Category Archives: News
It’s finally hit me: I miss record stores!
Recently, a friend and I were going to spend some time in the car driving to an underwater archaeology lecture at a nearby college. We had just seen Bohemian Rhapsody and were dying to listen to Queen.
The only Queen music we both owned was still on cassette, believe it or not.
“So…how are we going to listen to it in the car?” she asked.
I went through a whole thing about streaming on the phone and hooking up the Bluetooth and all of this other complicated stuff. And then it occurred to me, for the first time in probably years, that I could just go to the mall on my lunch break and get a CD!
Then I thought…wait, who still sells CDs around here? FYE is gone, Best Buy’s selection is nil if it even still exists at all, and there are no more specialty stores like Record Town (remember THAT?) or The Wall. I called my housemate Charles, but he really didn’t have too many ideas either—except for Gerosa Records. That was probably worth a shot, but it was too far for me to go on a lunch break.
In the past few years, I haven’t really missed being able to just run out and buy a CD; I’ve gotten incredibly used to Amazon Prime and having them arrive in a day or so or downloading an MP3. I like the new way of doing things: yes, there’s instant gratification, and yes, I can simply purchase only one song and not all of them (there were singles and Cassingles, but most of those were for the popular tunes only. You wanted something that wasn’t released as a single? You had to buy the entire album). But it’s not the same as getting into your car, unwrapping that cellophane and inhaling that plastic and new disc smell, slipping it into your stereo and mmmm.
What did I end up doing? I dashed home after work, downloaded some MP3’s, and burned them to a CD. But I gotta tell ya—nope, just nope. Nothing would have been more magical than to go to a record store at lunch and pick up exactly what I wanted.
Bummer.
“Splendid Chyna” on Black Friday sale for a whole week!
Nothing says Black Friday like a ghost story, right? If you missed the opportunity to read my novella “Splendid Chyna” – perfect if you like Asian Horror (i.e., The Ring, for those of you not familiar) and abandoned theme parks – the Kindle version is on sale for 99 cents through Thursday, November 29!
“Splendid Chyna” appears in the collection Three on a Match with two other novellas, “All’s Well that Ends” by G. Elmer Munson, and “Thicker than Water” by Melissa Crandall. These shorts are just the thing to be reading in between season busy-ness.
You can get it here, and happy holiday shopping!
Happy Thanksgiving!
I’m grateful fo all of my readers! Thank you so much for supporting me.
From our house to yours … wishing you a happy day spent with loved ones.
~ Krissi, Charles, Nathan and the cats, Poe & Mikey
Books and Boos Press signs THE SHADOWS BEHIND!
I’m over the moon to announce that I’ve signed the contract for Books and Boos Press to publish my collection of short stories, The Shadows Behind. The original announcement is on the Books and Boos Press website here.
Release date is set right now for April 30, 2019, and there will be some signings, along with a special one up at Howe Caverns in Howe’s Cave, New York, next summer!
Although the Table of Contents is still being finalized, this collection will contain a few long out-of-print favorites, among them “Deconstructing Fireflies,” (co-written with Nathan Schoonover), “Candle Garden,” and “How I Learned to Stop Complaining and Love the Bunny,” which was originally published in Citizen Culture back in 2005.
It will also include some pieces which are only available in single anthologies, and several brand new stories as well as a preview for an upcoming novella.
I’ll keep you posted!
“All Dolled Up” now available in JITTER!
Just in time for Halloween, my short story “All Dolled Up” is now available in Jitter!
So, if you like creepy dolls…even though this one has a Christmas theme…be sure to head on over here to pick up a copy!
If you prefer to read electronically and would like even more content bang for your buck, you can subscribe to Jitter for $20/year. That will give you access to not just Issue #7, but all of them. You can subscribe here.
If you’re curious, here’s the splash page for “All Dolled Up”: https://jitterpress.com/all-dolled-up-by-kristi-petersen-schoonover/
…Oh no! Scary panties…
Halloween may be all about showing off your best costume…but that doesn’t mean the parts of you people don’t see shouldn’t scare up some fun, too!
I was surfing around on Hot Topic and came across this irresistible The Shining hipster panty set: https://www.hottopic.com/product/the-shining-hipster-panty-set/11428991.html Read the rest of this entry
A Watery Halloween Treat!
These are plants at the bottom of a lake, but look closely at the one on the right — it looks like a skeleton clinging to something.
I got a very special treat recently—I95 Rock’s Ethan Carey, who’s probably just about the only other person as obsessed with Candlewood Lake’s creepy legends as I am—cited a blog post of mine on his blog here:
http://i95rock.com/those-that-stayed-behind-beneath-candlewood-lake/ and here: http://i95rock.com/dont-panic-stories-of-a-candlewood-lake-monster-are-simply-urban-legends/
It’s great to know these legends are being shared—it’s what keeps them alive. The original post about all of the legends is here: https://wordpress.com/post/kristipetersenschoonover.com/9576 or where it was originally published at the New England Horror Writers blog here: http://nehw.blogspot.com/2016/08/legends-of-candlewood-lake-guest-blog.html
I have plans, eventually, to put together an entire short story collection based on these urban legends, but at the moment I only have a few pieces. The good news is that the drowned souls legend to which Carey refers does have a short story based on it: it’s called “Rightfully Mine,” and it appeared in Sanitarium Magazine Issue #49—which is out of print, so if you’d like to read it, just send me an email on my Contact page and I’ll send the story straight to your Inbox!
Me (left) and my brother Chuck swimming in Candlewood Lake. This was taken in either 1981 or 1982, so I would’ve been 10 or 11.
MS for THE SHADOWS BEHIND has been delivered…and a new project
Margolynn gets an odd item in the mail in “Attempted Delivery.”
The manuscript for my upcoming short story collection, The Shadows Behind, has been delivered to the publisher, Books & Boos Press! The slated release date is April 2019.
This collection will contain some new stories, as well as some out-of-print pieces and reprints from currently available anthologies (if you’ve never picked any of those up, now you’ll be able to get some of them in one place). A few that are potentially included: Read the rest of this entry
DARK DISCUSSIONS hunts down THE LURKING MAN
In a special episode of Dark Discussions, the crew talks with lead actor Dan Lench (“Sariel”) about inner demons, angels of death and 2017’s dark morality tale The Lurking Man.
The Lurking Man, based on one in a series of novels by Keith Rommel, played the 2017 festival circuit and won many awards. It was an Official Selection at the Austin Revolution Film Festival, Long Island International Film Expo, Miami Epic Festival, Love International Film Festival and GenCon Film Festival. It was a finalist at the Los Angeles Cinefest, won four awards at the Indie Fest Film Awards, and took home 13 awards, including Best Leading Actor (our friend Dan Lench) and Best Original Song.
If you’d like to check out the trailer, you can watch that here. If you haven’t seen the film, you can rent or buy it here.
You can listen to our review on Stitcher, Itunes and here: Dark Discussions – Episode 339 – The Lurking Man (2018)
The masthead for DARK DISCUSSIONS Episode 339, THE LURKING MAN. Collage by Philip Perron.
How’d we do? Global Big Day Weekend Wrap-up!
A ruby-throated hummingbird at Audubon Bent of the River in Southbury, CT. Photo by Nathan Schoonover.
*I was working on this post when a tornado hit my house. So here it is, about a month later than expected, but just in case anyone was wondering…
The results of our Global Big Day–when we try to see as many species of birds in one day as we can as part of an international effort–are in!
We started the day (May 5, 2018) in our yard at 6 a.m. Our neighbor, Steve, joined us for coffee and birdwatching until 8:30. We got 23 species, so it was a great kick-off to the day.
Look at this portly guy!! A Gray Catbird at a preserve in Newtown, CT. Photo by Nathan Schoonover.
I’d jokingly set my goal at 50, and really didn’t think we’d come anywhere near that. But we headed out to a preserve in Newtown, where in under 40 minutes we bagged seven species–the most exciting for me Read the rest of this entry
