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Destination: Florida– A Spring Break Booklist

I don’t know about your state, but for the majority of residents in Indiana, spring break means Florida (or a staycation, in which you wish you were in Florida).  I’m pretty sure that if you live in a cold climate (which this winter has been all of us) Florida sounds pretty good right now. Whether you’re looking for reading material that takes place there, or just wish you were there yourself, here’s a list of books set in Florida that should get your blood pumping.

 


Duma Key by Stephen King

A terrible car accident that causes dramatic personality changes and leads to his divorce causes Edgar Freemantle to relocate to an isolated island in the Florida Keys, where he discovers that he possesses a remarkable artistic talent with supernatural aspects.

 

Hunger by Rodman Philbrick

 

Genetically engineered, human-eating sharks are loose in the Florida Keys. Doesn’t that summary make you want it for your next beach read?

If you prefer to stay inside while reading about malevolent, carnivorous, underwater predators, you could consider pairing this with the movie Deep Blue Sea. While I haven’t actually read this book, the plot sounds remarkably similar.

 


The Vision by Heather Graham

Treasure hunters, ghosts, and a serial killer haunt this romantic suspense thriller.

 


Fatal Treasure: Greed and Death, Emeralds and Gold, and the Obsessive Search for the Legendary Ghost Galleon Atocha by Jedwin Smith

 

Speaking of treasure hunters, here’s a real life story of treasure hunting filled with tragedy, obsessiveness, and, well, treasure. I can’t remember how old I was when the discovery and salvage of the Atocha became a big deal, but there was a massive exhibit at the Children’s Museum here, called The Search for the Golden Treasure, and I remember it well. The author of this book, Jedwin Smith, actually accompanied Mel Fisher and his company of treasure seekers on several dives.

 

Dead Tide  and Dead Tide Rising by Stephen A. North

These are fast paced zombie thrillers set in Pinellas County, Florida. Dead Tide Rising is the sequel to Dead Tide. Zombie lovers will find these to be good vacation reads, unless they happen to be vacationing in St. Petersburg.  Read our review of Dead Tide here and our review of Dead Tide Rising here.

 

Wolf Hunt by Jeff Strand

Jeff Strand is well known for his comic horror. Werewolf fans on their way to Florida are in for a treat with Wolf Hunt, which describes a road trip across Florida by two low-level thugs charged with delivering a man in a cage to a crime lord. Given the title, I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler to reveal that the man is, in reality, a ravenous werewolf. Strand doesn’t short his readers on the gore, though, so even with the comedy, it’s not for the weak of stomach. Read our review here.

 

Dying Days by Armand Rosamilia

Another fast paced zombie thriller that takes place in sunny Florida. Rosamilia has written several books and short stories set in this world. This one is available for 99 cents on Kindle, so it’s an inexpensive and easy choice that will help you to decide if you want to try more of his work. Read our review here.

 

Skeletons in the Swimmin’ Hole: Tales of Haunted Disney World by Kristi Petersen Schoonover

Six short horror stories for adults set at Disney World. The perfect antidote to Disney sweetness.

 

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow

He is not a horror writer, but I have read and loved most of Cory Doctorow’s work. I haven’t read this one, however. Reviews I have seen on it suggest that Doctorow was focused more on his setting (Disney World) and exploring ideas than on character development and plot. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom takes place in a future where scarcity is not a problem, wealth is based on reputation, and death is temporary, lasting only until your personality can be downloaded  into a clone. This doesn’t leave a lot of opportunity for meaningful conflict in a murder mystery. However, it sounds like Doctorow does put a lot of love into detailing the setting and the feelings of the people who really do live for Disney, which makes me wonder if he once wished he could live there himself. This was his debut novel, and his writing has become much more mature since then, but if I ever get back to Disney World (it’s pricey these days), I think I’d take this with me.

 

Shadows Over Florida by David Goudsward and Scott T. Goudsward

This nonfiction title is one horror movie fans can actually use to plan their vacations! Florida was the site of the filming of many grindhouse and exploitation movies in the 1960s and 1970s, and the Goudswards cover this in detail. They also document some of the influences Florida has had on prominent horror writers. Read our review here.

 

Not interested in Florida, and still want to warm up with a good book? Check out this booklist from earlier this year for more titles.

Whether you stay home, travel to sunny Florida, or choose some other vacation option, have a great spring break and enjoy some good reads!

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Shelley’s Daughters: The Magazinists

One of the interesting things about the women who have historically written supernatural fiction, especially in America, is how little of their writing is available to those who want to read it. And one of the reasons so little of it is available is because most of them did not publish books. They wrote for newspapers and magazines– and, in fact, are sometimes referred to as “magazinists”. Newspapers and magazines are ephemeral in nature– here today and gone tomorrow– so a great deal of the work of women writers has simply vanished. In introducing her partial bibliography of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (unfortunately, no longer available online), who is widely known for penning the terrifying story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Kim Wells noted that, as of 1998, just forty-three of her 186 stories had been published in book form. All of these appeared in magazines, and many of them appeared in The Forerunner, which she published herself.  According to Wells, Gilman also wrote over a thousand pieces of nonfiction on a variety of topics, which were mostly published in magazines and newspapers  (Oxford Online confirms this) and many of these have been inaccessible to researchers (although Radcliffe College reports that Harvard and Radcliffe now both have searchable collections of her papers in the process of digitization). And yet, most people know of this prolific writer and passionate social reformer primarily for one short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” .

Even less is available on other women writers (particularly those who wrote between 1850 and 1930) whose works were published mainly in newspapers and magazines, and whose names we may not even know well enough to find. Unfortunately for most reader’s advisory librarians, even compilations in which the editor has gone to outstanding lengths to seek out works from women magazinists (and there are a limited number of these), are now out of print.

 

Georgia Wood Pangborn (1872-1958) is oThe Wind at Midnight by Georgia Wood Pangbornne of these women, well-known for her supernatural fiction during the time that she wrote, but now almost completely faded away. In a draft of an introduction to The Wind at Midnight, a limited edition collection of Pangborn’s short stories that was published in 1999, editor Jessica Amanda Salmonson wrote that “she was possibly the best American supernaturalist of her day. Yet she fell so far into obscurity after she withdrew from literary life in the middle of the 1920s, she has been totally unknown to modern anthologists of supernatural fiction.” Some of her works can be found online in PDF format, and a few reproductions of her books Roman Biznet and Interventions are now available through Amazon (although they are quite expensive and I don’t have any idea as to the content or quality at this time. If you would like to sample her work, one of her stories appears in What Did Miss Darrington See? An Anthology of Feminist Supernatural Fiction, edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson, which is still in print.

Sarah Wilkinson (1779-1831), also known as Sarah Scudgell Wilkinson or Sarah Scadgell, is primarily known for her blue books, or chapbooks, and in fact, her first short works were published in a literary magazine called The Tell-Tale Magazine, which published them simultaneously as chapbooks.

In a blog entry at The Gothic Imagination, Franz Potter gives some description of what exactly a chapbook or blue book was. These were heavily illustrated 36 to 72 page booklets, much shorter than the average Gothic novel. Potter writes that while Ann Radcliffe and her imitators moderated their use of terror, chapbook authors “filled their pages with continual scenes of horror”. Click here to see PDF images of the pages from one of the blue books Wilkinson wrote, The Castle Spectre (which was based on a play by Matthew Lewis), so you can see exactly what they look like.

This is what Sarah Wilkinson was best known for. Her writing wasn’t limited to chapbooks, however: in 1806, she published a subscription novel titled The Thatched Cottage; or, Sorrows of Eugenia, which had such eminent subscribers as the Duchess of Gloucester. From 1812-1819, she worked as a teacher and wrote primarily children’s stories and books, but returned to the Gothic after poor health forced her to resign her teaching position, publishing A Bandit of Florence (1819) and Lanmere Abbey (1820). Over the next decade, as her health continued to fail and her financial situation became desperate, she continued to write short pieces for periodicals and blue books. Potter has written about her in detail here.

1875 Elliott & Fry photograph,courtesy Jennifer Carnell, Sensation Press

Charlotte Riddell (1832-1906), also known as Mrs. J.H. Riddell and F.G. Trafford, was also a well-known writer of supernatural fiction.  In an essay on her life, S.M. Ellis  called her “a born story-teller”. In addition to producing numerous novels, she wrote a tremendous number of short stories and tales for a wide variety of publications. Ellis wrote that she had written so many that  “she lost all count of her works, possessed very few copies of them herself, and often forgot where certain stories had appeared or what had happened to her rights in them.”She was born Charlotte Elizabeth Lawson Cowan. She grew up in Ireland, and many of her works are set there. Married in 1857 to Mr. Joseph Henry Riddell, she wrote primarily under the name Mrs. J.H. Riddell after that time. At her time, she was compared with Sheridan Le Fanu and her work was praised by M.R. James, a master of supernatural fiction himself. Peter Beresford Ellis quotes  the critic James L. Campbell who wrote: “Next to Le Fanu, Riddell is the best writer of supernatural tales in the Victorian era” (note: if you click on the link above, you will have to scroll way down to find the artile on Riddell, but it is there). In addition to being a writer of popular supernatural fiction, Riddell also was part owner of the literary journal St. James’ Magazine. While Riddell has occasionally had stories appear in anthologies of supernatural fiction, her work has been out of print and often difficult to find in the past. There are some recent collections of her work that have been published, however, that include some of her better-known novels, novelettes, and short stories. These include The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Mrs. J. H. Riddell: Volume 1-Including Two Novels “The Haunted River, ” and “The Haunted House at Latchford; The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Mrs. J. H. Riddell: Volume 2-Including One Novel “The Nun’s Curse, ” and Two Short Stories;  The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Mrs. J. H. Riddell: Volume 3-Including Two Novels “The Disappearance of Jeremiah Redworth, ” and “The Uninhabited House

Or, perhaps if you don’t require an expensive three volume set, you might take a look at these smaller collections that look much more like something readers in search of a good ghost story might appreciate. Click on the cover images to find out more about the below titles:

Weird Stories was first published in 1882, to great acclaim. Here’s a reasonably priced annotated version, currently in print.
 Fourteen of Mrs. Riddell’s supernatural tales.

These three women are just a few of those writing at the same time, struggling to make a living with their pens. All three of these women, writing as print culture exploded, made significant contributions to the writing of supernatural and Gothic fiction, the evolution of the ghost story, and the use of not just genteel terror, but of true creepiness and horror. Yet, while male authors of the same time are often well known, these women, as talented as they may have been, have been passed over by time. The scribbling women of the Romantic and Victorian eras, and well into the 20th century have a great deal to say, and it’s time to uncover it.

 

Women in Horror Fiction: H.I. Moscato (H.I.M.)

Women in Horror Month is technically over, but we still have more good stuff to share. Today, an interview with H.I. Moscato. If you didn’t know about her already, you might not have discovered her easily on your own. Enjoy!

Product DetailsH.I. Moscato is the author of a two-book vampire series, Vampire’s Song (2009 Amazon) and The Sound of Blood (Vampire’s Song) (2013 Amazon), as well as various short stories.

 

Can you give our readers a brief introduction?

My full name is Hortenzia Ilona Moscato and I publish under my initials, H.I.M., due to its length. I’m an author of a two- book vampire series and several short horror stories. I found my love of writing rather late in life when I caught up on reading all the books that my favorite author of the time had written and was having a hard time finding a replacement read that filled the same void. After a great deal of frustration in not finding what I was looking for I thought it would be fun to write something myself–  never thinking anyone would ever see it. That was all it took to fall in love with the craft. It’s now been 12 years, and my love affair with writing is still going strong.

 

Why do you write horror?  What draws you to the genre?

As all young children I feared the monsters under my bed and somehow early on I realized that the only way to keep them– the monsters– from eating me up was to befriend them with offerings of cookies. Now I chase their friendship on paper.

 

Can you describe your writing style or the tone you prefer to set for your stories?

I prefer to take a seemingly normal start to a story and then slowly twist it into something the reader never saw coming.

 

Who are some of your influences?  Are there any women authors who have particularly inspired you to write?

I find I’m influenced by every author I read. I can’t help but pull out everything I love, hate, got excited about, mad at or cried over out of every story. I’m not sure how you can’t be influenced one way or another– that’s, in my opinion the beauty of reading.

 

What authors do you like to read?  Any Recommendations?

Wow, that’s a tall order to fill. There are so many great writers. I’d have to say the best place to get a taste for an author’s work is through anthologies. I see them as sampler platters for novels.
Where can readers find your work?

I have two novels out, Vampires’ Song and its sequel The Sound of Blood both available on Amazon in hard copy and Kindle, as well as several short stories through Horrified Press and James Kirk Ward Publishing.