Meghan: Hi, Carol. Welcome back to Halloween Extravaganza. It’s great having you, as I didn’t get a chance to interview the last time you were here. Let’s start with something… easy. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Carol Schaffer: I am about to celebrate my 55th birthday, and I look forward to at least 50 more. I am a wildly passionate intense person. I am forever fascinated and impressed by the raw unpredictable, sometimes ugly side of life. I am a huge fan of old movies, and an even bigger fan of classic horror flicks.
Meghan: What are five things that most people don’t know about you?
Carol Schaffer:
From the ages of about seven, into my mid-twenties, I had the worst stutter. It was so bad that I rarely spoke to anyone that was not my immediate family. When I get upset or angry, I still stutter sometimes.
I have a certified phobia of big dogs, specifically pit bulls and German shepherds.
When I was growing up, many of the women, including my mom, practiced witchcraft. I was frequently involved in helping my mom with her spells.
I tried cocaine when I was nineteen and loved it for about a year.
I am painfully shy.
Meghan: What is the first bok you remember reading?
Meghan: What made you decide you want to write? When did you begin writing?
Carol Schaffer: I don’t feel like it was ever that I made a decision to write. I come from a family that had more skeletons in our closets than Disney’s Haunted Mansion. My mom deemed every single thing about our household lives, to be private or a “secret.” I think writing things down became my lifeline to sanity.
I started writing at about the age of nine.
My writing prompts were words from the Encyclopedia Britannica. I started with Vol. one and I worked my way through every volume that my parents managed to purchase.
Meghan: Do you have a special place you like to write?
Carol Schaffer: I usually find myself writing in the kitchen, or a room close to it.
Meghan: Do you have any quirks or processes that you go through when you write?
Carol Schaffer: I think the only quirk I have noticed about when I write, is that I feel like my creativity flows when I have been prompted to a strong reaction from an argument, or circumstance that is not ideal in my life. I don’t love how cliché I am as a writer when it comes to inspiration, but I’ll take it however I can get it.
Meghan: Is there anything about writing you find most challenging?
Carol Schaffer: The single most challenging thing for me about writing is, that I am almost always blasted with the most lyrical wording while driving, showering, or doing something involving other people, which makes it incredibly difficult to get my thoughts down quick enough to capture the way I first think them.
Meghan: What’s the most satisfying thing you’ve written so far?
Carol Schaffer: I wrote a short story about nine years ago that is one of my favorites of all time, so far. The inspiration from this story came from a dark secret that my ex-boyfriend once shared with me. It was on the fringe of erotic, and I have still never heard anything like it. I have never shared it with anyone, and I am not sure if I ever will.
Meghan: What books have most inspired you? Who are some authors that have inspired your writing style?
Carol Schaffer: What makes a good story is the author’s ability to make the reader believe that every word they are reading is entirely possible, even when the reader never would have normally believed that such a thing could take place.
Meghan: What does it take for you to love a character? How do you utilize that when creating your characters?
Carol Schaffer: I love characters that allow aspects of myself, that I don’t let people see very often, come out to play on full blast.
Meghan: Are you turned off by a bad cover? To what degree were you involved in creating your book covers?
Carol Schaffer: Book covers are moderately important if the author is unknown. I think the book’s title is much more important.
Meghan: What have you learned creating your books?
Carol Schaffer: The thing I learned from creating/writing, is that stories go on. There never really is an ending.
Meghan: What makes your books different from others out there in this genre?
Carol Schaffer: I am just recently preparing to go through the process of getting published, so I haven’t officially been placed in a writing genre; I have an idea where I would land. I think what sets me apart from many others in the genre that I could possibly fit is that my book is for me. It would probably be super cool to be published, but if it doesn’t happen, that’s okay too. My mission is to create the book that I am dying to read.
Meghan: How important is the book title, how hard is it to choose the best one, and how did you choose yours (of course, with no spoilers)?
Carol Schaffer: I feel like book titles are as important as what is inside of the cover. I try not to judge the book by the cover, because sometimes the cover turns out to be so much more interesting than the book.
My book title has changed so many times I have lost count. If I am honest, I still only have half the title. I love the half I have, and I will keep it, but I’m not quite there yet.
Meghan: What makes you feel more fulfilled: Writing a novel or writing a short story?
Carol Schaffer: I love to write short stories because they put a cap on things, while still leaving room for more.
Meghan: Tell us a little bit about your book, your target audience, and what you would like readers to take away from your stories.
Carol Schaffer: My book is about providing a template, which provides a path for the continuation of a life story to take place. My book is a sort of “Permission slip” for people who find themselves a little lost in a place where it’s murky, and difficult to see and believe that there is anything of relevance left to do with their life.
I made the decision to leave out autobiographical childhood details from my book because this book is about, “what next.” It’s about what’s happening now in this new phase. How essential it is to learn how to be open to gaining unfamiliar, untapped clarity that is unique to someone who has done a lot of living, and wants to do a whole lot more, and be happy as hell while they’re doing it.
Meghan: What’s in your “trunk”?
Carol Schaffer: 😉 Well… I wrote, Deck the Halls with Blood and Bodies, for The Gal in the Blue Mask, in contribution to Christmas Take Over in 2016. Deck the Halls, has continued to float around and haunt me ever since. The story is begging to be told in deep vivid detail, with crashing crescendos.
Meghan: What can we expect from you in the future?
Carol Schaffer: My book! Continued development of my new website, where I will write and share and blog about many interesting things including: my book, all things food and eating, my plans for moving to a farm in Washington, and the life and times of still being a wild child at the age of fifty-five.
I have been asked to do a night-time radio interview with someone who was a close associate of the late great radio host, Art Bell. The interview will delve into my exposure to the occult through my mother’s practice of witchcraft, and the influence it continues to have in my life.
Meghan: Do you have any closing words for your fans or anything you’d like to say that we didn’t get to cover in this interview?
Carol Schaffer: I know it’s been said many times, but I would like to say it again: It really doesn’t matter who has done it before you, or how good they were at it, nobody can do it, or say it exactly like you.
I was born and raised in Los Angeles, and stayed there until after I was married and had my first baby in 1989. I have lived in Riverside California for almost thirty years now, and I am still surprised by how small it feels. I have been in sales for a long time, and I love it. I consider what I do an art form. I am a gifted writer of stories, poems, speeches. The time finally feels right to share my writing with the world, or other interested parties. I adore the ocean, and the forest. I have a son and two daughters who I love to the moon. I once had a close encounter with a real werewolf.
I’d like to welcome back Martin Berman-Gorvine, with another short story written specifically for the Halloween Extravaganza. I always look forward to his submissions, and I hope you enjoy this story as much as I did.
Mischief Night A Tale of the Age of Moloch
By the time Lisa Henry broke out of the Castle, it was already Mischief Night. That meant she had just three days to live before she would be taken out when Black Mass ended at midnight, tied spread-eagled to the hood of Jack Kolver’s 1963 Ford Thunderbird, and become the Virgin Sacrifice Unto Moloch with a flick of the Pastor’s knife.
Since she was understandably unhappy at this prospect, she had done everything she could think of to avoid becoming Prom Queen of the Class of 1982. As a Nice Girl who was also stunningly gorgeous, with large almond-shape dark eyes and a lustrous mane of black hair, she had her work cut out for her to avoid her unspeakable fate when she started school last fall, her senior year at Chatham’s Forge High School. But she gamely did her best. She started by getting roaring drunk on moonshine for Homecoming and ralphing all over Mr. Goff’s spit-polished tasseled loafers. Since the shoes were the guidance counselor’s pride and joy, and he had the power to bust her Student Caste from Nice Girl all the way down to Slut, she figured she was set. Instead he wiped off the shoes with a damp paper towel, escorted her to the staff bathroom, and held back her hair as she finished emptying her stomach.
She tried talking back in class, even taking Moloch’s name in vain in Religion class with Mrs. Larssen. The old biddy merely patted her on the head and told her to calm down. Well, there was the more direct route to getting relabeled as a Slut. Her boyfriend, Chad Miller, was even more popular than she, a clean-cut blonde Jock who was the star Grabber for the Cheetahs in their blood-soaked grudge-match Games against the Linwood Lions. In the highly unlikely event that Lisa’s head did not end up separated from her curvy body and propped up like a gruesome hood ornament on the T-Bird the morning after All Souls Day, everyone expected her to marry Chad and have like a dozen kids, which would play hell with her figure. That prospect was only slightly more appealing than the sanguinary option, so she cheated on Chad with gusto and abandon, juicily smooching random guys in the crowded school hallways between class, making out with his best friend Jimmy “Punch-Drunk” Jones in the bleachers as the stands were filling up for a Game, and consummating her loss of innocence one memorable night during a January thaw with Frankie “Four-Eyes” Feldstein. Since Four-Eyes was the Platonic ideal of a Nerd and Lisa the foremost Nice Girl of the Class of ‘82, fucking him in full view of the T-Bird altar was a double sacrilege, a heaping of Caste Miscegenation on top of Unauthorized Sex. Poor Frankie took the full brunt of the punishment, though he went to his death on Chief Punisher Ariadne Mitchell’s dreaded Impaler shrieking that it had been worth it, and Lisa got off scot-free.
Chad laughed off Lisa’s betrayal. After all, he had been boinking Chelsea Everard, the Chief Cheetahs Cheerleader and another so-called Nice Girl, since sophomore year. But Lisa still held out high hopes she would get pregnant. Then Goff would have no choice but to bust her down to Slut. Even though that meant she’d probably end up a Holy Ho in the Consecrated Cathouse after graduation, it would still beat becoming Moloch’s All Souls Day treat.
No dice. There was blood in her panties, regular as pit-and-pendulum clockwork, and Lisa was inconsolable. Her mother tried to comfort her. “You don’t understand, Mom!” she wailed. “I’m gonna be the next Virgin Sacrifice!”
Mom’s cheek twitched. “You’re thinking a bit much of yourself, aren’t you, young lady? The way I hear it, Chelsea’s a shoo-in!”
“That dog, with her simpering smile and her strawberry-blonde curls? Puh-lease, Mom! It’s been blondes three years in a row, and everyone knows that Moloch likes a little variety!” She vowed to herself she’d get knocked up no matter what it took, but Chad just chuckled and pushed her away when she tried to corner him, and to all the other guys she was radioactive after they had been forced to watch Frankie’s agonizing death.
In the end, Lisa was right to worry that she would be Chosen. She was smack in the middle of Moloch’s spotlight when the high school gym ceiling rolled back to reveal the shadowy, towering form of the bloodthirsty god on Prom Night. She screamed and tried to run, but her classmates and teachers formed a solid ring around her, and the god’s enormous claws closed around the waist of her bright pink sequined gown and bore her away, wriggling and straining against the iron grip, to the Castle for her ritual four-month imprisonment.
Lisa the Apostate refused to surrender to her fate, chipping patiently away at the crumbling concrete walls of her cell with her metal food tray. The Castle was a former National Guard armory, built in 1922 when Chatham’s Forge was a part of the United States, and its structural integrity had been compromised forty years later when the Russkies nuked nearby Philadelphia during the War of the Judgment, also known for some inexplicable reason as the Cuber War. Maybe the nuke bombs were shaped like cubes, or something. Lisa had never been one to pay attention in history or any other class; Nice Girls were discouraged from doing so, anyhow. It was just as well—knowing how and why Moloch had really come to power in the shattered post-World War III world would have driven her to despair. As it was, she industriously flushed the dust from her work down the cell’s toilet each day, until the pipes filled with cement and the stench became unbearable. Nevertheless, she persisted, and broke out to the empty neighboring room on Mischief Night, not that she knew the date by the time she freed herself and ran down the stairs in her soiled Prom dress and pumps, a shit-stinking Cinderella.
It can’t be this easy, she thought as she barreled through the front door of the Castle and charged down Boot Hill in the darkness, making a beeline for home. As she ran, the sight of blazing trees in front yards brought home to her how much time had passed while she was imprisoned in the Castle. Mischief Night was an old tradition in Chatham’s Forge. Every year, Army draftees soaked bales of torn-up old copies of Moloch’s Truth, the local newspaper that was sold in town as toilet paper, in a vat of corn oil. Then they fanned out down the deserted streets at dusk, draping them over tree branches in the yards of those the Pastor had designated Enemies of Moloch. (Gasoline would have been preferable as lighter fluid, but since the War the stuff was worth its weight in molten gold.) When the air-raid siren atop the Town Hall went off, the trainee soldiers set the trees alight for the greater glory of Moloch, and his Enemies counted themselves lucky if the flames didn’t spread to their homes.
None of this was Lisa’s concern at the moment. Her parents were strictly orthodox, her little brother Ralph even more so; thus, there was zero chance of their big old oak tree being torched. Cutting across strangers’ backyards, ignoring the barking of the German shepherds their rich neighbors kept as guard dogs, she arrived gasping for breath at her own back door and began pounding on it, yelling for her family to let her in.
A few seconds later Ralph yanked the door open. In the four months Lisa had been gone he had grown at least an inch and his hair had darkened. “Pee-yew, Sis, you stink,” he said, pinching his nose between thumb and forefinger.
Mom’s fretful voice came from behind him. “Who’s making all that racket and breaking curfew? And didn’t I tell you to clean out the drain field for the septic tank?”
“I did, Mom! The smell is Lisa!”
“What are you talking about?” Mom demanded, shoving him aside. “Lisa is—oh, dear Moloch, it is you! What are you doing here?”
Having planned for this moment, Lisa burst into carefully rehearsed tears. “Oh, M-Mommy! It’s so awful! The Pastor himself came to my cell and told me I’m unworthy to be the Virgin Sacrifice! I’ve never been so humiliated in my life!”
Mom’s big dark eyes bulged. “But why? What did you do, young lady?”
“Let me in and I’ll tell you all about it.” Mom shut the door behind her, but immediately started gagging at the stench. “G-go take a bath first! I’ll have to call your father at work to come deal with this! You are going to be GROUNDED for a very long time for messing up Moloch’s Sacrifice, missy!” Lisa ran upstairs, her heart soaring, as Mom called Dad at his night watchman’s job at the Punishment Farm. It’s going to be all right, she thought, as she stepped out of her Prom dress and into the freezing, beautiful spray of their bucket-shower. Instead of hating the sandpaper-like soap that was all they could afford, she luxuriated in it and its faintly sour smell. I actually escaped! All I have to do is lie low for the next three days, the Pastor will grab Chelsea instead, and I’ll be home free!
As she was drying herself off she heard the front door slam, followed by her father’s voice. Daddy sounded angry, but how could that be? She’d always been his favorite. Disgrace to Moloch or no, wasn’t he overjoyed that his only Lee-Lee had returned to him alive?
He was not. She only caught snatches of the snarled conversation he had with Mom, but they were more than enough. “Naïve idiot!” he said, followed by a slap, a loud thump and Mom crying. He hadn’t hit her that hard since she was a freshman! Then his footsteps thundered up the stairs, hard enough to make the floorboards vibrate. Lisa dove for the door, turning the lock in the nick of time. “Open up! Open up, you MONOTHEIST!” Dad roared, rattling the doorknob as he followed up with a string of swear words that were almost as bad. He was throwing all his weight against the door as Lisa slammed the window open and jumped out, still clutching the towel. She wrapped it around herself and ran blindly, her tears streaking out behind her like rain off the windshield of a speeding car, a sight unseen in her world since before she was born. Her adrenaline was running so high she didn’t even notice she’d twisted her left ankle until the pain began to slow her down. As she limped up an unfamiliar street by the light of a burning TP’d tree, she also noticed she’d lost her towel and began to sob. There was no way out. Dad was going to raise the alarm and in minutes, everyone in town would be out hunting for the Lady Godiva of Chatham’s Forge. They’d tie her to a stake and heap damp pine branches beneath her feet, to smolder and roast her alive, slowly. Ariadne Mitchell would design a brand-new torture rack just for her. Moloch Himself would tear her intestines out while she watched…
In the normal course of a person’s life, ruminating over all the terrible things that might happen is worse than useless, it is maladaptive, a cause of anxiety and overall misery. At this moment of peril for Lisa, however, this mental tendency did the job it had evolved to do and spurred her to action. She didn’t want to die, and if she was doomed anyway she wasn’t going to go out on Moloch’s terms. So she limped down the street as fast as she could, heading by instinct toward the darkness at the edge of town.
Everybody knew there was nothing outside town but radioactive woods filled with cannibal Mutants. To protect his people against them, mighty Moloch had erected a big, beautiful Wall that was invisible to the naked eye but would slice you in two if you tried to walk through it unauthorized. Only Army raiding parties were allowed out, to enslave select Muties and drag them back to the Forge. And yet, it was whispered that if you kept your eye on Brandywine Creek, which cut through the center of town, you’d notice that it flowed through the Wall as if the barrier wasn’t there. So if you could hold your breath and duck under the water at just the right spot, and push yourself forward for just the right amount of time, escape was possible. Only someone truly desperate would attempt it, however, because the creek was shallow and narrow at the point upstream where it crossed the Wall, and filled with raw sewage at the downstream end.
Lisa, of course, was truly desperate. So she followed her nose through the chilly night air, frantic to find the stink she’d just washed off. Somewhere she heard the barking of dogs as a posse was assembled to hunt her down, and she jumped as the air-raid siren blasted. There were shouts in the night. She stumbled on, dry-sobbing as she scaled fences, tripped over tree roots and stubbed her toes on unseen rocks. At last, she glimpsed firelight from a burning tree reflected off flowing water somewhere down below, and took off down the slope so fast she almost fell, twice. “Stop right there, infidel!” a man’s voice yelled. There was a loud crack and a bullet whistled past her ear. Lisa jumped off the bank, drawing a deep breath as she plunged toward the sewer outlet, though the smell was so foul she began to choke before she even hit the surface. Never mind. Just… have to… follow the current… but how far, how far? For a Forger, Lisa was a pretty decent swimmer, and she’d taken part in a breath-holding contest once where some Nerd passed out and turned blue. But she’d never tried to swim underwater before, and already her lungs were aching. Just… a little… further… Just… a little more… and I’ll be free, in the woods. She poked her head above the surface a fraction of a second too soon.
Now, if this was a made-up story, you’d expect to hear how Moloch’s magic Wall sliced the pretty girl’s head neatly off her shoulders, spilling her guts into the muck and proving that You Can’t Escape Fate. After all, Lisa was lovely, and terrible things are always happening to comely young women in Gothic tales. Moreover, in seducing poor Frankie Feldstein in hopes that she would be rejected as Virgin Sacrifice and Chelsea Everard would take her place, she was treating other human beings as a Means to an End, in violation of the Golden Rule, Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative, Martin Buber’s “I-Thou” philosophy, and numerous other religious and ethical precepts. Thus, the mythical force of justice should have gotten her. However, this occurred in real life, and she surfaced in the free air of the forest with nothing worse than a skinned elbow, although she did nearly die a few days later from the raging infection spawned by introducing raw sewage into an open wound. But a tribe of Freemen, as they preferred to call themselves, had already found her and were nursing her through her delirium, while curly-headed Chelsea died in agony and terror at the hands of Moloch and His Pastor, thus becoming the Virgin Sacrifice of the Class of 1982. For the rest of her life, Lisa would be haunted by nightmares of Frankie and Chelsea.
And that, kids, is the whole story of how come my left elbow looks like I have an enormous burn scar, and also why I scream a lot in my sleep. I hope you’re satisfied.
If you found this story terrifying, nauseating and utterly tasteless, you will certainly not enjoy Martin Berman-Gorvine’s four-book alternate history horror series, Days of Ascension, to which it is a prequel.
If a demon and its servants ruled your ordinary town, demanding an annual virgin sacrifice, would you have the courage to stop them? And at what price? This question confronts Amos Ross, Suzie Mitchell, and Vickie Riordan, high school seniors in the new horror novel, All Souls Day.
In an alternate reality of the 1980’s, twenty years after the Cuban Missile Crisis triggered World War III and left the United States a devastated wasteland, the ancient, demonic god Moloch, whose worship was forbidden by the Old Testament, exercises absolute control over the Philadelphia suburb of Chatham’s Forge. The town is an oasis of prosperity that the nuclear war hardly touched, but its comfort comes at a fearful cost: at the high school prom every year, the prettiest and most popular senior girl is chosen by Moloch and his servant, the evil Pastor Justin Bello, to be spirited away to a former National Guard armory known as the Castle, where she is imprisoned alone for five months only to be beheaded and eaten alive by the demon on All Souls Day, the second of November, the anniversary of the war. And this year, 1985, it’s Suzie’s turn…
What if you escaped being sacrificed to the evil god Moloch and banished him from your town at a terrible price in blood and destruction… only to become prey to gods more powerful and ruthless still?
Teenage friends Suzie Mitchell, Amos Ross, and Vickie Riordan are plunged into this terrifying dilemma in the ruins of their hometown, Chatham’s Forge, in a world devastated by nuclear war. Stumbling through the wreckage, they must confront the physically living but soul-dead remains of their friends and family, the vengeful victims of the old order in the Forge, the ascent of the powerful and seductive goddess Asherah, and worst of all… the deeds they themselves are tempted to commit in their rage and grief.
When human rebels overthrow a god of human sacrifice, only to bring about the rise of a goddess even more cruel and perverse, is there any chance human dignity and freedom can survive?
High school sweethearts Amos and Suzie have been surviving in the woods with their two little children and a small band of the like-minded for seven years, ever since they destroyed the bloodthirsty god Moloch. Their friend Vickie is with them, but she lives under a curse because she fell under the spell of the goddess Asherah, murdered dozens of people in her name, and then turned against her. Can Vickie overcome her overwhelming guilt and the curse that exiles her from human society—and can she and her friends bring Asherah down? And if they do, what new bloodthirsty gods lie in waiting? Find out, in Day of Atonement!
Days of Ascension 4: Judgment Day
Twenty-five years ago, high school friends and lovers Amos, Suzie and Vickie destroyed Moloch, the evil god who reigned over their hometown of Chatham’s Forge, taking the Prom Queen in sacrifice each year. Together they have set up their own alternative society far from the Forge, which is now ruled over by an even more powerful and evil god, Ba’al. God Himself is hiding from this new threat in an abandoned 7-Eleven in Cape May, New Jersey. Can our heroes survive?
Meghan: Hi, Martin. It’s always fantastic to have you on the blog, so thank you for agreeing to come back another year. We’re going to do things a little different in this one. What are your go-to horror films?
Martin Berman-Gorvine: Well, my therapist says the emotions it evokes are “primitive.” That’s true, but all you have to do is look around at what’s going on in the world to see that almost everyone is ruled by the primitive, including those who think they are most sophisticated. Horror admits these truths, primarily the fear of death and pain and that it’s all meaningless, that most people like to look away from.
Meghan: Have any new authors grasped your interest recently?
Martin Berman-Gorvine: Shout-out to K Chess’s amazing alternate history novel, Famous Men Who Never Lived, a wonderfully imaginative and empathetic exploration of what it feels like to be the ultimate refugee, a “Universally Displaced Person.”
Meghan: How big of a part does music play in creating your “zone”? What do you listen to while writing?
Martin Berman-Gorvine: Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and Regina Spektor inspire me, but I can’t listen to any music with lyrics while I’m actually writing because it’s too distracting. If I have any music playing at those times, it’s instrumental pieces by J.S. Bach.
Meghan: How active are you on social media? How do you think it affects the way you write?
Martin Berman-Gorvine: Way too much! The feelings of rage I get from arguing with everyone who is Wrong On The Internet, especially about politics, combined with the utter futility of it all, may help fuel the sadistic impulses I channel in my horror fiction.
Meghan: What is your writing Kryptonite?
Martin Berman-Gorvine: See previous question. Facebook and Twitter are black holes of the writer’s time.
Meghan: If you were making a movie of your latest story/book, who would you cast?
Martin Berman-Gorvine: Oh jeez, well this is kind of embarrassing because it can give people a very wrong idea of what I was up to, but in my Days of Ascension horror/dark fantasy series I always saw in my head the character of Suzie played by Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Sarah Michelle Gellar, her best friend and romantic rival Vickie played by Alyson Hannigan, who of course was the Gellar character’s best friend Willow on the show, and even a more minor character, Deena the “medicine woman,” played by Michelle Trachtenberg, who was Gellar’s sister Dawn on the show. The characters of Suzie and Vickie may have originally been very loosely inspired by Buffy and Willow, but they went off in their own directions very early on.
Meghan: If you had the choice to rewrite any of your books, which one would it be and why?
Martin Berman-Gorvine: It’s a temptation that should be resisted, in my opinion, to rewrite books once they’re out there in the world. I wrote The Severed Wing, which became my first published novel, almost twenty years ago, and there’s no question I am a different person now and could not write that novel now. This may be the one area of my life where I have zero temptation to look back.
Meghan: What would the main character in your latest story/book have to say about you?
Martin Berman-Gorvine: “Lucky bastard!”
Meghan: Did you hide any secrets in your books that only a few people will find?
Martin Berman-Gorvine: I name-checked my great-grandfather Dr. Nathaniel Greenwood in my first published novel, The Severed Wing, and my maternal grandparents Dr. Samuel and Mrs. Miriam Lieberman in my only self-published novel to date, Ziona: A Novel of Alternate History.
Meghan: How much of yourself do you put in your books?
Martin Berman-Gorvine: A lot! For instance, the story of how I came to write the Days of Ascension series begins a long time ago, when I was in my early teens. It’s a miserable time of life for a lot of people and I was certainly no exception, though like every other kid I thought I was the only one. I did have an extra layer because I was a nerd, which had no positive connotations back then, in the early eighties in America. For a boy there was an inevitable inference of sissyhood, and I was bullied. Around this time I wrote a satirical mini-sociological study of the different “types” of kids I saw around me, which you can find here on an old blog post I wrote. Of course I saw myself and my friends as Brainy Weirdos. Mutatis mutandis, these groupings became the Castes of All Souls Day.
Meghan: Have you ever incorporated something that happened to you in real life into your novels?
Martin Berman-Gorvine: Oh, all the friggin’ time. I hate Mark Twain’s stricture about writing only what you know, but it does seem to happen quite a lot in my novels. My ninth grade history teacher, for example, was a major asshole and antisemite who put a trash can over my head while the class howled with laughter. I rewarded him by making him the villain of my YA science fiction novel Monsters of Venus. I’m not sure the real waste of space is dead, so I added one syllable to his last name. Still, I hope he somehow stumbles on the book, recognizes himself, and has a stroke!
Meghan: Are your characters based off real people, or did they all come entirely from your imagination?
Martin Berman-Gorvine: Many are the real people I revenge myself on in my novels. I probably had the most fun in the first two books of the Days of Ascension series torturing and killing a character based on a psycho teacher I had in junior high (a different person from the trash can bully). Since my brother was kind enough to send me the real guy’s obituary many years ago, I knew I was safe in calling the character based on him by the guy’s REAL NAME, with only one letter changed! Man, it is sick what I did to that dude! You have to buy my novel Day of Vengeance to find out!
Meghan: How do you think you’ve evolved creatively?
Martin Berman-Gorvine: Bolder tortures in my horror novels. Also, I am now perpetrating a romance novel.
Meghan: What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?
Martin Berman-Gorvine: Killing my darlings, as the saying goes. That is, having to cut beautifully written bits I’m fond of that just don’t fit in the larger work for one reason or another.
Meghan: Does writing energize or exhaust you?
Martin Berman-Gorvine: The actual writing is energizing and inspiring, when it’s humming along. It’s all the time killing to avoid writing that’s exhausting.
Meghan: Do you read your book reviews? How do you deal with the bad ones? Have you ever learned something from a negative review and incorporated it into your writing?
Martin Berman-Gorvine: Do I read all my reviews? As Leonard Cohen sang in one of his last albums, “There’s torture and there’s killing and there’s all my bad reviews/The war, the children missing, Lord, it’s almost like the blues.” I just had to restrain myself from arguing with the lone Amazon reviewer who trashed a satire I published under a pseudonym because he clearly hadn’t read the thing. I made a video of myself once burning a bunch of publishers’ rejection letters and pretending that act was a “sacrifice to the Muse,” does that count? No, I just tend to get annoyed by bad reviews, honestly. I haven’t read one yet where I didn’t think the numbskull just didn’t get what I was trying to do. On the other hand, I happily follow most suggestions from editors and beta readers, so it’s not like I’m a writer-diva.
Meghan: What are your ambitions for your writing career? What does “literary success” look like to you?
Martin Berman-Gorvine: Groupies! I won’t know I’ve arrived until I have groupies following me around like Neil Gaiman does. I need quality groupies, mind you, the kind who can discuss details of the Whedonverse and Albert Camus’ philosophy in the same breath.
If a demon and its servants ruled your ordinary town, demanding an annual virgin sacrifice, would you have the courage to stop them? And at what price? This question confronts Amos Ross, Suzie Mitchell, and Vickie Riordan, high school seniors in the new horror novel, All Souls Day.
In an alternate reality of the 1980’s, twenty years after the Cuban Missile Crisis triggered World War III and left the United States a devastated wasteland, the ancient, demonic god Moloch, whose worship was forbidden by the Old Testament, exercises absolute control over the Philadelphia suburb of Chatham’s Forge. The town is an oasis of prosperity that the nuclear war hardly touched, but its comfort comes at a fearful cost: at the high school prom every year, the prettiest and most popular senior girl is chosen by Moloch and his servant, the evil Pastor Justin Bello, to be spirited away to a former National Guard armory known as the Castle, where she is imprisoned alone for five months only to be beheaded and eaten alive by the demon on All Souls Day, the second of November, the anniversary of the war. And this year, 1985, it’s Suzie’s turn…
What if you escaped being sacrificed to the evil god Moloch and banished him from your town at a terrible price in blood and destruction… only to become prey to gods more powerful and ruthless still?
Teenage friends Suzie Mitchell, Amos Ross, and Vickie Riordan are plunged into this terrifying dilemma in the ruins of their hometown, Chatham’s Forge, in a world devastated by nuclear war. Stumbling through the wreckage, they must confront the physically living but soul-dead remains of their friends and family, the vengeful victims of the old order in the Forge, the ascent of the powerful and seductive goddess Asherah, and worst of all… the deeds they themselves are tempted to commit in their rage and grief.
When human rebels overthrow a god of human sacrifice, only to bring about the rise of a goddess even more cruel and perverse, is there any chance human dignity and freedom can survive?
High school sweethearts Amos and Suzie have been surviving in the woods with their two little children and a small band of the like-minded for seven years, ever since they destroyed the bloodthirsty god Moloch. Their friend Vickie is with them, but she lives under a curse because she fell under the spell of the goddess Asherah, murdered dozens of people in her name, and then turned against her. Can Vickie overcome her overwhelming guilt and the curse that exiles her from human society—and can she and her friends bring Asherah down? And if they do, what new bloodthirsty gods lie in waiting? Find out, in Day of Atonement!
Days of Ascension 4: Judgment Day
Twenty-five years ago, high school friends and lovers Amos, Suzie and Vickie destroyed Moloch, the evil god who reigned over their hometown of Chatham’s Forge, taking the Prom Queen in sacrifice each year. Together they have set up their own alternative society far from the Forge, which is now ruled over by an even more powerful and evil god, Ba’al. God Himself is hiding from this new threat in an abandoned 7-Eleven in Cape May, New Jersey. Can our heroes survive?
Meghan: Hi, Joe. It’s a pleasure having you here today. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Joe Hart: I’m thirty-six, married with two kids. I live in northern Minnesota in the middle of nowhere. I’ve been a full time author for seven years. Reading and writing has always been a big part of my life and I’m so fortunate to be able to do what I love every day.
Meghan: What are five things most people don’t know about you?
Joe Hart: Most people don’t know I love to cook and definitely would have ended up being a chef if I hadn’t become a writer. I’m left handed. My favorite food is sushi. I love the ocean but it absolutely scares the daylights out of me. I’m terrible at pool.
Meghan: What is the first book you remember reading?
Joe Hart: A book of poetry my mother had with a poem in it by Robert Louis Stevenson called The Swing. The language he used captured the feeling of being on a swing so well it never failed to thrill me as a child.
Meghan: What are you reading now?
Joe Hart: At the moment I’m doing a reread of Stephen King’s IT. It’s probably my fourth or fifth time through. One of my favorite books of all time.
Meghan: What’s a book you really enjoyed that others wouldn’t have expected you to like?
Joe Hart: Watership Down. You wouldn’t think a book about talking rabbits would be up a horror writer’s alley, but the story has such emotional depth it just sweeps you away.
Meghan: What made you decide you want to write? When did you begin writing?
Joe Hart: I always loved being scared. I loved scary movies and horror stories and wanted to be able to create something that would frighten other people in the same way. I started around the age of nine plinking away on my mother’s electronic typewriter and just never stopped.
Meghan: Do you have a special place you like to write?
Joe Hart: Usually anywhere quiet, although sometimes writing at a café or bar has its own appeal. Normally the office at my house is where most of the words get put down.
Meghan: Do you have any quirks or processes that you go through when you write?
Joe Hart: I have a small routine, but it’s important and seems to work. Normally I get up fairly early and make coffee, catch up on social media for a half hour or so, then read something- anything to get the creative juices flowing, then I’m ready to write.
Meghan: Is there anything about writing you find most challenging?
Joe Hart: Transitions between especially large plot points can sometimes be challenging as well as beginning chapters in the right way.
Meghan: What’s the most satisfying thing you’ve written so far?
Joe Hart: Wow, not sure I can point at any one thing and say it’s the most satisfying. I guess I’d have to say the progression of my career and skill set overall is something I’m proud of. I definitely abide by the idea of always learning and never being fully satisfied with your own work.
Meghan: What books have most inspired you? Who are some authors that have inspired your writing style?
Joe Hart: Living breathing characters. If the characters aren’t there in a book there isn’t much of a story as far as I’m concerned. You can have the coolest plot idea but without characters to make it whole, the story’s going to fall flat.
Meghan: What does it take for you to love a character? How do you utilize that when creating your characters?
Joe Hart: I feel like a character needs to interesting even before they’re relatable. They have to have great motivations for what they’re doing and have real human reactions to situations. They need to be quirky and have depth to their emotional responses. If all those things come together and drive the plot forward I feel like I’ve done my job.
Meghan: Which, of all your characters, do you think is the most like you?
Joe Hart: Oh boy, now that’s a dangerous question. I’d have to say Liam Dempsey from my mystery thriller series. He’s a realist and at times frustrated with the lack of justice in the world. I definitely can relate.
Meghan: Are you turned off by a bad cover? To what degree were you involved in creating your characters?
Joe Hart: At times, yes. If a cover isn’t at least interesting it’s not going to draw me in enough to read the synopsis. For most of them I’ve been very involved and had a lot of creative sway, which I’ve been extremely grateful for.
Meghan: What have you learned creating your books?
Joe Hart: That nothing is static. Everything is always changing and you have to adapt.
Meghan: What has been the hardest scene for you to write so far?
Joe Hart: Probably the death of a character by cancer which was modeled after experiencing a family member go through the same scenario. It was almost something I needed to write to deal with on a personal level.
Meghan: What makes your books different from others out there in this genre?
Joe Hart: I actually write in several different genres so I guess it’s my style that sets me apart from other authors. The specific way I access a scene or characters’ thoughts and emotions along with keeping up a fairly brisk pace.
Meghan: How important is the book title, how hard is it to choose the best one, and how did you choose yours (of course, with no spoilers)?
Joe Hart: I think a title is right up there in importance beside a cover. Extremely hard. Most times a title changes at least once while writing the book, sometimes more than that. On very few occasions a strong title arrives along with the idea and that’s wonderful. Usually I choose my titles through a phrase or a single word that encompasses the general feeling of the work, but it’s very difficult to find something punchy and interesting that connects certain ideas within the book. Titles are very tricky things…
Meghan: What makes you feel more fulfilled: Writing a novel or writing a short story?
Joe Hart: Definitely a novel since it’s such an undertaking. When you’ve completed a novel it’s like swimming across a large expanse of open water. The moment you feel solid ground under your feet again you sigh with relief. There’s an overwhelming feeling of accomplishment that is there in a short story as well, but less so for me.
Meghan: Tell us a little bit about your book, your target audience, and what you would like readers to take away from your stories.
Joe Hart: My books are pieces of me in so many ways. I’ve poured parts of my life into them and learned things about myself as they were created. My hope is to create something frightening and thrilling while always hopeful in its own way. My audience would be anyone who enjoys realistic characters dealing with incredible circumstances. I’d like readers to feel like they’ve gone on a journey when they’ve finished one of my books. Like they’re saying goodbye to friends in the characters I’ve created, but friends they can always visit again on a reread.
Meghan: Can you tell us about some of the deleted scenes/stuff that got left out of your work?
Joe Hart: Most of my “deleted scenes” are typically extraneous character development that isn’t necessary or that bogs down the plot. I try to be very careful about the major plot points and scenes of spectacle so when it comes time for editing the bulk of them stay put.
Meghan: What is in your trunk?
Joe Hart: I wrote about half of a post-apocalyptic novel that I set aside when I first got serious about writing. Not sure I’ll ever go back to it. I also have several short stories that are waiting for my brain to catch up to them so they can be finished. There’s also a screenplay I’ve been working on for the better part of a year that’s half done. That one will get finished since it’s my “downtime” project when I have gaps in other work.
Meghan: What can we expect from you in the future?
Joe Hart: I’ve co-written a YA novel that should be out near the end of the year and I’ve written a crossover thriller that has elements of horror and sci-fi that should be out sometime in early 2020.
Meghan: Where can we find you?
Joe Hart: The best place to catch up to me is at my website. Otherwise you can find me on Twitter.
Meghan: Do you have any closing words for your fans or anything you’d like to say that we didn’t get to cover in this interview?
Joe Hart: I just want to say thank you to all the readers who have made my continued career possible. And thank you so much for the great in-depth interview! Answering the questions was a blast.
Joe Hartis the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of eleven novels that include The River Is Dark, Lineage, Obscura, and the highly acclaimed Dominion Trilogy. When not writing, he enjoys reading, exercising, exploring the great outdoors, and watching movies with his family.
She’s felt it before…the fear of losing control. And it’s happening again.
In the near future, an aggressive and terrifying new form of dementia is affecting victims of all ages. The cause is unknown, and the symptoms are disturbing. Dr. Gillian Ryan is on the cutting edge of research and desperately determined to find a cure. She’s already lost her husband to the disease, and now her young daughter is slowly succumbing as well. After losing her funding, she is given the unique opportunity to expand her research. She will travel with a NASA team to a space station where the crew has been stricken with symptoms of a similar inexplicable psychosis—memory loss, trances, and violent, uncontrollable impulses.
Crippled by a secret addiction and suffering from creeping paranoia, Gillian finds her journey becoming a nightmare as unexplainable and violent events plague the mission. With her grip weakening on reality, she starts to doubt her own innocence. And she’s beginning to question so much more—like the true nature of the mission, the motivations of the crew, and every deadly new secret space has to offer.
Merging thrilling science-fiction adventure with mind-bending psychological suspense, Wall Street Journal bestselling author Joe Hart explores both the vast mysteries of outer space and the even darker unknown that lies within ourselves.
His life has been shattered by events beyond his control and regret is his constant companion. His wife is gone, lost to an unbeatable cancer. His son has been mentally and physically handicapped by a tragic accident. He’s been fired for using company funds in a failed attempt to save his wife’s life.
On a whim, Evan accepts an invitation to housesit on a picturesque island in northern Minnesota. At first it seems like the perfect second chance for he and his son to recover and rebuild their life together.
But there is something very, very wrong with the house and all that occupies it. And worst of all, Evan doesn’t know if the house is haunted…
Pain, horror, fear- These are the things that bestselling novelist Lance Metzger’s life have been comprised of. His childhood remains a riddled wasteland of abuse by a sadistic father and the abandonment of an apathetic mother. In turn, his only refuge became his writing.
A SANCTUARY, BROKEN
When Lance loses his ability to write and becomes haunted by a nightmare that he’d thought was buried, he is drawn inexplicably to a house on the shores of Lake Superior where he finds his muse once again, but something is waiting for him when he arrives.
AN EVIL WITHOUT BOUNDARIES
Now he must unlock the devastating secrets that the house holds and uncover the mystery of his own broken past before he loses his sanity, and perhaps his soul.
Let’s welcome Dev Jarrett today, who has a story to tell us about his Halloween memories.
My eighth Halloween began on Christmas Day when I was seven years old. Looking back, I don’t even know if Halloween was that big of a deal to me until that age. I mean, make-believe is the realm of children, and pretending to be someone else is just another day in the life of a child. Trying on different masks and different identities is a normal part of finding out who we are. Some of us realize that we enjoy trying on ALL the masks, ALL the time, I suppose, and turn into writers—or maybe schizophrenics.
When I woke up on Christmas morning in 1978—yeah, I’m that old, so what—I found the most amazing gift ever. A “King of the Gorillas Movie Makeup Kit” was nestled under the tree next to the handheld Electronic Football and Simon. I loved all three of these gifts, and I think I played both of the electronic games until I wore out the buttons, but the biggest deal was the movie makeup kit. Yeah, the age recommendation was ten and up, but thankfully Dad (as he usually did) ignored that shit.
I remembered the Planet of the Apes movies and I thought of how cool it had looked in those movies that the actors spoke and their makeup moved with them. This was like that. Realism! Instead of simple face paint, this amazing kit had individual molds of facial features. You had to mix the gelatin stuff together, then pour it into the molds and wait for it to set. When they were cured, you had rubbery appliances to attach to your face with the special glue. After that, paint the appliances and the exposed parts of your skin and put the cowl thing on—clearly the lamest part of the kit. I mean, it doesn’t even really look like hair.
It had enough of the mix for two applications, so I knew I couldn’t wait. I asked Dad to make me up – and I guess in that sense, it was a big kid’s toy, and Dad was the big kid. He made the pieces and trimmed them to fit me, and painstakingly painted me up. And it was so friggin’ cool! Somewhere in my parents’ house is a dusty photo album containing a picture of me in a Star Wars t-shirt and gorilla movie makeup. I knew, absolutely, that this was what I wanted to be for Halloween next year.
I would be the King of Halloween. The KING. After so many years of wearing boxed costumes with dead plastic mouthslits, I was going to look REAL. Next fall, I’d be the scariest monster roaming the streets of my neighborhood. We packed everything away carefully and I waited for the calendar to roll around to October of 1979. While the other kids would have plain plastic masks with eyeholes and stupid costumes, their “Trick or Treat!” muffled and lifeless, I’d be able to show a moving gorilla mouth and say something super pithy and cool, like “Trick or Treat, human.” This would be SO badass.
Halloween finally came. I was excited, ready to take my place as King of the jungle and the neighborhood King of Halloween. Dad hooked me up, carefully constructing the disguise that would make me look like something out of a movie. The mixing, the placement, and the painting took so much time, and all I could do was sit still while he created my alter ego. When he finished, he took my sister and me out to walk the neighborhood. Mom stayed home to pass out candy.
Dad walked from house to house with us, but stayed on the street while we went up to the doors. The first few houses marveled at my glorious disguise, oohing and ahhing over the intricacy of my makeup. In all honesty, the rest of the costume was regular streetclothes, but the makeup more than made up for any shortcoming in the wardrobe department. I began to think I was receiving more candy than the other kids because my gorilla makeup was absolutely the best. My pumpkin-shaped bucket of candy was heavy with the good stuff, none of that orange- or black-wrapped peanut butter taffy shit.
Damn right. The King of Halloween. The King, baby.
But I didn’t know what waited around the corner.
Barely out of sight of our house, already riding high on the idea that I had absolutely the best costume anyone was going to see this year, we went to a house with streamers hanging across the entry to the front porch. The porch stretched all the way across the front of the house, and it was festooned with hanging cobwebs and more streamers. They’d swapped out their usual porch lightbulb for a bright orange bulb. It was cool to see someone else in the neighborhood making an effort for the holiday. We went up the walk to the door and rang the bell, and Dad waited at the curb.
The timing was perfect. The front door opened, and I was already expecting new praises for my amazing getup. I was distracted, and didn’t see the maniac. He jumped over the side railing of the front porch and charged toward us, howling like a monster.
When I look back on it now, I think he must’ve been dressed as Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but at the time, it was only a giant (a grownup? dressed for Halloween? WTF?) guy in a bloody shirt and lumpy plastic mask lumbering toward us and screeching. He may have even had a chainsaw, I don’t know.
The self-proclaimed King of Halloween lost his shit. He dropped his bucket of candy, yelled, and ran for his goddamned life. My little sister ran too, but I think my reaction probably scared her more than Leatherface. I sprinted back down the front walk to the street, screaming at the top of my lungs, and launched myself into my Dad’s arms, crying. I ruined his shirt, burying my face in his chest. He was laughing, and in the same situation, I suppose I’d do the same.
He held me for a moment, and protected me, and he told me everything was okay, and soon the effects of the jump scare passed. When I turned to look, tears still streaming down my tiny gorilla face, the Leatherface guy was apologizing while laughing, and had brought my dropped bucket of candy out to the street. Dad assured him everything was cool, that I was okay, and in a few minutes, we continued on our way.
The King of Halloween, the kid with the awesome movie-quality makeup job, had been handily dethroned by a guy in a lumpy plastic mask whose mouth couldn’t even move. Ugh. How embarrassing.
I’ll always remember that Halloween. Halloween is such a fun day that it’s celebrated practically every day in our house, but that one was the one that truly scared me for the first time.
I was super terrified, and you know what?
It was fun.
So now my wife and I have carried on our own Halloween tradition for the past 25 years, and every year our neighbors know us as the “Halloween House.” We dress up, we play our parts, and really get into the spirit. One year, Jennie actually built a working guillotine for a dungeon-themed Halloween! Last year we had a Pet Sematary, and this year’s theme is a Witches’ Sabbath. Let’s see how many kids (and adults) we can scare this time. Come visit!
Happy Halloween.
Dev Jarrett is a writer, a father of five, a husband, and one of those guys the US Army trained too much. He speaks Arabic, he can break ciphers in his sleep, and can still break down and reassemble an M4 rifle and an M9 pistol while blindfolded.
He’s visited many different countries in the past quarter century, and can’t talk about most of the adventures he’s had. On the other hand, it’s public record that he’s received a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, so make what you will of that.
When a hapless explorer disturbs the watery grave of Muriel Wallace, a terrifying chain of events is put into motion. Corey Rockland, sheriff of a sleepy Georgia town, must now unravel the mystery behind a corrupt family and a broken heart dating back to the Civil War. Unless he can find a way to stop her, Muriel will unleash her vengeance on anyone she deems loveless.
Bud Primrose, assistant coach of a Little League team, gets smacked in the head with a line drive and wakes up in the hospital with a kind of second sight.
If you saw a stranger’s death coming, would you try to save her?
He sees others’ deaths hours before they occur. When he uses this strange new ability to save a woman from a brutal murder, he becomes the thwarted next target.
If you had the power, would you use it?
Now he must do everything he can to save himself and the woman he loves from the razor-wielding maniac bent on payback.
Fresh from Afghanistan, crippled by both a crumbling marriage and growing paranoia, can a soldier save his family from the ancient evil in his own house?
Sergeant First Class Chris Williams is back home, and he and his family are move to Fort Huachuca, a small Army post deep in the southeastern corner of Arizona.
From the time they move in, Chris and his wife Molly are struck by the preponderance of ghost stories surrounding their new home. Chris wonders why nightmares still plague him—then, he realizes the reason. He and his family are not alone in their house. An evil older than Fort Huachuca, older than time itself, lives there. Now, enough sacrifices have been made to its blood hunger that it can finally give birth to a powerful, deadly offspring intent on dominating our world.
Chris, Molly, and their two children become pawns of the evil spirit inhabiting their new neighborhood. Already casualties of life, crippled by both a crumbling marriage and growing paranoia, can Chris and Molly save their family from the evil already living under their own roof?
Seven year old Lucinda has a homemade doll that has a special kind of magic. When someone tries to hurt Lucinda and her mother, perhaps he’ll see the doll’s magic too.
For her seventh birthday Lucinda’s grandfather sends her a homemade doll. Her mother Sharon had a little sister once—and now Lucinda has a “little sister” of her own.
Sharon’s boyfriend Deke is not the man she thought he was—he’s hateful and abusive, like something out of a nightmare. Now he’s on the run from the police and he’s taken Sharon and Lucinda with him.
Mother and daughter must find some way to escape his blood-soaked grasp before he kills them both. They have no way out.
Meghan's House of Books 