John Everson's Blog, page 16

‘Tis the Season… Christmastime is here again!

“I wish you a Malty Christmas And a Hoppy New Year,

A pocket full of money … And a cellar full of Beer!”  — Anonymous

ANYONE WHO HAS BEEN on my mailing list for long knows that I am a total Christmas nut. Our house has the most lights on the block. Our tree has a million ornaments. I own about 300 Christmas CDs!

Over the years, I’ve stepped out of my usual “horror” persona to pen some short Christmas stories, and a couple years ago, I released them, along with some original holiday song lyrics,  as a short e-book called Christmas Tales. A warning: Don’t look for horror tales here — these are heartwarming fantasy tales!  I hope these stories bring a little Christmas cheer to people who enjoy all genres of fiction.

Christmas Tales just went on sale for $0.99 today, and you can download a copy at any of these stores:

AMAZON
AMAZON UK
Barnes & Noble
KOBO
SMASHWORDS

If you haven’t read them in Christmas’ past, I hope you’ll download a copy, settle down on a “cold winter’s night” and enjoy them this Christmas week.

I have also written and recorded an album’s worth of original Christmas songs over the years to give as gifts to family and friends. I recorded most of them with my sister-in-law on lead vocals, but my son Shaun has recorded a couple, and one of my favorites was recorded live in a basement studio with musicians from a couple different bands I’d worked with. It’s called “Show Me Christmas” and you can listen to it for free on my website’s Xmas page. Download it and put it on your iPod this year!

I’m personally looking forward to getting through the next few days at work and then spending the last couple weeks of this month relaxing with my family…  maybe I’ll finally get some reading and new writing in. It’s been a hectic year, and it’s definitely time to settle in for a long winter’s night!

I hope you are able to spend some enjoyable, revitalizing time with those you hold dear as we close out the year. Thanks, as always, for reading.

Happy Holidays from my family to yours,

John

 

- Originally posted in my December e-Newsletter.

 

 

DIY – How To Build Your Own Oak Home Bar

IF I CAN DO IT… anyone can.

Sure, I’m a guy who works with my hands… on a computer keyboard!

I write novels, I don’t build furniture. But sometimes, circumstance, bravery (or foolishness) collide.  I am writing this blog to hopefully show that if you want it bad enough… you can build it.  I documented most of my steps along the way with photos, so you can see all of the steps I went through. All of the photos on this page are thumbnails – click on them to see full-size versions.

HOW IT ALL BEGAN…

A few months ago, my basement had some water damage thanks to a faulty sump pump and all the carpet was removed. Before having new carpet installed, I decided that while the main room was bare concrete floor and empty of furnishings, I would finally take a crack at replacing the old half-bar that had been fashioned out of paneling 30 years ago by the home’s original owner. I wanted a more formal bar that resembled the Irish bars I’ve grown to love writing novels in.

However… the stores that sell home bars wanted $3,000 – $5,000 for the kind of bar I wanted, and really none of them offered the kind of gorgeous golden oak I loved, even if I could have afforded that kind of price tag. And they wouldn’t have fit the particular space I had very well, given that I had a short wall and a built-in refrigerator I couldn’t completely block.

So I was left with the option of trying to build it myself.

The only problem with that idea was, my experience with woodwork is almost nil. I replaced some plank flooring in a shed once… and helped my stepbrother install a small deck at my first house 20 years ago. That’s about it. I didn’t even have most of the tools I would need. During the course of this project I made a LOT of trips to Menard’s, and ended up buying a new circular saw, miter saw, rechargeable drill, carpenter’s square, nail sinker, tape measure and electric sander, among other things. That certainly inflated my overall pricetag, but I now have a great work bench in my utility room.

I didn’t let little things like lack of knowledge, experience or  tools stop me! And you shouldn’t either!

CREATING THE PLAN…

I scoured the Internet for plans and “how-to’s” on home bars and found a few articles and YouTube videos with various approaches. I compared what they did with what I wanted, and found myself coming back again and again to Gordon Milligan’s excellent blog post on how he built his home bar. Emboldened that it might actually be possible for someone completely inexperienced like me to do this, I sat down and planned out the dimensions for what I wanted to do for my own project.

I’m a very visual person, and can’t really deal well with blueprints. I created some initial planning schematics in Photoshop to give me a plan, but I also saw a lot of articles that suggest using boxes or some other three dimensional object to get a feeling for what your “plan” will really feel like in three-dimensional space once it’s done… and I think that’s wise. I already had “half” a bar (the one I was replacing), so I used that — putting it in place first on one side, and then sliding  it to the other side of the area where my new L shaped bar would go (the previous bar was simply an I). I chalked out the floor around it so while I had dimensions committed to paper, I would visibly see if something had gone awry from my original plan while I worked. Having a concrete floor at the time and building it in place was definitely a plus.

BUILDING THE FRAME…

The first step was to build a frame. I’d never framed anything. But looking at Milligan’s post and a couple others, I gradually got the concept of using “squares” of wood that interlock. I opted to use 2 x 4s instead of 2 x 6s, because my bar wasn’t going to be that long — just over 6.5 feet in one direction, and just under 6 feet in the other (measured from the ends of the Chicago bar rail, not the frame itself).

You have to do some math here to arrive at how big to make your frame… because on top of your frame, you’re going to hang wood of a certain dimension (probably 3/4 inch) and then you’re going to want to seat a bar top above that which covers the frame and extends 8-10 inches past your “walls” so people’s knees have somewhere to go. So you need to plan your frame based on the width of your actual bar top as well as on the ultimate final height. You should end up with your bar being about 41″ high.

If you’re doing an L shape bar as I did, you can actually build two sections completely separately, and then press them together at the very end and “latch” them. That’s how some of the pre-fab bars at furniture stores work. But I wanted my bar top to meet at an 45 degree angle and I wanted the whole bar to feel like a solid piece, so my frame is not divisible. That also means, my bar can never be disassembled to easily leave my basement. I pity the man who decides to take it apart someday.

A lot of people build the bar and then build the additional cabinetry as a separate box that sits behind the bar… I decided to frame in the cabinet area right under the bar to make the best use of space, so my frame was deeper than many I’ve seen. One problem I created for myself… In the last picture above, you can see that I made a smaller cabinet on the left (front) face of the bar than on the right. I also made the right side a couple inches deeper than the small cabinet, so I could store more things. This came back to bite me in the end, because that meant that the bar top needed to be extra wide to cover one side vs. the other… the realistic endgame of that is that the overhang on one side is shorter than the other. Nobody would notice really… but it’s a consideration I didn’t consider in planning!

You also have to plan whether your bar top is going to be edged by some rounded finishing pieces or by true Chicago bar rail. My dream was to have a bar that really looked like a pro bar… so Chicago bar rail it was. But that’s an expensive proposition too – about $12 a foot. To me it was worth it… because that edge is what you’re going to look at every time you walk into the room. I ordered six-foot lengths from Hardwoods Inc. and ended up having to order an extra piece because I’d underestimated my spoilage.  Cutting that stuff without pro equipment can be challenging! But we’ll get there in a minute.

HANGING ‘CLOTHES’ ON THE FRAME…

After I created my frame, I used oak veneer plywood (3/4″) to cover the front. I didn’t have a solid piece that long, so I tried to cut the two pieces for each in a length that would naturally be covered by my facing slats. I screwed those into the 2 x 4s of the frame, knowing that I would be adding slats later that would cover the screws and the seams. On the inside, I used 1/4 inch oak plywood.

For the top “underside” shelf I used 1″ solid oak, but since I ended up facing it, I really could have saved a couple bucks there and used oak veneer plywood. That’s what I used for the interior shelves.  For those, I screwed in 1 x 1 oak strips to serve as my shelf support (again, in retrospect, I could have saved some money and used pine since it’s really not visible). To cut out the front U opening in the shelves that fits around the 2 x 4 central dividers, I clamped the shelves to the top of the bar frame and used a jigsaw to create the U cut. Despite careful measuring, I cut them too tight the first time and had to open up the “hole” a little… but that was better than the reverse problem.

 

After I had the shelving placed inside, I used 1/4″ oak veneer slats to cover the visible sides of the 2×4 support. These were attached with wood glue and clamps. Then I used 1 x 2 pieces to create a facing lattice on the cabinet insides to hide the seams. These were also glued, with some small finishing nails to hold them in place. I used a nail punch to push the nails deep into the 1/4″  pieces and then covered them with wood filler.

Once the cabinet insides were finished, I could finally add the facing boards on the outside. I used oak 1 x4″ pieces, except for the vertical end pieces which were wider. I wanted everything tight, so I tended to cut them slightly large and then shaved them down a hair at a time on the miter saw until the seams all snugged up well.

THE BIG CUT!

Once the back facing was in place, I began to get the bar top ready. I placed a couple of 1 x 20 x 72″ sanded plywood pieces on top of my frame, and positioned my two 1 x 16 x 72″ oak  boards on top of that, and then placed the oak rail in place to see how it all was going to sit once I began cutting things to size.

Once I was sure all of the pieces were going to work, I cut the plywood base for the bar top and screwed that into my frame. Then I cut the oak boards for my bar top… probably in the worst way possible! I didn’t have a table saw, and the miter saw would only cut 12 inches… I needed 16.  So I put the two pieces on top of each other in a right angle and clamped them down hard. I also clamped my level — I used it as a metal guide for my saw to move against and stay straight. Then I used my circular saw to free-form cut across the two pieces to make my 45 degree angle cut. A pretty risky proposition with two big expensive pieces of oak. In the end, I got lucky and it worked pretty well… but I didn’t achieve a perfect no gap seam – after sanding, staining and varnish, it looks good, but it’s not as “tight” as a table saw would have gotten it.

Once that most stressful cut was complete, I clamped the oak in position, applied some wood glue to help lock it to the plywood frame beneath it, and then screwed the base and the top together. I drilled small holes on the underside of the bar and then screwed up from beneath (which was difficult in the far ends inside the cabinet!) I used  screws short enough that they wouldn’t come through the top of my bar. Once it was screwed so much that it will never, ever, ever come apart, I sanded the top down, especially the area where the 45 degree seam met.

Finally, it was time to do the second most important cuts of the project.

THE BAR RAIL…

Bar rail is a stepped piece of wood, so it’s difficult to cut easily.  It’s really important to a) have a good table/miter saw and b) put a spoiler board of the right size under the “step” of the underside of the bar rail. My miter saw turned out not to be a “perfect” angle cutter and I ended up re-cutting my edges several times because I kept ending up with a cut that left the top of the bar rail separated while the bottom was tight. Ultimately I ended up tilting the blade of my miter saw a degree to ensure the bottom of the rail wasn’t stopping the top from closing tight. That’s what you get when you buy a $100 miter saw instead of a pro piece of equipment. But I made it work. Watch this key video on YouTube to see how to do this… I watched it many times!

After I got the bar rails cut, I applied wood glue to the subboard and upper inside “step” of the bar rail. Then I clamped them in place, and drilled holes every few inches on the underside, making sure my screws were going to go through in the deepest section, so they didn’t pop through the top of my rail. It was a wonderful feeling when I took those clamps off the next day and everything was solid and tight!

THE SPILL RAIL…

After screwing the bar rail  in place, I cut 1×3 oak boards and made the outside of the spill rail. Because of my shelving, I actually needed a thicker edge than many bars I’ve seen in order to allow my bar top to overhang on the outside of the frame enough, while covering the whole frame too. My actual center oak of the bar was 16″ wide. But with the bar rail and the spill rail, the full depth of my bar from edge to edge is just over 26″.

Basically with my spill trough and its outlying rail, I extended my top by several inches and achieved the coverage over the frame and cabinets that I needed, while providing a useful feature in a basement that would have carpet — while many spill rails are not contained on the inside of the bar, mine is… because you don’t want spills draining onto the carpet, but rather being contained by the spill trough.

I used my existing Makers Mark rubber mat to tell me the right dimension for the trough (3.5 inches). Once I had it all set, I glued and clamped the trough rails in place and screwed them into the support plywood from underneath so no screws show.

I also faced the inside of the trough with 1/4″ oak strips. Originally, I did this to both extend the live surface of the bar a half inch on the bartenders’ side, as well as to provide a slight divider between the bar top and the overflow into the trough. I was going to use an epoxy to finish the top of the bar and I figured that little bump would keep the epoxy contained on the bar so that it didn’t drain into the trough. In the end, I opted to simply varnish the bar, so that plan was unnecessary.

I used the 1/4″ oak veneer strips to cover the bottom of the trough so that you weren’t seeing the plywood that the oak bartop was screwed into. Then I faced the inside rail of the bar with two rounded oak veneer pieces. These gave it a finished look and also helped hide the fact that one side of the inside part of the bar stuck out from the frame slightly more than the other!

I faced the front and side vertical panels of the bar with a 1  x 6″ oak piece on the bottom and .5 x 4″ slats vertically spaced out strategically to hide the seams of my oak face. These were attached with wood glue and a couple small finishing nails to hold them tight while the glue dried since I had no way to clamp them. I sunk the nails below the wood surface and covered them with wood filler.  I actually varied the pattern of the slats between the front and the long side, and like how it turned out.

MAKING DOORS WITH WINDOWS…

The final building step was to create the cabinet doors. I wanted the side of the bar that you could see walking into the room faced with doors, while I left the other side open.

I used 1 x 3″ oak strips and miter cut the ends to 45 degree angles. I actually cut them one on top of each other on the miter saw to ensure a matched cut. Then I laid them out on a flat cement floor, glued them and screwed them together. To hide the screws, I faced them with a 1/4″ oak finishing strip that I glued on and clamped. On the inside, I glued quarter round pieces, so that there was an inside “shelf” for the glass to rest on.

I learned the importance of not letting any glue leak out onto visible surfaces with that maneuver — I thought I’d worked pretty clean with the glue, but I ended up with some discolored areas once I applied the stain — you could see where glue had seeped out and soaked into the wood. Luckily I was able to touch up the marks with a Miniwax Stain Marker.

Once assembled, I attached the plexiglass I had had cut to size at our hardware store by screwing it in with screen clip holders. I then removed the plexiglass until after the stain and varnish were done (leaving the holder screws in place) and attached the doors with three hinges each. I set the doors up on blocks to ensure an equal alignment.

 

THE HOME STRETCH – ADDING COLOR AND SHINE!

Once the doors were on, it was time to sand and stain. I used both a small power sander and sanding sponges to go over all the visible areas. To choose the stain, I bought some stain sample packets at Menard’s and used the scraps of wood from the bar rail and bar front to test what each of our favorite options might look like. I love the honey oak look, but I wanted to make sure this had a little deeper richness to it, so I ended up using Varathane’s Golden Mahogany. I started on the inside so that if I hated it, or made any newbie mistakes, I could hide it. Once I’d completed brushing it on and paper toweling the excess back off, I stood back and looked… and worried that I’d gone too dark.

My wife agreed it looked a little darker than we thought, but urged me to press on… and once it dried, it did lighten just a bit, letting the buttery finish show.

The addition of varnish brought out the golden hue more, and in the end, it looked exactly as I’d hoped!

This was the first time I’d varnished anything in probably 25 years, and when I read the instructions to sand the urethane after each coat, I couldn’t believe it… how counter-productive is that? You put on a paper thin coat and then sand half it back off?  But if you want a non-bumpy finish… you have to do it.

I brushed on 5 coats of urethane over the course of 4 days. I used fine sandpaper in between the first couple coats and then began using steel wool. I used a a tack cloth to make sure the dust all came off, however, the first four coats of Miniwax Spar Urethane were full of small remnants – it was as if I was painting the bar with a clear coat that included hundreds of grains of sand. I tried a new can, and got the same result.  Finally on the fifth coat, I switched and used Varathane Spar Urethane… and the result was amazing. The urethane went on with a completely different consistency than the Miniwax. It dried to a beautiful, clear almost speckless coat, and I decided that that was as good as it was going to get. I saw some recommendations to do 7 coats, but I stopped at 5. That coat count, by the way, is for the top. I only went over the sides of the bar twice. Those didn’t need to be like glass.

A few days after my final coat, the carpet came… it was a wonderful feeling to move that bar finally into position.  It had taken over two months… but I had built a bar!

THE TAP DISPLAY…

But I wasn’t completely done. I had gotten the idea to create a beer tap display to mount on the wall behind the bar. During the weeks that I was slowly building the bar, I also was searching eBay for the taps of my favorite beer as well as some cheap tap spigots to “mount” my taps on to create an authentic looking display (much as I would have loved to have them, I was not going to run real tap lines through the wall… and then have to clean them every week!). I found some kegerator spigots for about $10 a piece, and one by one, assembled my wish list of taps.

Once I had all my taps and tap spigots ready,  I took two pieces of oak and cut them to size. I used a 1 1/8″ spade bit for my drill and bored holes in the top piece with about 2.75″ in between each hole. Then I glued that board to the larger board, stained and urethaned them, and then used Gorilla Glue to lock my spigots into the holes (I tried to find a way that I could screw them into the wood… but that didn’t work. Gorilla Glue locked them in really good – I just had to go sparingly on it, so the push-pull tap action didn’t get locked up when the Gorilla Glue foamed up inside the spigots).

THE BACK BAR…

My final project for the bar space was to build a “back bar.” The taps looked a little odd, floating up high on the wall with nothing beneath them, and I had more wine then our small wine rack held.  Plus, I had more of my pint glass collection I wanted to display. So I decided to build a combination wine rack / glass holder to fill the space beneath the taps.

I was a little worried about the length of the thing – the wall space between the refrigerator and the bar cabinet doors is not a lot. And I didn’t want to completely block the cabinet from opening. I figured out what seemed like a good compromise and then used wine bottles to gauge how deep the lower half had to be — I didn’t want it to stick out a half inch farther than it had to from the wall! The rest was a fairly simple project after the bar — I framed up a box using oak (again, I could have saved a lot of money on this piece if I’d used mostly pine).

I measured my existing wine rack to decide how much clearance I needed  between shelves, and then figured out how many shelves I could have in order to have the top piece of wood end up level with the top of the bar (41″).

Most people would do this on paper, but I figured all the measurements out using my grid in Photoshop.

I used  1.5″ and 3″ hole saws on my drill to make the wine bottle holes in the wood, both front and back of shelf pieces (small holesaw on the front and wide on the back.) I used the wine bottles again to figure out how much spacing I wanted between the holes and then clamped two pieces of wood together and drilled out my holes (one piece got the top half of the hole saw, the other piece got the bottom, so I ended u with half circles in each board).

I used small 1 x 1 boards to hold up the shelves, and then drilled and glued the rear bottle supports onto the back of each shelf board. I set those in place and slid them out slightly, so that the front wine bottle holders sat on them… then I drilled holes and attached those to the frame and then slid the shelves back inside. So the end result is, my shelves are removable, if I desire, though they look locked in place.  I sunk the screws in below the face of the wood, and put filler over the top. You can see the circles, but they look like rustic wood plugs instead of visible screws.

The top half for the glasses was a very simple box made of 1x4s with a shelf right in the middle of it. I put 1/4 inch oak veneer on the backs of both pieces, and then sanded, stained and varnished them (two coats).  After it dried, I brought it to its new home behind the bar, and screwed the top onto the bottom by going up from beneath, so the screws wouldn’t show. It worked out nicely!

And then for the finishing touch — I snaked Christmas rope lights inside the main bar and tacked them in place with some cable holders. Then I added an easy on-off switch at the end of the extension cord and hid them with a bottle on the lower shelf. This really brightened up the bar – there’s nothing like the gleam of colored liquor bottles being backlit!

One thing I wasn’t going to do was build the barstools… but I couldn’t find any that matched the wood of the bar — everything seems to be done in walnut and cherry. And in most of the stores where they sell bar stool and rec room furniture, the prices were $200 and $300 per stool. Ultimately, I found a set at Hobo that worked well – they were cherry, but with black leather and swivel seats. And they were just $80 a chair with backs, and half that for the stools without backs… I bought three “chair” stools for one side and three no-back stools for the other. While they don’t match the bar, they complement it nicely – and they’re comfortable!

It was a long, involved project, one that took up my minimal free time for months… but it was definitely worth doing. It looks great, it’s custom to the space, and every time I walk into the room, something inside me perks up and pounds its invisible chest and says “I did that. Me!” I think I’m more proud of the accomplishment of this project than I am of most of the books I’ve written. Speaking of which… for those of you waiting on the next Everson novel… it’s going to be a bit delayed. I… um…  spent a lot of my “writing time” this year building a bar!

Of course, those of you who follow my work probably know that I do a lot of my writing in bars — and now I have a really comfortable one very close to home. So maybe I’ll be more productive this year.

After all, the bartender never calls for my tab!

 

 

 

Amazon’s Halloween Kindle Deals!

Three of my Leisure/47North horror novels - THE PUMPKIN MAN, SIREN and THE 13TH - were chosen to be on Amazon’s Halloween Horror Kindle Deals promotion – 51 books for $1.99. Figured I should post this for anyone reading the blog in the next 24 hours! Here are the links and descriptions:

THE PUMPKIN MAN:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Pumpkin-Man-John-Everson-ebook/dp/B009NXM0RQ/

When Jenn inherits her aunt’s cottage, she doesn’t realize she is inheriting the start of a new dark legend. The Pumpkin Man has returned, leaving jack-o-lanterns carved in the likeness of his victims’ heads. How is the Ouija Board in the old cottage, and the mysterious hidden room connected? Will Jenn escape being carved by… THE PUMPKIN MAN?

SIREN:

http://www.amazon.com/Siren-John-Everson-ebook/dp/B00BT98IWS/

When Evan is lured into the sea by the beautiful naked woman singing on the rocks… he has no idea what he is getting into.

For Evan will soon realize that his seductive lover is a being far more evil…and more terrifying…than he ever imagined. He will learn the danger of falling into the clutches of the… SIREN.

THE 13TH:

http://www.amazon.com/13th-John-Everson-ebook/dp/B00BT8BQN2/

A century ago it was an exclusive resort hotel. But for years Castle House Lodge has stood empty, a haunting shadow of its former glories. Now, after twenty-five years of rumors and ghost stories, the overgrown grounds are showing signs of being tended. The building itself has been repaired. Castle House has new occupants.

What was once a haven for the elite is now a madhouse, a private asylum for pregnant women. But are all the patients really insane? And is it just a coincidence that people have begun to disappear from the nearby town? David Shale’s girlfriend is one of the missing, and he’s determined to find the truth behind the mysterious Dr. Rockford and his house of secrets. He will learn the meaning of the red X painted on the basement door…and he will know the ultimate fear, the horror of… THE 13TH.

If you want to see the full list of Amazon Horror Titles on sale for Halloween, go here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=s9_al_ft_feat?ie=UTF8&docId=1002990841

 

PLUS: CAGE Kindle Countdown Deal Ends Soon

In addition to all that… my first short fiction collection, CAGE OF BONES & OTHER DEADLY OBSESSIONS, originally released by Delirium Books for Halloween back in 2000, is on sale today on a Kindle Countdown Deal for just $0.99.

Just 14 hours left on the Countdown! This one includes 20 erotic horror tales, including my most popular story, “Pumpkin Head.”

 

Trick or Treat!

 

Today is Launch Day: Download THE FAMILY TREE now!

Today is LAUNCH DAY:

Download The Family Tree from Amazon!

TODAY IS THE OFFICIAL RELEASE DAY for The Family Tree!

My 8th novel is now available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Samhain  and all the other usual outlets.  I know a bunch of you on the list have already pre-ordered the book, and I really appreciate it! I can’t wait to hear what everyone thinks of the new story.

LET’S HAVE A RELEASE CONTEST!

I want to make sure this one gets a good, visible bump — heck, maybe a leap onto a bestseller’s chart! And the best way to do that, is to make sure a lot of people download it all at once on its release day. And since Amazon owns the bulk of the e-book release space, that’s the nut to crack. So if you have enjoyed my past novels, please log on to Amazon today, and download a copy of The Family Tree for your Kindle! Or…order a copy of the real, dead-tree book (my personal favorite kind.)

THE DEAL: I’ll even offer an incentive for acting today. Anyone who sends me a receipt from Amazon showing that they’ve ordered a copy of the book today (or pre-ordered it prior to today – you guys were out in front!), will be entered into a drawing to win a signed copy of your choice of one of my other (dead tree) books. Covenant, Sacrifice, The 13th, Siren, The Pumpkin Man, NightWhere, Violet Eyes, Needles & Sins, Vigilantes of Love, Cage of Bones. Name it, and it’s yours, if your name is pulled from The Great Pumpkin.

THE CATCH: To enter, you have to grab yourself a copy of The Family Tree today from Amazon. And then email me your entry to john@johneverson.com. Pretty easy, really.

Contest or no, I do hope you’ll check this one out… and hope you’ll enjoy the story!

Here’s the back cover description of the new book:

Its roots are old…and twisted!

The blood of the tree is its sap. It has sustained Scott Belvedere’s family for generations. It’s the secret ingredient behind the family’s intoxicating ale and bourbon, among other elixirs. But only when Scott inherits The Family Tree Inn, deep in the hills of Virginia, does he learn anything about his family, its symbiotic history, or the mammoth, ancient tree around which the inn is literally built. And after he stumbles upon the bony secrets hidden in its roots, while in the welcoming arms of the innkeeper’s daughter, he realizes that not only is blood thicker than water—it’s the only thing that might save him from the hideous fate of his ancestors…

Spend Halloween with me and The Family Tree! 

Yours in Dark Arts,

John

Evil is an empty pot of coffee

Over the past month, Grey Matter Press has orchestrated and sometimes hosted an Uncovering Evil blog tour to promote the anthology Equilibrium Overturned. As one of the authors included in the book, this week, the exploration of the nature of evil falls to me.

Over the past month, as this blog tour has been going on, I’ve been working a lot of extra hours at the dayjob. A lot of 9 a.m. – 9 p.m. shifts. Almost everyone at my work has – it’s our busiest time of the year. I’ve also been short-staffed, making it worse than usual. And maybe that’s why the nature of evil crystallized for me so perfectly just a couple days ago, when I went to press the handle on the coffee dispenser in our lunchroom, and all that came out were some frothy spurts of brown air. That’s when it all became clear.

Evil is an empty pot of coffee.

OK, well, not the pot exactly… evil is the person who walked away with the last cup of coffee at 9:30 a.m. in the morning without taking the simple action of emptying the old grounds, dropping in a new filter, opening a pre-measured bag of coffee and dropping it in said filter…. and then pressing the Brew button so that the next over-stressed person to walk into the kitchen could pour him or herself a cuppa.

That person who took the last cup and walked away, was evil. They knew that someone would come after them looking for coffee and they chose to gyp that person by not fulfilling the code – you finish it, you make the next pot.

Anyone within earshot of the lunchroom heard my lightning bolt realization as I found the coffee pot completely empty and proclaimed with loud and unapologetic judgement: That was evil!”

Evil is ultimately, selfish action. Good, on the other hand, is selfless action.

Neither state – good or evil – is some floating cloud of pregnant celestial baggage, waiting to land and overwhelm some unsuspecting host. I don’t believe there is some black spirit flitting around that is “pure” evil looking to undo the world. At its simplest, evil is selfishness. It could be grandiose selfishness – inviting a dozen people into your home one by one, and killing each of them, to fulfill whatever snuff kink gets your brain dancing.  It could be a medium selfishness – holding up a convenience store with a gun, risking the life of the cashier in order to take what isn’t yours… because you really want it, even though it’s not your due.

Or it could just be, taking the last cup of coffee in the lunchroom and walking away without filling the pot.

Does that make the coffee shirker Darth Vader? No. But there was a touch of evil there. As there is in all of us. I don’t think anyone is all evil or all good.

I don’t believe in absolutes. Life has never been black and white to me. Life – and good and evil… and all of us – live in the gray.

In my story “Amnion,”  from Equilibrium Overturned, a self-absorbed scientist sees nothing but his quest for the fountain of youth. And a woman  will use him in any way necessary if it means bringing her her life’s dream –a genetic reprogramming. They’re both obsessed with self… and they will ultimately hurt people in their colliding, obsessive quests. I don’t want to give too much away about the story, because I’d love for you to read it (come on back after you do and we’ll talk later!). But all of the characters in this story pursue their own desires at the expense of others.

That’s evil to me.

And you know what? There’s a little bit of that in all of us.

For more of the Uncovering Evil musings on the nature of the “dark” from Tony Knighton, Jeff Hemenway, Stephen Vessels, JG Faherty, S.G. Larner, Sean Eads and more, visit the Grey Matter blog.

To find out more about Equilibrium Overturned… click the scary reaper below!

 

 

CAGE OF BONES is on a Kindle Countdown!

My erotic horror collection CAGE OF BONES & Other Deadly Obsessions is on a Kindle Countdown Deal this week for just 99 cents!  I’ve always been really proud of this book — CAGE OF BONES was my very first short fiction collection — hell, my very first book, period — originally issued as a limited edition hardcover from Delirium Books way back in 2000. Only 300 copies were printed (they were all signed and numbered as a collectors edition release). It’s now available in paperback and e-book from Dark Arts Books.

CAGE OF BONES includes 20 stories, most of them erotic horror. Several of them have been reprinted a number of times, including “Pumpkin Head,” which has become one of my most popular stories (originally printed in Grue Magazine) and “Cage of Bones” which originally appeared in the Necro Publications magazine Into The Darkness.

The last reader review on Amazon sai,d “If I could give this six stars, I would!”

Another reviewer wrote: “While they were billed as ‘erotic horror’ I wouldn’t have said they were that naughty. They were more horrifying and the sex was in context. I applaud the author for being able to take me on a terrifying non stop rollercoaster ride, leaving me breathless and gasping at the end of each story. Great stories but don’t read them alone or with the light off.”

http://www.amazon.com/Cage-Bones-Other-Deadly-Obsessions-ebook/dp/B00EAOU7Z0/

 

Any interview that covers beer, books and Ke$ha…

This week, Glenn Rolfe, a fellow author in the literary trenches of the dark, did an interview with me as I gear up for the release of my eight novel, The Family Tree, next week. He asked some fun questions, and I had fun with the answers. Any interview that covers microbrews, the business of books and the guilty pleasures of Ke$ha is a good time in my book.

Check out Glenn’s blog and my interview here.

And don’t miss the bonus “soundtrack” extra at the end.

While you’re at it… take a read of Glenn’s own The Haunted Halls! After all… it’s October. The perfect season for haunted halls!

~ The Family Tree puts its roots down… on Oct. 7th!

he Family Tree, my eighth novel, debuts on October 7th from Samhain Publishing!

There are actually a few copies out in the world already… we sold some pre-release copies at the Samhain Publishing booth at HorrorHound Indianapolis a couple weeks ago, and tomorrow night, it will have its Chicago debut at the Chicago Horror Film Fest, where I’ll be a guest.

The first review, from Horror Fiction Review, says: “THE FAMILY TREE has a typical horror novel set up that has been done thousands of times (city slicker finds ancient evil in rural town). But Everson is one of a handful of writers who is able to make this work and even seem fresh. Like most of his novels, this one is heavy on the sex, and the prose pulled me through in two quick sittings. The second half is suspense-filled and had me cheering for Scott until the final page. This is Everson’s eighth novel and it’s a sure-fire hit for anyone who loves 70s/80s-styled pulp horror.” Read the full review here.

Here’s the back cover description:

Its roots are old… and twisted!

The blood of the tree is its sap. It has sustained Scott Belvedere’s family for generations. It’s the secret ingredient behind the family’s intoxicating ale and bourbon, among other elixirs. But only when Scott inherits The Family Tree Inn, deep in the hills of Virginia, does he learn anything about his family, its symbiotic history, or the mammoth, ancient tree around which the inn is literally built. And after he stumbles upon the bony secrets hidden in its roots, while in the welcoming arms of the innkeeper’s daughter, he realizes that not only is blood thicker than water—it’s the only thing that might save him from the hideous fate of his ancestors…

I’m really looking forward to hearing what readers think of this one.

You can order your trade paperback or ebook copy now at Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble!

~ Stephen King and me…

What do Stephen King and John Everson have in common?

Qualia Nous!

THIS WEEK MARKED a pretty big milestone for me. A new original story of mine called “Voyeur” (written early this spring) appears in a new anthology — Qualia Nous — which also includes stories by William F. Nolan (author of many Twilight Zone scripts as well as Logan’s Run) and … Stephen King!



I’ve published a lot of stories in lots of books and magazines over the past 20 years, but this is the first time I’ve ever shared pages with King. Needless to say, I was pretty excited when I learned that he had joined the project a few weeks ago.

The anthology was edited by Michael Bailey and just came out over the weekend from Written Backwards Press. You can read a bit about the book on the Written Backwards site here.

Here’s the description on Amazon.com:

A literary blend of science fiction and horror, Qualia Nous contains short stories, novelettes, and poetry from established authors and newcomers from around the world. Featuring the imaginations of Stephen King, Gene O’Neill, William F. Nolan, John Everson, Lucy A. Snyder, Thomas F. Monteleone, Elizabeth Massie, Gary A. Braunbeck, and many others.

Check it out here: http://www.amazon.com/Qualia-Nous-Michael-Bailey/dp/0578146460/

~ 48 is Great?

Friday marks my birthday. Again.

YEP, THIS WEEKEND, I turn 48 years old. I guess time flies when you’re constantly staring at a computer screen!

Yesterday I had lunch with a friend I haven’t seen in a long time. We met back when I was 28… which also turns out to be the same year I started publishing fiction. It was great catching up but… damn… how did 20 years slip by so fast?

I won’t get all melancholy about it though. This weekend is shaping up to be a fun one — centered around catching up with friends and family. I’ll be having dinner with my friend Jerry from Synapse Films tonight, with my friend Brad and his family on my actual birthday tomorrow night (at my beloved Hofbrauhaus!) and with my dad on Sunday. And in between… I’ll be hanging out all day at a book table on Saturday talking with horror fans at the Indie Horror Film Festival. It’s being held this year at Schurz High School on 3601 N. Milwaukee Ave. in Chicago, so I’m hoping to see some more friends from the Chicago area at that event!

Next weekend, I’ll be returning to DanCon in Orland Park — so I’m hoping to catch up with even more horror and dark fantasy fans then at the Orland Civic Center next Sunday, March 23rd. It’s going to be a blast!

 

Now on Amazon, B&N, Kobo…

It’s… The .48 Sale!

I figured I’d have a little fun with the whole 48 thing, so I’m advertising a “.48″ sale. I put my horror books that I personally have control over (most of my books are with other publishers) on sale this month at $1.48 or $2.48.  So if you don’t have them yet, pick up Cage of Bones & Other Deadly Obsessions, Vigilantes of Love or Failure on sale for cheap at Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords and Amazon (sort of). Amazon has only adjusted the price of Vigilantes of Love so far, but hopefully the other two will follow. If you already have these books, please post a quick review about them on Amazon — and help spread the word about the sale :-)  Here’s how you can find them:

* Amazon

* B&N

* Kobo

* Smashwords