Winter is coming.

Maybe. Possibly. Hopefully. One day.

But who says you have to wait until winter to feel that chill up your spine? We have a lineup of exciting authors for you, including our first returning readers! Two of our authors will be on our stage for the second time, introducing you to their newest works!

Coming off of two shows in October for the Lit Crawl events in SF and L.A., we’re incredibly excited to continue our journey and our efforts to build a community of genre fiction authors and fans, connecting readers and writers. We can’t wait to share the night with you.

We proudly present readings by:

Tom Voorhies received a BFA in Illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design. He currently lives in Los Angeles and is the co-author of the Quarantine Novel trilogy. Published by Egmont USA.

Lauren Perez is an LA-based writer, with publications in the Collagist, Bartleby Snopes, and Corvus Magazine. She also once wrote a 40 page paper on cannibals, back before they were cool.

Tim Chizmar lost himself in evil, scary books as a child. One day, a morally righteous librarian refused to check some out. Reading about demons, beheadings, and cannibalism wasn’t the norm in Linesville, PA. Tim’s mother insisted that her son be allowed to read whatever he wanted. The upset librarian said, “You son is going to grow up to be a great horror writer one day – OR A SERIAL KILLER.” As of this writing, Tim has not killed anyone. Yet. But he has written and sold many screenplays in Hollywood. When he’s not burying bodies, Tim is a comedian, actor, writer, director, and producer living in Los Angeles. What drives his success is knowing that somewhere in Pennsylvania, a librarian is praying for his soul.

Justin Robinson Much like film noir, Justin Robinson was born and raised in Los Angeles. He splits his time between editing comic books, writing prose, and wondering what that disgusting smell is. Degrees in Anthropology and History prepared him for unemployment, but an obsession with horror fiction and a laundry list of phobias provided a more attractive option.

Gretchen McNeil is the author of YA horror novels POSSESS, TEN, and 3:59, as well as the new mystery/suspense series Don’t Get Mad, beginning in 2014 with GET EVEN and continuing in 2015 with GET DIRTY, all with Balzer + Bray for HarperCollins. Gretchen also contributed an essay to the Dear Teen Me anthology from Zest Books.

Gretchen is a former coloratura soprano, the voice of Mary on G4’s Code Monkeys and she sings with the LA-based circus troupe Cirque Berzerk. Gretchen blogs with The Enchanted Inkpot and was a founding member of the vlog group the YARebels. She is repped by Ginger Clark of Curtis Brown, Ltd.

Katarina Leigh Waters –

Christopher Allan Poe is an author and touring musician from Los Angeles. He writes paranormal fiction with an emphasis on themes that shed light on social problems for women and children. A member of the International Thriller Writers and MWA, he travels the country speaking about the craft of writing to aspiring authors.

BOOKS WILL BE SOLD AT THE EVENT

Hosted by:
Xach Fromson
Lauren Candia

At California Institute of AbnormalArts
11334 Burbank Blvd
North Hollywood, California

DOORS: 8:00 p.m.
SHOW: 8:30 p.m.
$10 at the door

RSVP on Facebook HERE.

It’s our birthday! Join us in our celebration as we begin our second year of shows with a lineup that will knock your socks off. We’ll also be offering you CAKE. After all, what’s a birthday party without cake? But while cake makes it a party, our authors make it a show. For our seventh show, we’re proud to have a rock star lineup of all female authors for you!

Janet Joyce Holden is a novelist, and a writer of contemporary dark fiction. Her novels include Carousel, and the about-to-be-released sequel The Only Red Is Blood. She also has a number of short stories in various speculative anthologies.
She is originally from the North of England, and has lived in Southern California for the last eighteen years.  Her website is at janetjoyceholden.com.

Edith Cohn was born and raised in North Carolina where she grew up exploring the unique beaches of the Outer Banks. She currently lives in the coyote-filled hills of Los Angeles with her husband and fur-daughter Leia. All of these things provided inspiration for her novel SPIRIT’S KEY which debuts this September from Macmillan. Spirit’s Key is a mystery about a twelve-year-old psychic who works with the ghost of her pet dog to solve a crime on a remote and superstitious island. A companion short story called TUCKITOR’S LAST SWIM can be found at Tor.com.

Jennifer Maimone (pronounced my-moe-knee) was born in Southern California and grew up as the youngest, only daughter, of three kids to some really awesome parents. She really started to get into the paranormal in the 6th grade when a friend showed her a book about unsolved mysteries and the supernatural. From that moment on, she was hooked on learning whatever she could about the supernatural.

Jennifer graduated from college in 2009, eventually becoming a special effects makeup artist for independent films.  She started her own freelancing business as UnmaskedFX, and has been approached by the FaceOff TV program to be part of their show.   

Jennifer started writing Demon’s Prize in 2012.  It isn’t the first thing she has ever written, but it is the first one to be published.   The other stories she has written in the past were based on ghosts, vampires and creatures whose faces are actually masks.  She hopes to one day finish those other works and to see them printed alongside the rest of the Alpha Wolf Series.

Caitlin Doughty is a licensed mortician in Los Angeles. She’s the host and creator of the delightful “Ask a Mortician” web series. She founded the collective The Order of the Good Death and co-founded the public events series Death Salon. The Jezebel contributor’s been featured on National Public Radio, BBC, Forbes, The Huffington Post, Vice, LA Times, Bust Magazine, and Salon. She was born and raised in Hawai’i. This is her first book. Learn more about Caitlin Doughty at www.orderofthegooddeath.com.

Maria Alexander writes pretty much every damned thing and gets paid to do it. She’s a produced screenwriter and playwright, published games writer, virtual world designer, award-winning copywriter, interactive theatre designer, prolific fiction writer, snarkiologist and poet. Her stories have appeared in publications such as Chiaroscuro Magazine, Gothic.net and Paradox, as well as numerous acclaimed anthologies alongside living legends such as David Morrell and Heather Graham.

 When she’s not wielding a katana at her local shinkendodojo, she’s being outrageously spooky and writing Doctor Who filk. She lives in Los Angeles with two ungrateful cats and a purse called Trog.  For more information, visit her website at www.mariaalexander.net.

Nancy Holder is the New York Times bestselling author of eighty novels and over a hundred short stories. She has received five Bram Stoker Awards for her supernatural fiction and a Scribe Award for Saving Grace: Tough Love, based on the TV show. She is know for writing short fiction, novels and episode guides for such properties as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Teen Wolf, Hellboy, Beauty and the Beast, Sherlock Holmes, Kolchak the Night Stalker, is the co-editor of the young adult science fiction anthology Futuredaze²: Reprise, featuring stories by Neil Gaiman, Cassandra Clare, and Scott Westerfeld. She writes and edits comic books and pulp fiction for Moonstone Books, and teaches in the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing Program for the University of Southern Maine. She lives in San Diego. @nancyholder, https://www.facebook.com/nancyholderfans, and www.nancyholder.com

Books will be sold at the event.

September 20th at the California Institute of AbnormalArts.

Doors at 8:00. Show at 8:30 p.m.

$10.

RSVP on Facebook here.

Summer heat or no, we’re still going to send chills up your spine with our all-new lineup of authors! Our sixth show brings more award-winning fiction, and one of the hosts joins the lineup.

Scott Tarbet writes prolifically in several genres, sings opera, was married in full Elizabethan regalia, loves Steampunk waltzes, and slow-smokes thousands of pounds of Texas-style barbeque. An avid skier, hiker, golfer, and tandem kayaker, he makes his home in the mountains of Utah.

Tarbet’s first published short story, “Tombstone,” a ghostly tale set in the deep woods of East Texas, appeared in Shades and Shadows: a Paranormal Anthology, published by Xchyler Publishing (“The X”) in October of 2013.

His premiere full-length novel, A Midsummer Night’s Steampunk, an expansion of the Shakespeare classic, made its debut in December of that year to excellent reviews. A companion short story, Ganesh, was published in June 2014 in the critically acclaimed best seller, Terra Mechanica: A Steampunk Anthology,

Tarbet’s next endeavors, Dragon Moon, a speculative fiction thriller, and Rise of the Stripling Warriors, a work of Young Adult alternative history, will be published by The X in 2015. His short story Nautilus Redux is also pending publication.

Mere Smith is a recovering Southerner, as well as a longtime TV writer (“Angel”, “Rome”), author, blogger, and provocateur – best known for her unmistakable voice: profane, darkly humorous, and unexpectedly touching. You can find her books on Amazon, her blog at evilgalproductions.com, and you can follow her on Twitter at @EvilGalProds.

Catherine Cruzan grew up in Bloomington, MN, but Southern California has been her home since 1984. After graduating from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, with a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering, she has worked as a structures engineer for a number of aerospace companies in the Los Angeles area.

Catherine’s interest in books began as a child with a voracious appetite for reading. She had a number of poems and short stories published in the school newspaper. As an adult, she writes character driven Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction. Her writing education includes Long Beach City College and the UCLA Writers Program. She is an active member of the Greater Los Angeles Writers Society and Orange County Writers.

Some of her other interests include International Travel, Steampunk, Victorian London, her Yamaha FZ6R motorcycle, Archery and Tribal Style bellydance.

For info on her new novel, ELFKIND, published in April of 2014, visit her website at www.CatherineCruzan.com. For information on her many ongoing projects, visit her blog at http://CatherineCruzan.wordpress.com.

Jeff Eyres is a writer of comedy, horror and all things dastardly and inappropriate.  He has worked as a pundit / commentator on CNN Headline News and his written work has appeared on Saturday Night Live, HBO’s New Performer Series and on stages across the country including The Joseph Papp Public Theatre, the Samuel Beckett Theatre and Surf Reality’s House of Urban Savages where he was playwright in residence.  He is a graduate of Second City and the UC Riverside Palm Desert Graduate Center.  He lives in Los Angeles where he works as a comedy/horror screenwriter and is finishing his book “The Stoned Room: How Drugs, the Occult and Satanic Music Made Me a Better Person.”

Eric J. Guignard writes dark and speculative fiction from the outskirts of Los Angeles. His stories and articles may be found in the disreputable publications reserved for back alley bazaars. As an editor, Eric’s published the anthologies, Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations and After Death…, the latter of which won the 2013 Bram Stoker Award®. Read his novella, Baggage of Eternal Night (a finalist for the 2014 International Thriller Writers Award), and watch for many more forthcoming books, including Chestnut ’Bo (TBP 2015). Visit Eric at: www.ericjguignard.com, his blog: ericjguignard.blogspot.com, or Twitter: @ericjguignard.

Xach Fromson is one of the creators and hosts for Shades & Shadows. He is a native Angeleno, with a lifelong passion for horror, science fiction, and dark fantasy. He has appeared onstage at Dirty Laundry Lit, and manages the Notable Los Angeles blog for The Rumpus. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from UC Riverside Palm Desert.

Doors open at 8:00 p.m. Show starts at 8:30.

$10 at the door.

RSVP on Facebook here.

Beware the Ides of March!

Well, perhaps not “beware,” but look forward to the day. Saturday, March 15th, we’re bringing you an all-new lineup of authors. And we want you to join us! Yes, et tu.

Zack Morrissette has been called a hack, not a real artist and a lousy dancer. However, his first novel, The Other Side of the Fence, co-written by Steve Nixon, won Indie Book of the Day on indiebookoftheday.com and has 5 stars on Amazon. Zack’s been interviewed by geeksmash.com and thegeekgirlproject.com. He also draws a daily comic of exquisite nerd humor on Twitter and Instagram @zackmorrissette. He’s currently working on his next novel and might have been in the big dance sequence in the second Matrix movie. His work can also be found at anthologypress.com.

S.P. Hendrick is the author of two acclaimed fantasy series, The Glastonbury Chronicles and Tales Of The Dearg-Sidhe. A third companion, The Glastonbury Archives in the works, along with a deck of Tarot cards based on Celtic mythology, British folklore, and the worlds and characters she has created. Ms Hendrick holds a degree in English from the former San Fernando Valley State College (now California State University, Northridge). During the mid 1960s or as she puts it “in a past life” under the nom de plume Jennifer Starkey she did publicity for several rock bands and was a columnist for a national magazine. Her first novel under that name, Sunset Offramp was published during that era. She lives in the San Fernando Valley with her husband Jay T. Mayer, entirely too many cats, and thirty-two overflowing bookcases.

Nina Berry is a writer, redhead, and bodysurfer. She writes all kinds of things, including the paranormal OTHERKIN trilogy from KTeen and the historical thriller PAGAN JONES series from Harlequin Teen, debuting in 2015. She lives and works in Hollywood, pretending to lead the glamorous life. www.ninaberry.com

Chiwan Choi is a partner at Writ Large Press. He is also the author of Abductions and The Flood.

Cherisse Yanit-Nadal is a 2013 recipient of PAWA, Inc.’s Manuel G. Flores Writing Prize, and a 2013 VONA/Voices Fellow. She earned her baccalaureate degrees in English and music and her master’s degree in Rhetoric and Composition. She is currently in attendance at The University of California at Riverside – Palm Desert for an MFA in Creative Writing. She writes as the West Coast Correspondent for DC Asian Pacific American Film, Inc. Her fiction has appeared in the Berkeley-based Oatmeal Magazine.

Doors open at 8:00 p.m. Show starts at 8:30.

$10 at the door.

RSVP on Facebook here.

We’re coming back with more dark fiction to send shivers up your spines in the cold harshness of a January night. This show marks our transition to Saturday nights as well, so plan accordingly.

Martin Pousson was born and raised in the bayou land of Acadiana. His novel, No Place, Louisiana, was published by Riverhead Books and was a finalist for the John Gardner Fiction Book Award. His collection of poetry, Sugar, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. His short stories were awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in 2014. The stories have been published in numerous journals and reviews including Epoch, StoryQuarterly, Parnassus, The Rattling Wall, Cimarron Review, and New Orleans Review. He is working now on a story collection called Black Sheep Boy.

Benzon Ray Barbin is a writer and photographer from San Diego, California. Ever since he was a kid, he has loved science-fiction and fantasy. Aside from the staples of Star Wars and Star Trek, Japanese anime like Macross and the video game series Final Fantasy inspired him to write. Benn has an interest in intelligent, action-oriented stories. He is currently trying to get his novel, Reflections of Destiny published. When he’s not teaching English online or photographing, he enjoys listening to indie/electronic music on vinyl with his girlfriend Mary and drinking coffee from a French press. He has a love for football and will be disappointed when the season is over. He holds a B.A. in English from National University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from UC Riverside. Find him on Twitter (@seiken1), and if you’re interested, samples of his photography can be viewed at: http://500px.com/seiken1

Lilliam Rivera is a 2013 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow and a 2013 Enchanted Land Fellow at A Room of Her Own Foundation. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bellevue Literary Review, The Rumpus.net, Los Angeles Review of Books, Writers Tribe Review Spring 2013, Antioch University’s Lunch Ticket, Sucker Literary, and Latina. She’s currently working on a contemporary young adult novel titled My Shelf Life, an untitled speculative fiction novel, and various short stories. Lilliam can be found at www.lilliamrivera.com.

Jace Daniel is a writer residing in Los Angeles. His work has been published in the New York Times Bestsellers ‘Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure’ (2008), ‘Six-Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak: by Writers Famous and Obscure’ (2009), and ‘The Moment: Wild, Poignant, Life-Changing Stories from 125 Writers and Artists Famous & Obscure’ (2012).

Jace Daniel’s recent novel Under Angels, a supernatural thriller set in legendary tunnels beneath Los Angeles, is now available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle versions. He’s also written its award-winning adapted screenplay, and is currently developing the tale into a graphic novel. http://underangels.com

For more about Jace Daniel, please visit http://jaced.com

Martin Lastrapes is a novelist and his debut novel, Inside the Outside, won the Grand Prize at the 2012 Paris Book Festival. He grew up in the Inland Empire, studied at Cal State San Bernardino, has a Bachelor’s Degree in English and a Master’s Degree in Composition. He loves good pizza, watches his favorite movies over and over again, learned many a lesson from professional wrestling, doesn’t think there is such a thing as overpaid, wonders if he’ll ever be famous enough to be on “Dancing With the Stars,” is scared of Vladimir Putin, wonders if it’s too late to learn how to play the guitar, gets depressed when he hears the theme song from “M*A*S*H,” wishes he knew more history, wonders why Teen Wolf never made it to the NBA, and wants Morgan Freeman to narrate his life. You can find him online at Inside Martin (Official Website), Amazon Author Page, Twitter, Facebook

RSVP on Facebook here.