The Ghoulish Times | 12.23.24
Hello and welcome to the last Ghoulish Times of 2024. I am Max Booth and this is my free spooky newsletter. If you’re new here, there’s not much you really need to know. I write books and movies and also run Ghoulish Books with my partner Lori. Ghoulish is both a small press and bookstore located on the outskirts of San Antonio, TX. It’s just as cool as you might be imagining.
This will be the final newsletter sent out before the new year, so expect a lot of things scattered throughout with no real organized train of thought.
Thank you for being here. I love you.
APPROACHING DEADLINE: BEST TRANS HORROR OF THE YEAR
If you’d like to submit a reprint to our upcoming Best Trans Horror of the Year, Volume One anthology, the deadline is January 1st. More details HERE.
FREE SECRET MOVIE SCREENING AT GHOULISH BOOKS (PLUS, UPDATED HOLIDAY SCHEDULE!)
This Saturday (December 28th) we will host a free secret horror movie at our shop (9330 Corporate Drive, Suite 702, Selma, TX 78154). Pre-show begins at 7:30 and showtime hits at 8pm. If you’re not doing anything this weekend, and you’re local, please stop by and hang out! The movie we’re screening is great! But it’s also a secret…
Oh yeah, we have a bit of a wonky schedule for the rest of the year:
TUES, DEC 24 - CLOSED
WED, DEC 25 - CLOSED
THURS, DEC 26 - CLOSED
FRI, DEC 27 - 10-5
SAT, DEC 28 - 10-8
SUN, DEC 29 - CLOSED
MON, DEC 30 - CLOSED
TUES, DEC 31 - CLOSED
WED, JAN 01 - CLOSED
We will then reopen under normal business hours on Thursday, January 02, from 10-5.
Of course, our webstore is always open, and we will still be attempting to ship stuff out throughout the rest of December. Just please keep in mind that the postal service is currently insane right now and everything seems to be understandably delayed.
JEREMY C. SHIPP’S FAMILIAR
Our final book of 2024 is finally here, ghouls. Jeremy C. Shipp’s brand-new novelette, Familiar, is officially available to read as of today. The eBook can be purchased and downloaded right this very second. Paperbacks, however, might not ship until early January, depending when copies finally arrive (remind us to be better prepared if we ever want to publish a book during the month of December again, because holy crap what a nightmare everything is right now).
We should also mention all paperback orders from our website will come with a signed author sticker from Shipp themself, which can be secured HERE.
That paperback, by the way? We did something a little different this time. Due to its short length (it’s just a lil’ baby!), we opted to print it as a cute little pocket-sized book, at just 4×6. Here’s the full jacket art, courtesy of the forever-fabulous Betty Rocksteady:
In Jeremy C. Shipp’s FAMILIAR, two sisters hunt down killers and collect body parts, all the while complicating their lives with volatile magics, bizarre visions, and a mysterious mouth in the wall that may or may not be altogether trustworthy.
Purchase FAMILIAR through the Ghoulish Webstore | B&N | Amazon
Reviewers may consult BookSirens for available review copies.
GHOULISH TALES ISSUE #3 - IN THE FLESH!
We may not have received physical copies of Familiar yet, but we did finally get in copies of Ghoulish Tales Issue #3, and it’s a thing of beauty. Check these out:
Here’s the full Table of Contents:
Fiction
“Cutting a Mermaid in Half—The Magician’s Secret Revealed” by Joe Koch
“Red Carnage or Bust” by Xochilt Avila
“The Three Deaths of the Blue Moon Ripper” by Amanda Cecelia Lang
“My Werewolf in Bio” by TT Madden
“Remember to Forget Me” by Violet
“Swerve” by Perry Meester
“The Window at My Mother’s Back, the Door in My Belly” by A. W. Prihandita
“Revival Tour” by Alex Luceli JiménezNon-Fiction
“Goop by Goop: Interview with Charles Pieper” by Lor GislasonExcerpts
Haunted Hearts by Lucas Mangum
I Believe in Mister Bones by Max Booth III
Snag a copy directly from our webstore HERE, or from AMAZON or B&N.
2024 ROUNDUP, AND LOOKING AHEAD
And that concludes the books we planned to release in 2024. Here is a quick recap of them all, to refresh your memory:
Ghoulish Tales Issue #2
Bury Your Gays: An Anthology of Tragic Queer Horror edited by Sofia Ajram
Ghoulish Ghosts Presents... Roots Run Deep by J. Krawczyk & The 'Dillo by Max Booth III
The Day of the Door by Laurel Hightower
Give Unto Us by Justin Lutz
Pocketknife Kitty by Shannon Riley
Starlet by Danger Slater
The Flesh Inherent by Perry Meester
Haunted Hearts by Lucas Mangum
Decrepit Ritual by Valkyrie Loughcrewe
Ghoulish Tales Issue #3
Familiar by Jeremy C. Shipp
Quite a few, if you ask me. Maybe too many for a press of our size to responsibility handle, if you also ask me. To which I would have to say, hey, what are you, a cop? Please stop interrogating me. No more questions!!!
But hey—I won’t be upset if you decide to go buy some of these books! They’re all very good and worth your time! We have dedicated a lot of energy and money and time to putting them out for people to read and we’d love for you to give them a shot. You can find them at our physical retail shop in Selma, TX or on our webstore HERE or contact your local bookstore and ask them to stock some so you can buy them locally!
Next year won’t be quite as intense…is, um, a sentence I wish I could type. Unfortunately we simply have too many cool books to publish once again. What a curse! Here is what you can expect from Ghoulish Books in 2025:
A Feast of Putrid Delights by Valentina Rojas
The Best Trans Horror of the Year, Volume One
Say Uncle by Ryan C. Bradley
The Small Hours by Bob Pastorella
Witches in the Warren by Jessica McHugh
Issues with Authority by Nadia Bulkin
Mother-Eating by Jess Hagemann
Cosmic Dyke Patrol by Lor Gislason
You can pre-order most of these books right now exclusively through our webstore. Early next month (January) we will also open subscriptions to our entire 2025 lineup, as we’ve done the last two years. I just need to hurry up and decide if I want to go through the insanely stressful process of making it a Kickstarter (like we did in 2023) or simply sell it through the webstore (like we did in 2024).
Issue #4 of Ghoulish Tales will also release in the Spring. The ToC is already decided upon—I’m just in the process of editing the stories right now. There will also be a fifth issue sometime in the autumn, and we will open for submissions to that installment sometime in the summer, most likely.
Additionally, we’ve been in communications with Little Ghosts about potentially doing a new flipbook of our Ghoulish Ghosts imprint, so look out for a new volume to drop sometime in 2025.
Concerning my writing, I put out two books of my own in 2024. A novella and a novel. The novella, The ‘Dillo, was one half of the first Ghoulish Ghosts flipbook. It’s an absurd comedy about a man trying to hunt down an armadillo after his wife leaves him for another man. It’s a little bit Tom & Jerry, I guess. I think it’s a lot of fun, though. If you’re in the US, buy it HERE. If you’re in Canada, buy it HERE.
The novel, which dropped back in October through Apocalypse Party, is I Believe in Mister Bones, a beast of a book about indie horror publishing, body dysphoria, and internet curses. I think it’s maybe one of my best books, and I really hope to attract more readers for it in the new year. You can buy signed copies directly from my shop, otherwise snag a copy through B&N or Amazon.
If you happen to read it (or any of these books I’ve mentioned here today), please consider leaving a review on places like StoryGraph and Goodreads. It’s crazy how much it helps people discover new books.
I also had a few shorter works published this year. My short story “AITA for setting my dad’s trailer on fire?” was included in Why Didn’t You Just Leave? edited by Nadia Bulkin and Julia Rios. My story “Loud and Clear” was included in The Rack: Stories Inspired By Vintage Horror Paperbacks edited by Tom Deady. My story “3 Eggs” was included in a charity anthology titled Look at Our Holes: An Anthology of Voids & Orifices edited by Juan Valencia, which I believe comes out sometime later this week. And my poem “MAGA” was included in the just-released anthology Fumptruck: Open Letters, Essays, Fiction, Poetry, Artwork & Other Creations for & Inspired by the 47th President of the Divided States of America.
In 2025, I have a couple stories already announced. My story “Kids of the Black Hole” will be included in PUNK goes HORROR! edited by William Sterling, and my story “The Corpse Box” will be included in GabaGhoul: A Mafia Horror Anthology edited by Mark C. Scioneaux. Both of these stories tie together, in their own ways, and are involved in a new “mythos” I’ve started fucking around with that I’m excited about. Not really sure yet what I’m going to do with the mythos beyond these two stories, but I think it’s safe to say I’ll be touching upon some of the stuff introduced in them in other works sometime in the future.
I won’t have a new book of my own out in 2025, unless I decide to finally reprint a standalone edition of my novella Indiana Death Song (which can currently only be found in my collection Abnormal Statistics), or my agent sells the reprint rights for my out-of-print werewolf novel Carnivorous Lunar Activities. But even then, those wouldn’t be new or anything. I will have something new out in another language, however: the Spanish translation of Abnormal Statistics is due out October 2025 from La biblioteca de Carfax.
Writing wise, I’m focusing on finishing a vampire novel titled Let’s Go Kill Mom for my agent to start shopping around (soon, Becky, soon!). I am also contracted to turn in a stageplay adaptation of We Need to Do Something in the next month or so for a small theater in Austin, TX. Additionally, I’d like to knock out a spec screenplay for I Believe in Mister Bones to show producers. I’m also fooling around with a horror poetry collection tentatively titled Night Poems which I think could end up being pretty cool.
Truthfully, I haven’t done much writing at all lately. This newsletter is probably the longest thing I’ve written in weeks, if not months. Most of my time these days is spent editing, and still it doesn’t feel like I have enough time to even do that. In addition to editing Ghoulish projects, I’ve also started working as a copy-editor contractor for a tech site since bills have started piling up and there’s not been a lot of income on my end this year. Neither I nor Lori take a paycheck for the time we spend on Ghoulish. Anything we make from the small press or the bookstore just gets recycled back into the company to keep it going. Lori works full-time as a dance teacher and I uhhhh, I don’t know what I do anymore, haha. So, with that said…if you’re a writer or a publisher in need of an editor, I’m definitely available and interested in the work! Please ignore earlier in this paragraph where I complained about not having any time for anything anymore. I was lying!
Learn more about my rates here.
DECAYED TAPES - WINTERBEAST
Oh look, I podcasted again!
On the latest episode of DECAYED TAPES, we cracked open Vinegar Syndrome’s Homegrown Horrors Vol. 1 boxset and watched 1992’s WINTERBEAST, a movie that has nothing to do with winter. Come for the insane stop motion monsters, stay for the gratuitous porno mags. Or maybe come for those, too. It’s your decision.
Available on your favorite podcast apps. Or click HERE if you don’t know what that means.
MY MONSTERS
Here’s a fun little graphic I made about my monsters:
Okay, I think that’s it! That’s all I have to say until next year. Please consider joining us in March for the Ghoulish Book Festival!!!
—max