So, there we have it — the official book tour where I show up and do my little BOOK SONG and my LITERARY ULULATIONS. I hope you’ll come by!
Some quick As to your potential Qs —
Why Not My Town??
Well, the world is home to a lot of places and I cannot go to them all. I would like to! I’d love to do a huuuuuge book tour where I hit every state in the country and even some international pockets but that’s just not feasible. Plus, I try when possible to cover territory I either haven’t been before or at least haven’t been recently — next book tour would likely look very different!
Listen, if I could come right to your house, I would. I’d come over for dinner! It’d be great! But I can only go where I am summoned by the ancient rituals.
Why Should I Come?
Bookstores are cool! Booksellers are cool! Buying books from bookstores makes you cool by proxy. More to the point — hey, there are billionaires out there, and huge corporations, and isn’t it nice to be able to buy from smaller bookstores as a bit of counterprogramming? It won’t save the world but every little bit helps, and buying from bookstores is good for the store, for me, for you, for the overall bookish ecosystem. Support bookstores!
What If I Can’t Come?
The bookstores I’m visiting are likely able to hold a book for you and I can still sign it — many will even ship directly to you if you aren’t near to any of these. In fact, my own local, Doylestown Bookshop, will ship to you and I will give you a unique book-specific personalization alongside some very cool stickers by Natalie Metzger which maaaaaaay be these —
And all you gotta do to get a copy from D-town Bookshop is order here.
(Note: the cool stickers will also be coming with me on tour, obvs.)
So, if you can come to the events, please do. I figure I’m going to be wading out into the chaos factory that is America, so it’d be great if you swam out through the madness to say hi.
Failing that, buy from one of these stores! They’re where the books live. My books. So check ’em out. OKAY LOVE YOU BYE
Nassau Court is an attractive subdivision in Bethesda, Maryland that’s perfect for families — nice homes, plenty of space, good schools, and friendly neighbors. Couples Scott and Aimee, Lisa and Marcus, and Gwen and Anton socialize every weekend, help out with each other’s kids, and are good friends.
But when one of the husbands is found dead, the layers of artifice are quickly peeled back, and what once looked like perfect lives begin to fall apart, piece by piece.
The genial, sociable atmosphere quickly turns dark, with steadily escalating tension, unexpected twists around every corner, revelations about how dark human nature can be, and an ending that is as shocking as it is shattering.
Trust the process (i.e. yes, it’s okay to feel seasick and gloomy when you start).
After having written four books, you’d think I’d know that I always start each new book reluctantly, the words coming begrudgingly, accompanied by a vague sense of nausea and the feeling that I have no idea what I am doing. Yet it hits me anew each time. One day, in the midst of writing YOU DESERVE TO KNOW I entered the kitchen and my husband took one look at my face and said, “Let me guess, you have no idea if this novel is going to work.” Turns out, I say that every time I write a book. I am currently in the queasy stage of my fifth novel, but I am better able to see it for what it is — a necessary phase, not a determination on the worth of my project.
If you build it (your fictional world), they (the ideas) will come
I am not a writer who writes every day between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. with a pee break at 11, no matter what. There’s nothing I hate more than sitting in a chair, staring at a blank screen, except maybe having to toss out thousands of words I wrote because I didn’t know where I was going with my story. I only sit down to start a novel when I have a general idea of the whole thing — plot, setting, main character, tone. Until then there are dogs to be walked. Yet, I am not a detailed plotter. I have had to learn to trust that once I have built up enough story pressure in my imagination to start writing, like a tea kettle that starts whistling, the rest will flow. My characters get more interesting the deeper I get into the book. Take my murder victim in YOU DESERVE TO KNOW. He got his start as “husband no. 3” but after a few pages he emerged a writer, and not just any writer but a failed one, with great literary aspirations (yet little to back it up), and a dead mother who wrote beautiful prose that he may or may not have cribbed. The more I wrote about him, the more interesting and complicated he became, but it was only through writing about him that he was revealed to me.
Writing is great therapy (aka living well may be the best revenge but writing comes close).
Someone did me dirty once. Maybe someone did you dirty once as well, and you, like me, wondered if there was going to be any cosmic comeuppance for this evil-doer, any karmic retribution or at least acknowledgement that they did a bad, bad thing. Maybe you too experienced a profound sense of unfairness when you realized that was not going to happen. But did you sit down and write a novel and, inspired by your tormentor, create a character so vile and twisted that you cackled with glee as you wrote? I did, and it felt great, and my therapist called it sublimation, which is a fancy word for using your pain productively for your art. And it’s cheaper than therapy, too.
Genres are like lines in a coloring book, some people like to scribble outside of them
What kind of books do you write? I always hesitate a nanosecond when people ask me that. If I say mystery, they might imagine Hercule Poirot, with his ever-present pocketwatch. And no that isn’t right, but neither is the term thriller, conjuring visions of Jason Bourne racing through the streets of Berlin. Psychological thriller often means unreliable narrators (mine tend not to be) yet I resist th term domestic suspense as too small, cramped, claustrophobic. A reviewer once described my books as “suburban noir” and I loved it. The dark side of suburbia. Of course, there is no officially sub-genre called suburban noir. The Library of Congress categorizes my book as suspense fiction. I’ll take it. I’ve learned to write what I want and let other people worry about labels. I cannot imagine trying to reverse engineer a book to meet a subgenre’s conventions, although I feel like I have read a book or two that fall into this category.
Start the next bookis almost always the answer
When you are in the dark about sales — as in how many, and where, and what moves buyers? Or when you want to tear your hair out and scream WHY when your book club raves about a terrible, awful, no-good book. Or when you’ve found an incandescent little novel that makes it worth getting up each morning and you realize no one else has ever heard of it and you wonder how can such genius go unheralded. When you worry if your agent will ever call you back. When you try to figure out what strategy you should take on Facebook/Instagram/X/TikTok that won’t make you want to drink arsenic. When you think the font on your last book is why it might not be selling so well. When a celebrity chef/athlete/influencer writes something in your genre and gets a seven-figure advance. Start the next book. The answer is always start the next book. Edited to Add: sometimes the answer is chocolate.
Aggie Blum Thompson is the author of four novels of domestic suspense that are set in the D.C. area. Before turning to fiction, she worked as a reporter, covering cops, courts, and trials, with a healthy dose of the mundane mixed in. Her writing has appeared in newspapers such as The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. She lives just over the Washington D.C. line in Bethesda, Maryland with her husband, two children, small cat, and large dog. She is currently at work on her fifth novel.
Something wicked is going on in the village of Ascension. A mother wasting away from cancer is suddenly up and about. A boy trampled by a milk cart walks away from the accident. A hanged man can still speak, broken neck and all.
The dead are not dying.
When Rabbit and Sadie Grace accompany their friend Rose to Ascension to help take care of her ailing cousin, they immediately notice that their new house, Bethany Hall, is occupied by dozens of ghosts. And something is waiting for them in the attic.
The villagers of Ascension are unwelcoming and wary of their weird visitors. As the three women attempt to find out what’s happening in the town, they must be careful not to be found out. But a much larger—and more dangerous—force is galloping straight for them…
It’s not that I’m forgetting how to write. The books are actually getting harder.
I’ve written eight novels (eleven, if you count my drawer/trunk books), and each one has been harder to write than the one before it. Every time I start writing a book or story, it’s like I’m starting a jigsaw puzzle, and each puzzle has more pieces.
It’s my fault. I make it harder for myself. I lay down some new gauntlet every time to make it interesting. This time I challenged myself to try two types of story structure in one book, and I dared myself to switch back and forth between third- and first-person perspectives. I think it turned out pretty well. I’m happy with the end result. But for a while as I was working on this particular thousand-piece puzzle, I wished I had chosen one of those board puzzles for toddlers.
Of course, the book I’m working on now is even more of a challenge.
I am not just one thing.
Since you read authors’ newsletters (at least one author’s newsletter), you probably already know the difference between a “plotter” and a “pantser,” but just in case… Plotters are writers who outline their books first, then go back and flesh their stories out once the broad strokes are in place, while pantsers fly by the seat of our pants (get it?), diving into a story, often with no idea where it’s going or how it will end.
I’ve always been a pantser. I don’t usually know how I’m gonna wrap up a story until I’m about two-thirds of the way through. I genuinely think my subconscious figures things out while I’m merrily typing away, and springs the ending on me when it decides I’m ready. It’s a fun way to work, and I hope that if I can be surprised by my own story, maybe you’ll be surprised by it, too.
But I got two-thirds of the way through Rose of Jericho and realized I still didn’t know how to end it. I kept writing and writing, knowing full well that I was stalling for time, filling up pages that wouldn’t survive the next draft, trying to figure out what my subconscious had in mind (so to speak).
So I did a thing I’ve never done before: I went back through and summarized each scene with a sentence or two, and printed them out, and cut the pages into strips, one strip per scene. I laid them out on our bedroom table (the only table that wasn’t piled with books, or magazines, or mail, or our son’s crap) and moved them around, removing some and writing new scenes on blank strips of paper. I figured out my structure was all wrong just by looking at the thing physically.
Plotting backwards! Pantsing forward!
My books aren’t one thing either.
Sales & Marketing would like it if my books were one thing at a time. Westerns or Horror or Fantasy. They want to be able to sell my books. And I want them to do that. I want people to read my books! That’s the whole point! I could shout my stories into the void at the edge of town if I wasn’t looking for a conversation with my readers. (The void screams at me to join it.)
It’s easier to sell a book if you can sum it up neatly, but Rose of Jericho is a Weird West adventure, a Haunted House Horror story, and a Romantic Fantasy, all in one.
This book made me actually think about what I write and who I write it for. I wrote Historical Thrillers for a long while, then wrote a contemporary thriller, then I jumped to Horror/Western/Fantasy, but my thrillers all contained elements of horror and/or fantasy, and I never gave it any thought at all. I didn’t mean to mash things up so thoroughly, but I’ve always done that, and I’ve decided to make my peace with it. This is what I like to write. I hope this is what you like to read.
Sales & Marketing will always be frustrated with me. I don’t think there’s anything I can do about that. One genre isn’t enough. The story wants to be what the story wants to be.
Go easy on the spices.
I actually learned this with my second book then forgot it and had to learn it again. The first draft of my sophomore novel, The Black Country was twice as long as the final published version. I whittled away at it, and I whittled, and I whittled. Whole characters and chase scenes and subplots disappeared. I was miserable about it, and I vowed to be more focused in the future.
That lasted five whole books before I did it again. The final version of Rose of Jericho is about half as long as the first draft. I cut out a major character, and assigned his scenes to other characters, cut out unnecessary chapters and superfluous themes (see above for my genre problem). I didn’t need any of that stuff, and the book’s better without it, but it sure seemed right at the time.
Lesson learned. Again. I’m sure I’ll unlearn it in another book or two.
Rose of Jericho is amazing.
I mean the plant this book is named after (though I do hope you like the book).
There are witches in this novel, and each of them has a slightly different skillset, but they all derive their power from the earth. From herbs and wind and sun and seasons. As with my previous book, Red Rabbit, I spent a lot of time researching plants and a lot of them are absolutely incredible organisms. Case in point, Selaginella lepidophylla (also known as rose of Jericho, or the resurrection plant) can go years without water. Years! It can completely dry out, be damaged and burnt, then spring back to life minutes after being exposed to water again.
Sure sounds like magic to me.
Alex Grecian is the New York Times bestselling author of The Yard and its sequels, as well as Red Rabbit, Rose of Jericho, and the contemporary thriller The Saint of Wolves and Butchers. He has also written several award-winning graphic novels, including Proof, which is currently being developed for Fox. He lives in the American Midwest with his wife and son, their stinky dog, and a tarantula named Rosie.
Hey! A brief announcement here — I’ll have a couple more official details later in the week, but I wanted to let y’all know I’m going on tour woooo and sure everything is chaos out there and sure I’m going to have to get on planes and catch the new sexy superbug FLUSLES (aka Bird Flu and Measles), but whatever. I gotta sing for my supper, dance for my dinner, and I will do it in front of you, embarrassingly, if I have to. So where will I be?
More details to come! And some of these may require tickets and what-not, so if you’re planning to come, please check out the details page and see what’s up with that. Don’t forget too if you’re preordering and if you’re not coming to any of these, Doylestown Bookshop is an excellent place to preorder because you get VERY SPECIAL PERSONALIZATION and also VERY SPECIAL STAIRCASE STICKERS by Natalie Metzger
Darkness is interpretive. It’s in our nature to explore the shadows. Through the 13 stories presented in Black Magick, compiled and edited by award-winning occult author Raven Digitalis, the reader is transported into mysterious settings that blur the line between fiction and reality.
Each story uniquely integrates occultism and magick, deepening the mysteries of the shadow. By acknowledging darkness through the written medium, we can better come to terms with the darkness within ourselves.
These haunting tales are finely crafted by a wide variety of writers, and each story is uniquely different from the other. When we bravely explore the darker aspects of life, we more accurately come to know what it means to be human.
Black Magick is dedicated to author Storm Constantine, whose story “Candle Magic” opens the anthology.
IT’S OKAY TO REVIVE AN OLD PROJECT
I can’t believe this book is finally printed. I was convinced for years that Black Magick would never see the light of day, but lo and behold, it’s alive! It turns out that, well, creative visions just sometimes need a bit of time to gestate.
I originally conceived of this short story anthology back in 2008, in between the releases of my first books, Goth Craft and Shadow Magick Compendium. Something like 30 publishers rejected the project back then. This was due to its content: sex, drugs, occult terror — things like that. Since, at that time, my mind was moving on to the next nonfiction Pagan guidebook I had in mind, I set the project aside and let it gather virtual dust.
It wasn’t until 2023 that I had a dream where the project was revived. So, I just went with it! Half of the original authors stayed on board, while the other half dropped their story for one reason or another (or were impossible to get in touch with). New authors jumped in fast, and, after a few more US publisher rejections, Moon Books picked it up. Moon Books is a Pagan, Wiccan, and metaphysical publisher in London, and are a branch of Collective Ink.
Hot damn; a British publisher wants to print it? Let’s get ‘er done! Thankfully, Brits tend to be a bit more lenient about controversial literary expression, trigger warnings and all.
EDITING AIN’T EASY WORK
When Black Magick was revived, I was lucky to be in between projects. At that point I had begun co-creating decks of divination cards! My Empath’s Oracle had recently been printed, and plans were in the works for my Gothic Witch’s Oracle deck, which also recently got published by Crossed Crow in Chicago.
Editing the short stories, as well as reworking my original tale, proved to be an exhaustively lengthy process, not least because I had to educate myself about editing fiction writing specifically. Fiction is an entirely different beast from the nonfiction I had become accustomed to penning.
Many of the stories required multiple revisions and meticulous editing. Everyone was great to work with, luckily, from the contributing authors to everyone at the publisher. Writers, artists, and creative visionaries like to get things just right — and that we did!
Thankfully, my oldest friend in the world, Miranda S. Hewlett, not only contributed a story to the anthology, but stepped in as the book’s Associate Editor. Being an English professor and a literary genius in general, her skills picked up where mine left off. Another longtime friend and fellow contributor, S.M. Lomas, also stepped in to perform valuable proofreading for selected stories. With all our powers combined, the final form of Black Magick became one damn fine, spooky, and gloriously unusual piece of work.
DIVERSITY IS A VIRTUE
When one of Black Magick’s contributing authors dropped out for personal reasons, I needed a quick replacement. After some meditation and reflection, I realized that there wasn’t a Black voice in the anthology. A quick internet search revealed the work of Tracy Cross and her first novel, Rootwork. I contacted Tracy, who lives in Washington, DC, and she was happy to write a brilliant, futuristic Hoodoo tale just for the occasion!
The only thread running through every short story is the concept of “black magick,” the term itself being a bit tongue-in-cheek and sensationalistic. Otherwise, I encouraged authors to let their creativity and imagination run wild! No homogenization found here.
I’m amazed at the anthology’s diverse scope of material; I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so diverse, and at one time thought it might be too all-over-the-place. I soon came to realize that this is part of the book’s charm. Some of the stories are written in first-person, and others in third. Some tales are straightforward, while others are creepily obscure and hellaciously abstract. The breadth of subgenres contained include dark fantasy, erotica, sci-fi, mystery, folk horror, queer storytelling, period pieces, and a whole bunch more. Still, all of the tales stay firmly grounded in the genre of occult horror. Mission accomplished!
NORMAL PEOPLE ARE EASILY FREAKED OUT
Like I mentioned, Black Magick was originally rejected by a wide array of publishers due to some of its shocking content. When Moon Books picked up the project, however, their art, design, and marketing departments were all on board for creating one delicious, eye-catching, spooky-ass cover. What’s more sinfully stereotypical of so-called “black magick” than a so-called Voodoo doll?!
It turns out that both the book’s cover artwork and title haven’t been entirely received with open arms, but my guess is that it’s because ordinary, everyday folk just aren’t the book’s demographic! It’s easy to forget that superstitious beliefs permeate every culture to one extent or another. This was especially surprising to a person like me, who is deeply involved with real-life Witchcraft and occult spirituality. Indeed, more than a few folks have found the very idea of the project to be off-putting and frightening; even heretical. Oh well… their loss!
OUTSOURCING IS SMART & EFFECTIVE
I had never given a thought to the prospect of outsourcing. At the same time, I’ve longed for years for a secretary, an assistant — anything, anyone — to help with scheduling, promotion, advertising, and so on. I’m lucky enough to have all my books published traditionally; I don’t know how folks do it independently.
I just don’t have enough time in the day to promote myself properly. Between writing books and articles, a professional Tarot reading career, and keeping up with a handful of side jobs, it was a blessing to discover and employ an outsourced assistant! As it turns out, my online Pagan buddy Alex J. Coyne in South Africa not only performs writing and editing, but is also proficient in the arduous work of publicizing! Since asking him to become my official Publicity Assistant, I’ve been blown away by his ability to create succinct lists of new contacts and his skill at cold-pitching the book to reviewers whose content is published on numerous mediums; print, podcast, YouTube — you name it! Even my lovely overloaded Publicists are happy with his work, and are relieved that he can dig a bit deeper into forging new contacts and impressively think outside the box.
The exchange rate in this outsourcing has also been a pleasant surprise, and was a huge draw in my choosing to inquire about hiring his assistance. Just a handful of PayPalled bucks each month helps pay for his rent, food, and the expenses of life. It continues to be a result-yielding, mutually beneficial process.
Raven Digitalis is an award-winning author best known for his “empath’s trilogy,” consisting of The Empath’s Oracle, Esoteric Empathy, and The Everyday Empath, as well as the “shadow trilogy” of A Gothic Witch’s Oracle, A Witch’s Shadow Magick Compendium, and Goth Craft. Originally trained in Georgian Witchcraft, Raven has been an earth-based practitioner since 1999, a Priest since 2003, a Freemason since 2012, and an empath all of his life. He holds a degree in cultural anthropology from the University of Montana, jointly operated a nonprofit Pagan temple for sixteen years, and is also a professional Tarot reader, editor, Reiki practitioner, and animal rights advocate.
Step into the twisted mind of Del Howison with this unflinching collection of dark tales. What Fresh Hell Is This? brings together stories from across Howison’s prolific career, each one exploring the eerie and the macabre, examining humanity’s deepest fears and desires. Drawing on his rich life experiences—from being baptized in a river and attending a private Christian college to his ownership of the famed Horror bookstore Dark Delicacies—Howison crafts tales that delve into the darkest corners of the human soul.
These tales push boundaries, blending the supernatural with psychological terror, and invite readers into worlds where the unimaginable becomes real. From paranormal happenings to supernatural horrors, Howison’s storytelling prowess ensures that these stories will stay with you long after you turn the last page.
Things appear different in a group. All the dark tales in What Fresh Hell Is This? were written at different times and even different years for anthologies, magazines, and e-books. They have never been compiled in one place before. My first viewing of these as a group opened my eyes to a cohesiveness in my tale-telling that I never realized. The way I end stories, the way I pace, the POVs I choose to reveal what is going on. I’ve found that I’m slightly askew. I think that’s a good thing.
Patience truly is a virtue, especially when it comes to publishing. The entire industry moves at glacial speed. To push it faster rarely results in a better product. Rewriting, reediting, reformatting, etc. only improves the product with each pass. Don’t be in a hurry. I might be antsy to get the story out there. But once it is out there, it is out there forever. The extra time you take might save an eternity.
There is no such thing as a perfect book. Every book contains a mistake, a misspelling that wasn’t caught or an editing error, possibly a formatting faux pas. It doesn’t matter how many times it is edited or rewritten, there is an error imp hiding amongst the lines of your tome. Upon receiving your book, he is usually discovered in the first place you open it to. It doesn’t matter how inconsequential the error is. It stands like Mount Everest on the page. Every author has a publishing disaster in their past that never leaves the back of their mind, clinging to their anxiety and fear with the release of every book.
You can write to any theme the editor gives you. The freedom to write your own novel or story is a wonderful thing. But many times, that is not where the money comes from. An editor tells you they need an article or piece of fiction about X. In your mind you say, “But I don’t write about X.” Yes, you do and Y and Z also. When you write it and turn it in for that sale there is confidence that you gain. You become a better writer for pushing yourself to the other side of your self-imposed barriers.
When doing research for your writing don’t look only at the item you are researching. If you pay attention you will find a mention or a hint of something connected to you research that you didn’t know, an idea you didn’t realize before beginning your search. Follow that thread and see where it leads. Many times it will take you through a doorway that opens up an entire room of possibilities. Don’t get tunnel vision. Don’t close yourself in.
Del Howison is an author, journalist, SAG actor including the upcoming horror film Big Baby directed by Spider One. He is a Bram Stoker Award-winning editor of the anthology Dark Delicacies: Original Tales of Terror and the Macabre by the World’s Greatest Horror Writers. He has written articles for Fear.net, Gauntlet Magazine, and Writers Digest among others. Del’s short story Cul-de-Sac appeared in Weird Tales Magazine #369. His western short story The Lost Herd was turned into the premiere (and highest rated) episode, The Sacrifice, for the series Fear Itself. His dark western novel The Survival of Margaret Thomas was shortlisted for the Peacemaker Award given out by the Western Fictioneers. He has been shortlisted for over half a dozen awards including the Shirley Jackson Award and the Black Quill. Del’s retrospective short story compilation of dark tales, What Fresh Hell Is This? was released in early 2025. He is the cofounder and owner (with his wife, Sue) of Dark Delicacies, a book and gift store known as “The Home of Horror,” located in Burbank, California. The store won the “Il Posto Nero” award from Italy and has been inducted into the Rondo Hatton Hall of Fame.
