D.M. Woon hosted a Goodreads giveaway for his novella in Great Britain. Now, we are hosting a giveaway in the USA and Canada.

Click below to enter the giveaway. These are print copies, so you will get the full benefit of the boss cover.

And, I must warn again: this giveaway is for people over 18 years of age. There's a lot of gore and perversion in the tales The Bastard Drunk shares.

Don't miss out! We're giving away three free copies of Strangely Funny 2 1/2 on Goodreads. Goodreads is a great place to visit anyway, so get over there. :)

Nightmare Noir is now available on Amazon in the Kindle store, and on Smashwords in other e-book formats.

In other news: the winner of the Goodreads Giveaway is Barbara in Florida. And no, we don't know her.  :)  We had 715 entries for the drawing, which is our highest total ever.

Our Goodreads giveaway for Nightmare Noir ends on April 30th! If you haven't entered yet, now is the time. If you'd like to learn more about Alex Azar and the creation of James S. Peckman, check out his interview on Patricia Abbott's blog.

Nightmare Noir is now available at Amazon. In celebration of this, we are giving away another free copy of the book to the first person who posts what famous album cover the cover art of the book was inspired by. 

Here's an excerpt from the book to tease you: 

I hate reading modern detective stories that relate everything that happens to the movies. Rarely does this crap ever mimic the atrocities that some call cinematic experiences; more like celluloid extortion. Vampires don’t look like models or teen heartthrobs, Frankenstein’s creation, who isn’t called Frankenstein, is not a brainless oaf but more articulate than most Ivy League graduates, and zombies don’t eat brains, they feed on the souls of the newly dead to delay their own decay. But damn it, once in a while Hollywood gets it right; werewolves killed by silver, check. And that damned Book of the dead, yeah it’s real, too.

We've drawn the two winners for the cover reveal giveaway. One is in NJ, the other is in IL. Thanks for visiting all those blogs!

Monday, there will be more giveaways to celebrate the book launch. In the meantime, the Goodreads giveaway is still going on. Drop by to register in the April 30th drawing!

Anna Taborska is a British filmmaker and horror writer. She has written and directed two short films (Ela and The Sin), two documentaries (My Uprising and A Fragment of Being) and a one-hour television drama (The Rain Has Stopped), which won two awards at the British Film Festival Los Angeles in 2009. Anna also worked on seventeen other films, and was involved in the making of two major BBC television series: Auschwitz: the Nazis and the Final Solution and World War Two behind Closed Doors – Stalin, the Nazis and the West. 

Anna’s short stories have appeared in various anthologies, including Best New Writing 2011, Best New Werewolf Tales Vol.1, The Best Horror of the Year Volume Four, The Best British Horror 2014 and Year’s Best Weird Fiction Volume One. Anna’s short story "Bagpuss" was an Eric Hoffer Award Honoree, and the screenplay adaptation of her story "Little Pig" was a finalist in the Shriekfest Film Festival Screenplay Competition, 2009. Anna’s debut short story collection, For Those who Dream Monsters, was released by Mortbury Press in 2013, with a novelette collection (working title Bloody Britain) to follow. 

When did you know you wanted to become a writer?
I come from a film-making background. The process of making a film is lengthy. It starts with writing a screenplay and, if funding is not forthcoming, often ends there – with an unproduced screenplay that only a handful of people ever read. While trying to find a producer for my film projects, I started writing horror short stories and, in November 2013, Mortbury Press (home of The Black Books of Horror) published eighteen of them in my first book, For Those who Dream Monsters. 
 
How did you pick the genre you write in?
The world is a cruel and terrifying place, and, if art is supposed to hold a mirror up to nature, then horror is the art form that does it best.

Plotter or pantser?
I’m a pantser aspiring to be a plotter. I usually know how my story will begin and end, but my characters often surprise me by doing and saying things that I wasn’t expecting. Usually when I write, I enter what I think of as “the zone”, where I lose time and the words seem to write themselves – that’s my favourite part of the writing experience (I can’t really call it a process, as I frequently don’t have much conscious control over it). I do realise that I need to get my act sorted, take control and start to plot, scheme and outline in a much more orderly fashion.

What do you enjoy reading?
I enjoy reading any type of horror – particularly short stories by my fellow writers. I love the horror classics too, including those by ladies of horror, such as Mary Shelley and Shirley Jackson.

Future plans
In terms of future plans, I am working on a screenplay based on a novelette which will hopefully be published next year in my new UK-based collection. The working title is Bloody Britain, but this might change.

Anna's contribution to Strangely Funny II, "Dirty Dybbuk", is one of the stories from  
For Those who Dream Monsters. It's the tale of a straight-laced Jewish girl who is possessed by a spirit with nymphomania. If you like it, check out the rest of the collection. For Those who Dream Monsters is available on Amazon and directly from Mortbury Press in the UK (where you can also view her trailer for it): http://mortburypress.webs.com/forthosewhodreammonsters.htm

You can view Anna’s full résumé here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1245940/, watch her films and book trailers here: http://www.youtube.com/annataborska and learn more about her short stories and screenplays here: http://annataborska.wix.com/horror .

When she reads a good story, my cohort at MAHLLC usually tells me that I should take a look at it. When she read "Bedroom Bureau", though, Gwen told me I should go ahead and send a contract. I did read it, of course, and I saw what she meant. Today, we interview its author, Gwendolyn Kiste.

How did you come up with the idea for your story in Strangely Funny II?
Just before writing “Bedroom Bureau”, I had watched “The Sentinel”, a 1970s film about a portal to hell. It’s an underrated horror classic, but it’s also very dark. I thought it might be fun to take a similar premise, but inject humor and levity—including a whole lot of silly bureaucracy—to demons arriving in the human realm. Evil spirits aren’t usually sporting passports and making appointments, so the absurdity of the concept appealed to me.

Plotter or pantser?
I’d like to say plotter all the way, but if I’m being completely honest, my writing incorporates a bit of both. Plotting does help to keep me focused, but I enjoy the spontaneity from just writing on the fly and seeing where it goes.
 
Which author do you most admire, and why?
Shirley Jackson. Her ability to perceive darkness in the mundane of everyday life was so astute and ahead of her time. Plus, her language and characters are so richly imagined. I return to “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” again and again just to visit the Blackwood estate. Though there’s nothing overtly supernatural at play, it’s the most darkly magical novel I’ve ever read. I want a best friend like Merricat (though I’d be careful never to take sugar in my tea). Also, if you look into Shirley Jackson’s life, she had to deal with a lot of adversity in her family’s hometown, including injustice not so dissimilar from the townspeople in “The Lottery”. It’s always inspiring to see writers transform their personal hardships into indelible stories. 

Which place that you haven’t visited would you most like to go?
Loch Ness. Although I doubt Nessie would make an appearance, it would be fun to have a picnic there and just watch. You never know! I could get an awesome blurry image!
 
Okay, so you're an author. What do you enjoy reading?
Twentieth century horror stories are my favorites. Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, and, of course, Shirley Jackson inspire me every single day. 

Thanks for talking with us!

With parents who married on Halloween and read her Bradbury stories long before she started kindergarten, Gwendolyn Kiste considers horror, fantasy, and all things strange to be her birthright. Her genre editorials appear regularly on sites such as Horror-Movies.ca and Micro-Shock, and she is the resident “weird wanderer” for the travel-centric Wanderlust and Lipstick. With a background in cinema and theatre, she has written and directed several feature-length and short horror films, and her plays have been produced as part of the Big Read, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts. An Ohio native, she currently resides in the wilds of Pennsylvania with her husband, Bill, and cat, McQueen.

Check out Gwendolyn's story for yourself in Strangely Funny II, plus twenty other hilarious stories! Strangely Funny II is now available in print and Kindle formats on Amazon, plus several other e-book formats on Smashwords! 

We're also giving away three copies on Goodreads - deadline is August 31st!

What would a book launch be without some giveaways? We're giving away three print copies of Strangely Funny II on Goodreads! Be sure to sign up before the 31st!

But wait, there's more! Right now, we're GIVING AWAY free e-copies of the original Strangely Funny on Smashwords! Go to our Facebook Page at:

https://www.facebook.com/MysteryAndHorrorLlc

to get the coupon code for your free copy!


Can life get any better? Okay, okay, if we had winning lottery numbers it might. But in the meantime, take a fun read instead!

We are pleased to announce that we have drawn the winners for the free copies of Ha-Ha! Horror. One will be sent to Germany, the other to Florida. Oddly enough, the Florida fan was drawn by Monstermatt. Go figure...

Both winners have been notified and Monstermatt has their addresses. Congratulations!

In other news: since we became listed at Duotrope, we've received a number of novel submissions. This is great, but we're also plowing through subs for three different open anthologies at the moment. So.... we will close for novel subs on April 30th, Walpurgisnacht. We want the time to give our current novel subs a decent lookover.

IF WE ASKED YOU TO SEND US A FULL, we still want it. If you've subbed but haven't heard back yet, you are in the queue. Doesn't that sound British of us?

DON'T STOP SENDING US SHORT STORIES. We especially need more subs for History and Horror, Oh My! and History and Mystery, Oh My! We only opened for those last month.

Got it? Thanks!