Haunted Whispers

INTRODUCTION The book you hold in your hands is what Haunted Whispers should have been from the beginning. Unfortunately, that wasn’t possible when this collection of short stories came into existence back in 2012. At the time, I was young and had a few stories published. I had a few others sitting on my hard drive that were unpublished, probably for good reason. I decided it was time to put a book out, but the thought of writing a novel-length work seemed like a daunting task for which I wasn’t quite ready. A short story collection seemed more reasonable. So, I took the stories I had already written and wrote a few more to make the book a bit thicker and set about learning how to self-publish a book since I didn’t have the confidence in myself to believe a publisher would give it the time of day. At the time, there was another author I had as a friend on f*******: who had self-published his own book. I decided to approach him and ask him how he went about it. By this time, sss’s Createspace had been around for about twelve years, but I’d never heard of it. It seemed like an author’s dream. No upfront costs. They just took a percentage of every book sold. With Createspace, I could make a print book and do an ebook with KDP. The only cost involved was the cover since a member of a writing group I was involved in a few years before was doing some work as an editor for a publisher, so he was kind of enough to help me with editing the book. Within a few months, the book was published and ready for sale. The problem? Almost nobody bought it. A few of my co-workers purchased some copies directly from me. A couple of family members as well. Other than that, I don’t recall the book getting a single sale. This was my fault. While I was spending time learning how to self-publish a book, it never even occurred to me to learn how to market it. I had no idea how to promote myself or my work. So, the book remained for sale, even though no one was buying it, and I busied myself writing a novel. This time, I was determined to get it published by an actual publisher. I had become disillusioned with self-publishing and I wasn’t even close to ready to trying it again. In 2014, I completed a novel called Flushed which is and probably will always be my one published work outside the horror genre. Horror is my passion but that book needed to be written. It was a form of therapy to help me through some tough times I’d been having. My first thought was to send it to an agent and hope for the best. But, another writer friend had put out a few books with a small publisher who was just starting out. At this point, they had been around for about two years. I asked my friend about her experiences with the publisher and she had nothing but nice things to say about her experience, so I sent them my manuscript. At that time, the publisher was known as Creativia but they have since rebranded as Next Chapter Publications, a much better name in my humble opinion. Now, usually, when you send a manuscript to a publisher, a typical wait time for a response is anywhere from six months to a year. So imagine my surprise when I heard back within a week. They had a few questions for me about why I wanted to publish with them rather than self-publish, to which I responded by telling them about my lack of knowledge with regards to marketing and promotion. They told me they could help me with this and sent me a contract, which I read and signed. They worked quickly and the book was out within a few months. I got to work on my next book, a horror novel originally called Burnt Ashes (yes, I know what horrible title it is), which is now Ashes to Ashes. The publisher of my first book picked this one up as well. Within a few months of that one coming out, I was contacted by the publisher. They noticed I had self-published a collection of short stories and wanted to know if they could put it out under their banner. I was more than happy to oblige. The book got a complete overhaul. The publisher and I re-edited the book, they slapped a new cover on it, and I had now had three books published with them. Life seemed good. But it wasn’t. Not entirely. Haunted Whispers weighed on me for years afterward. There were some good stories in it. Stories I was proud to have written and readers seemed to enjoy. There were others, well…let’s just say I wasn’t as proud of those. Two of the stories, Home for the Holidays and Consumed, were written for specific anthologies and both were rejected. I was too naïve to realize that perhaps there were good reasons why they were turned down. Also, I was always bothered by the violence in Home for the Holidays. The story was written for an anthology of extreme horror. Now, I do enjoy reading some authors who write some pretty extreme stuff, but it was never something I enjoyed writing. I’ve written three extreme horror stories, one of which was published. But looking back, I’m embarrassed by all of them. Another story, The Lost, was weak. It was a good idea when I wrote, but the execution of it was lacking. It was a story written specifically for the collection and looking back on it, I should have scrapped it. A Tad Bit Ghostly is a story I enjoyed writing and some readers have said it’s their favorite in the book. But it didn’t fit the tone. The book was filled with haunting stories, most of which did not have a happy ending, and there’s this screwball comedy at the end. So, what was I going to do with this book in which I had no faith and could no longer claim I was proud of? I planned to pull the book from the publisher, give it a new title and cover, and pull the four previously mentioned stories and replace them with better ones written since the original publication of the book. I was going to self-publish it (yes, even though I had sworn off self-publishing for good. Trust me, I wasn’t happy about it). While discussing the idea of pulling the book and me getting the publishing rights back with Next Chapter, they said they were open to the idea of me swapping out some of the stories, adding this introduction, and adding in story notes at the end of the book. The compromise was, the cover would remain (which I’m okay with, I do love the cover), as would the original title. I could live with that, especially if it meant not having to venture into the scary world of self-publishing again. I’ve done it twice and fell flat on my face both times. So, dear reader, here is the new version of this book. My preferred version. I think it’s a stronger book having made some changes to it and I hope you think so too. --Joseph Mulak Spring 2021