Biblioholic's Bookshelf Black Friday Edition: 12 Frights of Christmas - Holiday Horror

I break this book out every other Christmas season or so to re-read a few tales. It includes a real chiller by Robert Bloch plus stories from H.G. Wells, Ramsey Campbell and H.P. Lovecraft in addition to the intro by Isaac Asimov.

Mine's an ex-library edition, so it's tattered a bit, but still very readable. 

Apparently a 13 Horrors of Halloween anthology exists also, but I've unfortunately never run cross that one. Need to look for it.

More on the Holiday Blog Tour - The Details

As mentioned earlier, the holiday blog tour organized by my friend Icess Fernandez Rojas  of Writing to Insanity is approaching. 

Icess is a writer and journalist living in Louisiana, where I'm from. So of course, we met in Washington state. Both of us journeyed to Washington to pursue MFA's. You'll find many of our friends and classmates from Goddard College reflected on the tour as well, though that's not all. 

I've been working on a 10-minute play and my story for the holiday tour during my writing time of late, so I haven't had a great deal of time to post here, but let me share the listing of bloggers on the tour for now. 

Hopefully I'll be back with pithy or profound musings before my holiday post, but in the meantime, browse the blogs below in anticipation of the holidays. 

Visit now:

Dec. 1 Julia Amante

Dec. 2 Valerie R.

Dec. 3 Radames Ortiz

Dec. 4 Deborah Grace Staley

Dec. 5 TBA

Dec. 6.Danielle Klenak 

Dec. 7 Lupe Mendez

Dec. 8 Natasha Oliver

Dec. 9 Maria Ferrer

Dec. 10 Sidney Williams

Dec. 11 Toni Plummer

Dec. 12 Mayra Calvani

Dec. 13 Kristy Harding

Dec. 14 Thelma Reyna

Dec. 15.Sylvia Mendoza

Dec. 16 Regina Tingle

Dec. 17 Teresa Dovalpage

Dec. 18 Mirta Espinola

Dec. 19 Kim Brown

Dec. 20 Gwen Jerris

Dec. 21 Paula Altschuler

Dec. 22 Caridad Pinero

Dec. 23 Teresa Carbajal Revet

Dec. 24 Icess Fernandez Rojas

Holiday Blog Extravaganza Coming Soon

One of my friends has organized a blog event for the holiday season. It will include quite a mixture of participants.

As my contribution, I'm at work on a short story about the holiday travel season, with a few dark turns of course.  It hovers between flash and short fiction, so I'm thinking of offering the whole piece as a ScribID download or something like that, making it a holiday gift.

I'll post details and blogs that will be involved soon.

Signing Az

As mentioned in my previous post, Azarius, my first novel, is rolling out in a new e-book edition from Crossroad Press. As one buddy once put it, it's the tale of an arch-demon menacing a small Southern town. I like the way that sums it up. 

I picked up a personal copy of the paperback the other day in telling a friend of the new edition, and a clipping I'd tucked there long ago fell out. 

I think it's probably my first book signing ever at a Waldenbooks in Alexandria, Louisiana. I think it was fun, but it doesn't quite seem like yesterday anymore. 

I didn't much updating on this book, as I did with some of the later ones that have already seen e-print. It's as it was created in that raw burst of energy as the ideas flowed when I was 26. 

I saw an interview the other day with William Peter Blatty. He said that as he recorded the audiobook of The Exorcist he read a passage and said: "Who wrote this garbage?"

I think every writer does that, finds flaws, longs to change things. I've decided to save the energy of sweating over words and phrases for new work.

As I recall, Az is a good tale. I worked to make it an exciting excursion into the world of demons and darkness. 

Now it's new again.

Get Azarius:

At the Crossroads Press store

On Smashwords

For Nook

Happy Halloween All!

Hope it's appropriately fun and scary. 

The New Cover for Azarius

Azarius, my first book, will be re-issued in an e-book edition from Crossroad Press any minute. David Dodd did the cover for the new edition. 

Now on Amazon!

The Making of a Halloween Story

I may have mentioned here or on Twitter that travel usually produces creative energy for me. As Halloween approaches, I've been reminded of a Halloween horror story I wrote a few eons back. It's called "Like Candy From a Baby," and it's a tale of an evil man who gets his just desserts, quite literally.

It was eventually slated for an anthology Edward Lee was working on, and he noted it almost made him throw up after he read it. That anthology never came about, but "Like Candy From A Baby" is now available in my collection Scars and Candy.

Dark stories inevitably lead to the question: "Where did you get that idea?"

I don't have a specific nucleus for the story, but it came about after a trip to the World Fantasy Convention in Seattle one year. World Fantasy is always held around Halloween, and I drove down from Alexandria, LA, that year to Robert Petitt's house. He lived in Baton Rouge in those days, before a Louisiana version of the Sons of Anarchy led to his relocation.

From there we drove to New Orleans and hopped a flight to the Northwest, and I read Razored Saddles on the plane, especially, at Robert's urging, Chet Williamson's "Yore Skins's Jes's Soft 'n Purdy He Said."

World Fantasy is a great con, and those were great convention years for me. Tons of friends were always on hand, and activities were non stop.

Robert was always a good traveling companion for me, more outgoing than I and thus better at meeting people. That was the year we met Wayne Allen Sallee, Yvonne Navarro, Beth Massie and many others. Dean Andersson and Nina Romberg were in Seattle that year as well, and many, many cool people were on hand.

When it was over, we headed home, and I was buoyed by the energy of being around new and old friends, kicking around ideas and attending readings and the like.

I'm not sure exactly when the tale sprang into my imagination.

Maybe it was while I slept on Petitt's couch and dreamed, but at any rate, as I started home I had a Halloween tale in mind and I picked up a pocket tape recorder I kept with me in those days and dictated the first lines about an awful man named Frank Church who had insidious plans for a Halloween house of horrors.

It's about an hour and a half from Baton Rouge to Alexandria. By the time I'd made the trip, I had a story on my tape recorder. It was a little verbose and badly worded in parts, but I transcribed and polished later.

Maybe creativity is confluence.

Biblioholic's Bookshelf: Straw Dogs AKA The Seige of Trencher's Farm Seventies movie tie-in-edition

I haven't seen the recent Straw Dogs remake yet, but the original is a brutal Sam Peckinpah tour de force with Dustin Hoffman and Susan George. I found this movie-tie-in edition of the film's basis, The Siege of Trencher's Farm, a few years ago.

Back from the Apple

Christine's wanted to spend a few days in New York City for about an eon, but conflicts kept prohibiting until we said "Dammit, we're wedging it in." 

It was a good decision, since NYC is such a smörgåsbord for eclectics. 

Christine's in a bit of a "Colonial-influenced" place at the moment, so we spent a while at the Museum of the City of New York on a docent-led trip through an exhibit called The American Style: Colonial Revival and the Modern Metropolis. That dovetailed into a visit to the MET and the American exhibits where re-created rooms from many eras almost let you step into the past. A room from a Frank Lloyd Wright mansion was a highlight.

We planed a couple of shows, off Broadway's Relatively Speaking--a series of one acts by Ethan Cohen, Elaine May and Woody Allen--and War Horse at Lincoln Center, thinking those represented a pretty nice spectrum. They did, of course. Tight, funny comedy-dramas peopled with stars-you-know make up Relatively Speaking, while War Horse, is, of course, a spectacle that's emotionally engaging from the start and you really do forget those are puppets and not real horses.

But we also wanted to be flexible and open to opportunities. We watched a good chunk of the Columbus Day Parade, and, on a whim, we managed to catch John Lithgow being interviewed (by Bill Moyers) about his memoir Drama: An Actor's Education at the New York Public Library. That opened with inspiring remarks from NYPL's president about keeping ideas and knowledge accessible to all in the digital era. 

We  spent a morning at James Robinson Inc. as well getting deep insight into the history of silversmithing from one of the proprietors. 

I've been a bit creatively fatigued of late, so it was really a wonderful trip that worked without a hitch or hiccup. It was nice to let everything inside relax a little, let my brain decompress and just absorb for a while. 

I enjoyed getting familiar with the subway again, with hoofing it through neighborhoods and along the edge of Central Park and through shops in Soho. 

I don't have anything eloquent or profound at the moment. It's just good to recharge in a spot where the energy is so high. 

Further reading

More on Relatively Speaking

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.

Biblioholic's Bookshelf: The Doomsday Bag - Sixties Espionage

This week's sort of a sequel to last week's Biblioholic's Bookshelf post.
During the sixties spy boom, Michael Avallone's fifties private eye Ed Noon began to get assignments from the president. This edition was one of the first Michael Avallone books I  found when I haunted used bookshops back in the day. It must have been a really popular entry in the series, because I saw in several shops after I bought it.