Shades & Shadows

We’re back, baby!

After a series of unfortunate events left us–and you–without a November show, we are coming out swinging in the new year! We are also going to be haunting a new venue, the LYRIC HYPERION THEATRE + CAFE. Directions and other info can be found on our Location page.

We’re also introducing another new feature: Online ticket sales! You can secure your seat ahead of time by clicking HERE and buying your ticket.

To ring in the new year, 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.

Jenna Pitman‘s first work was published in a monthly zine local to Seattle where it ran for nearly a year, garnering a fair amount of popularity. Since then she has had a number of stories and articles published in a variety of locations including the anthology Rock N Roll is Dead, Strange Aeons Magazine, and the Lovecraft eZine.  Before moving to Los Angeles, CA in 2012 she was a well known member of the Pacific Northwest convention community. Currently she is a happy resident of sunny Southern California where she hikes, dances, and practices yoga daily in addition to working as a full time writer.

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 –

BOOKS WILL BE SOLD AT THE EVENT

Hosted by:
Xach Fromson
Lauren Candia

DOORS: 7:30 p.m. sharp.

SHOW: 8:00 p.m. sharp.

Tickets are $10 online or at the door.

RSVP on Facebook HERE.

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.