Another Nightmare

While I'm in Nightmare Magazine mode -- just a head's up about a story that ran earlier in the year. Check out "Blackbirds," available as a free read or a podcast... and enjoy!

Sunday Supplement 10/13/13

Lon Chaney said: "There's nothing funny about a clown in the moonlight." Apparently, there's nothing funny about a clown on a box of breakfast cereal, either. Forget Famous Monsters of Filmland, and Aurora monster models, and Vampira and Bob Wilkins. It's stuff like this that gave birth to a generation of Monsterkids. Really. A couple spoonfuls of Sugar Rice Krinkles and every kid around the table looked just like this:

Speaking of Ray Russell (and sardonic grins), test-drive this personal assessment of writerly motivation: "I would say... ego, guilt, boredom, a love of language, and the desire to entertain myself. I think it was William Saroyan who said he wrote so that he would have something good to read in his old age. That's not a bad reason."

Okay. I kind of doubt this is a kosher product, but I couldn't pass it up. "Oh, Chick!" I bought the coffee cup, too.

Macabre Republic visits the haunted Hudson Valley. Man, those are some serious Jacks!

For my $$$$$, Mondo Zombie Boogaloo is just another way of spelling "2013 Halloween Essential." Some great tracks here courtesy of Yep Roc Records; I'm already addicted to "Theme from Young Frankenstein" and "Theme from Halloween" carved up and surf-stitched and electrified into mean new monsters by Los Straitjackets. Plus "Tingler Blues" and "Demon Death" from Southern Culture on the Skids -- the latter is a mean little short story of a song with a Deadbolt vibe. Nevie Rose's faves are "Que Monstruos Son" ("Dad! It's 'Monster Mash'! In Spanish!" *) and "Goo Goo Muck." And, hey, you can never go wrong with any version of "Monster Surfing Time." That's just boss, hoss.

And last but (hopefully) not least, an American Frankenpost Flashback: Five Favorite Universal Horrors for Halloween. You don't have to wait for the big day, though... it never hurts to get an early start on your Halloween viewing.


* Viva hombre lobo... and Morticia, too!

And Meanwhile, at the Bottom of the Bloody Box...

...I discovered a full set of the new Penguin Horror series. Thanks to Elda Rotor of Penguin for sending these. I look forward to dipping into each of 'em this October (Tia has long made a habit of reading Jackson's The Haunting every Halloween, so I'm sure she'll snatch that one).

It's especially gratifying to see Ray Russell's Haunted Castles included in this set. Russell -- the one-time executive fiction editor of Playboy who helped promote the work of such writers as Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson -- is himself a bit of a forgotten man these days. Guillermo del Toro sums up Russell's work this way in his introduction: "Russell links postpulp literature and the Grand Guignol tradition with the modern sensibilities of America in the 1960s. Within him resides a neo-paganistic streak that is passed from Algernon Blackwood and Sax Rohmer to him and other writers of unusual proclivities, such as Bernard J. Hurwood. A fascinating combination of the liberal and the heretic... Russell is the literary equivalent of the Italian filmmaker Mario Bava, a supersaturated neo-Gothiscist who shines above the premises of his material based on style, conviction, and artistic flair."

Well said... and if you've never read "Sardonicus," you need to fix that up right now. You'll see just how right del Toro is.

A Box of Bloody Hearts...

...hit the doorstep today at Casa Partridge. I wasn't expecting it. Imagine my surprise when I knifed into a box from Penguin and encountered this marvelously gorific tableau:

Yep. There's a cover that doesn't whisper. Which is another way of saying that Penguin has done a fantastic job rebooting S. T. Joshi's American Supernatural Tales. Formerly part of the Penguin Classics imprint, now out from Penguin Horror with a new intro by Guillermo del Toro.

That means you've got great intro's times two in the new edition, as Joshi and del Toro are two of the brightest gents in the horror business. Plus tales by Poe, Hawthorne, Bierce, Lovecraft, Bloch, Bradbury, Jackson, King, etc. Nice to have made the cut here... though it does feel a little strange to be in a TOC populated by more dead writers than living.

Oh, well. Could be I'm just being morbid (who? me? really?)... but somehow it does stir visions of hitting an elevator button late one night at the World Horror Con and recognizing familiar faces as the doors slide open -- Eddie Poe with a raven perched on his shoulder, and Two-Gun Bob, and rail-thin HPL, and king-sized Karl Wagner red-eyed and red-bearded and ready to rumble one last time.

HPL says, "Room for one more, Norman."

I don't think so, guys... I'm taking the stairs.

Big Mac

Just finished a new short story. Can't say much about it right now, because the anthology is in stealth project mode pending the publisher's announcement. The good news is that the finished product should be out fairly quickly.

Apart from that, I'll just say that the story is called "Incarnadine." Imaginative port of embarkation? I had the idea that I'd write "Macbeth" in five days, masquerading as a small-town noir. Yep. In about 3,000 words, too. There's a bucketful of hubris for you.

Anyway, I gave up on the whole Shakespearean thing fairly quickly... at least in a literal sense.

But I did keep the blood.

There's plenty of that.

Stay tuned.

10/31: Bloody Mary

Yeah. I know. It's been a long time.

But: I figured a great way to revive American Frankenstein would be with a new story of the Halloween variety by yours truly, now available online courtesy of John Joseph Adams and Nightmare Magazine. So grab yourself a mug of spiced cider and click on over for "10/31: Bloody Mary." You can read or listen. Either way, Bloody Mary's waiting just for you... along with a post-apocalyptic cyclops, a fistful of goblins, and a whole lot of gunpowder thrown in.

So enjoy. After all, it's October. The Dark Season has begun. Let's kick things into gear... and I'll be back soon.

Sunday Supplement 11/11/12

Don't know how I missed Dale Watson until now. I've about worn out The Sun Sessions and The Truckin' Sessions, and it looks like I have many more good CDs to pick up.

Yes. You read that right. I still buy CDs. They'll still be spinnin' when your iPod is dead and buried and all your virtual music has flown the coop.

File this under required reading: 25 Best Horror Novels of the New Millennium. Dark Harvest is in some fine company, and I am stoked.

I had the pleasure of writing the introduction for Laird Barron's next collection from Night Shade Books. Nope, you can't order it yet. My favorite story? "The Men from Porlock." That one would make H. P. Lovecraft cry for his mama. Seriously.

Haven't read Laird's novel, The Croning, yet? Pull that trigger, son!

The last two years, I've sworn I'm going to blog about Richard Sala at Halloween. Didn't happen. You can check him out here. If you're a monsterkid, you won't be sorry. Sala twists up everything you remember from your youth -- Universal Horrors, E. C. Comics, old pulp stories -- and somehow makes it all fresh and vital (i.e. "It's alive! It's alive!")