Tag Archives: horror

by

An Interview with Emerian Rich!

Emerian and I became friends at local coventions where I had to admire her hair and her eye make-up, which is amazing art! Turns out she’s also a tireless blogger, a prolific author, and a dynamic speaker! I asked Emerain to talk to us about the many hat she wears and how she finds time to juggle her many, many projects.

You have a lot of balls in the air – Horror Addicts, Regency Romance, SEARCH Magazine– tell us a little bit about your various projects.

Man, we could be here all day. My personality type is one that gets bored easily and I’m quite hyper, so to feed my “have to do something new” monster, I get myself involved in all sorts of stuff. I’m also OCD so let’s do this in a format I’m more comfortable with.

  • Horror Writer: I love writing my vampires in Night’s Knights Vampire Series, but I also have become a fan of short horror. It was hard to get involved in the short story game because my head just naturally thinks in novel length, but when I realized that shorts take a different sort of talent, a small idea, well crafted, the challenge was set. Now I enjoy the experiment of a horror short and when someone asks me to be in an anthology, I jump at the chance to stretch my short story muscles!

 

  • Horror Hostess: I started HorrorAddicts.net as a podcast to tide my vampire fans over until the next book, but it has become its own entity. With 10+ staff, we operate a podcast, blog, and now publishing house. Sometimes it seems very overwhelming, but it is so rewarding, that I must keep it going. This has also increased my voice acting jobs and opened my career up to new possibilities such as MC’ing and interviewing.

 

  • Romance Writer: Although it’s no secret, a lot of people don’t know I also write romance under the name Emmy Z. Madrigal. My Sweet Dreams Musical Romance Series started it all. It’s centered on older teens who are music lovers, including pop stars and the whole Jazz music scene. The spin off Anime Girl is targeted to twenty-somethings and is more of a chicklit type read about an Anime artist who falls in love at an Anime con. My most recent romance sale is a Regency romance called Lord Harrington’s Lost Doe. It’s more of an Austen-like novella with a rain-tormented estate, a lost girl, and the dark, tall, and grumpy Lord that finds her. Lost Doe should be released within the next year.

 

animegirlcoverfinal-copy

 

 

  • SEARCH Magazine Editorial Director: This is my newest baby and I am having fun learning all the new things the magazine can teach me. I’m also loving the new relationship it gives me with my writing staff. Writers are great people with vivid imaginations and I love seeing what they will bring me next!

Your newest baby is SEARCH Magazine (disclosure – I write for it). How did you get involved with this project, and what can readers expect from the magazine?

I was approached by the publisher to help her launch this local San Francisco Bay Area magazine. I loved the idea and jumped at the chance to add one more feather in my hat. I’ve directed many publishing projects, but this is the first mainstream publication. Her vision of bringing new and innovative ideas to our area really hit a chord with me. I love her slant on arts, entertainment, and her passion for growing local businesses along the way. If your readers would like to check out the magazine, they can get a free eCopy online at: searchmagazine.net

 

cover of SEARCH magazine

With so many projects happening at once, do you have any time management tips for us?

My answer to the first question shows that I like to segment my projects into boxes. So here we go with some bulleted tips that help me accomplish the impossible:

  • Become a note taker and list maker. Take a few minutes in the morning of each day to sort what is urgent and what can wait.

 

  • Try to get through as much as you can in one sitting, but make sure to give yourself realistic goals and breaks.

 

  • Make rules about social media. When you do it, when you don’t. We all need to do it, but it can end up gobbling up a lot of your time.

 

  • Above all…make sure everything you are doing is either working toward a goal, or enjoyable for you to do. If a project isn’t fun for you, honor commitments that you’ve already made, but then cut ties or figure out another way to contribute that is less irritating to you. The more enjoyable the work, the easier it will go.

If people want to start reading your work, where do you suggest they start?

At my main website, emzbox.com, they can find everything I do. I have horror, vampires, modern romance, regency romance, a little scifi and now a mainstream magazine. There’s a little bit for everyone. If they are looking for a good book to start off with, I would suggest Artistic License. It’s about a woman who inherits a house where everything she paints, comes alive.

cover of Artistic Liscence

It’s summer and I’m headed to the beach (in my dreams). What book NOT written by you should I put in my beach bag, and why?

I’m reading a great Pride and Prejudice variation by my favorite variation writer, Kara Louise. It’s called Pirates and Prejudice and it features Darcy becoming a pirate. A lot of time is spent on the ship, surrounded by water and beaches. Darcy being taught how to talk like a pirate is hilarious, even my husband enjoyed that bit. It’s a must read.

by

Book Review: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

OceanLane_HC_cI imagine that if you’re reading a blog called “Geek Girl In Love”, you probably are already a Neil Gaiman fan – but if you’re not, this book is a great place to start.  In English major parlance:  it uses the tropes of mythology, horror, and coming of age to produce a lyrical vision of metaphor made actual.  In normal language:  it’s scary as shit.

Ocean tells the story of an unnamed man who is home for a funeral and takes a side trip to his childhood home.  Past his old home is a farmhouse and a road that leads to a pond.  At the pond, the man begins to remember long-buried memories from his childhood, when he was menaced by occult forces and aided by the Hempstock family.

This book is deeply creepy.  In some ways it resembles Coraline, with its child narrator who sees a world grown-ups can’t, and in which the family members who are supposed to take care of you are dark and terrifying shadows of themselves.  The book is also beautiful, with the Hempstock farmhouse representing all that is comforting and safe, and the natural world being both terrifying and lovely.  Here’s the boy eating dinner with the Hempstocks, following a harrowing night and about to face more terrors still:

I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as I could not control the world I was in.  I could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I found joy in the things that made me happy.  The custard was sweet and creamy in my mouth, the dark swollen currants in the spotted dick were tangy in the cake-thick chewy blandness of the pudding, and perhaps I was going to die that night and perhaps I would never go home again, but it was a good dinner, and I had faith in Lettie Hempstock.

Ocean is a bittersweet story.  It’s about discovering that there are worlds within worlds – not just ones of magic versus the mundane, but ones inside people’s minds, ones in which adults are thinking thoughts and wanting and fearing things that have nothing to do with you, the child.  The narrator takes the horrors he encounters more in stride than other children might, because he already believes that the world is not safe (he has no friends, and no one comes to his birthday party).  This isn’t a book about the truth setting you free – too much knowledge is seen to be a dangerous thing, and indeed, our narrator seems to be unsettled and vaguely unhappy as an adult, perhaps because he was always a sad person, perhaps because of a trace of the supernatural remains inside him, or perhaps because he was exposed to too much knowledge too soon.

quote from Ocean at end of Lane

Quote, designed by Lakshani Surnaga

Neil Gaiman has a remarkable ability to inspire others.  People don’t just read his books, they inhabit them, and they interpret them with their own drawings and poetry and music.  Maybe this is because he creates a sense that the world he’s portraying is deeply layered.  For everything he describes, and he describes things vividly, there’s a suggestion of a whole host of other things not described.  So there’s room for everybody and every thing in it.  I highly recommend a visit to Zen Comics for this interpretation of Gaiman’s speech, “Make Good Art”.  I also recommend that if you are going to read Ocean, you set some serious time aside.  It’s a small book, but you’ll have to read it in one sitting.  Then, you’ll want to read it again – once for “what happens next”, once for the imagery and themes.