DID YOU GET TO SEE GABBY LIVE YESTERDAY? THEN DRUM FOR THE DEAD TODAY:

Looking for a terrifying horror read to get you through the weekend?

Check out the DRUMMING FOR THE DEAD series by Gabby Gilliam!

CHECK OUT SOME OF THESE REVIEWS:

Just like vampires cannot live without blood and a place to lay-low during the day, authors cannot live without reviews on Amazon. So read the books and give Gabby those five stars you know she deserves!

You can get both books in the series right now for less than the price of a Starbucks, or a McDonald’s anything, and have great horror for your whole weekend. It’s too freaking hot to go out anyway. Stay inside and read something scary!

Leave Gabby a review, and I’ll send you a PDF of the Gravelight book of your choice!

A hot weekend full of zombies. In the words of Walter Sobchak, “If you will it, it is no dream.”

Get your copy today!

And make sure to follow Gabby for more books!

INSTANT NOODLES UPDATE

DID YOU KNOW….

Instant Noodles has its own website now? https://instantnoodleslitmag.com

DID YOU KNOW…

Old Scratch Press is curating the December issue?

“Please take note, we’re shortening our word count. Can you take the challenge and keep it brief by making every word count? For our Winter issue we’re asking our writers to limit their poetry submissions to 2 poems (up to a combined total of 500 words). Prose writers, we’ll be only publishing work that is 500 words or less. (If you need to finish a sentence, we’ll cut you a little slack).  Guest Editors for the Winter issue include: GABBY GILLIAM: Poetry, R.DAVID FULCHER: Fiction, ALAN BERN and DIANNE PEARCE: Art, and NADJA MARIL: Memoir/Creative Nonfiction.”

WHO ARE OLD SCRATCH PRESS?

In January I emailed a bunch of poets who had allowed me to publish their poetry, and asked them if they would be interesting in forming a poetry collective, a thing where we could work together to promote and sell poetry, so that DPP could afford to publish poetry. MOST poetry chapbooks are published either by contests, or universities with large budgets, so that it doesn’t matter if the book sells or not. DPP can’t survive unless we sell books, so we had to find a different way to crack the nut.

I asked a lot of people who had writing I loved if they’d like to do something like that, and some of them decided to give it a try!

WHY did I choose them, instead of just putting out a call? Dave and I are a family (with our daughter), and so we tend to run DPP like a family business, and we like to offer any opportunities we have to people we already work with first, before we go find new people. That doesn’t mean we don’t want to find new people; it just means that once we publish you we try to promote you as much as possible. We would not have anything to publish without our authors, and we appreciate them.

If you’re interested in the folks who decided to roll the dice with us, visit their “about us” page.

You’ll find they’re great people, and great authors.

HAVE YOU READ WALDENLAND?

Copy of the page showing the start of Ben Talbot's short story. The image shows the first paragraph of Ben's story, and the Instant Noodles' header.

“I had the balls to ask my father what happened to my mother.”

What a way to start a story!

Ben Talbot is not new to writing, but he is new to sharing his writing. I think you’ll really enjoy Ben’s style of writing, and I am betting we’re going to see a lot more of his writing.

Take a read of Waldenland and let us know what you think.

ARE YOU AN AUTHOR? GOT A RECOMMENDATION FOR US?

Screenshot of the cover of Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury..Shows a small boy against a yellow background.

Ray Bradbury was a talented author, and, in many ways, my introduction into a genre called sci fi. In the 1970s sci fi felt like a new thing, but I think it has always been with humans, even from the time when stories were scratched into cave walls.

DANDELION WINE was one of my favorites. I remember how much I wanted to try to make wine from dandelions, which I had a long-standing love for, and still do. I remember how hot it was in this book, and in the 1970s, people with blue-collar parents, like me, didn’t have air conditioning. We had one huge window unit in the dining room of our twin brick house in Ridley Park, and my brother and I used to rush to sit directly in front of it, even though it meant being smushed up against the wall, and, really, too cold, as the air came out with frosty blasts, but in the summer heat in a tiny twin brick house, on a tiny nowhere street, icy was better than hot.

In DANDELION WINE it is the summer the main character, a young pre-teen fellow named Douglas, comes to realize that he is mortal, and that the time will come when summer won’t mean long days with nothing to do. It’s a book that is bittersweet, as Douglas learns that a time of year, a glorious season like summer, can be both lovely and sad, and real danger can be hiding around the corner, and that life is truly unpredictable, but also always ends the same way.

This would be on my summer sci fi reading list. What’s on yours?

Are you an author?

Would you like to do a guest post to tell us what’s on your summer reading list?

Pick a book and wax rhapsodic in 500 words or less, and, if selected, we’ll publish your piece, with links to your website, and your book(s). Let’s promote other indie authors and great books together!

Send your piece to: publisher@devilspartypress.com

AWAY WE GO!

I had the absolute pleasure this past week to mail off several packages:

And they were BREAK IN THE FIELD and ECHOES FROM THE HOCKER HOUSE heading out to five different judges each, to be contestants in the National Book Awards.

Ellis Elliott is a founding member of our new poetry cooperative: OLD SCRATCH PRESS. But I met Ellis when she was working on her cosy mystery, which will be on its way to print next year. For this year, Ellis’ poetry collection: BREAK IN THE FIELD is the first collection of poetry to be published by the collective, and In this wonderful collection Ellis reflects on parenting, blending families, and becoming a parent to a child with a disability. The book releases in a few weeks! Ellis is a gifted poet, and her website, if you are at all involved in your own writing, is one you want to check out (click the image to visit):

Virginia Watts (Ginny to all of us) is also a founding member of OLD SCRATCH PRESS, and a poet. But when I met her, I didn’t know that. I fell in love with her prose, and her book, ECHOES FROM THE HOCKER HOUSE is collection of moody, atmospheric, stories from deep in the woods of Pennsylvania, where things aren’t quite as they seem, as the shadows come down through the dense trees. We consider this a literary collection, because it’s not horror, but that doesn’t mean that literature won’t make the hair stand up on the back of your neck. The writing has shades of Flannery O’Connor at her best. Ginny’s website gives you a peak of what lies in wait in her collection (click to visit her website and get a taste of her writing):

and Ginny’s book also releases in 2023, when the Pennsylvania trees are at their most spectacular: fall.

Both authors make writing that I find I can’t put down.

I began my working life in the field of disabilities, and I so identify with the challenges Ellis describes in her poetry collection, and the love she feels for her stepson, her own sons, and her family on both sides of her second marriage. BREAK IN THE FIELD does just what it promises to do, disrupt that perception of our lives we have gotten so used to, and it does it both with insights into the demands of blending families, and the strong undertow of love, that won’t let us loose.

Dave and I both come from the wilds of Pennsylvania. My father’s people are coal people, and Dave’s father’s people are steel people, and being from those people comes with a certain something, the vein of precious ore in the rock, the granite the does not yield. Ginny’s stories in ECHOES FROM THE HOCKER HOUSE have that grit running through them, and people will keep going, even when the way forward is knee-deep in coal dust, and the hands you use to pull yourself through the day are calloused and permanently stained.

Two authors, two founding members of our new poetry collective, two collections: one poetry, one prose. One releases soon, and when you finish venturing into two families with BREAK IN THE FIELD, you can venture into the woods with ECHOES FROM THE HOCKER HOUSE. Your reading pile has never been more enticing.

PLUS! Pre-order and get a discount, and a special little something extra that is not available in stores or on Amazon, and that is signed by the author!