The Ghoulish Times | 04.08.24
Hello and welcome to the latest issue of The Ghoulish Times. My name is Max Booth III and this is my spooky newsletter. If you are wondering why you received this email, I'm afraid there are far more serious questions you should be asking instead--such as, what is that bizarre shape in the corner of the room, and why does its appearance slightly change every time you blink? Is it getting closer? Is...is it whispering your name? Dear god why does it have so many teeth???
Okay, great, I'm glad we could get that out of the way. To be honest, I don't have a ton to promote in this newsletter, but we pay for this service and I'll be goddamned if I don't use it. We will have more to promote in the next issue for sure. Although that isn't to say I don't have anything to promote in this newsletter. Don't get carried away now. I never said that. Do not tell anybody I said that.
Hey, it's Eclipse Day. We happen to live right in its path. Everybody is freaking out. Personally I'm hoping it's all some elaborate goatse prank. If you don't understand that reference, feel free to go google image "goatse" with all safety filters disabled. I recommend doing it in a public area, such as a coffee shop or church.
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A majority (but not all) of our Day of the Door pre-orders have been shipped out. It officially releases April 23rd, so we're excited we managed to get our butts in gear and send them to customers a little early. Please consider pre-ordering if you haven't already. Really excited about the early reviews it's gotten so far.
Here's a photo of many, many copies:
We spent about two days doing nothing but packaging orders--both those pre-orders and other random bookstore purchases from our webstore. I brought my desktop to our shipping area and watched a shit-ton of movies while doing it. Those movies were: Mute Witness, Paper Moon, Hundreds of Beavers, The Keep, Censor, and The Ninth Gate. I'd recommend them all, honestly. Some I'd seen before, some I hadn't. Paper Moon is an all-time favorite of mine. Mute Witness, I've seen that movie twice now, both times within the last week. It just hit Shudder on April 1st and I can't get enough of it. Also pre-ordered the 4K release from Arrow Video that's dropping later this summer. Can't believe how good it is. If you haven't seen Mute Witness yet, drop everything and go check it out. Read nothing about it ahead of time. I've also recently watched In a Lonely Place (loved it!) and Dream Scenario (expected to enjoy it, but kinda hated it to be honest!).
Here is what my trunk looked like after we squeezed all of these orders in, by the way:
We also recently received a huge shipment of new arrivals and restocks at the shop. Check it out:
See anything you like? We ship to anywhere in the world. Consider snagging a couple books from our webstore! We also throw in a bunch of stickers and bookmarks with each order (just, uh, don't tell the post office that).
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If you're a writer of horror fiction, this next section should be of interest to you: Ghoulish Books is planning to reopen for novella/novel submissions in August, so start sharpening up those spooky manuscripts. Minimum word count 25,000, maximum word count 90,000. Books accepted will be included in our 2026 lineup, possibly 2027. Payment: small advance plus 40/60 royalty split. We haven't opened for book submissions in several years, and probably won't again for a long time after this upcoming open call, so if you've ever wanted us to consider your full-length work, don't pass this up!
Also, if you're a short story writer, we will reopen Ghoulish Tales in June. Please note: for this specific submission call, we will only be considering stories and essays from authors who have never been published before. New Ghouls only, please. Nothing longer than 5,000 words. Payment: 10c per word.
More guidelines and other submission details will be posted soon.
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Earlier this week, Apocalypse Party Press revealed Trevor Henderson's cover art for my new novel, I Believe in Mister Bones. Check it out:
Isn't it beautiful? Maybe my favorite cover for any of my own books ever. Hoping to get it blown up and framed as a poster soon. Here's a little bit more about the book:
The email’s subject line reads: DO YOU BELIEVE IN MISTER BONES?
The recipient: Daniel Addams, one half of the Texas small press known as Fiendish Books, co-run with his wife Eileen.
Despite being closed for submissions, curiosity gets the best of him and he takes a look at the anonymous author’s bizarre manuscript—only to find himself obsessed with the titular Mister Bones, a mysterious entity rumored to steal your bones as you sleep, one by one, until he’s replaced your entire skeleton with an unknown substance.
But is Mister Bones real, and has Daniel unintentionally summoned him?
Or, as Eileen suspects, has he finally cracked from stress and lost his mind?
From the writer of WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING and ABNORMAL STATISTICS comes Max Booth III’s I BELIEVE IN MISTER BONES, a harrowing exploration of indie horror publishing, internet curses, and the universal terror of the human skeleton.
Coming October 2024 from Apocalypse Party. No pre-order option yet, but stay tuned. Until then, feel free to add it to your TBR on Goodreads.
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On April 21st, I'll be tabling at the small press book fair at the Tulsa Lit Fest. If you're local, I hope to see you there.
Not sure I have too much else to share. We're pretty swamped running both the press and the bookstore. Going to be hosting a huge event on April 27th to celebrate Indie Bookstore Day and our retail shop's One-Year Anniversary (stay tuned for more details soon).
There have been new episodes with our podcasts MY HORROR CONFESSIONAL and DOG EARS but I've been slacking on creating new blog posts for them all. If you're subscribed, I'm sure you've already found them in your phone's podcatcher. If you're not subscribed, there is potentially no saving you.
On the writing front, I'm frantically trying to catch up on a couple projects--both prose. Not really doing much screenwriting right now. Movie world seems bleak at the moment. I have a few things written on spec we're trying to pitch, but I'm not holding my breath. Although, every time I see We Need to Do Something on Hulu's Popular Horror category, I start getting that itch again to bust out yet another screenplay. Ah fuck it. I'm gonna write another screenplay, aren't I?
My book agent's also shopping around my currently out-of-print werewolf novel Carnivorous Lunar Activities. Fingers crossed we get some luck there. I think it's one of my best books. Certainly one of my funniest. Really hope we can land it the home it deserves.
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Oh, yeah, one more update before I leave you (more of a life update, really), but anyway it turns out I am non-binary and going forward will now be using they/them pronouns.
I don't really want to get too much into it, but a few folks have asked already, so I'll just say that, essentially, over the last couple years I've had a very similar conversation with many people where I said something along the lines of, "If I'd known what being non-binary meant as a kid, I might have been a bit less nuts and sad all the time," but only recently did I tell someone that and it finally clicked and I had a sudden, "Oh shit, hold up," moment, and realized it was pretty silly of me to assume that just because I was no longer a kid that this opportunity had somehow passed me by, and in fact there was probably a pretty big, obvious reason I kept saying and thinking the same thing over and over.
Soooo, yeah.
Non-binary ghoul?
I like the sound of that just fine, thank you very much.
All right--see you next time, my spooky friends.