[Michlib-l] U.P. Notable Book Club - Matt Hellman and "The Biting Cold"

[Victor R. Volkman]

      UP Notable Book Club presents a Q&A session with Matt Hellman
      about "The Biting Cold" a dark fantasy set in Copper Harbor

*Official Seal of the U.P. Notable Books 
<https://UPPAA.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b1016c5c910959a236f2ff48f&id=9a8569a5d3&e=2efc3cf0fe>
UP Notable Book Club:* The Crystal Falls Community District Library in 
partnership with the U.P. Publishers & Authors Association (UPPAA) has 
scheduled author events with winners of the /UP Notable Book List/. The 
33rd event is with novelist Matt Hellman who will take us through his 
dark fantasy set during the worst snowstorm in recent memory in Copper 
Harbor. Supernatural threats and an ancient evil not seen in those parts 
in more than a century threatens an already isolated community at the 
tip of the Keweenaw peninsula.

/*When: */January 11th, 2024 at 7 pm Eastern / 6 pm Central

/*Where: */Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87462645166?pwd=NHRMMHFWbnAzbjNWdUZPZTR2RnhqQT09

Meeting ID: 874 6264 5166
Passcode: cold/*
*/

*AUTHOR Matthew Hellman depictedMATTHEW HELLMAN i*s an award-winning 
author who was educated as an Electrical Engineer but has worked most of 
his life in law enforcement. Probably because those two things go 
together like peanut butter and jelly... Always a fan of good writing, 
he is studying the craft and moving toward a retirement gig as an 
author. He enjoys the freedom of fiction and the ability to employ his 
creative mind in the horror genre.

Matt's latest novel, "The Biting Cold" was recently awarded a U.P. 
Notable Book honor. His first novel, "Solomon's Seal", was published by 
Beacon Publishing Group (BPG) in November 2019. His novella, "The 
Hawthorne Blow", was published in January 2021. One of Hellman's short 
stories, "My Nameless Beast", is featured in the anthology, "Six Guns 
Straight From Hell 3", published by Science Fiction Trails Publishing in 
September 2020. This was all a well-thought-out marketing blitz by 
Hellman so that he had offerings covering the full spectrum of the human 
attention span. Matt lives with his wife and three great kids in 
Michigan's beautiful upper peninsula.

The Biting Cold by Matthew Hellman (book cover) 
<https://UPPAA.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b1016c5c910959a236f2ff48f&id=daabf28b67&e=2efc3cf0fe> 
What is it about wintertime that lends itself so supplely to the horror 
genre? Beginning with Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” in 1908, the 
dangerous beauty of winter was driven home.  Now throw in a dash of the 
supernatural, as in John W. Campbell’s “Who Goes There?”, which inspired 
John Carpenter’s low-budget classic “The Thing” (1982) and you have a 
real recipe for edge-of-your-seat chills. Matthew Hellman builds on the 
winter-horror tradition with his latest novel “The Biting Cold”.  In 
1842, the Ontonagon Boulder, an immense tonnage of float copper was 
removed from the eponymous county. That very same year, the Chippewa 
ceded all claims to 30,000 square miles of the Upper Peninsula to the 
United States Government. Hellman uses the purported disappearance of 
people in Copper Harbor in 1842 as the central mystery of “The Biting 
Cold 
<https://UPPAA.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b1016c5c910959a236f2ff48f&id=1af816a52a&e=2efc3cf0fe>”.  
What did those Native Americans know that made them happy to be rid of 
Copper Harbor?

Outside of Copper Harbor, a few other locales are mentioned such as 
Calumet and Eagle Harbor. A key discovery takes place on top of Brockway 
Mountain which will serve as a secondary anchor in the action of the 
coming battle. The mountain it seems is concealing a series of important 
aspects of the evil to come including petroglyphs and huge sinkhole that 
threatens to swallow our two teenage protagonists.

Throughout the area during the ensuing winter, Hellman portrays 
snowmobile and snowshoe pursuit scenes with great detail and accuracy.  
He has a penchant for introducing winter survival techniques and traps 
in just the right proportion and at just the right juncture in the 
storytelling. Even though I grew up watching snowmobile races outside 
Mackinaw City, I learned a thing or two about the dangers of handling a 
big machine in untracked snows, such as how it can dig itself into a 
hole in an unpacked snowbank.

-- Read the full review by Victor R. Volkman on /U.P. Book Review/ 
<https://UPPAA.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b1016c5c910959a236f2ff48f&id=a55f3ad625&e=2efc3cf0fe>.

More information about the U.P. Notable Book list, /U.P. Book Review, 
/and UPPAA can be found on www.UPNotable.com 
<https://UPPAA.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b1016c5c910959a236f2ff48f&id=046d20e4f2&e=2efc3cf0fe>

*<https://UPPAA.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b1016c5c910959a236f2ff48f&id=a72596c2f1&e=2efc3cf0fe>About 
the Upper Peninsula Publishers and Authors Association (UPPAA)*
Established in 1998 to support authors and publishers who live in or 
write about Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, UPPAA is a Michigan nonprofit 
association with over 100 members, many of whose books are featured on 
the organization’s website at www.uppaa.org 
<https://UPPAA.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b1016c5c910959a236f2ff48f&id=9465863920&e=2efc3cf0fe>. 
UPPAA welcomes membership and participation from anyone with a UP 
connection who is interested in writing.

-- 
Regards,

Victor R. Volkman, President
L H Press Inc.
www.LHPress.com
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