Oh, the Horror! March 14/15th.

Blame it on the Ides of March, or March Hare madness, or even a foolish whim... but some fellow horror writers and I are giving away FREE e-books to help prolong the chill in the air! We are keen to share our writing and want to reach new readers. I had a great response to my last Base Spirits giveaway, so I figured it would be fun to get together with a few other indie authors and spread the joy. Well... maybe 'joy' isn't really the right word for these truly terrifying titles on offer!

Remember: check the dates before you download. These are limited time offers, and we'd hate to disappoint you.

March 14th and 15th: Base Spirits is free on Kindle! 'In 1605, Sir Walter Calverley’s murderous rampage leaves a family shattered. The killer suffers a torturous execution… but is it truly the end? A noble Yorkshire house stands forever tarnished by blood and possessed by anguished spirits. Some crimes are so horrific, they reverberate through the centuries. As an unhappy modern couple vacation in the guesthouse at Calverley Old Hall, playwright Clara, and her scholar husband, Scott, unwittingly awaken a dark history. Clara is trapped and forced back in time to bear witness to a family’s bloody saga. Overtaken by the malevolent echoes, Scott is pushed over the edge from possessive husband to wholly possessed… Inspired by a true-life drama in Shakespeare’s day, this is itself a play within a play: a supernatural thriller with a historical core. Only one player can survive.'
Grab yours here: http://www.amazon.com/Base-Spirits-ebook/dp/B005L38G8E

But wait! There's much more...

Axel Howerton's Living Dead at Zigfreidt & Roy - A Vegas Zombiepocalypse is up for grabs. 'Blood and Coffee. Cowboys and Zombies. Welcome to the Last Diner at the End of the World. The coffee's hot and the ghoulish army of the undead isn't due for a few more minutes. Take a load off, fill your cup and listen to the last story of how the world ends. Not with a whimper, nor a cry, but with the roar of white tigers and the blazing neon of the Vegas strip.'
Find it here: http://www.amazon.com/Living-Dead-Zigfreidt-Roy-ebook/dp/B005V5QT04

Bryan Hall will offer up his short story collection Whispers From the Dark. 'What if your hometown hid a terrible secret? What if the vintage LP you brought home was more than just a record? What if your neighbor's pond held an evil only you knew about? What if your dying daughter's only hope lay in a strange shack deep within the Appalachian wilderness? This collection of fourteen short stories from the author of Containment Room Seven asks those questions and many more. You won't find vampires or zombies here - only pure, dark, unrelenting terror on every page.
Sounds spooky: http://www.amazon.com/Whispers-From-The-Dark-ebook/dp/B005Q339DQ

Last but never least, Robert S. Wilson is not to be be outdone! He is making all four of his titles free on March 15th! I'll link you to his Amazon Author Page for easy one-stop shopping. Here you can grab Shining in Crimson (Book One of his dystopian vampire series Empire of Blood), his novella The Quiet and two shorter works What Happens in Vegas and Born to Kill.
His page and books are here: http://www.amazon.com/Robert-S.-Wilson/e/B005EU57AY

We all hope you enjoy our books! I've found that Indie writers are a Tribe. We love to help each other out and promote one another's good work. There's no ulterior motive and no competition. After all, if you love to read, you'll want more than just one book, right? And when we can help point new readers to try out our fellow authors, everybody's a winner.

Enjoy, dear reader... and spread the word. And if you truly love our books, please let us know and also consider leaving a nice review on our respective Amazon pages. We'd love to hear from you and sincerely appreciate getting good reviews and ratings!

It's Not You-- It's Me.

As the launch of Base Spirits looms, I feel a need to address the portrayals of the two abusive husbands in my novel. Sir Walter Calverley is a creature of his time-- though I see enough sad tales in the news to know that such men do still exist. (As the original cover above says, it's 'not so new as lamentable and true'.) Happily for me, the monster in my book is in no way a version of any real person I've ever known. I did 'live' the part of Phillipa Calverley in the stage version of the central story, A Yorkshire Tragedy, and had to 'be' an abused wife who sees her children torn away. Thankfully, the only Sir Walter I've had to endure in my life has been a fellow actor's interpretation! All was forgiven in the pub after the curtain.

The other husband of note in Base Spirits is Professor Scott Atkinson.

Here's where real life has had some influence: my ex-husband is an English professor. At first I resisted the idea of writing Scott as one, but his character more-or-less presented himself to my Muse as a scholar, and it made good sense for the context of the narrative. The two of us actually did find and visit Calverley Old Hall during a trip for an academic conference, about the time I was in rehearsals for a Summerworks production of A Yorkshire Tragedy. In my book, there is a tension between the scholarly path and the writer's experience, but that is greatly exaggerated and not specific to my real-life interaction: I witness that eternal clash of cultures time and time again in my circles of theatrical pals and academic friends. I do NOT want to give the idea that Scott is supposed to 'be' my ex. I would hate anyone to think he was ever abusive to me. True, our marriage was not a success; but it was not in any way the violent train-wreck of the fictional Scott and Clara!

If anything, there are a couple of very positive attributes my Scott character has in common with my ex: they are both boyishly enthusiastic about the literature that they study, and both possess an uncanny knack for memorization. Other than that, my ex-- thank GOD-- is nothing like Scott! We both moved on a million years ago and I sincerely wish him nothing but joy in life.

The names for my contemporary main characters were derived from Calverley itself: there is a Clara Road in the village, and the original name of the resident noble family was 'Scot de Calverley', which was shortened over time.

Where do the explicit portrayals of such violent men come from? Essentially, I found them lurking deep inside myself. As my dear departed friend Timothy Findley used to say 'We are all of us a hiding place for monsters'.

And keeping with the Can-Lit quote theme... to paraphrase Margaret Atwood: 'Sometimes we just make things up'.

I've always likened writing to having a bag of material to sew into quilts. I am a scrap-gatherer collecting bits of 'fabric' from my reality: an angry, unblinking eye; the incessant jangle of keys in a pocket; the tilt of her head; the inflection in his voice... it all goes into my scrap bag. Bulging with images and gestures, turns of phrase and mannerisms, moments of shock and pleasure, the bag sits and waits for me to start the selection-- trimming and piecing, pinning squares together to sew into a crazy quilt. None of the patchwork makes sense on its own until it is part of a whole. The owners of the original fragments may not even recognize it as theirs, and for the most part that is for the best.