Hello everyone. Hope this post finds you happy, healthy, and enjoying all that the Spring season has to offer. It’s been a long cold Winter here in the Great White North and personally, I’m glad to be rid of it. There is just something about the Blue skies and warmer weather that always makes me smile. Makes me want to read a good book too!

On that note, I’m excited to be running another book promotion this weekend. Last month’s JIGSAW MAN promotion was a huge success — exposure-wise as well as sales-wise — and I’m hoping that with your help we can try to capture some of that magic once again. Starting right now and running until Sunday April 21, my full length horror novel VALLEY OF THE SCARECROW will be reduced down to the insanely low price of just 99 cents for the Ebook version. It will be available at most online bookstores, including:

Amazon
Amazon UK
Amazon.ca
Kobo
Apple
Smashwords

This book is my homage to all those great horror/slasher movies that came out in the 1980s,, the movies I grew up watching and loving. If you are a fan of the classic slasher/monster movies, I’m sure that you will love this book as well.

Here’s a little tease from the book’s cover description:

Gord Rollo’s chilling homage to horror/slasher films!

During the great depression, a small backwoods community in Iowa face even more difficult times than most, having to endure the slowly fading sanity of their leader, Reverend Joshua Miller. When it is clear the man has slipped beyond the edge of reason and perhaps signed a deal with the devil, the citizens unite to stop him any way they can, breaking into the church to lash the reverend to his wooden alter cross then boarding up the windows and doors to leave him to fate and God’s judgment. The people of Oak Valley then abandoned their town to the cornfields and woods; ending the madness for what they hoped was forever.

They were wrong!

Seventy-four years later, the corn and trees have taken back the area and not much is left of the once thriving little community but Joshua Miller’s desecrated church still stands, and within its boarded up and sun-baked walls something that used to be a holy man waits for whoever is unfortunate enough to release him from his cross…

THE SCARECROW WILL WALK AT MIDNIGHT…

The book also includes a FREE bonus short story about Reverend Miller that is a prequel to the events that take place in the novel. It’s called THE LAST STRAW and is one of my personal favorite short stories, it’s worth more that the 99 cents all on its own! Here’s hoping you give the book a chance and help me spread the word. Any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated. Every author needs a great street team so if you can talk about the promotion to your friends, post about it on Facebook, Twitter, your own blog/websites, any message boards you frequent, or anything else you can think of, I’d be thrilled. A million thanks in advance!

While I have you here though, I thought some of you might be interested in hearing how I came up with the idea for this novel. I know I’m always interested in hearing an author’s thoughts on his books and stories, so here goes…

Valley Of The Scarecrow came about sort of by accident to be honest. I was at a horror convention in Baltimore, Maryland years ago and ended up having a drink with a film executive from Dimension Films. We were discussing horror movies, of course, and I asked him (I’ll keep him nameless just because I haven’t asked his permission to post his name) what kind of script he would love to see come across his desk. He told me he’d love to see a good Scarecrow story come his way. He loved them and thought most of the movies that had ever been filmed about them were fairly bad or too cheesy. We agreed that the scariest part of the Jeepers Creepers franchise was when the Creeper was PRETENDING to be a scarecrow at the start of the second movie. If that was so cool, what would a good movie about a REAL scarecrow be like?

Not wanting to lose his interest, I told a little fib (okay, I blatantly lied) that I had been working on just such a film script. I told him I had always seen scarecrows as evil parodies of Jesus on the cross and said my scarecrow would have a religious background to add weight to the character and make him even creepier. I even came up with the title (Valley Of The Scarecrow) on the spot and we talked about how cool the movie trailer/poster would look and sound when it said:

Yea thou you walk through the valley of the scarecrow,

you SHALL fear his evil…

Anyway, once I got home from the convention (and sobered up) I realized I had a pretty damn good idea in my head for this scarecrow project and I started to write it up as a movie script. That project kind of petered out as Dimension Films was bought out and my movie executive friend moved on to another career but I never forgot about the idea. Flash forward a few years and I had my book deal with Leisure Books in New York and when I was asked what my idea was for my fourth book (after I’d handed in STRANGE MAGIC) I just blurted out “Hey, I have this pretty cool idea for a novel about an evil preacher who becomes a real flesh and blood scarecrow.” My editor loved the idea so off I went to write the novel.

It was never really intended to be a book, and when you read it you will see how it basically reads like the movie script it was supposed to be. I like that about it though. It’s different than my other books – more raw and stripped down to the essentials, like a movie would be. And hey, I’ve had lots of interest in turning this one into a film so if all goes well, Reverend Miller may yet make it to the big screen. My fingers are certainly crossed for that to happen. In fact, I honestly think this book and this character has real potential for a string of books and movies. We’ve all heard about Freddy and Michael and Jason and Pinhead but they are all getting a little long in the tooth. Perhaps it’s time for a new legend to be unleashed. Give Valley Of The Scarecrow a read and let me know what you think?

Cheers!