Let me introduce you to Shelner
And other fun stuff about March and April
Want to hear something embarrassing? Well, other than the fact that I still can’t spell the word embarrassing. I always write it with one “r.” I just did and thank God Substack underlined it for me like, “Hey, asshole, you’re spelling it wrong!” We all have those words, right? Yeah, you do. Admit it. What’s your word?
Anyway… my embarrassing moment happened at this year’s Scares That Care presents Authorcon 2 event that just took place at the end of March/beginning of April. First of all, the event was a blast! It was so much fun and so much money was raised for the charity. It’s our chance to battle real monsters. You should definitely be a part of next year’s event. Joe Ripple and Brian Keene have already started dropping hints and teaser images for Authorcon 3. The Facebook group has been buzzing about it. It’s going to be nuts! I’ll drop a few photos from the event throughout this issue. You can join the Facebook group by clicking HERE.
So, Thursday, after loading the car up and grabbing my bag full of Tootsie Pops (they’re a road trip must for me) and picking Jules up from work, we headed out for what should have been a 5-hour drive to Williamsburg, Va. It tends to take us closer to 7 or 8. Part of the reason could be things like when we stopped in Lewisburg to grab Arby’s real quick for dinner, Jules said, “Hey, there’s a Shoe Show. I kind of want to find something more comfortable to wear at the event.” I can’t really complain though because I ended up buying some fake Crocs. We’ll call ‘em Frocs. Hey, come on! I’m not spending $50 or more on a pair of bullshit rubber shoes!
Anyway, we got to the hotel at about midnight Thursday night. I bumped into a few friendly authors in the hotel lobby and talked to them for a while. I can’t drink because of all the liver issues I’ve been having. I don’t even drink beer anymore, but they were having a great time. Last year, I would have been right there joining them.
Friday was awesome. I set up my table and was lucky enough to be between the amazing Ruthann Jagge and one of my best friends in the biz, Lucas Mangum. Directly across from me was the Blood Bound Books table with Lucy Leitner and S.C. Mendes. They’re both so cool.
After the opening ceremonies, I went to my table and got everything ready to go (set up my Square credit card reader, cracked open an energy drink, etc.) but wasn’t yet fully in book-signing mode when two smiling readers approached my table. I recognized the first as Stephanie Evans, a friend from Facebook and TikTok. Her friend was new to me but was really sweet and purchased a book.
Now, here comes the embarrassing part. When it was time to sign her book, I asked, “And who am I signing this to?”
I looked up to find her name tag and saw the big green circular sticker she was wearing with something written on it in black marker. Reading that sticker, I proceeded to say, “Is it Shelner?”
“Excuse me?” she asked.
“Shelner?” I repeated. “Your name. Is it Shelner?”
Now, I thought that was an odd name, but who was I to judge? People have all kinds of different names. I mean people are naming their kids Apple and Rocket and Jermajesty. For real. So why not Shelner?
“What?” she asked again.
Glancing at her sticker once more, I realized what I was looking at. It wasn’t a nametag. I closed my eyes in shame. It was the pronouns sticker all the attendees were given. I’d forgotten about them since she was one of the first readers to approach my table. Her name wasn’t Shelner. Her pronouns were She/her.
But in my defense the “/” did kind of look like a lowercase “L” and the “h” looked like an “n.”
It turns out she’s a popular booktoker on TikTok named Kirsten who goes by @thespineofmotherhood.
I couldn’t stop laughing, and once I explained the situation, she was laughing too. She may forever remember me as that idiot author. Especially since she actually had me sign her book to Shelner. That’s how awesome she is. But, yeah, it was pretty embarrassing.
And now you all know about it! Because you’re all my best friends and won’t tell anyone.
I wonder if I’ll ever meet a Helhim.
What else happened in April?
I turned 44 on the 15th. That day, Mary SanGiovanni and Brian Keene happened to be at BAM in Beckley, WV on that leg of their pre-wedding whirlwind adventure. So, Jules and I stopped by to see them. I got a couple of books signed by Brian and picked up Mary's new book, Alien: Enemy of My Enemy. A bunch of my WV author friends were there so I got to see RJ Roles and his wife Jessica, Jason Nickey and his partner Jared, Paul Lubaczewski, and I even met Michael Knost (who isn’t in the picture below). As you can see in this picture, I made the mistake of saying I didn't know where to look (because there were too many cameras/phones) and my smart-ass cohorts here all said look thataway! Thataway happened to be out the far window... way out yonder.
It’s always great hanging out with fellow authors. We talked shop and other nonsense in the BAM aisles until I was sure the staff was ready to give us the boot. After we broke off from there, Jules and I went out to dinner and went to see a movie. It was an awesome day.
What else is new?
Four of my books were battling it out with the books of other indie horror authors over the past month or two in Kelvin VA Allison’s Facebook group: Indie Horror Novels. (click that group name to go there and join) If you’re not familiar with Kelvin, you should get to know him. He’s one of the sweetest, friendliest, most hard-working indie authors in the biz. We’ve come to be great friends. The guy’s a workhorse and a damn good author. He put together this indie battle royale in his group, refused to let people vote for his books, but let the readers decide which books should be entered. I think he said there were over 120 books entered. Readers pushed for four of mine to get in: The Maddening, Scalp, Faces of Beth, and Kin of the Fallen. That was pretty damned cool.
Kelvin worked his ass off, man. Every day he put up images of the two books going against each other. I think there were like eight battles per day. And in the comments of each battle, people could say which of the two books they liked best. At the end of the day, the book with the most votes would move on to the next round. So many awesome books were a part of the contest. I found some new books to read and I know a lot of others did, too. Faces of Beth and Kin of the Fallen made it into the final four of over 120 books! Thanks to you readers for voting and commenting.
But it was these two badass books that took the top two spots. Congrats to Daniel J. Volpe for snatching up that 1st place spot with Left To You and Jonathan Butcher for coming in second with What Good Girls Do. Faces of Beth took home third!
Make sure you check out Kelvin VA Allison’s work, too. He deserves it after all the work he does for so many authors. He really is a kind soul.
His most recent release is Ghoul 2: Exodus. He wrote Ghoul: The Beginning and Ghoul 2 with Lisa Hutchinson. You can click the image or HERE to go to Kelvin’s Amazon page where you’ll find both Ghoul books along with all his others.
In addition to placing in Kelvin’s Indie Author Battle Royale, Faces of Beth also made it into the Books of Horror group’s upcoming Indie Author Brawl. With this one, indie authors could nominate one of their books and people could vote on them by clicking the “like” button next to the book. The top 32 voted-on books were put into a bracket system. The actual brawl isn’t supposed to happen for six months, so that gives people plenty of time to read at least some of the books in the brawl. If you’re not in Facebook’s Books of Horror group, click HERE to go to that group.
In the first round, my Faces of Beth will be going up against Megan Stockton’s Bluejay. I grabbed a copy of that from her at Authorcon. It sounds awesome.
To go to my Amazon page where you’ll find Faces of Beth and all my other work, click HERE.
To go to Megan Stockton’s Amazon page where you’ll find Bluejay and all her other work, click HERE.
Megan is super cool. The first time we ever chatted, she bought my entire backlist in paperback. You should definitely check out her work. A couple of her books were in Kelvin’s Indie Author Brawl, too.
What have you been working on?
Crystal Lake Publishing’s Dark Tide Series: Lucas Mangum, Rowland Bercy Jr., and I turned in our stories. So, keep your eyes open for a road trip-themed book for Joe Mynhardt at Crystal Lake Publishing’s Dark Tide series. Our stories are pretty wild. I think you’re going to have a great time with this one. In the meantime, you should check out the other books in the series. Not that you have to read any of them to understand the others. Each book simply has three authors writing under the same theme. The books themselves aren’t linked in a way that you’d have to read book 1 then 2 then 3 and so on. Click HERE to go to Amazon’s page for the Dark Tide series.
I’ve also submitted a story to Crimson Pinnacle Press for an anthology called Thanks, RJ. It’s dedicated to RJ Roles, one of the publishers/masterminds behind Crimson Pinnacle Press, who has really done a lot for the indie author community. So, our way of saying thanks is to each write a story killing RJ. That’s the only rule. Just kill RJ. I had a lot of fun with my story. It’s nasty. The anthology isn’t up for pre-order yet, but you can check its progress on the crimson pinnacle website at https://www.crimsonpinnaclepress.com
Just check out the names involved in this on that image below. You can also click that image to go to their website.
Lucas Mangum and I are still plugging away at Diablo Snuff VS Gods of the Dark Web. We’re taking it easy with that one, having fun with it, and trying to enjoy the process of working together. The more we enjoy the process, the more you’ll like the end product.
On the solo front, I’m still working on the full-length version of Cannibal Caviar. I’m taking the short story I wrote in the Exits anthology and making it a full novel. I think you’ll really like what I’m doing with it.
I’m also dabbling with the prequel to Scalp again. Those of you who’ve read my parasitic head lice story know that I never really mentioned where those head lice came from. The prequel will absolutely go there. This one is planned to be more of a space horror though. I’ve always had a love for space horror and that’s where I’m going with this one.
My dark fantasy work has really been calling to me lately, too. I need to finish the 5th book in my Edge of Reflection series, and I have several other fantasy story ideas slapping me around every single day.
What’s on TV?
Farmer Wants a Wife. Hey, that’s enough of that judgment, okay? I’ve already admitted to liking reality dating stuff. We found this on Hulu and it’s our U.S. version of an Australian show. It’s okay. You get exactly what the title would imply. Four farmers are looking for love and some single women think they’re ready to give the farming lifestyle a shot.
Last Man Standing. I’ve never been a big fan of sitcoms, but when I find one I like, I’m pretty dedicated. At one point, I watched some of Last Man Standing with Tim Allen and really enjoyed it. Then I stopped and forgot about it. I just rediscovered it on Hulu so it’s nice to have a show with short episodes I can throw on when I don’t want to commit to a long drama.
From. I’d been wanting to see this show on Epix or MGM but neither of those channels had anything else I wanted to see, so I went with Showtime to see Yellowjackets and kind of forgot about From. Now that the first season of From is free on those streaming sites, I binged it, and I loved it. It was kind of like Lost but on the horror side instead of just mystery/thriller. It’ll leave you scratching your head and trying to figure out what in the hell is going on. Now that season 2 has started, I’m trying to decide if I want to pay for Epix (or MGM) or wait until all the episodes are out and binge it again.
What am I reading?
The Holy Bible. At this point, I've read the entire New Testament, and my faith has only grown stronger. I jumped straight to the New Testament first because I'd tried reading the Old Testament a couple of times in the past and gave up. I don't know why. Maybe I didn't understand. Perhaps I had a hard time comprehending God's wrath before truly understanding his grace. I don't know. But I'm ready now, and I'm finding it fascinating reading it with the Holy Spirit shining its light and giving me a little more wisdom.
Leaving by Tom Duffy. This is my first time reading Tom's work. I'd heard Armand Rosamilia and Chuck Buda mention how great of a writer he is on their Mando Method podcast, so I'd wanted to check out his work, but it wasn't until after chatting with him a couple of times on social media and meeting him in person at Authorcon that I finally ordered one of his books. I can tell you from our conversations he's a genuine, really down-to-earth guy. Full disclaimer - I did start reading Leaving after I saw what he wrote about me in the acknowledgments section of the book. I was truly surprised and very honored. I just finished his book today, and I can honestly say that I love Tom's writing style. Before even getting to the horror, when the book is mostly about a man's struggle with an incurable disease and his battle with alcoholism, I felt instantly invested. I could feel Jack's pain and I wanted him to hook up with Rachel and live happily ever after. I honestly forgot it was a horror novel aside from the horror of human suffering. Tom is just that good. You need to read this book. I bought Zodiac by Tom immediately after reading this one, and it looks like right now, as of the date this newsletter will go out, all of his ebooks are $.99 in the U.S. Click on his book cover above to go directly to the Amazon page for Leaving or click HERE to go to Amazon’s Tom Duffy page with all of his books. I know he also had signed copies of Leaving at this link HERE. I don’t know how long those will be available. You can always reach out to him on Facebook, too.
Hellbent: An Orphan X Novel by Gregg Hurwitz is the third book in the Orphan X series. I've listened to this whole series so far on audiobook and I've really enjoyed it. It’s basically about a secret organization within the government that takes kids off the streets and trains them to be assassins. When the program is dismantled, one badass, mean as hell Orphan goes after all the others. Orphan X, the main character, is just too damned good to be taken out. There's more to it than that, but it's a really cool series. Supposedly they were turning it into a TV series. Not sure if that's still happening.
Podcasts and Interviews
Since my last newsletter issue, I've only participated in one interview. It was a written interview with author Fallon Raynes. She asked some of the questions and let readers ask some.
Interview with Fallon Raynes. Click HERE.
I guess that’s about it for this issue. If you’re not already following me, make sure you’re hitting me up in all these places:
Website for signed copies of books:
https://www.CarverPike.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carver.pike.98/
Facebook Author Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/carverpikereadergroup
TikTok: @carverpike
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CarverPike
Instagram: @carverpike
Twitter: @carverpike
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Hey! Shelner here. Don’t be embarrassed at all about that happening! It was one of the highlights of the con and it made my day so much more fun. Happy to have met you and can’t wait to read Faces of Beth. 🙌🏻
That Shelner story made me laugh when I read it yesterday and then I thought about it driving to work this morning and laughed again. Sorry to see you were embarrassed about it, I think I would have been, too, but so glad you posted it because it is such a humorous, relatable type of occurrence.
Also, I had never heard of the Indie Author Brawl, I just requested to join that group, I’ll have to keep an eye on that once I get in.