I’m extremely pleased to announce that Infested took home the silver award at the 2023 IBPA Benjamin Franklin award ceremony for best horror novel!
Eerie River Publishing has made this book into so much more than I thought it could be, so a big thanks to them.
Now I just have to wait for my shiny, silver stickers to arrive so I can slap them on the book’s cover!
-C
As I said in my last post, my novel (tentatively titled They Crawl Within) was suddenly without a home. As luck would have it, the stars aligned, and the universal decided to smile upon me, and so, I’m happy to announce that it has been scooped up by Eerie River Publishing!
I’ve been following Eerie River for a little while now and have been impressed with their books, to say the least. And bonus, they are from my home province of Ontario!
The novel is currently scheduled for a fall 2022 release. Stay tuned for updates.
In the meantime, give Eerie River some love and check out their socials.
-Christian (C. M. Forest)
It’s official, my cosmic horror novella We All Fall Before the Harvest has been acquired by Timber Ghost Press! I wrote the book early this past summer and felt confident that it would find a home sooner rather than later. Stay tuned for more info about cover reveals and a release date.
In the meantime, check out Timber Ghost’s website for more spooky goodness. Timber Ghost Press
-C. M. Forest
I’m thrilled to have my story, The House in the Ground, included in this collection. The Emerald Edition is the 7th entry in the Horror Collection series, and features some great talent!
Available now as an e-book, and coming soon in print. If you would like to get a copy of your own, follow this link: The Emerald Edition.
-Christian
So, this coming September will mark the four-year anniversary of my first book, The Space Between Houses. I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of this book, and like having it available in my back catalogue…but, it is currently out of print.
Now, here’s the dilemma. I can get more made under my own press (Adventure Worlds Press), but since I don’t have any of the final files (the original publisher does), I would have to go through the book and literally retype it. This is not a completely bad thing, as there are a few minor things I’d like to change (mostly all grammatical), and this would allow me the chance to do so. The down side is, I’d have to retype the whole fucking thing.
Sigh.
I’m leaning towards doing it, if for no other reason then my next solo book (the long in development novel) will probably not be out for quite some time. I still have No Light Tomorrow and All These Crooked Streets but neither of those are horror, and they are both co-authored.
Double sigh.
I guess I need to think about it some more. I’ll give an update in a week or two once I’ve made up my mind. I just really don’t want to retype the damn thing.
Triple sigh.
Later ‘gators,
Christian
I guess I should give an update on my novel. It is the most asked question I get these days and so I figure it’s only fair to shed some light on where it’s at and where it’s going.
I started work on it a few years ago (or pretty damn close to), and it still has a ways to go. I did hit a big milestone back in late summer/early fall of last year when I finished the first draft. I was proud to have gotten that far, but I also knew that there was going to be a lot of work ahead of me.
I’m not going to bore you with the details, but the cliff notes version is this: I kept changing what happens in the book. Because of those changes, huge sections of the novel which I had already written, became irrelevant to the story and were cut out. This indecisiveness has resulted in a patchwork collection of words that is a complete mess. Needless to say, I had become very discouraged.
It wasn’t until the end of last December (as in about a month ago!) that I finally came to terms with the story I am trying to tell. All decisions have been made. There is finally, once again, a clear direction. It’s time to start a new draft of the book (draft #4 for those keeping score). For this draft, I am just adding in those final elements I am missing and smoothing the edges on the other additions. From there, I will start cleaning it up heavily and preparing it for the editor.
…Just not right now.
For the immediate future, I thought it best to set the novel down for a couple months. I’ve been working on it in one way or another for years and I think it’ll help tremendously to come back for this 4th draft with a fresh mind.
That doesn’t mean I’m not writing anything, as I’m currently chugging away on the crime novella for Adventure Worlds Press that I mentioned in an earlier post a couple weeks ago. And more importantly, it doesn’t mean I’m abandoning the novel. I truly believe that it will be a scary book and can’t wait for everybody to read it! I just want to make sure it is everything I know it can be before I release it on the world.
-C
Hey everybody! So, I’ve been talking to my buddy Ben Van Dongen (see what he’s all about here) and although it pains me to admit it, he was actually right about something…for the first time…ever! I don’t update my site enough. So, with the confidence of a new year before me, you’ll be hearing from me a lot more often.
This brings me to my first hurdle though. What the hell am I going to talk about? Ben’s blog focuses on various events and things from his life, but that’s not really my speed. Not that I think he is wrong to spend time on such topics, it’s more that I personally don’t like writing about that stuff. Because of that, I’m going to keep things as work related as possible around here. Basically, I’ll be giving updates, info on events and books and talking to and or about other authors and their work.
Since this is the first post of the year, and telling everybody your plans for the next 365 days is the cool thing to do, I will spill the beans a bit about what I have coming (fingers crossed) this year. Continue reading
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
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
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
C. M. Forest 