Narration provided by Wondervox.

By Mark McNease

I’ve written in several genres, formats and mediums over the years. Each has its own requirements, expectations and parameters: short stories, novellas (generally under 40,000 words), novels, poetry, screenplays, television scripts, and stage plays. For now let’s focus on some working definitions for genre fiction, nonfiction, and biography/autobiography.

For that past 15 years I’ve written primarily mysteries, thrillers, and some horror/supernatural fiction. I’ve also written countless blog posts, columns and articles, but that’s for another day and would require more words than most people want to read on this, so let’s narrow it down. Note that a lot of these apply to the genres in any form: movies, stories, TV shows, books  and more.

Horror

Horror is designed to evoke fear, dread, and a sense of the uncanny. Horror as a literary and cinematic form explores the boundaries between safety and danger, reality and the supernatural. There are also degrees of horror, from the everyday to the gruesome, from blood splatter to something simple but startling. We can be horrified without being repulsed.

I’ve attended Act 2 Books‘ Flemington Book Festival twice in the past few years, and this year they’re offering something special: Scary Story Fest, for authors in the horror and supernatural genres. I’ve written a few books myself under the name M.A. McNease (it’s my initials, not really a pen name), and I’ll have a booth among the tombstones. I’ll also be able to promote my writing workshops, as well as the audiobooks for A House in the Woods, narrated by Daniela Acetelli, and A House in the Woods 2: The Devil’s Due, narrated by my own Wondervox

It’s been a nice boost, too, for finishing Spellbound, the second book in my duology that began with I, Warlock: The Warlock Wars Book 1.

It’s my favorte time of year, in one of my favorite locations, offering books in my favorite genres (after mysteries, of course). Hope to see you there!

Narration provided by Wondervox

By Mark McNease

People sometimes ask in the workshops I conduct: What’s the difference between a journal and a diary? Autobiographical writing (or journaling) focuses on themes that often require revisiting our lives, and writing about specific events, people, experiences and memories. I refer to it as a process of re-discovery. When we journal, it’s not uncommon to find ourselves remembering things we’d forgotten, or not thought about in a long time. It’s  not so much that we’re discovering things about ourselves and our lives, as that we are coming upon them again. You may realize that one of the effects these memories have is to reawaken us to who we already are: those parts of our character and personality that began long ago and remain foundational to our identities.

A diary, in contrast, may be described as a daily, or near-daily, recording of events, people, and experiences. It can be kept in a spiral notebook, or typed into a document, or written down in a formal diary designed for that purpose.

Here are some broader thoughts about the differences between the two:

Journal versus Diary 

A journal and a diary are both personal writing tools that people use to record their thoughts, experiences, and reflections. However, they differ in purpose, style and content.

My book ‘Open Secrets: A Maggie Dahl Mystery‘ was chosen by a local book club several months ago. This past Thursday I was invited to their monthly get-together at a restaurant in Glen Gardner, NJ, where they meet for a meal and discussion. I was treated to dinner and talked about the book and about writing. What a treat!

Another summer, another sale at Smashwords. Talk about freedom! You can download all (that’s ALL) my eBooks for free through the month of July.

You can also find dozens and dozens of other free and discounted books by your favorite authors, and ones who’ll soon join your list of must-reads.

FIND MY BOOKS HERE (be sure to click on each one for the freebie) or just go to Smashwords summer sale page and start browsing. Hot reading fun in the summer time!

Welcome to the episodic audio edition of A House in the Woods 2: The Devil’s Due. Fasten your headphones and enjoy one new chapter each week. This is not an audiobook in the conventional sense, and no audiobook narrators living or dead were harmed in its production. This is a way for me to share some of my writing in an audio format. So settle back and enjoy the screams. You can  find all the episodes here.

About A House in the Woods 2

A House in the Woods 2: The Devil’s Due picks up where A House in the Woods left off. Laurel Calloway is still in the mysterious town of Strickland, New Jersey, where nothing is as it appears to be. Two years have gone by, and they’ve been good to the Calloways. Laurel and her husband Jeremy have a new house, and a new family with baby Isabel about to celebrate her first birthday. Everything seems perfect, until Laurel begins to have dreams. Bad dreams. Something tells her these dreams could really be memories. But of what? Of whom, and of when?

Did she really run over a woman in the road at night? Had they once had a dog? Why are these things trying so hard to surface, swimming slowly up from her subconscious? The more she begins to tell the people around her about these dreams, the more convinced she is that they’re part of it, and that these nightmares aren’t really dreams at all. Page after page, the pace escalates as Laurel begins to learn the truth and plot her escape. But will she succeed? The Devil is in the details.

PROLOGUE AND CHAPTER 1

Along with a constant downpour, Saturday brought a successful book reading and speaker event in Lambertville, NJ, at my home-away-from home: Soupcon at Bucks on Bridge Coffee Shop.

I helped Tara Benedetti’s mother, Lynda Young, publish her daughter’s book of poetry and arranged for a reading and speaker on schizophrenia. Shea Dibley, VP of  NAMI Hunterdon, spoke to us after the readings about his own experience living with schizophrenia. It was a true success, and an opportunity be of service.

Some photos