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Blog postExploring Perception in Dark Fiction
by Tori Eldridge
Every day, people make decisions that take them toward empowerment and righteousness or toward resentment, bitterness, and despair. Not all of these choices are clearly marked like forks in a road. Some creep up on us with insidious stealth, altering our perception and twisting the truth. The micro decisions we make every day can lead us to irrevocable actions that cause our own demise. They can -
Blog postI wrote the following in the latest edition of my newsletter, which went out yesterday. I thought I'd post it here as well.
Recently, a small-press horror publisher posted the back cover copy of one of their forthcoming books. The story revolved around a terrorist plot to exterminate the world’s white people using a plague genetically engineered to only affect Caucasians. The plague succeeds, 98% of white folks die, and world civilization collapses. The premise see -
Blog postI thought I'd post the Feb. 2022 edition of my newsletter here for folks who'd like to see what they might be getting before they subscribe. If you like what you see, you can subscribe to my newsletter here:
https://timwaggoner.com/contact.htm
Welcome to the latest edition of Writing in the Dark! This time, along with all the Tim Waggoner news you can’t live without, I’ll be talking about writing tips I learned in acting class, my evolving views -
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Blog postFrom time to time, writers message me to ask if I have any good resources for horror writing. Eventually, I created a document that I could send to them (which saves me from typing the same email over and over). I'm always happy to help other writers, and it recently occurred to me that I should share this list here, so that anyone can access it. This resource list is current as of 3/20/2022.
Before I post it, though, I'd be remiss not to mention my two books on horror wr -
Blog postIt’s my birthday month, and this year I turn fifty-eight. I started writing with the intent of making it my life’s work when I was eighteen, which means that I’ve been at this for forty years.
Forty.
Damn.
Years.
I published my first story in my college’s literary magazine in 1985 when I was twenty-one. I published my first novel in 2001 when I was thirty-six. (And I wrote a lot of unpublished stories and novels before I started publishing regular -
Blog post“There are writers’ cliques in horror, and if you don’t belong to one, you can’t get published. And not only don’t they support new writers, they actively work to keep us out!”
I’ll be fifty-eight soon. I started writing and submitting fiction to publishers when I was eighteen, which means I’m coming up on my fortieth anniversary as a writer. I can’t tell you how many times during my career I’ve heard statements like the one above, and not just regarding horror but other -
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Blog postThe other day I read a post on social media from someone announcing their retirement from writing. This wasn’t one of those attention-seeking posts that writers sometimes make, where they saythey want to quit writing, but what they’re really doing is fishing for reassurance. “No, don’t quit! We love your writing and we love yoooooouuuuuu!” The post I’m talking about was a serious announcement of how the person’s life circumstances had changed and they no longer found satisfactio
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Blog postRecently, I had the pleasure of participating in the December HWA NY Galactic Terrors Reading Series. When James Chambers initally asked me to read, he wanted to know if I had any Christmas-themed horror stories. I only had one -- "The Anti-Claus" -- and I planned on reading it. Then several days before the reading, Jim sent an email with details of the reading, including the fact that the readings were supposed to be ten minutes in length. I realized "The Anti-Cl
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Blog postBefore we begin, the topic for this blog is about the changing ways I’ve explored gender, sexual, racial, and societal diversity in my writing throughout the years. Just in case this post attracts the attention of hate-trolls who are against all those things, let me make something perfectly clear. Racists, sexists, homophobes, transphobes, antisemites, Islamophobes, Nazis, MAGA-heads – anyone who doesn’t believe that all human beings are equal, that difference should be celebrat
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Blog postI’ve been traditionally publishing my writing for nearly thirty years now, and in that time, I’ve worked with a lot of different editors. I mean a lot. It’s not always fun. I think most writers would like to submit their work to an editor and be told that not only is it going to be published, it’s brilliant and perfect and doesn’t need a single thing changed. (I know I do!) But a good editor can make your work better, what a friend of mine once referred to as “polishing the diam
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Blog postYesterday, I finished my fifty-third novel.
I’ve written more novels than that overall, but I don’t count the unpublished ones. If I did, I’d probably have to add maybe ten more to the total. And since this latest novel was written on spec (meaning I don’t have a publisher lined up for it yet), I guess it counts as unpublished too, but at this point in my career, I feel confident that someone somewhere will publish it. (I hope, anyway!)
Whenever people find out how many -
Blog postI’ve served as a mentor for the Horror Writers Association for a while now, and one of my current mentees recently sent me an email to ask where I get my ideas for stories. She told me about a time in third grade when she was afraid of one of the school restrooms – something about it just seemed wrong to her – but she wasn’t sure how to use that experience as fuel for a story.
The only way that I could think to explain my process to her was to literally work through my s -
Blog postHORROR STORY WORKSHEET
TIM WAGGONER
I’ve been writing and teaching writing for almost forty years now, and as you might imagine, I’ve given feedback on a lot of student stories – I mean, a lot. I see many of the same problems with beginners’ fiction, especially horror and dark fantasy, since that’s what I specialize in. While I know there’s no such thing as a fool-proof formula for writing a short story, as a teacher, I try to give students enough g -
Blog postHorror Twitter exploded into another debate about trigger/content warnings last week. My wife and I were visiting friends in South Carolina when it all went down, so I’m sure I only saw a small part of the discussion, some of which was, shall we say, less than civil? However, what I did see got me thinking again about the issue of content warnings (my preferred term) and whether I should apply them to my own work. As of now, I haven’t used content warnings for my horror fiction,
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Blog postSince some of you reading this may be pitching projects to agents and editors at Stokercon in a couple weeks, I thought I’d offer some tips on pitching.
Three Sections to the Pitch Technique
First is the one-sentence tag (This is a horror thriller that is very much Freddy Krueger meets Rambo). Then the slightly longer explanation (This is a story about an ex-military black ops captain who stumbles into a nightmare world where dreams can kill you -
Blog postI started this blog On August 30, 2011, almost ten years ago. When I recently realized this anniversary was coming up, I thought I should do something special to commemorate it, but what? Some kind of contest or maybe a retrospective of some sort? Then it occurred to me that 2012 will mark my fortieth year since I dedicated my life to becoming a writer. So what if I wrote about how the publishing industry has changed during those four decades, at least from my perspective, and t
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Blog postAspiring writers are forever searching for The Secret: the single trick or technique that will elevate their writing from promisingto publishable. Old pros say there is no secret to getting published, that it’s simply the result of hard work – reading a lot, writing a lot, getting feedback on your work, learning how to market your work, etc. – and I wouldn’t dispute that. But there is one element missing all too often from beginners’ fiction, and I’d argue that it’s one o
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Blog postIn my last blog post, “So You’re Never Going to be Stephen King” (which you can read here if you missed it: https://writinginthedarktw.blogspot.com/2021/02/so-youre-never-going-to-be-stephen-king.html) I wrote about coming to terms with the success we actually get as writers, as opposed to the kind of success most of us can only dream about. The topic definitely struck a nerve. Where most of my blogs get 200-300 views, that one got over 3,000. One of those readers was Br
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Blog postYears ago, literary agent Russell Galen wrote a regularly appearing column in Locus focused on publishing and writing careers. I was in my mid-twenties back then and subscribed to Locusfor all the science fiction/fantasy/horror publishing news I could get, and Galen’s column was the first thing I read whenever a new issue appeared in my mailbox. That was thirty years ago, and while I don’t remember a lot of what Galen wrote, one of the things that has stuck with me is this sente
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Blog postIt's a major award!
“Just tell me this, Montag: at a guess, how many literary awards would you say were made in this country on an average each year? 5? 10? 40? Not less than 1,200.” The Captain from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.
I’ve been active on social media for years, and it’ll come as no surprise to you that I’m primarily interested in discussions about writing and publishing (horror movies, superheroes, cool science news and facts, p -
Blog post2021 is upon us. I’ve never written a year-end wrap-up before, but all the cool kids are doing it, so I thought I’d give it a try.
The college where I teach closed down and shifted to remote learning in March. I’ve taught from home ever since (which means I’ve gotten very familiar with Zoom!). My wife and I MAY have had COVID in March. We weren’t officially tested, but our family doctor thinks it’s likely that we had it. I’m almost never sick, and when I am, it’s for a v -
Blog postHere's a horror story to fill you with holiday fear . . . I mean cheer. Enjoy!
THE ANTI-CLAUS
BY TIM WAGGONER
Jessica had one bad habit: she always ran late in the morning. She was on time for everything else the rest of the day – never missed a meeting at work, never showed up late for drinks or dinner with friends. But whatever the first thing she had to do in the morning was, she was late for it. Always. She’d tried all kinds of t -
Blog postI have two dachshunds – Lucy and Bentley. Bentley is five years old and is a sweet, lovable goof who gets into trouble quite often. My wife calls him a “menace without malice,” which is an apt description. Lucy is fifteen. She was a rescue when we got her about a decade ago, and her health wasn’t the best at that point. We’ve taken good care of her since then, but she has enough physical issues now that the vet told us last March that she might have as little as two weeks to liv
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Blog postElection Day is less than a month away in the U.S., and if everything goes as planned – a dicey proposition at best here in the Hellscape of 2020 – I’ll be heading downtown this afternoon to cast my ballot early. (UPDATE: It’s several hours later, and my civic duty was successfully accomplished! Take that, Forces of Darkness!) Social media has always been filled with political commentary from professionals and amateurs alike, but there’s been more of it over the last few years.
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Blog postMy book on writing horror, Writing in the Dark (named after my blog), will be officially released on Sept. 16thin three glorious editions – hardback, paperback, and ebook. (You can find ordering information after this post.)
I always write a blog post whenever I have a new book come out, and this time I wanted to write about a topic that would complement Writing in the Darkwithout treading the same ground. Eventually, I decided to talk about the most impor
Titles By Tim Waggoner
It's Alive: Bringing Your Nightmares to Life (The Dream Weaver Books on Writing Fiction Book 2)
Dec 14, 2018
by
F. Paul Wilson,
Clive Barker,
Chuck Palahniuk,
Michael Bailey,
Kevin J. Anderson,
Christopher Golden,
Sarah Pinborough,
Yvonne Navarro,
Joe R. Lansdale,
Jonathan Maberry,
Richard Chizmar,
John Skipp,
Gene O’Neill,
Kasey Lansdale,
Robert Ford,
Todd Keisling,
Paul Moore,
Kelli Owen,
Richard Thomas,
Rachel Autumn Deering,
Tim Waggoner,
Marie O’Regan,
Brian Kirk,
Kealan Patrick Burke,
Mercedes Yardley,
Elizabeth Massie,
Lisa Mannetti,
Stephen Graham Jones,
Vince A. Liaguno,
David Wellington,
Ramsey Campbell,
Stephanie M. Wytovich,
Tim Chizmar,
Del Howison,
Bev Vincent,
Jessica Marie Baumgartner,
Greg Chapman,
Tom Monteleone,
Lisa Morton,
John Palisano,
Jess Landry,
James Chambers,
Joe Mynhardt,
Eugene Johnson,
Crystal Lake Publishing
$4.99
Other Formats:
Paperback
The Thieves of Blood (The Blade of the Flame Book 1)
Apr 12, 2010
by
Tim Waggoner
$7.99
Other Formats:
Mass Market Paperback
Supernatural - Children of Anubis
Apr 30, 2019
by
Tim Waggoner
$7.99
Other Formats:
Mass Market Paperback
Supernatural: Carved in Flesh
Apr 16, 2013
by
Tim Waggoner
$7.99
Other Formats:
Mass Market Paperback
