Monday, November 4, 2013

Horror and the Overlords Connection

Hi, my name is Mike Squatrito and I’m the author of The Overlords fantasy series. I currently have self-published the first three novels in my Overlords collection and I’m working on the fourth as we speak. The stories are epic fantasy, on the lines of The Lord of the Rings, written at a Harry Potter level, with the character set influenced by the original Star Wars cast. I know, a can’t miss, right?!?! The books are suitable for middle school on up and highly recommended for all.


OK, enough about me and my books. I want to thank Gary for letting me guest post on his blog and being the fourth stop on my Overlords Blog Tour. Gary and I are Necon buddies and I’m very excited to be guest blogging on his site today! Knowing that Gary’s works are firmly entrenched in the horror genre I figured that I would talk about how horror and the Necon experience has weaved its way into my Overlords story line.

My novels, as I stated above, are pure fantasy but I have several dark corners within the series that border on horror. Before I delve into them, I wanted to describe what horror means to me. There are all types of scenes – blood and guts, gore, terrifying situations, intense anxiety – just to name a few. I’m not one for the blood and guts, hack’em up, cut them up with a chain saw … but wait … maybe I am!

One thing about horror that gets me is the shock of being terrified and the anxiety of knowing something awful is going to happen but just not knowing how. It’s the anxiety and fright that I like to convey and I can do this within my fantasy guidelines without crossing the line. The Scynthians, an evil humanoid race that I created in The Overlords, are six and a half-feet tall, fur covered, ruthless, albeit not too intelligent, creatures that have embarked on their “Extinction Process”. Basically their mantra is to slay every human they encounter by hacking off their arms, allowing them to bleed to the point of unconsciousness before tossing them, while still alive, into a raging inferno. Pretty horrific. Gory. Scary. And I thought this up before I ever attended Necon. You should be proud of me, Gary!

Another scenario has to do with anxiety, building the scene, knowing something is lurking just beyond the fringes. While journeying through the wilderness, an innocent night camping around the fire turns into a devastating situation. The dogs sense an evil presence and teleport out of the camp rather than to stay and help protect their masters. When man’s best friend decides to hightail it out of a cozy campsite while cooking food is present, you really should take notice. (Dogs never leave food. Never!) I feel I built up the anxiety level quite well and our heroes barely make it out alive.

Lastly, shock is always littered throughout the horror genre. When our adventurers ambush a bumbling band of Scynthians, they discover with horror that they were carting a wagon full of severed human body parts. To add to the intense scene, while trying to determine just what they’ve stumbled upon, they find that a teenage girl is still alive, pale white, one arm severed, the other badly broken and clinging to life. As you can see, I really wanted to drive home the point that the Scynthians are bad ass!

There are other circumstances where my group of warriors encounter horror-filled situation, but you’ll have to pick up your own copy of The Overlords to find out! I would like to thank Gary and all of my other horror author friends for opening my eyes to this exciting genre. I’ll be sure to tread lightly in this arena, since it’s not my area of expertise. I can only hope I did them proud!

My time here is up, but I wanted to pass along a few shameless plugs. You can learn more about me and my project at www.the-overlords.com and you can contact me directly at mike@the-overlords.com. As you can see, I’m looking for other authors to guest blog on my site and if you’re interested please contact me.

You can purchase my books and eBooks on my website or if you have Amazon (Kindle) and Barnes & Noble (Nook) accounts, at the following:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=squatrito%20overlords

Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/squatrito-overlords?store=book&keyword=squatrito+overlords

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Check out my blog, http://theoverlords.blogspot.com/

Check out my Self-Publishing consultancy as well, Self Publishing Insight