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All Authors Blog Blitz Featuring Author Katharina Gerlach

Today I am pleased to feature author Katharina Gerlach through the All Authors Blog Blitz put on at Goodreads by author Y. Correa. Enjoy!

Katharina Gerlach is a writer of Young Adult books and an independent publisher. Living in Germany despite her preference for all things Scottish, she writes fantasy and historical novels in English and German. All of her stories have a slight European flavor.

In my opinion, writing Horror, like writing humor, is much harder than writing any other genre. Things that paralyze me might not be scary for someone else, so naturally I shy from the genre. Unfortunately, once in a while, a story or nightmare pops up that fits the genre. Sometimes I can set it aside, but sometimes the story insists on getting written.
This happened with the story “Wedding Nights” in my two-story anthology

I woke from a nightmare that scared me so much, I had to get it out by writing a story loosely based on the dream. When I finished revising it, I set it aside to never look at it again (I still cannot read the story to this day).

One day, a small German publisher asked me to submit a story to a horror anthology. On a whim, I send this one and it was accepted. That’s the reason why I have a short horror anthology among all my Young Adult and Middle Grade fantasy stories and historical novels.
Whenever another nightmare will force me to write more horror stories, I will add them to the existing anthology. For me, it’s the best way to “get rid” of them, and for some readers it might just be the scare they had been looking for.

I want to thank Katharina for sharing her experience and story with us. As a fan and writer of horror, I can easily relate to this!

Please visit Katharina:

Her Website

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Night Dreams Giveaway

Night Dreams 1

I hope the Holidays are going well for everyone. Through the Goodreads Giveaway Program, I am doing my third giveaway since joining. This one is for the 1st episode in my Night Dreams series. The Beginning is the title of the first installment. 3 copies are available. Episode #1 runs at just over 24,000 words and centers around a Dream Psychologist’s secret gift to listen to his patient’s nightmares and enter their dreams, thus finding the way for them deal with their increasing horror and inevitable death. His gift gives him the ability to change the outcome by living/dreaming it as them. For more info on the giveaway, click here .
Thank you, and Good Luck!
~ALJ~

Pre-Halloween to Present…

It has been a busy time since just before Halloween, and continues on now, but I was able to get Episode One of my horror series Night Dreams, done. E1-The Beginning, takes Dr. Joseph Rickettes back in time to when he discovered his gift, and how it changed his life forever. The novella finished at just shy of 25,000 words.

After I was satisfied with the story, and after three drafts and editing, the formatting began for all of the various retailers, I was able to get the eBook in Amazon’s Kindle store by my self-imposed deadline of Halloween. Barnes & Noble’s Nook soon followed, with all of the other e-reading platforms soon to follow.

This was my first attempt at using Scrivener for the writing. With it being new to me, I made the most of it by using all of the needed functions to get the story done. There is a lot more to discover with the program, but I plan to continue using it alongside Microsoft Word for my future works. The conversion to mobi, epub, pdf…etc worked well for me, and as I get to know Scrivener more, I’m sure I will find more of the helpful features it has.

In all, the Night Dreams project was fun, and I find that setting those deadlines helps to keep you moving along in those times when you may not feel the writing-vibe hitting you. Episode Two – Andrea’s Demons, coming soon.

Hope your writing and reading are going well.

~ALJ~