By MICHAEL GINGOLD
True story-inspired terror lives on through the decades—and pop culture—in THE REMAKING, the new novel by Clay McLeod Chapman (pictured) that arrives today. Read on for info on the book and its promotional tour.
Published by Quirk Books, THE REMAKING is now available in hardcover and as an e-book (click here to purchase it); an audiobook will be out October 15. The synopsis: “Ella Louise has lived in the woods surrounding Pilot’s Creek, Virginia, for nearly a decade. Publicly, she and her daughter Jessica are shunned by their upper-crust family and the Pilot’s Creek residents. Privately, desperate townspeople visit her apothecary for a cure to what ails them—until Ella Louise is blamed for the death of a prominent customer. Accused of witchcraft, both mother and daughter are burned at the stake in the middle of the night. Ella Louise’s burial site is never found, but the little girl has the most famous grave in the South: a steel-reinforced coffin surrounded by a fence of interconnected white crosses.
“Their story will take the shape of an urban legend as it’s told around a campfire by a man forever marked by his boyhood encounters with Jessica. Decades later, a boy at that campfire will cast Amber Pendleton as Jessica in a ’70s horror movie inspired by the Witch Girl of Pilot’s Creek. Amber’s experiences on that set and its meta-remake in the ’90s will ripple through pop culture, ruining her life and career after she becomes the target of a witch hunt. Amber’s best chance to break the cycle of horror comes when a true-crime investigator tracks her down to interview her for his popular podcast. But will this final act of storytelling redeem her—or will it bring the story full circle, ready to be told once again? And again. And again…”
Chapman, a prolific novel and comics writer whose scripting credits include Craig William Macneill’s THE BOY and episodes of Glass Eye Pix’s TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE, launches THE REMAKING at a party in Brooklyn tonight. Details of that and the rest of his book tour are as follows:
• Tonight, 7-9 p.m.:
POWERHOUSE @ the Archway
28 Adams Street (Adams & Water Street @ the Archway)
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Free event; for more info, click here.
• Thursday, October 10 at 7 p.m.:
Charm City Books
782 Washington Blvd.
Baltimore, MD 21230
For more info, click here.
• Friday, October 11 at 7 p.m.:
The Poe Museum
1914 East Main St.
Richmond, VA 23223
For more info, click here.
• Monday, October 14 at 7 p.m.:
Flyleaf Books
752 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
Chapel Hill, NC 27514
For more info, click here.
• Tuesday, October 15 at 7 p.m.
Park Road Books
4139 Park Rd.
Charlotte, NC 28209
For more info, click here.
• Thursday-Saturday, October 17-19:
THE PUMPKIN PIE SHOW: THE REMAKING
Two shows a night: 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.
Under St. Marks Theater
94 Saint Marks Place
New York, NY 10009
For tickets and info, click here. Seating is extremely limited. Each audience member will receive a copy of THE REMAKING with their ticket.
• Tuesday, October 29th at 11:30 a.m.
Rutgers University’s Inside the Writers Lab
The Plangere Culture Lab, Murray Hall 302
New Brunswick, NJ
• Sunday, November 17 at 4 p.m.
Dark Delicacies
822 N. Hollywood Way
Burbank, CA 91505
For more info, click here.
For more on Chapman and his work, hit up his official website.
