Horror Factor is an online source for horror authors who want to hone their craft. The site offers not only monthly tips, a writer's forum, and articles on the horror writing craft, but also on publishing, promotion and marketing horror fiction. Here to talk about the site is co-founder Lee Masterson. Read on to find out all the goodies this site offers and how to subscribe to their monthly, highly informative newsletter.  

Thanks for this interview, Lee. Tell us a bit about Horror Factor. When and how did it get started?

Horror Factor was created in 2002 - about three years after we first launched the original Fiction Factor. The original site contains hundreds of articles on general fiction writing advice. It occurred to us that the information a horror writer might need would be more specific than just learning grammar or sentence structure or finding a publisher. Horror writing tips are also going to be vastly different for a children's writer or a fantasy writer. So we sat down and had a huge brainstorming session and came up with the various sub-sites that are aimed specifically at writers in each of the individual genres we chose.

As I'm a huge horror fan, I decided to build Horror Factor before the other sub-sites. It's remained my favorite to this day!

What does your site offer authors?

The websites as a whole were specifically created to help all writers to improve, hone and strengthen writing skills. There are entire sections in the Fiction Factor article archives on getting published, finding editors or agents, submitting or formatting work, and much more.

Horror Factor specifically caters to horror or dark fiction writers. We try hard to find quality horror-specific tips and advice that could potentially help a writer to improve his or her craft or to find publication. It's surprisingly difficult to find enough quality work in this genre designed to assist newer writers to hone their craft. We're always on the look out for more ways we can help out horror writers.

What about promotional opportunities?

We would sincerely love to promote all authors on our site somewhere - but our web host wouldn't be happy! We already blow out their hosting and bandwidth capacities quite often with the heavy traffic such an enormous site produces.

What we can offer is a bit of promotion in the "Writer Announcements" section in the newsletter. If any writer at all has some writing news they'd like to shout out or perhaps get some free promotion for a book/story publication, then feel free to hop onto our forum. Post your 'woo hoo' into the Announcements section. Remember to leave a link where everyone can find you. I'll get that announcement into the email newsletter and we'll let the world know about it for you!