#CreatureFeature – #MonsterMash #Readathon!

Yes loyal readers and fellow horror fans, I bet you were sitting there thinking to yourself, ‘I WISH there was a random, sporadic readathon which will probably never get finished but hey! I admire the woman’s ambition!’

Well, fret no more as I am HERE to fill that readathon spaced hole in your lives!
An occasional series which may never actually have a conclusion is exactly what I have planned.

Lately, I have been reading a lot of vintage horror, including Stephen King’s ‘Danse Macabre’ which posits the various types of creatures that there are in fiction.

The first are beasts-eg vampires, werewolves and shape shifters, psychotic madmen like Mr Hyde.

The second are monsters-Frankenstein, zombies, things from out of space and so on.

The third are spectral in nature, ghosts and haunted items from houses to shoes.

Lastly, in the ongoing house versus books battle chez Bridgeman, the books are winning…

Some I have carted from house to house and stored, without ever having read.

In attempt to claw back some much needed space-hey! pipe down at the back, we need space for activities not more books!-I have decided to embark on the mother of all readathons.

(Well, that’s what it felt like when I woke up bolt upright at the notion on my bed ,which is actually supported by half tonne of books)

Dividing my backlist into categories, I can work my way through them and share my love for horror at the same time #winwin!

Four categories,a million blog posts, some overlapping titles, let’s go!

Werewolves

Hit me up with shape shifter titles and series that you love! I have the Otherworld series by Kelley Armstrong, Glenn Duncan’s trilogy, ‘The Werewolf Of Paris’ by Guy Endore,non fiction books on lycanthropy lore and Rachel Vincent’s ‘Shifters’ series amongst others.

Shape shifters come into play in various novels such as Laurell K Hamilton’s Anita Blake series, but I am trying to stay away from lycan romances of which I found a plethora of during my late night research-jeez, there is a market for anything, hello werewolf harems!!!

So, I have a list of about 50 wolf/lycan/shifting novels which are horror based to tuck into, let me know if I’ll be looking at any of your favourites!

Vampires

Ah, the children of the night, such music they make! Vamps have been my jam since ‘Salem’s Lot’, do you like them or find them a bit oversaturated these days? I found a great selection of reads amongst the stacks and ones I can read on Kindle Unlimited so again will be reducing the stacks.

Amongst others I will be reading ‘Fevre Dream’ by George RR Martin, revisiting Nancy A Collins’ hero Sonja Blue ,ancient child star Timmy Valentine in Vampire Junctionand many more

But absolutely no Twilight.Sorry but once was enough for me, pure horror and no soft core anything is on my radar , I just can’t go back there . No sparkly vampires, nope . Blood thirsty, neck ripping, life ending beasts only please!

Ghosts

Things that go bump in the night! The nature of ghosts and what they mean has been a topic endlessly discussed since tales were first told around fires. What they want is open to debate, but here I will be looking at all matters of hauntings such as ‘The Good House’ ,‘The Quiet Neighbors’ and, of course, the apotheosis of haunted buildings, Hill House.

Throw a stick and you will hit-or rather fall through-a haunted something, the question remains whether or not you believe in what people or buildings are haunted by . Is it missed opportunites, a sense of a life unlived, a passion for vengeance, or something else that stops a person’s soul moving on?

This category had the most out of any books I looked at, I stopped at 50 because a) I have finite finances and b) finite life left to write about them. It literally could be a case of a haunted book a week for the rest of your life as each culture has its own myths about spirits .

Frankenstein

Now this category had the least amount of books in it, either based on Mary Shelley or inspired by Frankenstein which was surprising! This is probably my favourite gothic tale, and I could read tales based on messing with nature and things we were not meant to, over and over! Zombies have been added into the mix because they are the living dead and it seemed rude to leave them out of this whole shebang.

From Dean Koontz reimagining of the  Prodigal Son(stretching across 5 books, how did he manage that? ) to Carrie Ryan’s Forest Of Hands And Teeth, Fred Saberhagen’s the Frankenstein Papers to Frankenstein Agent of SHADE, there are so many ways to reassemble an animated corpse! But I am going to bypass the dark erotica again….sorry but ‘My First Time With Frankenstein’ is not my kind of read!

So there we are!

Any thoughts, recommendations and such, drop me a line! I will be having giveaways throughout the year too so keep a beady eye out….