Donald J. Bingle

 October 2019 Newsletter

October is upon us and we all know that means really frightening stuff: Halloween! Ghosts! Goblins! Ghoulies! Dental Appointments! And, of course, the approach of winter, not to mention the premier of Supernatural, Season 15. Also, of course, a new bevy of promotions, most of these dedicated to all things scary and spooktacular.

 

Turn on a light to ward off the shadows and read on ... if you dare.

 

SCARING OURSELVES OUT OF FUN AND PROFIT

 

From October 2015, Written for the Horror Writers Association

 

Yep, I’m an old guy, so I remember going trick or treating back in the ‘60s (that’s a date, not a temperature) in a housing subdivision in Illinois. The subdivision was plenty big (all pre-fabricated houses; our family watched as ours was unloaded wall by wall from a truck and assembled one day), so the principal negotiation which occurred between us kids and our parents on Halloween was how many streets we could go up and down trick or treating.

 

The limiting factor in such negotiations wasn’t how far we could go from the house (we walked about a mile to elementary school and there were hundreds and hundreds of houses within that radius) or whether there were bad neighborhoods or bad people out there ready to snatch us up for their own sick purposes, but how much loot ... er, candy ... we were allowed to haul in and eat at our leisure (after trading with each other for our favorites).

 

At about twenty houses per side of the street per block, we always pressed for at least five blocks (200 houses!), while Mom and Dad preferred two or three. Mom and Dad, of course, won all such arguments, which explains why I was still skinny by the time I got to high school.

 

Of course, these days, the negotiations are completely different. Why is that?

 

Scary stories.

 

Parents get in trouble in some locales for letting their kids walk to and play in local parks on their own and every year at Halloween the local television news does stories about the wisdom of sending kids to Halloween parties at school or church, instead of trick or treating, because bad things can happen. The local hospital usually also gets into the act by offering to x-ray candy looking for needles and razor blades hidden in apples and candy bars. Somber newscasters recommend chucking all unwrapped treats and checking the wrappers of the rest for punctures or tampering.

 

The thing is, while bad things can happen and may start happening more than they have in the past at any time, there’s just not a solid historical record for all this hype. Yes, there have been stories of tampering on the news, but they generally turn out in retrospect to have involved diseases or poisoning from other sources, or even deliberate attempts to kill a specific kid and then escape blame by tampering with that kid’s sugary stash. Don’t believe me? Check out this debunking on Snopes.com: http://www.snopes.com/horrors/poison/halloween.asp.

 

That’s right. Horror stories about trick or treating have stolen fun from millions of kids and made them raid their own allowance to purchase candy on the sly, rather having sweets handed to them by their neighbors—the same neighbors that yell at them when they step on the lawn.

 

As members of the Horror Writers Association, you can only wish your horror stories have the same kind of impact on the world.

 

Aloha.

 

Donald J. Bingle

Writer on Demand TM

 
Story Collections
 

SCARY STORIES I'VE WRITTEN OR EDITED

 

From October 2019, Written for this very Newslettter

 

Yep, I'm even an older guy now, but when I was first writing, I didn't really think of myself as a horror writer. Oh, sure, I wrote some scary stories back when I was doing last-minute, fill-in work for DAW themed anthologies back in the day, but I kind of thought of them as one-off stories, outside of my main focus in science fiction.

 

But, somewhere along the way, I realized that many of my science fiction stories were scary and that my books (all thrillers of one stripe or another) were dark. And then Steve Saus referred to my "signature dark humor" in a review and I began to compile my old stories by genre for re-release in my Writer on Demand story collections and I realized about half of the stories could be characterized as horror. My first novel was apocalyptic is setting, my second a dark comedy, my co-authored book with Jean Rabe had supernatural creatures, and my novella about a writers' group had some over-the-top grisly violence in it.

 

By the time I edited Familiar Spirits, an anthology of ghost stories, I was a member of the Horror Writers Association. Heck, I even attended StokerCon this last summer. So, my words of wisdom for today are these: Be who you are. Write what you want. Don't pre-categorize or pigeon-hole yourself--the world will do enough of that whether you want it to or not. The world is a scary place and you are part of it. So, go ahead and be scary if you want. Some people even pay good money to be scared.

 

Speaking of which, William Pack, the magician and story-teller who commissioned the Familiar Spirits anthology, has put together a special show of the same name. Check it out here and take a look at a video about the show here. 

 

I'm also in the midst of a few marketing promotions with other authors. Most of them are for dark, scary, and supernatural things. Click through on the banners below to check them out.

 

OTHER EVENTS

 

I'll be giving a presentation on Clues, Reveals, and Red Herrings for the Windy City Romance Writers at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, October 12, in Room A at the Naperville Municipal Center, 400 S Eagle St, Naperville, IL 60540 in downtown Naperville. I'll be doing the same program at the Laupāhoehoe Library on the big Island of Hawaii from 6:00 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. On December 9, 2019. The address is 35-2065 Old Māmalahoa Hwy, Laupāhoehoe (call 808-962-2229 for details or directions). Both presentations are free and open to all writers and other members of the public with an interest. I hope to see some of you there.

 

Aloha.

 

Donald J. Bingle

Writer on Demand TM

 

 

 

 

 
Writing Resume'

BOOK REVIEW, Lizzie Borden: Zombie Hunter. Five Stars.

 

Historical horror fiction is a very difficult thing to pull off well. Stick too close to the actual details of the case and you are competing with true crime, which is in many ways a much more disturbing genre. On the other hand, if you push the fictional envelope too far you run the risk the tale will veer toward silliness and camp or come off as mere window-dressing for a purely fictional horror tale. Verstraete does a fine job of intertwining the historical details of the Lizzie Borden tale, broadening and deepening our understanding of what really happened, while placing it in a context which encompasses all of the grit and ghastly horror of classic zombie tropes. At the same time, she manages to capture the essence of the historical era with language choices, character motivations, and rich, descriptive flourishes that feel right for the period, without being so bound to historical rhetoric that the narrative loses the pace modern audiences need or becomes difficult to parse. I found the first half of the book especially compelling, as the narrower focus on Lizzie's situation, and the inquest and trial following, make the story a bit more intimate and ultimately more credible. While broad, even apocalyptic, horror can be truly frightening and credible, the broader a tale of historical horror goes, the more difficult for the author to maintain a level of terror at a subconscious level with believability. This means the author of large-scale historical horror must rely more upon ramping up the action, body count, and squick factor. Verstraete clearly understands this tension, heating up the action sequences as the trial ends and the story broadens. Ending was satisfactory, though it could have been a bit tighter and tied up a few more details, but an altogether good read. Sure, it's not War & Peace (of course, neither is Moby Dick), but if you are looking for a review of historical horror or zombie fiction, this hits all of the buttons you are looking for. Well-written, well-edited, well-researched, and well-constructed to deliver what those of you reading this review are probably looking for.

I'm currently participating in the following promotions. Sure, you may know my stuff (okay, maybe not all of it), but there is plenty of other stuff in here that looks cool, so check them all out.

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