My first book Phantom Delivery is out now! If you remember how much fun it was to spend your nights in the 1990s hoping to get scared by the latest R. L. Stine or Christopher Pike novel, you’ll want to check out Nostalgiamares: Phantom Delivery. It was written by a fan of ’90s YA horror for fans of ’90s YA horror.
It’s been a very strange year for me. From having many of my dreams come true to getting diagnosed with ADHD (at age 38!), 2023 has been a dizarre and often frightening rollercoaster. At least I can finally say that my first novel Nostalgiamares: Phantom Deliveryis now available in paperback from the amazing folks at Raven Tale Publishing!
If your gateway to horror was classic ’90s movies like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, and you used to get lost in teen thrillers such as Fear Street and Point Horror then give yourself the gift of Nostalgiamares: Phantom Delivery!
As you’ve probably noticed, maintaining a website isn’t my strongest skill. So, I went ahead and created a Patreon.
Most folks who start a Patreon do so to make extra cash. Selling books isn’t the most lucrative business in the world. Unless you’re a major publisher, that is. Services like Patreon helps creators stay afloat.
While I support the idea of creatives utilizing the platform to pay some bills, I can’t bring myself to ask you for money for anything other than my books. That is why my Patreon is free to anyone.
Signing up means you’ll be notified of anything I post. In that sense, you can think of it as signing up for my official newsletter.
Publishing is hard. Even when you’ve got a great team of people helping you out every step of the way. Nobody is perfect. Mistake happen. Sometimes books are released in less-than-perfect condition.
The same goes for any form of entertainment. Movies have all sorts of mistakes in them. I’m not talking about plot holes or story inconsistencies. I mean stuff going wrong at some point during one of the various stages of production and winding up on the screen for generations of audiences to see.
Art is never flawless.
You see it with video games also. That is a behemoth of an industry, pulling in more money than my tiny brain can even fathom, and they still contain bugs and glitches. While not a big gamer myself, I’ve come across many a pissed-off gaming enthusiast complaining about massive titles arriving in stores before they’re finished just to hit a specific release window.
Does that make it a bad game? Not at all. It just means that a little patience is required while playing through for the first time. The same can be said for books, especially in the age of the ebook.
Despite my best efforts, my debut novel Nostalgiamares: Phantom Delivery contains some typos, formatting mistakes, and a few instances of weird phrasing. As utterly embarrassing as this truth is, I try to be Zen about it. People tell me they like the book. They say they noticed some issues, but assure me it did not hinder their enjoyment. That’s good to hear.
Still, that doesn’t stop me from cringing when I consider the fact that a few writers I admire have copies of the book and are forced to forgive a newbie’s oversight. Then, I remind myself that they were new to this at some point too. Chances are they have a few horror stories of their own to share about slightly imperfect books being sold to readers.
Another helpful tactic is to remember all the times I’ve encountered errors in books released by publishers with far more resources than my own. I won’t point any out here but they do exist. They know who they are.
So, I tell myself it isn’t a big deal. It eases my anxiety. Until I think of someone buying my book after meeting me at an event only to go home, hoping to lose themselves in a new story and be slapped in the face with a fractured sentence. What if they never trust me again?
All I can do about that is stay in constant contact with my publisher, making them aware of what I find, and seeing that it gets corrected. After all, someone who comes across the book a month from now will have no idea there were ever any errors. That is until they find one I missed.
All of that is to say that the book may be offline for a few days soon. We’re working at making the reading experience as simple and enjoyable as possible. So, if you haven’t purchased it yet, it’s okay if you hold off for a bit. I promise it will be worth the wait.
While I haven’t been actively working on the manuscript for almost four decades, it has been quietly brewing in the back of my mind since childhood. There are ideas, themes, and motifs in the book that I can track to very specific moments from my past. That, I believe, is how writers work. Our brains our sticky.
We encounter a mildly interesting idea and it stays with us, collecting other neat thoughts and experiences, until a story has formed. That’s one of the many answers to the infamous question, “Where do you get your ideas?” They come from all the crap our sticky brains have collected throughout the course of our lives.
Although it is early, the reactions I’ve been getting to the book have been amazing. For instance, the stunning blurbs I received. I still can’t believe that these accomplished people took time out of their crazy schedules to read a story from an absolute nobody like me.
Why in the world would the legendary Jonathan Maberry agree to read a book by some dope calling himself Mark Guyer? I don’t know. But he did. Not only that — he liked it! He liked it enough to write an awesome blurb that would make me want to read the book:
“NOSTALGIAMARES: PHANTOM DELIVERY is a mind-bending story of shifting realities that demands an answer to the question ‘Who am I?’ Weird, dark, and highly entertaining.” -Jonathan Maberry, NY Times bestselling author of CAVE 13 and THE SLEEPERS WAR
I mean…unreal!
I reached out to indie author and YouTuber Cameron Chaney to blurb the book because his Library Macabre videos got me back into the mindset I needed to be in to write Nostalgiamares: Phantom Delivery, and because his passion/respect for the kinds of horror novels Harper (my protagonist) finds herself in is unparalelled.
While he read the book, my anxiety went into a tailspin: What if he thinks the book is lame? What if he doesn’t see the in-jokes and meta commentary as interesting or funny? What if he simply refuses to blurb?
Relief washed away all the sweat and panic when he sent me this wonderfully concise blurb identifying the intended audience:
“Adult fans of vintage teen horror will enjoy a nostalgic tumble down the rabbit hole with Nostalgiamares, a loving homage to R.L. Stine’s Fear Street.” – Cameron Chaney, author of AUTOMCROW HIGH and host of Library Macabre
When I read that, I knew I’d done something right.
Then there was S. C. Fisher. I wasn’t as familiar with her work, but I liked the idea of reaching out to a fellow Raven Tale Publishingwriter for a little solidarity. Not only was she incredibly nice to me, but her reaction to my book almost knocked me over. I couldn’t believe it.
How could anyone have written something so incredible about a story I wasn’t even sure would work? Not only did she compare me to the authors who inspired Nostalgiamares, but she used the phrase billet-doux. For a book about a killer pizza man, that’s some pretty fancy language. Read it for yourself:
“With Nostalgiamares: Phantom Delivery, new fiction author Mark Guyer brings his A-game to construct a retro-horror world that delivers everything from murderous pizza delivery drivers to vintage Brendan Fraser; a recipe containing all of my favourite food groups! On a road paved by the masters that came before (Stine, Pike, Cooney), Guyer expertly walks us through a story chock full of witty dialogue, clever red-herrings, and gutsy ‘final girls’, who I actually believedmight just survive the supernatural killers stalking them. Nostalgiamares: Phantom Delivery is the billet-doux to vintage 80s/ 90s YA horror that I never knew I needed – hooking the reader from first syllable to last – and setting up a series that promises to earn its place on your bookshelf among the greats.” – S. C. Fisher, author of the Base Fear series.
These are three great writers who gave me their time, and I am eternally grateful. They made me feel like a real writer.
A hero of mine, D. J. MacHale (you know, the dude who created Are You Afraid of the Dark?) gave me a blurb as well. He didn’t have time to read the novel, but he told me the story sounded “crazy-fun.” I loved that reaction so much that I wanted to use it as a blurb. He gave me permission to do so.
This man created a series that was directly responsible for me becoming a writer. Now, his name is associated with my book. The loop on that is too much for me to comprehend.
Thank you all so, so much. I almost can’t believe it.
One of the reasons I fell in love with Fear Street and Point Horror was the covers. As a movie-obsessed kid/reluctant reader, seeing these covers with terrified teens pulled me in because they looked like film posters.
My favorite covers were for R.L. Stine’s The Baby-Sitter series. The suggested dark, suspenseful stories that played on the fear of being the sole protector of a human life in the face of unknown horror.
The young woman on the cover peered out of the house’s front window, looking at us as if we were the lurking danger hiding just out of sight. The second showed the same character opening the front door, showcasing her courgae despite her vulnerable situation. These images brought us into the story before we even made it to the first page.
Book three changed perspectives, with the determined sitter holding back the door from the monsterous individual trying to grab her. The fourth wasn’t quite as compelling with its young lead character merely talking on the phone with a frightened expression, but it still dared you to give the book a chance.
When Raven Tale Publishing asked me to give them a rundown for the potential cover of my book Nostalgiamares: Phantom Delivery, I knew it had to do the same. I wanted to evoke those classic teen thrillers.
At the same time, I needed it to call back to classic slashers, with the main antagonist of the novel brandishing his murder weapon for the world to see. The blood on the blade was their interpretation, and I support it 100%.
The image and the title should signal to the reader that this is a self-aware book that plays on your familiarity with the genre, setting the tone for all of the unexpected twists and turns to come.
We’re approaching the release. Get ready! Your Phantom Delivery is on the way!
Phantom Dlivery is the first installment of my Nostalgiamares series released by the excellent folks at Raven Tale Publishing. It sees 38-year-old Harper Sumner waking up in the form of fictional popular girl Patricia Weaver, one of the protagonists featured in her favorite young adult horror series Deadmares by A.X. Carver.
I wanted to see what would happen if you literally dropped a modern day reader into the nostalgic world of a book series they grew up loving. At the same time, I was interested in engaging with the very idea of nostalgia, of perception vs reality, and question why the media I grew up loving still retains such a powerful hold on me.
The title is meant to evoke those punny titles adored by creators like R.L. Stine that suggest a dollop of camp thrown in with all the terror and suspense. It refers to the main antagonist of the book, a pizza delivery man in a baseball cap that cloaks his face in shadow and who takes out his victims with a mean pizza cutter. Like a phantom, he can be anywhere, and strike when Harper least expects it.
In some ways, this is a self-contained story. The mystery of who the phantom is and who is behind Harper’s mysterious predicament are answered by the end. However, there are much grander mysteries far beyond the typical scope of a vintage YA thriller that can only be answered over the next three installments.
I’ve written a book titled Nostalgiamares: Phantom Delivery. It is the first installment of a quartet of books about a 38-year-old woman so fed up with the life of and adult that she is transported into the world of Deadmares, the Young Adult horror series she adored as a tween. I started writing it with the intention of honoring (and lovingly satirizing) all of the YA and Middle Grade fiction that proliferated throughout the 1990s. It’s got all the cool stuff you would expect, plus a stalker with a pizza cutter, a serial killer who looks like Cindy Crawford posing as a substitute teacher, a psychic named Madame Skye who can travel the multiverse, a self-aware interactive story element, and a bunch of other fun things I can’t wait to share. During the process, it grew into something unnervingly personal about the importance of presence and the folly of idealizing the past.
Sounds a bit academic, no? Well, I think creative people see their work differently than the audience. For anyone kind enough to check out my books, they will (hopefully) come away thinking it was a fun, meta throwback to the days when R.L. Stine’s slim and riveting volumes dominated the shelves of kids everywhere. This was my intention. However, being the author, I can’t help but include elements from my own life and struggles with anxiety and mental health.
I mention this to let folks know that these books are not intended for young readers. These books were written for those of us who remember being young readers. The kids who hated to read but found themselves lost in stories about bug people, haunted masks, and new kids at school with a dangerous reputation. They’re for individuals who look back at those early years when the days lasted long beyond their expiration date, the future was a lifetime away, and Saturday nights were reseved for Are You Afraid of the Dark?, and want nothing more than to go back there. I wrote them, I suppose, for me.
That being said, I have a hunch that there are more people like me out there. Thus, I wrote them for you. I hope you enjoy.
Mark Guyer Writes When He Can 