well, I expanded it to a full novel called Finding Perdita and it will be coming out from Damnation Books.

Fairy Tales can come true, it can happen to you...Run fast!

Down on her luck and out-of-work, actress Cindy White's life changes -- and not for the better! -- when her roommate kicks her out. Landing in new digs in an old Chelsea tenement Cindy discovers a tunnel from the building's basement that leads to the land of Perdita.

Perdita is a place she'd thought her father had made up in the fairy tales he'd once told her. It is a dangerous, ruined land of fairies, demons and captives -- like her father, whom she thought was dead. In Finding Perdita, a dark fantasy, a young woman discovers her true self and must align it with the old in leaving the world she knows behind in an effort to free her father. 

Anyway I don't yet have a cover reveal so I'll use the picture I created for the novella.


Tuesday, August 18, 2015

April Grey at Times Scare

I'll be reading my short story "I'll Love You Forever, But..." from my collection of that name at the HWA NYC chapter.



Night Terrors at Times Scare Kill Bar, Thursday, August 20, 7 p.m., http://timesscarenyc.com/
The roster for this night of readings is now full!

  • Daniel Braum and James Chambers will be hosting and asking trivia questions.
  • Reading in the first set will be Marc Abbott, Amy Grech, Teel James Glenn, Alp Beck, and Robert Masterson.
  • Reading in the second set will be April Grey, Oliver Baer, Trevor Firetog, Kathleen Scheiner, and Steven Van Patten. 
  • Marc Abbot will be showing two of his short films.
The very generous folks at the Kill Bar, a cabaret style bar attached to the Times Scare haunted house attraction, have agreed to let us host this event.

Hope you can join me there!

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

2015 Stoker Awards and World Horror Con

I had a terrific time at the Stokers and at the WHC. The panels were excellent, in fact, too good because then you'd have to choose between two or three panels happening all at once.  And then there was exhaustion and just needing to take a break.



Of course, the Atlanta Marriott where we were staying was a bit weird.

Sort of like being inside a leviathan. You can see its spine and ribs. The elevator made me queasy as it rushed up and down the spine.



And what better break than an absolutely wonderful indoor-outdoor pool?

I also had a great time at the Dead Dog Party, and let's not forget the Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading. I read my short story, I'll Love You Forever, But... while the other Broads read from novels.

I was missing my DH and DS the whole time, but I wasn't missing the housework I came home to.

Well, it's off to the Steampunk World's Faire in a couple of days.

Sunday, February 22, 2015

Chasing The Trickster Reboot

Murphy's law. My laptop dies just as I release the Amazon version of Trickster. typing this on a 5 year old iPad--doesn't  time fly? Oh well, happy about getting it done.

Chasing the Trickster

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Welcome to 2015!



Oh wow, where did 2014 go?  It's like I just woke up and here we are in 2015.

Last I remember it was September. My son was doing college applications all summer for admission to college this spring. (He got in at City College-Hooray!)

October went by in a storm of activity with me at the HWA table at NY Comic Con, and then heading off to the Stanley Writers Retreat in Colorado. On the last day of October I formatted the e-book version of Perdita (my latest urban fantasy novel)...

Then I fell off a cliff. The virus I had fought all October got the upper hand and in November it was bed rest and oblivion. I managed to survive Thanksgiving, but that's about all I did that month. The rights for Chasing the Trickster came back to me but I did little to prepare for it's re-release.

DS was getting ready for college in December while I prepped for Christmas.

And now it's over. I survived the holidays and am finally coming out of my long stupor.
I need to get all my little duckies in or row (more like herding cats).  

There's Chasing the Trickster to be re-released in e-book and print. It's sequel, St. Nick's Favor, needs to be released in print. Perdita and it's sequel, Return to Perdita also need to be proofread and sent out into the world.

Then I can get back to writing. I have endings that need to be written for two very patient novellas, and there is a WIP novel, for which I received editorial notes last year, that needs to be re-written.

So, welcome 2015, my plate is loaded.

How is your year shaping up?

 PS. Thinking of the above for the new cover to Chasing the Trickster. Feedback welcome!