Year End Review: Five Tips for Horror Writers

 Breed, Chase Novak, Guest Posts, horror, Mulholland Authors, New York Times, rosemary's baby, Scott Spencer, USA Today, Writing  Comments Off
Dec 312012
 

With 2013 just around the corner, it’s the perfect time to sit back and reflect on another year of great content and great books. Check back twice daily in the last days of 2012 for a selection of our favorite MulhollandBooks.com posts from the past year!

USA Today has called BREED by Chase Novak “a thrill to read [that] keep an audience enraptured.” The New York Times‘ Janet Maslin raves, “BREED is a foray into urbane horror, chicly ghoulish, with a malevolent emphasis on family values. “ Keep reading for Chase’s tips for writing a horror novel.

1. The requirements of good horror are not different from the requirements of fiction in general. Fresh language, believable characters, and a story that operates on more than one level –a story that has a meaning outside of and beyond the mechanics of the plot.

2.  If a paragraph can create that pleasurable rush of anxiety in you, probably others will get that lovely chill from it, too.

3. Sentences.  Fiction is made of sentences.  All fiction.  Building a novel out of weak or sloppy sentences is like building a house out of defective bricks.

4. Beware of concepts.  A cool idea does not necessarily lead to a good book. Figuring out the marketplace –vampires are in! no, zombies!  no, vampires!, no serial killers! –is for the marketing department, and books that begin with the writer trying to figure out what might get him or her onto some bandwagon are usually DOA.

5. Beware of formulas:  the books that last are the ones that are not really like other books.

CHASE NOVAK is the pseudonym for Scott Spencer. Spencer is the author of ten novels, including Endless Love, which has sold over two million copies to date, and the National Book Award finalist A Ship Made of Paper. He has written for Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The New Yorker, GQ, and Harper’s. BREED is his debut novel as Chase Novak.

"When you look past the surface tropes, horror is often fundamentally concerned with social life. How…"

 Breed, Chase Novak, horror, Lit  Comments Off
Nov 152012
 
“When you look past the surface tropes, horror is often fundamentally concerned with social life. How do people solve problems together that they’ve never had to solve before? How do we cope with change? How do we figure out whom we can trust and whom we can’t? Which of our social rules and rituals are valuable and important, and which ones are kind of silly and outdated?”

- The Boston Globe’s manners columnist in a review of Chase Novak’s Breed

The Lineup: Weekly Links

 Anthony Horowitz, Austin Grossman, book tour, bouchercon, Breed, Chase Novak, chicago fire, Derek Haas, Duane Swierczynski, Fun And Games, house of silk, Michael Robotham, Mischa Hiller, point and shoot, Say You're Sorry, Scott Spencer, Shake Off, The Right Hand, Weekly links, you  Comments Off
Oct 112012
 

Contrasted ConfinementWe made it out to Bouchercon last weekend to see Duane Swierczynski’s FUN AND GAMES win the Shamus for Best Paperback Original PI Novel–congrats, Duane! All the more reason to look forward to April of next year, when POINT AND SHOOT, the final in the now accolade-winning Hardie trilogy, hits bookstores… The Rap Sheet has a great write-up of the festivities if you were unable to attend. Here’s looking forward to next year’s event in Albany!

Michael Robotham embarked on a US tour straight from the convention and can be seen this Friday at Seattle Mystery Bookshop and on Saturday at Scottsdale, Arizona’s Poisoned Pen.

While Robotham’s been on tour, SAY YOU’RE SORRY has been raking in rave reviews from the likes of Kirkus, John Valeri at Examiner.com, Publishers Weekly, P.G. Koch of the Houston Chronicle. More to come!

Don’t let all the great news about SAY YOU’RE SORRY distract from the fact that THE HOUSE OF SILK is now out in paperback. Some guests posts from Horowitz here and here from our initial hardcover publication. “An intricate and rewarding mystery in the finest Victorian tradition” (Vanity Fair)–what’s not to like?

Asbury Park Press reviewed Mischa Hiller’s SHAKE OFF, and the Washington Post reviewed Chase Novak’s BREED, calling it “the best American horror novel since Scott Smith’s The Ruins.”

Speaking of BREED, don’t miss Chase Novak in discussion with Barry Lyga, Daniel Kraus, Jonathan Maberry and more at the New York Comic-Con this Saturday. Austin Grossman will be at the Con earlier that night, talking about his forthcoming novel YOU with Evan Narcisse of Kotaku.

Looks like someone on the set of NBC’s CHICAGO FIRE, co-created by our own Derek Haas, intercepted the shipment of a certain thriller from our warehouse…

That’s it for now. See you all next week!

Did we missing something sweet? Share it in the comments! We’re always open to suggestions for next week’s post! Get in touch at mulhollandbooks@hbgusa.com or DM us on Twitter.

The Lineup: Weekly Links

 blog reviews, Breed, Brian Truitt, Bruce Willis, Chase Novak, Django Unchained, Jamie Foxx, Janet Maslin, Joaquin Phoenix, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Looper, Master, Mischa Hiller, MTA, New York City, New York Times, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Quentin Tarantino, Rian Johnson, Scott Spencer, Shake Off, subway, transit ads, USA Today, Weekly links  Comments Off
Sep 072012
 

Contrasted ConfinementIt’s been a great summer summer at Mulholland Books, and we topped it off with our August publication, SHAKE OFF by Mischa Hiller, which received glowing praise from the likes of Kirkus, PW and Booklist, as well as great reviews from blogs like the Murder By the Book Blog, BestsellersWorld.com, Tzer Island, and The Review Broads.

Now that Labor Day is behind us, BREED has hit bookstores! The perfect literary chiller to kick off the fall season, written by National Book Award winner Scott Spencer under the pseudonym Chase Novak, BREED has been getting strong reviews from the likes of Janet Maslin in the New York Times, who proclaims the novel “reads like the work of a serious writer with keen antennas for sensory detail,” Brian Truitt of USA Today, who calls the novel “a thrill to read.”

Transit ads for BREED are now featured in New York City subway cars! We like the look of them so much we can help but share them…

In wider news, the Toronto International Film Festival has been taking place this week, and LOOPER, which arrives in theaters across the country later this month, recently kicked off the proceedings in stellar fashion. Check out this talk with writer/director Rian Johnson (also the writer/director of BRICK, a Mulholland favorite) and stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis if you’re in the mood for a good conversation (just skip to the twenty-minute mark!)

Speaking of films, it’s been a minute since we shared trailers of films we’re looking forward to–are you following THE MASTER, or Tarantino’s latest, DJANGO UNCHAINED?

Did we missing something sweet? Share it in the comments! We’re always open to suggestions for next week’s post! Get in touch at mulhollandbooks@hbgusa.com or DM us on Twitter.

Genesis

 Breed, Chase Novak, Guest Posts, horror, Mulholland Authors, New York Times, pseudonym, rosemary's baby, Scott Spencer  Comments Off
Sep 052012
 

Scott Spencer wrote BREED under the pseudonym of Chase Novak. Keep reading to find out why.

When, after writing ten novels, a writer decides to publish under a different name, there will inevitably be some curiosity about what is behind the sudden change.

Thinking about my becoming Chase Novak, three things occur to me.   The first is, I have always (and I mean always) wanted a second identity.  I could go on and on about why, but, really, isn’t it more or less self-explanatory –and practically a universal fantasy?  (In other words: wouldn’t you like to be someone else, and also remain yourself?)

The second thing that occurs to me is that I have been assuming new identities my whole writing life.  Especially when I write novels in the first person, in which the narrator does all he can do to make a reader believe that “I” have burned down my girlfriend’s house, or run for Congress, or that someone very much like Bob Dylan is “my” father.

And, finally, Chase Novak stepped forward because “he” was willing –and eager! –to go places in a novel that Spencer would not have been able to reach.  Spencer is limited by the fact that he stands atop (or perhaps is buried beneath) the high, tottering stack of pages he has already written.  Novak has nothing on his mind but a mania to follow the nightmare logic of his most troubled thoughts and memories.  In other words, Spencer could not have written BREED.  It was up to Chase.

CHASE NOVAK is the pseudonym for Scott Spencer. Spencer is the author of ten novels, including Endless Love, which has sold over two million copies to date, and the National Book Award finalist A Ship Made of Paper. He has written for Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The New Yorker, GQ, and Harper’s.

BREED, praised by Janet Maslin of the New York Times as “a foray into urbane horror, chicly ghoulish, with a malevolent emphasis on family values, is his debut novel as Chase Novak.

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