CARNIVAL OF FEAR

The Halloween carnival seemed like the perfect way to spend a Friday night, but when a group of teenagers find themselves trapped in the haunted mansion, they learn the awful truth about the carnival, and the demons that run it.  Now they’re trapped, fighting their way through a maze of torturous attractions where vampires, werewolves, aliens, and other monsters come to life, eager for human blood. As the body count rises, friendships are made and lost, and unlikely heroes emerge. The final showdown takes place in Hell, where the ultimate battle between good and evil will determine their fate. The Carnival of Fear - where the price of admission is your soul!

 

 This is the first novel I ever wrote. In fact, it's only the third piece of fiction I ever wrote. But it took me almost 10 years to sell it, and during that time I got pretty good at short stories and focused on them for a long while. It probably would have sold much sooner had I been even half-educated in how the publishing world works. But back then I didn't know the rules, didn't know other writers who could help me, didn't have the vast information on the internet to research. So I sent out an unedited, way-too-long version to all the big publishers (back in the days when you printed and mailed manuscripts; talk about expensive!) and got rejected everywhere. It was only after taking the Borderlands Boot Camp for Writers that I learned about beta readers and self-editing. I went back and cut 30,000 words from the book and sold it the next year.

 CARNIVAL OF FEAR came to me in a way no other book has since: in a dream. The entire story, all the characters, all the scenes, all the plot twists. I woke up with it all in my head like a movie. That morning I wrote down a simple outline so I wouldn't forget everything, and for the next three weeks I wrote in a notebook during my lunch hours while sitting on my back deck. Then I transcribed everything into the computer. (I still have that notebook. Maybe someday I'll be famous enough to sell it for a lump of cash!)

 Straddling the line between YA and adult horror, CoF remains my most popular novel. It came out in paperback in 2010, and in 2012 got released as a limited edition hardcover with a new cover. That sold out in less than a week and is almost impossible to find even on the 'net. It also spawned several short stories and poems, and the novella CASTLE BY THE SEA.

Out of print since 2013, now you can only get it either directly from me or through Amazon as an ebook. I do hope to have it come out in print again one day.

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Buy the book from JG Faherty direct