John Everson's Blog, page 18

~ Coffin Hop 2013: Let’s Talk Books!

Tuesday… the sixth day of the Coffin Hop!

I hope you’ve scored some goodies on the various blogs participating in the Hop so far! So far, Sandy Czernik, Lori Parker, Kate and Sheila Halterman have won e-book copies of Violet Lagoon on drawings here the past few nights.

Yesterday, we talked about favorite horror movies… today, I want to hear from you about your favorite horror books. Post in the comments section below about your favorite all-time horror novel or story… or if you can’t narrow it down… give me a list, and you’ll be entered in today’s contest to win an e-book copy of Violet Lagoon… Remember, everyone who enters the daily contest will be entered in Thursday’s grand prize drawing.

For me? I’m a huge Edward Lee fan. Give me a new Lee book, and you won’t find me out of my reading chair until it’s finished! I remember reading City Infernal cover to cover in a hammock one summer on the 4th of July. And I did the same with either Coven or Succubi. But there are other key authors and books for me too. I think discovering Stephen King’s Carrie and Firestarter in high school, and his Night Shift collection of short fiction, really set me down my path for horror. And after King, I discovered the horrendous yet literary visions of Clive Barker (his Damnation Game and Great & Secret Show novels were big eye openers for me). I loved the gothic dark beauty that Anne Rice crafted as well. Her first couple Vampire novels kept me glued to the pages, and I was fascinated with the deep, intricate histories that she wove in The Witching Hour.

So what about you? What books stuck with you for days and weeks and years after reading them?  Tell me in the comments below!

On Halloween night, I’ll be pulling names from all the entrants to the daily contest this week for these things:

* an autographed copy of the rare hardcover collection Creeptych (which includes “Violet Lagoon”),

* an autographed copy of Violet Eyes,

* a cool spider candle holder, and

* a highly coveted Samhain Publishing Blood-Pen.

* maybe one more secret thing specific to the Hop to be named later…

So talk to me about horror books today… and then come back again tomorrow to see what other webs we might weave!

(Oh – and visit all of the other blogs on the Coffin Hop too — there are dozens of contests and giveaways spread throughout the Hop blogs! You can follow the lists of people I’ve posted on Twitter or get the list of participants on the web here.)

~ Coffin Hop 2013: Let’s talk Horror Movies!

Monday… the fifth day of the Coffin Hop!

I hope you’ve scored some goodies on the various blogs participating in the Hop so far! So far, Sandy Czernik, Lori Parker and Kate have won e-book copies of Violet Lagoon on drawings here the past few nights.

Over the weekend, I watched a couple horror movies with my wife to get ready for Halloween this week… we caught the old Hammer film Kiss of the Vampire on Svengoolie, and then pulled out Scream 4, which I’ve had sitting around waiting to be watched for awhile. It turned out to be a great reboot of a great older series of films.

Which leads to today’s challenge.

To enter the contest today to win an e-book copy of Violet Lagoon… I’d like you to post what your favorite horror movies are. You can list one and dash on to your next Coffin Hop destination, or list a handful and spend some time to say something about them. I’d just love to know what everyone enjoys.

For me? I love the Eurotrash fare from the ’70s. Dario Argento’s Suspiria and Inferno. Jean Rollin’s Living Dead Girl and Fascination. Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond and The House by the Cemetery, Harry Kumel’s Daughters of Darkness and José Ramón Larraz’s Vampyres, among many others. I love a lot of modern stuff, but those old ’70s films from Europe… they really make me want to sit back with a beer and a carton of popcorn!

What horror movies do you love to watch again and again?  Post your answer in the comments below and you’ll be entered in today’s contest, as well as in the drawing on Halloween.

On Halloween night, I’ll be pulling names from all the entrants to the daily contest this week for these things:

* an autographed copy of the rare hardcover collection Creeptych (which includes “Violet Lagoon”),

* an autographed copy of Violet Eyes,

* a cool spider candle holder, and

* a highly coveted Samhain Publishing Blood-Pen.

* maybe one more secret thing specific to the Hop to be named later…

So talk to me about horror movies today… and then come back again tomorrow to see what other webs we might weave!

(Oh – and visit all of the other blogs on the Coffin Hop too — there are dozens of contests and giveaways spread throughout the Hop blogs! You can follow the lists of people I’ve posted on Twitter or get the list of participants on the web here.)

~ Coffin Hop 2013: The day of the Pumpkin!

It’s the Sunday before Halloween and the fourth day of the Coffin Hop!  Halfway there! Hopefully if you’re reading this right now, you’re already hip to the Hop… but if not, please read my post explaining what’s going on from Friday.

I am participating in the Coffin Hop for the third year in a row, and this year I’m giving away a free e-book of my novelette Violet Lagoon every day until Halloween… when the big prize gets pulled from the Great Pumpkin.

Everyone who enters the contest this week gets their name in the Great Pumpkin for the grand prize, as well as for that day’s prize. Enter this contest every day, and you’ll have seven chances in the hat for the drawing on Halloween night!

Yesterday, to get entered in the big drawing, as well as in the daily drawing for a copy of Violet Lagoon, all you had to do was post a comment about spiders at the bottom of the blog.

The winner of the Violet Lagoon e-book yesterday was Lori Parker. She’ll be entered in the big drawing Thursday as well.

Today, I have a new challenge to enter.

We’re celebrating Halloween this week, and yesterday (Saturday) Amazon.com featured my novel The Pumpkin Man on its Kindle Daily Deal promotion.

So… today seemed like a really good day to send everyone off on a “scavenger hunt” to that book’s micro site, www.thepumpkinman-horror.com.

What do you have to do? Have a little fun.

Over on The Pumpkin Man site, there’s an online Ouija Board. Type in some questions, and who knows, you might be making contact with The Pumpkin Man himself… careful what you ask!  Make sure you click on the iPod while you’re there, by the way.  I think you’ll like what it plays.

Anyway… pop on over, ask the board a question or two and report back here what it says by posting it as a comment to this blog below.

Tell me what the Ouija Board said… and you’re entered in today’s contest for a free copy of Violet Lagoon. And you’re also entered in the drawing for :

* an autographed copy of the rare hardcover collection Creeptych (which includes “Violet Lagoon”),

* an autographed copy of Violet Eyes,

* a cool spider candle holder, and

* a highly coveted Samhain Publishing Blood-Pen.

* maybe one more secret thing specific to the Hop to be named later…

So talk to me about Ouija Boards today… and then come back again tomorrow to see what other webs we might weave!

(Oh – and visit all of the other blogs on the Coffin Hop too — there are dozens of contests and giveaways spread throughout the Hop blogs! You can follow the lists of people I’ve posted on Twitter or get the list of participants on the web here.)

~ Coffin Hop 2013: The Weekend before Halloween!

It’s the Saturday before Halloween.

That means you have the whole weekend to hang out in the Coffin Hop!

Hopefully if you’re reading this right now, you’re already hip to the Hop… but if not, please read my post from yesterday.

I am participating in the Coffin Hop for the third year in a row, and this year I’m giving away a free e-book of my novelette Violet Lagoon every day until Halloween… when the big prize gets pulled from the Great Pumpkin.

Everyone who enters the contest this week gets their name in the Great Pumpkin for the grand prize, as well as for that day’s prize. Enter this contest every day, and you’ll have seven chances in the hat for the drawing on Halloween night!

Yesterday, to get entered in the big drawing, as well as in the daily drawing for a copy of Violet Lagoon, all you had to do was post a comment at the bottom of the blog.

The winner of the Violet Lagoon e-book yesterday was Sandy Czernik. She’ll be entered in the big drawing Thursday as well.

Today, I’m making the challenge just a tad tougher.

This contest is all about spiders, because my new novel, Violet Eyes is… you guessed it… all about spiders.

So to enter the drawing today, post a comment at the bottom of this blog about spiders.

Do you love them?
Hate them?
Why?
Do you have a good spider anecdote?

Let’s talk about your take on eight-legs of terror here!

Saturday night I’ll pull the second winner for the free copy of Violet Lagoon, and everyone will be entered for the Halloween drawing for the items in the picture below:

* an autographed copy of the rare hardcover collection Creeptych (which includes “Violet Lagoon”),

* an autographed copy of Violet Eyes,

* a cool spider candle holder, and

* a highly coveted Samhain Publishing Blood-Pen.

* maybe one more secret thing specific to the Hop to be named later…

So talk to me today about spiders… and then come back again tomorrow to see what other webs we might weave!

(Oh – and visit all of the other blogs on the Coffin Hop too — there are dozens of contests and giveaways spread throughout the Hop blogs! You can follow the lists of people I’ve posted on Twitter or get the list of participants on the web here.)

 

~ Coffin Hop 2013: Win yourself some SPIDERS!

It’s hard to believe but Halloween is just around the corner… and that means, it’s time for the Coffin Hop!

What is the Coffin Hop, you ask?

I would like to say that it’s an event where everyone climbs into a coffin and hops bunny style towards a finish line while being chased by a line of Grim Reapers with extra shiny blades.

Sadly, it’s not quite that cool. But it IS pretty cool.

The Coffin Hop is an annual event wherein a slew of horror authors and artists feature daily contests, prizes, fiction, giveaways… it’s basically a  series of connected horror blogs each offering a bit of trick and treat for readers. The more places you hop to on the chain every day, the more stuff you’re going to amass by the end of the week. Check out all the blogs for a chance to win… all manner of ghoulish prizes!

Here at www.JohnEverson.com, we’ll be serving up some eight-legged fare. Yep… this year, my Coffin Hop goodies all revolve around SPIDERS!

Every day for the next week, I’ll be giving away a free e-book of my novelette Violet Lagoon!

And at the end of the week… there’s a big prize. On Halloween night, after Trick-or-Treating is all done, I’ll have my son draw a name out of the Great Pumpkin from all of the entries I receive this week. That winner will receive:

An autographed copy of Violet Eyes , my seventh novel, just released from Samhain Publishing.




An autographed copy of Creeptych , the rare, out-of-print 2010 Delirium hardcover that features “Violet Lagoon” and two other buggy stories. This is a collector’s item and the last “extra” copy of this book that I own.




A cool spider design candle holder that has been lingering about in my office for many years.




One nifty Samhain blood pen.

So how can you win?

Simply post a comment to this blog below. Make sure to enter at least your name and email address (the email won’t be publicly displayed, but I can’t contact winners without it!)

I will be drawing a name every day, and will be adding some new things here throughout the week… so check back every day! And post a comment every day — everyone who enters will be entered in the drawing for the grand prize.

And after you’ve entered the contest by posting a comment below… visit http://coffinhop.com to see all of the blogs and their contests!

Trick or Treat… and…

Beware the bite!

 

~ The Spiders are here: VIOLET EYES

So, while I’ve been out-of-pocket traveling the past couple days, it appears that the spiders all got loose! Yep – My seventh novel, VIOLET EYES, is now available in both e-book and trade paperback from all the usual places!

* Amazon

* B&N

* Books-A-Million

* Chapters-Indigo

* Samhain

This is my big “spider” book, and I’m really excited about the release – it’s been a long time coming. I first outlined the novel five years ago!

Here’s the back cover description:

Their bites are more than deadly…

The small town near the Everglades was supposed to offer Rachel and her son a fresh start. Instead it offered the start of a nightmare, when an unknown breed of flies migrated through the area, leaving painful bites in their wake. The media warned people to stay inside until the swarm passed. But the flies didn’t leave. And then the radios and TVs went silent.

That’s when the spiders came. Spiders that could spin a deadly web large enough to engulf an entire house overnight. Spiders that left stripped bones behind as they multiplied. Spiders that, like the flies, sought hungrily for tender flesh…through Violet Eyes.

To celebrate (and pave the way for the novel), the e-novelette “prequel,” Violet Lagoon is also on sale this week for just 99 cents!

When I originally outlined the novel Violet Eyes back in 2008, my editor, Don D’Auria loved the concept, but was concerned about releasing the book right after Sarah Pinborough’s spider books had come out (too many spiders that year!)… so he said to wait on diving into that novel awhile. While I waited to write the full book, I decided to go ahead and write up the outlined prologue as a standalone story for Creeptych, a short collection I did with Delirium. That novelette is Violet Lagoon, which now is out under its own cover.

In the end, when I finally wrote Violet Eyes, the novelette ended up being too long to serve in its entirety as the novel’s prologue, but much of Violet Lagoon does appear in Violet Eyes — in part as the prologue and in flashbacks throughout the novel. I thought some people would still want to read Violet Lagoon, the original, uncut novelette, the way it originally was published.

So read Violet Lagoon, the story that spawned Violet Eyes here:

* Amazon

* Apple iBookstore

* B&N

* Kobo

Hoping everyone enjoys the creepy crawlies of Violet Lagoon and Violet Eyes!

Beware the Bite!

 

~ “Strong Will Survive” released in French

Look what came in the mail today, all the way from France! A copy of MYTHOLOGICA, a special preview “Issue 0″ edition of a new gorgeously illustrated trade paperback-size French magazine.

It features a translation of my story “The Strong Will Survive,” which was originally published in Space & Time magazine and then in my collection Needles & Sins.

Huge thanks to Thomas Bauduret for buying and translating it for this release. Thomas also has translated Covenant into French, for an upcoming release there.

Here’s their site: http://www.mythologica.net/mythologica-n0-couverture-finale-et-sommaire/

~ Cage of Bones now in paperback!

Look what arrived in the mail — my first book — now in paperback for the first time ever!!!

CAGE OF BONES & Other Deadly Obsessions was originally released as a limited edition hardcover by Delirium Books 13 years ago… but it has never had a trade paperback release until now.

I have always felt bad that CAGE OF BONES never came out in a paperback version when it was originally released. It was my very first book, and appeared in a limited hardcover edition back in 2000 from Delirium Books. At one point at the height of the “collectible books” boom, since there were only 300 copies made, there were some copies of CAGE that were resold on eBay for $150! Eventually, the collection did get a stripped down e-book release from the publisher, but that version was missing content from the original hardcover.

This summer, I got the rights back to Cage of Bones, and reissued the e-book (reinstating all the original story introductions) through Dark Arts Books. And this week, the first trade paperback edition was finally released,  nearly 13 years after the original publication! I still think this collection has some of my best erotic horror tales, including “Pumpkin Head,” “Anniversary,” “Direkit Seed,” “Cage of Bones” and “Every Last Drop” so I’m hoping a new audience will discover it! If you want a copy, grab one from:

Amazon
Dark Arts Books

Anyone who orders from Dark Arts Books can have their copy autographed if you like (because I’ll be the guy shipping it out!)

 

~ HorrorHound Weekend

I had a great time this weekend hanging out and talking horror with my fellow authors from Samhain Publishing at HorrorHound Weekend in Indianapolis!

This was the first HorrorHound I’ve gone to, and hopefully won’t be the last. My publisher, Samhain, was a major sponsor of the event and so they had a long table right in the front of the exhibit hall where I sat all weekend and signed copies of Violet Eyes and NightWhere with fellow dark scribes Jonathan Janz, Russell R. James, Kristopher Rufty, Mick Ridgewell, Brian Moreland and David Searls. It was great meeting / catching up with everyone.

I had dinner on the first night in the same room with Robert Englund (he was at the table right next to us!)  but it wasn’t until the end of the weekend that I actually got a chance to talk to any of the HorrorHound media guests. I met Danielle Harris from the Halloween movies — I saw her Among Friends feature when it debuted last year at Flashback Weekend in Chicago. I also had a great chat with Barry Bostwick (who will always be Brad from Rocky Horror Picture Show to me!) about scripts, films and novels. He was very genial and kind – I wished we could have talked more! We snapped this photo of him holding Violet Eyes, when he visited the Samhain table.

I don’t normally do autographs at conventions, but I brought my Ginger Snaps DVDs to the con and was all psyched to get  Emily Perkins to sign them… and then she turned out to be a last minute cancellation! :-/

I did, however, get to meet the real Pumpkin Man!

The weekend was like a small reunion from Flashback Weekend in Chicago just 2-3 weeks earlier — at that con, I had a table in the exhibit hall to sell all of my books and sat next to Justin and his artist wife Daniela Calcaterra Fullam of Little Punk People on one side and  Jerry Chandler of Synapse Films on the other. Both of them were right around the corner from me this time as well, and I went out to dinner Friday and again on with the Synapse gang — Jerry, Don May and Billy Kirkus. On Saturday night, we ended up in downtown Indianapolis to enjoy the gluttonous wonder of a Brazilian steakhouse at Fogo De Chao. And then we sat out on Jerry’s patio at the hotel talking about the subtleties of Detroit sausage half the night. Talk about a food night.

On Sunday, Daniela finished one of her art pieces, and named her Violette for me. Violette and a smaller girl named Lilac went home with me to deck out my purple office!

At the start of a convention, it always seems like you have a ton of time… and then all of a sudden, you’re packing up, and you realize you’ve not seen half of the things at the con, or talked to nearly as many people as you intended to! And so it goes.<

By mid-Sunday afternoon, the exhibit hall was nearly dead (which is when I walked over to say hi to Barry Bostwick and Danielle Harris). I snapped a few shots of the impressive  “Hall of Masks” in the ballroom across from where we had been all weekend, said my goodbyes and packed up the car for the long ride. On the way home I stopped in downtown Indy at Scotty’s Brewhouse for a beer and a burger so decadent I could barely get my mouth around both buns! Scotty’s rocks! Overall, a great weekend!

Here are some other pictures from the con. Just click on them to see larger versions:

 

~ FAILURE reissued – and it’s FREE this week!

Back in 2006, my novelette Failure  launched a “hardcover chapbook” line for Delirium Books. I got to create the wraparound cover art for that and the next several releases in the line, which was a lot of fun and really allowed me to stretch creatively.

This week, my imprint Dark Arts Books has reissued Failure with new updated cover art as well as a new author Afterword. The original full wraparound cover art is also included at the end of the book.

To celebrate the reissue, the novelette is free this week on Amazon — I’m hoping lots of people will download, enjoy this twisted little tale and spread the word about the book so it finds a new audience.

Check out the new edition here:

http://www.amazon.com/Failure-ebook/dp/B00E7CWA0K

The story revolves around three teens, who are lured into a twisted occult plot by a wizard with the promise of sex and drugs. But they never realized that the old man’s intentions were far darker than voyeurism.

Here are a couple of the reviews that the original edition received:

“Failure is one nasty tale — full of evil spells and bloodshed. It’s fast-paced and unforgettable.”

–Wicked Karnival

“…kind-of like reading a novella-length version of lyrics to a Slayer song …Failure is an impressive, fast-paced read that shoves your face into the sleaze and then takes off like a drive-by shooting. For a short story, this sucker packs quite a punch.”

–The Horror Fiction Review