John Everson's Blog, page 6

Flashback 2019: Another Con Reunion

John Everson at Flashback Weekend 2019.

I LOOK FORWARD to Flashback Weekend: Chicago Horror Convention every year. Not so much because of the guests of honor (who are always great — this year included Robert Englund, Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi) but because of the chance to hang out for a couple days with friends and fans that I only see a once or twice a year. While the Nightmare on Elm Street, Candyman and Evil Dead reunions are going on down the hall with movie stars, I’m reuniting with good friends.

Jerry Chandler and his daughter Noa at dinner at Flashback Weekend 2019.

This year was no different! As always, my table was right next to the Synapse Films booth, so I got to talk with Don May Jr, and Jerry and Noa Chandler and Brian Olson from Synapse all weekend.

We had dinner the first night at Bill Murray’s Murray Bros. Caddyshack bar & grill and enjoyed some “Crispy Potato Golf Balls” and other fine “sports bar” fare. They even did a special menu for the con featuring things like Norman’s Psycho Grilled Cheese, Freddy’s Dream Burger and Leatherface’s Slaughterhouse Pork Sliders.

John Everson and Brian Pinkerton at Flashback Weekend 2019.

Fellow Flame Tree Press author and longtime friend Brian Pinkerton stopped down on Saturday to grab a Sam Raimi photo and visited me before heading across the street to a concert with his wife.

I never thought he’d get through the lines, but somehow he managed it and made it to his show on time. Later that night, right after Noa and I got off the Zombie bus, I ran into him and his wife Jill on their way back to their car. Perfect timing all around!

John Everson and Lon Czarnecki at Flashback Weekend 2019.

And for the first time, Lon Czarnecki, a friend of mine since high school (we’ve hosted many horror movie nights together for friends in my basement!) had a booth as a vendor to sell his wife Amy’s cool creepy dolls and other horror merch.

I didn’t get any autographs this year (doing that is always a challenge when you’re running a booth — leaving the booth equals no sales!) I thought about trying to meet Melinda Clarke — I rewatched her Return of the Living Dead 3 the night before the convention — but instead I just caught a glance at her at her table from down the aisle.

Melinda Clarke

I did score a bunch of DVDs however from my friends at Synapse and Vinegar Syndrome, and even picked up a couple from the Full Moon booth.

Over the weekend I got the chance to talk for a bit with my ol’ pal Chad Savage, took Noa for her first walk on the Zombie Army Bus now that she’s over 21 and I caught up with a bunch of local readers, including Jenn Summers, Joseph Plotchl and Dori Valenta, Mickey Thompson and finally met Rachel Rose Bee “The Housewife of Horror” who lives just a town a way from me and does a lot of horror reviews and a video show.

John Everson and Joseph Plochl Mickey Thompson and John Everson Rachel Rose Bee – “The Housewife of Horror” and John Everson

On Sunday, my son Shaun came down as he does every year, to hang with our Synapse friends and to spend some time as Shaun The Evil Bookseller so that I can walk the hall for a few minutes. He and Don traded strategies for Pokemon Go.

Shaun the Evil Bookseller

After we tore down the booth on Sunday, I took Shaun to our annual dinner at the nearby Hofbrauhaus and this year Lon Czarnecki and Don May joined us. All in all, another great show with great people! I already can’t wait until next year! Here are some more pictures from the hall:

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Once… there was Charlee Jacob

I COULD FRAME a long litany of “once upon a times” about Charlee Jacob, but none would be as effective as any of her prose. She was an inspiration to me before I knew her and a friend once we met.

ONCE, she wrote a short story about A Town Called Everson… and I responded by writing a story about an oracle named The Char-Lee. 

ONCE, I read a story I’d written called “Bloodroses” that I thought was hard and brave and that I hoped would convey bitter heartache to a small crowd at the very first World Horror Convention I attended, in Denver in 2000. At the end of the reading, when the rest had dispersed, there was Charlee still remaining, sitting three quarters of the way back in the room.  She told me the story was good, and her words meant more to me than dozens of good reviews in the coming years.

ONCE, at the World Horror Convention in Chicago in 2002, I drove her husband Jim to the Korean market neighborhood in Chicago, to try to find a whole plucked chicken for her to swing around over her head during that night’s gross-out fiction contest. Because while she was soft-spoken and often serious, she was also brave and darkly funny.

ONCE , I questioned (as I often did), my writing ability and told her how I toyed with the idea of hanging it all up. At the time, I hadn’t been able to sell Covenant, my first novel, and there was another novel I thought about writing, but wasn’t brave enough to tackle. Tears welled in her eyes when she told me that I HAD to keep writing, and I had to write that novel that I was afraid of… it took me 10 years, but that novel eventually came out as NightWhere, one of my most successful books.  I never forgot her encouragement and emotion.

ONCE, I won a Bram Stoker Award for Covenant, and not long after, a package appeared in the mail. It was a framed, fuzzy fowling spider nearly as big as my hand. It was from Charlee.  She sent it in congratulations on the award, and I named it Stoker. It has hung in my office ever since.

ONCE , I talked on the phone every few months with Charlee and even stopped at her house a couple times to go to dinner with her and Jim when I was in Dallas on business trips.

ONCE , a dozen years ago, she did me the honor of writing the introduction to my third short fiction collection, Needles & Sins and said nice things that I didn’t deserve… but I was happy to have her in my corner.   

ONCE , we were much closer than we have been the past few years, as sickness chained her to a bed, and she could no longer come out to conventions. I’m terrible with phone calls and she did not use social media or e-mail.  I still heard from Jim now and then via Facebook, but my connection to Charlee slipped from regular conversations into the realm of “remember whens…” But I always thought we’d sit together and talk again. Now, instead, she’s sitting talking in a place I can’t reach with the others who once sat around tables together at World Horror Conventions in the early 2000s — GAK, Tom Piccirilli, Jack Ketchum, Richard Laymon, Larry Santoro, Edward Bryant, Robert Weinberg…

ONCE, the world was a better place when she was alive and writing dark, disturbing fiction that will always haunt you once you’ve read it. But once is no longer. She died this morning and I will never have that chance to catch up ever again.

I’ll miss you Charlee Jacob, but I’ll always be better off for having known you.

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Revisiting Covenant and House by the Cemetery while launching Devil’s Equinox

LAST WEEK, my 11th novel, The Devil’s Equinox was released by Flame Tree Press, but ironically, this week, I’ve been getting more press for some of my other books!

Today, I’m the featured author at ManyBooks.com, where they interviewed me about my 10th novel, The House By The Cemetery. Naomi Bolton asked me about the influences behind House, my writing habits, my “secret skills” and much more in an interview titled “John Everson – An Undead Witch, Comic Relief and a Haunted House.”

Meanwhile, Glenn Rolfe has just launched a new column for Cedar Hollow Reviews called “Leisure Days,” where he is revisiting the books and authors for the late, great Leisure Books imprint.

His lead off column puts the spotlight on my first novel, Covenant, which won a Bram Stoker Award in its original limited release by Delirium Books and was then released in mass market paperback by Leisure in 2008. You can read his review of the novel and interview with me about it here.

Tomorrow, however, it’s back to new release business! My big book launch signing for The Devil’s Equinox at the Barnes & Noble in Naperville, IL is tomorrow, July 7, from 2-5 p.m. I’m hoping to see lots of Chicago-area horror fans there. The B&N Facebook event page for it is here.

Early reviews have been great for the novel, the most recent coming from the blog site The Happy Horror Nerd which called The Devil’s Equinox “a very interesting and suspenseful read” and noted, “Everson did a great job of exploring the ‘be careful what you wish for’ theme with this disturbing story, and I highly recommend this novel to those who enjoy dark horror-thrillers, and don’t mind a little kink and Satanic worship.”

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Pinball at the Zoo ’19

Me with Christian, Shaun and Levi at Arcadia Brewing Co.

IT’S BECOME A TRADITION that we look forward to for months. Every April, Shaun and I drive up to the Expo Center in Kalamazoo, Michigan for the annual “Pinball at the Zoo” pinball show. We go up on Friday, play the silver ball that night and all day/night Saturday, and head home bleary-eyed but satisfied on Sunday morning. We hang out with our friends Brad Czernik and his boys, Levi and Christian, as well as other friends we have made in the “community” like Chad Dentandt. and Mike Gaspar. And Mike Schudel, who hosts an after-party on both nights where we probably play more pinball than we do at the convention proper. It’s an amazingly good time with friends and fun that always resets my head from the trials of life to a place of “this is why we’re alive!”

Classic Bally machine row!

This year (last weekend) was a little different, because Brad was out of town at a wedding, but since his boys are now in college, they went on their own, so we still had most of the crew together for a Friday night dinner at Bell’s Brewery’s Eccentric Cafe  (pictured below) and our traditional lunch with some other pinball fans at CJ’s Pub. And I took the boys on Saturday night to Arcadia Brewing (pictured above), though I was the only one who could drink! (They had great barbecue though!)

The Whole Crew: Shaun, Mike, Levi, Christian and Chad at Bell’s Eccentric Cafe.

It was also a little different this year since Mike’s after-party almost got shut down by a power outage the first night, and a snowstorm the next! But the power came back on, and we all braved the snow for (hopefully) the last time this year and… in the end it was all a great time!

Celebrating classic Bally tables!

People bring dozens of games to the Expo Center for attendees to play, and every year, I find one new (well, new to me) game that I haven’t played before. This year was no exception. A group of fans brought several classic Bally machines from the late ’70s/80s (including Mata Hari, a table I own) and set them all up in a single aisle. I got fixated on the Medusa table as well as Viking (which is laid out much like Mata Hari, but with a bank of inline drop targets). And I played an old favorite, Paragon, a bunch of times. Shaun knew that if he needed to find me in the hall… just walk down to the Bally aisle.

I also played both versions of the new Munsters table by Stern, which comes in both an all black and white art version (with a lower playing field) and a color version with no lower field insert… which I actually liked better.

The Play Continued After The Expo Center Closed…

At the after-parties, I fixated on the Star Gazer table, as I always do. It’s a 1980 Stern machine and I love the art and the field play. Everything is set up to take the ball in curves which makes for some interesting ball slingshots. And this time around I cracked 1.2 million on the table, which I think is a record for me!

I also spent a good amount of time on other favorites like Attack from Mars, Elvira’s Scared Stiff, Medieval Madness and a table I’ve played before but never appreciated until now — Circus Voltaire. That table has a rubber ball in a “cage” on the field, which deflects the pinball in interesting ways, and also has a figure that rises from the field — sometimes with your ball magnetized and stuck to the top!

All in all, it was another super fun weekend at Pinball at the Zoo which Shaun and I will both remember for a long time!

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Long live the Queen…

TODAY WAS A DAY that we have prepared for literally for years. But… you’re never really prepared for the end, are you?

Lem, the queen Lutino cockatiel of our flock of birds passed on, after living with us for nearly 30 years. She was the bird who sat with me in our first apartment at night while I wrote music on my Roland after Geri had gone to bed. She was the bird who sat with me in the office in my first house while I wrote my first novel and the short stories that would become my first book, Cage of Bones. She was there when my son was born. He’s now almost 14.

She knew all of my birds — from Beebs, the parakeet who predated her (I bought him in college) to Coraline, the parakeet I rescued from a forest preserve last fall. And Lem has been the constant roommate to my cockatoo, Kiwi, for close to three decades.

Lem lived a good, long happy life, but she was old. If you put it in human terms, she was, like, 110. Cockatiel lifespan in captivity is listed as 16-25 years. The oldest confirmed specimen is listed in Wikipedia as 36 years. Lem was born almost exactly 30 years ago. But she has been “geriatric” for more than 5 years. We bought Stormy, our grey cockatiel, four and a half years ago because we were sure that Lem was going to die that year — she’d lost the ability to fly and had become arthritic. We never guessed she’d last another five years. Though I’m glad she did.

Meanwhile, Stormy has found her own place in the house, and now won’t likely be moving to the office to keep my cockatoo company (which was the original point of buying her!) She is pals with the canary-winged parakeet and the budgie and their cages are in another room in the house.

I will miss the cockatiel who used to press her head into my ear for comfort late at night when everyone else in the house was asleep. The cockatiel who always smelled warm and good and faintly buttery. The happy chirper who greeted us as soon as the garage door opened with cries of excitement.

To be honest though, it’s been years since she was fully herself. She’s grown weaker and weaker the past few weeks, barely able to carry herself from her sleeping perch to her water.

It was her time. Stormy, the grey cockatiel, will now finally take her place now as house cockatiel queen. She’s been a lady in waiting for almost five years.

But she will never replace Lem. Who will forever be missed, and forever remembered for her fiesty nature and loving head bows.

Rest in peace, my lifelong friend. I hope where ever you are tonight, that you feel the wind beneath your wings again.

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What I Did on Spring Break 2019

My Bowling High Score!

I DID NOT GO to the beach during spring break, though I saw plenty of social media posts from those who did. But we had a good Everson “Staycation” anyway. I set what may be my personal high score in bowling when we took Shaun and a friend to Bowlero for an afternoon. (I hit a 195, and while I know I’ve hit the 190s at least once before when I used to bowl a lot, I know I’ve never broken 200).

University of Illinois



Shaun and me at the Alma Mater Statue.

We took Shaun down to Champaign-Urbana to see what my alma mater looks like with students roaming around. While we were at University of Illinois, we had an awesome lunch at Destihl Brewery (which didn’t exist when I was there!) and dinner at Papa Del’s, the ultimate downstate pizza destination (which did exist when I went there over 30 years ago!)

We stopped at my old dorm (Scott Hall) which looks exactly the same and the Krannert Performing Arts Center and Music Building, as well as Gregory Hall, home to the Communications/Journalism program (I spent many hours there. We also visited the quad and the student union, where Shaun spied a couple pinball machines and played a game of Ghostbusters.

Galloping Ghost

And on one afternoon, we spent a few hours playing pinball, and other video games — because we finally visited Galloping Ghost, lauded as the nation’s largest arcade. It’s been open for five years, but recently they opened an annex solely for pinball machines, and they had a couple of true rarities, including Alien and Predator (a prototype game that was never actually produced!) Afterwards, we took a drive and had dinner at the only remaining Bennigans in Illinois.

Going home again – CCH and Flossmoor Station

We also drove down to Country Club Hills, IL, the town my wife Geri grew up in (and where I first met her) to see her old neighborhood, and have dinner at Flossmoor Station, a cool little brewery housed in what was formerly the downtown train station. They’ve been there for over 20 years, and these days, they brew a pretty good New England style IPA

So… we may not have gone to the beach for Spring Break, but we did get around and had a good time!

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On Turning 53

I TURNED 53 just over a week ago. Not sure how that happened. Seems like I was just 35. I had to be away from home this year — I had a four-day business trip to Las Vegas that meant I was working for 12 hours on “the day.” I’m not a gambler, so I’m not a big Vegas fan, but I did manage to make the most of the small amount of free time I got.

Wednesday, March 13, 2019

The first night I was out there, I went to Guy Fieri’s Vegas Kitchen for a decadent “Ringer Burger” (which features a giant onion ring beneath the bun). I love Guy’s “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives” TV show, so it was super cool to eat in one of his places:

After that, I hopped in a cab and went a couple miles off the strip to a place I’ve been curious about for quite awhile — the Vegas Pinball Hall of Fame Pinball Museum!

Not much to look at from the outside, but inside, there were hundreds of pinball machines, from classic EM machines to ’80s solid states to modern games like Deadpool and The Wizard of Oz.

All of the machines are set to work on quarters (most are 50 cents, but a couple of the older ones were just a quarter and some of the more modern ones were a buck).

I was there two and a half hours playing, and only spent 15 bucks! The cab ride out there cost me more!

I played some of my favorite tables, from Bride of Pinbot to Bad Cats to Scared Stiff, and enjoyed a couple I’ve never gotten to see before, like the wide body Superman table and the Data East edition of Star Trek (not the older Bally table pictured above “in the shop”.

Then I walked a block or so down the street to the Crown and Anchor English pub to have a pint and call a cab.

Thursday, March 14, 2019

On my actual birthday, I was locked in a convention hall for over 12 hours, but once I got out, I did what any self-respecting horror author would do while in Las Vegas — I went to see the Zombie Burlesque show! I saw it there several years ago and it’s hilarious… and it did not disappoint the second time around. The guy two seats down from me got pulled up on stage at one point (much to the amusement of his wife). And afterwards, the cast came out to pose with attendees, so… I snapped a shot!

Afterwards, I had a couple beers to toast the day with a workmate and watched the busy Caesars Palace casino in action.

Friday, March 15, 2019

There was no time on my birthday for a proper dinner, so I made Friday my celebrate night — with an amazing Southwest Spiced Pork Tenderloin (and sweet potato tamale) at Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill, which was right there in Caesars Palace.

Sunday, March 17, 2019

Saturday disappeared without much to say about it. I was in an exhibit hall for eight hours and then packed up and headed to the airport… didn’t get home until after 1 a.m.

But Sunday, I celebrated with Geri and Shaun and went out to one of my favorite places for dinner — Two Brothers Roundhouse. Two Brothers is a longstanding brewery in the west Chicago suburbs, and they own a couple of restaurants as well. Since it was also St. Patrick’s Day, I had a Reuben!

My family knows what I love, so this year’s “birthday haul” included a handful of blu-rays, a “Tetris” style light for the game room, and a quilt featuring all the album covers of Styx, one of my favorite bands of all time (I’ve been a fan since 6th grade)!

All in all, it was a pretty good way to celebrate my increasing age!

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Converging on Capricon!

THIS WEEKEND, I’ll be hanging out with some of my best friends at Capricon 39, a science fiction / fantasy / horror convention in Wheeling, IL. Hoping to see lots of genre fans at my reading tomorrow night, as well as at the panels and autographing session I have coming up over the next four days. We’ll be talking about everything from “The Art of Violence in Horror” to the “Twisted Mind of Guillermo Del Toro.”

While we’ve all seen each other independently since then, I haven’t gotten to hang out as a group at a convention with W.D. Gagliani, Dave Benton and Brian Pinkerton since the last DucKon was held (also in Wheeling, IL) back in 2014! So it’s going to be a blast talking horror and writing all weekend with them.

Here’s my schedule of events:

THURSDAY:

6:30 – 8:00 PM: Themed Reading: Things that Go Bump in the Night…
…Or terrify us in the day. Horror writers read from their works.
AUTHORS: John Everson, W.D. Gagliani, Christian A. Larsen, Brian Pinkerton

FRIDAY:

11:30 AM – 1:00 PM: Razorblades on the Tongue: The Art of Violence
Violent scenes are a staple of the horror genre. How far should they go? When do you close the door? When does the violence no longer serve the work? Should writers worry about it, or just go with their gut?
PANELISTS: John Everson (Moderator), Lauren Jankowski, Karen Herkes, David Benton, W.D. Gagliani

4:00 – 5:30 PM: Writing While Life Rolls Over You
How do you survive Life Events while trying to juggle day job and a writing career? How do you stay organized? Recover from massive distractions? Get back to the project? Overcome imposter syndrome? Let’s figure this out together.
PANELISTS: Barbara Barnett (Moderator), Brian Pinkerton, David Benton, John Everson, Kristine Smith, Karen Herkes

8:30 – 10:00 PM: Theme Reading: Erotic SF and Horror
Authors read from their works of SF and Horror erotic fiction
AUTHORS: W.D. Gagliani, Brendan Detzner, John Everson

SATURDAY:

11:30 AM – 12:15 PM: Autographing Session
AUTHORS: David Benton, John Everson, W.D. Gagliani, Brian Pinkerton

5:30 – 7:00 PM: Dissecting the Monstrous Mind of Guillermo Del Toro
Discussion of del Toro’s monsters, from ghosts to kaiju and everything in between.
PANELISTS: John Everson (Moderator), Matthew Munro, Richard Chwedyk, Chris M. Barkley

SUNDAY:

10:00 – 11:30 AM: Ghosts and Hauntings: Chicago Style
Chicago isn’t just known for insisting that ketchup doesn’t belong on a hot dog. It is known for its ghost stories, and other haunting tales. The Eastland Disaster still haunts the shores of the Chicago River, the woman who can still be seen on the stairs of Fado’s Irish Pub. Resurrection Mary still hitches rides to get home. We will discuss plenty of haunted stories from the beginning of Chicago’s history.
PANELISTS: Bryn Dubois (Moderator), John Everson, Lee Darrow, John Nikitow

12:00 – 1:30 PM: Punch the Ghost! Horror as Therapy?
Fighting things we fear through Horror writing. Panelists discuss how their own fears both feed their creativity and help them to deal with their own darkness.
PANELISTS: Brian Pinkerton (Moderator), John Everson, W.D. Gagliani, Donna J.W. Munro, Justin Hamelin

You can download the full program book for the convention from the Capricon website.

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2018: A lot of Birds, a Beach, a bit of Pinball & a House book tour!

THE BALL HAS dropped. The family’s in bed. 2018 is over. As I write this, I’m spending the first hour of 2019 with The Marx Brothers and a movie they made 87 years ago (Horse Feathers). There are some things that stand the test of time. And many, many more that are forgotten. I’m going to reflect here on a few things I’d like to remember about the past 12 months.

I will definitely remember 2018 for as long as I am here to remember. Not that it was the “best” year of my life… but because there were some personal milestones that I’m glad to have passed. Every year at this time, I see a lot of “thank God it’s over, out with the old, in with the new” kinds of comments. I’ve always preferred looking back at the good parts of the year, because, let’s face it, every year is going to have plenty of bad to focus on… you’ve got to sift out and focus on the good. And for me… this year had some things worth remembering. FYI – Most of the links in the text below go to blogs I wrote during the year about the particular events.

2018 – The Cliff Notes version:

I visited New York (twice!), Las Vegas, Gatlinburg, Myrtle Beach, Kalamazoo and Ann Arbor. I did a book signing at Book Expo America in New York, found and bought two pinball machines I’ve wanted to own for some time (Meteor and Galaxy) and added two new birds to our home “flock.” I also got a promotion at work (which came with plenty of extra work which ultimately turned my summer into a blur!) and published my 10th novel, The House By The Cemetery with my new publisher, Flame Tree Press. I saw my son play drums and piano in jazz and orchestral recitals, saw Kansas, The Bad Examples, Matthew Sweet, Erasure and Book of Love in concert as well as spoken word shows with Eric Idle and Rob Lowe. And we took a family “road trip” vacation to Myrtle Beach, a place I’ve always wanted to visit. Ironically, the best thing about the vacation however were the stopovers on each end of the trip in Gatlinburg, TN.

Favorite Films?

I watched over 120 movies in 2018  –  the most since I began keeping a tracking sheet of them five years ago. Interestingly enough, most were ’70s-’80s Italian giallo/thriller or American exploitation films like Pets, which I reviewed. I actually watched 61 films made in the ’70s, vs. 28 in the ’80s and 18 made in 2000s. I also posted a review of Death Occurred Last Night, one of the many Italian police thrillers I watched. I went on a Fernando Di Leo kick for awhile (I watched nine of his films!) and also watched the original Death Wish series of films for the first time. I did see a few new movies though – 8 released in 2018.

My favorite new films released in 2018 were Red Sparrow, Suspiria (which I reviewed), Annhilation and The Endless (the latter two were the last movies I watched in 2018!)

Favorite Music?

One of my top albums of the year was Haerts’ New Compassion. But I also enjoyed new discs from CHVRCHES, Brandi Carlile, Belly, Alice Merton, Matthew Sweet, Nathaniel Rateliff, Muse, Florence + The Machine and more.

2018 – Month by month:

January began with “coding.” I redesigned and relaunched johneverson.com at the end of 2017, and spent much of January converting pages from my old blog to the new design. I also hosted my annual neighborhood “Chili, Beer and Bourbon by the Pool Table” party, and partly because of that posted my chili and stew recipes to my blog.

February brought us to one of my favorite venues — Two Brothers Roundhouse — to see one of my favorite bands from the ’90s — The Bad Examples. It was a great show, and as it turned out, we’d see leader Ralph Covert play twice more in 2018 (he opened for Matthew Sweet who we went to see in July at Evanston’s SPACE and then we also saw him a month later at his new CD release party). We also went downtown in February to see a Harry Potter comedy in Potted Potter before having dinner at one of my favorite Chicago restaurants, Howells & Hood (sadly, the restaurant closed due to Tribune Tower building renovations later in 2018).

March brought my birthday, a pinball victory and heartache. Our parakeet of seven years succumbed to a tumor after weeks of sickness and died in my wife’s hand. Boomer was a bird like no other, and we will miss him forever. His death led to a year of strange bird happenings for us. March also brought us a new pinball machine — Meteor — which I drove to Ann Arbor to procure. It was a game I’d been looking for for a couple years, and garnered many hours of spring and summer play. And I enjoyed a business trip to Las Vegas, where I didn’t see any shows this time, but did get to go to an Emeril’s restaurant.

April took me to one of my favorite cities — New York. I was there to attend a convention at Javits Center for work, but I was free in the evenings — which allowed me to visit some of my favorite places like The Ginger Man bar, Heartland Brewery and I got to have dinner with my editor, Don D’Auria — memorable experiences!

In April, I found out that V-Wars, a book and comic series created by Jonathan Maberry, was going to be made into a Netflix series. I was excited to hear that, since I wrote stories for both the first and third V-Wars prose books. Shaun and I also headed back to Kalamazoo for the annual Pinball At the Zoo convention that we attend every spring. I didn’t pick up any new machines there, but we did have a blast hanging with our pin-world friends.

We also brought home a baby parakeet named B.B. from a cool all-bird store called Bird is the Word about a half hour from our house. B.B. was a fun but sadly short-lived addition to our flock… more on that in September…

May brought one of the highlights of my writing life. My new publisher, Flame Tree, brought a handful of us to New York to participate in a launch event for the press and our upcoming novel releases at Book Expo — we all signed preview editions of our novels for the book sellers and librarians who go to the annual conference. I’ve wanted to go to Book Expo for a decade, so it was something of a “bucket list” event for me.

May also took Geri and me to the Chicago theater to see a very entertaining one-man show from Rob Lowe, who was on tour for his autobiography with a show called Stories I Only Tell My Friends.

June took us to a Kane County Cougars game, a visit to Revolution Brewing for Father’s Day and got me a promotion at work… which led to the next three months of constant overtime! Double-edged sword!

July brought us to the Chicago Theater again for an Erasure show, which was amazing. I saw them open for Duran Duran 30+ years ago in New York, at the UIC Pavilion 20+ years ago when I interviewed them, and in between at another show at the Chicago Theater. They have never failed to put on an entertaining show.

We also saw Matthew Sweet play a great set with Ralph Covert at the tiny SPACE club in Evanston, IL and I spent a night at the ever-enjoyable Naperville Rib Fest during 4th of July week, a long time tradition for me.

The best part of the month (and a highlight of the year) was our road trip driving vacation to Gatlinburg, TN and Myrtle Beach, SC, where Geri and I celebrated our 30th anniversary. We had never been to either place before, and really enjoyed them both. For my money though, our halfway point — where we stayed overnight going and coming home — was the place I’d want to return to. We really loved Gatlinburg, and were able to stay in the Old Creek Lodge, a good hotel right in the center of town.

August was “con” month. At the start of the month was Flashback Weekend, a local horror con that I always attend and have a book table at, and later in the month was HorrorHound Weekend in Indianapolis, where I also have a table, and hang out with old friends from high school and former neighbors. I got a box of preview copies of The House By The Cemetery so I was able to promote the book at those shows, a few weeks ahead of its release.

September brought me to my work’s annual convention and our second bird tragedy of the year… on the first of the month, I opened the garage door to take the garbage out, and B.B., our fledgling parakeet, bolted across the room and over my head. The bird had barely flown across the room in the house up to then, because his wing feathers were just growing out after being clipped… but I spent the afternoon chasing him through the neighborhood, tracking him to three trees and ultimately, I couldn’t recapture him. It was a horrible heartbreaking weekend.

A week later, we bought a new rare bird — a green Canary-Winged Parakeet that we named Pepper (like Jalapeno!) — and then the very next day, thanks to a Facebook tip, I ended up spending an afternoon in the woods capturing a blue parakeet that originally we thought might be B.B. based on someone’s report. It wasn’t our lost ‘keet, but in one of the stranger events of my life, I did manage to catch a wild parakeet in the woods! I caught her and posted about finding her, hoping to return her to her owners, but nobody claimed her, so I named her Coraline. Our house flock went from 3 to 5 in 24 hours that weekend. It’s made for an interesting last quarter of the year, integrating and raising two new babies.

October started with a fun show at the local college — Monty Python’s Eric Idle did a talk there to promote his new autobiography. It was one of two shows in the same month that we went to with Brian and Jill Pinkerton (the other being Kansas’ Point of Know Return 40th Anniversary Tour at the Chicago Theater.) Shaun and I also attended our other annual pinball show, Pinball Expo in Wheeling, IL.

The month was also the culmination of a year of waiting and preparation for me. At last, my 10th novel, The House By The Cemetery was published. Which led to six weeks of book signings and promotional events.

For the first time, I ended up on TV to promote a book — Flame Tree Press’s publicist got me booked on FOX Chicago’s morning show “Good Day Chicago”, broadcasting live from Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery, the place where the book was set. It was a nerve-wracking but amazing experience and afterwards, since I’d taken the day off work, I drove around the area to revisit old memories (my childhood homes and the first house I owned are near there).

In October I also did a couple newspaper interviews, an FM radio interview and signings at two Barnes & Noble stores and hosted a launch party and reading at Bucket O’ Blood Books and Music. I also did an event in my hometown, Tinley Park, at an art exhibition of Bachelors Grove paintings and photos, and did talks at the local Rotary Club and Naperville library. It was a busy six-week book launch period!

You can see the TV spot, and hear the radio clip and a podcast interview on my Interviews page.

November was all about finally staying home and finishing “the next book”. The promotion I got at my dayjob early this summer entailed a ton of extra hours… which meant I fell three months behind on writing my next novel, The Devil’s Equinox, which was supposed to be turned in to the publisher around Halloween. So once the book tour for The House By The Cemetery wound down, I dug in and worked on finishing and editing that book (I actually wrote the last add-in scene yesterday afternoon, on New Year’s Eve. Talk about down to the wire to finish the book by the end of the year!)

In November, I also had the opportunity to have dinner with my publisher, Nick Wells, my publicist, Sarah Miniachi and my editor, Don D’Auria — the third dinner I enjoyed with Don in a single year, a definite rarity! They were all in town for a sales conference and I steered them towards one of my favorite restaurants, J. Alexander’s. (Don, Sarah and I are pictured near my car here outside the restaurant).

December came and went fast! And unexpectedly, the last month of the year brought me a new old pinball machine! I saw that someone put up a nice-looking Galaxy pinball machine for sale at the start of the month. It’s a vintage 1980 game that I really love and had been looking for to add to my basement collection for the past couple years. And the seller was local. So while I didn’t really want to be spending a bunch of money right before Christmas, I couldn’t pass this one up. On a Sunday afternoon, Shaun and I drove to his house, checked it out, and made an offer. A couple days later, my basement game room looked like this:

If I wasn’t writing/editing The Devil’s Equinox in my off hours, that’s where you’d have found me over the past month!

And here we are. The end of a truly jam-packed year. I’m hoping 2019 is just as rewarding… if a little less stressful!

Cheers!

The post 2018: A lot of Birds, a Beach, a bit of Pinball & a House book tour! appeared first on John Everson.

Coraline’s Story: A parakeet lost… a parakeet found…

IT’S BEEN ALMOST four months since our baby blue parakeet, B.B., managed to fly over my head and out the door when I was taking out the garbage. I detailed that horrible day in a blog on Sept. 3rd. But what I haven’t written about is the amazing turn of events that followed a week later — and led to a month of “pet” adjustments in our house. As I sit here on Christmas Eve, thinking back on the year, I thought I should finally tell Coraline’s story (pictured here with our grey cockatiel, Stormy).

After B.B. escaped, we called the local animal shelter and posted all over local Facebook groups about our lost bird, and had several false alarms that she had been sighted. But in the end, though our hopes got up several times, all of the leads were dead ends.

A week after B.B. was lost, we went to the bird store we often visit, and bought a new baby that we’d seen there the month before — a beautiful green Canary-Winged Parakeet that we named Pepper (who has become my constant companion — if I’m in the house, she sqauwks until I take her out and let her sit on my shoulder). I wasn’t initially that excited about getting a new bird so soon… but this particular breed is fairly rare — the bird store had never had babies of this type before. So I knew if we were going to get one of the two babies they had… we needed to act quickly.

A very strange way to find a parakeet…

The day after we brought home Pepper, we got a message that a blue parakeet had been sighted in a local park. I knew that it was a longshot, but I grabbed my small bird carrying cage and drove across town to see if I could spot it.

My hopes fell when I reached the place. It turned out that the “park” was really a forest preserve. The person who had spotted the bird had seen it on the ground on a trail in the grass a few minutes walk from the parking lot. They had also marked the Google Maps lattitude/longitude of the point where the bird had been spotted which was helpful… so I walked down a trail through a forest area with a creek on one side and thick brush and trees on the other. I knew that I was on a wild goose chase.  There was no way I was going to find a parakeet in this! But I kept walking, until I passed the map coordinates I’d been given. No sign of a parakeet.

I slowed to a stop and shook my head. This was a pointless waste of time, I thought. And literally, as I was about to turn back to return to the parking lot, I heard voices up ahead and all of a sudden, a flurry of blue wings passed over my head, and a small parakeet landed in the trees to my right.  It was too far away to make out whether it was my parakeet or not, but it WAS a blue parakeet.

The voices turned out to be a couple of guys who said they’d tried to catch the bird a half hour before and it had eluded them… but was still hanging out in roughly the same stretch of trail. I whistled to the bird and it whistled back… and then disappeared into the thick trees.

I whistled for awhile and when it didn’t return, I tried to push my way into the brush — but it was full of thorn bushes and what looked like poison ivy — so I gave that up. Just as I was about to give up and leave, the bird suddenly returned, flying over my head and landing on the trail a few feet ahead of me.

Persistence pays…

And thus began a two hour game of “Catch Me If You Can.” I realized fairly soon that the bird was not my lost parakeet — ours had had a yellow spot on its head, this one’s head was white. But I decided to try to catch it anyway, because it would surely die outside in the cold Chicago area weather that was coming with the fall. And maybe I could post its picture on Facebook and ultimately find and return it to its owner, the same outcome that I wished for B.B.

It was one of the most frustrating and interesting afternoons of my life. The bird seemingly wanted to be caught… it taunted me. It would fly from one side of the path to the other, always staying just beyond my reach. Several times I was able to follow it to a small tree or bush, raise my hand to it… and it would fly a few yards away. It disappeared completely on a couple of occasions, and just as I would shake my head, give up and decide that it was all for naught and head back to the car, back the bird would come, landing on the path in front of me. It was definitely not afraid of humans… it just wouldn’t get on my hand.

It stayed on the path more and more and I began to try to put the cage down with the door open as near as I could get to it — I hoped that it might see cage bars as comforting — cage = a place where it had always gotten plenty of food. But while it didn’t fly away from the cage, it also wouldn’t go in of its own accord.

My wife texted me and suggested since I didn’t have a net, maybe I could use my t-shirt like a net since I was getting so close to it. So… I pulled off my shirt, and crouched down half-naked in the middle of a forest preserve crawling slowly to the spot where the parakeet was chewing on some grass and attempted to toss the shirt over and on top of it.

That didn’t work. But it must have made for a hilarious picture. I tried it twice and then stopped figuring that the bird wasn’t going to let me get near it again if I kept that up.

I can’t tell you how many times I almost gave up on this pursuit and left. The day was slipping away and I was seemingly no closer to catching this bird than when I began. But… every time I decided to return to the car, that bird came tauntingly close to me.  Finally, I got the idea of actually standing the cage up on its end and when the bird was in the right spot on the grass near it, bringing it down so that the bird went through the door and found itself inside the cage with the door opening down on the grass.

And damned if I didn’t catch the bird on the very first try!

It took two hours, but I actually caught a parakeet flying wild in a forest preserve!

OK… I caught a wild bird. Now what?

Of course, then I had to decide what to DO with her.  I drove her home, and put her in a small old cage I had in the attic from my very first parakeet, a blue budgie named Beebs that I bought in college. I had to keep “the refugee” separated from my other birds, because I didn’t know if she was sick or carrying any diseases. And because of that, the very next day I took her to the vet and had her tested for the worst bird disease, just to be safe. I also had them trim her wings, so that she wouldn’t be bolting out any windows for the next couple months! The test took a week to come back (it was negative) and the vet told me to keep her quarantined for a month from the others because if she did have anything, it would become obvious in that time. So for almost a month, she was separated from the others, and every time I handled her I washed my face and hands and changed clothes. Kind of a pain!

For a few days, I called her Flirt, because of the way she flirted with me to get caught. But it became apparent that she really wasn’t too flirty. In fact, for the first 4-5 weeks, she was the quietest, most nervous parakeet I have ever seen. Most of the time, she just sat completely still in her cage and never made a sound (I eventually got her a new bigger one).

Nobody answered our Facebook posts and reports to the animal shelter of finding her, so by the end of September, I knew she was truly “ours.”  I worked with her every morning and night to try to get her finger trained. She didn’t mind sitting on my shoulder, but she was (and still is) very skittish about getting on the fingers. Eventually, I named her Coraline, after Neil Gaiman’s character who goes exploring through a doorway and finds a whole ‘nother family.

In October, I finally introduced her to the other birds, who come into my office every morning and night for their hours of “out” time with the whole Everson flock (we have a cockatoo, two cockatiels and now the canary wing parakeet and “forest budgie”.) Slowly, she got used to the ways of her new home and the familiar trills of a happy budgie began to ring out in our house now and then.

By November, she had finally settled in fully, and was chirping regularly and learned to come out of her cage on my finger (vs. me reaching in and grabbing her, which was the only way to get her out the first few weeks). Now that December is nearly over, she’s grown back most of the flight feathers the vet trimmed the day after I found her, and is beginning to get a little more independent (she’s flown across the room a few times in the past week when I’ve reached out to grab her).

It’s been a long road, and definitely a strange way to get a new bird. But I’m glad we “found” both Coraline and Pepper that weekend in September. We lost one bird, which I will forever be sad over, but our flock then grew from 3 to 5 in one weekend, and they’ve brought their own unique, entertaining personalities to our house. Our lives are better off for knowing them!

Pepper and Coraline

 

 

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