Special guest for Hudgens Talk

How to be a writer and other things I can teach you in a pandemic

**Update: Due to the hurricane, this is being rescheduled. I'll post the new date when I know it.**

OK, it's really just the one thing.

I am super excited that I have been invited to be on Hudgens Talk, a forum offered by the local arts center. I'm going to be talking about my experiences as a writer, both as a journalist and a columnist but also about what I've learned in my first-time foray into the world of independent authorship.

It will, of course, be virtual. (Thanks a lot, COVID-19.)

So tune in at 5 p.m. Thursday via Facebook Live on the Hudgens Center page. I think I'm on for a whole hour, so if you've been thinking to yourself, "Self, I don't have enough Nate McCullough in my life," then here's your chance to fix that.

That's 5 p.m. Thursday. Be there!

www.facebook.com/hudgenscenter

Southern Nightmares

 I gave people nightmares!

It was a while back. I should've posted this a long time ago. It's been on the internet for a while, but maybe it's new to you. Maybe.

Anyway, here is the video of the Southern Nightmares Reading Series from the Atlanta chapter of the Horror Writers Association. It includes readings by me, Jeff Strand, Lisa Kroger, Jessica Ann York and Andy Davidson. Enjoy!  

Let me read you a story!

At 8 p.m., Aug. 27, 2020, you can hear me read from Drag You Down via the Horror Writers Association Atlanta chapter's Southern Nightmares reading series. This new online event has already hosted readings by multiple Bram Stoker nominee Peter Adam Salomon, soon-to-be-debut novelist Jessica Nettles, wildly popular Zombie Road series writer David Simpson and Bram Stoker Award-winning poet Linda Addison among many other talented writers. This Thursday's lineup includes:

Multiple Bram Stoker Award nominee and Splatterpunk Award winner Jeff Strand

Bram Stoker Award nominee Andy Davidson

Bram Stoker Award winner Lisa Kroger

Up-and-coming writer Jessica York

and me! (That's a lot of serious talent. I think maybe they put me in the wrong pile?)

Anyway, tune in via Facebook/Zoom and get some stories poured in your earholes.

(And by the way, doesn't HWA Atlanta have the most awesome cover photo/logo ever? It's by the uber-talented Lynne Hansen, who did the cover for Drag You Down.)

Book of the month. The. Worst. Month. Ever.

So... Anything going on?

Man, has the world changed in the approximately 10,000 years that have passed since I last posted back in February. Right after a convention. Remember those?

So let's get the pandemic out of the way.

I work for a newspaper. (And hopefully will continue to, even if it is for less money.) Busiest I've ever been. Up to my eyeballs in pandemic all the time. Sick of talking about it. Probably why it's hard for me to even type full sentences about it at this point. So I'll just say this: The effect on writing and book marketing has been massive. As in I've done almost none of either.

But I have done a few things. So here they are:

In the Panic Room

I was a guest on Panic Room Radio in March. One of the highlights of my year so far. We talked about writing, coronavirus (of course), some of the people who've helped me (like Lynne Hansen, who was also on Panic Room recently, and Jeff Strand, who they'll probably soon rename the show after), and I read an excerpt from Drag You Down. It was great fun and over way too soon. James Longmore and Xtina Marie are awesome (love that Xtina and her poetry), and they promised to have me back. I was on with Matthew Quinn. He's on first at about the 30-minute mark and I'm at about the hour mark. Listen to their show and go like their Facebook page.

HWA-Atlanta Book of the Month

I am a member of the Horror Writers Association Atlanta chapter. Joining is one of the best things I've ever done. So many great supportive people. (A bunch of us even watched the Bram Stoker Awards together recently, via Zoom, of course.) Each month, the chapter chooses a book by a member to promote and April is my month. Nothing like having the economy crash and burn when you're trying to get people to spend disposable income. But I'm still very proud it was the HWA book for April, and if you'd like to purchase it or suggest it to a friend, I'd be grateful.

A brief, nonjoking detour:

I'm one of those people who makes jokes to keep from crying. Most journalists, like cops and firefighters and hospital workers, are highly adept at gallows humor. I can't scrub all the bad shit I've seen from my brain. So the tone of this post might say Nate is being a snarky jerk. But I assure you, I've been sounding the danger bell for this nightmare pandemic for months now. I know A LOT of people who've lost their jobs. And we've now lost more people to COVID-19 than died in Vietnam. So when I say I'd be grateful if you bought my book, I would be, but truthfully, I don't care. I'm grateful that I'm relatively healthy, coronavirus-free (so far anyway), still employed (so far anyway) and the people I know who've contracted the virus seem to be getting better. And I hope you and your loved ones are healthy, safe and employed, and if not, I sincerely hope that situation improves soon.)

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Scream magazine

Speaking of crashing and burning, allegedly there will be a full-page ad for Drag You Down in the April issue of Scream. It was originally supposed to go on news stands internationally, but now, because of the pandemic, it's only going to subscribers. It was supposed to ship April 25. I've yet to see the magazine. But this is what the ad looks like:

If it's possible, I love the art by the aforementioned Lynne Hansen more than the words I put inside.

Speaking of ads...

There were also promos for Drag You Down on Episodes 9 and 10 of Make Me Read Your Book podcast, which quickly became one of my favorite podcasts. (Those two episodes feature Mary SanGiovanni and James A. Moore, by the way.) Katie Southard, who produces it, said she'd like to have me as a guest one day. You know, when the apocalypse is over and people can be around each other again and whatnot. Also, her husband Wesley has written some pretty cool stuff.

Pandemic Tradin' Post

If we ever have a true apocalypse, my skill, apparently, is obtaining reading material. So, you know, consider that when you're deciding who to invite into your bunker. So far, some of my favorite book mail has been from Matt Wildasin:



And this autographed morsel from Kenzie Jennings:

Get it? Morsel? A cannibal novel? 

Thank God I'm at least entertaining to me.

Anyway, I've yet to meet either of these people in person, but I hope to one day (Is the pandemic over yet?) And Matt promises to sign his for me whenever our paths cross.

Matt also has a podcast, called Grindcast, and he helps out with this one you might've heard of. Kenzie was on an episode, and so was my friend Sheri Sebastian-Gabriel, on this one.

Upcoming

Who knows? It's hard to say these days. I have been talking to people about signing books and a speaking event (which might end up being virtual now) at two different arts centers. But again, who knows? This fall I'm planning to attend Monsterama and Multiverse, assuming those happen, of course.

Beyond that, there is a novel that is almost finished. One day soon I will work on it again. Stay tuned.

A scream queen takes my book home, Women in Horror Month, and I'm with the band

I recently spent the weekend at Days of the Dead in Atlanta, selling books and people watching. I'm sure I did some other stuff, but honestly, after Felissa Rose of Sleepaway Camp said about my book, "This sounds like it would make a great movie," I kind of spaced out and forgot everything else. But since the point of this is to share news, I'll try to remember.

But first the Felissa story:

If you've never met Felissa Rose, do yourself a favor and fix that. She is a delightful person who really likes the horror community and treats her fans like gold.

 I first met her a few years ago. Last year, we took a photo together that I really liked (above), so when I saw her at Days of the Dead this year, I decided to print it out and get her to autograph it. Sunday afternoon was kind of slow at the book booth, so I headed over.

Enter the Super-Fan. No, not me. The guy in front of me.

You know the type. He was getting her to autograph everything he owned, Facetime his buddies, record his outgoing voice mail announcement, telling her his hopes and dreams, etc. Well, thank God, because that led me to talking with her assistant, which led to her asking what I was doing at the convention, which led to "I'm an author here selling books," which led to "What's your book about?" which led to "That sounds like something I would love to read," which eventually led to "Hey, Felissa, doesn't this sound like it would make a great movie?"

I'll spare you all of the minute details of the encounter (and believe me, they're all burned into my longterm memory forever), but this conversation led to Felissa reading the back cover, looking up at me and saying, "This sounds like it would make a great movie," and then at the same time we both said, "And I (you) could play Libby."

Now to be perfectly up front and honest, I don't know if Felissa has read my book, so I don't know if she liked it. But we did have a nice conversation, she asked if we could get a new picture (up at the top) and she even asked how to get in touch with me after she read it. And her assistant found me at the end of the day specifically to tell me that Felissa took the book with her on the plane. So if nothing more ever comes from it, I've at least got that story. Autographing a book for a scream queen and having her ask to get a picture with me is an experience from which my heart still hasn't recovered.

OK. Heart palpitations aside, let's get on with the rest.

I had a blast at Days of the Dead. I sold some books:

Some people bought them and signed up for my email list:

Frank Reddy, who blurbed my book, came out and bought one (by the way, I just started reading his latest manuscript, and man that guy can write. Buy his first book here.):

And I made some new friends, including this guy:

Eric is an actor and film maker with Wages of Cine. He made a great short film. And he's also the first person I ever met who understands like I do what it's like to have something in your head trying to kill you. (I'm a brain tumor survivor, and Eric is fighting cancer.) The Felissa story is awesome, but this guy was the real highlight of my convention.

Women in Horror Month

I mean this in all sincerity: Women are writing most of the best horror fiction right now.

I've been trying to spread the word. If you'd like to read my reviews and interviews with some of the best female authors, visit the Ginger Nuts of Horror, the UK's largest independent review site, and of which I am a staff member.

Review: Doll Crimes by Karen Runge
Sheri Sebastian-Gabriel Cracks Open the Spirits
Review: Reception by Kenzie Jennings

Five-star reviews

Drag You Down is getting them. And that makes me very happy:

"Wow!! I was halfway through before I knew it. I just couldn’t put it down."

"Creative, well-crafted story telling."

"Masterfully written, dark and refreshingly daring. Mr. McCullough obviously has a firm grasp on the discipline, the medium and his audience, and he most certainly has a very bright future ahead of him."

Don't you want to see what all the hype is about?

I'm with the band

There's a band I know
Called Roshambeaux
And they rock
Twitch, twitch

OK, you have to sing that to the tune of The Bedrock Twitch from the Flintstones for it to make sense.

Anyway, I've seen this band several times, most recently on Valentine's Day. They're great guys who make highly original music with a killer groove, and I seriously don't understand how they don't have a big recording contract and millions of dollars. (And J. is a horror fan; note the Night of the Living Dead T-shirt.) They were even nice enough to give me a really cool shoutout on their blog recently, so go buy their music, and see them live! (One day I'm going to talk them into letting me up there to play guitar with them. Maybe?)

That's all for now. Up next: I try not to make a fool out of myself on the radio.

Nate

Come see me at Days of the Dead

I have attended nearly every Days of the Dead convention in Atlanta since its inception. (I think I missed one.) It's one of my favorites, and I always go as a fan to add to the autograph, movie poster and horror movie collection. (Like any of those need additions at this point.)

But this year I will be there selling and signing my book, Drag You Down. (Maybe one day I'll be famous enough to be a convention guest. Hey, I can dream.)

But anyway, there is a strong guest list this year, as indicated by one Matt Hooper aka Richard Dreyfuss in the pic above from my favorite movie of ever and ever, Jaws. John Cusack, Ricou Browning (the last living Universal Monster, he played the Creature of the Black Lagoon) Linda Blair -- there are a ton of cool guests this year. It's a lot of fun and you should totally come to the Sheraton in Atlanta and see all those folks. (And me, of course.)

I'll be at a table with Matthew Quinn, who has two new books out this year, Little People, Big Guns and his latest, Battle for the Wastelands.

So stop by and say hi. There will be books to buy. (See what I did there with the rhyming?)

Hope to see you there.

Tickets

Sometimes you feel like a Nut

I'm very excited to announce that I have joined the staff of the Ginger Nuts of Horror, one of the finest horror review and interview sites based in the UK. 

Ginger Nuts reviews books and movies, posts interviews and guest pieces and generally waves the flag for the horror community. They've graciously allowed me to share my opinions on the site, and I'm excited about doing so.

My first review is of Doll Crimes by Karen Runge and will be live on the site sometime in the near future. In the meantime, you can read my bio and introductory article, and please check out the site and maybe donate to the Patreon. Let's get nutty for horror!

I Wrote A Book!

My new novella/short story collection, Drag You Down, is now available from Amazon in eBook and paperback formats.

I've had a long career as a journalist, and now I'm making my foray into the world of fiction. After much consultation with others in the horror genre, which, duh, is my chosen one, at least to start, I have decided to take a two-pronged, or hybrid approach to my attempt to become an author. Hybrid seems to be the path most writers take these days. That means they both self-publish and publish traditionally. Since the former is a lot more accessible than the latter, it seemed logical to start there.

The namesake story is about a man who dies but is resurrected by his vindictive wife, a woman who enjoyed making him miserable and who also happens to be an actual witch. He escapes and wanders into his old hangout, where his bar buddies attempt to help him escape while trying to figure out what to do with a guy who is supposed to be getting buried the next day. Originally titled Dead Guy Walks Into a Bar, I changed it to its current title on the advice of the cover artist, the wonderfully talented Lynne Hansen, who is not only one of the top horror cover artists in the business, but has quickly become a friend and dare I say mentor. (More on her in future posts, I'm sure.) It's part horror tale, part buddy story and contains some stuff I hope scares the crap out of you while occasionally making you laugh. It's already gotten its first five-star review, which is pretty awesome.

The other stories include The Gospel According to Pizza Face, which is a story I thought for sure had found a home in an anthology, but sadly, it had not. It's about a small-town preacher who runs up against his old high school bully. I wrote it at the suggestion of author Frank Reddy. I posted a photo online that I took of a pizza box sitting on the side of the road with a Bible on top of it. He texted "Writing prompt," and off I went. I wrote this story well before Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing put out its submission call for Tales from the Crust, an anthology of pizza horror. When they did, I thought, "Serendipity! I wrote a horror story that has to do with pizza, they need horror stories about pizza ... slam dunk!"

Unfortunately, it just banged off the rim. I'm guessing because the story does not revolve around pizza and maybe they wanted lots of pizza in their pizza horror. I don't know. But I do know this: After that book came out, publishers everywhere started putting notes on their submission guidelines that they absolutely do not want pizza stories. Both believing it to be a really good story (and I really think it is) and figuring I wouldn't be able to sell it for probably 10 years, I decided to add it to this collection.

The rest include:

• Billyboy - a story about murder and the deep, dark woods that ends in a Tales from the Crypt sort of way.
• Sitting Up With the Dead - set during the Great Depression, a young boy who is an outsider in his own home finds out things he didn't want to know about his father, his dead uncle, magic and more with his introduction to the old Southern tradition.
• Special Delivery - a speculative crime story in which a degenerate gambler thinks he has figured out how to rid himself of the loan shark to whom he is in perpetual debt, but things don't go the way he expected.
• I Can If I Want - a story I wrote for a contest, the winner of which would be included in the collection I Can Taste the Blood, the brainchild of one of my favorite authors, John FD Taff. The story appeared on the Grey Matter Press website (which I will link in the future; they got hacked last year and have had some serious web trouble since then, which is a shame because they are a stellar small press run by a standup guy). Appearing on the website makes it published, and therefore only eligible in the future for use as a reprint. It's a flash fiction piece about suicide, and people who've read it seem quite impressed, using words like "haunting" to describe. I'm pretty proud of it, too.
• The Party Out of Space - an extremely short flash fiction piece that originally appeared in the Mini Anthology from Alban Lake Publishing. Each author in the anthology was limited to 200 words to give their take on the same watercolor painting. (I saw Cthulhu in a clown suit, and I used the full 200 words, which I think makes mine the longest story in the book.) The anthology contains work by at least two Bram Stoker Award nominated writers, and it's only $3. Quite the bargain. It's also basically a chapbook because the stories are so short.

The next book I'm planning to finish is a full-length novel called Murder Gods. It's nearly done, and that I plan to agent/publisher shop, and hopefully hit the other, traditionally published prong of this deal.

That's it for now. Other things are happening, so more posts soon.

Horror Parade: Resurrection

via GIPHY

Five years ago, I had the bright idea to repurpose/rebrand this blog from Fright Film Spectacular -- a place where I just talked about horror movies, mainly during October -- to an all-encompassing horror news website called Horror Parade.

That did not work out.

I won't bore anyone with all the details of the past half decade. I'll just say: Life, huh? Ain't it fun sometimes?

Anyway, it's time to get back to the business of horror. A lot has happened in five years, and there is no point trying to rehash and catch up. There is also no point trying to compete with some of the other horror news websites which are already well established and do what they do just fine.

So. This will still be Horror Parade. It will still cover a broad array of subjects in the horror genre when I feel like it. But it will remain a blog, and dreams of becoming the Google of horror will just stay that. For now anyway.

But it will be more focused on my aspirations/budding career as a fiction writer and editor. In fact, in addition to occasional musings about movies and such, look for a heavier emphasis on the world of horror fiction and (hopefully) my place in it.

Things are happening. Just not in the way I intended. (Do they ever?)

Horror Parade has once again been resurrected. Like most things in horror, it refused to stay dead.

Let's see how long I can keep it undead this time.

Stay tuned.