Journalstone October Newsletter

Dear Reader,

It’s October…YAY! Time to carve those pumpkins, get those candy bowls stuffed, and dust off your year-round Halloween decorations.

What better way to celebrate everyone’s favourite time of the year than with a collection of Halloween stories from the leading expert (and pretty rad author), Lisa Morton? THE SAMHANACH AND OTHER HALLOWEEN TREATS drops October 20th from our imprint, Trepidatio Publishing, but you can pre-order this festive feast now!

October (specifically Friday the 13th) also sees the release of the critically acclaimed collection, STRANGE IS THE NIGHT, from author S.P. Miskowski. If you’re pre-ordering THE SAMHANACH, you might as well double-dip and get STRANGE IS THE NIGHT, too! (Here‘s a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly to twist your arm.)

One more big release rounds out October: THE WILDERNESS WITHIN, the second novel from author John Claude Smith. Out now from Trepidatio Publishing, it’s already garnering some fabulous reviews. Why not triple-dip and grab all three books? As the old saying goes: Trick or Treat Yoself.

Our audio-polsion is still going strong! That’s right, we’ve got audiobooks from Ronald Malfi, S.P. Miskowski, Adam L.G. Nevill, Laird Barron, Richard Chizmar, the list goes on and on. To check out our full audiobook catalogue, click here.

Have you heard about our newest imprint, Trepidatio Publishing? Much like JournalStone, the imprint will focus on dark stories from diverse writers. Want to learn more? Follow Trepidatio onFacebook! We’ll be debuting our new website soon!

The JournalStone Network is on the hunt for a Social Media Coordinator, and, as always, we’re looking for reviewers. Check out the full listings below, and join ussss!

Phew! That’s it, that’s all, folks. Until next month!

Jess
Assistant Publisher

NEW & UPCOMING RELEASES

THE WILDERNESS WITHIN
John Claude Smith

The forest is alive.

While visiting fellow writer, Frank Harlan Marshall, Derek Gray senses a palpable dread within Frank’s house and the forest that surrounds it; a subtle, malignant sentience. What should be a joyous event, as they await the surprise arrival of a long-lost friend, comedian “Dizzy Izzy” Haberstein, is fraught with unease Derek does not understand.

Derek’s confusion is upended by the chance meeting with musician Alethea, formerly of Dark Angel Asylum, a band that dropped out of sight once the leader, Aleister Blut, ended up in an insane asylum. As their relationship blossoms, Derek’s disorientation at the hands of the forest manifests as his world turns sideways…and one of Frank’s fictional creations—a murderous monster named Average Joe—gains foothold in the surreal, psychological terrain.

As the worlds of reality and fantasy meld, what transpires bounds from deeply profound to pure madness.

OUT NOW

STRANGE IS THE NIGHT
S.P. Miskowski

Over cocktails an executive describes to a friend the disturbing history of a strangely potent guardian angel. A young mom tries to perfect and prolong her daughter’s childhood with obsessive parenting. A critic’s petty denouncement of an ingénue’s performance leads to a theatrical night of reckoning. A cult member makes nice for a parole board hearing years after committing an infamous crime.

A multiple Shirley Jackson Award-nominee, S.P. Miskowski serves up an uncompromising collection of thirteen modern tales of desire and self-destruction. Strange is the Night offers further proof that Miskowski is—as Black Static book reviewer Peter Tennant notes—“one of the most interesting and original writers to emerge in recent years.”

COMING OCTOBER 13th!

PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY NOW

THE SAMHANACH AND OTHER HALLOWEEN TREATS
Lisa Morton

On one magical night of the year—when the breeze is scented with dead leaves and pumpkin, when the days have grown shorter and winter’s first touch prickles your skin—the barrier between worlds is at its thinnest, and dark magic abounds. Whether it’s the legendary trickster Jack about to acquire his first lantern, a teenage girl beginning to discover her own alluring power, or a fallen angel seeking redemption, Halloween’s sinister spell enchants all.

The four novellas and ten short stories in this collection from Lisa Morton, one of the world’s leading authorities on Halloween, bring the ancient festival’s beauty and terror to vivid life. In the Bram Stoker Award®-nominated The Samhanach, a suburban mother’s world is turned upside-down when her daughter is taken by a legendary Scottish shapeshifter. The acclaimed Hell Manor pits a professional trickster against four of the malicious Irish sidh inside a haunted attraction. Other stories offer a young 1930s blues singer confronted by the Devil, a corn maze where a boy learns the real meaning of sacrifice, a rescue worker trapped in Edgar Allan Poe’s haunted woods of Weir, and a Halloween expert (named Lisa Morton) who discovers the real truth behind the Celts’ celebration of Samhain, the precursor to Halloween.

“Now it is your turn to chew on these tasty morsels of fear, delight, horror, and optimism. These treats are now all yours to unwrap and devour. In the words of The Devil’s Birthday, you are about ‘to join the best Halloween party imaginable.’” —Nancy Holder, Bram Stoker Award®-winning author

COMING OCTOBER 20th

PRE-ORDER NOW!

HARDBOILED HORROR
Edited by Jonathan Maberry

There’s something out there in the dark.

There’s always something watching.

There’s always something reaching for you.

Always.

And sometimes there’s someone you can call. Someone you can hire. Someone who knows these dark streets and back alleys. Someone who knows how things work in this part of town. Private eyes who are often as dark as the things they hunt. Investigators who know how to look in the shadows for the things that go bump. Good guys but not always nice guys.

Hardboiled Horror collects fifteen original tales of noir mystery shot through with elements of horror and the supernatural. Occult detectives, paranormal investigators, seedy P.I.s, amateur sleuths and ghost hunters tackle the cases no one else can handle.

The killer lineup includes Heather Graham, Kevin J. Anderson, Rachel Caine, Scott Sigler, Seanan McGuire Alethea Kontis, Jonathan Maberry, Chris Ryall, Dana Fredsti, Jim Beard, Jacopo della Quercia, John Gilstrap, Jon McGoran, Josh Malerman, Max Allan Collins & Matthew V. Collins, and Nancy Holder.

Edited by New York Times bestseller and five-time Bram Stoker Award winner Jonathan Maberry.

COMING NOVEMBER 24th!

ALSO AVAILABLE AS AN
AUDIOBOOK!

PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY NOW

MAPPING THE INTERIOR (Audiobook)
Stephen Graham Jones

Mapping the Interior is a horrifying, inward-looking novella from Stephen Graham Jones that Paul Tremblay calls “emotionally raw, disturbing, creepy, and brilliant.”

Blackfeet author Stephen Graham Jones brings readers a spine-tingling Native American horror novella.

Walking through his own house at night, a fifteen-year-old thinks he sees another person stepping through a doorway. Instead of the people who could be there, his mother or his brother, the figure reminds him of his long-gone father, who died mysteriously before his family left the reservation. When he follows it he discovers his house is bigger and deeper than he knew.

The house is the kind of wrong place where you can lose yourself and find things you’d rather not have. Over the course of a few nights, the boy tries to map out his house in an effort that puts his little brother in the worst danger, and puts him in the position to save them . . . at terrible cost.

ORDER YOUR COPY NOW

WE SHOULD HAVE LEFT WELL ENOUGH ALONE (Audiobook)
Ronald Malfi

A new mother is pursued by mysterious men in black. A misguided youth learns the dark secrets of the world from an elderly neighbor on Halloween night. A housewarming party where the guests never leave. A caretaker tends to his rusted relic of a god deep in the desert…

In his debut short story collection, Bram Stoker Award-finalist Ronald Malfi mines the depths and depravities of the human condition, exploring the dark underside of religion, marriage, love, fear, regret, and hunger in a world that spins just slightly askew on its axis. Rich in atmosphere and character, Malfi’s debut collection is not to be missed.

COMING NOVEMBER 2nd IN SOFTCOVER, HARDCOVER, AND AUDIOBOOK

THE NARROWS (AUDIOBOOK)
By Ronald Malfi

The town of Stillwater has a very unwelcome resident.

The town of Stillwater has been dying—the long and painful death of a town ravaged by floods and haunted by the ghosts of all who had lived there. Yet this most recent flood has brought something with it—a creature that nests among the good folks of Stillwater…and feeds off them. The children who haven’t disappeared whisper the same word—“vampire.” But they’re wrong. What has come to Stillwater is something much more horrific.

ORDER YOUR COPY NOW

A LONG DECEMBER (AUDIOBOOK)
By Richard Chizmar

In 1996, Richard Chizmar’s debut short story collection, Midnight Promises, was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Publishers Weekly called it “a sterling collection” while singling out “The Silence of Sorrow” as “an understated masterpiece.”

Two years later, Subterranean Press published a mini-collection from Chizmar entitled Monsters and Other Stories. In his introduction, acclaimed genre critic Edward Bryant said, “When all is said and done, this book should leave you in utter silence, giving you time and opportunity to contemplate what you just read. Tough storytelling from a tough writer; but a writer who is not calloused. Chizmar possesses a finely honed gift of empathy. With utter grace and loving kindness he’ll put you right inside the life (and soul) of the monster.”

Now, nearly two decades later, Chizmar assembles thirty-five stories, including a previously-unpublished novella, and presents us with A Long December. This massive new collection features more than 150,000 words of Chizmar’s very best short fiction and includes 8,000 words of autobiographical Story Notes.

Eerie, suspenseful, poignant, the stories in A Long December range from horror to suspense, crime to dark fantasy, mainstream to mystery.

As New York Times bestselling author Scott Smith (A Simple Plan, The Ruins) notes: “It’s an idyllic little world Richard Chizmar has created. Boys fish in the shallows of a winding creek. A father tosses a baseball with his young son in the fading light of a summer day. There’s the smell of fresh-cut grass. And then, well…just beneath the surface? There are those missing pets whose collars turn up in a shoebox. Or the disturbing photos the dead can leave behind. Or the terrible thing you might find yourself doing when a long lost brother suddenly returns, demanding money. Chizmar does a tremendous job of peeling back his world’s shiny layers, revealing the rot that lies underneath. His stories feel like so many teeth: short and sharp and ready to draw blood.”

NOW AVAILABLE IN AUDIOBOOK FORMAT

VIOLENCE DAVE: HEARTLESS
By Konstantine Paradias

“Hell is real. And it’s coming this way…”

This isn’t the first time Dave’s been dropped into the killzone, where Hell and Earth meet. Again and again, he’s crashed down into the ground like an angry comet, clad in his living armor, with his shotgun, Bielebog, primed and ready. Time and again, Dave’s waded knee-deep through the dead, riding on the adrenaline wave, halfway baked out of his mind.

Except, Dave’s had enough. He’s died, fought and rampaged one too many times. He’s gotten sick and tired of being a berserker.

This time, Dave knows, will be the last time.

HERE WE GO AGAIN…

GET YOUR COPY NOW!

NOW THAT WE’RE ALONE
By Nicholas Day

“I’ve had a wonderful time, really the best. Do you want to come inside? It’s still early. I’d love to tell you a story.

But first, let me take off my face…”

Now That We’re Alone

11 short stories from Nicholas Day, celebrating the weird, wicked, and wonderful monsters hiding in the dark, hiding behind their human masks.

Available now!

LIKE FREE MOVIES AND BOOKS? HECK YES, YOU DO!

We’re looking for digital film reviewers, indie game reviewers, book reviewers, and interviewers. This is a non-paying gig for the time being and no experience is necessary, so if you’d like to take a stab at any or all of the above, send Editor-in-Chief of the JournalStone Network, Stuart Conover, an email!

ARE YOU SOCIAL MEDIA SAVVY?

We’re looking for a Social Media Coordinator to assist with the following tasks:

-growing our numbers across all our social media platforms
-scheduling posts on multiple accounts (familiarity with Hootsuite is a bonus, but not a necessity)
-reading and responding to private messages
-interacting with other horror outlets
-plus more!

Does this sound like you? Then let’s talk! Send the JournalStone Network Editor-in-Chief, Stuart Conover, an email!