John Everson's Blog, page 4

R.I.P. Dave Barnett. I wish you could Rise Again.

I’M LISTENING NOW TO “Rise Again,” a track from Wumpscut. It opens a mix CD that Dave Barnett gave me a long time ago. Dave introduced me to a lot of cool club music over the years, from Wumpscut to Covenant to Goldfrapp to Assemblage 23. Dave was a well-known figure in horror fiction circles, as the founder and publisher of Necro Books, as well as a great author in his own right. But he was also a longtime club DJ in Orlando. I loved to talk music with him as much as horror. But Dave won’t be introducing me to new music anymore. Yesterday, he was killed by a wrong way driver.

One of my publishers in Poland IMed me this morning to give me the news just before I started work (the world is a strangely small place). I have thought about Dave all day today while at work, and at the end of the day, I had a long call with Jim Jacob and found out that Dave had been killed by a driver who veered out of her lane in the wrong direction right into Dave. I’d been thinking all day that he had finally succumbed to one of his many health issues, which was bad enough. But to find out that no, after all of his hard-won battles in the hospital, he was killed like this… it is extra heartbreaking.

I feel terrible for his mom and all of his friends in Orlando tonight. I owed Dave an email from the weekend that I never got to. And now never will. But I’ll write “to him” here, remembering some of the good times to say goodbye.

Ann Laymon, GAK, Dave Barnett at World Horror Con 2006

My friendship with Dave Barnett goes back to my very first year of publishing horror. In 1994, he published one of my early erotic horror stories, “Cage of Bones” in his magazine Into the Darkness. We struck up a friendship via email, and I agreed to help copyedit the magazine. Within a year or two, he ditched the magazine and started the Necro book line and I served as copyeditor and proofreader for him for the next dozen years or so.

I wish I still had our correspondence from the ’90s. I read through some of our old emails from the early 2000s tonight and I could hear his voice in my head as I read his words. I asked for instructions on one manuscript that he sent me back in 2003 and his answer was pure Dave: Proof that fucker, byotch!

Dave was sharp, acerbic, and hilarious. He always told you what he thought, regardless of whether it was what you wanted to hear or not. I always knew I could trust his opinion to be honest. Dave didn’t sugarcoat.

I worked with Dave for years via the Internet before I finally met him at World Horror Convention in 2000. I gave him an early draft of my first novel Covenant to look at back then for Necro, and he rejected it with a typical Dave shrug. “Nothing happens for the first hundred pages, man,” he said. Or something close to that. I did a lot of rewrites after that before I finally got the novel in shape to be published (originally by Delirium Books). Here’s a picture of Dave with me and Delirium Books publisher Shane Staley from back in 2002 at the World Horror Convention in Chicago.

Shane Ryan Staley, John Everson, Dave Barnett

It wasn’t until 2007, after I’d been working for Dave for over a decade that he finally published a book of mine — my third collection Needles & Sins. I knew it didn’t matter that I worked with him, if he didn’t like it, he wouldn’t put it out on Necro Publications… so for a long time I didn’t know if he’d ever publish a full book of mine. I remember the process of building that collection was nerve-wracking. For every story I sent him that he accepted, he’d reject one or two others. I worried at one point that I’d never come up with enough “Dave-worthy” stories. In the end, of course, I did, and the book happened. I have Dave to thank for building probably my strongest collection, and my only one to include a Bram Stoker Award finalist story (“Letting Go.”) I wouldn’t have written that story if not for Dave because I wrote it specifically for that book. And here I am tonight, 14 years later, letting go of Dave.

My favorite years as a horror author center around the first decade of the 2000s, and Dave was a big part of those. I copyedited for him, he published Needles & Sins and a limited edition of my novel The 13th, and we hung out a lot at conventions. In those early years, I was always with Dave, Jim and Charlee Jacob, Gerard Houarner, GAK, and Chad Savage at cons. It’s hard to believe Charlee, GAK and Dave are all gone now.

GAK, Edward Lee and Dave Barnett at World Horror Convention 2004

A lot of people go to cons in “gangs” and sleep on floors to keep the hotel charges cheap. In my life, I only did that once and it was with Dave — Chad Savage and I both camped on Dave’s hotel floor at Baltimore’s Horrorfind Convention in 2004, while Dave and GAK had the beds.

That Horrorfind convention generated one of my favorite photos from all of the cons I’ve been to with me, Brian Keene, Chad Savage and Dave all lying on a bed in one of the party rooms:

Dave also taught me at that con how to maximize space at a convention table. He’s behind the Necro table here with Gerard Houarner. A couple of those GAK-a-lanterns are in my basement now:

I saw Dave when I visited Orlando for vacations or work over the years, and Dave took me out whenever I was in town. It’s an odd thing to remember, but once while I was in Orlando with my family, we went out for a beer together while my wife and young son stayed back at the hotel. When a song came on the overhead bar speakers, and one of us wondered who it was, he suddenly held his phone up in the air. I was like… “what the hell are you doing?” and he probably raised one “duh” eyebrow and said, “Shazam, man.” He showed me the Shazam app that night and I learned you could easily discover what music was playing on the speakers around you by using it. I still use that app today (just did the other night in fact during an online DJ’s set I was listening to).

I remember him taking me to his club once, on the last night I was in town for a work convention. It was so cool to see him in his element, manning the DJ booth. Everyone there knew “Little Dave.” I don’t remember what time he finished DJing and we finally left the club, I only know that I didn’t bother to turn the sheets down on the bed at my hotel that night. I laid on the comforter for about an hour before heading right back downstairs to catch my dawn cab to the airport. Not something I could pull off again now. Sucks to get old.

There was another time when he picked me up from my hotel and we hopped on the interstate and drove an hour or more down to see Edward Lee and have dinner at one of his fave hangouts by the ocean. Another amazing night.

And there was the time that we had dinner with Lee during World Horror Convention in San Francisco in 2006, where Lee showed me how to crack open a crab leg the right way. Here we are after, with Lee and Terry Tidwell, and Dave trying to hold my gut in for me.

Those were the days, my friend. And I wished they’d never have ended. But all things do…

Dave’s health stopped him from going to cons for a lot of the last decade, and I haven’t traveled to Florida in awhile. We talked occasionally or emailed, but not enough. Time moves the calendar pages faster and faster.

All I can say is that I am proud to have known Dave Barnett for more than 25 years. He was, and always will be, one of my favorite people.

Rest in Peace, Dave. I wish you could Rise Again.

The post R.I.P. Dave Barnett. I wish you could Rise Again. appeared first on John Everson.

Voodoo Heart hits Best Of Lists for 2020

THE RECEPTION FOR Voodoo Heart since it came out in October 2020 has been gratifying, to say the least! It started with a great review from BookList, published by the American Library Association, and has ended up on several “best of” lists since. It’s gotten some great reviews on GoodReads and maintained a 4.3 Star average on Amazon. And book bloggers have created all sorts of really cool “book porn” images of the novel on social media. I’ve collected some of the Best Of mentions and book art here!

Best Of 2020 Mentions

Marie’s Book Nook Retreat blog reviewed Voodoo Heart and then listed it on the Top 25 Reads of 2020 list. Marie was really active in 2020 promoting Voodoo Heart and some of my other books on her blog and social media, and I really appreciated her support!

Janine Pipe included Voodoo Heart in her Top Ten Books released in 2020 AND read in 2020 vlog on YouTube. In her blog review of the novel, she gave it five stars and said, “I bloody loved it!”

Kendall Reviews put Voodoo Heart on its Christmas Gift Guide in December 2020.

I love the idea of “voodoo for Christmas!”

Aiden Merchant listed Voodoo Heart as on of his Top 10 of 2020 (Novels + Novellas) in his Best Reads of 2020 Blog. In his review of the novel he said it “blends crime and horror seamlessly” and “has a strong grasp on suspense.”

Voodoo Heart was voted into the Top 25 of this Listopia list of Best Horror of 2020 on Goodreads.

A Voodoo Heart Social Media Gallery!

One of the interesting trends in the past couple years to me has been some of the arty images bloggers create to spotlight the books they’re reading. I call it book porn, because some of the images really try to make the books look “sexy”! Here are some of the ones I saw for Voodoo Heart over the past three months. I’ve really appreciated the artistry and creativity of so many of these!

@KimberlyYerina6466" data-attachment-id="7252" class="fg-thumb">@KimberlyYerina6466" width="300" srcset="http://www.johneverson.com/wp-content... 600w" height="300" class="fg-image" />@Night.Reader.Writes" data-attachment-id="7231" class="fg-thumb">@Night.Reader.Writes" width="300" srcset="http://www.johneverson.com/wp-content... 600w" height="300" class="fg-image" />@TheBradProctor" data-attachment-id="7245" class="fg-thumb">@TheBradProctor" width="300" srcset="http://www.johneverson.com/wp-content... 600w" height="343" class="fg-image" />@NightFallMysteries" data-attachment-id="7227" class="fg-thumb">@NightFallMysteries" width="300" srcset="http://www.johneverson.com/wp-content... 600w" height="300" class="fg-image" />@AidenMerchant.Official" data-attachment-id="7244" class="fg-thumb">@AidenMerchant.Official" width="300" srcset="http://www.johneverson.com/wp-content... 600w" height="300" class="fg-image" />@RhiRhiReader" data-attachment-id="7228" class="fg-thumb">@RhiRhiReader" width="300" srcset="http://www.johneverson.com/wp-content... 600w" height="375" class="fg-image" />@RhiRhiReader" data-attachment-id="7229" class="fg-thumb">@RhiRhiReader" width="300" srcset="http://www.johneverson.com/wp-content... 600w" height="375" class="fg-image" />@AidenMerchant.Official" data-attachment-id="7234" class="fg-thumb">@AidenMerchant.Official" width="300" srcset="http://www.johneverson.com/wp-content... 600w" height="229" class="fg-image" />@HonestMamReader" data-attachment-id="7235" class="fg-thumb">@HonestMamReader" width="300" srcset="http://www.johneverson.com/wp-content... 600w" height="300" class="fg-image" />@RadioactiveBookworm" data-attachment-id="7237" class="fg-thumb">@RadioactiveBookworm" width="300" srcset="http://www.johneverson.com/wp-content... 600w" height="300" class="fg-image" />@DuckFaceKim09" data-attachment-id="7230" class="fg-thumb">@DuckFaceKim09" width="300" srcset="http://www.johneverson.com/wp-content... 600w" height="300" class="fg-image" />@AidenMerchant.Official" data-attachment-id="7242" class="fg-thumb">@AidenMerchant.Official" width="300" srcset="http://www.johneverson.com/wp-content... 600w" height="225" class="fg-image" />@Night.Reader.Writes" data-attachment-id="7232" class="fg-thumb">@Night.Reader.Writes" width="300" srcset="http://www.johneverson.com/wp-content... 600w" height="300" class="fg-image" />@RadioactiveBookworm" data-attachment-id="7236" class="fg-thumb">@RadioactiveBookworm" width="300" srcset="http://www.johneverson.com/wp-content... 600w" height="300" class="fg-image" />@RadioactiveBookworm" data-attachment-id="7238" class="fg-thumb">@RadioactiveBookworm" width="300" srcset="http://www.johneverson.com/wp-content... 600w" height="298" class="fg-image" />@quaint.and.curious.volumes" data-attachment-id="7239" class="fg-thumb">@quaint.and.curious.volumes" width="300" srcset="http://www.johneverson.com/wp-content... 600w" height="300" class="fg-image" />@BookMovieGuy" data-attachment-id="7241" class="fg-thumb">@BookMovieGuy" width="300" srcset="http://www.johneverson.com/wp-content... 600w" height="300" class="fg-image" />@jkrmurrayakabookwyrm" data-attachment-id="7240" class="fg-thumb">@jkrmurrayakabookwyrm" width="300" srcset="http://www.johneverson.com/wp-content... 600w" height="375" class="fg-image" />@Coco_Carre" data-attachment-id="7243" class="fg-thumb">@Coco_Carre" width="300" height="298" class="fg-image" />@KimberlyYerina6466" data-attachment-id="7253" class="fg-thumb">@KimberlyYerina6466" width="300" srcset="http://www.johneverson.com/wp-content... 600w" height="300" class="fg-image" />@FNInkslinger" data-attachment-id="7246" class="fg-thumb">@FNInkslinger" width="300" srcset="http://www.johneverson.com/wp-content... 600w" height="169" class="fg-image" />@flametreepress" data-attachment-id="7247" class="fg-thumb">@flametreepress" width="300" srcset="http://www.johneverson.com/wp-content... 600w" height="167" class="fg-image" />

Thanks to everyone who has supported Voodoo Heart thus far, and helped new readers discover the novel!

The post Voodoo Heart hits Best Of Lists for 2020 appeared first on John Everson.

Goodbye 2020. No, really… Goodbye. Get lost.

NORMALLY, AT THIS TIME on New Years morning (it’s 1 a.m., an hour after the ball dropped as I start to write this), I pull out my notebook or keyboard and reflect upon the victories of the past year. I relive all of the things that happened that I know helped to shape the me I am today a year later than the last time I did this. Travel to various other cities, vacations, concerts, conventions…

But in 2020… there were… none of those things. I was supposed to go to San Francisco and New Orleans — two of my favorite places — for business trips. But… those trips didn’t happen. The New Orleans trip was supposed to happen right as I got the copyeditor notes to go over on Voodoo Heart. It would have been awesome to have done the final edits on that book IN New Orleans, where the story is set. But… the meeting was cancelled two weeks before it happened.

I was supposed to see a Keane concert and help out my son’s Marching and Jazz bands on their concert trails and competitions in the fall. Again… cancelled. The annual pinball conventions in Kalamazoo and Chicago that I always attend were cancelled, as were Chicago’s Flashback Weekend and Indianapolis’s Horrorhound Weekend.

And Naperville’s public library was hosting a national librarians event focused on horror fiction in partnership with the Horror Writers Association (HWA). My editor, Don D’Auria was flying in and I was going to help play “local host” to him and all of the writers coming in for panels for the event. Instead… we ended up recording panels on Zoom a few months after the event was supposed to happen.

It was like “the year that wasn’t.”

We sat at the table for our Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners talking to our families on a laptop via Zoom. And tonight, for New Year’s Eve? I sat on Twitch and chatted with some old music friends from the Facebook Strangies group while our “leader” DJ Mikey spun a virtual NYE Dance Party mix… complete with old club footage. The whole year was spent behind glass.

Capricon 40

The one convention I was able to do was Capricon, a venerable SF/F/H fan convention in the north Chicago suburbs that I attended the year prior with my writing friends W.D. Gagliani, Dave Benton and Brian Pinkerton. The show was over Valentine’s Day weekend and they ended up not being able to attend this year, so I was solo for the weekend, which was a little lonely, but also forced me to meet some new people and check out things at the convention that I normally wouldn’t… so it was still a good time. And it started out with a panel that was close to my heart — beer! We staged a “tasting” panel with “Beer from the Tropics.” Read my Capricon Blog for pix.

A Country in Quarantine

COVID-19 turned up shortly after Capricon by the end of February and essentially cancelled the rest of the year. Nobody grasped at the time that all conventions, concerts, travel, etc. would be killed not for weeks, but for months. But… that’s what happened. At first we watched the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 map on a daily basis… but eventually that stopped. The cycle didn’t break after a few weeks as we all hoped… it just kept escalating. Watching the numbers rise every day was just too painful.

Last January 1, I would never have believed that so many things could be cancelled and that just a few weeks after New Year’s the whole world would be walking around in public in masks. I could never have conceived that I would become a “telecommuter” every day or that my son would be doing all of his high school classes via Zoom.

But… that’s what happened. I was lucky; I could easily do my job from home since the bulk of what I do is project management, writing, editing, and creative direction. For me.. it actually meant more work than less… while I didn’t have to drive to the office, my workday somehow expanded from 8 in the morning until 8 at night an awful lot. I didn’t spend time in the car, but I also didn’t get as much writing done this year… but I was lucky — unlike so many others — to have a good job.

And honestly… I’m not a very social person, so I ended up largely enjoying the isolation of 2020. The only thing I really missed was writing at my favorite bars, eating at my favorite places and attending the horror and pinball conventions I attend every year. I wrote about my easy acclimation in March in my Joy of Isolation blog.

Chicago entered quarantine right after my birthday. On March 14, Geri and Shaun and I went out to celebrate my 54th birthday at Two Brothers Roundhouse, a fairly local brewery that I love. A couple days later, all indoor dining in Illinois was cancelled. I was already telecommuting, and decided to grow a COVID beard. I didn’t shave until our restaurant quarantine was fully lifted — almost three months later. We went out for Father’s Day on June 12 to Two Brothers to celebrate both the day and the return to restaurants… and I shaved my COVID beard that day to commemorate our “release from prison”. Here’s the before and after:

We didn’t completely return to our normal routine of going to a bar and grill on Friday nights to celebrate the end of the week, but we did eat out on restaurant patios a lot during the summer. We didn’t do much else though! We stayed close to home and stayed mainly isolated from friends and relatives. On a couple occasions we had people over for patio barbecues or “driveway” visits, but basically, I only left the house once a week for most of the year to go grocery shopping.

Things fall apart…

While we rarely left the house, we did still have some minor dramas during the year. I had my car fixed in March and then didn’t drive it for weeks… When I DID finally drive it, I heard a noise under the hood right after I left the expressway. And then I looked up and in my rearview mirror, I saw a round piece of metal bouncing along the road behind me as my steering locked up. Seems the repair folks had forgotten to put the screws back in the belt assembly that drives power steering and other things. That was a little frightening to be driving your car as pieces of it are literally falling off!

We also had an unexpected small flood in our basement in May when an old concrete patch (which has to have been in place for at least 15 or 20 years!) gave out during a rainstorm. All of the carpet by Shaun’s drumset was waterlogged and I had to use a saw to carve out the corner of the basement paneling to find the source of the leak. I ended up creating a plastic “riverbed” to guide the water across the carpeted room to the utility room drain. And then we spent the next three weeks getting the carpet cleaned, the patch repaired, and then I had to piece the paneling back together. Not fun… but it made May go by a lot faster!

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The Horror Must Go On

While all other life as we know it was cancelled, I did end up writing a new novel in 2020 called Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds. It’s a giallo homage, and so… on weekends over the summer, I binged on giallo films, rewatching many of the movies that inspired the novel (I have scores of giallo DVDs and Blu-Rays on my shelves!).

I usually do a lot of writing in bars when I’m in the midst of working on a novel, but that obviously couldn’t happen this year. Instead, I spent a lot of writing hours at the glass outdoor bar on my patio… which is truly an enjoyable spot to write. Also good for bird watching, since I have finch and hummingbird feeders out in the summer.

New Releases

Late this fall, right about the time that I was working on the final chapters of Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds, my 12th novel (and third from Flame Tree Press) was released.

Voodoo Heart came out on October 20th and has been getting some great reviews since its release and ended up on a couple “Best of the Year” lists. It’s a novel about voodoo and New Orleans that I outlined a decade ago and is based on the title story to my collection Vigilantes of Love, which came out 17 years ago… so this one was a long time gestating!

Voodoo Heart is my first novel to be available in Target stores since the days of my Leisure paperbacks, thanks to a distribution deal Flame Tree scored with Simon & Schuster… so I’m hoping lots of new readers find it.

Right after Voodoo Heart was released, I also had my first release come out in the Czech Republic. Carcosa Press translated and published my novel The House By The Cemetery as Dům u hřbitova, one of their Halloween releases.

It’s a gorgeous hardcover edition (click on the cover to see a larger version!), so I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to work with them on additional future translations!

Earlier in the year, I also had a translation of NightWhere come out in Poland. Phantom Books, which previously had translated Siren released it in March.

That was a translation a long time in coming… I had signed a contract with a different Polish press several years ago and they ultimately never produced the book and voided the contract. So… I was really excited that this novel was finally out in Poland.

I can only hope it sells half as well in Poland as it did for Festa Verlag in Germany.

I also participated this year in Survive With Me, a charity anthology book spearheaded by my labelmate Glenn Rolfe. It was envisioned long before COVID, but the “survival” theme certainly took on new meaning this year.

I wrote “Forest Butter” a brand new story for Survive with Me, which includes authors like Ronald Malfi, Hunter Shea, Tim Waggoner and more, and has all proceeds going to benefit the American Indian College Fund.

Playing The Silver Ball

I spent a LOT more time after work this year at my pinball machines in my basement. I’ve got a collection of five tables — Mata Hari, Sorcerer, Fireball Classic, Galaxy and Meteor, and for most of the year, for an hour or two a night, I’ve enjoyed heading to my basement arcade and setting new high scores on all of them. Since I didn’t have to get up as early in the morning to go to work… I’ve been staying up a lot later!

I hoped that all this would make me a better player, and I suppose it has to an extent, but I’ve grown to realize that I will never be a tournament-level player. I have learned a few things about maintenance though. Since I’ve played the hell out of these 40-year-old tables, I’ve also had to do repairs ranging from replacing fuses and drop target assemblies to doing paint touch up and clearcoating on one playfield that was peeling.

Still… I’ve put up some impressive high scores on my game room board over the course of the year. Click on the photo to launch the full size version and scroll through some of my “maintenance pictures”:

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Getting Bonded and more Film Fun

My son Shaun agreed to watch the entire James Bond film catalog this summer, to get ready for the release of the 25th Bond film… which got delayed… and then delayed again. Nevertheless… we did get through the entire film history of Bond over the summer… which was fascinating. While I’d seen a lot of the movies, I’d never seen all of them, let alone in order.

I blogged about the experience in A Summer to get Bonded.

Plowing through all of those films, plus trying to rewatch a slew of giallos, totally inflated my usual “movies I watched” list. To gear up for Halloween this year, I tried to watch a giallo a night for the two weeks leading up to Halloween, which resulted in a thumbnail review blog of what I watched called 10 Giallo Films for Halloween.

I’ve been keeping a spreadsheet over the past six years to track what films I watch in a given year and thanks to the Bond marathon and COVID, I ended up seeing nearly 165 films in 2020 — 30 more than in 2019 and 40 more than in 2018. The films come from all genres, but I’ve been really drawn to ’70s exploitation and Euro-horror from that era in recent years. 15 of the films I watched in 2020 were released in 1972 and 13 were released in 1971. Another 13 were from 1975. That’s over 40 of my 165 films from three years.

Not surprisingly this year especially, Giallo films topped the “most watched” genre for me — I saw 34 of them. Horror was right behind, at 33. Thanks to the Bond marathon, Thrillers came in at 28 and Exploitation films came in at 27.

Also in there were Arthouse films, SciFi, Drama, Comedy and, I actually saw 4 Documentaries (usually it would be unusual for me to see 1). I don’t ever tally up the number of “Making Of” featurettes that I watch on the DVDs after viewing the films, but I also watch a LOT of those.

Music and Reading…

Over the past few years, I’ve barely gotten time to do any reading for pleasure and I’ve not written and recorded any new music. I did a little bit more of both this year (I read Anne Rice’s 2nd Angel novel and wish she’d write a third, as well as both of her werewolf books, The Wolf Gift and The Wolves of Midwinter).

I bought a USB synthesizer keyboard at the start of COVID so that I could play a bit while in my office, but after a month or so, I stopped using it as I focused on writing Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds. I’m hoping to get back to it this month, now that the novel is basically done. If I’m lucky, by the time we are finally inoculated and out of the COVID crisis, I’ll have written a soundtrack for Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds (all gialli should have a good soundtrack!)

And here we are. January 1, 2021.

We’re still at least three or four months from seeing a solid recovery from the horrors of 2020, but with vaccines rolling out finally, there is a light of hope at last. With a little luck, the coming weeks will pass quickly and that we can finally start moving forward again with life instead of staying in stasis. While I’ve “enjoyed the silence,” I would like to see friends and family again, especially at the holidays. And more than anything for me, I’d like Shaun to be able to get back out and live the life of a teenager. High school was not meant to be experienced via Zoom and Facetime.

So here’s to 2021… the year we work to erase the scourge of 2020!

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The Horror Before Christmas 99 Cent eBook Sale!

THIS WEEK, TWO OF my horror novels — and my special Christmas book — are all on sale on Amazon for just 99 cents. Plus… my special Christmas page offers music and Christmas computer wallpaper / Zoom background!

The Family Tree: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N4MCONU

NightWhere : https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01NARGS4E/

Christmas Tales is also on sale this week for just 99 cents! This one is not horror – just three “ghosts of Christmas” kinds of stories to warm the heart: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004GUS980

The Family Tree has been called “A sure-fire hit for anyone who loves ’70s/’80s-styled pulp horror,” “a creepy tale of family heritage and devotion that you won’t soon forget” and maybe my favorite, “horror with a hard-on.”

NightWhere has been described as “50 Shades meets Hellraiser,” “Eyes Wide Shut meets Hellraiser” and “Hellraiser meets Basic Instinct” by different reviewers and was a Finalist for the Bram Stoker Award the year it was released.

Christmas Tales is a different kind of book for me. No horror at all. These three stories of holiday magic have been called “A Delight To Read!” One review said: “Definitely check out these stories…I treated myself to “Christmas Tales’. I found each story well written and perfect for the Christmas season. Please take a look at this author and his heartfelt & insightful stories. These are stories you can add to your Christmas tradition and share with friends and family.”

You can also visit my special Christmas page for some original John Everson Christmas music and more!

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10 GIALLO FILMS FOR HALLOWEEN

I LOVE GIALLO FILMS and decided to revisit 10 for Halloween this year. Giallo is the Italian term for mystery fiction and thrillers, particularly murder thriller films with a horror/exploitation bent. Originally they were a series of mystery books all printed with yellow (giallo) colors to differentiate them in the ’40s, but in the ’60s and start of the ’70s, they became a film subgenre thanks to directors Mario Bava and Dario Argento and typically feature mysterious killers with mysterious motives, often wearing black gloves and masks to hide their identities. Blackmail, sexual exploitation, a victim often suspected as the killer and identity turnabouts abound in the giallo, which often have plot twists that will leave your jaw hanging open.

I own dozens of giallo films and decided to revisit some that I haven’t seen in awhile this month, which is great because I have a bad memory. I rarely remember the core plot points of books and films a few weeks after enjoying them … so most of these felt like seeing them for the first time for me! I started watching the films on this list 10 nights before Halloween, and decided each night on the spur of the moment what to watch… so the countdown is not about the quality of the films from worst to best, but rather, a night-by-night countdown to Halloween!

My thumbnail reviews on each film I watched follow:

#10 THE BLOODSTAINED BUTTERFLY

Director Duccio Tessari may be more known for his Italian Westerns, but in 1971, a banner year for giallo films, he made this interesting entry to the genre. It opens with a mysterious stabbing murder of a young college student in a park during a rainstorm. A TV personality is tagged as the killer, and we soon learn that his lawyer, who presents a half-hearted defense, is having an affair with the accused’s wife.

It’s a good setup, but honestly, the 45 minutes of police procedural and courtroom drama in the middle drag a bit. It’s worth sticking it out though for the surprising endgame, when we find out who really killed the girl (and the other two murders that occur during the film). This is not one of my favorite giallo films, but there are some well-shot scenes and it stars Helmut Berger. If you’re a giallo fan, it’s definitely worth checking out. If you’re not a raving fan… it’s probably not the film I’d suggest you start with.

5 out of 10 black-gloved fingers!




#9 SHORT NIGHT OF GLASS DOLLS

The second entry in my countdown to Halloween was made in the same year as yesterday’s film (1971 was a very good year!). So, watching the extras of last night’s film, I discovered that this was originally supposed to be titled Short Night of the Butterflies, but thanks to the release of the movie I reviewed yesterday — The Bloodstained Butterfly — they renamed it just before releasing. Odd to have accidentally watched them back to back!

This features an alluring score by the always dependable Ennio Morricone, who always leaves you humming the theme hours later. It was Director Aldo Lado‘s first film and that may explain some of the more uneven spots when it drags a bit in the middle. It wins back points for a bizarre concept — the “narrator” is basically a corpse; American reporter Gregory Moore (played by Jean Sorel) is brought to the morgue but he is still trapped in his “dead” body. He tells the film in a series of flashbacks about the mysterious disappearance of his girlfriend Mira (the striking Barbara Bach). The film follows his search for Mira which leads him to strange places including a house on stilts inhabited by a blind man and the discovery of an Eyes Wide Shut kind of secret elders society. But people are watching him, as informants and friends around are killed as he circles closer to the answer. The answer, by the way, despite lots of build, still comes completely out of left field, almost as if Lado grabbed the end of a horror exploitation film and spliced it in.

Bach is alluring and Sorel is a strongly sympathetic detective lead. There are enough odd moments and unexpected deaths to keep you wondering as Sorel tries to figure out what has happened to his girlfriend… while periodically commenting as his corpse is wheeled around the morgue and taken into the OR for attempted resuscitation before being brought to a medical theater for… the end? The ending is a chilling bit of “oh no” that will have you rewinding to watch it again. At least I did.

7 out of 10 black-gloved fingers!

#8 BLACK BELLY OF THE TARANTULA

The third entry in my countdown to Halloween was made in 1971, the same year as the last two I reviewed. This giallo is notable for both an inventive “kill” conceit as well as for having three Bond girls in the cast — Claudine Auger (Thunderball), Barbara Bach (The Spy Who Loved Me) and Barbara Bouchet (the original Casino Royale). In addition, the lead actor, Giancarlo Giannini, played Matis in the two most recent Bond films! All that said… this is not a Bond film…this is an early giallo with a mystery, murders and blackmail scheme at its core.

This one finds a mysterious killer attacking women with surgical gloves and killing them by paralyzing them with an acupuncture needle before slicing their bellies open with a knife while the victims are still alive but frozen (akin to the way tarantuals are killed by wasps). The idea is great, but honestly is a little underplayed here. Giannini is great as a detective who is having huge doubts about his career, particularly when he is unable to save victims involved in the case — which somehow ties back to a spa and a smuggling ring. This one is directed by Paolo Cavara, who only made a couple giallos. He started out doing mondo documentaries in the ’60s and then moved into doing a handful of genre westerns, comedies and giallos in the ’70s. This features another score by the seemingly ubiquitous Ennio Morricone.

7 out of 10 black-gloved fingers!




#7 PLOT OF FEAR

Last night’s rewatch of Black Belly of the Tarantula made me curious to revisit director Paolo Cavara‘s other giallo, 1976’s Plot of Fear. While I’ve seen both of Cavara’s giallo films before, it was interesting to watch them back to back. Both feature unusual plotlines for a giallo, and both follow an inspector as he tries to unravel a convoluted mystery. And oddly enough, while Cavara’s first giallo featured three past and future “Bond girls,” his second ALSO features a future Bond girl in Corinne Cléry (Moonraker). Maybe the casting folks at Eon Productions had an in with Cavara.

In this outing, our Inspector (played by Michele Placido) is trying to figure out how a man strangled in his home by an S&M prostitute is connected with a woman killed by a wrench to the head on a bus since the killer left cutouts from a children’s book at each crime. Eventually, he finds himself at an empty now-disbanded club called Wildlife’s Friends, where Jeanne (Corinne Cléry) tells him about the decadent Eyes Wide Shut-style parties that occurred there, including the girl who was scared to death when they threatened to feed her to a tiger.

There are plenty of red herrings and the end had me rewinding to figure out what I missed. But there are enough quirky scenes that I found it just a hair more satisfying than Black Belly of the Tarantula.

7 out of 10 black-gloved fingers!

 

#6 YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY

The fifth entry in my Italian horror/thriller countdown to Halloween is from one of my favorite giallo directors featuring one of my favorite giallo actresses.  Director Sergio Martino filmed some of the best giallos and this, his fourth, references his first (The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh) in its title, as well as employs the same actress, the always alluring Edwige Fenech, in a turnabout kind of role for her.

The film introduces us at the start to an abusive, alcoholic, washed up writer (played to the hilt by Luigi Pistilli), who taunts and demeans his wife at drunken parties and has some strange fascination with his dead mother and one of her dresses. Meanwhile, his wife (played by giallo regular Anita Strindberg) not only puts up with his degradations but also fights with Lucifer, his dead mother’s black cat. When a former blackmailing fling of the writer is killed with a scythe on a night he was supposed to rendezvous, he’s easily the first suspect. It’s not long before his housekeeper (who he has also sexually abused) is slashed under his own roof. When he insists to his wife that the killer is not him but that he will be locked up if they don’t hide the body, she helps him secrete the dead woman behind a wall in the wine cellar of their crumbling mansion. Sound a little familiar? This one uses several riffs from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat,” but they’re nods to the source, not a production of that story.

This one has plenty more twists in store. When the writer’s niece, played by Edwige Fenech, turns up to stay in the crumbling mansion with them, she soon is playing sexual games with both husband and wife, but what is her motive?

The final scene is one of the best twists in a giallo, and even though I’d seen it before… I had totally forgotten it, so I was grinning ear-to-ear when it watched it again last night. There are good things about not having a good memory! I rewatched all of Martino’s other gialli earlier this year, so I’m glad I saved this one for Halloween week. Great characters, lurid scenes, unexpected twists. Highly recommended!

9 out of 10 black-gloved fingers!

#5 THE CASE OF THE BLOODY IRIS

Also known as Why Those Strange Drops of Blood on Jennifer’s Body?, this 1972 giallo was directed by Giuliano Carnimeo and stars Edwige Fenech as Jennifer, a fashion model drawn into the orbit of Andrea, an architect who seems to have amazing luck at being in the wrong place at the wrong time… at least as far as murder is concerned. He’s played with likeable brooding by giallo regular George Hilton (who also appeared with Fenech in The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh).

After attending one of her photoshoots, Andrea is drawn to Jennifer and helps get her and her daffy friend (think Laverne with a better figure) an apartment in one of his buildings. As it turns out, the reason the apartment is empty is because it is where a girl has just been murdered in the bathtub, shortly after she found the body of a call girl murdered in the elevator. Soon another woman of questionable repute (she wrestles half nude with men in a special “members only club”) is also found dead… shortly after having dinner with Andrea. Hmmm.

We quickly learn that Jennifer’s new apartment could really use a better set of locks. She wakes up one night with a black-hooded man over her bed. Then her ex-husband, a sex cult leader who is stalking her throughout the film and leaving the title’s shredded iris petals all over, corners her there and rips her clothes off. And then a black-hooded figure again turns up to ruin her wardrobe. She handles all this amazingly well as the viewer is asking… Is Andrea behind it? Is it the mysterious male voice next door, who the old woman who buys horror magazines insists does not exist? Is it the neighbors on the other side — the weird old violinist or his flirtatious yet somehow cool lesbian daughter?

This film is filled with wild characters, frequent compromising situations, often unintentionally silly dialogue, a police chief who looks for postage stamps for his collection as much as evidence at the murder sites and virtually everyone we meet is a suspect. It is a ton of fun and hits all the buttons for me. Plus it has one of my favorite themes in giallo films, thanks to Bruno Nicolai.

9 out of 10 black-gloved fingers!

#4 THE CAT O’ NINE TAILS

You can’t have a giallo list without talking about Dario Argento, who is largely responsible for popularizing the style that Mario Bava started in the ’60s.  I’ve been trying this week to not simply watch “the greatest hits of giallo” though, so it took me all this time to hit on one of the master’s entries. (I watched his first one not too long ago, so that’s why I didn’t “start at the beginning”).

Cat o’ Nine Tails was Argento’s second film (ironically, like so many others on this list, released in 1971), and is the middle in his “animal giallo” trilogy that started with The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and ends with Four Flies on Grey Velvet. These films are not related other than the style of the title, which Argento says he stopped doing because everybody else started doing it (see Butterfly and Tarantula earlier in this list).

This one is far less exploitative than many of the giallos on this list; the sexual element that most giallos include really only pops up in one scene, because the story doesn’t really call for it. The focus of the story is on an older blind former journalist (Karl Malden) who overhears a conversation about blackmail while on the street with his young niece (who serves as his eyes), and not much later hears a murder happen on the street below his apartment. The next day he meets a reporter played by James Franciscus investigating the murder, as the body was discovered in a genetics research complex at the end of the block.

Soon the blind man and reporter are teaming up to try to solve the crime. It’s a fun pursuit for Malden’s character, who has been confined by the loss of his sight to solving physical puzzles. Meanwhile, someone is at work knocking off anyone who might have insight into the crime, and soon both the former and current reporter are in the sights of the killer…and it’s no longer a game.

This one offers some science fiction overtones (the genetics lab is working on solving a chromosonal predisposition towards violence), some suspenseful strangling and stabbing, a nailbiting scene of graverobbing (for clues!) and a car chase that leaves our intrepid reporter a bit ashen.  It’s a great Hitchcockian story with a soundtrack by Ennio Morricone, and a perfect introduction to the giallo if you’ve never seen another.

8 out of 10 black-gloved fingers!

#3 ???

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Voodoo Heart Blog Tour

MY PUBLISHER HAS staged a Blog Tour to support the release of Voodoo Heart this week, and the first few entries have been awesome. Readers seem to really be enjoying the novel’s mix of mystery and voodoo and horror! I’ll post excerpts and links here as the tour continues:

DAY 1: Oct. 19

The Book Lover’s Boudoir called the book “well written and engaging” and said “the most enjoyable aspect of the book is the voodoo lore in the book. It seemed to ring true and I’m sure the author did his research. Overall, I had a great time with this which was a bit different for me.”

FANFIaddict also gave it a 4-star review and said “I was glad to have read this book during the spooky season. Between the setting and the tone of the story, it gives off chilling vibes and keeps me in the Halloween mood.”

DAY 2: Oct. 20

Janine’s Ghost Stories started Day 2 of the blog tour with a 5-star review. Janine wrote: “There was mystery and horror and shocking revelations, and it was fantastic. 5/5”

The Ink Slinger / Betwixt The Sheets blog said “the story is richly tinted in darkness… This book is definitely not for the squeamish, anyone wishing to avoid themes of black magic rituals, or those who are uncomfortable with very taboo sex.. but for me, those were probably the most interesting elements.”

DAY 3: Oct. 21

Rajiv’s Reviews gave the novel 5 stars and it “creepy, twisted, horrific, and SO awesome! The author writes the story in a noir-styled manner that immediately makes it stand out. As soon as I started reading it, the tale felt like watching Humphrey Bogart mixed with American Horror Story. As I love classic noir films and horror, reading this book was a treat!”

DAY 4: Oct. 22

A Genuine Opinion staged a book giveaway on Instagram and wrote this about the novel: “My interest was instantly peaked because of the description of this book, i love anything to do with Voodoo and New Orleans so I knew I would enjoy this. John wrote a masterpiece. It is full of magic, darkness and mystery on every page, keeping you gripped and guessing throughout. I enjoyed delving into the case of the missing/murdered people with Cork and found myself wishing I could witness (or be part of) the rituals of the New Orleans priestesses. I finished this book at dead on midnight, and did find myself a little scared which I did not expect, but loved all the same – I don’t think this book is for the faint-hearted. “

Honestmamreader’s Book Blog called it “The perfect pick for a spooky October read…. There’s plenty of graphic scenes and rituals that made me squirm. There were parts that disgusted me, but these parts are what I found fascinating as well (if that makes sense) if it wasn’t for these rituals and scenes we would have a very tame book….If you want a spooky read that will corrupt your mind. Voodoo Heart is the one to buy!!”

DAY 5: Oct. 23

Booker T’s Farm gave Voodoo Heart “5 Paws.” “This book was fascinating, intriguing and spooky – a perfect Halloween read.  It’s full of tons of information regarding voodoo practices which makes me seriously question what Everson does for fun, or applaud him for his degree of research.  At its heart, pardon the pun, Voodoo Heart is mystery wrapped up in horrific details. “

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It’s V-Day: Voodoo Heart is now available from bookstores everywhere!

Today is the official Release Day of my 12th novel of horror and the macabre!

TODAY IS THE RELEASE DAY for my new Flame Tree Press novel, Voodoo Heart. I’m anxious to hear what you think of it! This New Orleans detective / voodoo curse novel has been a long time in coming — I wrote “Vigilantes of Love,” the short story that inspired the novel, 17 years ago!

So far, the reviews have been really good! Booklist, a key review publication from the American Library Association, described it this way: “Ribaud’s quest takes him from French Quarter juju shops to macabre rituals in snake-filled swamps, and Everson exploits his unique setting to the hilt. Like Hjortsberg’s [1978 novel Falling Angel], Voodoo Heart offers a solid blend of supernatural horror and hard-boiled detective fiction, and should appeal to horror devotees as well as mystery buffs.”

The book’s Goodreads page has been showing a lot of 4 and 5-star reviews from reviewers who got it ahead of publication, and you can also see some excerpts on the book’s Reviews  page on my website. But to really make this one take off… I need you! Every review helps. Every order pushes it up the rankings so that more readers see it.

Order your copy today on Release Day and help give Voodoo Heart a strong launch!

IF YOU DIDN’T ALREADY pre-order a copy, I hope you’ll order one this week, whether it be an ebook for Kindle or a paperback or hardcover edition! The number of sales that a title gets on its release day and first week are important stats that determine how much stores like Amazon promote the book. So… please, if you enjoy my fiction, pick up your copy today! You can even get it through Target stores! 

Here are some of the places where it’s available:



Amazon.com / Barnes & Noble / Books-A-Million / Target /   Flame Tree Press /  Waterstones /  Chapters-Indigo /   Simon & Schuster Bookshop

I’m also selling a limited number of autographed copies, through this website… so if you want a signed paperback or hardcover edition, please visit the Voodoo Heart page and  I’ll get one signed and out to you!

There’s other stuff I’d love to tell you… it’s been three months since the last newsletter but… I’ll keep this one brief for now. Let’s just say… more to come!

Dark Dreams and Happy Halloween!

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A Summer To Get Bond-ed

THIS WAS THE SUMMER OF BOND. I think my son Shaun and I will always think of it that way somehow. But last weekend, the Summer of Bond came to an end — kind of fittingly really, since it was the weekend after Labor Day, a holiday which always kind of signals the end of summer. On Saturday night, Shaun and I watched Spectre, the 24th “official” James Bond film, ending a summer-long 007 marathon.

IT WAS ABOUT 8 years ago, I’d guess, when I splurged and bought the 50th Anniversary James Bond blu-ray box set with the intent to watch all of the films in order. I’d seen a bunch of them, but honestly, when you dig all the way back to the Connery and earlier Moore titles, I couldn’t remember which ones I had seen. Anyway, it was a perfect box — starting with 1962’s Dr. No and continuing all the way into the 2000s with all of the official Bond films. They even left a slot at the end to insert the disc for 2012’s Skyfall, which was to be released later that year. (You’d have to buy that separately, but still. The box was forward-thinking, aiming for completeness!)

And then… the set sat on my shelf for the next eight years. I kept looking at it (along with my equally cool Hitchcock box) and saying “I want to start that soon…” but never did. I knew it was a big undertaking… 24 movies? That’s a commitment.

This spring, I started joking with my 15-year-old son Shaun on weekends saying “hey, do you want to watch a Bond movie or an Italian Western tonight?” He always said “uh…no” … until one night in June. He was sitting on the couch on a Friday or Saturday night on his phone looking bored and it was close to midnight. I was about to head downstairs to watch something, so I said “hey… do you want to watch a Bond or an Italian Western tonight?”

Astonishingly… he said YES. Clearly, he was bored.

And then I had to make a decision… do I introduce him to Clint Eastwood in Fistful of Dollars? Or Sean Connery? I decided Bond might be a little better for a midnight movie and the die was cast.

I popped in Dr. No, and the Summer of Bond began.

If you’ve never seen the original James Bond… well… it’s nothing like the series today. The year was 1962. Cars were big and boxy. Special effects? Minimal, because they all had to be real. No CGI.

Halfway through the film, I thought “there’s no way he’s going to want to continue watching the rest of these — they are just too dated.”

Amazingly — and I don’t even think it was because of Ursula Andress’s famous bikini scene — he said he enjoyed it, and yeah, he’d be up for another one.

The next night, we watched From Russia With Love. This one steps up the action and the intrigue quite a bit from the first, and we both really liked it.

Then the next weekend came Goldfinger, with a scene where a woman is literally smothered and left as a “warning” by being shellacked nearly nude in gold paint.

What a way to go?

I found the ending to that one a little too deus ex machina for my tastes, but Shaun really dug it. We flip-flopped on Thunderball, which he found confusing, but I really liked the fact that they went for a more labyrinthine spy plot.

We both were surprised at how much we liked the one George Lazenby Bond — 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (featuring the only “Mrs. Bond” so far in the series!)

We also both agreed that Connery’s one-off return for 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever did not live up to his earlier Bonds and thus were primed for the arrival of Roger Moore with Live and Let Die (1973).

Moore was the first Bond I ever saw at the theater — I remember my dad taking me to see Moonraker. Not surprisingly, I really enjoyed the Moore era. I love ’70s action and grindhouse cinema, so the aesthetic of the era calls to me… and Moore was “my” Bond as a kid. His first outing as Bond is good, but he really hit is stride a couple movies later.

I was really bummed when we reached 1985’s A View To A Kill (with one of the series’ best theme songs from Duran Duran!) and the end of Moore’s 13-year reign as 007.

I remember liking the Timothy Dalton Bond films when I saw them in the theater in the ’80s, but set in the context of all the rest… The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill just don’t hold up. There are some great scenes, but Dalton just can’t pull off the “playboy” aspect of Bond. Perhaps that’s why the seduction scenes in his films are mercifully short. Every time he went to kiss a girl, I felt like he was going to eat her.

Not a good “hunky Romeo.”

The arrival of Pierce Brosnan in 1995’s GoldenEye rights Dalton’s wrongs though.

Brosnan is as believable a “playboy” as Moore was, and perhaps a more believable spy/hitman.

I love all the Brosnan Bond’s, and particularly his first and third, The World Is Not Enough, which features my favorite Bond theme song (sung by Garbage, who Shaun and I saw in concert a couple years ago).

When Daniel Craig arrived on the scene with 2006’s Casino Royale, the series took a new modern, grittier turn. I’m sure there are many fans of the Craig-era Bond’s who would dismiss the earlier films as schmaltzy. But the thing with Bond is that… each actor’s series of films is a reflection of its time. It was fascinating to watch the series evolve from Connery to Craig. Each actor played some aspects of the character better than others. Each decade showed advances in special effects and storyline complexity, not to mention changes in social mores. The way Connery simply grabbed and “took” a woman would never be done in a film made in the 2000s!

Daniel Craig in Casino Royale.

Craig plays the spy/hitman element of Bond probably the best of all the actors. He is a better romancer than Dalton, but not as good, in my mind, as Brosnan or Moore. Shaun says Craig is his favorite Bond, and I guess that’s not surprising; Craig started playing Bond a year after Shaun was born — these movies truly are contemporary for him.

Me? I am torn between Moore and Brosnan, but with a soft spot for Connery’s early formative films.

Best Bond?

It’s impossible to pick a “favorite Bond” out of 24 films. There are so many good plots and sequences. Each actor had their highs and lows playing the character (except Lazenby… he only got the one shot!)

So I sat down yesterday and tried to pick out my Top 2 from each actor. Somewhere among those then, is my favorite of all time. I’d need to watch them all a couple more times to decide though, and that ain’t happening. Not this year anyway. The next Bond film I see is going to be No Time To Die, hopefully in theaters this November. Shaun and I are both primed and ready. He even plays Billie Eilish’s theme song on the piano (alongside renditions of Skyfall and the original theme music).

I’m bummed that our summer-long marathon is at an end, but at least we still do have one more to look forward to.

(OCTOBER UPDATE: We went ahead and watched the two “non-canon” Bond films that were produced due to an early licensing issue — the ’60s version of Casino Royale, and the comedic Thunderball-based Never Say Never Again, in which Connery returned to play Bond in the ’80s. The original Casino Royale is painful as a Bond film. Despite a star-studded cast, it’s wildly uneven and odd, and occasionally turns into what looks like a Benny Hill episode. Never Say Never was much better, though still not as good as any of the canon Bonds.)

In any case, here are my favorite films from each actor era (Shaun agrees with most, with the exception of the Connery ones).

Sean Connery:
1) Thunderball
2) Dr. No

George Lazenby:
1) On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

Roger Moore:
1) The Spy Who Loved Me
2) The Man with the Golden Gun

Timothy Dalton:
1) The Living Daylights
2) Licence To Kill

Pierce Brosnan:
1) GoldenEye
2) The World is Not Enough

Daniel Craig:
1) Casino Royale
2) Skyfall

That’s 11 of the 24 films… but honestly, if I was ranking my favorites, Timothy Dalton would not be in the top 10, so… knock his two out of that list, and you have my Bond Top 9!

And now, enough with Bonds past. The countdown to November has begun!

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Six Months in Isolation… a Pinball Heaven

THIS WEEK I RECEIVED the Advance Reading Copy of my 12th novel, Voodoo Heart, my next book from Flame Tree Press (it will be released on October 20). I also set a new personal high score on Mata Hari, a pinball machine that I’ve played since I was 17 years old. And I was a guest on Glenn Rolfe’s Horror Shop YouTube show. So… it’s been a great week!

I was thinking that it’s been awhile since I wrote a blog and should probably memorialize some of the things that have been going on… and then I looked and realized holy crap… it’s been six months since I wrote The Joy of Isolation. Spring has come and Summer is nearly gone. So what have I been up to all this time? Writing. Gardening. Working. Playing Pinball. Honestly… it’s been a pretty good six months. My dayjob sent us into full-time telecommuting as soon as COVID hit, which has freed up almost two hours a day that I used to lose to commuting. There have been a LOT of long days at work… but I always end them here at home and can start my evenings immediately. That’s meant more time for pinball.

Of Pinball and Vinyl Records…

For anyone who doesn’t know, I’m a big pinball fan and have five older pins in my personal “basement arcade.” I once even wrote a pinball horror story for the Chopping Block anthology a couple years ago. I always play my tables more in the winter, since I’m stuck in the house more, but this year, that just extended… indefinitely. For the past nine months, I’ve been playing for at least an hour every night, often longer. And… that’s meant I’ve improved and beaten all of my prior high scores. I’ll never be a “wizard” but I’m definitely a better player than I was.

The Everson Basement Arcade

For most of the year, my original table — Mata Hari — was broken. I bought the table in 2014, but have played it all my life, because my in-laws used to own one. I finally got mine fixed at the beginning of August, and while it took me a couple weeks to get back into the “groove” of the machine, over the past couple weeks, I’ve beaten my old lifetime high score not once… but twice! Last night I sat down and had the best game of my life on the table while listening to Romeo Void’s Instincts album. I knew it was going to be a top score so I pulled up my phone and recorded it:

Fixing Mata Hari has actually led to me combing through my vinyl album collection and listening to things like Romeo Void, Let’s Active and The Pandoras that I haven’t listened to in years. While it wasn’t working, I moved it away from the rest of my machines into the room in my basement that has a pool table left by the former owners (that sadly, I rarely use). That room also has the only turntable in the house, which I actually bought in high school (still works great!) So playing Mata Hari since she’s come back to life has allowed me to enjoy all sorts of old, near-forgotten albums.

Classic mid-80s albums from Champaign IL bands Otis and the Elevators, Last Gentlemen, The Elvis Brothers and Paul Chastain.

Last week, while playing Mata Hari, I was rediscovering my favorite “local bands” from the four years that I went to school at University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana in the mid-80s. There were a handful of artists during that period that all managed to break out of the college town and onto the national scene, at least for an album or two.

Here’s a picture of the LPs I’ve been listening to. The Elvis Brothers, a rockabilly/power pop trio got signed for two albums with Portrait, and synth popsters Last Gentlemen ended up signing with Zoo Entertainment (home of Tool and Matthew Sweet). And speaking of Sweet, Paul Chastain eventually would become Sweet’s longtime bassist. Otis & The Elevators was a Deadhead kind of band who never quite broke out of the region.

I used to go see all of these bands at a local rock club called Mabels, and all of the indie albums they cut back in Champaign days were awesome.

Books! Giallo! Voodoo!

The past couple years, I’ve spent my Christmas vacation frantically trying to finish and turn in my next novel by the end of the year. This year… I vowed I would not do that — I wanted to get this year’s novel done by fall. And… COVID has certainly helped. With most of my weekends free, I’ve been able to keep to a weekly writing schedule which, at this point, should have me finishing up sometime in mid-October.

Movie posters for Dario Argento’s first Giallo film.

The new novel-in-progress is called Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds. For fans of ’70s Italian movies, you might pick up on the title sounding a bit like the giallo genre of movies… and you’d be right! I love giallos — I own more than 100 of them on DVD and Blu-Ray. So this year, I decided to write my own homage story to the film genre I love. I’m hoping that fans of the form will enjoy it.

This project has also led to me re-watching so many of the films that influenced me this summer — I’ve revisited everything from Argento’s Deep Red and Opera to Fulci’s Don’t Torture a Duckling and A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin to Bava’s Blood and Black Lace to Martino’s All the Colors of the Dark and The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh and so many more. If you haven’t seen those films… I highly recommend them all. There’s a great list here; I own most of them and they’re great Halloween season viewing!

Speaking of my favorite holiday, Halloween is coming soon… and so is my 12th novel, Voodoo Heart! It’s available for pre-order in paperback, hardcover and ebook now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Hoping lots of readers will pre-order and give it a good launch boost!

My Flame Tree Press books so far:
The House by the Cemetery, The Devil’s Equinox, Voodoo Heart.



Reviews and Interviews

So far reviews for Voodoo Heart have been really great — Glenn Rolfe talks about it a little on his Episode Two of The Horror Shop and then hosted me on Episode Three for a long interview where you can see my basement bar and arcade, Glenn’s wife’s mysterious eye and learn more about the new book, our shared love of beer and Kesha:

Book Nook Retreat gave it five stars and said “This book literally kept me awake nights as I just could not put it down. I told myself that I was just going to read a couple of chapters, but the more I became involved in the storyline the more hours I stayed awake!”

Read the full review on GoodReads.

I’ve also turned up a couple times this summer on the Are You Into Horror? channel on YouTube! House By The Cemetery got a great review in June and The Devil’s Equinox scored “Five Pentagrams in a review in August:

The host of the program, Richard Wilson has obviously been reading a lot of my stuff this summer, and so recently he sent me a couple books to sign. I surprised him by adding to the return shipment. You can see his “unboxing video” posted this week here:

So that’s what’s been going on!

Today is Labor Day in the United States, which serves as a sort of unofficial “end of summer” holiday, though the end of the season is still officially a couple weeks away. I’m going to go enjoy what looks like a perfect day — sunny and 75 — and work on a chapter of Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds.

Cheers!

A shot earlier this summer on the patio at one of my favorite local brewpubs, Bulldog.

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The Joy of Isolation

LAST NIGHT, I POSTED this video on my Instagram story – because it was really a perfect Friday night at home! I played a little music on the keyboard & guitar and then spent a couple hours on my pinball machines. Had Material Issue’s best CD Destination Universe on the stereo, a Revolution Anti-Hero IPA in my pinball machine cup holder, and ultimately set my 2nd best high score on the Sorcerer machine (#3 on the machine itself). The only reason I stopped playing after midnight was to go watch the movie Passengers (kind of a great “isolation” film!) on the big screen.

Perfect Pinball Night!

So, it turns out, I’m finding I’m perfectly suited for the Apocalypse! As of yesterday, thanks to the coronavirus, I’ve been telecommuting for three weeks and have barely left the house during that period. Unlike a lot of posts I’ve seen lately, I don’t feel cooped up or stir crazy at all. I’m still putting in 9 and 10 hour days at the dayjob, which means the weekdays fly by. Telecommuting has meant that I don’t waste two hours of life on the road everyday, and that’s an amazing gift – it’s meant that I’m a little more “alive” at the end of the workday to spend some time with my family and do some “writing” work and play some pinball.

I have a huge stack of books and movies I’d like to get to in the coming month of quarantine, but I’ve been doing copy edits on my next novel over the past couple weeks after work, so… I haven’t dug into those entertainment stashes yet.

Since they have more time and aren’t running around every night, I have gotten to watch an awesome Amazon Prime series I’ve wanted to see for awhile with Geri and Shaun — Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens. I loved that book when I read it 20 or 30 years ago, and the adaptation is great. If you want hilarious British humor about an angel and demon teaming up to try to stop the Biblical apocalypse, I can’t recommend it enough.

Over the next few weeks I’d like to find time to use all of the music instruments in my basement again. I used to spend hours every weekend playing and writing songs, but life’s pace ultimately pushed music to the side for me. Last night I played a little for the first time in awhile… but I still haven’t spent “quality time.” Maybe this enforced slowdown will finally let me get back to that.

Basically… I guess I’ve been putting together the perfect basement in my house over the past decade to prepare for this! I’m very happy staying here… As long as the power stays on and there are IPAs in the beer fridge… I’m good!

Hope you are keeping some distance from the panic machine, finding pieces of your life that you’ve had to put on hold and spending more time with the people who really make your life have meaning.

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