The Ghoulish Times | 02/25/23
The Ghoulish Times | 02/25/23
Newspaper Interview - Bram Stoker Awards - Ghoulish Dating Game
Hello and welcome to the latest issue of The Ghoulish Times. My name is Max Booth III and this is my spooky newsletter. If you’re new here, allow me to catch you up to speed: I am the voice screaming for help in the wall between your bedroom and bathroom. You will never find me, and soon my lungs will give out for good. What will happen then? I don’t think either of us wish to find out.
Now that we have that cleared up, let’s move forward with the latest ghoulish news of the week.
San Antonio small press Ghoulish Books opening horror bookshop after a successful Kickstarter
That’s the headline for an interview published earlier this week in our local alternative newspaper, The San Antonio Current. The interview, of course, is with me and focuses on our recent Kickstarter campaign, as well as our upcoming bookstore and new horror magazine Ghoulish Tales. You can read the whole thing HERE.
I prefer the physical newspaper layout edition, personally. Look how cool this thing looks…
Just a quick correction: “Goosebumps for perverts” is not the tagline for our young adult magazine haha. It’s more of an unofficial tagline for the entire imprint of Ghoulish Books—along with “live spooky. die spooky.” Also, I cannot believe I ended this interview by saying “I’m real confident that it’s not gonna be a disaster.” Talk about famous last words. I have doomed myself before we even moved into the building.
Over on the Current’s Instagram page, enthusiasm for the bookstore kind of exploded. As of right now, there are over 100 comments on their post about our interview, which has resulted in our IG account attracting over 300 new followers. Of course I’ve gone through every comment. How could I not? Here’s my favorite one, which definitely threatened this undead ghoul to tear up a little:
Just a reminder for those who missed previous updates about the bookstore: we don’t officially move into the building until the beginning of March—so, hopefully sometime next week. After that, we will need to figure out what exactly needs to be done before we can open for business.
The previous tenant was also a bookstore (although, a more general one, not horror-centric), and they were relatively new, so I don’t anticipate any repairs needing to be done. Plus, we purchased their bookshelves and asked them to leave them mounted to the walls, so that will help the move-in process run a little smoothly.
I know we will need to still schedule the city to come out and inspect everything, plus we need to start acquiring more stock…hopefully, maybe, we can open by the end of March. Really not sure yet. More updates as we have them!
Plus, at the end of March I will be driving to Virginia for Scares that Cares Authorcon II, since I have a Ghoulish Books vendor table there. Plus, come mid-April, we have the Ghoulish Book Festival in San Antonio, which is of course our big fest that Lori and I run together. If you haven’t bought a badge yet and you plan on attending, here ya go. Badge purchases really help us fund this thing! Thank you.
Ideally, I’m hoping we’re at least open before GBF. Once we figure everything out, we will definitely have a grand opening for the store. Hopefully with a food truck and live readings and everything. That’s the plan, anyway…
Kickstarter Backer Surveys
I just wanted to post an update here in case the initial survey notification went to spam. We have officially sent out backer surveys to everybody who supported our Kickstarter campaign last month. As of this morning, 320 have already responded, meaning we only need 34 more responses before we are 100%. If you have not responded, please login to Kickstarter and click on the survey. These surveys will help us tremendously with smoothly getting your books to you. Let me know if you have any questions.
Bram Stoker Awards
Laurel Hightower’s Below, which we published last year through Ghoulish Books, has officially been nominated for a Bram Stoker Award in “Superior Achievement in Long Fiction.” Here’s what Laurel had to say about it on Twitter:
If you’d like to read Below, you can purchased a copy directly through our webstore.
Betty Rocksteady Interview
Over on the TBM Horror Podcast, Betty Rocksteady was interviewed about all things spooky. Watch it here:
The Ghoulish Show - February 2023
THE GHOULISH SHOW is a live variety comedy show celebrating everything spooky, hosted by me and featuring numerous guest performers. It occurs in Austin, TX at Radio Coffee & Beer on the last Tuesday of the month, every month—assuming the weather behaves (it’s an outside event).
This month’s episode (Tuesday, February 28th 8pm CST) will feature a GHOULISH DATING GAME and each performer will read spooky LOVE POEMS. Performers such as...
Susan Snyder
Andrew Hilbert
John Baltisberger
Ryan C. Bradley
Michael Louis Dixon
Felix Morgan
Come on down and enjoy the spooky fun! Merch table opens at 6pm and lasts until after the show ends.
Facebook event page can be found HERE.
Okay, that’s it for this week. You can support us on Patreon, browse the books in our webstore, and follow us on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter (PMMP | Ghoulish Tales | Ghoulish podcast | Ghoulish Books | personal).
Or just click on our LINKTREE for all relevant links.
Reserve your ticket for Ghoulish Book Fest 2023.
You can also join us on the Ghoulish Discord.
See you next time, ghouls.