Halloween Horrors – New Release

My new collection, Halloween Horrors: Selected Short Tales of Dark Psychological Horror, is now available.

This trio of stories deals with love, guilt, and madness colliding at the darkest time of year — when the masks come off and the real monsters are revealed. Each story takes place in and around Halloween and explores the fragility of sanity when fear, grief, and obsession begin to feed on each other.

An elderly widower prepares a deadly Halloween treat for the boys who tormented him and his late wife.
A child appears on a suburban doorstep, clutching a jar full of living nightmares.
A desperate addict sets off a chain of horrors that summons something he can’t control.

These are dark, violent, and psychologically raw stories — horror stripped to its nerve endings.

Halloween Horrors is available in a Kindle edition via the links below:

Of course, this digital edition will also be available at most other online book retailers.

Thanks to everyone who continues to read, share, and support my work.

William Cook

The Fangoria Horror Business Model

Along with Stephen King and Hammer Horror, Fangoria magazine was one of the earliest influences on my obsession with Horror in all its various forms. I scored a binder filled with the first 12 issues when I was 14 and became a devout subscriber. 40+ years later, Fangoria’s transformation from a struggling print magazine into a multimedia powerhouse is a story of resilience, innovation, and strategic growth. Their journey provides valuable insights for anyone in the horror business – whether you’re running a small indie publishing house, starting a podcast, or looking to scale your horror-themed merchandise line. Let’s break down Fangoria’s rise to success, the strategies that set it apart, and why it’s the ultimate business model for horrorpreneurs at any level. Fangoria’s launch Fangoria began as a print magazine focused on sci-fi and fantasy under the name Fantastica . This title was short-lived due to its similarity to Fantastic Films magazine, and it was forced to cea...

THE (EXTREMELY) SHORT GUIDE TO WRITING HORROR BY TIM WAGGONER

Tim Waggoner graciously let me reblog this fascinating little exploration of his on writing horror. THE (EXTREMELY) SHORT GUIDE TO WRITING HORROR BY TIM WAGGONER Horror comes from a fear of the unknown. Keep a sense of mystery going in your story. What’s happening? Why is it happening? What’s going to happen next? How much worse is it going to get? Horror comes from a violation of what your characters consider to be normal reality. This violation shakes them to their very core because it raises the possibility that everything they thought they knew is wrong and that anything could happen. The Universe isn’t orderly or benign. It’s chaotic and malicious. Dread is the mounting anticipation of a threat drawing ever closer. Terror is a deep emotional and intellectual reaction to a threat, a profound realization that reality isn’t what we thought it was. Horror is an immediate reaction to a threat – disbelief, denial, turning away. Shock is a surprise, an ad...

The moon speaks to me of you (a love poem)

Apologies for the lack of recent posts. I have been writing and have also been quite active on Medium.com lately. For those of you who are on Medium, please feel free to connect with me there via the link below. Medium has proved to be quite an interactive forum in which to share my work and has motivated me to keep writing and sharing my poems and stories. The poem below is one of my more popular pieces of writing on Medium, so I thought I'd share it with you here on my website. Thanks for reading. Please be sure to subscribe to my website via the 'Free Books' tab above ⬆⬆⬆. Photo by Manuel Torres Garcia via Pexels.com Shall we dance into the night you & I our words but a whisper? What is it that makes this soft sadness so indeterminable so impenetrable sunk so deep into this endless night? The broken light that comes & goes between the darkness either side of dawn speaking of your memory ushering in each day one, as if a step away from you the next, a step toward...

William Cook

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