31 Days of Horror Begins Year 10 Tomorrow But Let's Begin With a #HorrorForLibraries Giveaway #57 Today!

Today's giveaway is MY NEW BOOK! In celebration of the 10th Anniversary of 31 Days of Horror [beginning tomorrow], I am celebrating big time. But first, the rules:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Each entry will be considered for EVERY giveaway. Meaning you enter once, and you are entered until you win. 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. I use Random.org and have a member of my family witness the "draw"based off your number in the Google Sheet.
4. 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 #56. The winner was Meghan from Sargent Memorial [MA] Library  

And now on to my latest giveaway.

I have a copy of my BRAND NEW book: The Readers' Advisory Guide to Horror, third edition. Literally hot off the presses as my author copies arrived this past Sunday. And I have reserved 1 of those copies for one of you. I will even sign it.

I am extremely proud of this book. Maybe the third time really is a charm. It has everything you need [and more] to help readers find horror through the local public library. And, it doesn't matter how comfortable you or your patrons are with the genre. From novice to hardcore terror-fiend, all can learn something from this book. 

I hope your libraries all order a copy, but in the mean time, here is the link to the official press release and below. I am also re-posting this piece, an excerpt from the opening of the book that ran in the August 2021 issue of The Corner Shelf, a Booklist newsletter. 

As a Booklist contributor, I am not allowed to have my book reviewed in the magazine, but because the book is also published by the same arm of the ALA, they have been very supportive.

Click here or see below to get a taste of what you can expect from the book. And don't forget, if you are ordering a copy for your library, click here, use an ALA member's login, and enter the coupon code below [expires today] or at the top of this blog [which does not expire today but is not as good a coupon].

But also, enter today for a FREE, SIGNED copy. Only 1 winner. Good luck! 

Excerpts from the Experts: The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror By Becky Spratford.
		FEATURE. First published August 13, 2021 (Booklist Online).

Horror reads are intriguing, terrifying, and very popular. Unfortunately, guiding horror readers can be a daunting undertaking if you fear the genre or are unfamiliar with it. In The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror (ALA Neal-Schuman, 2021), author Becky Spratford shares the many reasons why readers seek horror, how to have conversations with them about their favorite types of terrifying reads, where to find titles, who the most popular authors are, and, of course, many annotated lists to help you match books with readers. In this excerpt taken from the book’s preface, she answers the all-important first question, “Why do we need horror?”

Here’s a special offer for Corner Shelf readers: Get 10% off (20% for ALA Members) The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror with coupon code CSRA21 (expires 9/30/21).

Why We Need Horror
by Becky Spratford 

Readers love fantasy, but we need horror. Smart horror. Truthful horror. Horror that helps us make sense of a cruelly senseless world. —Brian K. Vaughan^[1]

Horror has seen an explosion in mainstream popularity, one that I don’t think anyone saw coming. Here are just a few obvious examples: The Walking Dead went from a cult graphic novel series to a pop culture, television obsession; Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties (2017) was a National Book Award finalist for fiction; multiple horror titles by people not named King made the New York Times year-end Notable Books list; and new horror voices, authors who were not even mentioned in my previous edition, have appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers list.

It is clear, as Brian K. Vaughan noted in the above epigraph, that people need horror, and, in fact, they have always needed it. But why has it been in such demand over the last ten years? I am sure many of you can posit some reasons, but quite simply, our current world is a dumpster fire, with crisis after crisis piling up day after day, unfolding in real time through social media and phone alerts. It is nearly impossible to avoid being bombarded with messages of doom and gloom from the real world. As one of the hottest authors in horror today, Stephen Graham Jones, noted in 2019, “Horror is the perfect vehicle for our current set of concerns, horror ismost definitely booming.”^[2]

He elaborated on this concept further in a podcast appearance earlier that year: “It [horror] makes me feel alive because if I’m feeling fear, it’s fear for something that can be taken away which is to say I still have something, that I am still alive.”^[3]

Horror feels real right now, but the complex, biological processes that elicit fear, dread, and anxiety in humans have their roots deep in the evolution of all animals. Every person experiences fear, and in their own unique way, and that is why horror tales go back to the dawn of storytelling. However, that is not to imply that the genre is stagnant. Each time horror reemerges and stretches its tentacles into the mainstream public consciousness, it does so because of fresh voices and perspectives. Take 1922 and the birth of Weird Tales. H. P. Lovecraft and his contemporaries created an entirely new type of horror, cosmic horror,^[4] a subgenre that is seeing a resurgence 100 years later as its current practitioners grapple with its racist and misogynistic history. Or 1974, when Stephen King’s Carrie was published and our current era of modern horror began. And into the twenty-first century, when horror is being embraced by those whose voices have been marginalized by the hegemony of a constructed white, heterosexual norm, those who have lived in real fear and horror, and are now turning their experiences into the best examples of the genre, causing a renaissance, as John Fram, debut author of The Bright Lands, which features an unapologetically queer hero, noted in Library Journal: “It’s a trend I don’t see stopping anytime soon. We live in a gaslit era, a time when straight, white society is finally being visited by the fears and uncertainties that the rest of us have been battling all our lives. Horror seems ready to tell us that yes, things really are more terrifying than you could have imagined. . .What a time to be alive.”^[5]

As best-selling horror author Brian Keene has noted, “The writers may change, but the genre prevails.”^[6]That was as much the case when Mary Shelley published Frankenstein as it was when Jordan Peele won an Oscar for Get Out, and it remains to this day.

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[1]. Brian K. Vaughan, introduction to Locke and Key: Crown of Shadows, by Joe Hill, illus. Gabriel Rodriguez (Idea and Design Works, 2010).

[2]. Becky Spratford, “Stephen Graham Jones Primes Us for the Second Wave of Summer Scares,” RA for All: Horror (blog), February 13, 2020, http://raforallhorror.blogspot.com/2020/02/stephen-graham-jones-primes-us-for.html.

[3]. Stephen Graham Jones, “Episode 38: Why Does Horror Matter?,” in Ladies of the Fright, produced by Lisa Quigley and Mackenzie Kiera, podcast, recorded live at StokerCon 2019, www.ladiesofthefright.com/podcast/2019/6/28/lotf-38-why-does-horror-matter-stoker-con-2019-panel. Transcribed by the author.

[4]. Cosmic horror will be discussed at length in chapter 12.

[5]. Becky Spratford, “Rise of the Monsters: Top Horror Titles and Trends Coming This Season,” Library Journal, July 8, 2020, www.libraryjournal.com/?detailStory=rise-of-the-monsters-horror-genre-preview-2020.

[6]. Brian Keene, End of the Road (Baltimore, MD: Cemetery Dance, 2020).