Best of the Best

What’s the best character you’ve ever written? What’s the one character you wish you’d written? These are the hard questions I like to put to other authors, but rarely like answering myself. (Don’t worry, I do answer this one)

The Dolls had to answer me, or else I’d be bitchy at them for weeks, so here are the best characters they’ve written, and/or the one they wish they’d written:

 

Katrina: I wish I’d written Calamity Leek from The First Book of Calamity Leek. I love kid characters in adult books, but especially ones that have one over on the adults–they see more, learn more, do more… Calamity is a force to be reckoned with at only ten or eleven years old in her clan of crazy, heathen sisters.

 

 

 

Christian: What’s with all these impossible fucking questions? Jesus. That’s not my answer, by the way. Okay, not a lot of people know this but I’m a fan of David Morrell, the Canadian writer, and I always wish I’d written First Blood. Rambo might come across as a bit cheesy and contrived in this day and age, but the original character is fascinatingly written. Complex yet very simple, which is extremely difficult to do. By the way, the book has a lot more depth and is a great deal darker than the film. I did try to write a Rambo-esque character in Human Waste (Dan Pallister), but my attempt was admittedly weak in comparison to Morrell’s. If Dan Pallister and Rambo had a fight, I’ve no doubt Rambo would win.

 

 

 

Peter: Ella Jenkins, The Broken Doll, was a lot of fun to write. I tried to make sure that she came across as both vulnerable and dangerous in equal measure.

 

 

 

 

Michael: Elsie McBride as a study in corruption. She is the darkest and most substantial character I’ve written, because over the three books in the forthcoming Gift Trilogy, she has time to develop and grow. We first see her as a baby in a bottom drawer.

Liam: I like them all, but I’m admittedly a bit biased.

 

Renee: I wish I’d written Owen Meany, from John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. That character has haunted me since high school and I’d love to craft such a memorable personality.

As for the best character I’ve ever written. It’s hard to choose. Carroll Albert from In the Bones, Jack from The Legend of Jackson Murphy, and Milo Smalls, from Mad. I love Elwin from Cats Like Cream too, and Gopher, a secondary character in Eat the Rich… I guess it’s like children. You can’t pick a favorite.

 

Steve: I am best known for Brandon Thighmaster, a monk who subverts everything about monks. Instead of seeking enlightenment by turning away from the self, his temple seeks perfection through utter self-obsession. In short, I get to write a kung fu monk who is guilelessly in love with himself, and thinks he’s far more awesome than he is. A good friend of mine pointed out that Brandon Thighmaster is a dumb white guy’s misunderstanding of eastern mysticism, ignoring all the deep stuff in favour of wicked abs and showy spin kicks. He was absolutely right.

What about the rest of you? Any character you wish you’d written? Or, I guess we can turn this around and ask  you what’s the WORST character ever written?

 

Free Promo for Indie Writers

By Chris Saunders

 

I wish I had a dollar for every time someone asked me about marketing. Then I’d be rich, and I wouldn’t have to worry about marketing. Not every indie writer has a huge budget. Or even a modest one. Most have no marketing budget at all. The good news is, contrary to popular belief, you don’t need one. This article explains how to grow your platform, and maximise your marketing potential with minimum financial outlay.

The mistake a lot of inexperienced writers seem to make is in assuming that there’s ONE thing they can do, one trick they can employ, which will guarantee sales, and they spend a lot of time and energy trying to uncover this mythical secret. I’m going to tell you right now that there isn’t one. Or if there is, I’m yet to discover it. Promotion is an ongoing project, a constant battle, and there is no quick fix. Keep in mind there is a lot of trial and error involved, and what works for one may not work for another.

A good place to start are those social media channels which most of us use daily anyway; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads, Bebo, LinkedIn, whatever your poison. You don’t need all of them, but you do need several, and link them so if you post on one, it automatically feeds to the others. This is easily done under ‘settings’ on most platforms. Post a lot. More than once a day. Get in the habit of using relevant #hashtags and be interesting. Don’t just post links to your book and expect people to rush out and buy it. They probably won’t. Engage your audience and make them care about you. When people are being bombarded by ads and spam at every turn, you have to stand out.

On these platforms, search for and follow like-minded people, join groups based around genres you write in, and get involved in public discussions. Be a presence. Actively seek out other writers and share their links. Be selective, though. It’s no good championing period drama books if you are trying to build a true crime audience. You often find that writers and other creative types reciprocate. This is how you gain new followers who can then be converted into readers. When someone shares your link, always ‘like’ the post and say ‘thank you,’ because this influences algorithms and suchlike which bumps the post so it becomes visible to more people.

Perhaps most importantly, you are going to need an online hub, a base. A professionally-built website would be advantageous, but these cost money. The next best thing is a WordPress or Wix site which, with a bit of love, can be made to look just as good. Again, post regularly, weekly or bi-weekly, and link it to your other social media platforms. It’s the only way to build a following. You need a steady stream of content, but this isn’t too difficult to achieve. If, for example, you have a new release coming out in August, pre-release you can whet people’s appetites with an announcement post and a cover reveal, then follow it up with a celebratory post on the day of release, and later an extract or an explanatory post or two explaining to readers why you wrote that particular story or focusing on some aspect of the process. It’s not difficult to get six or eight posts out of a single release. In and around these, write the occasional book or movie review or opinion piece, and you have that steady stream of content. Don’t forget to devote a section of your blog to your books, and be sure to provide cover images and buying links.

Now we are getting to the nitty gritty. The stuff that not every writer does, but perhaps should. Firstly, set up specialised author pages on Facebook and Amazon so people can find you easily. Be mindful that Amazon has different ‘branches’ in different locales, so you need to set up two; Amazon.com and your country’s Amazon if you are based outside the US. Also think about joining or starting a ‘collective,’ of authors who cross-promote and support each other and arrange a few ‘personal appearances.’ Most libraries, education centres, and even coffee shops welcome local authors who arrange signings or readings there. It’s good for business. Post about these appearances on social media.

Next, consider undertaking a blog tour. This is a simple matter of identifying a selection of websites and blogs within your niche area, contacting them, and asking if you could write a guest post for them, or do an author interview, or maybe even a giveaway or competition. This is a great way of reaching a wider audience, and some places even pay for content. When each piece comes out, share the links on your social networks. Spread your ‘appearances’ out over a few weeks or months to maximise impact, and when the tour is over write a blog post about it.

See how all the components fit together?

Yes, all this requires time and effort, but if you want to sell books, it needs to be done. Nothing in life is truly free.

C.M. Saunders is a freelance journalist and editor from Wales. His work has appeared in over 70 magazines, ezines and anthologies worldwide, including Loaded, Maxim, Record Collector, Fortean Times, Fantastic Horror, Trigger Warning, Liquid imagination, Crimson Streets and the Literary Hatchet. His books have been both traditionally and independently published, the most recent being X3, his third collection of short fiction, which is available now on Deviant Dolls Publications.

 

Find out more on his website: https://cmsaunders.wordpress.com/

Visit his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/CMSaunders01/

Or follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CMSaunders01

 

 

The Process

A common interview question for authors is “Do you have a writing process?” This refers to the little things we do or incorporate into our routine in order to be productive in our writing. It’s fascinating because every writer is different, and some have some pretty weird shit they need/do to keep the creative juices flowing.

Christian: When I write non-fiction, yes. I write down all the main points I want to make in order, then do the necessary research and piece the whole thing together like a puzzle. That’s more of an exact science, and there are formulas to follow.

But when I write fiction, none at all. I generally wing it. I don’t know what works for other people, but I hate routines. Too stifling. I think when you try to pour creativity into a bottle is where it all goes wrong. I set targets like word counts and make sure I hit them. That’s about it.

Liam: Yes. I call it “daydreaming on paper.”

Michael: Early morning pottering, tea, radio, social media, i.e. the time-sink – get it out of the way, chores. Sit down to work at ten. Stay until 1pm lunch and news. Two hours in the afternoon. Pleased if I make 1K words. End with a ‘To do’ list for the following day. Weekends are spent editing or critting in the SFF Online Writing Workshop, which I thoroughly recommend.

Katrina: I write things on a bunch of dry erase boards like a big crazy, ignore most of them, and draft in Scrivener because I like how fancy it makes me feel.

Steve: Panic. Write. Repeat.

Renee: I do not have a process. I want one, but I can’t settle into a writing routine long enough to develop one.

So, there you have it. Some of us have a very distinct “routine” we like to follow when writing, and some just work with what we have when we get the urge to write. What about other writers out there? Do you have a process? Any weird shit you have to do or have to have in order to be productive?

What’s in the Dead of Night?

By C.M. Saunders

Last year, after the rights to Apartment 14F, one of my earlier novellas, reverted back to me, I was finally able to polish it up and put out the version I wanted to. Now, I am giving the other book published by Damnation Books the same treatment.

I haven’t read this story for years. I don’t tend to go back and read stories once they’ve been published. It’s partly because I see writing as a continuous process. I’m a better writer now than I was eight years ago when Dead of Night first came out, and I’m probably a better writer than I was last week. But I have to say, this wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

From the double-meaning title to the cheesy one-liners and OTT violence, Dead of Night probably represents my first shambling steps into splatterpunk territory. It’s one of the first things I wrote that had a female protagonist. And no, it’s not because I’m sexist. I just didn’t think I would be able to write a strong female character convincingly. It took me a long time to realise that well, men and women aren’t very different after all. For this story, I thought I’d turn the usual set of circumstances on their head and have the gal saving the guy for a change. During the course of the story I grew very fond of Maggie.

I found the story flowed quite well, there weren’t many grammatical errors, and I was happy with the overall pacing. The only thing that lets it down is the fact that in some parts, it’s pretty dated. It’s been almost a decade since I wrote it. At the beginning, I had Maggie and Nick Arguing over what CDs to play in the car. Do cars even have CD players anymore? I suppose some still do. But for how much longer?

Dead of Night is packed full of pop culture references. Music, films, books. In the first version the dead celebrity Nick and Maggie discussed in the beginning was Michael Jackson. Since then Prince died, so for the reboot, Prince gets the nod. I always preferred his music anyway. There was a period in the second half of the eighties when he was untouchable. MJ does still get a name check, though, and I gave Meatloaf a nod by nicking one of the lines from ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light’ (I’ll probably get sued for that). I even slipped in the phrase ‘motley crew.’ Proud of that one.

If you’re a connoisseur, you might catch some of the movie references, too. The ‘Romero’s zombies’ one is easy to get, and the whole Nick losing a hand thing is a thinly-veiled homage to Evil Dead. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid also makes an unlikely appearance.

In a lot of my stories I drop the names of Cardiff City players, past and present. It’s kind of an in-joke nobody fucking notices except me. Steve McPhail and Jay Bothroyd are definitely from the past. I was going to update them, but then I decided it wouldn’t make much difference. McPhail and Bothroyd are still great players and deserve their place in history.

Reading it back now all these years later, though I might not have been aware of it at the time, Dead of Night is clearly a tribute to the King of splatterpunk, Richard Laymon. I even use the word ‘rump. ’ If you aren’t familiar with his work, the joke is that he used ‘rump’ A LOT. At every opportunity. A couple of times a page. It was one of his trademarks.

Perhaps the hardest adjustment I had to make when I knocked out the original version was that I had to write it in ‘American.’ I rarely do that. The vast majority of my stories are set in places I have lived – Wales, England or China. However, because the story is about American Civil War zombies, this one had to be set in America. There was no way around it. I have visited America, but never the Deep South where the story is set. Some artistic license was used there.

I found a couple of continuity errors, even after two rounds of editing by the publisher. That sucked. I had my happy couple hiking several hours to their camp site, then ‘nipping back’ to their car to grab hoodies when it got cold. That was improbable. Perhaps even more improbable than the other stuff going on. Oh, and I know guns probably wouldn’t still work after being in the ground for 150 years or so but fuck it, I wanted them to work so they did. It’s my story.

Finally, I added about 1000 words and inserted more line breaks. I originally wanted to tell the story through two POVs simultaneously, flashing back and forth from one to the other. But of course, that’s extremely difficult to do without head-hopping all over the place, so line breaks it is.

All things considered, I’m pretty happy with this reissue. The book has been out of print for a couple of years now, apart from a few ropey second-hand paperbacks floating about on Amazon. It’s an important part of my back catalogue, and I’m glad it’s finally available again.

Dead of Night is out October 1^st on paperback and ebook.

Follow me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CMSaunders01/

Or visit my blog: https://cmsaunders.wordpress.com/

Online Obsessions: Sites We Can’t Live Without

Christian had this idea that you guys might enjoy knowing a few of our favorite things. Maybe he was wrong, but we’re going to tell you anyway. This week, let’s discuss the website we can’t live without.

Peter: It sounds crap but probably Amazon; I order almost everything I buy from there as I don’t like going out (mostly books and booze).

Christian: Wales Online, for many reasons. I travel a lot, and it’s the best way to keep in touch with things that happen in Wales where I am from. No other website, not even their own, has as much Cardiff City FC coverage. Other than that, I love the wacky news stories they publish, because Wales can be a pretty wacky place. Just the other week, they ran a headline, “MAN ADMITS HAVING SEX WITH HIS TERRIERS, TAFF AND BEN.”

I just love how they gave us the names of the dogs just to, er, ram the point home.

Renee: You guys can be all “I don’t rely on social media,” snobs or whatever, but I’m just going to say it: I love social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. First, they’re a marketing tool, but second, they’re entertaining and (sometimes) informative. I suppose I could live without them, but I’d be really sad about it. Also, Netflix. Does that count as a website?

Steve: I used to be such a big fan of Cracked, but these days they’re not as fun as they used to be. I was a serious fan, and the two articles I had published there remain some of my proudest writer achievements. Man, I was a fan boy. There’s was the only forum I frequented, and I’d check them every day religiously. I even had dreams where I’d meet up with the writers. Silly, I know, but that’s how much I loved the site.

They were recently acquired by a larger media company. They jettisoned many of my favourite writers, and steered harder into building readership over building audience. A little bit of my stake in the internet eroded that day, I’m not ashamed to say.

Liam: I managed to live without any of them for a good while… but I tend to check out what’s going on “behind the wall” at homebrewforums.net several times a day.

Tony: I suppose Yahoo, since that’s my email and I see a lot of the news there. As apps go, Instagram is what I usually check rather than FB. It’s like Playboy back in the day. Just show us the pictures.

Mike: On British radio there’s a long standing series called Desert Island Discs where minor celebrities discuss six discs they would take with them, interleaved with episodes in their lives. At the end of the programme they have to choose which one of those six discs they would have to take, choose one luxury, and one book other than Shakespeare and the Bible. So, in this context, there is no website I couldn’t live without assuming Google and Bing were a given like Shakespeare and the Bible. And I have my doubts about them – as I do all electronic knowledge. I bought the ‘Complete Works of Edgar Wallace’ on Kindle, and compared its contents with my own battered pulp library of Wallace. There’s one political thriller full of, now laughably, racist comments at the expense of the Chinese. It was written during the ‘yellow peril’ phase in our history. Guess which book wasn’t included in ‘The Complete Works of Edgar Wallace.’ Thing is, who are the guardians, the gatekeepers of websites?

Katrina: Twitter. Like most people, I have an addiction to social media. But since I am old and like my social media to come with a side of intelligent conversations, Facebook and Instagram can fuck off.

Okay, Kittens, now’s your chance to steer us toward something new and wonderful. What’s one site you can’t live without?

Halloween Sales!

 

Happy almost Halloween, kittens! This is just a reminder that we’ve got some sales happening in honor of Halloween, because we all know it’s the best of all of the holidays.

First, get Renee’s horror/thriller tales, BAYOU BABY, IN THE BONES, DIRTY TRUTHS, THE LEGEND OF JACKSON MURPHY, and SMOLDER for just 99 cents each from October 27th to November 1^st.

Steve Wetherell’s SHOOT THE DEAD, as well as selected titles in the Authors and Dragons’ SHINGLES SERIES will be 99 cents each as well from October 27^th to November 1^st.

CM Saunders is having a sale on his X series, so X: A COLLECTION OF HORROR, X2: ANOTHER COLLECTION OF HORROR and X3 are all 99 cents from now until the first week of November.

So, make sure you all get in on the deals!

So, Let’s Talk about Why You Didn’t Like My Book

Wouldn’t we all love to ask a reader that? Especially those one-star jerks who leave NO EXPLANATION AT ALL? Yeah, you guys suck. In case you’re wondering, here’s one question we’d ask readers who didn’t like our books. Except Michael, who has to make sense and be rational all the time.

Michael: I have no questions. He or she has bought it so have every right to opine.

Katrina: There was one reviewer who couldn’t believe ALL DARLING CHILDREN was published because apparently it was so bad that anyone who okayed the publishing was obviously stupid. I’d probably ask her what put her in such a bad mood that she needed to be so horrible. It wasn’t as if she was criticizing any one or two things; she was just being shitty.

Christian: What’s wrong with you? Are you some kind of fucking dunderhead? Hello? McFly?

I’m kidding. I have no idea what I would ask them. If someone doesn’t love you, you just have to accept it. You can’t make them love you. Bonnie Raitt was right. I tried that before and ended up with a body buried in the garden.

Steve: “The fuck’s your problem, jack? Got a small penis or something?” I was once drinking with a friend who asked this question to a particularly petulant doorman. The question got his nose broke in answer, but it was worth it, I think. (Although it wasn’t my nose, to be fair.)

Liam: “Hey, if your favorite book is To Kill a Mockingbird, what in hell are you doing reading my stuff anyway?”

Renee: Where did I lose you? How can I get you back? Please love me!

Just kidding. Seriously, I’d want to know what it was that turned them off. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of they didn’t like it and there’s nothing I can do about it.

So, basically, when leaving reviews, don’t be mean. If you have to be mean, at least explain where the author went wrong, so that they never make the same mistake again. Let’s turn this around now. Readers, what’s one question you’ve wanted to ask an author about a book you hated? (You don’t have to name names or books, just put the question out there and maybe you’ll get an answer.)

Book Review: The Outsider

by C.M. Saunders

 

Title: The Outsider

Author: Stephen King

Website: https://www.stephenking.com/

News of this release first broke back in August 2017 when King let something slip during a USA Today interview. Constant Readers then had to endure an anxious 10-month wait until they could get their grubby paws on physical copies. In fairness, it was worth the wait.

The Outsider starts almost like a police procedural, quite reminiscent of the recent Bill Hodges trilogy, when an 11-year old boy is found murdered and mutilated. However, things soon take a supernatural turn when it transpires that the chief suspect, the man who was identified by eye witnesses and left DNA evidence at the scene, was apparently in another city miles away at the time of the murder. What’s more, he can prove it. This, understandably, throws a spanner in the works and leaves the local law enforcement in a bit of a quandary. It’s an impossible crime, kinda like a locked-room murder, SK style.

At almost 600 pages, The Outsider is a pretty substantial addition to the Stephen King library, both literally and figuratively, and keeps up his recent hot streak. It illustrates his usual mechanism of juxtaposing the ordinary and the extraordinary, or in this case the possible and the impossible, seamlessly. As evidence for both sides mounts and opinions shift, you can’t help but feel for poor Terry Maitland, the well-respected cornerstone of the community who is accused of such an unthinkable crime. As ever, King’s character-building is exemplary, and his attention to detail unparalleled. Unusually, the premise is both outlandish and unnervingly plausible as it builds towards a shocking climax.

Somewhat predictably, it was recently announced that The Outsider will be shortly be produced as a TV mini-series, much like The Stand. On the face of it, the Outsider seems like perfect TV fodder.

Dead of Night, the new novella by C.M. Saunders, is OUT NOW!

Young lovers, Nick and Maggie, decide to escape the city to spend a romantic weekend camping deep in the idyllic countryside. The excursion begins well, but soon degenerates into a maelstrom of terror when one of them comes face to face with a centuries-old civil war soldier. Together, the couple flee into the wilderness, but soon find engaged in a mortal battle with a group of long-dead Confederate bushwackers.

PLEASE NOTE: This is a story of extreme horror and is not suitable for children.

And don’t forget to visit his blog!

 

 

 

Favorite Things: Musical Edition

Christian had this idea that you guys might enjoy knowing a few of our favorite things. Maybe he was wrong, but we’re going to tell you anyway. This week, let’s all share our favorite album (music, for you young folks like Katrina who aren’t aware that such things are still in some people’s vocabulary). For many of us, music is crucial to getting in the right head space for writing, so finding a whole collection of songs that make us happy is pretty important.

Christian: I’m a rocker at heart, so I’m going for Def Leppard’s Hysteria. It’s just the perfect album. Sometimes the best works of art are born out of adversity, and this album certainly was because drummer Rick savage lost his arm in a car accident prior to recording. Twelve tracks, seven singles and 25 million sales, it epitomizes eighties garishness and excess and Mutt Lange’s production means it still sounds as fresh today as it did when it was released over thirty years ago. A bit of trivia: at over 62 minutes, at the time it was one of the longest albums ever released, which is why it sounds like shit on vinyl.

Katrina: What is this? The early aughts? We don’t do albums anymore. Songs. Podcasts. Hooks. Bits of words with a little bit of electro playing in the background. (None of which I can name without saying “You know, that one that goes dun-dun-duh and then there’s this weird high-pitched scream?”)

Renee: They call them albums here and here and here. Just so you all know, we’re not old. They’re still albums.

Katrina,

Anyway, can I have a top three? Well, I’m going to do it anyway. I love Hysteria, which Christian already mentioned, but it’s not a favorite. Although, Pour Some Sugar on Me, Animal and Love Bites are among my favorite songs (a list longer than my favorite books), my top three favorite albums are movie soundtracks. The first, obviously, is the Dirty Dancing Soundtrack. I listened to that thing back in the day a million times. I actually wore the tape out. (Yes, I’m old enough to have listened to cassette tapes.) The other two are Cocktail and Footloose. There isn’t a single song I don’t like on any of these albums, which I can’t say about anything else.

You all thought I’d say Nickelback, didn’t you? *sniff*

Tony: I haven’t thought about albums in a while. Nowadays it’s stream a Pandora channel and forget about it. I have to reach back to think of a favorite album and the one that first comes to mind is Iron Maiden: Number of the Beast. I was a big heavy metal guy in high school and listened to Iron Maiden pretty much nonstop. Today I’ll stream the blues when I write, occasionally Beastie Boys. But Iron Maiden, on the rare occasion. I can’t remember where I put my keys but I still know the words to The Trooper. Go figure.

Liam: Hmm. This depends on the genre, but if I really have to choose only one… I’d have to go with The Complete Recordings of Robert Johnson, with David Bromberg’s My Own House as a close second, in a dead tie with Dervish, Live at Palma.

Peter: Couldn’t honestly say, I rarely listen to anything other than generic radio nonsense in the car.

Mike: Tough one. Again, let the reader choose. Bob Dylan’s John Wesley Hardin/Highway 61 revisited/ Blood on the Tracks/ Street legal/ Desire, Rolling Stones, Gimme Shelter, Sticky Fingers, or Exile on Main Street.

Steve: Death to the Pixies. I know it’s gauche to select a ‘best of’ compilation as a favourite album, but hear me out. It wasn’t easy building musical taste before the internet. I had to hop on a train if I wanted to find interesting albums, and we had all of maybe two radio stations dedicated to new music- which back then was mostly the Spice Girls on repeat.

I ended up snaffling through the discarded tapes and CDs of my older siblings, slowly working out what I was supposed to like, and what I actually liked. Stumbling onto the Pixies was a revelation. Something about the manic emotional ambivalence, and the silly seriousness of it. It had a timeless, kind of grubby sexual vibe that I still to this day associate with awkward-but-rocket-fuelled teenage libido. For a while I was flying solo on the pixies- they were a difficult act to sell to my friends who were all about the Deftones or whatever, but when they came back with Death to The Pixies, suddenly they were everywhere, and I was very briefly cool.

What do you all think? Good choices? If not, please, point us in a direction. Wow us with your recommendations for best album ever.

 

31 Days of Horror

If you’re a horror writer or reader, October is the best month of all the months, because it’s all about the scary. We love it so much, we wanted to do something awesome, so we came up with a giveaway (stole the title/idea from Peter Blakey-Novis, but he’s okay with that).

So, what is our 31 Days of Horror about? Well, every day in October, we’ll be giving away books to at least one lucky reader. All you have to do to enter is share from our Facebook page, on Twitter (Tag a Doll, please, so we know you shared. We’ve added twitter handles at the bottom of the post.) or share this post.

Once you’ve shared, your name is in. If you don’t win on the first, don’t fret, your name is re-entered for the second, and so on. That means just one share gets you in every single day, whether you win or not. Two shares gets you two entries, but only one share per day, per person counts, because we don’t want to annoy people. You share every day? You got 31 entries by October 31st, you awesome thing.

What are we giving away? Well, Renee made this nifty calendar. It’s a work in progress, so as more titles are available, we’ll update.

So, that’s e-books and paperbacks. Renee has a stack of paperbacks from some kickass dark fiction authors left over from a previous promotion she needs to unload, so you guys win!

Twitter Handles, Facebook Pages (feel free to like and/or follow us as well) to tag when sharing:

Deviant Dolls – @deviantdollspub, Facebook

Renee Miller – @reneemj, Facebook

Christian Saunders – @cmsaunders01, Facebook

Katrina Saete (Monroe) – @authorlady22, Facebook

Steve Wetherell – @afistfulofsteve, Facebook

P.J. Blakey-Novis – @pjbn_author, Facebook

Michael Keyton – @BaffledSpirit

Liam McNalley – Facebook

And it all begins NOW. First winner will be announced on October 1st, via Twitter and our Facebook page. Good luck and Happy Halloween!