Rebecca Rowland book release

Cambridge College alumna (MEd, '12) Rebecca Rowland will be appearing at Barnes & Noble, Holyoke on October 13, 2018, as part of the store's Local Author Extravaganza. Ms. Rowland will be signing copies of her short story collection, The Horrors Hiding in Plain Sight, as well as the Halloween-themed anthology Ghosts, Goblins, Murder, and Madness to which she contributed and curated.

Rebecca Rowland grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts, but spent much of her early adult life in the Boston area. An alumna of American International College with a double major in English and Psychology, she received her master’s degree in English from Simmons College and Master of Education from Cambridge College before pursuing an advanced graduate certificate in Library Information Science at Kent State University. After teaching high school English for many years, she became a librarian and freelanced as a copy-editor for graduate students, publishing houses, a celebrity's blog, and a large public union. Her first published work was a ghostwritten memoir of a former victims' rights advocate. She is a proud member of both the American Library Association and the Horror Writers Association and makes a home with her family in Western Massachusetts. Kane Hodder, horror movie icon, calls Rowland’s writing “a fresh and unique breath in the horror genre.” Special effects legend Tom Savini notes, “Sometimes the best special effects are the ones done in the reader's mind; for her magically detailed description, Rebecca Rowland deserves an honorary FX award.” 

About the books

The Horrors Hiding in Plain Sight (ISBN 9781943201280, released September 2018) features seventeen short stories in the vein of Flannery O’Connor:

From obsessive sadists and a Poe-preaching admirer to callous serial killers and a blood-thirsty spouse, the residents of Rebecca Rowland’s universe dwell in the everyday realm of crime and punishment tempered with fixation and madness. There are no vampires, zombies, or magical beings within these walls; these monsters don’t lurk under the bed or in the shadows: they are the people we see every day at work, in the supermarket, and in broad daylight. They are the horrors that hide in plain sight, and they will unsettle and terrify more than any supernatural being ever could.

Ghosts, Goblins, Murder, and Madness: Twenty Tales of Halloween, edited by Rebecca Rowland (ISBN 9781943201693, released August 2018) features twenty-one different voices hailing from five different countries and eleven states and a wide array of styles, storylines, and horror subgenres:

Devil's Night, Day of the Dead, and Halloween have been celebrated around the world in one form or another, beginning with the Ancient Celts over two-thousand years ago. For some revelers, it's a time for guising, or dressing up in elaborate costume; for others, it's a time for practical jokes and mischief, and for some, it's a reverent occasion to acknowledge the thin line between earth and the spirit world. In this same vein, the stories in this collection provide a wide-angle lens at what comprises the unique expanse of horror fiction today. From hobgoblins and apparitions, to haunted dwellings and cursed possessions, to good intentions gone awry and evil ones turned on the perpetrator, these twenty tales will unsettle, frighten, tickle, and caution, and in the end, readers may take heed before ever again accompanying their children trick-or-treating, striking up conversations in anonymous chat rooms, or fortifying their homes in an attempt to prevent Halloween vandalism.