John Everson's Blog, page 2

Cover Reveal: The Bloodstained Doll

ON OCTOBER 8, my 15th novel, The Bloodstained Doll, will be released in hardcover, paperback and e-book editions by Flame Tree Press. It’s another horrific murder-mystery thriller in the vein of my last Flame Tree release, Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds.

Meant to celebrate the crazy giallo thrillers of Italy from the 1970s, I have really enjoyed writing these two novels and I hope you’ll enjoy reading them! So… without further ado… here’s what it will look like when it hits shelves this fall:

So what’s this one about?

Here’s what the cover copy will say:

When Allyson’s mom dies unexpectedly, she thinks her world has hit rock bottom. But that’s before she goes to live with her estranged Uncle Otto in Germany. When a child’s empty casket is unearthed in the backyard during a violent storm, suddenly people close to her uncle start turning up dead.

Is there a connection?

As the noose tightens and murders draw closer to Berger Mansion, Allyson and her new boyfriend Andrew discover a dark truth hidden in the attic. Soon their lives are at stake if they don’t discover why each broken body is decorated with… a Bloodstained Doll.

The novel is available for pre-order now, so if you’re looking forward to this one, please pre-order and help make sure it has a good launch this fall!

AMAZON: www.amazon.com/dp/1787588882/

B&N: www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-bloodstained-doll-john-everson/1145621575

FLAME TREE: www.flametreepublishing.com/the-bloodstained-doll-isbn-9781787588882.html

Visit store sites or learn more on the book page for The Bloodstained Doll.

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The Night Mother is nominated for a 2024 Splatterpunk Award!

TONIGHT WHEN I LOGGED in after the workday, I found my social media had been blowing up all day… because The Night Mother is nominated for a 2024 SPLATTERPUNK AWARD in the Best Novel Category!!!

Talk about a great way to end the day!

I am hugely thankful to everyone who nominated the book – it’s a novel I’m really proud of that was literally a decade in the making. I had wanted to write this book since NightWhere originally came out and became a Bram Stoker Award Finalist back in 2012.

Given that this was the first book I’ve had to release independently in many years, to have The Night Mother show up this year on the Splatterpunk Award ballot is… awesome in a way I can’t fully articulate.

And… I’m with amazing company in the Novel category with C.J Leed, Duncan Ralston, Bryan Smith and Kristopher Triana. There are a ton of amazing writers in the rest of the categories too, from the incredible Edward Lee (who gave me an awesome blurb for The Night Mother), Ryan Harding, David J Schow and Gina Ranalli to Candace Nola, Matthew Vaughn, Chet Williamson and K Trap Jones.

The awards will be given out by Brian Keene and Wrath James White at KillerCon this summer in Austin!

You can see all of the nominees here: https://killerconaustin.com/awards

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Meeting an Idol: Italian Director Sergio Martino

LAST NIGHT, I drove into Chicago for a showing of The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago … which was one of the most amazing nights I’ve had in years. I was lucky enough to be able to attend a special private reception before the film, where I met and talked to director Sergio Martino – who is one of my absolute favorite Italian directors (there’s a character named after him in my novel Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds.)

I don’t get fanboyish over many people – I was a music critic for 20 years, so I’ve met a lot of “stars” over the years. But this… this was special. There was a language barrier, but he speaks some English, so I was able to talk to Sergio one-on-one for awhile about his career. He signed a couple of posters for me and talked a little bit about ’70s film production in Italy, which is one of my favorite periods in cinema. It’s also the period in which Sergio made his best films, including The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh and Torso, which I drove down to see the night before last (he did an introduction for that film on the stage as well).

A couple years ago, I found Sergio through Facebook. He agreed to look at my forthcoming “giallo homage” novel and after reading, he was kind enough to give me a wonderful promotional blurb for Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds. I never imagined at that point that I would ever get to meet him in person!

Here’s what he wrote about Five Deaths and is printed on the back cover of the hardcover edition:

“I read this story with ever-increasing interest. The dynamics and tension felt reminiscent of my thriller films from the 70s and 80s, which have been appreciated by many American directors such as Quentin Tarantino. It would make a great film for lovers of the genre. Ottimo intrigo!”

Last night, somebody brought him a bottle of J&B to sign, which was genius – J&B appears in almost every giallo film. It’s like there was no other alcohol in Italy in the 1970s.

The film showing itself was great – I’ve seen The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh several times and rank it as one of the best giallo films ever made – but I’ve never seen it before on the big screen. It was so much fun to be in a packed house where people reacted with laughter and cheers and clapping. They even had a live organist playing over trailers prior to the show!

And afterward, Stephanie Sack, who was instrumental in bringing Sergio to the States, interviewed him about his films and talked about the “family” connection he had with his producer (brother Luciano) and lead actress in several films Edwige Fenech (sister-in-law).

While he knows enough English to talk one-on-one a bit, he had an interpreter for the on-stage interview, who was amazing. (I don’t know how she kept up with him on both nights – she was also there to translate for him when he talked about Torso the night before).

He told some great stories about his career, including visiting Chicago over 50 years ago and getting the “key” to the Playboy Mansion. All in all, a super memorable night!

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NOW ON AUDIO: NightWhere, The Night Mother, Pumpkin Man & Violet Eyes

OVER THE PAST THREE months, new audiobook company Fright Night Audio has released four of my novels in audiobook format via Amazon and Audible.

Violet Eyes, which previously had a limited release a few years ago from Audio Realms, just came out in a newly recorded edition this week and is narrated by Kaleigh Kirby. The Pumpkin Man, which was my last novel for Leisure Books back in 2011, is finally in audiobook format a dozen years later and is narrated by Jennifer March.

And after being contracted twice by other publishers over the past decade and never produced, at last NightWhere is available in audio, along with the new sequel The Night Mother. Both books are narrated by Marlaina Garrett.

Download your copies today from Amazon or Audible. You can hear samples of each of them at the links below:

VIOLET EYES: https://www.audible.com/pd/Violet-Eyes-Audiobook/B0CPB4BQJX

THE PUMPKIN MAN: https://www.audible.com/…/The-Pumpkin-Man…/B0CKV2KFW6

NIGHTWHERE: https://www.audible.com/pd/NightWhere-Audiobook/B0CJ9WLCB9

THE NIGHT MOTHER: https://www.audible.com/…/The-Night-Mother…/B0CLB1YKYB

Pumpkin Man a BESTSELLER:

The Pumpkin Man was one of Fright Night’s bestselling releases in October!

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The Night Mother is Alive!

AFTER A 10-MONTH WAIT, The Night Mother, the sequel to NightWhere, is finally available! I turned in the manuscript to my editor at Flame Tree Press almost a year ago, so I’m super excited that the book finally launched on Thursday, June 1st via the Dark Arts Books imprint (a last-minute publication change; Flame Tree will instead issue my novel The Bloodstained Doll next year.).

The Night Mother is a novel I wanted to write for a decade, so you could say it’s been a 10-year, not a 10-month wait! As soon as Samhain Publishing released NightWhere back in 2012, I knew that I personally wanted to know more about the story of Selena, the mysterious “guardian” of that novel who saves Mark from the evil clutches of both his wife and the otherworldly BDSM club known as NightWhere.

I wasn’t sure what the story was though for a long time, so writing it kept getting postponed in favor of novels like The House by the Cemetery and Voodoo Heart. But during COVID, I decided that I really wanted to know what happens to Selena and Mark, so I decided to just dive in and see where the road led. Originally, I thought it would be more about Selena’s past – and some of it is – but mostly this is a new story that takes place after the events of NightWhere, as Watchers from the club are trying to recapture Mark and Selena. It’s also about newcomer Cassie, a dominatrix who is hit with the worst bit of luck a domme could have.

I reached out to some people ahead of the novel’s release to see if they would read it and review it so it could “hit the ground running” and the response was amazing. Authors Edward Lee, Tim Waggoner and W.D. Gagliani all provided blurbs saying things like “The perfect storm of supernatural mayhem, celestial sex, and gore galore!” and “Another wickedly entertaining novel from a master of erotic horror! and “10 lashes out of 10!” And Horror Bookworm Reviews, Betwixt the Sheets and WMP Dark Fiction Magazine all came through, saying things like “Come on in and sin. Yes, please!” and “titillating extreme horror for the truly daring.” You can read all of those reviews on The Night Mother Review Page. Plus a couple of early readers posted great 5-star reviews to Goodreads, which you can read here.

Lots of people pre-ordered autographed editions of the paperback edition directly through me via The Night Mother webpage and dozens of people pre-ordered the ebook edition on Amazon. The first couple Amazon reviews that appeared were both 5-star ratings, so I am really hoping that trend continues!

But mostly, what I’m hoping, is that all of the fans of NightWhere discover that this new book is available and that they read and enjoy it. Out of all my novels, NightWhere is the one that has generated the most “when are you going to write a sequel?” requests. So I’m really hoping that they all find out about the book and that they enjoy where the story takes them. I know I enjoyed writing it and discovering the next chapter in Mark and Selena’s lives. And honestly, Cassie was a surprise to me – I loved finding her and her story.

Several people have asked me if there will be a hardcover edition of The Night Mother and the answer is… hopefully some day? Originally, Flame Tree was going to issue both The Night Mother and reissue NightWhere and they always used to do hardcover editions… but then earlier this year they decided to cut most of their hardcovers due to cost and sales, so if these books had come out as originally planned through Flame Tree, there would absolutely have been no hardcover. However, now that Dark Arts has issued the books, I could license a hardcover edition. I personally think it would be super cool to see a matching NightWhere, The Night Mother hardcover set. But… nothing is currently in the works.

However, what is in the works, are audiobooks! Fireside Audio will be producing audiobooks of both NightWhere and The Night Mother, which is awesome. I can’t wait to hear them! NightWhere had been contracted for audio years ago, but never got produced. So now, at last, people will be able to hear the invitation from The Watchers to “Come in, and sin.” Stay tuned…

In the meantime… if you’re reading this, I hope you’ll give The Night Mother a read. She’s waiting for you… with open arms. And more.

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A Return to NightWhere…

“NightWhere is a batshit crazy, hot, wet ride into hell!”
-Dreadful Tales  

2022 WAS THE 10-YEAR ANNIVERSARY of the release of NightWhere, my sixth novel and my second to be a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award. It was also the year I finished writing its long-awaited and promised sequel, The Night Mother. After years of wanting to tell the story of Selena, the mysterious fallen angel from NightWhere, I finally dug in and did it. And the story surprised me! The novel went in a bit of a different direction than I intended… but I love how it turned out.

NightWhere was one of the first releases from the now-defunct Samhain Publishing, and has become one of my most-read novels, which is funny to me because for years I was a little afraid to write it, given its over-the-top “sex club from hell” themes. One reviewer called it “50 Shades meets Hellraiser,” which I think is the best description ever! The novel has gone on to sell thousands of copies in translation in Germany, was also released in Poland and this year will be released in Czech. Fans all over the world have asked me for years: “Will there be a new NightWhere story? When?”

Well, in just over a month, you’ll be able to finally read the next chapter in NightWhere!

This week, the original novel will return to print. And on June 1, The Night Mother will at last appear! Here’s what they’ll look like:

The Night Mother picks up shortly after the events of NightWhere, and brings back many of the characters from the original book (including Mark, Rae and Selena), as well as introducing some new cast members. You can pre-order the eBook edition of The Night Mother now on Amazon. The trade paperback edition will also be available on June 1, however there is no regular pre-order available for that. I am offering a pre-order option for signed and personalized editions of that via The Night Mother page on this site.

Read the full descriptions of each book here:

NightWhereThe Night Mother

There is also a standalone NightWhere novelette called Field of Flesh, a sidebar story set between the timelines of the two novels. To celebrate the release of The Night Mother, for the first time ever, Field of Flesh will appear in a small trade paperback edition in May! More news on that soon. Here’s what the full cover will look like:

Get ready for a sinister spring!

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HorrorHound 2023 – Spring into Horror!

A LITTLE RAIN couldn’t dampen the high spirits of Horror fans last weekend in Cincinnati, although nobody wanted to stand in the drizzle on Friday waiting for the doors to open for the first HorrorHound Weekend of 2023! Luckily, the clouds didn’t last all weekend.

I drove down to Cincinnati on Thursday night, intending to visit the Hofbrauhaus in Newport, KY for dinner but thanks to the rain, I opted instead for White Castles and a quiet night in my hotel to rest up for the big weekend. I did, however, get a chance to stop at Jungle Jim’s International Market on the way in. I’d heard about the place from my friend Linsi on my last visit and it was only 15 minutes from my hotel so… sidetrip!

And man, was it worth it! Jungle Jim’s is literally the largest supermarket I have EVER seen. They literally have MAPS for shoppers. From aisles of international foods and giant sacks of rice to live seafood to a cigar humidor room to cookware to an enormous liquor section… the place was amazing. They even have a tasting bar in the liquor section, where I got to try a 3 Floyd’s Zombie Ice. I love their Zombie Dust ale and didn’t realize there was a new variety coming out… it was great!

If you’re ever in Cincinnati, check it out. And be prepared to spend an hour or two.

The pictures don’t do it justice.

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Day 1

Load-in on Friday was damp, and I think it took me longer to set up my booth than ever before, but once I had everything on the table, I decamped to 3rd Eye Brewing across the street for a 3rd Eye PA and a bite to eat… then it was back to the convention center for six hours of … TERROR!

OK, not terror. A helluva lot of fun. I got to reconnect with fellow author Michael West and my friends from Synapse Films, my booth neighbors for the weekend. I look forward to hanging out with the Synapse Team — Jerry Chandler, Don May, Tim and Angie O’Saben and Sean Provost — every year at shows and this year got to meet a new member of the gang — Carol LaBranche. And my longtime author friend from Delirium Books and Leisure Books days, Michael Laimo turned up unexpectedly as well, which was a great surprise (he’s working for a horror masks and dolls and such company these days!) And my friends Erica Wetzel-Fields (who brought NINE of my books to my table to sign!) and Krystyna Cole Ratliff turned up early (they visited Michael and me several times during the weekend.) And I got to talk a little with longtime friend, reader and artist Erica Kauffman of Atomic Cotton (whose booth was just down the aisle).

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Friday was the busiest Friday at a horror convention I’ve ever seen, and the six hours the exhibit hall was open went by fast. I saw several familiar faces, saw lots of cool costumes and met a lot of new readers. It was a great day and at the end I went with the Synapse gang to B.J.’s Brewhouse to celebrate the start of a successful con.

Day 2

Saturday is always the big day at a weekend convention and this one was no exception. We were in the hall from 10-7 and and had a blast. Jerry even put on three hours of Depeche Mode and The Cure on his portable speaker for me, which kept me moving all morning behind the books!

I saw some great costumes (Pinhead was amazing!) and talked to tons of horror readers, including a couple of V-Wars fans who recognized my characters from the Netflix series. Many of the people who stopped at my table had picked up my books at previous shows and came back for more (thanks to all of you!) There were even a couple people who remembered when my prior publisher, Samhain Publishing, was a sponsor of the convention and used to bring a bunch of authors in for signings (including me).

At the end of the day, I discovered there’d been a huge power outage a mile from the convention center (we lucked out at the show!) that had all of the hotels behind the expressway in darkness for about 8 hours. I went home to change my shirt and drop stuff off and had to walk up five flights of stairs in the dark to get to my room… but luckily, by the time I got back from a fun night with the Synapse gang at a hibachi restaurant, the power was back.

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Day 3

On Sunday morning, I stopped at Waffle House for my favorite breakfast – jalapenoed hash browns, omelette, biscuit and bacon before heading to the convention center fortified for the day. We don’t have any Waffle Houses in Illinois, so it’s always an anticipated treat!

I took some last shots of the hall when I got inside before the crowd hit and talked a bit with James from Vinegar Syndrome. Calm before the storm. I never did get a chance to meet any of the guests this time around, but I did snap a picture of Elliott Fullam from Terrifier 2. Ten years ago, I had a book booth at Flashback Weekend in Chicago next to his parents (his mom is super cool artist – see Little Punk People!) and he and my son Shaun spent the whole weekend playing video games together on iPads. It’s been so cool to see him having so much success with the new Terrifier movie (which was all OVER this convention!)

Sunday is always a strange day at shows. You know all the fun is almost over so the first couple hours go fast (and filled with yawns from late Saturday parties!)… and then everything slows down as the audience all but vanishes the last couple hours before the actual end time… and then it’s manic again – vendors all tearing down their booths and saying hasty “goodbye until next times.”

This one was no different, but at least it was a warm sunny ride for the first couple hours home. I stopped at the Yard House for dinner in Indianapolis as I always do for a relaxing dinner before finishing the last three hours home.

A huge thanks to Nathan, Jeremy, Aaron and the whole HorrorHound crew for yet another great show. Can’t wait until next time!

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A Return to NightWhere…

2022 was the 10-year anniversary of the release of NightWhere, my sixth novel and my second to be a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award. It was also the year I finished writing its long-awaited and promised sequel, The Night Mother. After years of wanting to tell the story of Selena, the mysterious fallen angel from NightWhere, I finally rolled up my sleeves and did it. And the story surprised me! The novel went in a bit of a different direction than I intended… but I love how it turned out.

NightWhere was one of the first releases from the now-defunct Samhain Publishing, and has become one of my most-read novels, which is funny to me because for years I was a little afraid to write it, given its over-the-top “sex club from hell” themes. One reviewer called it “50 Shades meets Hellraiser,” which I think is the best description ever! The novel has gone on to sell thousands of copies in translation in Germany, was also released in Poland and this year will be released in Czech. Fans all over the world have asked me for years: “Will there be a new NightWhere story? When?”

Well, this summer, you’ll be able to finally read the next chapter in NightWhere!

In just three months, on May 9, 2023, my publisher Flame Tree Press will re-issue the original novel with a gorgeous new cover. A month later, on June 13, The Night Mother will at last appear! And here’s what they’ll look like:

The Night Mother picks up shortly after the events of NightWhere, and brings back many of the characters from the original book (including Mark, Rae and Selena), as well as introducing some new cast members. Both novels are available to pre-order now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, etc.

Read the full descriptions of each book and get the pre-order links here:

NightWhereThe Night Mother

You can also read Field of Flesh, A NightWhere novelette, a sidebar story set between the timelines of the two novels.

“NightWhere is a batshit crazy, hot, wet ride into hell!”
-Dreadful Tales  

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2022: A Very Giallo Year!

IT WAS A GOOD YEAR. I won’t say a VERY good year, but 2022 wasn’t bad. While things started returning to normal after the worst of the pandemic was over in 2021, this year, while masks were still very much in evidence, we all kind of went back to travel and concerts and… DOING things. The difference was, you worried way more than ever in the days leading up to a concert or a party that you might come down with COVID and have to miss it.

Luckily… while I had a touch of pneumonia that killed several weeks in the fall, I didn’t have to pull the plug on any events this year. I think I saw my friend Brian Pinkerton (pictured here) more than ever this year between the conventions and concerts we hung out together at.

I finally got to go back to my beloved Pinball Expo, and took my “book booth” to Capricon, Flashback Weekend, Comicopolis, Krampus Fest, Fan Expo and two HorrorHound Weekends. I also saw one of my stories turned into a quick skit this fall at a “Haunted Library event in Glen Ellyn, IL and had a table at the Berwyn Library’s Local Author Day. And I spent a week in Boston for my dayjob’s annual Fall convention and had a brief work trip to Austin, Texas.

I stayed pretty busy!

 

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Concerts

I also saw a bunch of concerts: I finally got to see one of my favorite synth bands,  OMD (the links in this section all to to my YouTube videos of the shows). I saw Goblin for the third time, performing the soundtrack to Suspiria live. I took my son Shaun to see Jacob Collier, and my wife Geri to see Shaun Cassidy. And Geri and I caught up with our friends Bill Gagliani and Dave Benton when we drove up to Milwaukee to see Dennis DeYoung’s Hunchback of Notre Dame musical where I got to introduce Bill and Shaun to Dennis since I used to see him quite a bit when I was a music critic!

I caught a great outdoor summer show by the remaining members of Material Issue and The Smithereens) and went to three great shows with Brian Pinkerton — the Roxy Music 50th anniversary tour, Nick Mason performing early Pink Floyd and Howard Jones with Ultravox singer Midge Ure, who we got to meet after the show.

 

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Bands

This was also a big year for my son Shaun’s bands. His Naperville Central High School Jazz Combo did several shows, including a showcase at a classic jazz club in Chicago and he was a rock star in the NCHS Drum show in the spring.

I spent many Friday/Saturday nights in the first quarter of the year driving him to practices for Pi Percussion, a high school / college age competitive percussion ensemble and ultimately drove to Dayton, Ohio for a few days in the spring to see him and Pi perform in a national percussion championship (WGI Finals), which was an amazing experience.  His group placed sixth in their class, and some of the “showcase” acts put on shows that would rival a Vegas production.

It was a really exciting weekend – and in addition to the performances, I visited a cool barcade, a Troll bar and took Shaun to Record Store Day while we were there.

 

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Over the past few months, we’ve spent a lot of time celebrating “last time we’ll…”  events with Shaun and starting the “get ready for college” journey. He’s a senior in high school now, so we’ve visited a bunch of colleges in the summer/fall and had the bittersweet experience of helping as parent volunteers at his final high school Marching Band season (he was the section chair for the Front Ensemble, playing marimba).

This winter, he decided not to play marimba for a WGI competitive band again (which bummed me out, honestly!) and instead is playing piano in the Youth Jazz Ensemble of DuPage, which pulls some of the best high school kids from the county together to record an album and possibly earn a slot in a NY jazz competition.

The first quarter of 2023 will be college decision time — with us driving around from college to college as he does music auditions at each to decide which university he’ll end up at for a degree in music education.

A Good Year for Books!

In March, my 13th novel Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds was released. This one was really a labor of love for me — a tribute to the giallo movies from Italy in the ’70s that I am absolutely obsessed with and have been for years. It also led me to write and record a song for the first time in ages – because giallos have to have a theme song! You can listen to the result here.

I was super excited that two of my favorite giallo filmmakers – Sergio Martino and Ernesto Gastaldi – agreed to blurb the book. Their endorsement meant as much to me as a blurb from Stephen King. (You can read what they said on the Five Deaths book page.)

I visited several area book stores to sign copies of the novel, which was the first time I’ve gotten to go store-to-store for a little promo tour in a long time!

After Five Deaths was out on the street, I finally knuckled down over the next three months and finished the long-talked about sequel to NightWhere, The Night Mother. I’ve wanted to revisit NightWhere for a decade so I was excited to finally write The End on the new book in July.

Both NightWhere and The Night Mother will be issued by Flame Tree Press in May/June 2023.

 

Best in Movies

I’m a huge movie lover, and I track the films and genres that I watch every year (it all goes into a spreadsheet!) Most of what I watch is older — cult giallo, horror and art films from the ’70s-80s. And this year, I saw around 120 films. Only a handful of those were released in 2022, but I really enjoyed the new Knives Out: Glass Onion film, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore and Ti West’s X and Pearl duo of films were both excellent.

Sad to say, I was not a huge fan of Smile or the Halloween and Hellraiser reboot entries.

I discovered a couple excellent, classic thrillers in Alex De La Iglesia’s Perdita Durango (1997) William Friedkin’s Cruising (1980) and the comedic 1973 Dutch thriller Naked Over the Fence, and finally saw Roman Polanski’s sex comedy What? and the Oscar classic Midnight Cowboy.

This year I broke my vow to not watch TV series. I’ve always avoided getting sucked into them, not because  I won’t enjoy them, but precisely because I will. And… if I’m spending hours watching series, I won’t be doing any writing. But… I couldn’t resist seeing the new Wednesday series from Tim Burton (LOVED it) or Star Trek Strange New Worlds (EXCELLENT!) or Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities (Pretty good) or Neil Gaiman’s Sandman (Not bad… though somehow I expected to be wowed more).

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I also had to watch Season Two of Star Trek Picard (AWESOME) and Season Three of Stranger Things (weakest of the three, but I liked it).

Year of the Giallo

With the release of Five Deaths, my giallo novel, I ended up rewatching a lot of classic giallo films, including my all time faves The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, What Have You Done To Solange, Death Walks at Midnight and The Red Queen Kills Seven Times. I also discovered a couple good ones that I’d never seen, including Death Carries a Cane and No One Heard the Scream. All told, I saw about three dozen gialli this year.

I didn’t blog most of the year because I think I tired myself out in March — to lead up to the release of Five Deaths, I posted a giallo film review every day for three weeks in March under the heading 21 Nights of Giallo. You can read all those giallo reviews here: Week One | Week Two | Week Three.

In July, I also got to enjoy seeing some giallo on the “big screen” when Facets Multimedia in Chicago presented a Giallo Gellato special evening with three films, including The Psychic, Investigation of  a Citizen Above Suspicion and Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key.

And…. as mentioned in the concerts segment, I also got to see classic Giallo score maestro Claudio Simonetti and Goblin perform some of their theme music in December at Chicago’s Thalia Hall.

Music is Life

I listened to a ton of music this year, because 4-5 nights a week, I turn on DJ shows on Twitch.TV and listen to goth/punk/club/industrial music while I play pinball in my basement. My favorite DJs are DJ Slave1, DJ Melting Girl, Evilyn13, and Red Party NYC, but there are a bunch of others too. The result, however, is I didn’t BUY a lot of music and I don’t actually know the artist names of half the songs I really like! But… I know I did love new releases by Boy Harsher, Wet Leg, Leathers, Actors, Death Cab for Cutie and more.

And a few books:

I didn’t read nearly as much as I wanted to this year (like… 10 books!) but I did really enjoy (finally) reading Dan Brown’s amazing Angels & Demons, Nina Kiriki Hoffman’s Thresholds and Clive Barker’s Mister B. Gone. I was trying to move some things off my To Be Read list that have been on my dresser for over a decade, so this year I read nothing published after 2011!

And here we are…

With a return to business as usual for the most part, 2022 slipped by fast. Weeks seemed to go by like days. And for the most part, it was a pretty good year. We even enjoyed a rare family reunion with my brother Michael and sister Michelle. While I’ve seen both of them over the past decade, when Mike came to stay with us a couple days in May, it was the first time we’d all been in the same place in many many years!

Hopefully, 2023 will be an even better year. It certainly started out good – after I watched the New Year Countdown on TV last night, I went downstairs to play some pinball and listen to my favorite DJs on Twitch, and… I started an epic game of Sorcerer, my favorite machine. I play this table incessantly, at least 10 hours a week on average. But I didn’t set a high score on it in all of 2022.

In the first two hours of 2023, I played a single game for over a half hour, turned the scoreboard over (it only goes up to 9,999,999) and racked up a new personal best high score of over 12 million. Not a bad way to start the year! Hopefully it’s a portent of things to come.

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HorrorHound 2022: The Weekend They Returned

TALK ABOUT AN AMAZING weekend. HorrorHound 2022 in Cincinnati was outstanding. I have been to shows with more people (DragonCon, Wizard World) but never a show with more engaged people. Horror fans were glad to be back at their spring convention, and it showed. From the time HorrorHound opened on Friday afternoon until the last hour before it closed on Sunday, I was talking to people most of the day. It was my most successful convention ever in terms of both book sales and just talking to cool people!

I have done the HorrorHound Indianapolis show for years, but last September was the first time I went to their larger Cincinnati event — mainly because they moved the Indy show to Cincy last fall. I’d always heard the usual Cincy March show was huge, but all of the vendors I talked to agreed that last month’s convention was the biggest ever. So it was the perfect place to debut Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds, which arrived in bookstores just a couple days prior to the convention!

I headed down on Thursday, since with the time change between Chicago and Cincinnati, it’s a 6-hour trip.  Plus, I wanted to stop at Newport on the Levee, where I used to do a lot of booksignings at the Barnes & Noble and hang out at the Hofbrauhaus, back in my Leisure mass market paperback book tour days.

I hit the Hofbrauhaus mid-afternoon on Thursday and it was a very welcome return. It felt smaller than I remembered, but the sausages and sauerkraut were just as good as I remembered. Maybe better! I ordered extra kraut and red ale!

Hofbrauhaus Cincinnati Hofbrauhaus Cincinnati inside Writing at Hofbrauhaus Cincinnati Hofbrauhaus Cincinnati Hofbrauhaus Cincinnati sausages

I spent a couple pleasant hours there setting up a video on my laptop for the theme song I wrote and recorded for my new novel Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds. Once I was nearly done (I finished it and uploaded it to YouTube at the hotel later), I went out to walk the Levee for the first time in close to a decade.

Things were not quite the same.

COVID was hard on some of the places I remember there. My old Irish Pub along the river was shuttered, with a new brewpub taking up a fraction of the space at the front now. But most disturbing was when I walked up the steps expecting to see the familiar green logo of Barnes & Noble…

… and found a whitewashed half-empty building.

B&N, the anchor of the Levee, apparently pulled up stakes over a year ago. That was a bummer. I spent a lot of hours at that store a dozen years ago, driving down on weekends and doing Friday AND Saturday night signings while spending the afternoons of those weekends driving around to sign books at other stores and doing signings in Indianapolis and Florence, KY.

The times, they have a-changed.

A little more somber than before, I drove down to my hotel, checked in and finished my video before going out to Twin Peaks for a quick late dinner. Luckily that was the only sad part of the weekend!

Friday morning, I drove over to the nearby Waffle House and enjoyed one of my favorite things — jalapeno-peppered hashbrowns and an omelette, before setting up my booth at the convention center.

Once I had everything in place, I had a couple hours to kill before the show opened, so I hopped in the Mustang and headed to the outskirts of Cincinnati to discover Fifty West Brewing. I’d really enjoyed their IPA the last time I was in town and decided to check out the home base. I’m glad I did… the place is super cool with a very retro 50s look, a hamburger bar and it looks like it would be hopping spot in the summer with a huge outdoor beer garden.

I tried a couple things and brought back a couple sixpacks before diving into sociability for the rest of the weekend!

Over the next few hours, I talked to lots of people I had met at previous HorrorHounds, and met lots more. The evening flew by fast, and at 10 o’clock, the Synapse Films crew of Jerry Chandler, his daughter Noa and Sean Provost and I all headed over to the nearby BJ’s Brewhouse for a late, well-earned dinner.

Saturday went much the same — I hit Waffle House first-thing and settled in for a long day of chatter. So many cool horror fans and conversations made the day go by crazy fast!

We ended the day again with a Synapse dinner — but with a much expanded cast — at Synapse’s traditional Saturday night haunt — Vincenzo’s, an amazing Italian joint. Afterwards, Jerry and Noa and I decamped to Tim and Angie O’Saben’s room to talk and watch a classic Outer Limits episode.

On Sunday morning, I introduced Jerry and Noa to my Waffle House obsession before the con started. Yep… three days in a row for me!

And, then the doors opened and the hallways flooded with people! Other than a couple cool pennants featuring Robert Smith and David Bowie as The Goblin King from my booth neighbors (artist Matthew Lineham), I never ended up buying anything at the show because I almost never left my booth! Before I could believe it, it was 5 o’clock and I was pulling down my vinyl banners and packing up the few remaining books on my table to head out. Conventions always go fast, but this one flew, because I was busy talking most of the time.

I said my goodbyes, and headed up the road an hour and a half to Indianapolis to have a quick dinner at one of my favorite spots, the Yard House, before hitting the road for another three hours.

I wish I could remember half of the crazy conversations I had that weekend, but all I can really say is that it was a blast and I can’t wait until we do it all again in the fall! Until then, here are a few more pictures from Cincinnati, the floor of the Sharonville Convention Center and more!

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