Are You Hep to the Jive?

You bet you are... as long as you've got these five CDs to shuffle up a Hep-Cat Holiday both reet and poteet...

Why I Still Like Two-Gun Bob

"And Solomon Kane shuddered, for he had looked on Life that was not Life as he knew it, and had dealt and witnessed Death that was not Death as he knew it. Again the realization swept over him, as it had in the dust-haunted halls of Atlantean Negari, as it had in the abhorrent Hills of the Dead, as it had in Akaana -- that human life was but one of a myriad forms of existence, that worlds existed spun on through the untold ages, Kane realized, and as it spun it spawned Life, and living things which wriggled about it as maggots are spawned in rot and corruption. Man was the dominant maggot now -- why should he in his pride suppose that he and his adjuncts were the first maggots -- or the last to rule a planet quick with unguessed life?"

Robert E. Howard
"The Footfalls Within"
The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane

Thursdays

"Stimulation? Thursdays. Motivation? Thursdays. Paydays. That's it. It's important not to think too much about what you do. You see, with my way of thinking there are always Thursdays -- no matter how the picture turns out."

--Lee Marvin

American Actor

The Original Mr. Fox

Just discovered that my old buddy Rockin' Randy Fox has whomped himself up a blog. If you're in the mood for some real-deal monsterkid memories, click on over to A Schmuck With an Underwood and check out Randy's essay, "The Communal Deadly Mantis, or 'Movie Good, Piano Bad!'" It's hilarious, even if you're not old enough to remember the excitement that could set a young movie lover's heart beating pitter-pat when the new issue of the TV Guide arrived in the mail. And, yep, I'll admit it -- as a kid I used to attack the TV Guide with a red felt pen to mark shows I wanted to see as soon as it showed up, and I often set my alarm clock for truly ungodly hours to catch movies in those pre-VCR days. (Not that I caught them all -- while Randy always seemed to miss Bride of Frankenstein, my tales of woe were missing first-run TV shows like Kolchak and Planet of the Apes because football games fell on Friday night [and nope, I wasn't a jock... I was in the band]).

Anyway, click on over and tune in. I'm sure Mr. Fox will keep things interesting. After all, Randy knows his stuff when it comes to movies, music, comics, and all the cool marginalia that falls in between. I mean, this is the guy who cooked up a Gene Vincent/Allison Hayes story for my B-Movie antho, It Came From the Drive-In. If you read that one, you'll remember that Mr. Fox shook, rattled, and rolled that wild pair straight into The Twilight Zone.

With Elvis as the bad guy.

And Vic Morrow along for the ride, too.

Now, that was a bucketful of rockin' good.

'Nuff said.

Crucified Dreams

Comin' at ya this February, a new anthology from Joe R. Lansdale and Tachyon Books. Crucified Dreams looks like another great compilation from Hisownself, and I'm proud to be part of it.

Introduction Joe R. Lansdale
The Whimper of Whipped Dogs Harlan Ellison ®
The Monster Joe Haldeman
The Mojave Two-Step Norman Partridge
Front Man David Morrell
Interrogation B Charlie Huston
The Quickening Michael Bishop
The Evening and the Morning and the Night Octavia E. Butler
Love in Vain Lewis Shiner
Beast of the Heartland Lucius Shepard
Coffins on the River Jeffrey Ford
Game Night at the Fox and Goose Karen Joy Fowler
Copping Squid Michael Shea
Access Fantasy Jonathan Lethem
Singing on a Star Ellen Klages
Quitters, Inc. Stephen King
Nightbeat Neal Barrett, Jr.
Window Bob Leman
The Pit Joe R. Lansdale
Loss Tom Piccirilli

The Flat Zantis

Lock the doors.

Hide the children.

They're here!

Your Basic New Year's BANG!

Work by yours truly turned up on a couple of "best of the year" lists. First off, Stomping On Yeti chose Lesser Demons as a noteworthy short story collection, comparing my work to my buddy Laird Barron's thusly: "The yin to Barron's yang, Norman Partridge's horror is less literary and more raw. If Barron is the football player who studies the finest QBs and demonstrates text book mechanics, Partridge is the pure gamer, the kind that learned the game in the vacant lot, the kid that beats the odds time after time. His fiction is pulpy and raw, full of overambitious simile and metaphor that shouldn't work but always does. He writes about sheriffs and soldiers, the kind of hard-nosed men who do what needs to be done because, hell, someone has to do it."

To top that off, Blu Gilliand of Examiner.com fame chose Lesser Demons as his favorite book of the year, while my Cemetery Dance collection, Johnny Halloween, clocked in at number five on his Top Ten list. Even better than that is the fine company of writers I'm rubbing shoulders with on Blu's list: Stephen King, Joe Lansdale, Tim Lebbon, and my good buddy Tom Piccirilli.

But wait, there's more: Blu's also started what promises to be a great blog on all things horror called The October Country. Click on over and check it out. You'll be glad you did.