Daniel G. Keohane's Blog

Author Christine Hayton is doing a free book giveaway at Goodreads for our anthology of novellas CHILDHOOD FEARS this month. Check it out and enter!


https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...

The audiobook for MARGARET'S ARK is now available from Audible.com, iTunes and Amazon. Narrated by the amazing Caroline Miller! Check it out now here:

Amazon: http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...

Audible: http://www.audible.com/pd/Fiction/Mar...

So, with the release of Samhain's CHILDHOOD FEARS in paperback and kindle, the authors of the 4 novellas (myself, as G Daniel Gunn and L.L.Soares, J.G. Faherty, J.H. Moncrieff and Christine Hayton each wrote a little something about what scared us as children, keeping to the 4 themes of one of the other novellas. Came out pretty cool, and at times quite informative:

JG Faherty (author of "Winterwood") talks about the Japanese game of Hitori Kakurenbo, a decidely twisted and frightening rendition of Hide and Seek, only between you, and a demon-possessed Teddy Bear. True story, which makes it all the more creepy: http://jgfaherty-blog.blogspot.com/

J.H. Moncrieff (author of "The Bear Who Wouldn't Leave") drags into the light the question: what real nightmares strike terror in the hearts of society. Killer clowns, both imagined, and real: http://www.jhmoncrieff.com/send-in-th...

L.L. Soares and I do a back and forth about Scarecrows, and how sometimes the strangest things frightened us as children: http://dankeohane.blogspot.com/2015/1...

Christine Hayton (author of "Scarecrows") wraps up with a discussion of some decidedly dark traditions of Christmases past. Not the spiritual side, but the traditions the world comes up with over the centuries: https://christinehaytonwrites.wordpre...

Samhain Publishing is having a 30% across the board sale on all horror titles this week only!

"All the authors effectively evoke the dread that comes from knowing the children can't rely on their parents for protection or rescue, and real-world concerns such as child abuse and committing the mentally ill to institutions... sometimes loom larger than any paranormal menace." - Publishers Weekly.

My newest novel, Plague of Darkness, what Horror Fiction Review called "...easily Keohane's best novel to date," is now free for the next five days on Kindle! Find it here: http://smile.amazon.com/Plague-Darkne...

We have a release date for my new novel, Plague of Darkness: next Thursday, November 20th. You can pre-order the kindle version any time and on the 20th it will be delivered to your device automatically. The print edition is actually available now but hoping for the push to be on the same day, to help with rankings. 12.99 (unless on sale) for the print and only 2.99 for the kindle edition.

Here's the blurb:

People hide their secrets in the dark. Sometimes, that same darkness is what will eventually reveal them.

Eight months after Saint Gerard's Episcopal Church closes its doors, the building has become the new home of Bill and Seyha Watts. The house, however, has plans for its new occupants. Trapped in a biblical darkness that can be felt, four people stumble through a surreal nightmare where the only escape is through their deepest fears and memories. Cut off from the outside world, they are prisoners of a power they cannot see, struggling to understand what is truth – and what is a lie.

I like to think this one is pretty unique, and pretty creepy. Hope everyone else thinks so. :)

My short story, "Box" is now available on the kindle for only 99 cents. This story was originally published in Coach’s Midnight Diner, Back From the Dead Edition. When it was released it received an Honorable Mention in the Year's Best Horror. I'm pretty proud of this particular piece:

http://www.amazon.com/Box-A-Short-Sto...

This coming April (April 14 - 20, 2013), along with a group from our church (New England Chapel), my daughter Amanda, my wife Linda and I will be traveling to Alabama for a week to work in one of the areas hit hardest by tornadoes in 2011. Multiple tornadoes touched down all across the Southeast United States that day, but Alabama suffered the greatest damage with an 80 mile long path of destruction through the state. Two years later many families & communities are still struggling to rebuild their homes and their lives.

We will be working with a non-profit community organization which has been working tirelessly to help families and commuinities rebuild - rebuilding homes and also helping to clean up debris, even after all this time.

As preparation, we're asking you to partner with us on this important service trip, looking for prayer and financial support. If you can pray for us and our team we would appreciate it, especially as the date approaches.

If you would like to help financially (each of us needs to raise $935 for air fare, food and transportation), you can make a tax-deductable donation online by visiting

www.dankeohane.com/alabama

or you can donate by check payable to:

"New England Chapel"
with "Alabama - Keohane" in the memo field and mail it to:
Dan Keohane
31 Beaman Rd
Princeton MA 01541-1113

Thank for your support!

There's a blog event that’s been going around among writers – actually it’s being referred to as a blog meme – a new name which I had thought was a nonsense word for making funny viral videos, but as I write the word it occurs to me now: meme, self-promotion (“me! me!”)... ah, I get it. I’m getting on in years, takes me a while... where was I?

Well, this one’s called "The Next Big Thing." Authors are blogging answers to ten quick questions, then tagging up to 5 other authors they think readers should know about. The whole idea is to create a network through social media, drawing new readers through blog readerships, etc. Kevin Lucia(www.kevinlucia.com) tagged me in his post last week, and now it’s my turn. Thing is, this has been going on for a little while now and most writers I know have been tagged or simply never read their emails (Of course, being sick for over 2 weeks didn’t help matters in regard to contacting folks), so I’ve only one writer to share with you today - ironically he is the first person I thought of and asked, so I'm psyched about that.

L.L. Soares (www.llsoares.com) is an amazing talent and I’m psyched to be able to “tag” him. His first novel, Life Rage, has just been released and I’m actually reading it now. Its a strong, dark tale, full of the rage Lauran’s known for in much of his writing. I’m hoping this book with get his name out there, his work compared to the likes of Jack Ketchum. I’m already thinking this way early in the book. It’s not surprising because he’s always been a strong writer, covering the gamut from the dark and violent to the tender and poetic. He and I collaborated on a short story for Cemetery Dance Magazine a while back and even have done a novella together. Lastly, be sure to check out the review site Cinema Knife Fight he co-edits with Michael Arruda.

So, I need to answer some questions for you:

1) What is the title of your next book/work?

My next release is titled Plague of Darkness. You’ve probably heard mention of it over the years in my posts. I’ve been editing it from line one to ‘the end’ quite a few times, and it’s almost ready to make it’s appearance, probably early next year.

2) Where did the idea come from for the book/work?

Quite a few years back, when I was attending the Catholic church in town, the parish was having a dedication / consecration ceremony on its 40th anniversary. Seems the Catholic church (among other denominations) won’t fully consecrate (make holy with a ritual ceremony) a building unless they own it. If there’s a mortgage, then the bank owns it. Long story short, we crammed into the small church for the ceremony. As it went on I began to imagine what would happen if all the stained glass windows went black and we were trapped inside. The next day I was telling someone at work about the service, and he asked if churches ever deconsecrate a building. I didn’t know – but I assumed so (they do). Of course, deconsecrating a church might cause the windows to turn black.... A year or so later I was considering some new novels to write and this image kept coming to mind. I closed my eyes and opened the Bible to a random page and pointed (as I had done with Solomon’s Grave) and my finger landed on the story of the Plague of Darkness in Exodus.... I knew I had my story.

3) What genre does your book/work fall under?

I’d say it falls under horror or suspense, but with a biblical theme like Solomon’s Grave or Margaret’s Ark. This one is a bit darker than the previous two, but I have to admit, it’s an original.

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

No clue on this one. I have my own images of what the characters look like. At least one, a teenager named Gem, is based on an actual person I knew years ago. But casting the movie... too early to even muse on that.

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

People hide their secrets in the dark, but sometimes that same darkness will bring them to light.

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Oh, I’m done with agents for a while. I actually had this book with a major NY agent for a while. It was an honor to be ignored by an NY agent instread of my previous agent. Not. And going with the small press doesn’t appeal to me, considering I’ve been fairly successful with Margaret’s Ark on my own. I’ll probably put Plague of Darkness out via my own Other Road Press imprint unless something comes up beforehand.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

About a year, but it’s gone through somewhere around twelve rewrites since then.

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I was worried when Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker came out with their House while I was writing Plague, but that ended up seems to be a completely different book. Same genre, though. It’s a haunted house story, using a biblical theme as it’s basis, and with a unique kind of haunting.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I think all that was covered above, but I was inspired after finishing Solomon’s Grave to do another biblical-based horror novel (Solomon was written after Margaret’s Ark, though published first).

10) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

As with most of my books, the characters have to be real and the book needs to be about them. In this case, there are five characters (four in the house but a fifth who had a lot of influence on their past lives) who need to be as real as I could make them because their stories, their secrets, is what builds the book. I did a lot of research, for example, on the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot’s reign of terror, even interviewed someone who lived in that era in Cambodia to flesh the story of Seyha Watts. The above mentioned fifth character, Ray Lindu, was more a side reference when I wrote the first couple of drafts, but over revisions he became a more terrible person, to the point that the entire story changed when he changed. It was an interesting process. Have to admit, this book took forever to finish. It kept 'morphing into something else when I wasn’t paying attention.

Weekly update time:

I finished my first full-length short story in over two years! It's called "My Dearest Gwendolyn" and it's sitting on the desk of the editors for an anthology it was written for, waiting for their decision. Yes, no, doesn't matter. Nice to have written a story again after so long.

On the novel front: about 1/3 of the way through some EXTENSIVE editing of the next novel: Plague of Darkness. Been sitting on blocks for a while, and though I'd probably done at least a dozen drafts, there were a lot of pages with tons of scribbles, cross-outs, rewrites. Looking good! This one is definitely an original piece, for sure. When it's released I'll talk about how the idea came about.

Nothing. Daniel G Keohane is fine, and author of Margaret's Ark and Solomon's Grave (and the upcoming Plague of Darkness, but that's another topic for another day). But there is a concept called Branding, where your author name becomes synonymous to readers with your most well-known works, and directs them to the next book, and the next. As much as Solomon's Grave is labeled a horror or suspense novel (it was a finalist for the coveted Bram Stoker Award in 2009), it's also an Inspirational Suspense novel. Same with Margaret's Ark, which is by far (and so far) my most successful and well-received novel, based on so many positive reviews coming in from all kinds of readers in the US and abroad.

Now, in January I released Destroyer of Worlds, and though the couple of reviews it's gotten on Amazon so far have been tremendous, and personally I think it kicks major butt novel-wise, it's more a traditional horror novel - part supernatural, part psychological drama. It also has a lot more swearing and sex in it. Though not all readers of my previous novels Margaret's Ark have been Christians/religious, many are. And much of Destroyer might not appeal to them. In fact, it was the mix of reviews on Goodreads itself which got me thinking of how the audience for this book versus the others might be (sometimes) different.

Branding. How do I differentiate to a reader without resorting to content warnings the difference in the two sets of novels? Answer: the author name.

Daniel G Keohane, my full name and long-standing author de plume, for my faith-based novels.

D G Keohane, similar to the above, and still my name but a way to make the horror style of anything else I wrote stand out. Someone likes Margaret's Ark, they'll look for more books by Daniel G Keohane. Someone likes Destroyer of Worlds, they'll look for more from D G Keohane. Now if I can convince the publisher of Christmas Trees and Monkeys to change the name as well...

It's not unique. Other writers have done this in the past (one extremely good dart player who comes to mind is author Michael Marshall Smith, aka Michael Smith, aka Marshall Smith).

Let me know what you think.
Dan
aka, D :-)