SSP Anthology Extravaganza for Vampires Don't Sparkle!: Book Spotlight and Giveaway

Hi, everyone!

I am pleased to participate in the SSP Anthology Extravaganza hosted by Tomorrow Comes Media for Vampires Don't Sparkle!

Editor Bio:

Michael West is the critically-acclaimed author of The Wide Game, Cinema of Shadows, Spook House, Skull Full of Kisses, and the Legacy of the Gods series. A member of the Horror Writers Association and Indiana Horror Writers, where he serves as President, West earned a degree in Telecommunications and Film Theory from Indiana University, and since that time, he has written a multitude of short stories, articles, and reviews for various on-line and print publications. He lives and works in the Indianapolis area with his wife, their two children, their bird, Rodan, their turtle, Gamera, and their dog, King Seesar.

His children are convinced that spirits move through the woods near their home.

About the Book:

TITLE: Vampires Don't Sparkle! 

EDITOR: Michael West

PUBLISHER: Seventh Star Press
PUBLICATION DATE: March 15, 2013

FORMAT: Paperback, 233 pages

GENRE: Horror, Dark Urban Fantasy
ISBN: 9781937929602

What would you do if you had unlimited power and eternal life?

Would you…go back to high school? Attend the same classes year after year, going through the pomp and circumstance of one graduation after another, until you found the perfect date to take to prom? Would you…spend your days moping and brooding, finding your only joy in a game of baseball on a stormy day? Or would you…do something else? Anything else? The authors of this collection have a few ideas; some fanciful, some humorous, and some as dark as an endless night. Join us, and discover what it truly means to be “vampyre.”

Buy Links:

Amazon Kindle / Amazon Paperback


CONNECT ONLINE WITH SEVENTH STAR PRESS:
Facebook | Twitter | Website | Blog

Featured Stories and Authors in Vampires Don't Sparkle!:

“A New Life” by J. F. Gonzalez
“What Once was Flesh” by Tim Waggoner
“The Darkton Circus Mystery” by Elizabeth Massie
“Robot Vampire” by R. J. Sullivan
“Beneath a Templar Cross” by Gord Rollo
“The Weapon of Memory” by Kyle S. Johnson
“The Excavation” by Stephen Zimmer
“Skraeling” by Joel A. Sutherland
“Dreams of Winter” by Bob Freeman
“Dracula’s Winkee: Bloodsucker Blues” by Gregory L. Hall
“I Fuck Your Sunshine” by Lucy A. Snyder
“A Soldier’s Story” by Maurice Broaddus
“Rattenkönig” by Douglas F. Warrick
“Vampire Nation” by Jerry Gordon
“Curtain Call” by Gary A. Braunbeck

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Vampires Don't Sparkle! Tour Participants:

May 16 - MikesFilmTalk: Guest Post

May 17 - Come Selahway With Me: Guest Post

May 18 -  A Girl and Her Kindle: Review

May 20 -  Laurie’s Paranormal Thoughts and Reviews: Interview

May 21 -  Kentucky Geek Girl: Interview

May 22 - Strange Amusements: Promo/Spotlight

May 23 -  Book Den: Guest Post

May 24 - Beagle Book Space: Promo/Spotlight

May 26 - Armand Rosamilla, Horror Author: Review

May 27 -  Bookishly Me: Review

May 30 -  The Cabin Goddess: Review

May 31 -  WTF Are You Reading?: Review

June 3 - Book in the Bag: Review

June 4 -  The Dan O’Brien Project: Guest Post

June 7 -  Bee’s Knees Reviews: Review

June 11 - Darlene’s Book Nook: Guest Post

June 16 - Jess Resides Here: Top Ten’s List

June 17 -  The Witchy Contessa: Review

June 19 - My Seryniti: Review

SSP Anthology Extravaganza Full Tour Schedule:

May 16 - Jay Wilburn Blog: 

Guest Post (Southern Haunts)

May 16 - MikesFilmTalk: 

Guest Post (Vampires Don’t Sparkle)

May 16 - Armand Rosamilla, Horror Author: 

Guest Post (Perfect Flaw)

May 17 - Laurie's Paranormal Thoughts and Reviews: 

Interview (Southern Haunts)

May 17 - Laurie’s Thoughts and Reviews:  

Interview (Perfect Flaw)

May 17 - Come Selahway With Me:  

Guest Post (Vampires Don’t Sparkle)

May 17 - The Dan O’Brien Project: 

Guest Post (The End Was Not the End)

May 18 - The Dan O’Brien Project: 

Promo-Spotlight (Southern Haunts)

May 18 - A Girl and Her Kindle: 

Review (Vampires Don’t Sparkle)

May 18 - Ian’s Realm: 

Guest Post (The End Was Not the End)

May 19 - Angela Meadon Blog: 

Guest Post (Perfect Flaw)

May 19 - Strange Amusements: 

Review (The End Was Not the End)

May 20 - Book in the Bag: 

Review (Southern Haunts)

May 20 - The FlipSide of Julianne: 

Guest Post (Guest Post)

May 20 - Laurie’s Paranormal Thoughts and Reviews:  

Interview (Vampires Don’t Sparkle)

May 21 - Spellbound by Books: 

Excerpt (Southern Haunts)

May 21 - The Dan O’Brien Project: 

Guest Post (Perfect Flaw)

May 21 -  Kentucky Geek Girl: 

Interview (Vampires Don’t Sparkle)

May 22 - Darlene’s Book Nook:  

Guest Post (Southern Haunts)

May 22 - Strange Amusements: 

Promo/Spotlight (Vampires Don’t Sparkle)

May 22 -  Bookishly Me:  

Guest Post (The End Was Not the End)

May 23 - Workaday Reads: 

Guest Post (Perfect Flaw)

May 23 - Book Den: 

Guest Post (Vampires Don’t Sparkle)

May 23 - Laurie’s Thoughts and Reviews: 

Interview (The End Was Not the End)

May 24 -  Books, Owls and Tea:  

Guest Post (Perfect Flaw)

May 24 - Beagle Book Space:  

Promo/Spotlight (Vampires Don’t Sparkle)

May 24 -  I Read a Book Once:  

Review (The End Was Not the End)

May 26 - Kentucky Geek Girl:  

Interview (Southern Haunts)

May 26 - Armand Rosamilla, Horror Author: 

Review (Vampires Don’t Sparkle)

May 27 - Bookishly Me: 

Review (Vampires Don’t Sparkle)

May 28 - Spellbindings: 

Guest Post (Writers Workshop of Science Fiction & Fantasy)

May 29 - Darlene’s Book Nook:  

Guest Post (The End Was Not the End)

May 29 - Book in the Bag:  

Interview (Writers Workshop of Science Fiction & Fantasy)

May 30 - Darlene’s Book Nook: 

Guest Post (Perfect Flaw)

May 30 - The Cabin Goddess: 

Review (Vampires Don’t Sparkle)

May 31 - WTF Are You Reading?: 

Review (Vampires Don’t Sparkle)

May 31 - Literary Meanderings: 

Interview (Writers Workshop of Science Fiction & Fantasy)

June 1 - Babs Book Bistro:  

Excerpt (Southern Haunts)

June 1 - Readings Sunshine: 

Review (Perfect Flaw)

June 1 - The Witchy Contessa: 

Review (The End Was Not the End)

June 1 - Laurie’s Thoughts and Reviews: 

Interview (Writers Workshop of Science Fiction & Fantasy)

June 2 - Beagle Book Space: 

Promo-Spotlight (Southern Haunts)

June 2 -  Kentucky Geek Girl: 

Promo-Spotlight (Writers Workshop of Science Fiction & Fantasy)

June 3 - Reading Away the Days:  

Review (Southern Haunts) 

June 3 - Book in the Bag:  

Review (Vampires Don’t Sparkle)

June 3 - Spellbindings: 

Guest Post (The End Was Not the End)

June 3 - The Witchy Contessa: 

Review (Writers Workshop of Science Fiction & Fantasy)

June 4  - Jess Resides Here: 

Guest Post (Perfect Flaw)

June 4 - The Dan O’Brien Project: 

Guest Post (Vampires Don’t Sparkle)

June 5 - Book Reviews and More:  

Review (Perfect Flaw)

June 5 - Once Upon a Time: 

Guest Post (The End Was Not the End)

June 6 - A Book Vacation: 

Guest Post (Perfect Flaw)

June 6 - Beauty in Ruins:  

Review (The End Was Not the End)

June 6 - Come Selahway With Me:  

Interview (Writers Workshop of Science Fiction & Fantasy)

June 7 - Word to Dreams: 

Review (Perfect Flaw)

June 7 - Bee’s Knees Reviews:  

Review (Vampires Don’t Sparkle)

June 7 -  I Read a Book Once: 

Review (Writers Workshop of Science Fiction & Fantasy)

June 8 - The Witchy Contessa: 

Review (Perfect Flaw)

June 10 - Spellbindings: 

Guest Post (Southern Haunts) 

June 10 - WTF Are You Reading?: 

Review (Perfect Flaw)

June 11 - Darlene’s Book Nook:  

Guest Post (Vampires Don’t Sparkle)

June 12 - Celticlady’s Reviews: 

Promo-Spotlight (Southern Haunts) 

June 12 - Bookishly Me: 

Review (Perfect Flaw)

June 12 - Library Girl Reads and Reviews: 

Guest Post (The End Was Not the End)

June 13 - The Witchy Contessa: 

Review (Southern Haunts) 

June 13 - Book Den: 

Guest Post (Writers Workshop of Science Fiction & Fantasy)

June 14 - Word to Dreams: 

Guest Post (Southern Haunts) 

June 14 - Sweet Southern Home: 

Guest Post (Perfect Flaw)

June 15 - Bee’s Knees Reviews: 

Review (The End Was Not the End)

June 15 - The Dan O’Brien Project: 

Promo-Spotlight (Writers Workshop of Science Fiction & Fantasy)

June 16 - I Smell Sheep: 

Guest Post (Southern Haunts) 

June 16 - SpecMusicMuse:  

Review and Interview (Perfect Flaw)

June 16 - Jess Resides Here:  

Top Ten’s List (Vampires Don’t Sparkle)

June 16 - Once Upon a Time:  

Promo-Spotlight (Writers Workshop of Science Fiction & Fantasy)

June 17 - Bookishly Me: 

Review (Southern Haunts) 

June 17 - Spellbindings: 

Guest Post (Perfect Flaw)

June 17 - The Witchy Contessa: 

Review (Vampires Don’t Sparkle)

June 18 - Recent Reads: 

Review (Writers Workshop of Science Fiction & Fantasy)

June 19 - Recent Reads: 

Review (Southern Haunts) 

June 19 - My Seryniti: 

Review (Vampires Don’t Sparkle)

June 19 - Come Selahway With Me:  

Guest Post (The End Was Not the End)

L. Andrew Cooper Virtual Tour: Guest Post and Giveaway

Hi, everyone!

I am pleased to participate in L. Andrew Cooper's Virtual Tour hosted by Tomorrow Comes Media.


About Andrew:

L. Andrew Cooper thinks the smartest people like horror, fantasy, and sci-fi. Early in life, he couldn’t handle the scary stuff–he’d sneak and watch horror films and then keep his parents up all night with his nightmares. In the third grade, he finally convinced his parents to let him read grownup horror novels: he started with Stephen King’s Firestarter, and by grade five, he was doing book reports on The Stand.

When his parents weren’t being kept up late by his nightmares, they worried that his fascination with horror fiction would keep him from experiencing more respectable culture. That all changed when he transitioned from his public high school in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia to uber-respectable Harvard University, where he studied English Literature. From there, he went on to get a Ph.D. in English from Princeton, turning his longstanding engagement with horror into a dissertation. The dissertation became the basis for his first book, Gothic Realities (2010). More recently, his obsession with horror movies turned into a book about one of his favorite directors, Dario Argento (2012). He also co-edited the textbook Monsters (2012), an attempt to infect others with the idea that scary things are worth people’s serious attention.
After living in Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and California, Andrew now lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where he teaches at the University of Louisville and chairs the board of the Louisville Film Society, the city’s premiere movie-buff institution. Burning the Middle Ground is his debut novel.

CONNECT ONLINE WITH ANDREW:

Website/Blog | Facebook | Twitter

Welcome to Darlene's Book Nook, Andrew!

Andrew has written a guest post, so I will now turn the floor over to him!

What’s Sex Got to Do with It? (where “It” is horror and dark fantasy)
by L. Andrew Cooper

As soon as I finished saying there’s no sex in my novel Burning the Middle Ground, I realized I was a complete liar, but the potential buyer had already moved on anyway. Well, dispensation: I didn’t mean to lie. In that moment I was thinking about how strong a warning to give about the violence, so I really did forget about the scene that, depending on how you look at it, is either just really immoral sex or really, really kinky and immoral sex. But there’s just that one scene. And it’s not like there are man-hammers slamming against the pulsing heat of need or anything. It’s not written to arouse, amuse, or do whatever that sort of prose is supposed to do. That sex scene isn’t a sex scene at all in my mind; rather, it is a scene that develops characters and charts the growing power of an antagonist. It just happens to involve hot banging in a cheap motel room in the middle of the day. Because that was the best way to advance the narrative.


So I’ve written a lot about how horror relates to sexuality (in my non-fiction books, Gothic Realities and Dario Argento), but that’s different from just plain sex, the cheap motel sort of thing I mentioned, people doing it being described by the words on the page. Just plain sex is so much more awkward. As a professor, I can talk about literature and film and “the phallus” all day. But it just feels different when I start writing about someone doing something with/for/to/by/around/on/because/inside…


No one has ever mentioned, by the way, whether that sex scene in Burning the Middle Ground is hot. I don’t really mean it to be, but if it is, hey, cool—you enjoy it; I get credit. But I do have trouble imagining trying to write a hot sex scene in a horror novel. The reservation makes me think of the oft-quoted moment when Peter Straub said of Stephen King, “Stevie hasn’t discovered sex yet.” Good to know an ubersuccess can be more reserved. The genre itself can go pretty far; I’ll sum it up with hoping I’m not the first to tell you that zombie porn means the number of orifices is almost beyond imagining.


I don’t know whether King’s reservation has anything to do with mine. For me, it’s a matter of affect. Horror is about reveling in icky feelings. Sure, I’ve got to give characters and readers alike some variety of emotions, but pages are rare real estate. Let’s say I can devote a page to details of two characters either having dinner or having sex. Which will afford me more opportunities to convey distinctive, important aspects of these people’s lives, particularly those aspects relevant to a horror story? Okay, the beast of the story can be a beast in bed or something, but assuming the sex is consensual, it’s a happy act, so it’s a distraction from the primary affect, horror. Whereas dinner is at least closer to value-neutral than sex. And the vocabulary of affect, of the feelings people can express and that I can narrate, over dinner is broader (even though the affect itself may be narrower). In short, I can say more with dinner than with sex, and what I say can develop more dimensions of the narrative while staying in the narrative’s spirit of horror rather than straying into the spirit of joyous eroticism.


But that may not be how I’m feeling the next time I draft a manuscript, because generally I think sex is good. Sex is good for marketing, fun to read and fun to write, subversive, and when done well, anything but the “copulation of clichés” Nabokov accused pornography of being. In horror as in any genre, a little explicit sex can deepen characterization, develop characters’ relationships, sustain readers’ engagement, and contribute to an emotional pattern that makes contrasting emotions (e.g., attraction and revulsion) more shocking, not to mention more meaningful. As for my stuff, I’ll use whatever and however much sex I need to tell my stories as my stories get told. Burning the Middle Ground just needs the one scene. Well, and a few hints at other sexy things happening. I mean, it all depends on how you define….

Thanks so much for joining us today, Andrew!

About the Book:

Burning the Middle Ground is a dark fantasy about small-town America that transforms readers’ fears about the country’s direction into a haunting tale of religious conspiracy and supernatural mind control. A character-driven sensibility like Stephen King’s and a flair for the bizarre like Bentley Little’s delivers as much appeal for dedicated fans of fantasy and horror as for mainstream readers looking for an exciting ride. Brian McCullough comes home from school and discovers that his ten-year-old sister Fran has murdered their parents. Five years later, a journalist, Ronald Glassner, finds Brian living at the same house in the small town of Kenning, Georgia. Planning a book on the McCullough Tragedy, Ronald stumbles into a struggle between Kenning’s First Church, run by the mysterious Reverend Michael Cox, and the New Church, run by the rebellious Jeanne Harper. At the same time, Kenning’s pets go berserk, and dead bodies, with the eyes and tongues removed from their heads, begin to appear.

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Tour Participants:

May 8 - Read 2 Review - Character Post

May 9 - readings Sunshine - Review

May 10 - Spellbindings - Guest Post

May 11 - Beagle Book Space - Promo/Spotlight

May 12 - SpecMusicMuse - Review

May 14 - Workaday Reads -Guest Post

May 15 - The FlipSide of Julianne - Interview

May 16 - Once Upon a Time - Guest Post

May 17 - Sheila Deeth - Character Post

May 18 - Azure Dwarf - Review

May 19 - MikesFilmTalk - Review

May 20 - Laurie’s Thoughts and Reviews - Interview

May 21 - Beauty in Ruins - Review

May 24 - Book Den - Guest Post

May 25 - Come Selahway With Me - Excerpt

May 28 - The Dan O’Brien Project - Promo/Excerpt

May 31 - Armand Rosamilla, Horror Author - Guest Post

June 1 - Bee’s Knees Reviews- Review

June 3 - Rachel Tsoumbako - Review

June 4 - Fictional Candy - Excerpt

June 5 - I Smell Sheep - Guest Post

June 7 - Darlene’s Book Nook - Guest Post