Hey! 2020 is behind us! We made it!
Last year was not exactly ideal (says captain obvious). All the plans were scuttled…seriously, all of them. The various book signings and conventions I had lined up to promote the re-release of The Space Between Houses vanished. I’m not complaining about this, mind you. It sucks, don’t get me wrong, but we were all in the same boat, so I’m not going to make it into a one-man pity party.
On a positive note, I did get some writing in, and even managed to sell four short stories (three have been released, the last coming this fall), with a fifth out in the ether as we speak.
I also managed a couple new drafts on my second horror novel, as well as a first draft on a literary fiction book I’m working on. That latter project will come to completion first, but then it’s back to the scary for me.
Another thing 2020 allowed me time for was a re-write of my first horror novel. Basically, after talking to some friends in the industry, I decided that there needed to be some changes to the story (mostly pacing). Ultimately, I am much happier with the novel now, and have recently started sending it out to agents and publishers (fingers crossed).
Looking ahead to this year, besides finishing those two books, I’m also going to try and squeeze in another four or five short stories as well as a mystery project (more on that soon).
With any luck, we’ll all be able to return to some semblance of normal in 2021 and we can start going outside again (I’m almost a mole-person at this point so it can’t happen soon enough). I miss the conventions and signings so much! Meeting new folks is the highlight of this wacky career I’ve chosen.
Anyway, that’s enough out of me for now.
Cheers!
-Christian
I’ll get the obvious one out of the way first. Stephen King. Listen, if you are a horror writer, you have probably been influenced by King’s work (whether you like his stuff or not). The man is synonymous with horror fiction. My first experience with King’s work came through my brother. He was (and still is) and avid reader of Stephen King. Because of that, even though it would be years before I would pick up a horror novel (King’s or otherwise) I was seeing his books lying around our house. Since then I’ve read about twenty or so of his books (with many more in the ‘to-read’ pile). My personal favs are The Shining, Bag of Bones, The Talisman and Desperation. But to be honest, I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read by him (except for The Colorado Kid. That book sucked hard).
Next up is one of two Canadians. Michael Slade (AKA John Banks, Jay Clark, Rebecca Clark and Richard Covell).
And that brings me to the second Canadian: Craig Davidson (AKA Nick Cutter). I met Craig a few years ago when I was asked to host The Dark Side Tour on its stop in my hometown. The tour was a cross-North American book tour with Craig Davidson and Andrew Pyper. At the time, I had just taken my first fledgling steps into my writing career and felt immediately out of my depth talking to these two guys. Luckily, they were both awesome and the night went off without a hitch. A perk of playing host was that I was given copies of their new books at that time (The Deep from Craig and The Damned from Pyper), so that I could ask some relevant questions. And although I loved both books, something about Craig’s visceral horror really grabbed me. I went back and read his other offering under the Cutter name (The Troop) and was outright hooked, and have greedily devoured everything since. I’ve been fortunate enough to hang out with Craig a bunch of times over the last couple years, and now consider him a friend. I’ve yet to be disappointed with any of his work, but hands down my favourite is the literary kick to the face called The Acolyte. This book resonates with me on every level. I fucking love it.
C. M. Forest 