​The Ginger Nuts of Horror Website welcomes author Genevieve Gornichec to the sie to celebrate the release of her new novel, The Witch’s Heart, published this month by Titan Books. 

​​Getting to visit the world of your absolute favorite fantasy novel would be a dream come true for a lot of us, no matter how scary or dangerous that world may be. I think that’s part of the appeal of Dungeons & Dragons, and medieval and renaissance faires—that idea of stepping away from the humdrum of our everyday lives and into another world, just for a time. 


Historical reenactment may not be fantasy in the genre sense, but takes that immersion to an entirely different level. For me, doing Viking Age living history has been an invaluable experience when it came to revising my debut historical fantasy novel, The Witch’s Heart. Because, realistically—how often can a fantasy author say that they’ve walked in their main character’s shoes?


When I wrote the first draft of The Witch’s Heart ten years ago, I was in my third year at university. I’d become obsessed with the Norse myths and Icelandic sagas, and the book was a reflection of this. At this stage, I was so focused on moving the story along and making it fit into the background of the myths that I didn’t think too much about the setting.


But several years after I wrote The Witch’s Heart, I went to my local renaissance faire in a “lady Viking” outfit I’d bought off the Internet and found out that there was a Viking Age living history group near me. This group and its members changed the course of my life as surely as the first time I’d set foot in my professor’s Old Norse classroom as an undergraduate. 


For reference, the Viking Age spans roughly from the years 700 CE to 1100 CE (most commonly, the raiding of Lindisfarne Monastery in 793 CE to the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066 CE), so taking such a far step back in time was really intimidating at first. How was I supposed to even imagine how people lived back then?


Immersion is easier than you think when you’re surrounded by a group of people committed to exploring what life might have been like so many centuries ago, which is really what’s at the heart of living history itself. Simple things like cooking over a campfire, building tents, making crafts, using historically plausible drinking vessels and cookware, telling tales around the hearth in a reconstructed longhouse, and watching combat techniques over the years has provided me with a perspective I never would’ve gotten anywhere else. 


It made me think about my main characters: “How could Angrboda have transported her potions in the book? What types of things would Skadi have traded? What would their clothes have been made of?” These are things I had not even considered when I wrote the first draft of the book—although in my defense, I wrote it in three weeks for NaNoWriMo in 2011!


In later revisions and into the final print version, I got to pepper in little historical details, like nalbinding (which is a lot like knitting), mentions of women’s textile work, and more. Angrboda’s original outfit was even rewritten to exclude the traditional brooches that Viking Age women wore, since I found them too cumbersome to work in, and the witch is nothing if not practical. 


These types of experiences enabled me to make the setting that much richer in The Witch’s Heart, and there’s something really cathartic about escaping into another world, whether you’re reading a book or camping out at a Viking fort without electricity or cell phone service. If you pick up the book, I hope you enjoy it—and thank you very much to Ginger Nuts of Horror for hosting me today! 

When a banished witch falls in love with the legendary trickster Loki, she risks the wrath of the gods in this fierce, subversive debut novel that reimagines Norse myth.

Angrboda's story begins where most witch tales end: with being burnt. A punishment from Odin for sharing her visions of the future with the wrong people, the fire leaves Angrboda injured and powerless, and she flees into the furthest reaches of a remote forest. There she is found by a man who reveals himself to be the trickster god Loki, and her initial distrust of him and any of his kind grows reluctantly into a deep and abiding love.

Their union produces the most important things in her long life: a trio of peculiar children, each with a secret destiny, whom she is keen to raise at the edge of the world, safely hidden from Odin's all-seeing eye. But as Angrboda slowly recovers her prophetic powers, she learns that her blissful life and possibly all of existence is in danger.
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Angrboda must choose whether she'll accept the fate that she's foreseen for her beloved family or rise to remake it.

Imagine a world painted in crimson, amethyst, and onyx hues. The sky is a cauldron of smoky clouds and stabs of lightning. Our hero, the protagonist, beaten and wearied, stands with a brilliant blade held aloft in an endless battle against the insidious and darkly robed villain.

Now imagine that protagonist is you, or me, or someone else striving to express themselves, to write, to paint, to act, or whatever. And who is the antagonist? Who is the villain?

Personally, I call it the Voice of Discordia.

What is the Voice of Discordia? It’s different for everyone but, in essence, it is whatever tries to prevent you from achieving whatever it is you want to achieve.  Depression, anxiety, writer’s block, doubt. All of it can act as the Voice of Discordia.

For me, my Voice of Discordia comes from my lifelong anxiety and depression. Most days, the voice – my inner monologue that tries to tell me that chances of success are too small, that I’m not good enough, and nothing I do will matter – is manageable. I can deal with it and push through. Other days, it’s a cacophony, a weight that crushes me down.

And the thing is, the Voice of Discordia never stops whispering. It’s like quicksand waiting to drown you, and it’s a lot easier to let yourself sink than to always fight against it. Dealing with anxiety and depression is just that: a daily fight against yourself, and it is exhausting. It really, really is. There will be days where I wonder how I am supposed to have any energy to write when it takes everything I have to get up in the morning, to do the chores that need doing, to go to work every day. What will I have left for writing?

I don’t always stay on top. I sink to the Voice of Discordia’s persuasive pull. Suddenly it’s been several days since I last wrote ,and every day it seems too hard to start again, what’s the point? How do I start again, how do I get in motion when I’ve been still for so long?

If my anxiety is a choking hold around my neck, then my depression is a weight that settles on top. So now what? I’m in the pits. How do I climb out?

I don’t have the answer for everyone struggling against their own Voice of Discordia, but I can share what has worked for me. When I was at one of my lowest points in my life, I wasn’t writing at all. I felt there was no point, and I had pretty much given up. Every task seemed daunting and impossible.

I was at rock bottom, and I had a choice to give up, or to try something, anything. So, I set a daily goal for myself of only 200 words. That doesn’t sound like much, does it? Yet, in those early days, even 200 words was a struggle. I would agonize over those 200 words for hours.

But it was an act of resistance against the Voice of Discordia. Every 200 words was a success, because it was better than doing nothing at all. And that was what I began to realize at that time. Success didn’t have to be this huge endeavour. It didn’t have to be fireworks and champagne. Sometimes it just meant I got out of bed, did everything I had to do, and still managed to (barely) get 200 words written.

Eventually, I was writing more than 200 words a day. Suddenly, it wasn’t torture anymore. Writing was becoming easier, and the Voice of Discordia became weaker. I had one of my stories published two years after, and that was only the beginning, I suppose. But not the end, because I don’t believe my fight against the Voice of Discordia will ever end.

Writing then became a tool I could use against the Voice of Discordia because I could funnel in all my anxiety, all my darkness, and all my despair into my stories. My characters suffered and fought with me against Discordia. Now, dozens of published stories later, I am more confident in myself despite Discordia.

I guess another method of coping with my internal battle was in the act of naming it. You see it in movies about demons all the time: if you know its true name, you gain control over it. For me, giving a name to the voice inside my head that was telling me I wasn’t good enough was a way to set it apart from me. Before, it was nameless. It was me. I fought against myself and how do you win that fight?

With a name, the Voice of Discordia became an enemy I could ignore because it wasn’t me, so it didn’t deserve my attention. When I find my thoughts twisting and I begin to spiral into that darkness, I remind myself to ignore Discordia and the seeds it tries to sow.

At the same time, how do I tell people to keep fighting when I know how much it hurts? When people ask me how am I so productive, how do I handle my job plus my writing, and art, and blogging? How do I tell them that every day feels like work sometimes and every day is just another day fighting in an endless war against Discordia?

I will tell you to keep fighting because sometimes the best path in life, the most rewarding path, will also be the hardest. I will tell you to keep fighting because every victory, no matter how small, matters. I will tell you to keep fighting because you matter.

I won’t lie to you. It will never be an easy journey against anxiety, against depression, against the Voice of Discordia. But you don’t have to let it define you. Your darkness, your struggles don’t have to drape you like a veil, obscuring you from your potential.

The darkness will always be a part of you, but you can force it to be defined by you instead. Cast it behind you like a shadow and use it in your art, in your fiction.

That’s what I do.

And some days I win, some days I lose, but I will never stop fighting.

x PLM

Spacefaring researchers disturb an ancient horror. An enchanted object curses a grieving widow. A haunted reel torments a film student. A murder trial hinges on a chilling testimony.

In Howls From Hell, sixteen emerging horror writers pave the way for the future of the genre. Fans of dark and macabre fiction will savor this exhibition of all-original tales born from one of the fastest-growing horror communities in the world: HOWL Society.

With a foreword by GRADY HENDRIX, this anthology unveils the horror writers of tomorrow with spine-tingling stories from:

P.L. McMillan, J.W. Donley, Shane Hawk, Christopher O'Halloran, Alex Wolfgang, Amanda Nevada DeMel, Lindsey Ragsdale, Solomon Forse, Justin Faull, M. David Clarkson, B.O.B. Jenkin, S.E. Denton, Thea Maeve, Joseph Andre Thomas, Joe Radkins, Quinn Fern

Revisiting the ‘Masters of Horror’

We are living in a golden age of horror on TV. Shows like ‘The Walking Dead’, ‘Supernatural’ and ‘American Horror Story’ have effectively taken the genre mainstream, offering weekly doses of gore and mayhem to the masses. Go back a decade or two however, and genre fans had far fewer options to choose from. Anthology shows, like ‘Tales From the Crypt’, ‘Monsters’ or ‘Tales From the Darkside’ were king during the horror heyday of the 1980s, providing cheesy and cheerful tongue in cheek horror in half hour bites. It wasn’t until 2005 that the TV horror anthology show got serious, and delivered arguably the most consistent, memorable and scary anthology show to date.

The brainchild of horror legend Mick Garris, the show’s title is no hyperbole. ‘Masters of Horror’ brought together the best horror talent Hollywood (and beyond) had to offer. Episodes directed by undisputed genre luminaries such as John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, Dario Argento and Stuart Gordon were like hour long movies brought to your TV screen. High production values, A-List talent and a free reign to do whatever they pleased resulted in some truly unforgettable work from a group of horror legends let off their leash. These are stories that have stayed with me in the fifteen years since many initially aired and, in this series, I’ll be revisiting all twenty-six episodes, one at a time, to shine a light on a fondly remembered and undeniably influential moment in horror TV history.
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Join me as I take a look back at Dreams In The Witch House

The original airing of this episode coincided with my discovery of the films of Stuart Gordon and, at the time, I was gleefully watching and re-watching ‘Re-Animator’ and ‘From Beyond’, relishing the joyful excess and manic energy of them. Oddly, I had yet to discover ‘Dagon’, also starring Ezra Godden who is also the lead in this episode, but the prospect of another H.P. Lovecraft adaptation from my new favourite director was a very exciting prospect and I look back on this episode as one of my favourites of the whole run.

Rewatching it now, I was struck by two things. Firstly, it is a lot more comedic than I remember it being and second, it takes its premise a lot further than I recalled from my initial viewing fifteen years ago. The premise is, after all, a pretty dark one.

Walter (Ezra Godden) is a student studying string theory at none other than Miskatonic University. Hoping to find somewhere quiet and, more importantly, cheap to live so he can do his research he finds a free room in a dilapidated and filthy boarding house which the surly building manager (Jay Brazeau) reluctantly agrees to rent to him. Walters room (and the whole house for that matter) is suitably creepy, with its filthy walls and haunted looking paintings, not to mention the weird layout of the walls which come into play later on.

Also living in the house is Frances (Chelah Horsdal) along with her infant son Danny, who we meet being chased around their room by a rat. Walters other neighbour is elderly recluse Mr Masurewicz (Campbell Lane) who, upon hearing the news of the rat, promptly asks Walter if it had a human face! Not creepy at all…

When Walter goes to sleep later that night we see the rat again as it scurries along his bed and sits on his chest, waking him up. I honestly can’t decide whether the rat with the mans face is hilarious, or the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen committed to film, but I suspect a healthy mix of the two and it is nothing if not memorable. I’d go so far as to say this summarises the vibe of the whole episode. It is incredibly over the top, with liberal amounts of blood, some gratuitous nudity and some uniquely surreal special effects. It is intentionally, blackly funny, as you’d expect from the director of ‘Re-Animator’ but that helps to balance the very grim plot that sneaks up on you while we’re having a great time with the talking rat and borderline slapstick performance from Ezra Godden.

Speaking of the cast, Ezra Godden is fantastic in ‘Dreams In The Witch House’ (as he was in ‘Dagon’). He has a great energy and goes for a pretty exaggerated performance that really suits the material, and which reminded me a lot of Bruce Campbell’s tour-de-force in ‘Evil Dead 2’. I couldn’t help but think what a shame it is that he didn’t go on to become a more well-known horror actor, much like Stuart Gordon’s other go to performers, such as Jeffrey Combs or Barbera Crampton. The other cast of the episode fare ok, but none come close to stealing Godden’s thunder.

By the midway point, Walter has become convinced that something evil is in the house and, thanks to his coincidentally super useful study of string theory, as well as a helpful peek at a certain forbidden book being held at Miskatonic U, he surmises that the being that is hounding him lives in the house with him, but on another plane of existence. Once he voices this realisation, things escalate pretty quickly from there and he is visited in person by the titular witch living in the house in what may or may not be a dream.

It’s at this point things take an unexpectedly bleak turn, as an increasingly agitated Mr Masurewicz confesses the murder of multiple children in the past (at the behest of the witch) in an effort to persuade Walter to leave before the same fate befalls him. Walters growing attachment to Frances and Danny convince him to stay and attempt to defeat the witch using the knowledge he has gained so far. A brave, heroic choice, but not one that works out well for him in the end.

After a bloody showdown with the witch, in which eyes are gouged with the maximum amount of blood possible and there is a symbolic strangling with a crucifix, Walter seemingly prevails. We’re just being set up for a far bleaker ending however as Walter returns to find the witch’s familiar gnawing on Danny’s neck and police are summoned just in time to break in and find Walter sat in a pool of blood, cradling Danny’s body. It is such a jarring scene after what has been a mostly fun and larger than life affair up to this point and it’s played straight and very effectively. I never for a second thought Danny would actually be sacrificed, and was genuinely shocked that they went through with it.

An equally downbeat epilogue tells us that not only did Walter not succeed in stopping the witch, but she has been more prolific that we first thought, as police find over seventy bodies of young children at the house dating back centuries. A last minute appearance from the man/rat who dispatches Walter in a particularly unpleasant and painful looking way wraps up the episode. Evil triumphs, everybody is dead. Damn Stuart, that got pretty dark!

Would I still count ‘Dreams In The Witch House’ as one of my favourite episodes? It’s certainly no ‘From Beyond’, but it is very clearly a Stuart Gordon production and you can’t help but get swept along in the insanity of any of his work, so there is a lot of fun to be had. Ezra Godden is a big reason why this episode works as well as it did, and the human/rat hybrid is not something you are ever going to forget and you can take from that what you will.
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Join me next time as I’ll be looking at episode three of the first season, Tobe Hooper’s ‘Dance of the Dead’. See you then!

Based on a short story written by horror icon Joe R Lansdale and directed by cult director of the ‘Phantasm’ series, ‘Incident on and Off a Mountain Road’ is a strong opening episode and effectively sets out what to expect from ‘Masters of Horror’ in general. You have a big-name horror director, with a story from an equally big-name horror writer, with a star of the horror big screen front and centre (in this case, Angus Scrimm, aka ‘Phantasm’s’ The Tall Man). This episode even features an early horror role for ‘Vacancy’ and ‘The Devil’s Candy’ actor, Ethan Embry. It also boasts fantastic effects work from Greg Nicotero (of ‘The Walking Dead’ and ‘Creepshow’ fame) which was a staple of the show’s two-year run.

The story is quick to get into the action as, within the first few minutes, Ellen (Bree Turner) has crashed into a seemingly abandoned car on a rural stretch of mountain road in the middle of the night. Being a considerate citizen, she gets out of the car to check on the other driver, only to find they have been taken by a horrifying giant of a man who signals his ill intentions straight away by chasing her off the road and into the woods, throwing knives at her as she flees.

If you’re expecting a lot of running and screaming, then those expectations are soon subverted as Ellen wastes no time in fighting back. Quickly setting a series of traps as she flees, she takes the fight to the killer almost straight away. We learn more about Ellen and how she has come about this survivalist knowhow through flashbacks to her time with first date, then boyfriend, then husband, Bruce (Ethan Embry). These flashbacks begin with an initially sweet meeting of the pair, Ellen obviously taken with Bruce’s easy charm and winning smile. Hints are given that he may not be as pleasant as he first appears, but back in the present, Ellen has bigger problems when a trap backfires and she is caught.

This brings us to one of the things I remember most vividly about this series in general, and that is the violence. Memories of watching relatively tame, comic book inspired TV horror in the 80s and 90s perhaps help set the expectation that Masters of Horror would be, if not family friendly, certainly nothing too explicit. This is TV after all. ‘Incident On and Off a Mountain Road’ dispels that notion pretty damn quickly as we get a lingering close up of a victims thigh impaled by a large, painfully sharp looking wooden stake. From there, Ellen and his other captive are taken back to the killer’s lair, which is tastefully decorated with decomposing corpses displayed proudly across the front yard, set up as scarecrows, moonlight shining through the holes where their eyes used to be.

Returning to the flashbacks, we see a slightly more militant, unhinged side to Bruce, as it’s quickly made clear he and Ellen have moved off-grid and Bruce is seemingly obsessed with teaching her how to shoot, handle knives, and do lots of other training in preparation for… whatever pending global catastrophe it is Bruce is worried about. The training has served Ellen well in the present, but you can’t help but think that their relationship isn’t going to end well.

Meanwhile, things have taken a turn for the ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ as the killer has Ellen chained up in what can only be described as an industrial era torture dungeon in desperate need of a good wipe down. Here we meet Buddy (Angus Scrimm), a delightfully unhinged victim of the killer who has inexplicably survived, only to lose his mind. His interactions with Ellen are equal parts unsettling and hilarious and it really helps add to the overall sense of dread and unease, just in time for the episode’s big set-piece.

The eye drilling scene is definitely one I remember from my initial viewing. It stops short of actually showing the drill penetrating the  eyeball, but barely, and it is pretty graphic and very well shot. These hyper violent moments become a bit of a staple of the show, as it becomes clear that there may be a bit of friendly rivalry going on with the Masters of Horror in regards to the gooey red stuff. This was a great opening gambit (albeit one that is easily topped. Where, however, is a story for another article).

If things have gotten grim for Ellen in the present, then it comes as a bit of a shock when things take an equally dark turn in the flashbacks. I can honestly say I blocked the whole penultimate scene with Bruce out, and re-watching now I can see why. Bruce’s actions that signal the final deterioration of their relationship are harrowing to watch and explain how Ellen got to where she is in present day. I won’t spoil the ending, but I enjoyed how it flipped the final girl trope on its head and some of Ellen’s actions in the closing minutes are an uncomfortable mix of understandable, justified, questionable, and downright evil.

I remember ‘Incident On and Off a Mountain Road’ being a strong entry in the series and my recent re-watch did nothing to displace that notion. Bree Turner does great work in this episode, especially impressive when she’s onscreen with such well known horror talent, and this is important because so much of this episode’s success relies on Ellen, who goes through massive shifts in personality and demeanour in the 50-minute runtime. The effects hold up surprisingly well for what is effectively a fifteen-year-old made for TV movie and the story does go in some genuinely surprising directions.

Next time, I’ll be looking at episode two of the first season, Stuart Gordon’s ‘H.P Lovecraft’s Dreams in the Witch-House’. See you then!

Everyone loves a great supernatural war story, well I sure as hell do, and authors Benedict J Jones and Anthony Watson are no strangers to this fantastic sub-genre of horror fiction, with Benedict's brutal Slaughter Beach, and Anthony's thought provoking Witnesses, they have now formed an Entente Cordiale to bring you an explosive historical horror novel of mystics, soldiers and spies.

Today on The Ginger Nuts of Horror Website we bring you an exclusive cover reveal for The Damocles Files: Ragnarok Rising 

The World is at War; as nations clash across continents in a titanic struggle for global domination another parallel conflict is being fought in the shadows by academics, mystics, soldiers and spies. The spoils for which they fight are the worlds occult treasures and the keys that will awaken an ancient sleeping evil.

The Damocles Files: Volume One is a new novel from the pens of authors Benedict J Jones (Slaughter Beach, Hell Ship) and Anthony Watson (Witnesses, The Fallen). Set across the entirety of the Second World War, it tells the epic story of the secret government organisation, Damocles, and its battles to combat the occult machinations of the Axis powers.

The novel is a mixture of military action and supernatural horror and is set in a variety of locations including Iceland, Turkey, Egypt and Denmark. The narrative is presented in fractured form, made up of a series of short stories with an overarching storyline and recurring characters, culminating in a novella-length final story set in numerous locations on the night of the fall of Berlin.

The amazing cover art and design comes courtesy of Peter Frain at 77studios and brilliantly captures the feel of the book and its combination of action and horror whilst referencing the military comics of yesteryear.
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The Damocles Files will be available in both paperback and ebook formats this summer. A novella, Wings in the Darkness, will be released on May 21st. This story is an expansion of one of those featured in the novel and is the perfect introduction to the world of Damocles and the characters who populate it. The novella is available for pre-order now.