In 2023 Ghoulish Books will publish 13 spooky horror books, including 2 issues of GHOULISH TALES!
BACK UP THE PROJECT HERE!
In 2023, we are publishing 10 books and three issues of two different magazines. Via Kickstarter, we are allowing our fellow ghouls to pre-order our line-up for the entire year. We are including exclusive merch and other cool bonuses. Every book pre-ordered through our campaign will also ship with a signed bookplate from the author.
BOUND IN FLESH: AN ANTHOLOGY OF TRANS BODY HORROR – edited by Lor Gislason
BOUND IN FLESH: An Anthology of Trans Body Horror brings together 13 trans and non-binary writers, using horror to both explore the darkest depths of the genre and the boundaries of flesh. A disgusting good time for all! Edited by Lor Gislason. Featuring fiction by LC von Hessen, Theo Hendrie, Derek Des Agnes, Winter Holmes, gaast, Charles-Elizabeth Boyle, Hailey Piper, Joe Koch, Layne Van Rensburg, Bitter Karella, Amanda M. Blake, Lillian Boyd, and Taliesin Neith.
CONJURING THE WITCH – Jessica Leonard
There are witches in the woods. These are the words the reverend of the Lilin Assembly of Our Lord repeats to his parishioners each week. Steve and Nicole Warby think it’s just a metaphor, until Nicole takes a walk in those woods and comes back changed. Something came out of them with her, and the simple small-town life they’ve always known is forever altered when they discover the dark secrets buried deep and those intent on keeping them there. Fearing for his wife’s sanity, and his own comfortable status in the church, Steve is unsure if he wants to help or ignore the problems. The reverend believes there are witches in the woods, and he thinks Nicole is only the most recent.
Conjuring the Witch is a dark, haunted story about what those in power are willing to do to stay in power, and the sins we convince ourselves are forgivable.
LET THE WOODS KEEP OUR BODIES – E. M. Roy
Leo Bates knows what’s behind every corner in her hometown of Eston, Maine, where she’s lived her whole life. Some bad memories and grief for her late parents, sure, but nothing dangerous. Nothing unexplainable.
All of that changes when her girlfriend Tate goes missing, and the lead detective on the case blames Leo for the disappearance. Haunted by self-doubt, Leo can only watch as the town she thought she knew deteriorates around her. She is forced to confront the painful truth about her parents, this town, and her relationship if she is to survive the following onslaught of conspiracies, cryptic monstrosities, and whatever is hiding in the woods where Tate was last seen.
The familiar becomes strange the longer you look at it. Leo navigates a broken sense of reality, shattered memories, and a distrust of herself in order to find Tate and restore balance to Eston—if such a thing ever existed to begin with.
LIKE REAL – Shelly Lyons
In Shelly Lyons’s debut novel, Like Real, Vic Moss—kenjutsu hobbyist and clueless Lothario—lets vanity dictate his decision to acquire an experimental new-tech prosthesis that promises to evolve into a seamless, realistic looking hand. Instead, it tears from his body, transforms into his clone, and pursues a relationship with the same woman Vic has in his crosshairs—forcing Vic to kill or be replaced.
This mind-bending body horror rom-com is a rollicking Cronenbergian gene splice of Idle Hands and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. It’s freaky. It’s fun. It’s LIKE REAL.
THE ONLY SAFE PLACE LEFT IS THE DARK – Warren Wagner
In The Only Safe Place Left is the Dark, an HIV positive gay man must leave the relative safety of his cabin in the woods to brave the zombie apocalypse and find the medication he needs to stay alive.
RAINBOW FILTH – Tim Meyer
Rainbow Filth is a weirdo horror novella about a small cult that believes a rare psychedelic substance can physically transport them to another universe.
SAINT GRIT – Kayli Scholz
One brooding summer, Nadine Boone pricks herself on a poisonous manchineel tree in the Florida backcountry. Upon self-orgasm, Nadine conjures a witch that she calls Saint Grit. Pitched as Gummo meets The Craft, Saint Grit grows inside of Nadine over three decades, wreaking repulsive havoc on a suspicious cast of characters in a small town known as Sugar Bends.
Please note the above cover for Saint Grit is what we are labeling the “Censored Cover,” which we will be using for online distributors and bookstores. However, Alejandra Oviedo also created an “Uncensored Cover” for Saint Grit, which we will be offering exclusively through Kickstarter, our webstore, and hidden under the table at physical events (KS backers will be given a choice of which version they prefer).
Check out the Uncensored Cover HERE.
THE SCREAMING CHILD – Scott Adlerberg
A CHILD VANISHED IS NOT A CHILD GONE
The Screaming Child is a mystery horror novel told by a grieving woman working on a book about an explorer who was murdered in a remote wilderness region, only to get caught up in a dangerous journey after hearing the distant screams from her own vanished child somewhere in the woods.
WHAT HAPPENED WAS IMPOSSIBLE – E. F. Schraeder
Everyone knows the woman who escapes a massacre is a final girl, but who is the final boy? What Happened Was Impossible follows the life of Ida Wright, a man who knows how to capitalize on his childhood tragedies…even when he caused them.
XCRMNTMNTN – Andrew Hilbert
THIS IS NOT A PORNOGRAPHY
When a pile of shit from space lands near a renowned filmmaker’s set, inspiration strikes. Take a journey up a cosmic mountain of excrement with the director and his film crew as they ascend into madness led only by their own vanity and obsession. This is a nightmare about creation. This is a dream about poop. This is a call to arms against vowels. This is XCRMNTMNTN.
~~~
That concludes the 10 books we have planned for the year. If you aren’t already salivating like a little creep, let us continue onward into magazine territory.
In addition to issue 3 of our YA horror magazine, NIGHT FRIGHTS, we will also be releasing the first 2 issues of a new biannual horror magazine called GHOULISH TALES.
If you are a writer interested in submitting to the new magazine, we are currently open for submissions until February 15th. We are offering 7c per word, but if we meet a certain stretch goal on the KS we will raise the payment to 10c. More information about submitting can be found HERE.
Every book will include signed signature stickers from the authors and editors.
Anyone who secures the $300 or $500 book bundle will receive a box of Ghoulish merch, which will consist of a Ghoulish Books bookmark, a Ghoulish “GOOSEBUMPS FOR PERVERTS” tote bag, a Ghoulish pin, a Ghoulish pen, a KEEP SAN ANTONIO GHOULISH bumper sticker, and a laminated Ghoulish subscriber membership card good for 10% off on anything in our webstore and at physical events.
The $500 bundle will also include one badge for the Ghoulish Book Festival in San Antonio (April 14-16 2023) and one Ghoulish Books T-Shirt.
$10,000 – DOG EARS PODCAST [UNLOCKED]
Dog Ears will be a podcast hosted by Max Booth III and Lori Michelle about the writing and publishing industry. It will cover publishing news, deep dives into publishing topics, and interviews with those who work in publishing.
$15,000 – THE BOOK OF FRANK [LOCKED]
The Book of Frank is a collection of absurd flash fiction by Max Booth III. Each story is about his dachshund, Frank, and his many bizarre, often violent adventures.
Some stories consist of titles like “Frank Kills Kennedy” and “Frank Eats a Chicago Dog.” To get a better idea of the collection’s style, we’ve made “Frank Goes Wacko in Waco” free to the public on our Patreon.
Note: this book will only happen if we hit our stretch goal. If reached, it will be included for free with the other 13 publications via the eBook and paperback bundles.
$20,000 – PAYMENT INCREASE FOR WRITERS [LOCKED]
We will increase writer payment for Ghoulish Tales from 7c per word to 10c per word.
$25,000 – GHOULISH AUDIOBOOKS [LOCKED]
We will produce audiobooks for every single-author 2023 publication (so, this excludes the anthology Bound in Flesh and our two magazines).
Anyone who subscribes to our $300 or $600 bundles will receive them as they become available.
$35,000 – ??? [LOCKED]
What could this be? Maybe we’ve already figured this out, or maybe we have no fucking idea. Either way, it’ll be a fun surprise when we hit this stretch goal.
Note: this is an estimated timeline. Due to the nature of publishing, delays can sometimes occur, but we will try our best to deliver everything in a timely fashion! Realistically, a lot of these ETAs are listed a month later than our true goals, but we’d prefer to surprise you with an early arrival than disappoint you with a late shipment.
- January 2023 – Kickstarter commences.
- March 2023 – Like Real and XCRMNTMNTN.
- April 2023 – The Ghoulish Book Festival in San Antonio, TX kicks off on the weekend of April 14-16. Also, bonus merch boxes should start arriving around now.
- May 2023 – Ghoulish Tales Issue 1, Bound in Flesh, Conjuring the Witch, and What Happened Was Impossible.
- June 2023 – The Only Safe Place Left is the Dark and The Screaming Child.
- September 2023 – Rainbow Filth and Night Frights Issue 3.
- October 2023 – Ghoulish Tales Issue 2, Let the Woods Keep Our Bodies, and Saint Grit. If we hit the Book of Frank stretch goal, this is also when it’d ship out.
Scott Adlerberg is the author of the novels Spiders and Flies, Jungle Horses, Graveyard Love, and Jack Waters. He has written many short stories and contributes pieces regularly to sites such as CrimeReads, Mystery Tribune, and Criminal Element. Every summer, he hosts the Word for Word Reel Talks film commentary series in Bryant Park in Manhattan. He was born in New York City and lives in Brooklyn.
Andrew Hilbert is the author of Inner Space, Invasion of the Weirdos, Bangface & the Gloryhole, and Death Thing. He lives in Texas.
Jessica Leonard is a horror author who loves creating ghosts and that feeling you get when you think someone is watching you. She was born in a small town that may or may not exist and still lives there to this day. She lives with her husband, son, and two dogs. She has two novels, Antioch and Conjuring the Witch.
Shelly Lyons is a nice lady from Los Angeles who considers herself a real LA townie. Her favorite TV movies are The Initiation of Sara, Mansquito, Yeti: Curse of the Snow Demon, and Lifetime’s Killer Under the Bed, the best movie about evil sentient dolls. As an entertainment journalist, she interviewed Roger Corman and once angered Burt Reynolds by asking what he learned about directing from Paul Thomas Anderson. Now she knows Reynolds directed at least nine movies, and wishes to apologize to him, wherever he is. She wrote screenplays for unsavory characters and marketing copy for a big search engine before reinventing herself as a narrative prose writer. Perhaps you’ve seen her short stories in anthologies or on her site, shellylyons.com. If you wish to meet Shelly in her natural habitat, you might find her skulking through various Los Angeles neighborhoods in search of a Little Free Library or standing in line for a double feature at The New Bev.
Tim Meyer dwells in a dark cave near the Jersey Shore. He’s the author of more than fifteen novels, including Malignant Summer, The Switch House, Dead Daughters, Limbs, and many other titles. When he’s not working on the next book, he’s usually hanging out with his wife and son, shooting around on the basketball court, playing video games, or messing with a new screenplay. He bleeds coffee and IPAs. You can learn more about his books at timmeyerwrites.com
E. M. Roy (she/they) is a writer and lover of all things weird, horrific, and dark, especially when those things have a social justice bend and are rooted in a queer perspective. After obtaining a B.A. in English from Boston University, their work has appeared in a handful of small publications. She currently resides near Portland, Maine with her parents, sibling, and dog, Boo. Let the Woods Keep Our Bodies is their debut novel.
Kayli Scholz writes and consumes horror in the wilds of Florida. Her short fiction has appeared in Dark Moon Digest and A Formal Invitation. She’s currently working on her next book. Saint Grit from Ghoulish Books is her first novel.
A rustbelt native, E. F. Schraeder believes in ghosts, magic, and dogs, and writes poetry and fiction most often inspired by not quite real worlds. The author of As Fast as She Can (Sirens Call Publications, 2022), the Imadjinn Award Finalist Liar: Memoir of a Haunting (Omnium Gatherum, 2021) and other works, E.F. Schraeder is also the author two poetry chapbooks and a third forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in 2023. Schraeder’s recent work has appeared in Lost Contact, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Moonflowers & Nightshade, Dancing in the Shadows: A Tribute to Anne Rice, and other journals and anthologies. Schraeder’s nonfiction has appeared in Vastarien: A Literary Journal, Radical Teacher, the American Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom blog, and elsewhere. A youth librarian by day, Schraeder studied applied ethics and humanities in graduate school and holds an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Social Philosophy and advanced degree in Library Science.
At 16, Warren Wagner realized he was gay at a memorial service for Ronald Reagan and it was all downhill from there. Wagner’s screenwriting has placed in multiple contests, most notably as a finalist in the Austin Film Festival screenplay competition. Whether it’s comedy, drama, or horror, Wagner’s queer perspective makes the material feel fresh and unique. He currently lives in Toronto, Ontario with his dog Kaufman.
Ryan Caskey is a multi-published illustrator and designer from Columbus, OH. He has created work for Hulu, Archie Comics, Ghost, and Rick and Morty, among others. Most recently, he created The Spooky Tarot, a fully illustrated 78 card tarot deck inspired by vintage Halloween and medieval horror that was successfully funded via Kickstarter. He spends his days working with clients to conjure new nightmares and creating products inspired by horror and Halloween under the name “The Spooky King”.
Zug Goodina is an artist. Check out more of his work here.
Aidan Mayner is a multidisciplinary artist, due to a lack of discipline rather than an overabundance as one would naturally assume. Born and raised in Toronto, Canada, he has a formal education in visual art with a focus on textiles and is self-taught in graphic design. He is compulsively facetious, and his brain doesn’t works so goods.
Alejandra Oviedo is a cartoonist who goes by the name Ruttu. She specializes in vintage inspired stuff for cool cats and glamour ghouls. https://linktr.ee/ruttu
Babs Rastorfer does character design & animation. Find out more about them here: https://bluehatted.carrd.co/
Matthew Revert is a designer based in Melbourne, Australia who has gained prominence in the independent press and record label world for his creative designs. His design of different formats, including books, cassettes and LPs, for various clients ranging from independent presses to industry heavyweights such as Eraserhead Press, Thick and Vaney, Bizarro Pulp Press, Ampersand Press, Broken River Books, Lazy Fascist, Kye Records, Erstwhile Records, Slope Editions, Noemi Press, Civil Coping Mechanisms, Grindhouse Press and Dzanc, to name a few, has garnered him a strong following and a recognisable name. Sought for his unique style of design which often throws back to 60s and 70s era Penguin books, Revert’s work evokes a sense of nostalgia and harkens back to an untainted version of design. Known for a wide range of design styles and implementations, possibly his most popular signature is creating distressed, aged looks which can have even the trained eye believing the item in question to be well-thumbed and roughly treated by human hands and the inescapable ravages of time. His work ranges from purely digital design, to organic construction, to creation by hand and/or a careful symbiosis of multiple mediums to create eye-catching and idiosyncratic designs.
Betty Rocksteady spends as much time as possible wandering around daydreaming. Her illustrated cosmic sex horror novella The Writhing Skies won the 2018 This is Horror Award for best novella, and was nominated for the Splatterpunk Award. Surreal and explicit, her short fiction is collected in In Dreams We Rot. Her illustration style is inspired by old cartoons and newspaper comics. Soft Places is her first graphic novel. Find out more at www.bettyrocksteady.com.
Luke Spooner is a freelance illustrator from the South East of England. Since graduating from Portsmouth University with a First-Class degree in illustration Luke has gone on to work on a wide variety of projects and commissions, including; illustrations and covers for horror, science fiction and fantasy books, magazines, graphic novels, conceptual design, music packaging and business branding. Luke has also illustrated children’s’ books for authors who aim to promote diversity and mindfulness in younger audiences. In the last two years he’s joined forces with Artwork500, who are based in Ireland, to help sell his original paintings and has in turn been able to explore new artistic avenues under his own direction. Luke’s online portfolio can be viewed at www.carrionhouse.com and his original paintings are for sale at: https://artwork500.co.uk/product-category/artists/luke-spooner/
Max Booth III is the CEO of Ghoulish Books, the host of the GHOULISH and Dog Ears podcasts, the co-founder of the Ghoulish Book Festival, and the author of several spooky books, including Abnormal Statistics, Maggots Screaming!, Touch the Night, and others. He wrote both the novella and film versions of We Need to Do Something, which was released by IFC Midnight in 2021 and can currently be streamed on Hulu. He was raised in Northwest Indiana and now lives in San Antonio.
Lori Michelle is the CFO and layout guru of Ghoulish Books. She formats books for several indie horror publishers and a multitude of other freelancers. In the evening, she is Ms. Lori, dance teacher extraordinaire, teaching young minds all over the San Antonio area the joys of shuffle ball change and pas de bouree.
Lor Gislason (anthologist) is an autistic non-binary homebody from Vancouver Island, Canada. Their articles have been featured on Hear Us Scream, Horror Obsessive and several upcoming anthologies. Their dream is to one day make an encyclopedia covering body horror films. Their novella, Inside Out, is available wherever goopy books are sold.
Jenna Malcolm (copy editor) is an editor by day and a craft enthusiast by night. She’s worked on magazines, technical documents, and fiction, with horror and surrealism being some of her favourite genres. She lives in Alberta, Canada.
Emily McCorkle (copy editor) is an editor, tutor, blade shearer, and recovering English teacher. She has worked with magazines, dissertations, fiction, and horrifying student essays. When not immersed in words or thoughts, she’s knee deep in critters, crafts, crystals, and chaos on The Island of Misfits and Noise in Texas.
Did you make it all the way to the end? Well, heck. Here is a link to Max Booth III’s MAGGOTS SCREAMING! Feel free to download and read, either way. Thank you for supporting indie horror.
Risks and challenges
All of these books are happening regardless of the Kickstarter’s success. They’re already written. Some have gone through dev edits and are in the process of being copy edited. Others are still in the process of dev edits. Some are being formatted and prepared for the printer. Every author has been paid their advance. Same goes for the cover artists.
These books will be published. We are simply using Kickstarter as a venue to conveniently pre-order our entire line-up and also offer some neat little bonuses. The books will be published throughout the year, which means backers will receive copies of each title as they become available. We hope to group some of the books together so we aren’t having to send you 13 different shipments.
Since we have several physical rewards, there are always risks with using postage and we will do our best to address any issues caused during delivery. However, we have a decade’s worth of experience shipping books, so we do not predict many issues. If you choose a single eBook / paperback tier instead of the bundle, you will be prompted to pick which book you want to receive in a survey after the Kickstarter ends. We will post updates the moment we have them.
BACK UP THE PROJECT HERE!
