Each year during the blog-a-thon I choose one of my trusted indie publishers for libraries [listed here] and invite the press and their authors to introduce themselves to all of you in the library world.
This year I chose Grindhouse Press, a female owned press putting out high quality, high interest titles, celebrating their 10th anniversary this year. After reading and enjoying both True Crime by Samantha Kolesnik [featured in my Readers' Shelf column and giveaway a few days ago] and The Perfectly Fine House by Kozeniewski and Young [for my Library Journal June Horror Review Column], I reached out to CV Hunt, owner and publisher, and asked her to gather 6 authors of her recent and upcoming titles to share "Why I Love Horror" with all of you. Over the next four days I will be featuring these authors.
This week's giveaway announcement is also tied to this spotlight on Grindhouse Press as Hunt is offering two finished titles-- Gone to See the River Man by Kristopher Triana and Depraved by Bryan Smith -- one title to 2 winners [randomly decided which winner gets which title]. As a reminder, here are the basic rules to enter:
- You need to be affiliated with an American public library. My rationale behind that is that I will be encouraging you to read these books and share them with patrons. While many of them are advanced reader copies that you cannot add to your collections, if you get the chance to read them, my hope is that you will consider ordering a copy for your library and give away the ARC away as a prize or pass it on to a fellow staff member.
- If you are interested in being included in any giveaway at any time, you must email me at zombiegrl75 [at] gmail [dot] com with the subject line "#HorrorForLibraries." In the body of the email all you have to say is that you want to be entered and the name of your library.
- Each entry will be considered for EVERY giveaway. I will randomly draw a winner on Fridays sometime after 5pm central. But only entries received by 5pm each week will be considered for that week.
- If you win, you are ineligible to win again for 4 weeks; you will have to re-enter after that time to be considered [I have a list of who has won, when, and what title]. However, if you do not win, you carry over into the next week. There is NO NEED to reenter.
Click here to see giveaway #23. Our winner was Stacy from Spencer County [KY] Public Library.
Why I lover horror. Let me count the ways . . .
by CV Hunt
by CV Hunt
As a small child I wasn’t the biggest fan of horror. I was in elementary school during the 80s and my brothers, who were seven and nine years older than I, were into all of the 80s slashers. There was something about the anticipation of gore that made me anxious from the second the opening credits popped up on the screen. And with most of those movies, you don’t have to wait too long before at least one person was slaughtered. That is what drew people, especially teens, to slasher movies. I’d learn in later years to appreciate the slasher genre but not at the age of seven.
Our family lived in the middle of a corn field, four miles from the nearest town, and didn’t have cable for the longest time. The television picked up three local channels well enough, two more on a clear day. I can still recall the whirling sound of the rotary antenna, desperately trying to find a signal. I was fortune enough that my dad was a cinephile. He would stop at the local grocery store—which had a tiny room that was the sole movie rental place in our town of 800 residents—at least twice a week and rent three or four VHS tapes. A couple of new releases and a couple of older movies to save money. This is how I discovered that not all horror was pure gore.
My dad was a fan of Jack Nicholson and he would watch The Shining at least once a year. Usually around Christmas time. I can recall seeing it at a young age and not being as disturbed by it as the slasher films my brothers were constantly watching. I swear The Shining may be the one horror movie I’ve seen the most, thanks to my dad’s obsession with it. But the movie I can recall as the first horror movie I’ve ever seen was Basket Case. Frank Henenlotter’s homage to Hammer Films is what I swear rooted my love for horror.
Sometime around the time I discovered Basket Case my mom thought she could help me with my fear of slasher films by purchasing a copy of Fangoria for me. I can recall standing in the aisle of this bizarre liquor/book store that was more known for selling lottery tickets than anything else, and my mom flipping through the pages of a Fangoria and saying, “See. It’s just make-up. Like Halloween.” I’m pretty sure I flipped through the pages of that magazine until it fell apart, thinking that someday I was going to grow up and be a make-up artist for movies.
I never realized I’d grown up in a ‘horror family’ until someone pointed it out to me recently. I was discussing all of the previously mentioned things and brought up that my mom would host a Halloween party every year. She’d make invitations for us to give to our friends, decorate the entire house, turn the garage into a mini haunted attraction, and prepare food labeled with ghoulish names to make them into something horror related. Spaghetti was cat guts. Green grapes were peeled eyes. Kool-Aid that had been frozen in a rubber glove would float in the punch bowl. To top it off, she loved to sew. All of our costumes were handmade. Halloween was huge for the entire family. And who was hiding in the haunted garage just waiting to scare the kids . . . my dad.
But my love for horror didn’t stop there. As I got older, my brothers moved out, and the house became deserted as my parents worked all day or night or sometimes both. There are only so many movies you can watch when you’re a latchkey kid. But there’s always a never-ending supply of books from the library. I was lucky to be gifted my brother’s book collection when he joined the Navy. I found getting lost in books to be more entertaining when you’re stuck at home in the middle of a cornfield. The brother who gifted me the books was much of the same creature. Nose in book and oblivious to what is going on around you. A movie only lasts ninety minutes.
That love of books, especially horror and transgressive fiction, is what has stuck with me the most. If you would’ve told thirteen-year-old me, sitting on her bed, reading The Dark Half, that one day she’d not only be writing horror but publishing it . . . well, I’m sure she’d have something smart aleck to say and she would’ve asked why you were in her house.
I attended a small school. The high school and junior high were in the same building and there were only about 350 students. I was seen as ‘the weird girl’ or a ‘witch’ or a ‘Satan worshiper’(thankfully we were too isolated for them to know about the satanic panic). I remember being ashamed of loving horror. Ridiculed for wearing a shirt with the Grim Reaper on it. I never thought my love of horror would bring me to be swimming in it. Not only that, but finding so many people who love it as much as I do. Attending conventions filled with other people like me. Finding chat rooms and message boards (the internet wasn’t a thing until I was nearly twenty) filled with people with all kinds of recommendations. Discovering the limitless subgenres of horror. Discovering video stores in a city. Discovering the limitless tomes in online bookstores!
We now live in a world where entertainment, art, movies, music, and even books can be obtained in a matter of seconds. No more filling out order forms in the back of magazines and waiting a month for a copy of Faces of Death to arrive in the mail. Even in the internet’s infancy I can recall having to print out an order form and make out a check in order to get my hands on some hard to find horror movie shirts. Books on your reader of choice in seconds. Endless libraries of movies. Heck, a whole streaming service dedicated to horror movies. And just about anything else your little horror heart desires delivered to your door the next day, in some cases a matter of hours. Yes, technology can be frustrating. But I can’t imagine a world where I couldn’t get my horror fix with just a click of a button.
Click here to learn more about Hunt's press and look for a double dose of Grindhouse Press authors sharing "Why I Love Horror" over the next 3 days.
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