Well, it’s time! The judges have cast their votes, and we have a winner! I want to thank Lee Thomas and Maria Cruz for their help selecting a winner, and I want to that those who sent in entries. There was some great stuff, but in the end there can be only one winner (plus one second place winner and one third place winner). Congratulations, winners. Your prizes will be sent out this weekend.
GRAND PRIZE WINNER: Les Weiler
SECOND PLACE WINNER: Brian Nicola
THIRD PLACE WINNER: Robert Dandusevski
When a bank job goes horrifically wrong, career criminal Danny Black leads his crew from El Paso into the deserts of New Mexico in a desperate bid for escape. With a psychopath and a hostage keeping a gutshot redneck company in the back seat, Denny soon finds himself with no choice but to hole up in an abandoned factory, the former home of Red Sky Manufacturing. — Surrounded by nothing and no one, Danny thinks he may have finally found some breathing room, a chance to think and to plan. Danny and his crew aren’t the only living things in Red Sky, though. Something waits in the abandoned factory’s shadows, something horrible and violent. Something hungry. — And when the sun drops, it will feast.
The paperback edition of Red Sky will be available from Deadite Press in November. It sports an original cover by Alan M. Clark. Red Sky was my first published novel, and I’m very proud of it. A lot of action in this one. Pick it up. I think you’ll dig it.
Thunderstorm Books is launching a new Book of the Month Club. If you enjoy limited hardbacks, this is a pretty good deal. Maintain your membership for a year, and you’ll earn a hardcover chapbook with new stories by Brian Keene, JF Gonzalez, Kealan Patrick Burke, and Shane McKenzie.
As regular visitors can see, my website has looked a little different this past week. Last Monday, the site was hacked. In order to fix everything, we had to update Word Press and wipe almost everything clean. So we had to load up a new theme. Because of that, my old graphics header is no longer compatible with my website. That picture above of a forest floor? I don’t want that to stick around.
So, I thought it was high time for a contest.
THE “GET YOURSELF KILLED” STATIC BROADCASTS CONTEST
Design a new graphics header for my blog, and I will make you a character in my next novel. It’s possible you’ll survive, but I wouldn’t say it’s likely. In fact, I’d say it’s almost impossible.
THE RULES
1. Contest Deadline is Halloween. Any entries received after October 31st, 2012 will not be considered.
2. To enter, either post your entry in the specified thread on my message board (you will need to register), or email your entry as an attachment to southardcontest@gmail.com
3. Entries must conform to the following specs: 940 pixels wide, 198 pixels high, 96 dpi, JPEG format.
4. While you may use any graphic from my books, it is by no means a requirement. Get creative!
5. Winners will be decided by a panel of judges and announced on November 5th.
6. In order to win the Grand Prize, you must be willing to reveal at least some details regarding your life, physical appearance, and so forth. Otherwise, I’m just using a name.
PRIZES
Grand Prize: I will make you a character in an upcoming novel. Your header image will be displayed on my home page for a minimum of six months.
Second Prize: Signed copies of my books Something Went Wrong and This Little Light of Mine.
Third Prize: Signed Copies of my books A Trip to Rundberg and the German edition of Red Sky.
THE JUDGES
Nate Southard: Hi. I work here. I write books and things. Usually, they’re scary.
Lee Thomas: Lee Thomas is the author of The German, Torn, and The Dust of Wonderland. He is a winner of both the Lambda Literary Award and the Bram Stoker Award. He also possesses a keen and demanding design sense that has sent many a designer insane.
Maria Cruz: Playing the part of our “Civilian who likes pretty things” is my close friend Maria Cruz. She plays a lot of video games and probably just wants to see something with Hello Kitty or a cartoon ninja on it. When she reads the bio I wrote for her, she might get angry.
In the last few days, genre fans have probably noticed the call to arms concerning Tom Piccirilli. Last week, he was diagnosed with brain cancer, and on Monday he had a tennis ball-sized tumor removed from his brain. He’s in a tough fight, and as many aspiring authors know, medical bills can be life-shattering for those who make their livings from prose.
In that light, Tom’s family has started a fundraiser to help offset his medical costs. In just a few days, they’ve raised almost $15,000, but that will probably do little more than scratch the surface. If you can, please go to the fundraiser website and give. Tom is one of the most talented writers I’ve ever know, with his book Every Shallow Cut being particularly amazing. Speaking of, publishers ChiZine have said 100% of all proceeds of the Every Shallow Cut ebook will go to Tom, so if you’d like to check out this amazing author, please do so.
In two days, I’ll be heading to the Alamo Drafthouse to spend a week at Fantastic Fest, the annual festival of scary, gross, creepy, hilarious, bizarre, and otherwise awesome movies. Hard to believe, but this will be my fifth year attending.Â
Fantastic Fest has brought me some amazing memories over the past few years. I’ve eaten stirfry cooked via flamethrower, watched a Viking chorus/karaoke line, watched The Road Warrier outside, turned around to tell someone to stop jostling me only to realize said jostler was Bill Pullman, and listened to Thomas Haden Church explain how learning to roll joints is the only thing he picked up in college.
The best part of Fantastic Fest, however, is the movies. Some of the flicks I’ve seen at the festival have gone on to become favorites of mine. Even some I didn’t catch during the festival, but caught up with later, have become important to me. I just wanted to take a second to run down some of my favorites and thank the festival for introducing them to me. I owe you one….
Donkey Punch
Not the first movie I ever saw at Fantastic Fest, but the first one that thrilled me. This drug-drenched story of vacation flirting gone horribly wrong has since become a go-to movie for several friends of mine in that “It’s late, and I want to watch something fucked up” kind of way.
Let the Right One In
After all the buzz that surrounded this one at the festival, I went to see it as soon as it returned to the Alamo Drafthouse. Wow. The best vampire movie of the last decade, and one of my favorite movies of all time.
I Think We’re Alone Now
In 2008, Fantastic Fest allowed some of their films to be viewable online during the festival. This quirky, disturbing documentary about two different people stalking former bubblegum pop star Tiffany was one of the movies I watched that way.
Trick R Treat
Possibly the best horror anthology movie ever made. This love letter to Halloween gave me the most fun I’ve ever had at the movies.
Clive Barker’s Dread
One of Clive Barker’s best short stories comes to life in a truly grisly way. The beef scene still horrifies me.
Kidnapped
I suppose this one skates dangerously close to being torture porn. Maybe it’s the long shots that never seem to end, or maybe it’s that opening scene that makes almost no sense, but this movie just drilled down to my core and infected me.
Rammbock
A man tries to win back the love of his life on a day zombies rise and attack Berlin. This is a zombie movie that made me cry.Â
We Are What We Are
This amazing flick from Mexico plays like a family drama: the patriarch dies, and the family is left to pick up the pieces. One hitch…they’re cannibals.
Drones
A romantic/sci-fi comedy filmed in a remarkably short period on a remarkably small budget packs a lot of laughs. An office worker realizes his new girlfriend is alien…and that an interstellar war may be right around the corner.
The Crow’s Caw has posted a new review of Down. Not bad, not bad….
There’s a new review of Down at Horror Talk. As far as I know, it’s the first official review. Go check it out and then spread the love!
This Saturday, Sinister Grin Press and myself will be hosting a Down release party at Triple Crown Tattoo, located at 1157 Chicon St in Austin, Texas. We’ll have books for sale, beer, some food, and we’ll be giving away some books and some tattoos. Please come out and say hi!
6-9PM
Triple Crown Tattoo
1157 Chicon St
Austin, Texas
My second fiction collection, Something Went Wrong, is now available for purchase from Thunderstorm Books! Limited to 100 copies, this signed collector’s edition contains reprints of some of my favorite stories from the past five years and some great new stuff, including the title novella, which might be my best work to date.
Here’s the back cover copy for your viewing pleasure…
A smitten thug makes a choice between saving the world or the woman he loves…
With wood and nails, a man builds a weapon of hatred and violence in order to battle his past….
In the middle of the night, a lonely man wakes to find a sack of body parts on his doorstep….
A mysterious agent wonders if he can live with his new job while training under a man who horrifies him….
Terror and true love. Determination and hatred. Sadness and hope. All this and more awaits you in Nate Southard’s second collection of short tales. Including the original novella Something Went Wrong, these seventeen stories of broken, angry, mournful, and iron-willed people will show you the lengths the desperate and lonely will go to when the stakes are high and things go wrong.
