The Ghoulish Times | 10.13.24
Hello and welcome to the latest issue of The Ghoulish Times. My name is Max Booth and this is my free spooky newsletter.
If you’re just joining us for the first time…here’s a quick recap: This newsletter is primarily intended to promote everything going on with Ghoulish Books—which is the small press & bookstore that I co-run with my partner Lori Booth. It also serves as an outlet to promote my own work as an author & (occasional) screenwriter, since the idea of maintaining two separate newsletters is so exhausting that it immediately makes me want to walk into traffic.
This is the first issue of The Ghoulish Times I’ve done in over a month. September was absolutely nuts. I attended Fantastic Fest in Austin and watched 14 feature films. I also co-organized an entire horror book market during the fest, which proved to be highly successful and a shit ton of fun. I’ll do a more in-depth recap of the event at the end of this newsletter, but first…we have lots of awesome Ghoulish Books stuff to share!
GHOULISH IN TEXAS MONTHLY
Richard Santos published a great piece over on Texas Monthly about three horror-themed bookstores in Central Texas, which generously included Ghoulish Books! I was thrilled to answer a couple questions for it, too. Read the article HERE.
DECREPIT RITUAL COVER REVEAL
Earlier this week we finally, at long last, revealed Chris Maxwell’s cover art for Valkyrie Loughcrewe's DECREPIT RITUAL:
DECREPIT RITUAL is a second-person narrative about a suicidal protagonist who has gone up into the wilds of Norway to take their own life. While there, they happen across a mysterious VHS tape that contains a bizarre film like nothing they’ve ever seen before.
“…a gore-soaked howl captured on decaying VHS, the cursed tape from The Ring by way of a psychedelic gut-stomping SOV horror flick. It’ll cave your skull in.”
—Trevor Henderson, creator of Siren Head
“…like a horror film remembered from a dream; characters at once familiar and alien, operating under the stomach-lurching logic of a nightmare. Proof, if ever it was needed, that Loughcrewe is one of the most exciting voices working in the genre today.”
—Saoirse Ní Chiaragáin, author of Wax & Wane
Look for this one to drop at the end of November. In the meantime, I encourage everybody to pre-order it directly from our GHOULISH WEBSTORE. Secure yourself a crazy awesome novella while also supporting a small business! You can’t lose.
LAST CALL FOR SIGNED HAUNTED HEARTS
October 20th is the cut-off date if you want a SIGNED & PERSONALIZED paperback of Lucas Mangum’s coming-of-age Halloween novella HAUNTED HEARTS.
Here’s a fun excerpt from a recent book review:
"Lucas Mangum is the Shudder of the horror community, he offers a wide variety of horror, thriller and supernatural fictional content…there’s always something good on." - Mike Rankin, Horror Bookworm Reviews
Read the full review HERE.
The official release date for HAUNTED HEARTS is October 29th, but we can’t guarantee a signed & personalized edition if you pre-order after the 20th. Personally I think it would be very funny if we made Lucas sign so many copies that his fingers literally broke and he was out of work for months. But only you can make that happen, by pre-ordering a copy and making all of your friends/enemies/neighbors pre-order a copy, too. LINK TO PRE-ORDER.
DID I JUST LIE?
That was probably a lie about this being the last call for signed HAUNTED HEARTS pre-orders. I’m sure I’ll email y’all again on the 20th. I know it can be annoying but also this is literally my job. None of this functions correctly if nobody’s buying books, right? So for that to work I simply must never shut up about them for the rest of my life.
Which reminds me…here’s another reminder about three other recent Ghoulish Books publications you might’ve missed!
THE FLESH INHERENT - PERRY MEESTER
On a hot summer night, something enormous screams down from the sky and pierces into the desert not far from the small town of Farchapel. The stories that trickle back from the crater are strange indeed—those who find it and return claim to be forever changed, transformed into the better, ideal versions of themselves they’ve always wished to achieve.
Jamie, recent mysterious visitor in town, is a man on the run, all too eager to escape his current form no matter the cost. Sidney, local drunk, would rather face a hole in the ground than the things he’s done. As the two men venture into the desert canyons in search of their better selves, they soon discover that what hides there is much more terrible—and eager to lure them in.
STARLET - DANGER SLATER
When an aspiring young actress accepts an invite to a fading A-lister’s home, she soon learns the terrifying secrets of the Hollywood Elite.
POCKETKNIFE KITTY - SHANNON RILEY
Jamie is a thirty-year-old banker wedged between grief and newfound freedom. Through a domino cascade beyond her control, she winds up stuck in her suffocating hometown. The monotony is broken swiftly when, following a night of spite-fueled impulse, Jamie soon begins to undergo a rapid and gruesome transformation. She finds herself teetering on the edge of her own sanity as she pieces together if rescue will ever come for her. And if not, what is she going to do about it?
Exploring themes of sexual empowerment, revenge, and loneliness, POCKETKNIFE KITTY asks the reader to explore exactly how far they’d go to save their own skin.
SUMMER’S LAST SCARE
To celebrate the end of summer, local horror writers gathered at Ghoulish Books on September 21st to perform live readings of their most terrifying material. If you missed it, do not fear. Thanks to Michael Louis Dixon, we now have a video recording of the entire event up on the Ghoulish YouTube channel. Watch it here:
Hosted by Max Booth III (me!), our line-up included: Ryan C. Bradley, Celso Hurtado, John Baltisberger, R.C. Hausen, Michael Louis Dixon, R.J. Joseph, and Leticia Urieta.
I have no explanation for why I started the event by immediately slapping a chair and throwing it across the room, but it certainly got everybody to quiet down and pay attention.
HAUNTED BONES
As for other events we have lined up at the bookstore…only one, really. I realize as a horror bookstore we should probably have planned a dozen different events throughout October, but to be perfectly honest? Lori and I are so goddamn burned out it’s not even funny. We are too tired to be properly spooky right now!
But we do have one legit spooky shindig lined up at our bookstore in Selma. On Saturday, October 26th, we’ll be hosting HAUNTED BONES: A Spooky Celebration of Halloween!
Book readings! Author signings! Costumes! Trick r treating! Free movie screening!
Come celebrate the publication of two new horror books by local Texas authors! Lucas Mangum (HAUNTED HEARTS) and Max Booth III (I BELIEVE IN MISTER BONES) will be performing live readings and then discussing their latest publications (audience q&a encouraged!), followed by a good ol' fashioned book signing. We will close out the night with a FREE, SECRET HORROR MOVIE SCREENING!
Show up in your Halloween costume to receive a handful of candy and 10% off your order (valid any time throughout the day)!
Our bookstore address is 9330 Corporate Drive, Suite 702, Selma, TX 78154. If you’re on Facebook, you can also RSVP via the event page.
HORROR SHOW SPOOKTACULAR Triple Feature
The other event I have lined up this month is actually in Houston, at the new, back-from-the-dead River Oaks Theatre.
On the night of Wednesday, October 30th…
Join the River Oaks Theatre for a pre-Halloween extravaganza as we screen three mystery horror films back-to-back-to-back on the big screen!
This suspense-filled spooktacular is curated by River Oaks Theatre's Artistic Director Rob Saucedo, Bloody-Disgusting's Meagan Navarro, and Texas author Max Booth III.
Three secret horror films, one unbelievably wild night as we count down the final hours until Halloween. This one will leave you seeing skeletons.
MAX BOOTH THE WRITER
A few cool things to plug on the “Max Booth Writer” side of things…
Over on Electric Literature, Brian Asman published an article about some of his favorite werewolf books, which included a shoutout to my own novel Carnivorous Lunar Activities:
Named after a quote from the 1981 classic An American Werewolf in London, Carnivorous Lunar Activities is an offbeat horror comedy perfect for fans of Kevin Smith movies. When Ted’s old friend Justin thinks he’s turning into a werewolf and wants Ted to kill him. Is Justin crazy? As the clock ticks closer to midnight, Ted’s going to have to make a decision. Filled with whip-smart dialogue, Carnivorous is a compelling story about the nature of friendships and how they wax and wane.
As I write this newsletter, Carnivorous Lunar Activities remains out of print. My agent, Becky LeJeune, is currently shopping it around to interested publishers for a potential reprint edition. Hit her up if you happen to be an editor and this book sounds like your kind of thing.
Also of note worth mentioning: I recently sold two new short stories that will see publication sometime in late 2024/early 2025.
“The Corpse Box” will be included in GabaGhoul: A Mafia Horror Anthology edited by Mark C. Scioneaux (October Nights Press) and “Kids of the Black Hole” will be included in HORROR goes PUNK! edited by William Sterling (Truborn Press).
Both of these stories share a mythos I’ve been cooking up about a weird, mysterious box. I don’t want to reveal anything more and would rather y’all just read the stories once they’re available. But I will say these won’t be the only two stories about this thing.
I would also be remiss if I didn’t recommend adding We Need to Do Something to your movie lineup for this year’s spooky season. For those new here, in addition to writing the source material novella, I also wrote the screenplay for the adaptation. Still very proud of this project!
It’s currently streaming on Hulu! There are also DVDs and Blu-Rays floating around the various places you can still buy those.
FANTASTIC FEST RECAP
If you don’t know what Fantastic Fest is, it’s essentially the largest genre film fest in the United States. 7 consecutive days of movies. I attended a good majority of those days, driving back and forth from San Antonio to Austin (about one hour each way), wasting a whole lot of gas money and productive hours to just totally OD on new genre films.
Except for Monday of the festival, which was a work activity. Because, for the second year in a row, Fantastic Fest has allowed us to organize a little horror book market inside the theater. It was honestly a total success. One of the better sales days most of us have ever had, and we are so very grateful for Fantastic Fest and everybody who showed up to buy books.
I also watched 14 feature films during the fest, and I will do a quick review of them below, in order of when viewed from first to last:
CLOUD
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s CURE is one of my favorite horror movies of all time, so of course I was delighted to start the fest off with his latest work. CLOUD is not horror, however. It’s more of an action movie, I guess? But only in the way Kurosawa could possibly imagine an action movie, if that makes any sense. By the end of it, I couldn’t help but realize this was Kurosawa’s attempt at a Coen Bros movie.
GHOST KILLER
Directed by Kensuke Sonomura and written by Yugo Sakamoto. The premise for this one is a lot of fun: a recently killed hitman possesses a college student and tries to convince her to help carry out his revenge. An astonishingly impressive lead performance from Akari Takaishi. Some very funny moments. It also drags and doesn’t do enough with the concept. Mostly a good time.
BRING THEM DOWN
Directed by Christopher Andrews and co-written by Andrews and Jonathan Hourigan. I will watch anything with either Christopher Abbott or Barry Keoghan in it and Bring Them Down happens to feature both of them, so it was no real surprise that I loved this thing. It’s doing a lot of things here we already saw in The Banshees of Inisherin but it’s still well worth your time. Really fucking good shit, honestly. HOWEVER: Avoid if you can’t handle animal violence on the screen. Because oooooh boy. It is rough haha.
DEAD TALENTS SOCIETY
Directed by John Hsu and co-written by Hsu and Kun-Lin Tsai. Easily one of my favorite films from the festival. Ghosts in the underworld compete as influencers over who can create the best scares. Imagine the intersection of Beetlejuice and Monsters Inc.
EBONY AND IVORY
This is the latest movie from Jim Hosking, who previously gifted us The Greasy Strangler and An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn. I had a fun time but recognize how extremely grating his movies can also be. Either you love his work or you despise everything he makes with the utmost intensity. Thankfully I’m a fan.
SATURDAY NIGHT
This was the first “Secret Screening” of the fest: Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night, which depicts the last 90 minutes leading up to the pilot episode of Saturday Night Live. Very hectic stuff. I don’t think it quite succeeds in what it’s trying to do here but I still had an enjoyable time. The best thing about this movie is the cast.
A DIFFERENT MAN
Written & directed by Aaron Schimberg. Coming soon from a24. Really enjoyed this one. A favorite from the fest. Shades of Barton Fink and Charlie Kaufman all over this thing.
THE APPRENTICE
Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong are both excellent in this but I was so fucking annoyed to be watching it. Bland and lifeless shit. Should have been 100% meaner. Caught this as a secret screening and I have no idea why this was chosen for a genre festival. Perplexing. Hated this.
AJ GOES TO THE DOG PARK
Written & directed by Toby Jones. I need a dozen more AJ GOES TO… sequels. Totally my kind of shit. Humor felt like a more innocent, optimistic John Swartzwelder. A movie with so much heart that I fell in love pretty much immediately.
MADS
Directed by David Moreau. This is a one-shot zombie movie that I instantly adored. Like if the Safdie Bros had made 28 Days Later. Highly recommended.
SUNSET SUPERMAN
Also known as Don’t Mess with Grandma - the latest movie from my friend Jason Krawczyk (of Little Ghosts Books). This movie is so goddamn funny. I was crying with laughter from start to finish, basically. Coming soon to Tubi. Do not miss this one.
SISTER MIDNIGHT
SEEK THIS ONE OUT THE MOMENT IT’S AVAILABLE! The debut genre film from Karan Kandhari. Sister Midnight was my #1 favorite movie of the festival. I don’t really know how to discuss this one without spoiling some fun surprises, so here’s the official description on Letterboxd: An arranged marriage in Mumbai: the husband is limp and spineless and, once the wife arrives in the marital hovel, she assumes a particularly crude form of misanthropy. Trapped in the hell of coupledom, Uma is transformed into a disturbing and ruthless figure, giving free rein to her own feral impulses.
STRANGE HARVEST: OCCULT MURDER IN THE INLAND EMPIRE
A really cool faux true crime documentary about a serial killer. Good stuff!
MR. CROCKET
My joke review on Letterboxd was just “I Saw the TV Glow for cis people” and, honestly, I don’t feel like wasting my time talking more about this movie. I mostly hated it. The only redeeming aspect was the art direction. Kind of a bummer to end the festival with, but what can ya do! Not all of them are gonna work for everybody and this one certainly did not work for me.
Oh yeah and at some point during the fest, one of the secret screenings included the first three episodes of The Creep Tapes, coming soon to Shudder. If you’re a fan of the first two Creep movies then you will love this show. TBH I think it works way better as short TV episodes compared to feature-length movies.
Shortly after Fantastic Fest I found myself sick with some mysterious illness and was out of commission for like a week, but I’ve since recovered.
BTW, I’m on Letterboxd and you can follow me HERE.
Okay, I hope like hell that was everything I wanted to include in this newsletter. Have a good weekend and stay spooky, ghouls…