The Ghoulish Times | 03.08.24
Hello and welcome to the latest issue of The Ghoulish Times. It is March 8, 2024 and my name is Max Booth III. If you are reading this today, Friday, that means there is exactly one week until this year's Ghoulish Book Festival kicks off in downtown San Antonio. I am so excited and stressed and pumped up and terrified and I am looking forward to seeing old friends and making new ones.
There are two of you I am not looking forward to seeing again, though. I will let that linger as a mystery. Sort of like who killed Laura Palmer? except I'm not going to allow some dicknosed television exec to force me to reveal the answer publicly. You'll just have to come up with your own theories and be satisfied with nothing further.
If you missed it, here is the festival program.
And here are all of our wonderful spooky vendors (along with hours of operation and other important details):
If you can't view the image, most if not all of the information should be available HERE, too.
Yesterday I completed what will probably be my final journey around San Antonio handing out promotional materials for the fest. I walked around 4 miles or so, which is about what I've been walking on every promo trek. Sometimes I think about what great shape I'd be if I hosted a fest every month, but then I start crying at the thought of it and quickly wipe it from my brain.
Most people are pretty excited about the fest and are cool with us leaving promo stuff out. Sometimes people simply laugh in your face and say no. That's rare, but it happens! It definitely happened yesterday. Also around the same time I learned that cool poetry project I'd been invited to co-write had been cancelled. But that's okay, because look! Tote bags and fest t-shirts have been obtained, so everything's looking up Millhouse, baby!
If you haven't bought a badge yet...now is the time to do it! Make sure to show your badge to all of the vendors and ask them about any badgeholder discounts they might be offering ghouls, too!
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STARRED PW REVIEW
Our next publication, Bury Your Gays: An Anthology of Tragic Queer Horror (ed. Sofia Ajram), just received a starred review from Publishers Weekly!
You can pre-order the anthology wherever books are sold. We recommend directly from our webstore, if possible.
We'll also have copies at the Ghoulish Book Festival!
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THE DAY OF THE DOOR (IN THE FLESH)
Physical copies of Laurel Hightower's The Day of the Door have arrived, just in time for GBF!
Technically it's not available until April 23, but we'll be selling them a little early for those who attend the fest. Otherwise, pre-order here.
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I should also mention that if you were interested in ordering both Bury Your Gays and The Day of the Door and several other kickass titles from us (such as new books from ghouls like Jeremy C. Shipp and Danger Slater, to name a few), there's still another week or so to get them all by securing a 2024 membership subscription. Click HERE for more details.
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GHOULISH TALES SUBMISSIONS UPDATE
We are still considering submissions for Ghoulish Tales Issue #3 until March 29th. We've also shared Betty Rocksteady's cover art for this issue on Patreon, if you want to take a sneak peek (and also support us on Patreon, which is a super cool thing to do).
Here are our most updated submission stats for issue #3:
Unread: 7
Accepted: 2
Shortlisted: 15
Withdrawn: 12
Rejected: 569
If you'd like to submit something our way, check out our guidelines HERE. And if you'd like to read a previous isue, click HERE.
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DOG EARS
This has been a long time coming, but the Dog Ears podcast is finally live. I’ve been teasing this project for over a year at this point, I think, and I’m pleased to report the wait is over! Check out Luke Spooner’s logo artwork:
It is also an absolute honor to reveal the podcast’s theme song: “Telescope” by The High Strung!
Episode one, titled “Smiling As They Shovel Dirt On Your Face”—in which I share an amusing and embarrassing anecdote about my first short story acceptance—is out right now and can be listened wherever you download podcasts. I have big, big plans for this show. Please consider leaving a review on iTunes. It really helps!
More about the first episode:
In the debut episode of DOG EARS, Max talks about how a genuine lunatic published his first short story, and warns writers about common red flags when it comes to submitting to open markets. What is an anthology mill, and why should you finally start respecting yourself as a writer and stop settling for anybody just to see your name in print?
Listen wherever you download podcasts or click HERE.
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DECAYED TAPES
Speaking of podcasts, did you check out this week's episode of Decayed Tapes?
On this week’s episode of Decayed Tapes, we watched Olaf Ittenbach’s debut SOV feature film, BLACK PAST, a delightful 1989 German splatter fest of blood, guts, and severed limbs that felt like the deformed love child of EVIL DEAD, DEMONS, and A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. It is a nihilistic annihilation of the human body that we couldn’t help but adore. We love practical effects and gosh darn it we love this movie.
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BACK FROM THE DEAD
A big moment of relief hit me this afternoon as I got ready to take this photo:
Finally, at long last, my first three novels (originally published in 2014, 2014, and 2015) are back in print under the Ghoulish label, with new covers by Betty Rocksteady. Those are Toxicity, The Mind is a Razorblade, and How to Successfully Kidnap Strangers.
They've been OOP for several years now, definitely before my readership expanded after the WNTDS movie hit, and people have asked when these would return... well, now they finally have. You can buy them wherever you get books. If you've already ordered from the site, I'm in the process of signing and packaging right now.
I've given all three a proofread and have slightly revised them when I felt necessary, but didn't change anything that would impact the story. Just...sloppy sentence structure, a few jokes I wasn't fond of anymore, stuff like that. I also wrote a long author's note at the end of Toxicity about how it was written and what inspired it and the long publishing journey it's experienced.
At this point now, the only books in my backlog not in print are two shitty collections (which will remain OOP) and my werewolf novel Carnivorous Lunar Activities, which we're currently shopping around to other presses and hopefully one of them bites soon.
If you'd like to order all three, signed, as one discounted bundle, click HERE.
Hell yeah, ghouls.
See some of you next week at the Ghoulish Book Festival!!!
—max