The week that was...

What a week...

What I've discovered this week is that Facebook is just another corporation, that doesn't know the meaning of the words common sense. What Rocky, Lisa and I went through (censorship at its nastiest) is going to leave a bad taste in our mouths for years to come.

Witch Hunts was in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, but what it did show me was how influential people power (and specifically our friends in the horror community - you guys and gals rock!) can be. Thanks for going into bat for us!

Without you we probably wouldn't have our page back. And while Facebook did ultimately do the right thing, they could have avoided all this by not doing the wrong thing in the first place!

But at least I am ending the month on a high note.

The digital version of the anthology A Killer Among Demons, published by Dark Prints Press is now available to buy with the paperback expected in 2-3 weeks and my favourite magazine - Midnight Echo released its 9th issue today!

The anthology contains my story "A Matter of Perception", a sort of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit with a very thick coating of the fantastique. It's touching and macabre all at once. I'm sharing book space with some amazingly talented authors, including William Meikle, Alan Baxter, Angela Slatter and
Stephen M. Irwin, just to name a few. I can't wait to read it myself!

Midnight Echo Issue 9 is a real joy as I provided all the interior corner art, a full page piece for a rather well known author, the latest installment of my vampire comic with Mark Farrugia, Allure of the Ancients and a few other pieces of advertising that I created.

I've also been busy at the computer and created a book cover for a forthcoming e-book anthology from the Horror Writers Association. I believe it will be shown around at the upcoming World Horror Convention, so if you're going, keep an eye out for it!

The other news is that Granite State College in new Hampshire USA, which has Witch Hunts as a textbook in its History 510 class recently sent me a copy of all the students' essays on our book. I've been given permission by GSC to put all of the students' comments together in a special publication. I'm about half-way through and I'll provide a sneak peek of it soon.

Now that this mad week has gone, I'll be counting down to June 15 for the Bram Stoker Awards in New Orleans to how Witch Hunts goes in the graphic novel category. Rocky and Lisa will be there, but sadly I'll have to watch the webcast back here in Australia :(

Good luck to all the finalists!

So unless Facebook tries to censor us again, you won't hear from me until then!

Vindication for Witch Hunts!

As of this writing Facebook has (dare I say it) done a complete "about-face" and re-instated the official Witch Hunts page.

https://www.facebook.com/settings?ref=mb#!/pages/Witch-Hunts-A-Graphic-History-of-the-Burning-Times/142351579230386

We can only put this down to the support of our colleagues in the horror community who fought on our behalf to have this censorship lifted. We thank those who supported us. Power to the people!

This is indeed a win for common sense, but maybe Facebook should have put some of that into practice in the first place!

Although this is great news - for the record we still never received an explanation from Facebook or a clarification of what the "bullying" was in relation to.

Perhaps we need to set some rules for Facebook?

Face-less-book

Facebook.

We all use it to share with friends, to promote our books or just chat about writing, but what happens when it goes bad?

I discovered what happens today when Facebook, in all its omnipotent wisdom decided to shut down the official Facebook page for the graphic novel I illustrated, Witch Hunts: A Graphic History of the Burning Times.

According to a very vague message from Facebook, the site breached its community standards, specifically in the area of "bullying". 

The thing is Facebook won't tell us what constituted the bullying. They just shut us down - even after we made an appeal.

There is nothing on our Witch Hunts page that constitutes bullying, or any other breach. In fact the graphic novel has received nothing but positive reviews from critics, is a textbook in a history program at a US college and is up for a Bram Stoker Award.

Worse still, mine, Rocky Wood's and Lisa Morton's Facebook accounts have been temporarily blocked for 12 hours.

Whether the complaint is genuine is now less important compared to the actions of Facebook. To shut down a page without a warning, or better still the opportunity to reply to the complaint - in other words to find us guilty before innocence has been proved - is ironically tantamount to wait for it ... BULLYING!

If someone out there has a genuine complaint then let's hear it. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Everyone is also entitled to have a fair right of reply.

I ask anyone who reads this to share this on your social pages. The only way we are going to get Facebook to change it's barbaric ways is to let the world know about it.

In the meantime, you can still find out all there is to know about our book at www.witchhuntsbook.com

Here's Rocky Wood's thoughts on the debacle http://witchhunts.lisamorton.com/wp/?p=339

Real-life horror

For almost 15 years I've been a professional writer, but not in a fictional capacity.

My writing background comes from being a newspaper journalist on three newspapers in Central Queensland. I was a reporter for about eight years and in that time I wrote countless news articles and news features; stories on fatal traffic accidents, murders, train derailments, you name it. I had to do death-knocks (where you go through a phone book or electoral roll to find the family members of a deceased person and as them how they feel about it). I had to invade people's privacy and talk to them in their worst moments just to get a story and and earn a wage to feed my kids. I hated doing it, but it was my job.

There were good stories as well; stories about heroes saving people's lives, people getting justice, couples still in love after 60 years, charities making a difference, war veterans being honoured. Each person I interviewed left a mark on me and I loved telling those "human interest" stories. Not to diminish that the bad stories didn't need to be told too, but sometimes I wonder if the horrible things I witnessed as a journalist have fostered my passion for writing horror - at least on a subconscious level?

It was while I was working on one particular newspaper that two things occurred which influenced my decision to change my line of work. Apologies if this is all a bit too much, but I guess it might put things into perspective. The first story was about a man who died in a caravan fire. I was tasked with going out to the scene and covering the death for what would be the front page of the next day's paper. What I saw at the scene was truly horrible, an image of a deceased person that will be forever ingrained on my memory. I won't describe that image, but sometimes when I'm writing a story it's the first images that easily comes to mind.

The other story concerned a two year old boy butchered by a relative who suffered from a mental illness. Given I had two of my own children at the time, doing this story had a profound effect on me, but what affected me the most was that the little boy's family told me they forgave his killer - that it wasn't his fault, he was simply sick.

Let me state here and now that I was never offered counselling, most journalists are never offered counselling.

Although I'm a horror writer and I write pretty grisly tales about death and damnation, nothing I write will ever compare to what I wrote about as a journalist.

It took me a few years to get out of journalism, and for the past four years I've worked as a media officer. All of the stories I write are positive and the job is the job. I still love writing fiction and sometimes I wish it was all I did, but at least it's fiction and not reality. I don't ever want to do that type of writing again.