Sleepy Hollow. Washington Irving wrote the classic horror short in 1820. It was made into a popular Disney movie in 1949 and played decade after decade afterwards, a Hollywood movie by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp, and currently a JJ Abrahms American television series in its third season. Loved the book and the Disney movie, the Tim Burton was fair in my opinion, and I haven’t seen one episode yet of the television series (I’ll watch the first two seasons when they come out on Netflix). But all this shows that Washington Irving crafted an enduring story set in early, post-Revolutionary America in the real town of Sleepy Hollow, New York and featuring an especially unique and powerful apparition known primarily as the Headless Horseman.
My Sleepy Hollow Horrors (Hollow Blood and The Devil’s Patch) is my second series and my first adaption of another author’s work. With any genre, subject, or work I write in, I have to put my own spin on it and the Sleepy Hollow Legend is no different.
What’s different about my version of Irving’s classic?
I tried to stay true to Irving original work by keeping the main characters and especially the feel of the region as described. What is different is that it is a decade after the events that ended with the confrontation between Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman. A stranger comes into town (Sleepy Hollow) looking to find out exactly what happened to Ichabod, so in that way Book One is a detective story.
I love history and I was born in New York so I was able to weave real history into the fiction story. Did you know Washington DC became the nation’s capitol after Philadelphia, PA? We see the tiny specks of flame that would ignite the American Civil War sixty years later. We also learn that the Horseman isn’t Sleepy Hollow’s only apparition to be spoken of in the wee hours of night by the fireplace.
Book Two takes a different approach. There is no mystery to be solved as in Book One. All there is facts. The stranger’s identity is revealed and, for those who know the reference, he is assembling his own Super Posse—if you don’t know the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid reference, think the movie Predator.
It was such a joy to write both books—the first is 100 pages and the second is 115 pages. That was also by design to keep with Irving’s classic. He wrote a short story; I wasn’t about to write an 800 page tome.
Hollow Blood is a scary read with a touch of the detective thriller and the ever ominous question hanging over them: “Will Death Be Upon Them All?” In The Devil’s Patch, it’s all about the “hunt that damn monster down” sub-genre.
So don’t forget to stop by my 7-stop Hollow Blood Blog Tour with Beck Valley Books (Monday, October 26th to Tuesday, November 3rd)! Check out each stop and the reviews. And don’t forget to enter out last giveaway for the year: a Worldwide $50 Amazon Gift Card /Paypal Cash Giveaway! (Click on any blog tour stop for details)
Get your own copies and enjoy my Sleepy Hollow Horrors today.
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Austin Dragon is the author of over 30 books in science fiction, fantasy, and classic horror. His works include the sci-fi detective LIQUID COOL series, the epic fantasy FABLED QUEST CHRONICLES, the international futuristic epic AFTER EDEN Series, the classic SLEEPY HOLLOW HORRORS, and new military sci-fi PLANET TAMERS series. He is a native New Yorker but has called Los Angeles, California home for more than twenty years. Words to describe him, in no particular order: U.S. Army, English teacher, one-time resident of Paris, ex-political junkie, movie buff, Fortune 500 corporate recruiter, renaissance man, futurist, and dreamer.
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Your books look and sound absolutely amazing!!!!!