I’ll be signing copies of No Light Tomorrow (alongside Ben Van Dongen) this Saturday from 1pm – 3pm at the Coles Bookstore located inside Tecumseh Mall!
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Time for a Sequel
I’ve been thinking recently that it would be fun to go back and write a sequel of sorts to one of the stories in The Space Between Houses. I’m not really sure why I think this is a good idea, it will almost certainly end in disaster.
Anywho, if you’ve read the book, and have always wanted to see a sequel to one of the stories contained within, check out the poll below and let me know which one it is. Whatever story gets the most votes will get a sequel which will available right here for free on this very website. No promises exactly when, but most likely in May.
Toronto Bound!
This coming Wednesday (as in tomorrow), I will be heading to Toronto for a reading. This marks a new achievement for me as I’ve yet to do anything book related in the big city since starting this whole being a writer thing.
The event is put on by publisher ChiZine (I just raved about one of their books, The Acolyte, in one of my previous posts) and is held monthly. I first heard of the event from horror master and all around cool guy, Craig Davidson (AKA Nick Cutter) a few months ago, and almost immediately, Ben and I started making plans to get out for one of them.
As luck would have it, I met one of ChiZine’s head honcho’s at Bookapaloza in Whitby at the very end of last year and basically sealed the deal for attending.
Both Ben and I will be reading from No Light Tomorrow, along with a third guest, and I’m super excited about the whole thing. It’s nice to get out of town and meet new folks.
If you are in area, and what to come out and hear me babble for a bit and then grab a few beers, follow the link to the event page (ChiSeries) for all the details.
-C
Adventure Worlds Summit 2017
The First Annual Adventure Worlds Press summit is nearly upon us (Feb. 10th – 12th), and I’m pretty pumped for it! Wait, you don’t know what I’m talking about? I’m pretty sure I mentioned the summit at some point in the last few months. Hold on, I’m going to go check.
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Hmm, looks like you’re right, I’ve never once talked about the summit. Well then, I guess now’s as good a time as any.
In a nutshell, the Adventure Worlds Summit is a weekend where all of the Adventure Worlds Press projects and ideas for the rest of the year (and slightly beyond) will be hashed out. The idea is to sit down, and make a plan for what’s to come.
Although this is the first annual summit, the weekend getaway has been going on for a few years now with the Adventure Worlds crew (we used to call it the writing retreat). It’s usually three people (although the first year we had four) in a cottage for a few days writing like crazy.
The retreats were always fun and productive. I wrote the majority of my stories for No Light Tomorrow, as well as a healthy part of my novel at the previous retreats. There’s usually way too much food and way too much booze (two things I love having way too much of). This year will mostly be the same, except now that Adventure Worlds is a publisher, we (Ben and Myself) figured we might as well get some business done as well.
The main item on the docket will be the upcoming crime anthology. The stories are being written as I type this, but we need a name and we have to start looking at cover ideas and designs. Plus, we want to do something special for the launch that will take some serious planning. Beyond that book, there are a couple of smaller projects that need to be discussed. I have a few ideas that need fleshing out, but could be amazing.
So there you have it, the first annual Adventure Worlds Press Summit! I’ll be tweeting out all weekend, as well as plastering pics all over Instagram. If you’re interested in such things, follow me for all the wacky happenings.
-C
My Twitter
And Instagram
Best of ’16
When you’re a writer, you are constantly being asked, “Who’s your favourite author?” Or, “What is your favourite book?”
And being a huge book nerd, I love answering that question. For the sake of this post however, I will only answer one of those questions…sort of.
I’m going to go through and give you my five favourite books…of 2016. Now, to clarify, this does not mean the book was written/published in 2016, but rather, last year is when I read it.
Also, the order they appear below is not an indication of how much I liked one over the other, but rather, is a chronological listing of when I read them.
With that said, let’s get to it! Continue reading
Big News
So, while plugging away on my novel, something crazy happened. I’ve become a full fledged publisher!
The very short version goes like this. After reaching out to publisher Mirror World Publishing to see if they’d have any interest in releasing the illustrated edition of my second book, No Light Tomorrow, I was asked if I could meet with the owner.
She had something bigger than just publishing the book in mind, and instead asked me (and other Adventure Worlds owner Ben Van Dongen) if I would be interested in turning Adventure Worlds Press into an imprint of Mirror World. As an Imprint, we would focus on horror and hard sci-fi (two things Mirror World does not deal in) as well as other fringe projects.
Of course we agreed and the rest is history. To hear Ben’s take on the even, hit up his blog right here: https://benwltp.wordpress.com/2016/08/11/how-to-become-an-imprint/ and to see what Mirror World had to say about the whole thing, click this bad boy right here: https://mirrorworldpublishing.wordpress.com/2016/08/08/introducing-our-new-imprint-adventure-worlds-press/
The first book out under the Adventure Worlds Press imprint is, you guessed it, No Light Tomorrow Illustrated Edition. But we are already planning out 2017 and there should be some fun books coming soon!
Digital Death (Pt. 6)
Level 6: The last Boss!
We’ve made it all the way to present day (approximately). I’m happy to report that there are now more horror games than ever. It’s like everybody finally realized that the horror genre is ripe for the picking when it comes to video games. So…fuck yeah!
Alright, before I get super current, I need to go back a few years for this first one. The game came out on the PS3, but I didn’t play it until just recently on the PS4.
The Last of Us (2013)
I’m about to say something that may cause people to roll their eyes, but I don’t give a squirt. The Last of Us is as good a story, both in acting and content, as any movie I have ever seen. Never, in all my years of gaming, have I been so emotionally involved in the characters I was playing as. Joel and Ellie’s (the above mentioned characters) story is touching, chilling, tragic, loving, and everything in-between. Continue reading
Digital Death (Pt. 5)
Level 5: Where we start at the depths of the ocean, move on to the farthest stars and end in…Twin Peaks???
Hi there! Welcome back to my stroll down memory lane. Last time I was a major downer, this time, high on life (and drugs!) I’m all smiles. So, like I said, the first half of the 2000’s were fairly light on the scary stuff for me, but I finally got my shit together, picked up a Xbox 360, and got my horror on!
Sometime in 2005/06 I started hearing of this next game. I had made some new friends thank to returning to school. What’s that? Oh, I was in animation. Yeah, yeah, it was pretty awesome. Huh? Did I graduate? Um, well you see…don’t judge me!!
Bioshock (2007)
I hadn’t really played much in the way of first person shooters (FPS) since the Doom days. That game messed me up that badly. So when a pal of mine got all excited about this little game called Bioshock, I was somewhat lukewarm. Sure, the gameplay footage looked seven shades of rad, but still, it was a FPS. Continue reading
Digital Death (Pt. 4)
Level 4: Japanese people are weird and why are the Russians always up to no good?
Remember how I mentioned that 1999 was the greatest year ever? Yeah, well 2000 was a giant pile of shit. Pretty much everything good from the previous year was torn away to be replaced with cruel, mocking reminders of what I had lost. Don’t worry, you can put away the world’s smallest violin, this hasn’t devolved into a pity party. I just have to set up where my head was at in the early 00’s and why for a solid few years I had all but moved away from horror (which included horror video games).
Instead, I threw on my wizard cloak, grabbed my phaser (set to sexy!) and got my geek on. Because of this, all my time went to things like the Dragonlance books, and JRPGs (Japanese Role Playing Games for those who have a life). The real world was scary enough, I didn’t need to add to it with video games.
That said, there was one exception during this sad horror-less period in my life…
Onimusha: Warlords (2001) Continue reading
Digital Death (part 3)
Level 3: The worst town ever!!
Boy, 1999 was a crazy year for me! I had a steady job, both the Matrix and Phantom Menace had come out (screw you guys! I like the Phantom Menace!), and I even managed to get a girlfriend (I know, that one surprised me as well). With all that great stuff going on, I was ready to declare 1999 the greatest year ever in the history of years…and then Silent Hill came out and ruined me. But before we travel to that awful little town, we need to make a pit stop first in Hong Kong.
Fear Effect (1999)
We all like cartoons (that wasn’t a question), and we all like horror stories (I’m just assuming), so what happens when you combine them? You get Fear Effect!
A couple things right out of the gate for this one. First, it was cel-shaded. There was a run in the years following this game where cel-shading was all the rage, but this one predated that jazz. Also, unlike the Resident Evil games, which used pre-rendered backgrounds (for the movie buffs, think matte paintings, for everybody else, basically static images) this bad boy did something different, it used full-motion video on a loop. This made the environment pop in a way that was not really seen at that time (it was also responsible for making this rather short game come on 4 DISCS!!!). Things were always moving in the background. Sure, it was a little weird if you hung around long enough for the loop to repeat, but hey, it was still awesome.
![Fear%20Effect%20[Disc1of4]%20[U]%20[SLUS-00920]-front](https://christianlaforet.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/fear20effect20disc1of420u20slus-00920-front.jpg?w=304&h=285)
The gameplay was a mix of shooting, puzzle solving and quick-time events. You got your pick of mercenaries. A couple of grease balls named Deke and Glas, and super fox Hana. Obviously, I picked Hana. Mmm, Hana, in her tight leather pants and over-abundance of cleavage…
Huh? Oh, right, the game. A fun thing about Fear Effect was that you could literally be scared to death (hence the title). Your health bar would deplete if you ended up in bad situations. Hilariously, you could actually regain health by calming your character down (things like solving puzzles and killing baddies in an efficient manner) would bring you back to the green. Continue reading
C.M. Forest 