And without further adieu, I present a peek into the mind of Jeremy C. Shipp.

 Q: I have to confess that I have this stereotypical image of a horror writer in my head that’s something along the lines of a hunched over guy in a dungeon-like basement, typing furiously with four cigarettes smoldering away and every so often letting loose a mad scientist cackle while rubbing their hands together in an oh-so-evil way… What’s the true story?  What is your writing process really like?

 A: The truth is, I write hunched over in an office overflowing with weird statues and toys such as a half-naked Santa in a mason jar, typing furiously with organic, aflatoxin free peanut butter on the roof of my mouth and every so often letting loose a giggle as my pygmy tigers, as I like to call them, perform near-impossible acrobatic feats.

 Q:  How long have you been writing and when did the horror genre come into focus for you?

 A:  In fourth grade, I wrote my first short story, about an alien named Chomper with an affinity for opera. Then, when I was 13, I wrote my first novel, and I’ve been writing almost constantly ever since. I started creating horror stories when I was a little boy, playing pretend with my brothers. Some of our recurring characters included a mummy, death, and a floating mouth that could eat people and send them to strange alternate dimensions.

 Q: If you could be one of your own characters in real life, which one would you be and why?

 A:  I’d probably be Cicely from Cursed. She has a good attitude, and she knows how to draw monsters.

Q:  Got any elves that can come do my dishes when I go to sleep?

 A:  I’m afraid not. However, I once owned an anthropomorphic dish who was rather skilled at washing elves. He eventually ran off with some spoon.

 Q:  You personify and bring to life people’s nightmares in your writing [see clowns].  Is there anything that you’re afraid of?

 A:  Heights, mold, clowns, hierarchical thinking, lack of empathy.

 Q:  Speaking of clowns, every third Facebook post of yours gives me visions of Killer Clowns from Outer Space luring unwitting children from fast food diners, inciting uncontrollable chills…  What gives with all the clowns?

 A:  A murder of clowns moved into my attic a couple years ago, and they’ve been tormenting me ever since. They throw moldy pies at me. They sic their undead balloon animals on me. They even perform unnecessary surgeries on me in my sleep using rusty scalpels and rubber chicken beaks.

 Q:  How’ve the garden gnomes been treating you lately?

 A:  Me and the garden gnomes, we get along splendidly. I give them all our banana peels, and in exchange, they stave off the apocalypse using sacred sporks.

 Q:  Does your writing give you nightmares or do nightmares give you writing?

A:  Both. Also, sometimes, my nightmares give my writing nightmares, and my writing gives my nightmares nightmares.

 Q:  If you could take over the mind of any writer for a day, who would it be and what would you do?

A:  I would take over my own mind and I’d force myself to tickle an attic clown and to do other strange things that I would never do.

 Q:  What do your mini tigers [cats] think of the attic clowns?  Or, do your cats turn into the attic clowns and torment you?  I could totally see cats doing that…

A:  My cats have the power to transform into attic clowns (as all cats do), but they would never use this power, as cats are highly allergic to evil. Thankfully, attic clowns are highly allergic to cuteness, and so the cats and the clowns leave each other well enough alone. 

 Q:  Is there a question you’ve never been asked that you wish someone would and what would be your answer?

A:  I’d love to be asked: What’s your favorite peanut butter-based meal? That would have to be peanut butter and watermelon sandwiches, cereal and peanut butter, or peanut butter smothered in peanut butter with a nice peanut butter sauce.

 Q:  Random parting thoughts?

1. Eating baby corn makes me feel like a giant.

2. The best thing about being in a pickle is eating your way out.

3. Evil twins are people too.

4. I kill zombies for the rush. I eat their brains for the irony.

You can find autographed copies for sale by clicking HERE!  To purchase from Amazon, click the cover images.

Or, you can be entered to win a copy of Fungus of the Heart by signing up for Jeremy C. Shipp’s newsletter HERE or by entering on GOODREADS.

You can find Jeremy on FACEBOOK, MYSPACE, TWITTER, and be sure to visit his WEBSITE, that is to say if you aren’t afraid of clowns, running toasters and poka-dot penguin armies…

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FROM THE AUTHOR’S WEBSITE:

What if the best morning of your life suddenly turned into your worst nightmare? Sam Case is about to find out. Saving Rachel is the story of what happens when killers force a man to choose between his wife and his mistress…and the one he rejects must die. But wait–all is not as it appears to be. In fact, nothing is what it appears to be!

Saving Rachel is a scary, funny, roller coaster ride through hell, with twists, and turns that will slap your face and suck you in!

REVIEW:

This suspenseful mystery will leave you confused but deeply intrigued.  There are crazy twists, turns and round abouts that will leave you regretful to put it aside.  I imagine that if Dean Koontz collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock at the circus, this would be their brain child.  This is a novella worth reading, no doubt about it.

RATING:

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Hope is not an investment strategy. If you’re like most people, you hope for a comfortable retirement doing what you like to do, free from financial worry. But have you asked yourself the tough questions that need answering before you can begin attaining your retirement goals? Do you even know, in specific detail, what your goals are? Do you want to live in the lap of luxury or merely continue living the lifestyle you currently enjoy? And do you know what it’s going to take to be able to do those things?
Most people have never really taken a hard look at where they are financially and what it would take to reach their goals. That’s because financial decisions are emotional and difficult, and change often involves risk. But change is what’s needed if you want to start thinking and acting like someone in control of his or her finances. Investors think differently than non-investors and I need you start thinking like an investor if we’re going to get your money to start working for you.

Before we get started, though, I want you to understand a few things about my approach to wealth building. While I believe that you can amass great wealth by sticking to these pillars of wealth, I don’t want you thinking that this is a get-rich-quick book or that I expect you to immediately understand everything about wealth building just because you’ve read my book. This is going to take work and patience and planning, and maybe even help from a financial professional.

I believe in planning for the entire length of your lifetime, and that your plan will need updating and adjustment to survive as long as you do. Financially successful people understand that amassing wealth isn’t about gimmicks or following the crowd. In order to create wealth you have to take a serious look at what’s best for you and your family. There is no one-size-fits-all financial plan.

I’m going to ask you to think like a corporation and honestly look at your personal cash flow. Would you buy your family business as it is today, based on your personal balance sheet? Are you running the family finances to the best of your abilities, and are you using the Three Secret Pillars of Wealth? Recently, three of the richest men in the world were asked by Forbes magazine what the best investment advice that they’d ever heard was.

Together, these three men identified the three pillars of wealth, and I want you to learn how to use them to the same great effect as these billionaires.

-James Burns

Hannibal's Elephant Girl

This is a historical fiction set in 218 BC and follows a young girl, Liada who suffers from amnesia. Liada is plucked from the river by an elephant, Obolus which sets the first book in the (coming) series in motion.

From the website:

“This is the story of my life as a young girl following Hannibal and his army from Carthage in North Africa to Iberia, and then over the Alps toward Rome. I never reached Rome, but then neither did Hannibal. I left him after the battle of Trebbia, taking with me his last remaining elephant, Obolus, and my friend, the slave girl Tin Tin Ban Sunia. This book recounts the first month of our long journey.” ~Liada

REVIEW:

From the moment I opened the pages of this story, I found myself riveted and thrilled.  There is a melodic cadence that seems to run the author’s words fluidly from the book to your mind and the images of scenes described seem to pop from the page as if the book were a miniature movie screen.  The balance of right and wrong and proportion of development, conflict and resolution could not have been better poised than if put on an actual scale.  I walked away from this book feeling satisfied but yet with hope for more to come of this 12 year old phenomenon and her elephant.

RATING

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FROM THE AUTHOR’S WEBSITE:

The sleepy town of Newbury, Connecticut, is shocked when a little girl is found brutally murdered. The town’s top detective, perplexed by a complete lack of leads, calls in FBI agent Leia Bines, an expert in cases involving children.  

 Meanwhile, Dr. Peter Gram, a psychiatrist at Newbury’s hospital, searches desperately for the cause of seven-year-old Naya Hastings’s devastating nightmares. Afraid that she might hurt herself in the midst of a torturous episode, Naya’s parents have turned to the bright young doctor as their only hope.

 The situations confronting Leia and Peter converge when Naya begins drawing chilling images of murder after being bombarded by the disturbing images in her dreams. Amazingly, her sketches are the only clues to the crime that has panicked Newbury residents. Against her better judgment, Leia explores the clues in Naya’s crude drawings, only to set off an alarming chain of events.

 In this stunning psychological thriller, innocence gives way to evil, and trust lies forgotten in a web of deceit, fear, and murder.

REVIEW:

This psychological and paranormal thriller commands the reader’s attention and drags them into the story by their collar from page one.  It is a true page turner that is irresistible and devastating to put down.  There is a perfect balance of plot and character development, suspense, climax and closure tied together with smooth, fluid prose.  The feelings of connection to the characters Dr. Peter Gram, Naya Hastings and Detective Leia Bines that the writer invokes, will pull you into the novel irrevocably through the end and leave you anxious to see what Preetham Grandhi will put forth next.

RATING:

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Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Shit is for the most part, a table book set out on the cocktail table to amuse your guests with the raucous title. There are some funny bits but overall has the feel of a blog compilation. It contains zilch in the way of creativity and would not hold up to the label of literature, and yet…there’s a Volume Two.

RATING:

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Of all the books I have read in my life, there isn’t a single book that I have come across that would earn a rating worthy of 5 pens, until I read “Queen’s Cross”.  It is rare to read of war in such an elegant, poetic prose.  It’s meaty but not raw.  It has war and it has (era and stature appropriate) romance and love, politics, grandeur and simplicity.  It is a perfect medley of real history and creative fiction.  You’ll find yourself, be you man or lady, falling for Isabella, the Queen of Castile, nay, Queen of Spain. 

The title is apropos in the sense that the Queen wears a cross allegedly fashioned from one of THE three nails (yes, those three nails) but also for the cross that is her burden to bear of uniting Spain.

Read this, and you’ll not be disappointed.

RATING:

One of the main questions I receive from readers (about my novel) concerns why I have chosen to write about such desperate and downtrodden people. My short answer is that readers learn more about themselves when they read about desperate people.

Unfortunately, happy, content characters don’t teach us much about ourselves. But tragedy, desperation, violence, these force us to look inward, to contemplate our lives and more importantly, to consider our own flaws. These are the emotions that transform us, that make us learn about ourselves in ways we hadn’t before. 911 changed Americans in a way that gazing at the Statue of Liberty simply can’t. Horrible experiences (even when read about) wake people up. To be honest, I have no desire to write comfortable, safe little books filled with characters that readers grow to admire. Don’t get me wrong, of course I want readers to walk away somehow changed by the book, and I certainly want them to experience a gamut of emotions while reading (love, hate, grief, sadness, etc.). Like any writer, I enjoy when readers like a character I’ve developed, but in all honestly I’m happiest when a reader tells me they hate one of my characters. When I hear this, I know I’ve impacted them on an emotional level, mostly because when readers begin to hate a character, they begin to learn about themselves in a way they simply don’t when they admire a character.

Chris Tusa

*Read the VintageDM review of “Dirty Little Angels” by Chris Tusa.