Last August, I was approached by the mastermind of the Haunted Mansion Retreat, Rain Graves, and invited to serve as editor for The Haunted Mansion Project: Year Two.  The book would collect nonfiction, short stories, and poetry inspired by the 4 days 17 writers and artists would spend in the Mansion in September 2013.

Of course I said yes.  I love ghost stories more than any other breed of horror story.  I had been thrilled to have my work appear in The Haunted Mansion Project: Year One, edited by E.S. Magill.  She’d done the hard work of organizing the first book in a coherent way that added power to the stories as they built on each other.  All I had to do would be follow in her footsteps and work with professionals like S.G. Browne, Sephera Giron, Stacey Graham, Angel Leigh McCoy, Lisa Morton, Yvonne Navarro, Weston Ochse, and more. Piece of cake!

I am so proud of how the book turned out.  It debuted on June 13, at the World Horror Convention in New Orleans. On June 14, a bunch of the contributors gave a vertical tasting of the book, reading 5-minute snippets of their work. The event was a shivery success.

Before the convention, I’d had a brainstorm: I could interview the contributors to the book here on my blog.  They’d have a chance to talk about what influenced their contributions to The Haunted Mansion Project — and I could sate my curiosity about their experiences (supernatural or inspirational) at the Mansion last year.

The biannual Haunted Mansion Retreat is going to skip next year, but will return in September 2015. Registration is already open, although limited to 30 people, so we don’t overwhelm the spookiness of the Mansion.  Some of the Survivors have already signed up for their third go-round with the ghosts.  You can check out the details here.

Tune in tomorrow for the first of my interviews. In the following days, we’ll hear from Rain Graves, Sephera Giron, E.S. Magill, Rena Mason, Lisa Morton, Kim Richards, and the leader of the GhostGirls paranormal investigation team, Nichole Boscia — and the rest of the Haunted Mansion Survivors.