Saturday, August 27, 2016

Writing from The Hart Chapter 3

I haven't really blogged much this year. Why? Well no real reason and many reasons I guess. My life is mostly boring. The exciting stuff goes on inside my head which is where I like to keep it. I've had my fair share of exciting when I was a teenager and in my mid-twenties. And I'm happy to be leading the boring life. One of the more quiet aspects about my life I don't talk about in public much is I'm a psychic medium, clairvoyant and empath.

This wasn't something I woke up one day and said hey wouldn't it be fun to be. It's not something I can completely turn off or ignore. Tried that and it didn't work out so well. Because of the experiences I've had they have influenced my writing which is one reason I feel so at home writing paranormal. Besides having an interest in vampires and ghosts in general I'm also pagan so that plays into my writing as well. And lately I've been writing about grim reapers. Again personal experience there too which is hard to explain without sounding crazy. But then again when you tell someone that you hear voices in your head that aren't your own  - or your characters'-then you get strange and funny looks.

It's always amusing when in my day job we get talking about past job experiences and of course I always tell them I was a psychic because well hey I still list it on my resume since it helped put me through college. Most find it interesting and ask me about it. Others I'm sure thing it's all - wooo-- and I'm talking out of my ass.

However, yeah, no. The place I used to work at is still in existence. And it was just a little over a year ago that my mentor, friend, old boss, passed away and it really struck home. Alex was one of the most kindhearted people I had met, stern, crazy, and a whole other host of things that made me want to kill him at times and hug him. And of course  he might be gone from the world but the bastard still owes me money. LOL.

I found Alex on the old Compuserve online chat rooms where he was running a psychic development classes. And at that time I was still in high school and dealing with all this crap with home life and well with these crazy ass things going on with the ghosts in the various apartments I lived in, the typical shit from being a teenager, and everything else. We talked for months and he invited me into Boston to interview with him. So my mom and I went cause at this time I was a couple months from graduating high school and Alex had no idea I was so young. He had me do an interview with on the psychics there which constituted of reading her cards. I had no fucking clue what I was doing. Not really. But he hired me that day and I started 3 days after I graduated high school. It helped my college was three blocks away.

Four and a half years later I had to part ways with the Tearoom because it was my time, but in those years I met so many wonderful people who have stayed with me even today. Some have also gone from this world and left a hole in my heart. But life goes on and I see the occasionally in dreams.

How does this all work into my writing besides shaping my plot lines? Well it spawned a series of books called Soul Reaper Series. I came to a point in my life i knew I wanted to write and it takes a lot of energy to birth a book and do readings. So I had to chose reading or writing. The books won out.

In many ways I am happy how things turned out. And I always wonder if I should go back to doing readings, but I'm firmly reminded that writing is my path and while I'll never get rid of my abilities they are more just another side of me.

Check out other chapters in Writing from the Hart

Chapter 1
Chapter 2


Also my Current Releases are:
Reviving The Dragon
Worlds Apart
Death's Revival

I'm always happy to talk about my personal ghost stories and past psychic experiences, but I no longer do readings professionally.

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Guest Post: L. Andrew Cooper’s TOP 10 HORROR FILMS OF ALL TIME


Let's welcome L. Andrew Cooper to the blog today with this top ten Horror Flicks of all time.



Ranking is subject to change without notice!
10. House by the Cemetery (1981): I’ll be on the Lucio Fulci panel at DragonCon in Atlanta this year! With a monster named Dr. Freudstein in a self-conscious blend of Henry James and slasher movies, what’s not to love about this corny Italian gore movie?

9. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919/1920): The classic German Expressionist silent that many wrongly consider the first horror film, it’s arguably the first great horror film. The set design is still mind-blowing, the performances and storyline still scary. See it with live music (there is no “authentic” score).

8. Hausu (1977): Did you ever notice that mushroom clouds from nuclear bombs look like cotton candy? Have a dance with a skeleton, but be careful, or the piano might eat you. “Genius” does not begin to describe the weirdness of this film.

7. Antichrist (2009): To be honest, I like Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, the follow-up to this one, a bit more, but it’s not as clearly horror. Antichrist is sad and beautiful when it isn’t almost unwatchably violent. Chaos reigns!

6. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984): I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. Actually, I saw Wes Craven’s teen-slashing classic long before I got to Hamlet. I tell the story of how Freddy cured my nightmares in my first book, Gothic Realities.

5. The Thing (1982): You can love the amazing creature that shifts into the shape of any living being it samples—thanks to awesome makeup and animatronics—and the heart-thumping score by Ennio Morricone. Or maybe love the nihilistic, Lovecraftian storyline and performances by Kurt Russell and Keith David. Or just bow down to John Carpenter genius, and be afraid. 

4. Audition (1999): A genre mind-bender, this one lulls you into liking a middle-aged widower who’s just looking for love the wrong way as he raises his son. Maybe he exploits patriarchal advantage a little. More than a little. And someone notices. In the tradition of Texas Chain Saw Massacre, you’ll think it’s a lot gorier than it is, because this movie will hurt you. Takashi Miike, the director, is a super-genius.

3. Candyman (1992): The score by Philip Glass, the story by Clive Barker, the why-haven’t-you-done-more direction from Bernard Rose… but most important, why does it take British material to craft the most important (and overlooked, considering its brilliance) horror film about race and sexuality in America?

2. Martyrs (2008): So difficult to watch, but so rewarding. Like Audition, you spend half the film thinking you’re getting one thing, and then you get another. Both halves rock the soul. Why don’t more stories aspire to transcendence?

1. Suspiria (1977): This is director Dario Argento’s masterpiece, and he has so many good films that I spent a great deal of trouble writing a book about him. It’s over-the-top gruesome, but it’s over-the-top gorgeous. His inspiration was Disney’s Snow White. As you watch people being ripped apart, you might feel confused by the relationship, but when you think back on the colors, you’ll understand.



About the author:    L. Andrew Cooper scribbles horror: novels Burning the Middle Ground and Descending Lines as well as anthologies of experimental shorts Leaping at Thorns (2014 /2016) and Peritoneum (2016). He also co-edited the anthology Imagination Reimagined (2014). His book Dario Argento (2012) examines the maestro’s movies from the 70s to the present. Cooper’s other works on horror include his non-fiction study Gothic Realities (2010), a co-edited textbook, Monsters (2012), and recent essays that discuss 2012’s Cabin in the Woods (2014) and 2010’s A Serbian Film (2015). His B.A. is from Harvard, Ph.D. from Princeton. Louisville locals might recognize him from his year-long stint as WDRB-TV’s “movie guy.” Find him at amazon.com/author/landrewcooper, facebook.com/landrewcooper, and landrewcooper.com.


Book Synopsis for Peritoneum:  Snaking through history–from the early-1900s cannibal axe-murderer of “Blood and Feathers,” to the monster hunting on the 1943 Pacific front in “Year of the Wolf,” through the files of J. Edgar Hoover for an “Interview with ‘Oscar,'” and into “The Broom Closet Where Everything Dies” for a finale in the year 2050–Peritoneum winds up your guts to assault your brain. Hallucinatory experiences redefine nightmare in “Patrick’s Luck” and “The Eternal Recurrence of Suburban Abortion.” Strange visions of colors and insects spill through the basements of hospitals and houses, especially the basement that provides the title for “TR4B,” which causes visitors to suffer from “Door Poison.” Settings, characters, and details recur not only in these tales but throughout Peritoneum, connecting all its stories in oblique but organic ways. Freud, borrowing from Virgil, promised to unlock dreams not by bending higher powers but by moving infernal regions. Welcome to a vivisection. Come dream with the insides.
Book Synopsis for Leaping at Thorns: Leaping at Thorns arranges eighteen of L. Andrew Cooper’s experimental short horror stories into a triptych of themes–complicity, entrapment, and conspiracy–elements that run throughout the collection. The stories span from the emotionally-centered to the unthinkably horrific; from psychosexual grossness to absurd violence; from dark extremes to brain-and-tongue twister. These standalone stories add important details to the fictional world and grand scheme of Dr. Allen Fincher, who also lurks in the background of Cooper’s novels Burning the Middle Ground and Descending Lines.

Author Links:

Website: landrewcooper.com.

Twitter: @Landrew42

Facebook: facebook.com/landrewcooper

Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/author/landrewcooper



Tour Schedule and Activities

8/8 MyLifeMyBooksMyEscape Interview

8/8 SpecMusicMuse Guest Post

8/8 Darkling Delights Guest Post

8/8 Beauty in Ruins Guest Post

8/9 Jordan Hirsch Review

8/10 The Seventh Star Interview

8/10 Vampires, Witches, Me Oh My Top Ten List

8/10 The Sinister Scribblings of Sarah E. Glenn Guest Post

8/11 EricJude.com Guest Post

8/12 Reviews Coming at YA Guest Post

8/13 I Smell Sheep Top Ten List

8/13 Bee's Knees Reviews Review

8/14 Sheila's Guests and Reviews Guest Post


Amazon Links for Peritoneum

Print Version

https://www.amazon.com/Peritoneum-L-Andrew-Cooper/dp/1941706746



Kindle Version

https://www.amazon.com/Peritoneum-L-Andrew-Cooper-ebook/dp/B01FKW6AJC



Barnes and Noble Link for Peritoneum

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/peritoneum-l-andrew-cooper/1123778083?ean=9781941706749


Amazon Links for Leaping at Thorns

Print Version

https://www.amazon.com/Leaping-at-Thorns-Andrew-Cooper/dp/1941706738



Kindle Version

https://www.amazon.com/Leaping-at-Thorns-Andrew-Cooper-ebook/dp/B01FL1EQXE



Barnes and Noble Link for Leaping at Thorns
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/leaping-at-thorns-l-andrew-cooper/1120361766?ean=9781941706732




Saturday, August 6, 2016

2016 - I'm alive. I swear. Or Alive-ish.

Hello World. I am alive. I swear. I just haven't been blogging. I've been sticking my face in the computer and writing. Books and more books. And then there is the day job and the puppies and normal life stuff.

But mostly focusing on writing. Since January I have four new books come out with Changeling Press. 

Shift Inc: Bear Embrace
Shift Inc: Captive Hearts
Shift, Inc. Wolf's Bane
Raven Saga Box Set 1-5

Another new book is coming out next week Shift Inc: Reviving the Dragon


Also I have signed on with Evernight Publishing with a short story entitled: World's Apart which will be out August 16th.



My latest horror novel - Death's Revival- has also come out with Seventh Star Press.

I am very excited about all of these so you know what's been keeping me busy.

Along with fangirling over Supernatural and Sharknado 4. Mostly Supernatural.

Currently I'm working on some stuff dealing with Grim Reapers. And waiting to hear back on something else. And you know editing something else.

So I'm always busy. I just stay quite. My life is rather boring so I don't mind getting lost inside my head.

Just sometimes I forget to come out and say hi to the world.

Hi World!