Biblioholic's Bookshelf: Miss Finney Kills Now and Then

I've seen a different cover on this book. The edition I own's a second printing, I believe. The inside credits indicate the tale is based on a screenplay by several writers working with Al Dempsey, though I don't believe a film exists.

When Darkness Falls - The New Cover

Here's the cover for the e-book edition of When Darkness Falls, originally published by Pinnacle in mass market paperback. Love the mood it evokes.

It's done by David Dodd from Crossroad Press and really captures the fog-shrouded small town/rural setting of the novel.

It makes me recall the writing of the book. More than ever I felt immersed in the setting during the writing. It was like I knew every turn and storefront in the little town. When the book was finished I felt a little sad that I wouldn't be visiting the shops and houses there any longer.

Crossroad will be posting the book wherever e-books are sold this week. Look for it on Nook, Sony, Kindle and at Smashwords. 

Here's the original cover:

Trailer of the week: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami (U.S. book trailer)

My week's been a little off kilter, so I didn't hit any of the post days I've been trying to maintain. Let me round things out with a post.

As you know if you drop by here often I'm a huge fan of Haruki Murikami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

1Q84 is his new book coming soon to the U.S. Looks exciting.

Biblioholic's Bookshelf: The Devil Rides Out and Gateway To Hell - Thirties and Seventies Horror

Early and Dennis Wheatleys novel are brought together in this hardcover. They're both entries in his Duke de Richleau series. The movie version of The Devil Rides Out starred Christopher Lee as de Richleau.

Trailer Tuesday: The Night Shift

The Night Shift Trailer by FightingOwlFilms

I just got word of an indy film that looks interestingly pulpy, fun and off-beat, so, of course, it seemed right for Trailer Tuesday.

It's described as a "supernatural-adventure-comedy" called “The Night Shift.” It's being distributed by R-Squared Films and will be released Oct.  25. It's also available for pre-order on Amazon, hence the associates link.

The Synopsis
Here's the blurb: “The Night Shift” is a supernatural-adventure-comedy about Rue Morgan, the undead night watchman at Pinewood Oaks Cemetery.

Rue, along with his buddy Herb, a limbless corpse, spends his nights trying to keep the cemetery’s cantankerous residents in, and his days dreaming of a date with hard-nosed day-shifter, Claire. It’s an okay afterlife until a scourge of supernatural occurrences leaves Rue not only watching the cemetery, but also watching his back!

Loudon Wainwright III No Sure Way

I've mentioned it in past years on the anniversary of 9/11, but Louden Wainwright III's "No Sure Way" still captures the way we felt the hour, the day, the week, the month after and now 10 years after.

Friday Flash: Come Sunday - Rural Noir

(I wrote this as an entry for a small-town noir contest. They  apparently had a lot of entries, so I thought I'd share it here. They offered a photo as a story prompt,  a '30s-era mug shot of a female inmate. I've done a few pieces of flash, and I've been interested in experimenting more with affecting tales in very brief form, so I decided to give it a try.)

Come Sunday

I don’t think they got my good side when they snapped the photographs. The cop at the camera didn’t have a lot of patience. Neither did the detectives.

Maybe the photographers from newspapers and magazines will do better. I’m going to be in there some day. Wait and see. Won’t just be some sob sister write up. I’m no Bonnie Parker, and small town girls who kill their drunkard husbands aren’t that rare. Tough times we live in, but this is not all there is to me, locked up here in this little cell while they try to decide what to do with me.

I expect they’ll have the women come talk to me, ask me what went wrong. They might even get the preacher, but he knows what was haywire twixt me and Harold Walters. They all know.
Harold was my second husband. I married my high school sweetheart Gerald Bailey right after we left school, and he got a job driving a log truck from Hampton Mills. Papa didn’t want me to, but I was crazy about Gerald.

Then this tramp Wanda Denton came along, and he got sane about me and crazy after her. He came back a few months later, but I’d moved back home, and Papa ran him off when he tried to see me.
They got some papers drawn up, then Papa had the preacher over one Sunday after church. He brought Harold with him, all dressed up.

Sixteen years older than me, he was, but he needed a wife cause his had died of consumption or cause she wanted to get away from Harold. Upstanding the preacher said.

He couldn’t wait to get ahold of me, not at first. Papa and the preacher were serving him up quite a little dish. I was eighteen. He was never tender, but he was satisfied about two years, until his funds started drying up, and I was fool enough to ask for new dresses.

Punches made me reconsider. He knew how to put them where they couldn’t be seen. I took it for a while. Then I went to see the preacher. Told him I wanted to run, maybe go places like in the big magazines, or like you saw in the movies. He said I couldn’t leave a husband. That wouldn’t be blessed, and he had the ladies of the church give me a good talking to. Had them tell me I had responsibilities and that I was expected to stay with my husband.

I stayed as long as I could and started smoking like a train. When I couldn’t take it no more, that’s when I put the rat poison in his coffee.

And here I sit. I won’t say much today, but come Sunday, that’s when they’ll take notice. When they’ll start wanting to take my picture like that trunk murderess Winnie Ruth Judd or somebody.

It’s communion Sunday, so they’ll be pouring everybody a little taste of the wine I fixed up, just like Harold’s coffee.

(Thanks to Small Town Noir for the use of the prompt image. Read the true story behind it here.

Get more of my dark fiction in my collection Scars and Candy, available on Kindle and wherever you buy e-books. You'll also find my story "Telephone" and more in the collection Soul's Road.

Coffee Image from Clipart For Free

Farewell to Michael S. Hart - Project Gutenberg Founder

I was sad to read this a.m. of the death of Michael S. Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg. I've found many hours of reading material on the site over the years.

I think the first e-book I ever read, most of it online anyway, was The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I worked for a while as a reference librarian. When I was on the night shift, I kept the e-text open in one browser window, reading a paragraph here or there when things grew quiet between helping patrons.

I found The Beetle and The Green Mummy on Gutenberg as well, along with a host of classics, the stories of John Silence, The House on the Borderland and more.

I guess never thought much about the man behind it all.

He kept a lot of books alive.

Biblioholic's Bookshelf: To The Devil A Daughter - Fifties Horror

In the days before e-Bay, I didn't stumble across many books by Dennis Wheatley. That's odd considering their popularity plus the movie adaptations, but it was true. I found this 1972 edition of Wheatley's 1952 novel in a used shop sometime after I saw the Richard Widmark/Natashia Kinski Hammer release by the grace of VHS. 

Trailer Tuesday: Since Noon Yesterday

In following through on my look at Ed Noon and Michael Avallone, here's a slightly different Trailer Tuesday.

Toward the end of his career, Avallone wrote a final set of Ed Noon novels that took his hard boiled private eye in all new directions. He'd been a private eye, a spy and in the final novels, some unpublished, he faced an alien invasion.

His son, David Avallone, is a film maker, and he adapted the final books into a web film. I missed it on Atom Films or whichever short film site it debuted on. Happily now it's on My Space films, and below is the teaser or prelude.