A Very Manic Ghoulish Times | 03.14.24
Ghouls! It is once again the best time of the year: Ghoulish Book Festival Weekend. This will be a short newsletter but a necessary reminder that the festival kicks off Friday morning in downtown San Antonio.
But before we get into festival stuff, I must remind everybody that the deadline to subscribe to our 2024 Ghoulish Books membership is MONDAY! Please consider subscribing to our 2024 line-up by clicking HERE.
We have so many books coming out this year and you could pre-order them all with one discounted payment!
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Okay, so this Ghoulish Book Festival I never seem to shut up about...
Please refer to our programming guide HERE.
Also, I was just informed this morning that our food truck guy is bailing on us, and there's definitely not enough time to schedule someone else. This sucks, but not much I can do at this point. Luckily there are some good restaurants within walking distance, such as Gus's Chicken, Thai Lucky Sushi Bar & Restaurant, Rosario's Mexican Cafe. Sorry!
Just a reminder: our vendor room is FREE to the public all three days. We also sell badges that grant you access to all of our panels, live readings, and workshops, plus most (if not all) of the vendors will be offering discounts on their books when you show them your badge. Additionally, badges come with exclusive tote bags full of free merch from our sponsors! (Also, honestly, buying a badge helps us fund this thing every year.) If interested, you can snag one HERE.
The fest will be downtown at the old Hermann Sons building. Address: 525 S St Marys St, San Antonio, TX 78205.
Also, ICYMI, here are our festival hours for the weekend:
FREE BOOKSTORE HOURS:
Friday 12-6
Saturday 10-6
Sunday 10-5
EVENT HOURS FOR BADGEHOLDERS (PANELS, READINGS, ETC):
Friday 1-9
Saturday 10-11
Sunday 10-3
Our physical retail shop in Selma will be closed Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, and we will reopen Tuesday morning at 10am.
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This morning we kicked things off by announcing an exciting acquisition for next year: Ryan C. Bradley's SAY UNCLE, which we're pitching as UNCLE BUCK meets HELLRAISER.
Look for SAY UNCLE in Spring 2025.
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I uploaded a second episode of my new DOG EARS podcast. It's a pretty long one, but also very educational I think and really worth listening if you're someone interested in creating comic books.
Max invites Zach Chapman (House of Blood, A Haunting on Mars) to discuss what goes into self-publishing comic books. From the scripting process, to recruiting a team of artists, and also to actually printing the physical product. This is a crash course on the absolute essentials everybody interested in creating comic books needs to know.
We also offer a few words of (hopeful) wisdom to the authors currently without a publisher in the wake of Polis Books announcing their imminent closure. Plus: RIP Sue Arroyo of CamCat Books.
Listen to it HERE.
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I think that's everything. There's another episode of the DECAYED TAPES podcast in the process of uploading, but I don't have time right now to wait for it to go live and make a blog post about it, so just stay tuned on your phone's podcast app. It's about an insane movie called DEBBIE DOES DAMNATION and it fucking rules so hard. Listen to our ep! Watch the movie on the internet archive! Buy a bunch of clay and cardboard and make a movie of your own!
I am finishing this up on Thursday, at 12:20pm. The fest kicks off tomorrow. After sending this out, I am going to go pack all of the merch bags for badge holders, pack all of our books, pack our cars, figure out how to use our panel audio equipment on my desktop (my laptop broke and I haven't been able to afford repairing it so I'm lugging my giant-ass desktop to the fest instead this year), and then going downtown to...uh, set up the festival. Busy busy busy times.
OH YES AND BEFORE I LEAVE YOU...
Sofia Ajram's BURY YOUR GAYS antho is launching at this fest! If you're there, please buy a copy! If you've already ordered from our site, paperback pre-orders have been shipped, and we'll be mailing hardcover pre-orders next week (they arrived much later than the paperbacks did, sadly).
If you're not attending the fest and you haven't already ordered, consider doing so from our webstore: https://ghoulish.rip/product/bury-your-gays-an-anthology-of-tragic-queer-horror/
And, if you're in Canada, order from Little Ghosts: https://www.littleghostsbooks.com/product/Buryyourgays/1636
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Oh shit! Speaking of Little Ghosts Books...Chris, one of the co-owners of the indie bookstore/small press, drew something very very awesome recently, and I was left with little choice but to tattoo it on my body:
But what does it mean? What is its significance? That is a surprise, but not for much longer. If you see either of us this weekend, come ask us about the design. Otherwise, stay tuned...