John Everson's Blog, page 5

Warming the Winter with a trip to CAPRICON 40! (UPDATED with pix)

It’s CAPRICON 40 Weekend! This year, the venerable SF/F convention returns to the Wheeling, IL Westin with a “Tropics of Capricon” theme. Consequently, the first panel I’ll be on will be about IPAs – Beers From the Tropics (well, the IPA was really a beer brewed to GO to the tropics!).

You know a con that STARTS with a panel on beer is gonna be good!

I’ll be around with books in tow all weekend, but here’s my main panel schedule for the weekend:

Friday, February 14
2:30pm
Beers from the Tropics
Food Room – 1509 (15), 2:30pm – 4pm

Saturday, February 15
12:15pm
Reading: John Everson & Richard Garfinkle
River C (1), 12:15pm – 1pm

5:30pm
How Not to Kill Yourself Over a Deadline
Willow A (1), 5:30pm – 7pm
Sunday, February 16

Sunday, February 16
10am
Social Media Pitfalls for Aspiring Creatives
Ravinia A (1), 10am – 11:30am

POST CON UPDATE

Had a great time at Capricon this year! I went there for the first time last year with my friends W.D. Gagliani, Dave Benton and Brian Pinkerton.  This year, the rest of my gang couldn’t make it, but I made some new friends, thanks to the “Beer From The Tropics” panel that I helped with on Valentine’s Day.

Anyone who knows me knows that I love IPAs, and four of us introduced an audience to samples from some of our favorites. Claire Humphrey brought some great stuff (including Goblin Sauce!) down from Toronto, Dan Berger covered the north Chicago area and John Wardale tapped Michigan.  Me? I introduced people to my go-tos:  Revolution Anti-Hero, Two Brothers’ Love of Hops and, given the tropics theme, I brought some Stone Brewing Tangerine Express. 

On Saturday, I did a reading of “Preserve” and “The Right Instrument” from Vigilantes of Love, in the con Cafe (where they also hosted live music throughout the weekend, and also sat on a panel on meeting deadlines.

Writing at Spears

I took some “me” time then, and decamped to Spears Burgers & Bourbon for dinner and a couple hours of brainstorming — I needed to work on developing some pitch ideas for my next novel.

After I got a few things down on paper (well, on digital paper), I went back to the hotel and walked the room parties, from the Beer & Books event to Barfleet. I didn’t stay too long since I didn’t know anyone, but it was enjoyable to wander the party floor for a while!

I closed the weekend with a pretty lively panel for a Sunday morning on Social Media. All great fun!

Social Media Pitfalls for Aspiring Creatives Panel: Trungles, James Plaxco (moderator), Red, Beverly Bambury, John Everson



Coming up next…

I’ll be appearing at the Naperville Library on May 7 as part of the Horror Writers Association 4th Annual Librarians Day event with a bunch of authors (including some from Flame Tree Press, as well as my editor!)

After that… starts the countdown to one of my favorite events of the year, Flashback Weekend! I’ve already got my booth booked there for July 31.

The post Warming the Winter with a trip to CAPRICON 40! (UPDATED with pix) appeared first on John Everson.

Warming the Winter with a trip to CAPRICON 40!

It’s CAPRICON 40 Weekend! This year, the venerable SF/F convention returns to the Wheeling, IL Westin with a “Tropics of Capricon” theme. Consequently, the first panel I’ll be on will be about IPAs – Beers From the Tropics (well, the IPA was really a beer brewed to GO to the tropics!).

You know a con that STARTS with a panel on beer is gonna be good!

I’ll be around with books in tow all weekend, but here’s my main panel schedule for the weekend:

Friday, February 14
2:30pm
Beers from the Tropics
Food Room – 1509 (15), 2:30pm – 4pm

Saturday, February 15
12:15pm
Reading: John Everson & Richard Garfinkle
River C (1), 12:15pm – 1pm

5:30pm
How Not to Kill Yourself Over a Deadline
Willow A (1), 5:30pm – 7pm
Sunday, February 16

Sunday, February 16
10am
Social Media Pitfalls for Aspiring Creatives
Ravinia A (1), 10am – 11:30am

The post Warming the Winter with a trip to CAPRICON 40! appeared first on John Everson.

At the end of a decade… 2019

Shaun and me sporting our Muse concert t-shirts on New Year’s Eve.

2019 WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR. From an amazing Muse concert to Horror and Pinball Conventions and high school marching band competitions, it was action-packed. And, for the first time in my writing career, something I wrote appeared on TV (how cool is that?)

At the start of December, V Wars launched on Netflix and included two characters – Danika and Mila Dubov – and adaptations of the stories that I wrote about them in the original V-Wars books.

I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t one of the highlights of my year!

In June, my 11th novel, The Devil’s Equinox, was released by Flame Tree Press and since then has received pretty good reviews. And this month I wrapped up writing my 12th novel, Voodoo Heart, for release next year.

In the fall, a new story, “The Cemetery Man,” was released in the much-acclaimed Midnight in the Graveyard anthology from Silver Shamrock Press. I penned a couple other short stories this year as well, though they haven’t been released yet.

In June, a Polish edition of my fifth novel, Siren, was translated and released as Syrena in Poland by Phantom Books, which is super cool… that’s the sixth book I’ve had released by four different presses there… and NightWhere is slated to follow from Phantom this month. Here’s a cool YouTube review of Syrena:

So… it was a pretty good year in the world of writing for me.

On the Concert Trail…

This year was also a pretty good year for music. Shaun and I went to see the Muse concert in Chicago in April. I’ve always liked Muse but I’d never seen them live. I’ve seen hundreds of other concerts over the years, but these guys unexpectedly blew me away – the Simulation Theory tour was definitely one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. Here’s a short video I shot of one of the songs. There are a bunch of others on my YouTube Channel.

Claudio Simonetti and me.

And there were some other noteworthy shows this year too. I saw Brandi Carlile in June, hot off her Grammy Awards win, and Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin in October — where I got the chance to meet Claudio himself – one of my keyboard idols.

It wasn’t a “concert” per se, but Geri and I also got the chance to see John Cleese of Monty Python’s Flying Circus do a spoken word “retrospective” show in Chicago, along with Brian Pinkerton and his wife.

Over our Christmas break, Shaun and Geri and I got to see two shows — the Gin Blossoms (who we’ve seen a couple times before) and Trans-Siberian Orchestra, who I’ve wanted to see for years because I was a huge fan of Savatage, (TSO is really an offshoot of Savatage). They put on an amazing pyrotechnic show, and even slipped in a couple Savatage songs, which totally made my day.

From Rock to Marching Band



Shaun in uniform.

While we saw some memorable shows, for the first time in my life, I saw a lot more Marching Band music this year than Rock Concerts. Shaun graduated 8th grade in the spring and almost immediately started working on Naperville Central High School Marching Band over the summer.

He plays marimba with the band, and Geri and I volunteered to help with the prop crew. That meant lots of weekends spent pushing heavy wooden “clouds” on and off football fields all around suburban Chicago, to accent their show, Cloud 9.

They won a bunch of awards over the season, which culminated in a road trip to the Bands of America competition in Indianapolis at the Colts’ Lucas Oil Stadium…Where it was pouring rain the whole time we put together the props in the parking lot.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so wet and cold! But it was worth it to see the kids perform in that huge venue in front of thousands of people. And, hell… I got to walk a cloud onto the (thankfully enclosed) field.

There was also another point in the season, where they performed at a competition and it was super windy… and since they were concerned about the props moving or falling over during the show, several of us parents acted as “human sandbags” to keep the wooden clouds in place on the field. Not a position I ever expected to find myself in.

But… it did give me the chance to shoot some cool “on-the-field” perspective video of the band in motion as I hunched behind a 10-foot long wooden cloud:

At the end of the season, Shaun got awarded Marching Band “Freshman of the Year” and then promptly auditioned his way into the high school Jazz Studio Orchestra, which took us almost immediately down to the University of Chicago for a concert.

Plus, he also auditioned and landed a role in next spring’s NCHS Drum Show, a production we’ve paid to see for years and something he’s wanted to do since before Junior High… so… the band music life is here to stay!

Convention extension…

This year was a great year for horror conventions. W. D. Gagliani, Dave Benton and Brian Pinkerton and I all converged on a northern Illinois SF/F/H con called Capricon at the start of the year, which was a blast. There’s nothing better than hanging out with those guys.

Brian Pinkerton, David Benton, W.D. Gagliani and me.

At the end of July, I had a booth at Flashback Weekend as always, and had a blast with my friends Jerry and Don from Synapse Films, as well as my friend Lon, who got a booth there for the first time himself and joined Shaun and I for our traditional “end-of-con” dinner at Hofbrauhaus.

John and Lon Jerry and Noa Shaun and Don

Just a few weeks later I drove down to Indianapolis for Horrorhound Weekend, the other horror convention I have a booth at every year. This year, thanks to Shaun’s “touring schedule” with the marching band, he and Geri couldn’t join me, but I still had a great time with Jerry, Don, Lon and our former neighbors Diane and Troy.

The con moved from a hotel to the Indianapolis Convention Center for the first time this year, so it was a big transition. It went well, though I have to say I missed the old “intimacy” of the hotel ballrooms we’ve been in in the past.

The highlight for me this year was meeting 60s horror film queen Barbara Steele.

Jerry and Noa Demoness & John Siren reader! Amy, Diane, Troy John Everson and Barbara Steele

In the fall, I was part of the Oswego Library Literary Festival and the Naperville Library Local Authors Festival. I also did booksignings for The Devil’s Equinox at the Barnes & Noble stores in Naperville and Orland Park, IL.

And Brian Pinkerton joined me for a Halloween-week signing/reading at Bucket O’ Blood Books & Records in Chicago. Just a few weeks later, Brian and I went back to a signing by Bill Gagliani and Dave Benton.

John Everson, Martel Sardina, David Benton, Brian Pinkerton, W.D. Gagliani



Pinball Life

This was the first year in a while that I didn’t buy a classic pinball machine to join the collection in my basement, but I did have some memorable silver ball events nevertheless.

In March, I went to Las Vegas for work and while I was there, I got the chance to visit the Pinball Museum there and played dozens of games that night. The next night while still in Vegas for my birthday, I went to see the Zombie Burlesque show which I’d seen a few years ago. It’s a hilarious production if you ever get the chance!

In April, Shaun and I drove out to Kalamazoo for the Pinball at the Zoo Convention (an annual Spring tradition for us) and enjoyed a lot of game play, as well as a couple great dinners with our pin-friends at Bell’s Brewery’s Eccentric Cafe and the Arcadia Ales taphouse.

We stopped a couple times this year locally at the new Galloping Ghost pinball arcade, where I confirmed my love of the Elvira and the Party Monsters machine (I’ve spent hours on that table there!)

All that prepped us for our fall pinball convention, Pinball Expo in Wheeling, where, this year, they were debuting the new (and third) Elvira themed table, Elvira’s House of Horrors. I spent the most time at this year’s Expo than ever before (I’d never attended on Thursday before, just Friday-Saturday). And I still could have played more!

Elvira herself (Cassandra Peterson) was there in person, so I got a picture and autograph with her (how could I not?)

I also picked up a cool bit of “pinball trivia” art at the show. The artist who created the recent Batman 66 game created an art piece for a potential Beetlejuice pinball game. While nobody has picked up on the them for production, someone licensed the art from him for a limited edition backlight. Being a fan of Beetlejuice and pinball, I had to buy a signed edition for my basement. Now if someone would just be smart enough to make the game!

Birds and Loss

I’ve had birds as pets for most of my life now. This was a particularly difficult year for me there. Lem, a lutino cockatiel who has been with me for 30 years (way past normal lifespan) finally died — in my hands on a day I was working from home. That was hard to take, but she was very old, and it was not completely unexpected. We’d really been preparing for it for years.

What really hurt, was losing Pepper just a few weeks later. Pepper was a green Canary Winged Parakeet who was barely a year old when she died. She had been battling an undiagnosed internal issue for most of her life. I spent nights with her in our basement when I was sure she was going to die because she had pneumonia early in the year. She was in the “bird hospital” several times from January – June. Every time it seemed like she was getting better, two or three weeks later she began to decline again.

It was maddening, and the vet – despite many tests – never was able to diagnose her. I gave her vitamins and immune system boosters every day. She cuddled on my shoulder every minute I was in the house – in fact, if she knew I was in the house and wasn’t holding her, she’d call until I came to get her.

The loss of that demanding little voice when she finally died (like Lem, in my hands), has haunted me for the rest of the year. She was with me almost the least of all of my birds… and yet, has left the hardest hurt on my heart.

Films and Music

Somehow, this year I managed to see 132 films. That’s a record number compared to the previous five years since I’ve been tracking my movie watching. I have long been a fan of ’70s exploitation films, but this year, I finally discovered the Dolemite and Human Tornado films of Rudy Ray Moore (which I loved) just in time to enjoy the My Name Is Dolemite Eddie Murphy biopic on Moore a few months later.

I also have been an occasional fan of Westerns, and discovered the Italian Sartana films (in part, because they were what I watched with Pepper on nights when she was having breathing problems).

I rewatched a number of Guillermo Del Toro films, since I was on a Del Toro panel at Capricon, and also discovered the works of Gorman Bechard, Ted U. Mikels, Rick Sloane and Andy Sidaris.

Modern films that I saw and loved included A Cure for Wellness, Knives Out, Yesterday, Green Book and Crimson Peak.

While I saw some modern films, I continue to be drawn to ’70s films; 56 of the 132 movies I saw this year came from that decade, while 35 were from the ’80s.

Thematically, of my 132, around 50 were horror, while another 50 were arthouse/exploitation films of one style or another. And another batch were thrillers, sci-fi and westerns.

My favorite ’70s discoveries that I saw for the first time this year were Tiffany Jones, The Corruption of Chris Miller, Coffy, Thundercrack, Chatterbox, Shadows in an Empty Room and Young, Violent, Dangerous.

On the Music Front…

I discovered some great music in 2019. I continue to obsessively listen to DJ Mikey’s StrangewaysRadio mixes on MixCloud, which introduces me to a lot of one-off poppy singles and indie bands like Witch of the Vale, MisterWives, Kitten, Hatchie and Hanne Mjoen.

Keane put out a great comeback album this year with Cause and Effect (Shaun and I are looking forward to seeing them live in March!) And sadly, The Muffs released their final album, No Holiday, just two weeks after leader Kim Shattuck’s death from ALS.

Travel

This year was super busy, but we didn’t go too far afield. We couldn’t do a getaway family vacation since we had to spend thousands in our back yard in the spring replacing a fence and cutting out a giant old tree. (I also got stuck with lots of car repairs on my old Mustang).

But we did take a short spring break day trip to see my old U of I College campus in Champaign-Urbana, and we went up to Milwaukee on another day trip to visit my nephew. I was in Indianapolis three times between HorrorHound and Shaun’s band excursions. So… here’s where I got to this year outside of Illinois:

Las VegasNew OrleansSan DiegoIndianapolisMilwaukee



Stone Brewing Beer Garden, San DiegoStone Brewing, San Diego



At the Dawn of a Decade…

And now… as I write this, the annual New Year’s Late Showing of The Marx Brothers’ Horse Feathers on TV has ended and it’s past 2 a.m. Probably time to call it a night.

When you stop to think about it, it all really goes by too fast. It’s been a good year. I only hope that 2020 is even better.

Cheers.

P.S. Here’s hoping for a second season of V-Wars in 2020 so I can see what they do with my vampire sisters Danika and Mila!

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Christmas is for Reading!

I LOVE ALL THE LIGHTS and carols and ceremony of Christmas. I’m not a religious person, but I do believe in traditions, and the celebration of love and the year’s events gone by. While I’ve made my reputation as a horror author, I’ve written a short book of Christmas stories and lyrics and recorded a bunch of Christmas songs. To hear one, just visit the John Everson Christmas Page on this site.

To celebrate the season (and encourage a long winter’s night of reading!) most of my kindle books are on sale this week (and free on Kindle Unlimited) for the holidays! I’ve also included Martin Mundt’s amazing Synchronized Sleepwalking in this list, which I edited and wrote the introduction for. Check it out for genius! Grab a couple of these on Amazon for your e-reader and settle down for a long winter’s read:

NIGHTWHERE



FIELD OF FLESH



VIOLET EYES



VIOLET LAGOON




THE FAMILY TREE



SACRIFICING VIRGINS



REDEMPTION



VIGILANTES OF LOVE

SYNCHRONIZED SLEEPWALKING



CHRISTMAS TALES







A Horror Christmas List:

NIGHTWHERE – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01NARGS4E/

NIGHTWHERE – FIELD OF FLESH: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073DGWD7S/

VIOLET EYES: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N4TBJEK/

VIOLET LAGOON: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FCKGBVU/

THE FAMILY TREE: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1544153864/

SACRIFICING VIRGINS: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01NAT3W3H/

REDEMPTION: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N36RT3T/

VIGILANTES OF LOVE: https://www.amazon.com/Vigilantes-Love-Tales-Dark-Light-ebook/dp/B004FEFAIY

CHRISTMAS TALES: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004GUS980/

SYNCHRONIZED SLEEPWALKING by Martin Mundt: https://www.amazon.com/Synchronized-Sleepwalking-Martin-Mundt-ebook/dp/B01740ZC9M

Merry Christmas!

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When your “kids” Danika and Mila grow up and go to Netflix: V-WARS

Netflix V Wars Cast

EIGHT YEARS AGO, Jonathan Maberry approached me and a handful of others with an invitation to contribute to a new shared world book he was creating that dealt with vampires. I still have the original e-mail – from May of 2011 – and of course I accepted the invite, but I never dreamed when the resulting book V-Wars was first published in 2012 that it would spawn three more prose volumes, a comic book series, and now, a Netflix series!

The new V Wars series on Netflix launched last Thursday starring Ian Somerhalder (Vampire Diaries), and has been getting lots of press this week, including praise from Howard Stern.

I was hooked on the V-Wars concept from the start. I’d published dozens of short stories and a handful of novels at that point, but I’d almost never written about vampires. The vampires Jonathan envisioned, however, were not the sparkly kind. V-Wars vampires were to be science-based creatures; vampirism was posited as a past genetic mutation that has lain dormant in junk DNA and is now reactivated in many thanks to a virus, causing lots of conflict — the V Wars.

Each of the contributing authors wrote independent stories for V-Wars, but tied them all in some way to Jonathan’s over-arching plot idea and core characters.

One interesting conceit we got to play with was that there are many different types of vampires, based on heritage. Every culture carries its own vampire myths, so in the world of V-Wars, that meant that if you were Indian or Asian or Russian, there are different attributes that have lain dormant in your DNA. If you were Japanese, the activated “junk” DNA would trigger you to become a different kind of vampire mutation than if you were from Romania.

The birth of Danika and Mila Dubov



“Love Less” from V-Wars

For that debut volume of V-Wars, I decided to write about the Russian Wurdulac, a vampire that can only feed on those it loves. And that’s how the story of two sisters of Russian descent, Danika and Mila Dubov, was born, in a long novelette called “Love Less.”

In that original story, Danika is a selfish, hedonistic tabloid talk show host who turns Wurdulac and has to figure out what has happened to her and how to survive when, in fact, there are very few people she has ever given affection to (making it hard for a newly born Wurdulac to feed!)

A couple years after V-Wars was released, Jonathan invited me back to be part of the third book in the prose series, V-Wars: Night Terrors. I wrote a second story called “Love Lost” focused on Mila Dubov, now a vampire thanks to her sister. But Mila hates her condition, refuses to kill people, and instead has become a vigilante, hunting down vampires. When she rescues a fellow vampire vigilante who remains human, Mila begins a love story that is doomed from the start by her new nature.

V-Wars: Night Terrors came out at the start of 2016 and included “Love Lost.” There have not been any further opportunities for me to write about the Dubov sisters over the past four years, but they are two of my favorite characters that I’ve created.

So imagine my excitement when I looked at the cast list this past spring for the Netflix production of V Wars and saw the names Danika Dubov and Mila Dubov listed!

V Wars goes to Netflix

I knew the Netflix series was in production last fall, but originally it was thought that they would only be using Jonathan Maberry’s characters from the comic book series, so I didn’t think any of my contributions to the books would end up being filmed. But… this spring when I looked up the show to see when it would finally be on TV, there they were in the production cast list — Danika Dubov, played by (Shadowhunters) and Mila Dubov, played by (Smallville, Bitten, Supergirl).

I was sitting in a bar after midnight in New Orleans, working on ideas for my 12th novel, Voodoo Heart, when I took a break and Googled V Wars since it had been a long while since I’d heard any updates about it. A minute later, it was all I could do not to grab the bartender, point at my laptop and yell “Look! Danika and Mila are going to be on TV! My girls have hit the big time!”

I restrained myself from grabbing the bartender, but it was not easy. I spent the next few months watching for the release date to be finalized for the show. When it finally debuted, on Dec. 5, I went immediately to the TV as soon as I got home from work and started binging!

It was pretty cool to get to the very end of the first episode and see this:

From author to viewer

I have to say, it was a very strange experience as one of the contributors to the V-Wars books to watch how the Netflix writers kept some elements of stories and characters the same, but drastically changed and consolidated others. In the original books, there were “war” stories going on all across the country. Jonathan’s core story with Dr. Luther Swann and Michael Fayne “Patient Zero”, were set in New York.

My stories were in Chicago, and Danika and Mila never actually met Swann or Fayne in the books. Yet in the first episode of the Netflix series, Danika is revealed as Fayne’s girlfriend and has changed from a talk show host in Chicago to a realtor in New York. Her basic nature, however, remains unchanged, and she does follow some of the plot points of my original story.

Danika (Kimberly-Sue Murray) in survival mode.

Nancy Holder’s story from V-Wars, featuring crazy biker Bobby, was set in the Southwest in the book, but in the series, those characters are also relocated to New York, and in fact, in one scene, Bobby carries out a brutal act that actually Mila performs in the book.

And speaking of “mix-and-match,” there’s also a touching scene in the series where Michael Fayne shows mercy on a woman sitting on a bench alone at night, waiting for a bus. He tells her how he has just “lost my brother” and then lets her go.

In the books… that’s actually a scene I wrote for Danika, where she meets a guy on a bench waiting for a bus at night, and her intent is to feed on him. Her nature (not kindness) forces her to let him go, but she bemoans that she has just “lost my sister.” Same scene, just transposed to another character!

There are a lot of merges and changes like that to create a tighter, film-able, story in the series with the characters more interconnected, but still, the kernels of the original stories remain. At one point in Episode Three, in the first scene where we see Danika and Mila together, I actually yelled out from my couch “YES! They kept the soup!” which was a plot point in my original story.

Letting go…

There are plot elements in the original stories that were, of course, unfortunately left out of the series. I think the action sequences in Mila’s love story in “Love Lost” would have made great, edge-of-your-seat TV, but sadly, was not filmed. The gist of that story exists in the series, but is painfully truncated and thus lacks the emotional punch of the original ending. But… who knows, maybe somehow they’ll use a part of it for Mila’s arc if the series goes on to Season Two.

Laura Vandervoort as Mila Dubov

Either way… characters that I created actually made it to television. Stories that I wrote were adapted and filmed.

That’s an amazing feeling, and something I’ve hoped for for years as a writer. The past few days, watching the reviews, interviews and social media posts about the series have certainly been a high point in my 25+ year writing career.

And Danika and Mila?

Well, I guess they’ve grown up. Kimberly-Sue Murray and Laura Vandervoort did a great job in bringing them to life on the screen. But other writers are working with Danika and Mila now, and I may not have the opportunity again. I hope that I will, but who knows? I’m like any father — I don’t want my kids to leave home, but I’m happy that they’re out in the world and successful now.

Where ever they go, I’ll always be proud of them!

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Pinball Expo 2019: All About Elvira!

Elvira’s House of Horrors Pinball

I HAVE TO ADMIT that before I played it, I was a little skeptical about the latest Elvira-themed pinball machine that debuted this weekend at Pinball Expo 2019. I’m a big fan of the previous Elvira tables, Elvira and the Party Monsters (1989) and Scared Stiff (1996), both designed by Dennis Nordman and released through Midway/Bally.

The new table, Elvira’s House of Horrors , from Stern Pinball, was also designed by Nordman, and served as the centerpiece of Pinball Expo 2019 in Wheeling, IL this weekend, since they brokered a special guest appearance by Elvira (Cassandra Peterson) herself. The first couple times I played the table, I bemoaned the lack of some of the more whimsical features of the past two tables — like the “monster slide” style ramps. But by the end of the weekend (after two or three dozen plays!) I was a solid fan (aside from the weird cartoon “Deadheads”).

The three different Elvira pinball machines in a row.

I’ve been going to the show for several years now, but this is the first year I’ve gone to Pinball Expo on Thursday and Friday night as well as all day Saturday. Which means I got a LOT more play time in this year! That worked out, since I think there were more machines there this year than ever before.

I took pictures of a lot of the machines I played, so based just on counting those, I know I played more than 40 distinct games, many of them several times.

I spent a lot of time playing the new Elvira’s House of Horrors machine (my high score at the end of the weekend was nearly 35 million — though two of the guys I was with scored over 60 million on it). I also set a new personal best score on one of my favorite classic games, Stargazer (1,384,150 – up about a hundred thousand from a score I set on it in the spring).

Meeting Elvira

There were a lot of highlights for me for this year’s show. I was fist-pumped on Saturday by Steve Ritchie, who designed all three Black Knight pinball machines. I talked with Zombie Yeti, the artist behind Stern Pinball’s Deadpool, Ghostbusters and others. I saw Dennis Nordman, the creator of the art for all three Elvira machines. And on Friday night, I met Cassandra Peterson, Elvira herself, and got her to sign a photo for my game room. (Hopefully some day, it will hang near an Elvira pinball table… but that’s a long-range game room dream!)

Here’s the video of her being introduced by Jack Danger (“Deadflip”), a pinball “rock star” who Shaun met and took a picture with last year. She appeared at HorrorHound in Indianapolis last month, but I never got the chance to meet her there since I was running my own table the whole show.

Since the Elvira line was huge, I disappeared for an hour and had dinner at Spears, a great beer, burgers and bourbon bar near the hotel with my best friends in pinball — Brad and Christian Czernik, Mike Schudel, Chad Dentandt and Mike Gaspar. I spent some extra time at Spears both Thursday and Friday nights working on my next novel, Voodoo Heart, since it’s due at the end of the year. I couldn’t go a whole weekend without getting a chapter or two written!

I then came back when the celebrity insanity had abated a bit, and actually got in line to meet Cassandra. Unfortunately, I didn’t know Mike Gaspar was out in the audience shooting pictures of my back… or I would have turned around to have gotten a shot with both Elvira and myself LOOKING at the camera…

The History of Pinball with Pat Lawlor…

Friday also was a different day for me because, thanks to my friend Chad, I got to actually attend one of the lectures going on at the show (usually, I just play the tables and don’t see the “deep side” of the convention).

I watched Pat Lawlor give a talk on the history of pinball, its booms, busts, and reinventions which was pretty interesting. Lawlor is the game designer of two of the game’s biggest titles — The Addams Family and Twilight Zone, and more recently created Dialed In and Willie Wonka.

Pat Lawlor



The big day…

On Saturday, Shaun went down with me (as usual) to spend the day and we were there for almost 12 hours. There were more four ballrooms of machines this year (there were also tournaments going on, but as much as I love pinball, I’m not competition ready), so unlike previous years, Shaun did not try to play every single machine. That would not have been possible! (He has come close in prior years).

One room held the most recent Stern games (Elvira, Star Wars, Beatles, Jurassic Park, Deadpool) and we hit all those.

Another held games available for auction, which had a really weird mix of titles — some offbeat things I’ve never seen before including some Spanish titles, along with more big-name licensed stuff like Shrek, Jetsons, Family Guy, Mars Attacks, Hook, and a big 3D “Pong” table. (I kicked Shaun’s butt on that one. I’m old school.)

There was also the standard, crowded “older title” room where many people bring games and leave them on free play all weekend in exchange for free admission to the convention. I thought about bringing one of mine this year… but was lazy!

That room was where I spent a good chunk of time on Saturday night playing Stargazer and Elvira and the Party Monsters and Cybernaut, as well as checking out the play on examples of Meteor and Galaxy — tables I own. I decided I liked my tables better!

“F

Then were was a “Dealers Room,” where in addition to some newer games from current smaller manufacturers like Jersey Jack and American Pinball, there were parts and artwork and other things being sold.

I ended up buying an LED frame with signed Beetlejuice artwork by Chris Franchi, an artist known for his recent Batman 66 and The Munsters themed tables for Stern. Sadly, the Beetlejuice pinball art that he designed may never become a table, but since that’s a favorite film of the Everson clan, it was a natural crossover piece to grab for our game room.

The dealer’s room is also where Brad was helping out most of the weekend with a charity booth called Project Pinball.

Fun with Pinball Exhibit

A cool added feature of the show this year was Fun with Pinball exhibit room filled with small demo stations which showed “How Pinball Works.” I talked a bit with the creator, Mark Gibson, who guided Shaun through playing both “baseball” and “horserace” game he’d fashioned with various pinball parts.

Ever since I was a young boy, I played the silver ball…



The Jurassic Park victor is paraded through the hall!

There are other stories. Like Shaun being paraded through the hallways on Mike’s shoulders to celebrate his triumphant win over Mike and Christian on Jurassic Park.

Or the strange group half-step dance to the them of Manos, Hands of Fate every time it came on during a segment in the new Elvira game.

Or the strange series of photos titled “Look Who’s Here” of the back of people’s heads while playing pinball that were texted to multiple players…

Suffice it to say… we had a great time. And the best times always end too soon.

Here are some more pix from the weekend:

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Scream from Heaven: R.I.P. Kim Shattuck

The Muffs – No Holiday

LAST NIGHT, as I was taking a short break from playing the silver balls at Pinball Expo to squeeze in a little writing on my next novel Voodoo Heart, my son Shaun texted me to tell me there was a new CD just released by punk-pop band The Muffs called No Holiday. He knows I love The Muffs…Nobody belts out a punk-rock scream like lead singer/songwriter Kim Shattuck. So I was pretty excited that there was a new disc…until moments later when I discovered that the album now stands as their swan song — it was released two weeks after Kim died on Oct. 2, 2019 of Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS).

I was crushed. I’ve got most of The Muffs’ CDs (and even her earlier discs with The Pandoras) and whenever I need some punk-pop-pick-me-up, I plug in their early 90s discs The Muffs and Blonder and Blonder into the stereo.

I interviewed Kim once for a cover story for The Illinois Entertainer (http://popstops.net/muffs.htm) and met her on an early tour. She was a riot. Funny, sarcastic, unpredictable. She told me in that interview that she once dumped a glass of water in a cop’s crotch because he was forcing her to empty it out before she got on stage. “he didn’t say where,” she pointed out.

Kim Shattuck “I have to pee” signature.

I met her at a Lounge Ax show in Chicago 25 years ago and she signed my cassette case: “I have to pee. Kim.” You don’t forget an autograph like that.

Three years ago, I friended her and had a short
conversation on Facebook when I couldn’t make a show that they were
doing in Chicago (I was out of town). I didn’t realize it was that long
ago already… and now that turns out to have been the last chance I had
to see them live again.

I’m listening to the new album now and she sounds great… maybe not quite as manic as 25 years ago… but her voice still growls and croons as vibrant and alive as ever. I’m going to focus on that… and play this one a lot. Goodbye Kim, and thanks for the music and the attitude! There was never another like you.

Here’s the Rolling Stone article about her death:
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/kim-shattuck-muffs-dead-obituary-894132/

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Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin plays Deep Red

Claudio Simonetti and John Everson

YOU COULDN’T ASK for a better way to kick off “Halloween Season” than a concert by the guy who created the haunting scores for some of the best Italian horror films of the ’70s – 90s. When I heard that keyboardist Claudio Simonetti was coming to Chicago on Sunday, Oct. 13 with his touring version of the classic Goblin, I bought tickets instantly. And he and the band did not disappoint. For the first half of the show, they played the soundtrack to Dario Argento’s Deep Red as the film played behind them.

Once the film was finished, they played another full set featuring some of their most well-known themes to other Argento classics like Phenomena, Tenebrae, Suspiria, Mother of Tears, Demons and more. It was truly an amazing night in an intimate setting (I had one of about 40 chairs in the front of the small venue, with standing room behind for another 60 or so true horror fans.)

After the show, I had the opportunity to meet Claudio as he walked through the club. I don’t go “fanboy” very often, having met hundreds of artists over the years while I was a music critic, but shaking Simonetti’s hand and being able to thank him for the music was definitely a special moment for me.

Here’s the full playlist of the Goblin tracks that I recorded:

Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin live at Reggie’s Rock Club in Chicago.



Warming it up: Doskalle and District 97

In addition to the nearly 3-hour Goblin set, there were also two opening acts… so it was a very long night at Reggie’s Rock Club! Swedish act Doskalle took the stage first with a very theatrical instrumental set. Here’s a snippet of their sound:

Doskalle live at Reggie’s Rock Club in Chicago.

Chicago jazz-hard-rock-fusion band District 97 kept things alive for the middle third before Goblin took the stage for the showing of Deep Red. Here’s “Trigger,” probably my favorite of the tracks they played from their new album:

Districk 97 live at Reggie’s Rock Club in Chicago.

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HorrorHound Indy Grows Up!

Trapped by a Demon at the Costume Contest!

I’VE BEEN GOING TO HORRORHOUND in Indianapolis for many years now, and have seen it in three different locations.

In 2019, the convention took the leap from a “hotel” con to the Indianapolis Convention Center. It was a good change which turned it into the biggest Indy HorrorHound ever, though I can’t say I didn’t miss the old comfortable carpeted digs of the old Marriott out by the airport.

It was weird to see the con set up with lots of space and long concrete aisles!

It wasn’t the only change for me this year. Unlike the past couple years, my wife and son couldn’t come down for this one, because Shaun had a high school band competition that weekend. And I learned once I got to Indy that the spot I have visited for lunch and dinner every time I’ve been in Indianapolis over the past decade… had closed. No more “Scotty’s Brewhouse Burger” on the way out of town

…And Then There Were Three

“Everything you love must die…”

I MET HER ONE YEAR AGO this month. We were just visiting the Bird Is The Word store to get some seed for our “flock.” And Shaun and Geri and I all held this little green Canary Winged Parakeet that they’d just gotten in from a breeder in Florida. She was a baby and a cute little thing… and somewhat rare — the store had never gotten one of that type in before from a breeder — and they’re a longstanding store that deals solely in exotic birds. A couple weeks later, our budgie parakeet escaped our house in a fluke accident and we were heartbroken… but after a few days we decided to go back to the bird store and bring home that green Canary Wing if she was still available.

On September 8, 2018 she came home with us, and we named her Pepper. Like the Jalapeno. She was supposed to be Shaun’s bird, but she bonded to me. So much so that after a few weeks she hissed and opened her beak with a protective fierceness at anyone who came near me while she was sitting on my shoulder or hiding in my lap… which was pretty much every waking moment I was at home. She made herself MY bird.

Just under a year later, tonight on August 12, 2019, she left us. Tonight I can’t sleep until I tell her story.

Pepper got sick a couple months after we brought her home, and I left work early as soon as my wife called to let me know she was “down” so that I could take her to the vet. I already was so in her thrall after a few weeks that I would have walked away from anything to keep her safe.

With “the flock” on my desk.

She got better in November after some vitamin treatments and we forgot about it. She became a regular member of our flock, and a feisty one at that. In the mornings she’d push the other birds away from the food I set out on my desk while I was answering morning email, and at night she took over my right shoulder and snuggled against my neck for hours.

We watched a lot of “Barney Miller” and “Hogan’s Heroes” reruns together after dinner. She healed my heart when Lem, my cockatiel of 30 years finally succumbed to old age a couple months ago, slimming our flock from five to four (a cockatoo, cockatiel, budgie and Pepper).

Pepper enjoying headscratching “chest” time.

This summer, she became a baseball fan, because when the Cubs were on, she knew that she could have my chest and shoulder to lounge on for three straight hours at a time. Hell, sometimes she even rolled on her side and let her legs go limp with her feet both sticking out into the air when I was rubbing her. She surrendered everything when she was sitting with me. When she was in her cage and heard me cough or sneeze from another side of the house, she instantly gave out a monkey-like “ehhh-eh-eh-eh” chirp demanding that I come get her. She would be quiet on weekend mornings… until she heard me stir upstairs.

Pepper and Stormy.

I love all my birds like my babies, but Pepper demanded my heart. And I had to give it. In all honesty, I did feel a little guilty because she quietly displaced Stormy, my grey cockatiel who used to own my shoulder much of the time. While I still scratched Stormy’s head in a way nobody else is allowed to, for most of her “out time” Stormy became “Geri’s bird” over the past year as Pepper staked and fought for her territory. Me.

When 2019 began, Pepper got sick again, and we made many trips to the vet.

At the vet…

She went back on vitamin and immune system building drops. I started checking her weight every few hours every day on a little scale in my office, because she had dropped 1/3 of her body weight since her fall visit and I hadn’t realized. I wasn’t going to let that happen again. I had a special feeding mix that I fed her with a syringe whenever her weight dipped to make sure she stayed level.

She got better for a few weeks… and then got worse again. Ended up in the bird hospital twice over the coming weeks, staying there for days at a time with pneumonia.

At one point, before she stayed in the hospital, I was sure she was going to die. She was struggling for breath and would go into a panic when she couldn’t quite catch it, running and stumbling across my shoulders.

Two different nights I sat up with her until after 2 a.m. She watched Sartana Italian Westerns with me (they were subtitled, so I could keep the sound low) until the dark and the warmth of my shoulder settled her to an uneasy sleep. I was almost sure both of those nights that I was going to wake in the morning to a dead bird.

But she pulled through. Again and again. As Spring turned to Summer, it seemed that we might have finally licked whatever disorder had plagued her. She started making whistles and chirps on sunny days that she had never made in the first six or seven months we’d had her.

I was excited that we maybe had finally turned the corner. She still had not grown in new wing feathers, which was troubling. The store had clipped them before we brought her home in September, but birds molt every few weeks or months, so she should have gotten “new” wings well before spring.

Stealing Shaun’s breakfast.

She did have a small molt in late May or early June, and a couple new wing and head feathers came in. But not enough were replaced for her to fly. And her tail feathers, which she seemed to snap off every time one started growing in, stayed stubby.

A couple weeks ago, she began showing signs that something else was wrong. This time she didn’t have breathing or weight loss issues. Instead, she was stumbling. As if she’d pulled a muscle in her leg. I thought that was what it was because her energy remained good… but then the appetite started dipping and the “limping” got worse. We made another vet appointment, and I started feeding her more formula again to keep her weight up in the meantime.

By the end of the week, she was no longer craning her head when I let her out of her cage and saying “Hi!” to me. She just threw herself up my shoulder to take her place there to cuddle.

We had an appointment tonight and I figured we’d be doing x-rays and seeing just what was going on this time to lay her low. Not that any prior tests had ever discovered the root cause of her issues. All of her cultures and blood tests came back negative for worrisome issues every time. I suspect that whatever was behind all of her health issues of the past year was one and the same. Tumor. Neurological disease. Cancer. Digestive organ disorder. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now because nobody ever solved the puzzle.

I took her out of her cage tonight after I got home from work and weighed her, and she flapped and struggled to stand straight. She was a little low in weight, so I said, “let’s get you some food before we go to the vet,” and took her to the kitchen to make the formula. I set her on the counter, and she stood for a second… and then simply laid her whole body and head down. I reached out to her and said, “what’s the matter” and she suddenly bleated out a staccato call that I’d never heard before.

It was her death cry and I knew it instantly for what it was.

I picked her up and saw the light leaving her eyes. I cried “no, no no” but her head lolled, and she was gone.

Just like that.

Life is fleeting, fickle and cruel.

Whenever you are responsible for a life — child, elder parent, pet — you will always second guess your decisions. Could I have done this and it would have been different? Should I have done that? What if we’d had an emergency vet visit a couple days earlier? What if we’d gotten her anesthesia and had x-rays done the last time she got sick? It’s a horrible game that our minds play and mine has certainly played it tonight. But no self-recriminations will bring back the little green spirit that brought me so much joy this past year.

Geri told me later that she had had a difficult day… a lot of fluttering and trying to stay up on her perch when she couldn’t maintain her balance.

Pepper had struggled and held on and waited for me to come home to her. And as soon as I did come home and picked her up… she could finally let go. She waited for me to say goodbye.

I understand Pet Semetary now. I get all of those horror novels where people foolishly use voodoo and radioactive chemicals and invoke demons or a Monkey’s Paw. I have cried all night that I just want her back. When I reheated dinner, I looked at the pork ribs I grilled last night and burst out in tears… because I cooked them to have as leftovers for the week solely because the bird liked them… and she never had the chance to eat them. I would do almost anything to have her back, snuggling against my neck. I want to walk to her cage and have her little green neck extend happily and say, “Hi!”

But those eyes won’t look into mine again. That “ehhh-eh-eh-eh” won’t greet me as I walk down the stairs late on a Saturday morning, asking me why the hell I stayed up so late last night watching bad movies and slept so long.

Because she is sleeping now. Kiwi and Stormy and Coraline all understood her passing, I think. They were all strangely quiet tonight… the flock is now three.

I cried tonight when I thought of Pepper’s wings, and how they never filled in so that she could fly around the house and to my shoulder as the other birds do. I cried that I didn’t recognize how close to the edge she was.

God in heaven, if you are there and fair at all, I pray that you let her at last fly high and free as she never could here with me. If spirits live on, she should fly.

Nobody deserves it more. My Pepper deserves a high-flying soar and rush.

I held her after she went away for an hour or more tonight, not letting her get cold. But now I visualize and hope for only one thing. Green wings, extended and swooping just below the sunset’s rays.

Rest in Peace, my sweet, loyal bird. I will never be the same, for you took over my heart and your passing leaves a large empty hole there. I will always miss you now, but even though it hurts like hell, I’m thankful you came into my life for a little while.

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