Joe Augustyn's Blog

Just wanted to say I'll be manning the Horror Writers Association table at Monster-Mania in Cherry Hill, NJ this weekend along with some very talented fellow writers from the HWA.

We hope to see you there. Drop by to say hello.

The horror community took a devastating hit this week with the passing of Rocky Wood. Members of the Horror Writers Association knew Rocky as the President of that professional guild... but also as a sterling human being. He was a friend to all members, from his close friend Stephen King to the newest newbies in the organization. He himself was a multi-award winning writer. Despite being severely afflicted with ALS Rocky was quick to respond to emails and worked hard to improve and expand the HWA, and whoever steps into his shoes will be hard-pressed to fill them. I only "met" Rocky through emails but was proud when he referred to me as his friend on FB. Despite his lofty position he was down-to-earth and very supportive of other writers--a rarity in today's anxious, competitive world. I've known a lot of leaders in the movie, publishing and general business worlds, and would rank Rocky as one of the very few greats among them.

An interview with Rocky summing up his life is here:

http://tinyurl.com/kjfd4fg

Was thrilled to get a 5 star review on DEAD RAIN by Goodreads super-reader Steven, who devoured it promptly and was very generous in his praise.

I then discovered a few more reviews on Amazon for the same book. I couldn't be happier with the response--even the qualified 4 star review from a reader who didn't like one character in the book, but was incredibly positive about the rest of it.

Just wanted to say how important reviews are. Not only do they help writers survive financially, they give us the courage to forge on through the lean times.

Thanks to everyone who's ever reviewed a book!

I've been working on a number of novels over the course of the last decade, writing a draft of one then letting it sit while I work on another, then returning to the first to do a rewrite and again later for the final polish.

GHOSTWRITER The Polaroid Ghost & True Tales of the Paranormal is the only non-fiction book I've written and it took a decade and a half to complete. It all started back in the late 1990s when I decided to write a book about the incredible phenomena I'd personally witnessed at a friend's house--a home that has appeared on half a dozen TV shows about the paranormal over the past few decades.

I managed to jot down everything I'd experienced at the house, a variety of unexplained ghostly and poltergeist activity over the course of a decade. At that point Fate intervened and I got sidetracked by a writing assignment for Propaganda Films, a rewrite on a surfer movie that, like the vast majority of projects developed in Hollywood, never got made. Then I got hired to work on a video project, putting my artistic talents to use creating fake comedic magazine covers in Photoshop.

A few years passed with no progress on the ghost book and I finally decided to exit stage right and get "back East" as they say in Tinseltown. My plan was to immediately start writing books, but another screenwriting gig popped up, this time adapting a book about a grisly ritualistic murder. It was nice to get a paycheck, but again that movie never got made. The producer dragged his feet and another film based on the same case beat him into production.

The delays in finishing GHOSTWRITER proved fortuitous. After bouncing around between apartments in Philadelphia and Wildwood, NJ, I stumbled into an unbelievable deal on a vacant house for sale. Uninhabited for some 30 years, the house was being sold by someone who'd inherited it. The price was insanely low and the neighborhood was one that I'd been keeping an eye on for a few years, just waiting for an affordable property to turn up.

I bought it and moved in. Actually it's more accurate to say I "camped out" because the place needed a complete rehab. Rather than go into long details that are included in the book, the place turned out to be haunted, something I should have anticipated due to the length of its abandonment and the low low sale price.

Not only did I get a new home, I also ended up with a handful of stories for my book. Tales of poltergeists throwing metal objects around, making noise, causing things to disappear and reappear. All the typical pranks these spirits are known for.

Only after experiencing too many things to dismiss, I asked my neighbor if she'd ever heard anything strange about the house. She immediately advised me to get a priest to bless the house, and proceeded to rattle off a long history of unexplained, often early, deaths in the house.

I'd lived in a handful of haunted houses before, but in the ten years I've lived in this house I've experienced a mind-blowing assortment of activity. I'm used to it by now, but on one or two occasions I was so rattled that I had to leave the lights on until dawn.