Secrets from The Chloe Files: Episode 23

Days have grown chilled here on the Ghost Coast of New Salem, Maine. But it's a chill of evil and a portent of impending tragedy.

I know how it feels to lose a loved one to the forces of darkness. To lose an entire family. I know what suffering is. Some new to this cursed town do not. They've not experienced Hell up close and personal. But that will soon change.

Celia Matthews...a young woman, just married. She sees a bright future. I wish I could save her from the disillusionment that will shortly follow.

But I can't save everyone.

When her husband fails to return home from work tonight she'll get a call. Detective Sturdevant will break the terrible news to her. Her husband was killed in an "accident" on 22.

He will not tell her the body has somehow disappeared from the morgue. What's left of it, I should say.

She will cry, as we all do when our own are taken from us much too soon. But tears...are a step away from screams.

Because when she finally returns to her bedroom, distraught and certain she will not sleep...He will be waiting for her. Her mourning will die as quickly as her gasp. The dead seldom stay buried in News Salem.

And seldom return the same...
--Chloe Everson

Welcome to New Salem...Where Hell comes home...
The Chloe Files by Howard Hopkins
For a limited time -- Now just $2.99 on Kindle & Nook
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004WLCRYK

Kindle Reigns for Christmas and the Western Rides Again in 2012

The good news for those of us authors and readers who work in the electronic book arena is that Kindle reigned supreme with holiday sales among ereaders, and Nook also did quite well. In the fading hours of Christmas my own Nightmare Club paranormal series for children saw a huge increase in sales that has continued over the proceeding week, as well as a decent increase in my paranormal horror series The Chloe Files and my newly inaugurated western line that began with Blood Creek and Johnny Dead Kindle releases.

The trend is certainly encouraging, and the very fact people are turning back to the escapism of reading in these troubled economic and personal times is hopeful. Even more so is the trend toward young readers picking up books again, something that had been becoming a bit of a lost art over the past decade with the advent of video games.

With the recent announcement that the publisher of Black Horse Westerns, for whom I have penned 34 novels, opened their own ebook line, of which the first in my "Pass" series, Vengeance Pass, will see e-print in 2012, the year looks to be a new renaissance for the Western.

Welcome to New Salem...The Dead are waiting...
Order your copy of the paranormal horror series The Chloe Files on Kindle today
Limited time price $2.99
THE CHLOE FILES #1: Ashes to Ashes by Howard Hopkins
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004WLCRYK
(Also in Nook and paperback)
Will you believe?

Doc Savage Returns in Horror in Gold

Doc Savage returns in a brand new adventure written by Doc Savage historian Will Murray (writing under the cherished house name of Kenneth Robeson) in Horror in Gold. With a new gorgeous cover painting by Joe DeVito, this marks Doc's second all new "wild" adventure, with the promise of more to come.

The book is available from Amazon and through retail outlets in paperback, and also in ebook versions, including Kindle and Nook. Doc Savage and adventures fans alike won't want to miss the latest exploit in the adventures of Doc Savage.

From the back cover:

It began with an uncanny encounter on busy Seventh Avenue. Two men pass each other in the street, walking along calmly one minute—struck down the next by a horrific fate. All over Manhattan, soundless detonations cut down prince and pauper alike. No one is safe. Great buildings are reduced to ruin. Banks are demolished. The authorities stand helpless. Only one man, Doc Savage—scientist, adventurer and superman—can penetrate the eerie enigma that threatens to bring the mightiest city on earth to its knees. But when The Alchemist decrees that the Man of Bronze must surrender unconditionally to save New York, will Doc be snuffed out next? From the besieged canyons of New York to the rugged coast of Alaska, Doc Savage and his men race to resolve the riddle that brings grisly doom to ordinary citizens—and threatens the economic recovery of a Depression-besieged world.

On Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Doc-Savage-Horror-Kenneth-Robeson/dp/1618270230/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1326047493&sr=1-2

New Interview up Today

I'm being interviewed over on Ashley Barron's blog today. Ashley was kind enough to let me take up much space discussing writing in various genres, the business of writing and my series, as well as advice for those just starting out. I hope you'll take a look.

You can find the interview here:

http://blog.thepriyas.com/2012/01/08/author-interview-howard-hopkins.aspx

Secrets from The Chloe Files: Episode 22

Clouds hide the winter sun on the Ghost Coast of News Salem, Maine. They are the color of melancholy. I sometimes think there are clouds in my soul.

I often wonder how my sister could have vanished so entirely from the face of the earth thirty years ago. I should have found some trace of her by now. Maybe that means I'm fooling myself by holding onto hope she may still be alive. Maybe the ghost I've been seeing really is her.

Still, too many things don't add up. What few clues I've discovered point to something else, something darker. Something that tells me I can't let go of my thin hope of finding out the truth...and helping her find peace if need be. Helping myself find peace.

But I'm not looking for closure...I'm looking for answers...And something tells me I'm getting close...
--Chloe Everson

Welcome to New Salem...The Dead are waiting...
Order your copy of the paranormal horror series The Chloe Files on Kindle today!
Limited time price $2.99
THE CHLOE FILES #1: Ashes to Ashes by Howard Hopkins
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004WLCRYK
(Also in Nook and paperback)
Will you believe?

Johnny Dead Comes to Ebook

From out of the past come the roaring guns of a man long thought dead. Is he ghost or man?

Johnny Dead by Howard Hopkins is now available in Kindle and Nook. Formerly a Black Horse Western published under the penname Lance Howard, this new edition carries a brand new cover.

From the blurb:

Two years ago, ambushed by masked killers, brought down by blazing guns, manhunter John Deletéreo, his wife and unborn child perished under the hot New Mexico sun, the only testament to their demise two simple graves on a hillside.

So when he rides into the hellhole known as Payton's Bluff, seeking answers to a mystery plaguing him since birth, townsfolk think they've seen a ghost. Legend calls him Johnny Dead, a man with a skull-carved Peacemaker who delivers grim justice, then vanishes into the Western night.

Then on a darkened trail, he encounters beautiful but bitter Kylie Barton, a young woman bent on revenge against the powerful Galendez family. Having sought the help of a pathological killer to avenge a brutal attack, she sets in motion events that threaten to end the career of a man many claim isn't even alive...

Has a gunfighter returned from the dead?
Johnny Dead by Howard Hopkins
$2.99 on Kindle and Nook
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006TI54NA

Living in a Virtual World

Writers are always thinking. And not always in normal directions. But what fun is normalcy, anyway?

Since I have just finished drafting a major YA paranormal series project (which will consist of three lead novellas followed by an explosive and large, 110,000 words plus, novel launch) I noticed a strange--I guess the only word I can find for it is "break" -- detachment after typing -30- (something writers used to use to mean "The End" from the old telegraph days) and leaving my "girls" behind, at least for a few days before plunging into subsequent drafts and rewrites, edits and all that good stuff.

I was "living" in my head with these characters so intensely for so long I found myself arguing with them, angry with them, happy for them, annoyed at things they said or did, and sad when certain others didn't make it out of the story alive. They became an extended family of sorts.

And doing this every single day for a month, giving myself over to their story, meant feeding it all into the virtual world of the computer, in essence uploading the scenes flashing through my brain into electronic chatter.

We all live more and more in a virtual world. We work on computers, play on computers, date on computers, read on Kindles, Nooks and computers, even discover imagined worlds--in my case horror and paranormal worlds, or the world of the Old West--on computers.

So where does it stop? Is the line of demarcation growing ever thinner? Are the characters peopling our virtual worlds becoming more and more real? Are they part of us, or are we slowly becoming part of them? Does the old phrase "authors give their chracters life" take on a whole new meaning?

Will someday who we are be simply another file executed on our computer, where we can make life function as we want it to? Creating billions of our own little realities, where only what we desire lives?

It's difficult for writers to separate from their creations. Add that to a computer where we can immerse ourselves into the worlds we create...

I guess, then, my only question would be, what happens when the power goes out?

Will you believe?
Order your copy of the paranormal horror series The Chloe Files on Kindle today!
Limited time price $2.99
Welcome to New Salem...The Dead are waiting...
THE CHLOE FILES #1: Ashes to Ashes by Howard Hopkins
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004WLCRYK
(Also in Nook and paperback)

Sliver of Darkness Now on Sale

Ring in the New year with a paranormal bang! I'm pleased to announce that for a limited time The Chloe Files #2: Sliver of Darkness is on sale on Kindle exclusively for $2.99. That's a dollar off the publication price for a complete Chloe Everson novel plus a bonus short story that sends our paranormal investigator back in a ghostly 1920s flapper party.

From the blurb:

"Engaging and fresh...an imaginative ghost story, filled with mystery and chilling scenes."
--Margaret Marr, Nights & Weekends Reviews"

The veil between the living and the dead has been pierced. The war between Darkness and Light has begun. All I can say is...bring it on!"
--Chloe Everson

Who knows what crimes cripple the minds of the guilty? Brant Lamont's acting career was on a downhill slide, then one night after a performance he vanished. Was he dead? Alive? Forty years later still no one knows what became of the mercurial actor...or the rising starlet who'd become his mistress. It was as if they'd both walked off the face of the earth. Until Chloe Everson's world flashes to a bizarre black and white and the specter of one of Lamont's characters, the Sliver of Darkness, visits her in the dead of the night.

But ghostly visitations aren't Chloe's only dilemma, because the New Salem Ripper is stalking the waterfront, butchering prostitutes and young strippers, moving ever closer to an encounter with the object of his obsession... Chloe herself...

Includes the bonus Chloe story: The Trouble with Flappers

Waking up naked in black and white with a ghost in your bedroom? Awkward!
The Chloe Files #2: Sliver of Darkness
$2.99 on Kindle New Year's Celebration special price.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0057U3PH8