Author of adventure/thriller and horror fiction

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THE RETREAT Audiobook Omnibus Now Available

May 11, 2023 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

Get it while it’s hot! And by “hot” I mean on fire, emitting screams, and surrounded by laughing, machete-wielding maniacs. The Retreat, the apocalyptic military fiction series by me, Stephen Knight, and Joe McKinney, is now available as an audiobook omnibus narrated by the great R.C. Bray.

The world would die laughing….

When a new disease turns people into sadistic, laughing killers, a light infantry battalion fights to maintain order in Boston. As infection spreads, the Army loses control, and the soldiers find themselves fighting the people they once swore to protect.

As the country slides into violent collapse, the lost battalion learns the last bastion of the federal government is still holding out in Florida. Harry Lee, its commander, decides the only hope is to lead the survivors there.

But first, they must cross more than a thousand miles of an apocalyptic America, hunted by a savage and merciless enemy.

Inspired by The Anabasis and written by a team of best-selling zombie authors, The Retreat: The Complete Series for the first time brings together all six volumes, chronicling a horrific vision of the apocalypse and a brutal depiction of courage in the face of impossible odds.

This omnibus includes the following works:

The Retreat: Pandemic
The Retreat: Slaughterhouse
The Retreat: Die Laughing
The Retreat: Alamo
The Retreat: Crucible
The Retreat: Forlorn Hope

I was very happy to contribute Pandemic and Alamo and have a chance to work with these great authors.

Click here to check it out at Audible.

And of course, there’s always the eBook option.

Filed Under: Apocalyptic, APOCALYPTIC/HORROR, Books, CRAIG'S WORK, MEDIA YOU MIGHT LIKE, The Blog, The Retreat Series, Zombies

DJINN Now Available for Pre-Order!

May 11, 2023 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

I am excited to announce that DJINN, my supernatural military thriller, is now available for pre-order for Amazon Kindle. This novel reimagines the witch for the War on Terror era, taking the reader on a journey into the heart of darkness that is both human and supernatural.

Here’s the synopsis:

In the violent aftermath of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, a photojournalist arrives to learn the fate of the Witch Doctors, a fabled Army occult warfare unit. Holly believes her father, reported missing in action, ran this mysterious outfit that sought to weaponize black magic to win the War on Terror.

As the Taliban advances and the national government crumbles, Holly makes a harrowing journey into the deep desert to an abandoned base, which houses a terrifying secret. There, along with a group of American ex-soldiers, themselves cursed, she will face the ancient evil the Witch Doctors unleashed…

The terrors that live in the world of the djinn. The horrors that lurk in war itself.

DJINN releases June 16 in eBook and trade paperback exclusively through Amazon. Read by Garrett Michael Brown, the audiobook releases the same date.

You can get it here. I hope you’ll check it out. Thank you for reading!

Filed Under: APOCALYPTIC/HORROR, Books, CRAIG'S WORK, Djinn, HISTORY, MEDIA YOU MIGHT LIKE, Other History, The Blog

PHASMAPHOBIA

April 8, 2023 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

When EPISODE THIRTEEN, my found-footage novel about a paranormal reality TV show, came out, I was asked in interviews about sources of inspiration for it. A big one for me was PHASMAPHOBIA, a computer game. This is the scariest, most enjoyable horror game I’ve ever played.

When I first heard about it, I was skeptical. The game’s graphics and game play looked pretty janky to me. You don’t have any weapons, which feels weird when you’re used to playing first-person games that have a combat element. You move slowly. Most of the houses you explore aren’t creepy mansions but instead regular suburban homes. What’s scary about this?

A lot, it turned out. It scared the crap out of me.

Okay, here’s how it works. You’re a member of a team of up to four professional ghost hunters. You travel to haunted houses and explore them to 1) locate where the ghost is, 2) identify the type of ghost based on the evidence you collect, and 3) do optional actions like get the ghost to blow out a candle or get a picture of it. The only problem is the ghost generally remains unseen, so you have to use a variety of detecting equipment to discover physical evidence the ghost leaves. Another problem is the longer you’re in the house and depending on what you say over the mic to the ghost or your teammates–the game uses voice recognition–the ghost starts to get agitated. This is good, as its activity leaves evidence, but bad, in that the ghost may decide it’s time to hunt and kill you. The lights flicker, the door slams, you’re trapped, and you have to hide and pray the thing doesn’t get you.

The detective work is fun, but what makes this game work is the atmosphere of dread–something I tried to bottle in EPISODE THIRTEEN–in this case achieved with darkness and subtly with sound along with your own willing suspension of disbelief. The moment you go into the house, you know you’re on the clock for the ghost getting angry. There are jump scares, but they’re sparse and earned, such as when you’re just about to leave the house and the door slams in your face, signaling the ghost is coming for you. Out of all the games I’ve played, this one comes closest to the experience of reading, where the player’s imagination does a lot of the work. Like watching a horror movie, if you tell yourself it’s only a game and doesn’t matter, it likely won’t affect you much; but if you run with it and let yourself be immersed, it will very likely freak you out.

PHASMAPHOBIA is a classic game that is virtually unique among horror games, though it has had many (poor in my view) imitators. I recommend it if you’re looking for a horror experience you can enjoy solo or with some buddies online.

Filed Under: APOCALYPTIC/HORROR, CRAIG'S WORK, Episode Thirteen, GAMES, MEDIA YOU MIGHT LIKE, The Blog, Video & Board Games

DAISY JONES AND THE SIX

April 7, 2023 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

Based pretty faithfully on the excellent epistolary novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid, DAISY JONES AND THE SIX (Amazon Prime) is about a fictional 1970s rock super band that rocketed to stardom and then suddenly called it quits at their last concert, with the band years later finally telling the inside story. The adaptation was done with obvious love and it grew on me, though it veered into TV tropes when it shouldn’t have.

The story focuses on Billy Dunne, the front man of a hardworking rock band that is starting to go somewhere when Billy takes some time off to go to rehab to clean up his act, coming out of it an artist afraid to take risks. Seeing big potential, an enterprising producer convinces him to join forces with Daisy Jones, a young woman with arresting charisma and brimming with raw, unbridled creativity. Their personalities clash until the two discover they perfectly complement each other to make great music, resulting in tension both within the band and in Billy’s marriage.

The show leans on the unrealized romance angle of the book to the point of trying to convince viewers to get behind it, but I found their relationship utterly toxic. Daisy’s kind of a spoiled and nasty person in pretty big ways, while Billy’s flaws are out there while appearing more tempered. Honestly, the subplot of the romance between the guitarist and the keyboardist struck me as far more compelling and fun to watch. Otherwise, the show writers veered off the book–at least how I remember it now–to make a few of the characters do some really over the top stuff, like a wife suspecting her husband might be cheating going out and cheating on him, and this is presented as empowering for her. Uh, good job?

The acting and direction are terrific, with energetic performances by Riley Keogh (channeling Steve Nix as Daisy), Sam Claflin (Billy), and the rest. The concert scenes are packed with energy but not overdone. The only drawback on this side of things is the original music produced for the show is fine if not good, though hardly super band material. (You just have to run with it.)

Overall, I was impressed with the adaptation, which was pretty faithful, had a terrific energy, portrayed the 1970s as a real time real people lived in, and overall showed a lot of heart.

Filed Under: MEDIA YOU MIGHT LIKE, Movies & TV, The Blog

My Deal with Hachette for HOW TO MAKE A HORROR MOVIE

March 24, 2023 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

I could not be happier today to announce I have signed a deal with Orbit, the speculative fiction imprint of Hachette Book Group, to publish my next horror novel, titled HOW TO MAKE A HORROR MOVIE. This is my fifth novel with Hachette, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to work again with my awesome editor and such a great brand.

A slasher film director makes a horror movie with a cursed camera that kills anyone he cares about. The scream queen he loves wants to survive the night. Together, director and Final Girl, they’re about to make movie history.

No details yet on publication date yet, but it will be available pretty much everywhere, bookstores and so on. Get ready for a deep dive into horror movies and in particular the eighties. Can’t wait for all y’all to read this one. Stay tuned for more soon!

Filed Under: APOCALYPTIC/HORROR, Books, Craig at Work, CRAIG'S WORK, How to Make a Horror Movie, MEDIA YOU MIGHT LIKE, WRITING LIFE

THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING (2022)

March 21, 2023 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

In THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING (2022), a lonely academic who studies story encounters a djinn, who wants to be freed by granting three wishes. The academic, however, knows all the stories of wishes going wrong, setting up a contest of wits and wills. This is a charming movie, though its last act appears grafted on to bring the film into a meh finish.

Alithea (Tilda Swinton) is an academic who lives a life of reason and studies story for a living. While attending a conference in Istanbul, she is struck by visions, which suggest some destiny, though this is never explained. She encounters a bottle and releases a djinn (Idris Elba, born for this role), who offers to grant three wishes in return for his freedom. The only problem is as a woman who has studied story her entire life, she knows all the cautionary tales about making wishes. She also feels complete, and so has no heart’s desire from which to make a wish.

The first two acts of the film take place largely in Alithea’s hotel room, where she negotiates with the djinn while he tells her stories about his doomed interactions with humans in the past. The backstories are heavily CGI’d along with the initial appearance of the djinn. That and the playful narrative make the whole thing feel like a Disney movie for adults, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you just run with it. Like I said, the whole thing is charming, and the stories themselves are fanciful and interesting, building an overall narrative.

Swinton plays her part with crisp efficiency; Elba fully inhabits his role and as usual chews the scenery. The only problem is this is supposed to be a love story of sorts, and they don’t really have any chemistry. Which brings me to the third act, where we get to the love story, which would be fine only besides a lack of chemistry feels utterly grafted on, along with a subplot involving bigotry. A lot of happens in the third act, but it feels rushed and out of character for Alithea. This is a story we need to be shown instead of told for emotional impact, but it feels like telling.

All that being said, though, overall I liked THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING enough for its positive qualities. Despite the strange pacing and meh conclusion, it had its charms, I was entertained, I enjoyed Elba’s performance a lot, and for these things, I was happy enough.

Filed Under: MEDIA YOU MIGHT LIKE, Movies & TV, The Blog

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