What a terrific thing to wake up to the other day, this INCREDIBLE review of Behind the Shadows by The Bedlam Files’ Adam Groves, who says:
“The stories of Ray Van Horn, Jr. are drafted with enormous energy and ingenuity, but what really gives them their edge is the author’s Tarantinoesque grasp of late Twentieth Century pop culture minutiae. The skilled prose and pointed conceptions, which often revolve around actual media events from years past, make for a collection whose horrific content registers as strongly as its name drops.”
Today, the second edition of my “Unearthed Metal” series for The Ripple Effect, a 2012 lost footage interview with Goth metal cabaret icon, Maria Brink from In This Moment.
This stack represents books I have written or appeared in to this point. Never mind my other published short stories and binders of tear sheets from 300 music and film interviews conducted and more than a 1,000 media reviews.
Miniscule to many of my peers. The more pros I have made friends with this year, the smaller I feel. My life’s mission and utmost desire is to triple this at a minimum in my remaining years. May that be a long, fruitful road. The biggest difficulty in my recent years is reinventing myself into a fiction author, specifically a horror author, after 16 years as a music and film journalist, an NHL analyst, beat reporter, local photographer and serialized superhero scribe. It’s been a humbling ride rising up from a nobody to a music industry described A-lister to a nobody again.
Writing was never a hobby for me. Just ask my friends, family and high school and college classmates. It was a side hustle when times were hard and we needed all the coin we could get. Eventually, that took the love out of what I was chasing after. There are days I lament not being in the music racket, but this year, I have been doing band press releases on the down low for an LA publicist who I am proud to see her shop boom. I just got my first freelancing pay from Rue Morgue magazine. It all starts to bring back that tickle in my heart, that flame of passion.
I want to thank those who have supported and bought Behind the Shadows in the two short weeks it’s been out. My best sales launch to-date! I will soon have another anthology to add to this stack when my story “Good Day for a Seven Nation Army” appears in the Maryland-themed Ole Blue Claw: Tales From the Crustier Side of Maryland.
I give this my all and I do my absolute best not to shirk in defeat reading such wonderful books by notable authors, some of whom I am now lucky to call friends. I have a woman who kicks my ass whenever I say I suck or question why I want it all so badly. I do want it, though, and the mission is always the mission until it’s not. To the divine which is always at elbow’s reach, may the latter come only with my final breath.
Ratu says Behind the Shadows by Ray Van Horn, Jr. makes a gnarly holiday gift, for yourself or the horror nut in your life. Are you really gonna argue with Ratu?
Available through Raw Earth Ink at Amazon, Barnes and Noble.com, Lulu, Kindle, Kobo and Nook!
Tonight, I will be featured on livestream with my man, Jack Mangan from Metal Asylum and The Heavy Metal Hall of Fame talking about Behind the Shadows, and whatever rad stuff that crops up. 6:00 pm EST! metalasylum.net
It’s Cyber Monday, my friends! You know where you’ll be. You know where I will, too. Lurking Behind the Shadows with a hearty thank you for your order!
There just may be some evil truths to a real-time haunted covered bridge in Kingsville, Maryland. Count Dracula is dead, and one of his cavern-bound brides is following in his dastardly footsteps, prowling Victorian London in search of a coven of her own. Young Jessica and her Vietnam-surviving father share a sordid secret; little does Jessica’s dad know she has one more that’s about to root its ugly head.
There’s something about that carnelian-colored guitar pick which turns the average player into a fret god, but is the cost of its power worth murder? The Death of Superman is all the rage of 1992 and Hell is about to rain from the skies upon geeks in line for second print comic books. Professional baseball player Jake Puzzella committed a crime in the name of love; the paycheck’s come due in the bottom of the sixth. Music junkie Evan is at the end of the rope in his marriage; in the heat of passion, he fails to heed David Bowie’s caveat about Lady Grinning Soul being one’s living end.
These are some of the frights skulking inside Ray Van Horn, Jr.’s new horror collection, Behind the Shadows. Stephen King, EC horror comics, Saturday night ghost hosts, Bram Stoker, The Twilight Zone, ’80s splatter films. All the beloved genre elements thrown into the meat grinder of Van Horn’s ten tales of terror with some contemporary twists. Behind the Shadows is coming for you from Raw Earth Ink, Van Horn, Jr.’s third book with the imprint.
“Van Horn, Jr. takes your fondest memories, cuts the steaming hearts out of them, and feeds them to you perforce.” So declares New York Times best-selling author Michael Jan Friedman about Behind the Shadows. None other than Chasing the Boogeyman, Becoming the Boogeyman and Memorials best-selling author, Richard Chizmar glows, “Had a blast with Behind the Shadows! Scary, smart and entertaining!”
Roads Lesser Traveled 