Please give a warm welcome to friend and fellow horror scribe, Glenn Rolfe. You may remember my interview with him a few months back. Today he’s here to talk about the joys of the Halloween season and his brand new werewolf novel, BLOOD AND RAIN.
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This month, Samhain Publishing released my werewolf novel, Blood and Rain. I cannot express how cool it is to have this baby come out in October. I mean, this is the month of all months, right? Halloween? So cool.
For most of us horror guys and gals, we like to delve into the dark side any time of year, but for the majority of the people out there, October is the perfect season for scary reading. It’s when your aunt Mae puts down her Patricia Cromwell or Janet Evanovich novels and reaches for the Dean Koontz book in the dark corner of the bookshelf. It’s when Uncle Eddy sets Robert Parker to the side and dives into Pet Sematary. If Eddy or Mae are feeling especially wicked, and maybe they happened upon a copy of Ketchum’s Off Season or Laymon’s The Cellar at the Goodwill this summer, maybe they brave the unrelenting horror waiting within those yellowed paperback pages. Any way you slice it, they’re in for a treat.
In Blood and Rain, I take a small town sheriff and pit him against one helluva monster. There’s no cute love story. There’s no conflicted beast trying to decide whether or not to give into its primal urges. There are no perfect people. And if you think everyone is coming out of the next full moon alive and well? You will be in for s surprise. This is a mean machine of a novel that decided to treat like a trail of gasoline–open page one, drop the match, and get ready for this story to fucking burn.
What would Mae or Eddy think if they stumbled across my book? Well, that’s the other thing. While it is definitely a horror novel, I want it to be that next book in the dark end of the bookshelf at your aunt and uncles. These characters are real. Their flaws are flaws that we all have. The town could be any small town you’ve lived in or passed through. Gilson Creek, Maine is like a mash-up of Farmingdale, Gardiner, and Augusta, the places I grew up. I hope in writing my people and the places the way that I have it will make them and my story accessible to any fiction fan out there. Even Mae or Eddy. But definitely you and me.
There are a lot of horror books out there today (and a lot of GREAT ones this year in particular). I hope whether you’re a full-time fan of horror fiction or just a once and a while spook-seeker, you’ll give Blood and Rain a chance to scare the hell out of you. Happy October reading!
Cheers!
Lucas Mangum 