Not Dead... Only Dormant

Well, it's been a while. Not much blogging in the last few months. Of course, I could give you a bucketful of reasons for that. They'd make sense to me. Hey, they might even make sense to you.

But to tell you the truth, explanations always end up sounding like alibis to me. Let's just say that American Frankenstein is coming back, and these days I'm working hard on an overdue project called Oktober Shadows. The going hasn't been easy with this novella. In fact, some days working on it has seemed a metaphorical exercise in battling burning windmills that'd test the Monster himself (and you can toss in a few bubbling sulphur pits, too). But the story finally feels right, and it's going well, and that is more than okay with me.

After all, this is October. It's the perfect time to be writing this piece. Another long California summer is dying (finally), and it's almost my favorite day of the year. Right now the page I've got minimized down there on my task bar is littered with dead werewolves, and it feels good to be the guy who put them there.

Which is really kind of odd, if you think about it. Getting so wrapped up in a world that only exists on paper. Maybe you have to be a writer to understand something like that. Or maybe not.

Still, when all is said and done, I hope those of you who pre-ordered Oktober Shadows from the fine folks at Cemetery Dance will find it worth the wait. Thanks to Rich Chizmar and Brian Freeman at CD for their patience, and thanks to those of you who ordered the book for the same. Believe me, I appreciate it more than you know... especially you readers who've taken time to drop me a line and tell me how much you're looking forward to the book, regardless of the delay.

Now, time to post this and get back to another dark land.

A place called Oktober.

The werewolves there are dead.

But to the north there are vampires...

Sunday Supplement 7/24/11

Tom Piccirilli: All My Crushes Are Dead.

That's how it's done, son (i.e. I can't wait for this).

Here's what I'm reading right now. One of the most exciting moments of my comic buying kidhood was buying the first ten issues of this book off the rack at the local liquor store. These days, I'm often surprised when discussions of this character don't even mention the guys who set him shambling down his dark road... but, man. They did fine stuff, and waiting month-to-month for these tales was one of my first real lessons in A-N-T-I-C-P-A-T-I-O-N.

Great piece on the Top Ten Lost Horror Movies... especially if you find silent horror as creepy as I do.

"For Charles Bronson"

Last Call at Vampire Lake

Just saw that the trade edition of Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy 2 is now sold out over at the Subterranean Press website. Looks like copies can still be had over at Amazon... but my Spidey senses are tingling on this one (i.e. if you snooze, you lose, amigos).

My novella "Vampire Lake" is in this anthology, and thanks to all of you who've written to tell me how much you enjoyed it. The San Francisco Book Review just chimed in, calling my tale "a new classic." "Vampire Lake" also earned great reviews from Fantasy Book Critic and Locus, so I'm pleased with the reaction to this one.

And if you'd like to pull up a bucket of water from subterranean depths and have yourself a free taste, just click here.

Johnny Halloween OOP

Just had word from Brian Freeman at Cemetery Dance that Johnny Halloween: Tales of the Dark Season has gone out of print. You can still grab copies at Amazon and Camelot Books, and probably a few other places out there, but you probably don't want to wait too long to pull the trigger.

And: Thanks to all of you who already dug into your wallets and picked up a copy. I appreciate it!

Horror for Mom

Mother issues? It all starts here.

Mom is big and green... and flosses with the belts of men.

It's all about motherhood... and things blowing up.

Shop early. I'm sure these will go fast.

A Dark Harvest at Seton Catholic Central High (Part 4)

Here's the last part of my Dark Harvest interview with Kevin Lucia's Creative Writing students. Enjoy!

Dave: Why didn't anyone question the ritual before Pete?

There were people who did -- Kelly Haines' dad for one. But people like that ran up against the Harvester's Guild. And you can figure out what the Guild did to them. They ended up like Kelly's dad, just another example to everyone in town of the cost of stepping out of line.

Marieke: Why didn't the parents stand up and do anything?

Part of the answer to that one is in the answer above. Another part is human nature, which is something most horror writer's explore. I believe most people cling to a sense of stability, sometimes at a great cost. And the cost of the Run in Dark Harvest may seem extreme at first, but not when you place it within the parameters of human history. Take Nazi Germany, for example. People lived in that society, lived their lives day-to-day, got up and went to jobs and came home and made dinner. Laughed and cried on the weekends. I'm sure some of them didn't know what was going on, and some of them chose to ignore it, and some of them were knee-deep in it but still managed to close their doors at night and sleep like babies. I'm sure others battled nightmares, and some couldn't sleep at all. None of that's pretty, or pleasant, but for me it reflects one of the darker and more frightening truths about the human condition.

John: You don't give much history or background to the rituals. Why?

Good question... and one I get a lot. Again, part of this answer is in the one above. For most people, I think why isn't necessarily the most important question when it comes to day-to-day existence. The important question is how. As in: I don't care why this is happening; I care how I'm going to get through it day-to-day.

That's something I've explored in a lot of my stories, and for me it's a much more interesting question than why. Really, why's are a dime-a-dozen. If I wanted to toss one into Dark Harvest, it could have been as simple as one line or a paragraph: Well, the town was built on an old Indian burial ground, and there was this curse, and the October Boy was part of a ritual to make a deal with the Devil, and... You get the idea.

To tell the truth, I didn't care about any of that. I wasn't concerned with why's. I cared about how people would live within the very dark parameters they faced in that town. I cared about the how's. For me, those were the questions that made things interesting, and those were the questions that shaped the story. Seeing how each character dealt with the situation. The environment. The horror. Seeing how reactions and actions shaped them. For me, that's the real meat of most stories, and that was my focus in Dark Harvest.

New Cemetery Dance Website

I'm bumping Part 4 of my interview with the students at Seton CC High to Friday to make way for some news that rattles one of the Horror genre's favorite boneyards: Rich Chizmar and Brian Freeman have unveiled a reboot of the Cemetery Dance Website. Poke around the grounds and you'll find a Forum (I just registered), a Norman Partridge page, The Writer's Corner (where you can get some great advice from CD authors, including yours truly), Breaking News, and Interviews with some of your favorite writers.

And hey. What's that? There's even a tab for forthcoming eBooks?

Cue afterburners. These guys are ready to roll.