Coming Dec. 2 - A Disturbance of Shadows

 

A Disturbance of Shadows, a short haunted-house-slasher-cosmic horror blend of mine is coming Dec. 2 from Crossroad Press.

It's a return to Louisiana for me and to the realm of Aismley where many of my early books are set.

Hopefully it's an intense little burst for readers as events unfold at an old Louisiana mansion where a reporter and videographer seek refuge during a storm. Dark secrets are housed in the house, of course, and details about a peripheral character of mine come into more focus in and around sightings of a couple of local ghosts.

Pre-order now for a nice price here. (Amazon is offering a Pre-order price guarantee.)

GNELFS are back and a Secret Revealed

The team at Crossroad Press actually broached the notion of bringing some of my backlist out in new print editions for the first time at Scares That Care Authorcon in the spring of this year (2023). They've had ebook and audiobook editions out for some time but had plans to do more with their print catalog.

I said sure, and in the fall, they touched base about getting the original cover art for a trade paper edition of GNELFS. 

Since there was no art credit on the original mass market edition, I had to reach out to the last editor I had at Kensington Books. He reached out to the art department, but he wasn't optimistic.

They turned up a name, Richard Newton, and Crossroad reached out to him and worked out some sort of deal for the cover, partly as a flag to the fact they published broad backlists of vintage horror titles.

I was kind of amazed to see the crispness of the digital art they obtained. The size of the original mass market had resulted in the original painting being cropped, and other losses in reproduction had affected the color mix and more.

Happily on the new mass market, much is restored. 

The re-release prompted me to search for GNELFS online a little more, and I discovered more love for the book than I'd ever realized. Some of it's cropped up in the past few years in a wave of interest in vintage horror titles following the release of Paperbacks From Hell even though the art didn't appear in the volume. None of my titles did.

I actually became aware of some of that love because British author Mark Morris revealed on socials he desired a copy of GNELFS. He pointed me to a YouTube channel where his novel Stitch and GNELFS were reviewed.

So, it's exciting to have the book back in new paper editions with new people discovering it. 

It's also fun to find people like Danube, the peripheral protagonist who joins Gabriella Harris in her struggle against dark magic.

I originally thought I might do more with Danube, gradually revealing more of his history. Clues are in place for his identity, but they are not overtly stated. 

That was not to be, but I considered using Danube when I was invited to do something for Malibu Graphics back in the day. 

He seemed like a natural for some comics adventures, but I was worried about tangling up the rights to a character I might use again in print. 

I developed Peter Mantus from there. Mantus, like Danube, was essentially a psychic investigator. 

He also had a complicated history with his father, a dark sorcerer. Mantus, not Mantis as some people mistake it at times, took his surname--and pseudonym since he wrote books about his investigations--from a demon or god depending on who you talk to, sort of as a reminder of his father's bad acts and what he was standing against.

I've probably mentioned that before in interviews or somewhere, but it's nice to get it all in one place here. 

It's been kind of fun to learn in some cases GNELFS was a favorite book for many readers when they were younger, even though it wasn't written as a YA. 

The concept and art are iconic, so GNELFS stands out, I guess. As Stephen King said not long ago, long after he's gone, "that fucking clown" will be remembered.

Probably so too for me and these little minions. So it goes.

Long Waltz Cover Reveal Coming Soon - Get An Early Peak

 The sequel to Fool's Run is called Long Waltz, and it's coming soon. Final touches are being put on the cover, so the full reveal will be in the near future.

Meanwhile, here's a bit of a look. This book's going to find Si Reardon in Florida and wrangling with a fresh group of powerful men. This time they're from Hollywood. While stars and producers are busy shooting a sequel to a film lensed in Florida years ago, Si is called on to find out what he can about a girl who disappeared after working briefly on the first movie.

Of course he'll find himself plunged into a maelstrom of drama and corruption that will call on all his wits and resourcefulness. Friends Jael and the McCluskey brothers will be on hand too.

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - The Green Eyes of Bast by Sax Rohmer - Twenties Horror

Best known as the creator of Fu Manchu, Sax Rohmer, real name Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward, also produced a host of stand-alone novels. He also penned several other series, Gaston Max, Red Kerry, Paul Harly and Sumuru. 

Sumuru seems to have been an attempt to produce a slightly more enlightened series in the fifties even though his Fu Manchu series, which had generated controversy and charges of racism, continued on paper. 

He also wrote tales of Bazarada based on magician Harry Houdini. The Green Eyes of Bast is more in that vein, a horror thriller from 1920 with a focus on Egyptian magic. It feature psychic investigator Dr. Damar Greefe. This edition is February 1971 from Pyramid.

 

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

 

Cover Stories - Ali Larter was apparently the model for my novel Blood Hunter's Original Cover

Apparently even if I read reviews, I'm guilty of not reading them carefully. A gentleman named Mark Louis Baumgart was kind enough to write a thoughtful review of my novel Blood Hunter some time back. It was a meticulous piece on Amazon that sought to put the book in perspective on the horror paperback fiction landscape.

I noted it there somewhere along the way, happy to have it, of course, but I only noticed today that he included a bit of trivia several paragraphs deep.

SEE ALSO: THE RETURN OF BLOOD HUNTER

Apparently the cover painting artist on the original Pinnacle Books edition was done by E. T. Broeck Steadman, and a 17-year-old Ali Larter of Heroes was the model for his work. It was before she became an actress. Checking her bio, she must have been a Ford model at the time and just shy of heading to Italy, Japan and a few other places. 

I honestly never knew that. A little googling located the author's website with his note on the work. 

The character in the painting is a little younger than the character she more or less represents in the book, but it's still kind of fun to know.

I can't recall my original title for the book. Blood Hunter was the publisher's choice from a later list I submitted. 

SEE ALSO: WHEN DARKNESS FALLS - THE NEW COVER 

My original cover idea was a clawed hand and forearm raking its way across the cover, back of said hand and the forearm covered with mud, leaves and Spanish moss as the human creatures in the tale used to form pelts for themselves.

Something similar had been done recently, so the editor asked for another idea. 

I suggested a swamp.

"What's a swamp look like?" she asked from her New York City desk.

I had a Louisiana cypress swamp in mind. By the time notes were conveyed, the swamp took on a more lush look and the character most-closely aligned to the one on the cover lost a few years. 

So it goes, it's still a catchy image for one of my favorites of my early works. 

Order Blood Hunter here

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - Watchdog by Faith Sullivan

Faith Sullivan is a versatile author who has written a number of novels sometimes harnessing genre elements or myth. This signet edition is dated February, 1983.

SEE ALSO: Biblioholic's Bookshelf - The Scarf by Robert Bloch

I picked it up in a shop I often remember fondly here, The Book Nook, operated by a very cordial lady named Lena Cortello in Alexandria, LA.

It was a go-to spot for me, tucked in a corner shop off a major thoroughfare. It was a corner crammed with paperbacks of all varieties and comics too. 

I miss it and the era of shops like it, when there were more obscure gems than multiple copies of week-old bestsellers, but time marches on. 

I picked up some titles for 5 cents each when The Book Nook closed and inventory when to another, short-lived used book store in the '90s. I was glad for the bargains in the moment, but I should have paused to mourn. 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - The Most Deadly Game Novelization No. 2 - The One-Armed Murder by Richard Gallagher

As mentioned here before, I loved the brief series The Most Deadly Game when I was a kid. It's remembered less fondly on the Thrilling Detective website, so my youthful zeal may have been overrated. 

It seemed cool to me back in the day, anyway, and starred George Maharis of Route 66, Yvette Mimieux of The Time Machine and Ralph Bellamy of everything. 

This one has a different author than the first, possibly a pseudonym. It's copyright Aaron Spelling Productions, 1971. 

SEE ALSO THE MOST EDADLY GAME NOVELIZATION NO. 1 

Read a smidge more about the series here. 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - What About the Baby? by Clare McNally

A sub-genre of menaced brides, mothers and expectant mothers cropped up in the 1980s, perhaps an offshoot of the fading gothic surge. It seems to anticipate the current crop of domestic thrillers. 

Since Thomas Altman titles which fit in that vein have been mentioned in recent weeks, here's another in a similar style. What About the Baby by Clare McNally is from Bantam, September 1983.

View more of Clare McNally's titles here. 

SEE ALSO: KISS DADDY GOODBYE by THOMAS ALTMAN

 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - Kiss Daddy Goodbye by Thomas Altman aka Campbell Black aka Campbell Armstrong

Kiss Daddy Goodbye (1980) is another from  Thomas Altman aka Campbell Black and Campbell Armstrong, following up on last week's post. If you think about it, the Altman novels kind of anticipate the  current domestic thriller era.

This is actually a hardcover book club edition I bought from a remainder house, Publisher's Central Bureau. The True Bride actually followed this one followed by Black Christmas, not a movie tie-in, though the author did write a tie-in to Dressed to Kill as Campbell Black. 

SEE ALSO:BIBLIOHOLIC'S BOOKSHELF - MR. APOLOGY BY CAMPBELL BLACK  

Dark Places followed this one and The Intruder rounded out the Altman novels. 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - Mr. Apology by Campbell Black

As I've discussed here from time to time, I worked at a newspaper for many years. After a while in general news, I moved into the features department. They asked for me after my first novel came out because it seemed to indicate I could write descriptive prose. I was more interested in writing about arts and letters and entertainment anyway, but it never proved to be a good fit.

Surprisingly the editors were not particularly interested in arts and letters, movies, music, books or many of the things that usually go into, you know, the arts and entertainment section of a newspaper features section. 

Despite that attitude, I always tried to bolster book and author coverage when I could, since I was working in that vineyard and knew what that meant to writers as well as readers.

Often, in spite of that, I was peripheral to decisions. 

SEE ALSO: THE HUSTLER - FIFTIES MAINSTREAM FICTION

An author from, I believe, New Orleans came by one day with the cover art from his upcoming techno-thriller style book. He'd just received it from the publisher.

His selling point was a shadow of a helicopter, almost an Easter egg the artist happened to drop into the mix. It was maybe a stretch to get editors interested. Didn't work even though he was a Louisiana writer and had something new from a New York house in a popular genre.

Somewhere in the process they introduced him to me, though I wasn't getting assigned to review his book. I think they had me busy on something exciting like "People Who Own Dogs in Cenla." 

In the course of conversation, he mentioned a friend, Campbell Armstrong whose real name was Campbell Black. "He sometimes writes as Thomas Altman."

I'd read Black Christmas and The True Bride. I said, "Yeah, I've read him. He puts out some things as Campbell Black."

"NO, HE WRITES AS CAMPBELL ARMSTRONG," the guy said emphatically. Wouldn't hear of different.

I let it drop, but I knew my own book holdings, and I had the one pictured at my house though this is not my copy which is in storage at the moment. 

The editor never took an interest in the guy's cover nor his technothriller. 

He sent postcards a few times after as reminder, escalating his tough sell, but there were stories about refrigerator magnet collectors to be assigned. So it goes. Today we have this thing called the internet that at least settles disputes. 

All of that came back to me for some reason. Conflict sticks with you, I guess. 

 

 ADDENDUM

Got my copy from storage, so here's the back cover.

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - Six Great Short Science Fiction Novels

I got this one from my older cousin. It was in a stash with some issues of Galaxy and a book assessing the James Bond book series, things from his youth. I think he was out of college by then, and I was still a kid. 

It was tucked away in a corner of an abandoned house on his parents' property that was now being used for storage. 

The Asimov entry introduced me to the three laws of robotics. Well, actually my cousin had told me about that. I learned that's where he'd discovered them. 

SEE ALSO: NEW PEOPLE TV TIE-IN NOVELIZATION

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - The Dark Shadows Book of Vampires And Werewolves

Happily as I mentioned recently, the original Dark Shadows novels are being reissued. This is another adjacent, branded book from the original Paperback Library era. It includes classics such as John Polidori's early tale of a gentleman vampire,"The Vampyre." That was begun, of course, during the same writing challenge that produced Mary Shelly's Frankenstein.  It seems an appropriate public domain choice for a collection adjacent to the world of Barnabas Collins. 

The complete contents are listed on Goodreads. 

This one is copyright August, 1970 by Dan Curtis Productions.  

SEE ALSO: Biblioholic's Bookshelf - The Dark Dominion 

The Obligatory Holding Up the New Book Photo - Fool's Run

Holding the trade paper edition of Fool's Run. 

Christine did the honors, opting for the natural light of what is usually our dining room. 

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - Ed Noon and The Flower-Covered Corpse

I discovered Michael Avallone and his detective hero Ed Noon via a Writer's Digest cassette on mystery writing.  I've mentioned that often in interviews and online forums.

I began to watch for his titles, especially those about his hero Ed Noon. The sixties entries from the series were the most plentiful at the used book shops around my home town. I had to do mail order for the first book, The Tall Dolores. 

I believe this was the first I picked up, though I found one of the Spy to Mr. President Noon titles as well. 

SEE ALSO: Biblioholic's Bookshelf - The Doomsday Bag

This one, The Flower-covered Corpse is copyright 1969 and is from the Curtis Books run of Noon titles with the Gil Gerard-lookalike model as Noon. 

 

SEE ALSO: Biblioholic's Bookshelf - The Tall Dolores, Fifties Private Eye
 

A little more on Avallone and Noon

Biblioholic's Bookshelf Special - Diamonds are Forever RIP Sean Connery

Very sad to read this morning of Sean Connery's passing. I'd thought of him recently, perhaps because of  the not-much-loved League of Extraordinary Gentlemen cropping up on Amazon Prime. 

My first Bond in the theater was The Man With the Golden Gun, for my friend and I, a fun, glossy action extravaganza despite how it's viewed these days, or by critics then.

My first Bond book however was the tie-in edition of Diamonds Are Forever, Connery's return to the role. Ads on TV and even on the radio made it sound thrilling. 

My old man bought me the novel off the drug store paperback rack when it cropped up and that introduced me to Ian Fleming's world. Combined with the radio ads, the cover helped me understand the disparity between spelling and pronunciation of Sean. 

RIP, Mr. Connery. You and Bond are forever. 

Cover Reveal: Fool's Run - A Si Reardon Novel

 Coming November 24, 2020

Pre-order now on Amazon

#coverreveal #cover #thriller #mystery

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - A Werewolf Among Us by Dean R. Koontz

Baker St. Cyr is part computer part human and all cyber detective. From Ballantine, January, 1973. 

Book Cover Reveal: Edgar Allan Poe Collection Quoth the Raven

The thrill of having something new come out never gets old, I must say!

My short story "A Cooler of Craft Brew" will appear in the new collection Quoth the Raven from Camden Park Press.

The cover is a bit of all right, designed to capture the spirit of the time of Edgar Allan Poe with just a hint of the modern since the goal of this anthology is to offer stories and poems that celebrate Poe in the 21st century. Its official release date is Oct. 7, 2018, anniversary of Poe's mysterious death. And just in time for Halloween.

My story focuses on a "Florida man" and offers just a hint of why all of those Florida man headlines reporting strange and bizarre behavior occur.

Pre-order links (updated as they come):

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HWLD8JJ/?tag=kydala-20

Barnes and Nobel: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/quoth-the-raven-amelia-gorman/1129654980;jsessionid=5D277E15B09B559849E035C80DF05247.prodny_store01-atgap01?ean=2940161916940

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/quoth-the-raven-2

Biblioholic's Bookshelf - The Sorcerers - an Avon Satanic Gothic by Dorian Winslow (Daoma Winston)

Titles from Avon's brief Satanic Gothic line from the early '70s are pricey these days. I found an OK copy of this title for a decent price.

Dorian Winslow is a pseudonym of Daoma Winston, who passed away in 2013. Here's the Washington Post obituary detailing her career.

Biblioholic's Bookshelf: The Devil's Churchyard

Haven't done a Biblioholic's Bookshelf post in a while. I've never picked up many books from the gothic era, though I've always been intrigued by the covers. Lately I've started acquiring titles that look interesting.

Seems Godfrey Turton, author of The Devil's Churchyard wrote non-fiction and a few novels. This one drew my interest what with the horror overtones. It may have been published in the Doubleday hardcover simply as a romantic thriller with the gothic packaging to come from the Pocket Books edition. I'm not sure.

It's the tale of Kate Evans who stumbles upon a secret stone-ringed altar and a strange vellum-covered book and is soon in the sights of an evil reverend who I suspect has a second congregation.