If you don’t have the stomach for bad reviews, then why on earth did you become, or even consider becoming, a writer? Why the hell are you fathoming such a misguided idea? Have you lost your beautiful mind? Do you know what you’re in for? Do you have any idea how mean people can be?

In the same way people are mystified when they get bitten by sharks after going into the ocean, aka where sharks live, some writers become blindsided by the inevitable bad feedback of their cherished, long suffered-over, great American novel – writers who thought, for whatever reason, that everyone in existence was going to love it. “Don’t these critics understand? This is my life’s work. My blood is in this novel. My sweat and heartache.“

No one neither knows that nor cares. And despite what you may think, most critics (or avid readers, at least) respect the art of writing, and don’t seek opportunities to tarnish your good name in publications, or on blogs, or the Amazon user review section. Unless they’re a connoisseur of the crappy, they’re not hoping your book sucks. After all, they had to dedicate their time to reading it, didn’t they? In some cases, they paid for it with their own hard-earned cash-money, right? So, what masochists are peeling back the cover of your book with a sick gleam in their eye and saying, “I can’t wait to hate this.” Very few of these people exist, and the ones who do have gone so severely wrong in their lives that hate-reading a book is the least of their problems.

A fancy little thingamajig called Google Alerts is configured to inform me once a week if there have been any new mentions of my books across the interspectrum. Links to these mentions are supplied to me via email, and after a deep breath, I click, and wait to see what reaction someone has had to my work. Sometimes it’s a great one. Other times…it’s not. And sometimes the not-great feedback waiting for me is vicious or beyond. Sometimes the vitriol spewed forth about my work reeks of such hostility that I start mentally auditing every day of the last year to determine if I’d accidentally aided and abetted a cuckold-like situation, or run down an elderly grandma during an afternoon drive, in an attempt to determine if this cuckolded or vroomed-over individual was related to the person currently lambasting me. Well, in the same way I’ve prepared myself for some readers and critics to hate my work, you better do the same; and you can start by realizing one thing: the hate train’s not going to stop. Ever. And that’s not (necessarily) because your book sucks, but because no one in the history of everything has ever written a book that’s since become universally loved. Not Dracula, Great Expectations, or Catcher in the Rye has enjoyed infallible praise. (Not even Gone Girl!) Think of any book you feel would be spared critical drubbings. Think of your all-time favorite book. Think of the book that touched you on the deepest level. Think of the book that made you realize you’re not at all happy and something in your life needs to change, or that you are happy, and have, at that moment, confronted and subjugated the barrier preventing you from embracing that happiness. Think of the book that saved your life. Think of the defining book that made you want to write. Now, realize someone you’ve never met, and probably never will, hates that book’s fucking guts. “Worst book ever!” they’ve already said about it on Goodreads – probably Frankenstein.

That’s the notion where you, as a writer, can take an odd bit of comfort: no matter how hard you work on your book, no matter how many years you spend poring over each of its words, no matter what emotionally devastating event occurred in your life while you were in the middle of writing Chapter 27, somewhere out there on Planet Earth, someone hates your book. They hate it to death. They hated it before you ever typed or scratched down the first word. They were going to hate your book no matter what you named your protagonist, if you opted for or avoided the split-personality twist ending, if you opened your prologue with lyrics from Bob Dylan instead of The Smiths. And this person may share their thoughts about your book in an eloquent and constructive manner, genuinely wanting to offer points of consideration for when the time comes for you to write the next one. Or, they may just corral their giggling friends around their Macbook’s microphone and laugh uproariously about the perceived stupidity of the work you believe so much in before uploading it to iTunes for free download – a chaotic, fever-dreamed, carnival-like gangbang of hate directed toward everything that means the world to you.

Like it or not, the internet has given everyone a voice. Blogs are free to open – even those that cater to destroying every literature-personified version of yourself, and right in front of your eyes. (Those blogs are super free.) Everyone has become a critic. The idea of book reviews only appearing in printed newspaper and magazine columns, leaving the every-day opinions of readers confined to the library meeting room or the water cooler or Aunt Sophie’s couch, is an archaic notion; something of the past, and very forgotten. Now Aunt Sophie’s got her own blog, and it’s called “Sophie’s Voice.” On it, Aunt Sophie’s going to rip your book to shreds because she bought it on a whim based on the front artwork of the girl in the pink flower dress in the arms of a strapping sailor, but didn’t stop to examine the cover long enough to realize that this sailor was actually wearing hospital scrubs from the asylum he just escaped and is cutting the girl’s head off. “Not what I expected at all!” Aunt Sophie has posted. “I give this book two tea mugs out of five!”

This rant of mine isn’t going to offer you a magical Evil Dead incantation on how to forever ward off negative reviews. There’s no scheme I can share that will enable you to avoid ever putting yourself in that line of fire. If you create, you will be criticized. That’s the only sure thing you will ever know in this world, besides the whole death and taxes thing. And I’m not going to fall back on the old adage of, “Those who can’t create, critique,” because that’s a bullshit fallback created by the artistically sensitive; a lazy straw-man defense that devalues the art of the critique in the first place, which, like it or not, is vital to the artistic movement. But this is what my takeaway message is in all this: once your book is published (and congratulations to you for making it that far) and the feedback starts rolling in, you’ll soon learn how to decipher the difference between a person who hated your book but who is offering valid, respectful, and candid insights on where you went wrong…and those other kinds of “critics” who randomly point their angry fingers at you and decide you’re next on their chopping block. These so-called critics will have the presumption to act like they’re an authority on you and profess to know what was going on in your head while you were writing the very book they’re currently tearing asunder. That’s not their right, nor their privilege. They can gleefully destroy your book all they want, which is their right, but once insults start getting thrown, and once the attacks start to become personal slights, during which blanket judgment starts being passed on you – the author, the person they’ve never met in their lives – that’s when you know you have to walk away from your computer, or phone, or coffee table, and not dedicate to it, as Johnny Cash said, any of your energy, time, or space. And if these reviews are worded in such a way to suggest the reviewer hopes the author stumbles across these thoughts one day, only so said author can experience the heights of humiliation and disillusionment these reviewers are striving toward, that’s when you’ll know the difference between critics who want to help, and armchair reviewers with “blogspot” in their URL who only want to exorcise their own demons and try to ruin your day. However, and unfortunately, that’s not to say their words aren’t going to hurt or offend any less just because their review venue doesn’t hold the same amount of prestige or pedigree as the New York Times. Because their words will hurt. No matter how removed from the process you try to remain, they’re going to hurt. Just always, always, always consider the source – and dear gosh, find something in the review to laugh at, because that’s the best writer’s therapy there is.

The critical process is just as valuable as the writing arts; in the same manner writers have a responsibility to put forth their very best effort before they ask readers for their hard-earned dollars, critics – professional or amateur – have a responsibility to provide honest, objective, non-biased feedback, negative or not, and leave all other prejudices at the door. Remember, reviews can be reviewed. Critiques can be criticized. In the same way a book or novella or short story can be dissected, and its merit quantified, the same thing can be done with reviews. Sometimes reviewers suck at reviewing in the same way they claim writers suck at writing. Sometimes reviewers are nothing more than assholes with an email address. It’s up to you – the struggling writer – to know the difference between a review written to help, and a review written to hurt. And you soon will. You just have to grow that thick skin first. Grow it and keep in mind: there are people out there – perfect strangers – who hope that you fail, and for no reason other than they have nothing better to do. And these people need to suck it.

The time has come again – for both the Collingswood Book Festival, and for me to re-use some of last year’s verbiage because I am lazy! Fellow Jerseyites, Philadelphians, and…people who live in Delaware: you should come visit the Collingswood Book Festival Saturday, 10/3, from 10-4. I will be there selling copies of The End of Summer, as well as The House on Creep Street, the book I co-authored with my writing partner and fellow chum, Chris Evangelista. Check out the festival website to learn more about it.

Book lovers of all ages: join us on Saturday, October 3, 2015 when festival-goers will have an opportunity to stroll more than six blocks of Haddon Avenue filled with authors/speakers for adults and children, as well as booksellers, storytellers, poetry readings, workshops, exhibitors, kid-friendly activities, and entertainment for all ages. This award-winning festival is the longest-running, largest literary event in the Delaware Valley. Remember, all events are free!

It’s September, which equals Halloween. To the real devotees, it’s August that actually equals Halloween, unless we’re being lenient toward the “normals.” But yeah, Halloween lasts 2-3 months a year. Didn’t you know that?

Like many other Halloween obsessees, I like to hoard relevant reading for this time of year. Whether it’s a brand new title or something I like to revisit every year or so, having something appropriate to read as the nights grow longer and darker is essential.

This is one of my absolute favorites:

Synopsis:
Halloween, 1963. They call him the October Boy, or Ol’ Hacksaw Face, or Sawtooth Jack. Whatever the name, everybody in this small Midwestern town knows who he is. How he rises from the cornfields every Halloween, a butcher knife in his hand, and makes his way toward town, where gangs of teenage boys eagerly await their chance to confront the legendary nightmare. Both the hunter and the hunted, the October Boy is the prize in an annual rite of life and death.

Pete McCormick knows that killing the October Boy is his one chance to escape a dead-end future in this one-horse town. He’s willing to risk everything, including his life, to be a winner for once. But before the night is over, Pete will look into the saw-toothed face of horror—and discover the terrifying true secret of the October Boy…

Dark Harvest, by Norman Partridge, is deceiving at first. The actual book itself is thin, numbering 170 pages, and at first glance appears to be a children’s novel. Not helping is the quite large typesetting and a line spacing that could be described as generous. I have nothing against material for younger readers, mind you – I still, after all, revisit those infamous Scary Stories books from time to time – it’s just that I was expecting something, on the surface, a bit more adult. I had no idea that what appeared to be a children’s novel was actually a novella geared toward somewhat older readers – that it would contain genuine fears and emotions shared among adolescent and adult characters alike. Dark Harvest may be a quick and breezy read, but in this case, there is no mistaking quality over quantity. And there are definitely themes at play here that are for adult eyes only: alcoholism, anger, sacrifice, abuse, bloodshed, cult worship, child death, and full-on murder.

I almost literally judged a book by its cover.

I really hate to use this analogy, considering Dark Harvest was released a full two years prior to Suzanne Collins’ juggernaut, but it very much is The Hunger Games meets Halloween – only Partridge is clever enough to tie the hunger inflicted upon these kids to the myths and traditions of Halloween itself. You see, young Pete and many of the nameless town’s kids have been locked inside their rooms for the five days leading up to Halloween and given nothing to eat. And then when October 31st finally comes calling, the kids are released into the night to hunt down the October Boy…an unnatural and resurrected figure brought to life by dark magic…and who is literally filled with candy, courtesy of the mysterious figure responsible for bringing him to life. It’s just an extra little incentive for the winner, but one that heightens the viciousness of the kids involved in the hunt. It truly is trick-or-treat at its most twisted and dangerous.

While the majority of your characters are kids, there is nothing lighthearted or even morbidly funny about what’s going down on Halloween night. These kids aren’t out for a gas – they have a very dangerous goal, and it’s literally winner-take-all. Kids drop, one by one, as bloody messes. They are cut in half by sawed-off shotguns or nearly run down by speeding trucks. And the few adults who should care about the well being of their town’s children – especially Officer Ricks, a representative of the law and member of the mysterious Harvester’s Guild – don’t. All they care about is making sure one of the kids is successful in dropping the October Boy, so that the following year will be prosperous for their small town.

Dark Harvest is exactly that: dark. It’s not afraid to get its hands dirty, and it’s not afraid to depict children as the murderous and dangerous beings we like to pretend they aren’t capable of being. Despite their young ages, they have very adult mindsets about their goal. And they’re not afraid to knock each other off in the process. As for our lead character, Pete McCormick, he wants to do what everyone else is trying to do: knock off the October Boy and reap the benefits. But he doesn’t want the luxury car and the big house and all the money and riches that allegedly come with such a prize. He wants to kill the October Boy and use it as a one-way ticket out of his town, where his mother has died, his father has become a drunk, and he’s been left all alone to care for his little sister. All he wants is to leave everything behind and start a new life.

Dark Harvest is at times very conversational, and at others maddeningly bleak and heart-achingly poetic. Partridge is an absolute master at personifying and literalizing regret, through either action or description. Recollections of one character, Dan Shepard, are extremely powerful as he looks back on his life and realizes there’s not much about it he doesn’t wish he could rescind:

Just because he can’t put a name to the furrows life carved in his hands doesn’t mean he can’t see where those ditches run. He knows well enough where they run. He even knows how those ditches were dug. Hell, sometimes he can almost see the shovels working. And tonight he hears those kids screaming in the streets, and he remembers what it was like to be sixteen… or seventeen… or eighteen, and run in their number. When he could believe the things that people told him, and he could chase after a dream until his heart pounded like it was ready to batter its way through his rib cage and take off on its own.

And that’s the way it was back then. For Dan and for all the guys he knew. You remember how it was, because you weren’t really any different. You could believe the things that people told you, too. Their words were gospel, and you trusted them. You believed because you were sixteen… or seventeen… or eighteen. You believed because your dreams had started running up against the Line like it was a brick wall that didn’t have a single crack. And you believed – most of all – because you had to. You needed to believe that someone could get out of this town, same way you needed to believe that that someone just might be you.

And:

You found a job. You filled up your days. And you filled up your nights, too. On one of them you found yourself with a girl who made you feel a little bit better about the way things were, and pretty soon you found yourself with that girl most every night. And a ring went on her finger, and the two of you carried around a couple of keys that matched the same front door, and at night you both found your way through it and closed that door behind you and, together, you waited for the morning to come.

(That last paragraph brings me to tears every time I read it.)

There are no sunny characters in Dark Harvest. Each person we meet is a tragic one. Each looks back on their life and sees nothing but darkness and sadness, and those that don’t can barely be considered human. Even Pete, with whom we are meant to sympathize (and we do), doesn’t see much hope for himself beyond successfully bringing down the October Boy. It’s his only way out. It’s his only way to escape the nothingness that has encapsulated his life.

Patridge uses Dark Harvest to honor Halloween, and to great effect. It recognizes that its roots are strange and often sanitized by Walmart ghost windsocks and grinning skeletons that are having just a blast being dead. And it certainly does a great job using Halloween as a backdrop for a more unsettling and scary realization: that once kids become old enough, they will set out to carve their own place in the world – that the turn-out of the world as we know it is up to them. Some parents will try to guide them as best as they can, and others will be ghosts and non-presences. And even those individuals that kids are raised to trust and respect won’t just be disappointing and disillusioning, but downright dangerous. This extends to every facet of life, from teachers, police officers, upper management, and even the president. Above all, the book preaches: If you make the right choices, you will be rewarded. If you let your desire for fame and fortune guide you, then you are doomed.

And it’s as simple as that.

Having read Dark Harvest again for this write-up, I’ve come to realize it’s one of my favorite books. Halloween is the hook to draw you in, but the meat of the story is regret. We’ve all done something in our past that fills us with nothing but regret – it’s probably the only thing we have in common as human beings – and Dark Harvest harnesses the power to effortlessly draw that regret out and make you see it could just as easily be you making the Run, trying to cross the Line, and dreaming of a better life after taking out the October Boy.

A Shadow of Autumn takes you back to childhood nostalgia while peeling away the mask to reveal things that haunt your worst nightmares. Within these pages, you’ll find the usual denizens of the holiday—demons, witches, ghosts, and bloodsuckers—along with strange and unknown creatures lurking everywhere from innocuous cornfields and pumpkin patches to basement hatches and high school dances.

These fourteen tales of fall magic and Halloween horrors will keep you looking over your shoulder long after the last light of October has waned.

Don’t say we didn’t warn you…

Table of Contents:
“Salt the Earth” by Gerri Leen
“The Halloween Girl of Coldsprings” by J. Tonzelli
“Hattie’s Ghosts” by Scarlett R. Algee
“Simon’s Cottage” by John Kiste
“The Hairy Man” by Julia Benally
“The Triple Dare” by Miracle Austin
“The Bones of Hillside” by Lee A. Forman
“On a Night like Devil’s Night” by Daniel Weaver
“The September Ceremony” by Gwendolyn Kiste
“Hall ‘O Ween Partie!” by Troy Blackford
“Old Temperanceville” by Mike Watt
“The Jorogumo’s Daughter” by K.Z. Morano
“The Twisted End of Vernon Boggs” by Brooke Warra
“The Balfour Witch” by Tawny Kipphorn

Buy A Shadow of Autumn on Kindle! (Other ebook formats and paperback version coming soon.)

Be sure to like the book’s Facebook page to stay up to date on all of the book’s happenings.

Click to enter. You need a (free) Goodreads account to do so.

“The Halloween Girl of Coldsprings,” my “non-fiction” story about the spirit of a young girl haunting her old town every Halloween, will be appearing in the upcoming anthology A Shadow of Autumn, due out this coming fall. I was asked to contribute a story from my collection, The End of Summer: Thirteen Tales of Halloween, and “The Halloween Girl” seemed like a safe bet, as that one seems to have struck a chord with readers. A very preliminary website for A Shadow of Autumn is already up, and content will be continuously added between now and the book’s launch. Also be sure to like the book’s Facebook page to stay up to date on all of the book’s happenings.

Roma Gray, fellow author, Halloween kindred spirit, and head mistress of the website “Trick or Treat Thrillers,” recently interviewed me about my books The End of Summer: Thirteen Tales of Halloween and The House on Creep Street. It was a jolly old time and I once again acted like I knew what I was talking about. We chat about the inspirations behind my writing, my horror obsession, and I also drop some advice for aspiring authors that allowed me to exercise some of my own demons (in a sense) while sounding completely full of myself. Don’t miss it! (Interview here.)

The lovely Gwendolyn Kiste, fellow author and blogger, recently included me in her blog’s Author Spotlight series, and asked me some questions about my books, my inspirations, and other such things. I drop a hint or two about future books, so be sure to check it out if you’re so inclined.

We’re two days from the big day, and I’ve received a pretty sweet Halloween present: some more kind words about The End of Summer, this time from one of the winners of the Goodreads Giveaway. The winner also writes for a blog, and they were gracious enough to share their thoughts with others in today’s blog post. Head over to Turtle’s Songs to check it out, and thanks to them for the very enthusiastic review!

Maybe it’s the magic of the October that’s already in full swing, or maybe it’s just taken a year for people to slowly start finding the book, but I couldn’t let it go unsaid that I truly appreciate each and every person who has contacted me via this website to let me know that they read The End of Summer and absolutely loved it. I’m not even talking about the Amazon reviews that (so far) have been pretty positive, but those who actually took time to reach out to me personally and let me know what they thought. One reader in particular wanted me to know that I had a “new fan all the way over in Germany,” which is just so cool that I don’t even know how to respond, other than offer my absolute and genuine thanks.

Halloween-specific fiction simply doesn’t appeal to the masses, but the masses were never the intended audience, anyway – the audience were those weirdos out there who love October 31 as much as I do.  So far, I seem to be finding some of those people, and when I do, the mutual appreciation we find feels really, really good.

With that said, please enjoy this really awesome (and legitimate) image released by NASA this week that was taken by a satellite and shows an unusual amount of heat activity on the surface of the sun, giving it the appearance of our favorite smiling gourd.