A Spooky Interview with Mia Dalia

Samhain Screams will be released on the 17th of October—but the Kindle version is available for pre-order today at just $1.99 instead of $3.99. You can also add the anthology to your Goodreads list. Our aim is quite simply to make Halloween 2025 the spookiest ever with this anthology featuring twenty scary tales handpicked by Greg Chapman and Cameron Trost. Do you dare peek into the troubled minds of our contributing authors?

Hi Mia, 

What does Halloween mean to you and how do you celebrate it? 

It’s my favorite holiday of the year. Our town has a very famous avenue that goes all out every October. On the 31st, I can be usually found there. Though I’m always up for a good costume party.

Will you be donning a scary costume this Halloween?

Absolutely. My wife likes to make this challenging, so she usually tells me what she wants to dress up as the morning off, and then I get creative. I prefer homemade costumes to storebought, so it’s always fun to see what I can come up with.

Without giving too much away, is there a story behind your contribution to this anthology?

Oh, yes. The Last Pumpkin is actually almost entirely a true story—except for the horror bits. There was indeed a fabulous little pumpkin patch waiting in our backyard when we moved into our new house. And being city folk, we have no idea what it was. Hilarity and amazement ensued. And then I decided to fictionalize it by throwing in a killer twist.

Do you have a favourite Halloween tale?

I should have one. I don’t really. I’m still looking. Though I keep writing my own takes on it. I did a short novel last year set entirely on October 31st that I’m inordinately fond of. And just the other week I wrote another Halloween-themed short story. 

Would you share something about yourself that your readers don’t know yet?

I’m a very private person. If you follow me on socials, you won’t find anything about my life / wife / house / meals / pets / political and personal opinions / etc. But I do put a lot of myself into my work. The best way to get to know me is to read between the lines of my stories ;)

Where can we find you online?

https://daliaverse.wixsite.com/author

https://linktr.ee/daliaverse

Thanks for playing along! 

A Spooky Interview with Jacy Morris

Samhain Screams will be released on the 17th of October—but the Kindle version is available for pre-order today at just $1.99 instead of $3.99. You can also add the anthology to your Goodreads list. Our aim is quite simply to make Halloween 2025 the spookiest ever with this anthology featuring twenty scary tales handpicked by Greg Chapman and Cameron Trost. Do you dare peek into the troubled minds of our contributing authors?

Hi Jacy,

What does Halloween mean to you and how do you celebrate it?

Halloween, to me, is the embodiment of everything I loved as a child, from the movies to the costumes to the candy. Sometimes I'll have a costume party with trivia, contests, and plenty of libations to the spirit of Halloween, but other times, I'll sit on the couch and put in my Halloween trio of movies. I typically start with Rocky Horror Picture Show, follow it up with Dawn of the Dead '78, and then finish it off with Trick 'r Treat. Either way, for twenty-four hours, I feel like a kid again.

Will you be donning a scary costume this Halloween?

It depends on which route I go. If I throw a party, and Halloween is on a Friday this year, so it's likely, I'll throw on some costume or other. I usually go for something topical and cheap as a costume. But you never know.

Without giving too much away, is there a story behind your contribution to this anthology?

For Indian Corn, I tried to take everything I love about Halloween and give it an Indigenous spin. There's no deeper meaning to it. I just played with the things I love to create a classic Halloween vibe.

Do you have a favourite Halloween tale?

My favorite Halloween tale is definitely Trick 'r Treat. I also love the classic Halloween movie with Jamie Lee Curtis. But Trick 'r Treat has the most Halloween-like vibes for me. It perfectly encapsulates the feeling of anything possibly happening at any moment that I felt as a child out in the night knocking on strangers' doors.

What are you working on at the moment? What are you writing?

I'm currently working on This Rotten World 12: Burn It All Down, the twelfth entry in my popular zombie series. I'm also revising an anti-billionaire horror novel that is off the walls bonkers. In addition, I'm trying to sell four completed manuscripts, one of which is a fully fledged Halloween-themed novel!

Where can we find you online?

I have my seldom updated website, jacymorris.com and I can be found on Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. Just do a search for Jacy Morris Author, and I'll pop up.

Thanks for playing along!

A Spooky Interview with Matthew R. Davis

Samhain Screams will be released on the 17th of October—but the Kindle version is available for pre-order today at just $1.99 instead of $3.99. You can also add the anthology to your Goodreads list. Our aim is quite simply to make Halloween 2025 the spookiest ever with this anthology featuring twenty scary tales handpicked by Greg Chapman and Cameron Trost. Do you dare peek into the troubled minds of our contributing authors?

Hi Matthew,

What does Halloween mean to you and how do you celebrate it?

Like many people, I see it as a celebration of all things dark and spooky, so I love it! I could put together a book solely consisting of stories I wrote that are set on Halloween – the latest, even more recent than “Hauntology” (which I wrote in April this year), is a seasonal-themed slasher for another anthology. My partner Meg (the award-winning cover artist Red Wallflower) and I like to do something special for Halloween, even if it’s just staying in with a pumpkin pie she’s baked and some horror flicks. In the past, we’ve gone out to cinema screenings or goth events, and two years ago, we carved pumpkins together for the first time (see accompanying pic). Naturally, hers was great and mine looked terrible.

Will you be donning a scary costume this Halloween?

I doubt it. I don’t really dress up for it, unless you count that year I wore a skirt and steel-capped boots to DecaDanse.

Without giving too much away, is there a story behind your contribution to this anthology?

I’ve talked about the tale’s genesis in other promotional materials for the book, so what else can I say? Well… one of the central images in “Hauntology” is an advertising photo featuring a smiling woman. That image comes straight from a 7/11 on Hindley Street here in Adelaide whose window signage really needs to be updated. In fact, Meg and I both took photos of it, entirely independently, because something about it spoke to us… and here it is, given a new and very eerie home…

Do you have a favourite Halloween tale?

Meg and I watch something spooky and/or fun every year – last year, I believe it was Young Frankenstein. But in terms of Halloween stories that have really stuck with me, I’d have to say The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1949). It’s a Disney animated short about Ichabod Crane’s run-in with the Headless Horseman that I saw a few times as a child – at school, no less. The chase scene that comprises the last section of the film is fairly intense for a children’s movie! I actually referenced this film in that slasher story I mentioned earlier, though I ended up cutting that line in the edit.

Would you share something about yourself that your readers don’t know yet?

I’ve written at least one song that would make a great addition to any Halloween playlist. Check out “Cemetery Girl”, from Blood Red Renaissance’s debut album Champagne Tragedy. Unlike the left-field rock and metal that dominates that record, this song is a graveyard waltz that opens with an organ sample from The Black Cat (1934) and features me playing theremin and fire extinguisher. I last performed it at the book launch for my first horror collection, If Only Tonight We Could Sleep, in an acoustic variant featuring accordion.

What are you working on at the moment? What are you writing?

I’ve spent this year working on short fiction, turning out some great stuff (including “Hauntology”, if I do say so myself), but now it’s time to turn back to my current novel, which I began in Canberra at Conflux last year. I worked on it every day for two months until other book-editing obligations forced me to put it aside halfway through the first draft, and now I’m keen to read it over and pick up where I left off. It touches on many of my recurring themes – abandoned places, street art, fractured love, loneliness, and punk-rock defiance, to name a few. It’s going to be very heartfelt and very creepy. Its working title is Desolation.

Thanks for playing along!

Photo credit: Red Wallflower

A Spooky Interview with Tom Rimer

Samhain Screams will be released on the 17th of October—but the Kindle version is available for pre-order today at just $1.99 instead of $3.99. You can also add the anthology to your Goodreads list. Our aim is quite simply to make Halloween 2025 the spookiest ever with this anthology featuring twenty scary tales handpicked by Greg Chapman and Cameron Trost. Do you dare peek into the troubled minds of our contributing authors?

Hi Tom,

What does Halloween mean to you and how do you celebrate it?

Halloween is my absolute favorite time (and day) of the year. I typically go all out—from the costumes, to the plastic skeletons strewn about my lawn, to the movies that I'll ritualistically watch, to the annual quest to Spirit Halloween. Something about Halloween just oozes nostalgia and reminds me of times I've most felt myself. To an extent, as an author of horror, I get to celebrate All Hallows all year—but Halloween is the Super Bowl for spooky people like myself.

Will you be donning a scary costume this Halloween?

Well, of course, but— you see—this is serious business and I can't just reveal what that'll be, this early on. Stay tuned.

Without giving too much away, is there a story behind your contribution to this anthology?

I once stumbled across a painting of a clown in a thrift store. Didn't buy it, but that evening I had a nightmare that heavily featured this particular portrait. Like many of my nightmares, this one became fodder for a story.

Do you have a favourite Halloween tale?

So many. Most recently, I read All Hallows—a novel by Christopher Golden. It's set on Halloween night. Couldn't put it down.

Where can we find you online? 

Find me here:

Instagram - @bookishrimer

Blue Sky - @rimertom.bsky.social

www.tomrimerauthor.com

 

117 Talented Authors

A number of authors have had their spooky, mysterious, thrilling, and disturbing tales published with Black Beacon Books since 2013. Our fourteenth anthology, Samhain Screams, will be published in one's month's time, our sixth novel, Dead on the Dolmen, will be released at the end of January next year, and we have four short story collections under our banner.

So, just how many contributors do we have so far, and what are their names? Well, the answer is 117, and here's who they are...

A Spooky Interview with Nick Manzolillo

Samhain Screams will be released on the 17th of October—but the Kindle version is available for pre-order today at just $1.99 instead of $3.99. You can also add the anthology to your Goodreads list. Our aim is quite simply to make Halloween 2025 the spookiest ever with this anthology featuring twenty scary tales handpicked by Greg Chapman and Cameron Trost. Do you dare peek into the troubled minds of our contributing authors?

Hi Nick,

What does Halloween mean to you and how do you celebrate it?

Halloween is everything mythical and magical wrapped up into a holiday. Now that I have kids I plan on celebrating it with Trick or Treating (of course) and then a horror movie marathon before bed.

Will you be donning a scary costume this Halloween?

This year is my son’s first Halloween and we’ll be going as cowboys.

Without giving too much away, is there a story behind your contribution to this anthology?

I have written several novels and a few dozen short stories set in the mystical New England beach town of Silverport. I’ve been wanting to explore more about the mermaids featured in those stories and having them culturally clash with Halloween seemed like a great opportunity.

Do you have a favourite Halloween tale?

My favorite Halloween tale is actually the movie Trick R’ Treat, written and directed by Michael Dougherty.

What are you working on at the moment? What are you writing?

Currently, I am editing and pitching a Halloween fantasy novel about a pumpkin carver with magical abilities.

Where can we find you online?

You can find links to some of my short stories on and novels on nickmanzolillo.com. You can also find me on Facebook and Instagram.

Thanks for playing along!

A Spooky Interview with Em Starr

Samhain Screams will be released on the 17th of October—but the Kindle version is available for pre-order today at just $1.99 instead of $3.99. You can also add the anthology to your Goodreads list. Our aim is quite simply to make Halloween 2025 the spookiest ever with this anthology featuring twenty scary tales handpicked by Greg Chapman and Cameron Trost. Do you dare peek into the troubled minds of our contributing authors?

Hi Em,

What does Halloween mean to you and how do you celebrate it?

Growing up as an Aussie kid in the 80's, the closest I got to Halloween was watching Michael Myers on Betamax. I had no real understanding of the season, other than the superficial elements like pumpkinheads and trick or treating... and the idea of trick or treating conjured images of angry adults who thought it was appropriate to scream at kids in costumes to stop the neighbourhood from becoming too "Americanized". It was many years later that I learned the true roots of Halloween (Samhain). The cycle of life and death, the thinning of the veil; things us horror lovers tend to think about all year-round. Suffice to say, I'm not so much into the costumes and candy as I am the deeper, quieter meaning. That's why this Halloween, you'll find me celebrating quietly at home, writing horror, reading horror, and watching Halloween films with my dogs.   

Without giving too much away, is there a story behind your contribution to this anthology?

Public transport terrifies me. I am crazy hyper-vigilant, and something as simple as riding a train leaves me exhausted from endless "what-if" scenarios. What if this person beside me is a bad person? What horrible secrets might they be keeping? What awful things could they have done? Originally, I wrote this story based on that premise—the vulnerability of sharing confined spaces with strangers—but it felt incomplete. So I rewrote it and set the story on Halloween night, when the physical and spiritual worlds are permeable, and it all fell into place.    

Would you share something about yourself that your readers don’t know yet?

I am obsessed with the 1987 film The Lost Boys. I can recount the entire script, word-for-word, as well as the killer soundtrack. It's less about fangirling and more about the profound connection I had with it as a kid. Because of that film, I had an epiphany at twelve years of age that changed me forever. My real name is Em, but the "Starr" part of my name is a homage to TLB.

What are you working on at the moment? What are you writing?

I am taking the rest of this year to finish my debut novel, Cactus. It's a pearler and I can't wait to share it! After that, I'll be penning more short stories, with a view to putting together a collection of Coastal Chills.

Thanks for playing along! 

A Spooky Interview with Kevin M. Folliard

Samhain Screams will be released on the 17th of October—but the Kindle version is available for pre-order today at just $1.99 instead of $3.99. You can also add the anthology to your Goodreads list. Our aim is quite simply to make Halloween 2025 the spookiest ever with this anthology featuring twenty scary tales handpicked by Greg Chapman and Cameron Trost. Do you dare peek into the troubled minds of our contributing authors?

Hi Kevin,

What does Halloween mean to you and how do you celebrate it?
 
October is a big month for my partner and I. We have costume parties with friends and do our best to cram in as many scary movies as possible. My favorite tradition is attending Chicago’s 24-hour Music Box of Horrors movie marathon with my friends.
 
Without giving too much away, is there a story behind your contribution to this anthology?
 
Every October, I aim to draft at least one new Halloween story. Vengeance of Halloween (VoH) is my good-natured jab at the glut of delightful Halloween pop-ups that spring up like clockwork every August. It's also an homage to some of my favorite horror films such as Halloween III: Season of the Witch and the Universal Monsters.
 
Would you share something about yourself that your readers don’t know yet?
 
I love to travel, and I’ve been to all 50 U.S. states!
 
What are you working on at the moment? What are you writing?
 
I’m a big dinosaur fan, and I have a number of dinosaur sci-fi adventure stories set in a shared world called New Pangea. You can find some of these stories as singles, included in various sci-fi anthologies, but I’m currently in the process of collecting them all together in an anthology titled Tales from New Pangea, which should be available in 2026.
 
Where can we find you online?
 
www.KevinFolliard.com

Thanks for playing along! 

A Spooky Interview with Epiphany Ferrell

Samhain Screams will be released on the 17th of October—but the Kindle version is available for pre-order today at just $1.99 instead of $3.99. You can also add the anthology to your Goodreads list. Our aim is quite simply to make Halloween 2025 the spookiest ever with this anthology featuring twenty scary tales handpicked by Greg Chapman and Cameron Trost. Do you dare peek into the troubled minds of our contributing authors?

Hi Epiphany,

What does Halloween mean to you and how do you celebrate it?

My favorite holiday of course! I live pretty far out in the country so we don’t get trick-or-treaters. To prepare for Halloween in recent years, my husband and I have taken the door-to-door concept to the back roads where we live in southern Illinois. We’ll blast Halloween sound-effects and scary music as we drive around, occasionally letting go of a really good scream at an appropriate moment. Just sharing the Halloween spirit.

Will you be donning a scary costume this Halloween?

I can usually cobble something together from my closet, adding a mask or some other detail from the pop-up Halloween store. My favorite costume from years-gone-by was Werewolf Tamer.

What are you working on at the moment? What are you writing?

I’m working on a folk horror novel, in the rewriting/editing stage. I’m outlining a sequel to that novel, and also a dystopian novel. Always short stories, too.

Where can we find you online?

epiphanyferrell.com and several social media platforms.

Thanks for playing along!

A Spooky Interview with Tom Coombe

Samhain Screams will be released on the 17th of October—but the Kindle version is available for pre-order today at just $1.99 instead of $3.99. You can also add the anthology to your Goodreads list. Our aim is quite simply to make Halloween 2025 the spookiest ever with this anthology featuring twenty scary tales handpicked by Greg Chapman and Cameron Trost. Do you dare peek into the troubled minds of our contributing authors?

Hi Tom,

What does Halloween mean to you and how do you celebrate it?

In the last six years, my significant other and I have established a Halloween tradition: Starting October 1, we watch a horror movie every evening leading up to Halloween.

Without giving too much away, is there a story behind your contribution to this anthology?

There's not really a story, more of an urban legend (a "black van" roaming my neighborhood when I was a kid) combined with an anecdote (a grade school friend trick or treating at a house with a woman in a hospital bed in the living room).

What are you working on at the moment? What are you writing?

At the moment, I'm working on a folk horror story based around a (completely made up) splinter sect of the Catholic church.

Where can we find you online?

The best place to interact with me is on BlueSky, where I'm @CalmTomb.

Thanks for playing along!

A Spooky Interview with Daniel Fox

Samhain Screams will be released on the 17th of October—but the Kindle version is available for pre-order today at just $1.99 instead of $3.99. You can also add the anthology to your Goodreads list. Our aim is quite simply to make Halloween 2025 the spookiest ever with this anthology featuring twenty scary tales handpicked by Greg Chapman and Cameron Trost. Do you dare peek into the troubled minds of our contributing authors?

Hi Daniel,

What does Halloween mean to you and how do you celebrate it?

One of the things that makes Halloween great is that it is a celebration of creativity. And it doesn’t matter how big or small your celebration is. Want to throw on a black vest and call yourself Han Solo ? Cool. Want to build an elaborate costume that takes months of effort and planning ? Also cool. How much or how little you do is up to you, and it’s all fun.

As for me, I like to take a wander around my neighbourhood and see how people have transformed their homes, and how excited little kids are as they run from one home to the next. It’s a good feeling.

Would you share something about yourself that your readers don’t know yet?

I think cats are beautiful but I won’t pick one up. They’re living bags of knives.

What are you working on at the moment? What are you writing?

I haven’t really written many short stories in the past. So this year I thought I’d give them a whirl and it has turned out to be a lot of fun. So far this year, six of my stories have been nabbed by various publications, and I’m pretty excited to meet new readers via these happy little bursts of creativity.