John Everson's Blog, page 8

Death Occurred Last Night – Artful Heartache in Italian Crime Cinema

“MY DAUGHTER IS A CHILD at whatever age.” That simple, and yet slightly deceptive sentence sums the pain at the core of Death Occurred Last Night (La morte risale a ieri sera) a 1970 Italian murder mystery/giallo directed by (also known for The Bloodstained Butterfly). The film has been restored and released on Blu-Ray with one video interview extra by Raro Video. At the outset of the film, we meet Amanzio (played by Italian star ), a distressed father who brings a complaint to a police inspector about the lack of action in finding his missing “child,” a 25-year-old woman named Donatella (played by ). The inspector is surprised that Amanzio would call his daughter a child. The sad twist in this case is that Donatella has the mind of a three-year-old, despite the appearance of a beautiful, sexy woman who attracts men like flies.

Amanzio has kept Donatella locked up in an apartment to try to protect and take care of her. Initial flashback scenes show him helping her brush her teeth and put on her clothes. But when she disappears while he is at work, there are no clues. The jaded inspector tells the distraught Amanzio that every year thousands of girls are stolen from their homes. They vanish without a trace, sold into an underground network of brothels. Nevertheless, the inspector, Duca Lamberti (played by ) decides to take the case as his own. The first half of the film plays out as a Poliziotteschi, a police-driven investigative crime film. Wolff hits the streets (and brothels) to look for clues. But as he chases down plenty of leads that point to Donatella being taken into the Italian sex underground — he never gets close enough to find her.

Until her body is discovered.

From Mystery to Murder

With the sad discovery of the body,  the film effectively moves in to Act Two. In the first half, we’re hoping Lamberti will find the girl. In the second, we want him to find the girl’s killer.

His search leads him to prostitutes and wealthy perverts as he works with a partner and an informant to try to infiltrate the underground to find a lead. And while presented as a moral man, he’s not above resorting to threats and blackmail to get the information he needs to solve the case. Lamberti is a great character — an older, jaded detective who has seen it all. He harbors a bleeding heart that keeps him pounding the streets at all hours, trying to ensure that  justice is served. His wife supports him, but also reminds him that he is “not the whole police department” and that he should take care of himself better. She even accepts his unorthodox move of bringing back a prostitute to stay in their the house under his protection, as he tries to gain information to help in the investigation.

Justice is served

I won’t go too much into the final act because I don’t want to ruin its impact, but it’s a perfectly played out conclusion of justice and revenge that will stick with you long after the credits. But there is no end to this sad story that can bring back the innocent girl. That tragedy remains haunting to both the characters and the viewer as the credits roll.

If you have ever enjoyed an Italian police film or giallo… you should absolutely check this film out. Strong characters, an intriguing mystery, a great period jazz soundtrack and solid direction make this a highly entertaining entry into the genre. While the discovery of the clue that leads them to the abductor is a little … unlikely… it’s forgivable in an otherwise strong, well-played mystery. And at the center is a brilliant performance by Frank Wolff, who captures the conflict of the police detective perfectly. He’s hardened by the crime he faces every day… and yet when he goes home at night, he’s still hurt by it, struggling to find a way to make things better.

A face that should have been seen longer…

You may recognize Wolff from some other key films of the time. I’m terrible with names and faces, but I kept thinking he looked familiar as I watched this. Afterwards when I looked him up, I realized why. He plays a police commissioner in Fernando Di Leo’s excellent Poliziotteschi film Caliber 9, appears in the giallo Death Walks on High Heels and also plays one of the leads in Radley Metzger’s The Licorice Quartet. Wolff started his career in American films in the late ’50s, playing parts in things like The Wasp Woman and Beast From Haunted Cave. He also appeared on TV in “The Twilight Zone,” “The Untouchables” and “Rawhide.” But it was via Spaghetti Westerns in the ’60s that he rose to real prominence. Sadly, he suffered from depression and killed himself in a hotel room in 1971, just as he  had completed some of his best work (Caliber 9, Death Walks on High Heels, Lickerish Quartet and Death Occurred Last Night were all released between 1970-1972).

I watch a lot of Italian films from the ’70s — from giallos to horror to arthouse to poliziotteschi. For whatever reason, the mood, music and plots of that era speak to me now more than anything produced in Hollywood. Genre films of the ’70s have become my favorite period in film. While there are some that I won’t likely watch again, I know that this is a movie I’ll be returning to. Hopefully during showings to turn other people on to the film!

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Flashback Weekend 2018: A Preview Launch of The House By The Cemetery

I LOOK FORWARD to Flashback Weekend: Chicago Horror Con every year. It’s one of my favorite parts of summer, and this year, Flashback Weekend 2018 was extra special, because it also served as the “Sneak Peek” local launch of my upcoming 10th novel, The House By The Cemetery. My publisher, Flame Tree Press, was able to print a batch of advance reader copies of the book so that we could stage a bit of a debut at my local con two months ahead of time (it will officially be released to bookstores on October 6.) Flame Tree also sent a bunch of hardcover notebook/journals to give away to anyone who purchased the book… so Flashback-ers got a really cool deal!

One of the reasons I love Flashback is that while it’s a good-size convention, it’s also feels like kind of a “family” show. A lot of the same people come to vend and attend every year, so it’s like a reunion every August. It’s my opportunity to hang out with my friends Jerry Chandler and Don May Jr. from Synapse Films who I only get to see a couple times a year, as well as with many local readers and fans. This year I snapped pictures with some of them — here are pix of me with Chad Savage, Brian Pinkerton, James Henry Wood, Jason Henderson, Johngy of Johngy’s Beat and the Synapse crew (at dinner on Friday night at Bub City BBQ).

 

A weekend talking horror goes fast!

This year there was no “film debut” at the Muvico Theater down the street, which was a bummer (they showed the 4K remasters of Synapse’s Suspiria and Well Go’s Phantasm the past couple years). But that left more time for fun dinners at Bub City and Hofbrauhaus with my Synapse crew on Friday and Saturday nights this year.

I also had the chance to have a beer with a local horror effects maven and actor (Leo McNamee), chatted for a few minutes with Lynn Lowery who I met last year at HorrorHound and hung out for a bit with Chad Savage on the Zombie Army bus on Saturday night.

The hours of horror talk always fly by fast at Flashback, and Sunday always seems really short. I did get to walk the hall a little bit (for the first time all weekend!) and recorded a quick video interview with Johngy’s Beat:

My son Shaun “The Evil Bookseller” has come down on Sundays with me the past few years to talk with Pokemon Go with Noa Chandler and Jerry and Don, and to help me with booth tear-down. This year was no exception, and after everything was loaded up, we headed over to Hofbrauhaus to enjoy our “wrap” dinner with some awesome sausage & sauerkraut plates.

It’s always bittersweet to see this show end, but the one saving grace is, we do it all again a couple weeks later at HorrorHound in Indianapolis!  Here are some other pix from the weekend:

      

 

 

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What I Did On My Summer Vacation… Myrtle Beach via the Smoky Mountains

I HAVE WANTED to go to the Carolinas for over 30 years. My wife Geri and I have talked about going for most of that time. George, one of my best friends in college, had planned to drive there with me over our winter break during my junior or senior year while we were at University of Illinois… but then a massive ice storm hit the east coast that Christmas, and so we had to cancel. I’ve traveled to all sorts of places over the past couple decades for my dayjob… but though I’ve literally visited dozens of cities for work, they were never anywhere in North or South Carolina. It took until this past week for me to finally get in the car and go… to Myrtle Beach.

After not going far from home last summer, this year Geri and Shaun and I decided to stage a driving vacation to South Carolina, and so we packed up the car last Friday night, and headed out early Saturday morning for the long drive to the coast. We booked a condo on North Myrtle Beach for four nights. But since it’s almost a 16-hour drive there from Chicago, we also booked a hotel room in between for a Saturday night stay in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, another place I’ve always been interested in as it’s considered the “gateway” to the Smoky Mountains. As it turned out, while I enjoyed Myrtle Beach (I am always a sucker for the ocean), I think I may have enjoyed our brief sojourn in the Smoky Mountains on the way to and from the beach even more!

The long road south…

The nine-hour drive to Gatlinburg on Friday turned into more than 11 hours thanks to road construction and rain, so we were pretty tired when we rolled past Dollywood and finally into picturesque Gatlinburg.

The town was gridlocked with tourists driving down the main drag at 7:30 at night, and it took us almost a half hour to drive down the main street and then circle back to check into our hotel, the Old Creek Lodge (highly recommended – nice woodsy decor rooms with wood floors that overlook a small creek at the base of an aerial tram line!).

  

Luckily, Bennett’s Pit Bar-B-Que was just a block away from our hotel, because the skies opened up just as we left our hotel to scout for dinner… after waiting out the rain a few minutes beneath an awning, we ducked across the street and got a booth at Bennetts, where we had one of the most entertaining waiters I’ve seen in a long while.

We also had some solid BBQ.

I enjoyed the brisket, smoked sausage and pulled pork, as well as the Mandarina and Green Man IPAs that they had in stock from Asheville, NC.

 

Unfortunately the rain and late arrival meant that we really couldn’t explore the town that night — the next morning, we had a big breakfast at Crockett’s Breakfast Camp (thickest pancakes I’ve ever seen!) and after a quick walk (cut short by another brief rain shower) we hit the road to the coast, though we decided then that we were going to stop in Gatlinburg on the road home to see more.

Over the mountains and through the woods…

The estimated six-hour drive bloated again, thanks to the slow winding route we took through the Smoky Mountains, highway accidents and lots of rain, so when we finally hit Myrtle Beach after 7 p.m., we went straight to dinner before heading to the hotel.

 

We stopped at Bully’s Pub just down the street from our hotel in Barefoot Landing, and there I discovered the beer that I would drink for the rest of the week — New South Brewing’s Dirty Myrtle DIPA. I found it at almost every place we ate and before we left town, I ended up driving to the brewery (which had a cool little tasting room) and buying a bunch in cans to take home.

Our condo at Beach Cove was great, with a balcony facing the beach on the 14th floor (which Shaun pointed out was actually the 13th floor.) On Monday, Shaun and I went down after breakfast and ended up spending six hours on the beach. When we finally called it a day, we cleaned up and drove down to the main attraction of Myrtle Beach.

On the Boardwalk…

I’ve heard a lot about the Myrtle Beach boardwalk so I was anxious to see it. There’s a ferris wheel there and a bunch of bars and arcades, but it was honestly a bit smaller and seedier than I expected, given the hype I’ve seen for it. Nevertheless, it was a cool place to stop for a little while.

Geri and I were celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary that day, and enjoyed a great dinner at Pier 14, a restaurant perched out on a pier — which was a gorgeous setting.

When we got back to Beach Cove, Shaun and I hit the beach — there were lots of people walking around “crabbing” in the dark with flashlights aimed at the edge of the tide line… so we checked it out ourselves. Shaun managed to catch a couple minnows swimming in the inch-deep tidewater, as well as a couple sand crabs.

 

 

Back to Barefoot Landing…

On Tuesday, Shaun and I spent a few more hours on the beach and built a well-barricaded sand castle (that still could not withstand the tide) before heading down to Barefoot Landing again to shop and have dinner at LuLu’s, a cool new seafood-oriented restaurant owned and operated by Jimmy Buffett’s sister. The shrimp and grits were awesome!

 

Broadway at the Beach…

On Wednesday, we spent some more time on the beach (and built a “fish trap” hoping that we’d catch some of the minnows that washed up with the high waves… alas, we did not). In the afternoon we went back to the Boardwalk and had a snack at the Bowery before going to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Odditorium.

Then we headed over to New South Brewing to pick up my Dirty Myrtle double IPAs before going to Broadway at the Beach, a more modern tourist trap that beats the classic Boardwalk easily for shops and entertainment.  We found a couple chatchke’s there and had dinner at Liberty brewing before calling it a night.

 

Back at the hotel, Shaun and I hit the beach with our iPhone flashlights to go crabbing once again… sadly, this time around Shaun was not able to catch a fish barehanded as he did a couple nights before.

Back to the Smokies!

On Thursday morning, I took a quick final dip in the surf before we hit the road to start the long drive home. We’d been thinking of taking a side trip to Charleston on our return, but the storms that had been popping up all along the coast that week were in full swing there, so instead we headed straight out to Gatlinburg, after a BBQ lunch at Bar-B-Que House (which had super tender brisket!).

I plotted a route through the center of the Smoky Mountain National Park on Route 441 (a different route than the way we’d used on our way to Myrtle Beach) and it was a great choice. We saw a herd of elk at the Oconaluffee Visitor Center, as well as a bunch of breathtaking views of the Smoky Mountains.

 

When we hit town, we checked back into the Old Creek Lodge and walked a few blocks to have dinner at the Tom and Earl’s Back Alley Grill where a countrified piano man was performing a mix of pop and country songs on the patio. It proved a perfect relaxing ending to the long day.

The next morning, we stopped back at Bennett’s for a breakfast buffet, before catching the air-tram up the mountain to take in the view from the ski resort area there.

 

Back to Illinois…

And then…after a quick last walk of the main street, we packed it up and headed down the long road home on Friday afternoon. We wanted to stay longer, but I had tickets to the Erasure concert back in Chicago on Saturday night so… we had to call it a day.

It was a great vacation, and, as they always are, too short. While I spent over 12 hours in the ocean, which I love, at the end of the day it was our “stopover” spot that really caught my attention. I’d never been to the Smoky Mountains before, and now I’m looking forward to finding an opportunity to return and enjoy the woods and Gatlinburg for a much longer time. Maybe next time tucked away in a secluded cabin in the woods!

Some more photos from the trip:

       

 

 

 

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Discovering the claws of PETS…

I LOVE FILM, and over the years I’ve gone through many “discovery” phases, where my curiosity drives me to focus on watching a particular genre of movies for an extended time (horror, noir, b/w ’50s sci-fi…). Over the past few years, I’ve been obsessed with European horror, drive-in, grindhouse and exploitation movies from the ’60s-’80s. I’ve gone through periods of focusing on the work of directors like Jean Rollin, Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Mario Bava, Jess Franco, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Alain Robbe-Grillet as well as following film companies that specialize in the kind of obscure films I love — like Synapse, Mondo Macabre, Severin, Shameless and most recently, Vinegar Syndrome, who recently released a restoration of the film I’m focusing on tonight — Pets.

I keep a spreadsheet on what I watch every weekend, and over the past five years it has clocked in between 80-90 movies a year, with the vast majority being films made before 1990.  At this point, I’ve seen a LOT of old obscure movies, so it’s more and more of a treat when I discover a really good film that I’d never seen or heard of before. Last weekend, I had the joy of discovering one of those. When the end credits played on Pets, I sat back and said “where has this movie been all my life?!”

Vinegar Syndrome does big twice a year sales, and last month for their “Halfway to Black Friday” sale, they unveiled a surprise 2K restoration release of Pets, a 1973 exploitation film by Raphael Nussbaum based on a three-act stage play by Richard Reich (who also wrote the screenplay). I’d never heard of it before, but there’s a great article about the work’s transition from play to film at Temple of Schlock.

The film apparently follows the structure of the play for the most part, though the movie changed the narrative from being three independent mini-plays about human relationships to a linear narrative with three key acts following Bonnie, a provocative runaway played by Candice Rialson who moves from one “kept” relationship to another. The subtext of the original play (critiqued on its original performance as ‘heavy-handed’)  is really what makes this grindhouse action/drama/touch-of-horror film so much fun. Because in the midst of the tease and schlock there actually is a bit of a message about how humans often treat each other as sexual pets vs. equals. But… as the ’70s movie posters proclaimed, pets have claws…

Act One

Pets opens with Bonnie being driven back home by her abusive brother, who apparently has come 200 miles to reclaim her after she’s run away. But Bonnie isn’t going to be taken back to captivity so easily, and uses her wiles to escape, escalating a bad situation and abandoning her brother to an angry mob. You’ve got to love dialogue that includes phrases like “jive ass honky.” She leaves her brother to be beaten up and walks the empty streets and beach as the opening credits roll before hooking up with a streetwise girl named Pat who offers her a cigarette and takes her under her wing briefly.

Pat is nobody’s pet, and when Bonnie spies a weapon in her purse, she asks “What do you carry a gun for?”  Pat doesn’t mince words: “To avoid the hassle of being raped, can you dig that?”

Pat also encapsulates Bonnie’s character for us early on, calling Bonnie: “foxy” and noting, “men really go for you don’t they – you look like a… a little kitten.” At the same time she also telegraphs her hatred of dogs (because, people are usually cat or dog lovers, right?)

The dog in question belongs to Dan, a convertible owner who they convince to take them for a ride… but Pat’s goal isn’t what it seems. As Bonnie cuddles with the dog and hikes up her skirt in the front seat — sex is always her weapon — Pat is pulling out her gun in the back seat and changes their joyride to a robbery. They pull over onto an empty road in the beachside hills and Pat leaves Bonnie to keep an eye on Dan while she goes back to rob his house. The dialogue between the two, as Bonnie flaunts herself and asks him, “What do you want, lapdog?” sets the stage for Bonnie’s outlook in the rest of the film. Ultimately, in this scene, she treats Dan as a pet for her own pleasure, taunting, “I’ll show you… Helpless, the way I’ve always been. Hands tied.”

She eventually abandons her captive “pet” the way she is abandoned by Pat, and moves to “act two” of the film, where she is adopted by Geraldine, a female artist who invites her back to her house.

Act Two

Bonnie agrees to serve as a live-in model for the woman, who quickly seduces Bonnie. But Bonnie still lives to conquer men with her looks which brings out the jealousy in Geraldine. The artist’s cheerful benevolence soon turns dark — the beach refuge becomes a prison as Geraldine grows more possessive and prevents Bonnie from going into town to stop her from indulging in any flings.

Meanwhile, an art gallery owner and collector becomes intrigued with the power of the new paintings Geraldine is producing of this increasingly seductive looking model. He buys one and commissions more. And has a strong interest in meeting the model.

Act Three

When Geraldine’s means of caging her “pet” goes violently south, the collector is the final “savior” of Bonnie… And as it turns out, he maintains a whole menagerie of pets, some of which take the whip to keep in line (leading to the provocative cover movie poster and DVD cover art the film has always had).

Bonnie soon finds that the prison of his relationship is the most overt of all. But pets have a way of getting their own way, even when in captivity, don’t they?

The Final Curtain

This film grabbed me from the opening, when Bonnie effectively sacrifices her brother to win her own freedom. It’s not the kind of film that will appeal to those weaned on Hollywood blockbusters; Pets is a product of its time — and that’s part of the joy of watching it. To hear the music and slang and see the styles and attitudes of the early ’70s. It’s definitely not for those constrained by “PC” sensibilities.

This is a grindhouse movie, so you know that you’re going to get some sleaze and tease factor, but it also has something to say… and does so with some bizarre situations and twists. If you enjoy stepping back into the vibe and style of early ’70s grindhouse films as I do, you will love this one.

I did.

Take a closer look at Pets at:

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Book Expo 2018 – A Flame Tree Preview!

A WEEK AGO at this time, I was having dinner in New York City with my new publisher, Nick Wells, my editor Don D’Auria, and three of my favorite fellow authors — Tim Waggoner, Jonathan Janz and Hunter Shea. We had all flown in to New York to take part in a big “preview autographing” session the following day to debut the new Flame Tree Press imprint to the thousands of booksellers, librarians and publishing industry mavens attending the mega annual Book Expo 2018 convention.

I can’t believe it’s been a week ago already… but life seems to keep moving crazy quickly!

How it all went down…

After anticipating the even for a couple months, last Wednesday morning, I drove to O’Hare Airport and flew to LaGuardia. Once on the ground, I got to see a couple streets in Harlem and snapped a couple pictures of Central Park while going by since we came in from the upper end of Manhattan. My cabbie insisted that the Triborough would be faster to get in from the airport over the Midtown tunnel (not sure I believe him since the drive time was double his estimate!)

I should probably note here that I adore New York. I lived in Manhattan for a summer in an NYU dorm (which was actually a converted hotel) when I scored a college magazine internship… NYC has always been a second home to me ever since. So… when I got in, I checked into my hotel (Four Points by Sheraton) and immediately hit the streets to walk around a little. I was just at Javits Convention Center for work a month before, so I was very familiar with the walking route … consequently, I explored a bit and took the long way around to get there and check in for my badge.

I was looking for a street hotdog which I always get when in NYC, but after not seeing any vendors on 9th Avenue south of 40th Street, I ended up going into an Irish bar (Twins Pub) for a beer and a snack of chips and malt vinegar (you should always go to an Irish bar when in NYC!)

After a Merman NY IPA and some fried potatoes with malt vinegar, I was fortified enough to go over to Javits and retrieve my badge. The show was only half-open when I got there, but I did walk around what was open on the Exhibit Floor, and got to meet Julianne LaBrecque, the customer account representative from BookBub who sends me all the e-mails about my promotions when I land a BookBub e-book promotion. So that was a cool thing right there!

  

Dinner with my publisher!

When I got back to the block of my hotel, I realized that right on the corner was the Beer Authority, a cool multi-level tons-o-taps beer place that I’d visited on my last trip, so I decided to go up and see what was on tap. I saw Tim Waggoner was in town and online, so I invited him over and got to catch up with him for a half hour before going back to the hotel to change for a Flame Tree Press group dinner.

A short while later, I met Tim and Don and Nick in the lobby, and we walked over to the restaurant together a couple blocks away (etcetera etcetera).

Hunter Shea was waiting for us there and we enjoyed a great dinner catching up with each other and learning more about Flame Tree and Nick Wells, its founder. And Hunter convinced us all to try a New York stout that he loves called Mothers Milk (which was pretty darn good!)

 

 

The Big Day: Book Expo 2018!

On Thursday morning, it was grey and lightly raining, so I sat under an awning on the street awhile with my coffee before heading to the convention center. I knew I was going to get wet on the way there but… the good thing about not having much hair these days is that… it dries fast! On the way there, I grabbed a late breakfast / early lunch of street pizza — a cheap, filling $1 slice!

The hall at the convention center was crazy busy when I arrived — the day before it had been pretty quiet, but Thursday was “show time.” People were everywhere, different booths had authors signing, or were giving away free books.

I found the Flame Tree Press booth at the front of the Baker & Taylor area, and talked a bit with Don and Nick and Jonathan Janz (who had arrived too late Wednesday night for dinner). Then I walked the hall a bit with Jonathan (scored an Eric Idle button because he has an autobiography coming out) and then finally… it was time for the signing.

After we gathered for a bit in the “Green Room” and signed in, we walked along the back of the row of draped signing booths until arriving at #15 — the Flame Tree home for the afternoon. I was first up, and didn’t know what to expect — would anyone show up?  Mary Higgins Clark and Jonathan Cain (from Journey and The Babys) were both signing down the line during the same hour and naturally had long lines.

As it turned out… I signed steadily, without more than a few seconds of a break for the first 40 minutes of my hour, which was really cool. I met librarians from Connecticut and New York and one from a suburb a half hour from my house, as well as booksellers and one of the longtime board members of the World Fantasy Convention (we talked for quite a bit as we’ve worked with many of the same people over the years!)

Jonathan Janz was up at the end of my hour, and at some point while he was signing and I was talking with Don and his wife Leah, Hunter came over and we decided that since there was lots of space and I still had some books left, we might as well all set up shop down stream from Jonathan – we would just change who had “seat #1 priority” for the rest of the afternoon. That worked out really well, so we all met people who otherwise might not have come back once every hour to get signed books.

   

 

   

After it was all over, I only had a few copies of The House By The Cemetery left (which Flame Tree will use for promotion) and Hunter and I went back to the Flame Tree booth to talk more with Don, Nick and a couple of key sales people with Baker & Taylor (Jonathan and Tim had already headed to the airport).

 

Finally, as 6 p.m. loomed closer… I had to acknowledge that “it was over.” The event we’d all been prepping for and looking forward to was… done and gone. I said my goodbyes and headed to The Keg Room (another place I had visited just a month before) for a quick dinner before going to the airport.  But while I was there, I got a notice that my flight was going to be delayed 90 minutes.

 

Given the flight delay, I decided to have a last beer at The Beer Authority before getting my bags from the hotel, where I was able to see some of the Cubs-Mets game.  I hated leaving there, because I had a great seat, and was enjoying the game… but you never know with flight delays if they’ll suddenly say “ok, we’re actually only going to be 15 minutes delayed, not an hour and a half” … so I figured I’d better go sit at the airport… though I didn’t rush.

Good thing that I didn’t rush, too… once at the airport, the flight ended up delayed another hour. I tried to get the Cubs game on at an airport bar. Since it was a New York Mets home game, I figured that would be easy but… they couldn’t find it on DirectTV!

Eventually, after midnight, we finally took off, and I got home past 2:30 in the morning. Thankfully, I’d taken Friday off from work as well as Wed/Thurs!

So… all in all… an amazing experience that introduced the new Flame Tree imprint — and my 10th novel — to a lot of people. I can’t wait until this fall when everyone will have a chance to finally read it!

 

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HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY signing at Book Expo America (BEA) announced!

ON MAY 31st, I will be signing preview copies of The House By The Cemetery at the Javits Center in New York City as part of the annual Book Expo America (BEA) conference! Signing at Book Expo America is one of those bucket list kind of things for me… I’ve wanted to go to BEA ever since my first novel, Covenant, came out in paperback ten years ago.

BEA is the biggest book convention in the U.S. of the year, and thousands of booksellers and librarians attend to meet authors and get a peek at what the big books of the coming publishing year will be.

BEA book signing schedule

Why am I finally going? Longstanding UK publisher Flame Tree Publishing is launching a whole new Horror/Fantasy/Science Fiction imprint this fall – Flame Tree Press.  So to promote the new line, they are staging a big preview signing at Book Expo America with some of the authors whose books will launch that line on Thursday, May 31. My 10th novel, The House By The Cemetery, is one of those books. Flame Tree is printing up special early copies for the event!

Here’s the Flame Tree signing schedule at BEA:

1-2 p.m. ~ John Everson

2-3 p.m. ~ Tim Waggoner

3-4 p.m. ~ Hunter Shea

4-5 p.m. ~ Jonathan Janz

House pre-orders available

The hardcover and trade paperback editions of The House By The Cemetery won’t be available from stores until Oct. 6. But you can pre-order both the hardcover and paperback editions now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble if you want to receive a copy as soon as it’s available.

Or… come to the Flame Tree signing at the Javits Center in a couple weeks and you can get one of the very first copies printed!

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Return to New York!

THIS HAS BEEN a crazy couple of weeks! Two weekends ago, I spent playing pinball with my son and friends in Michigan… and then, last weekend I spent working at a convention center in New York for my dayjob.

In between? I signed a contract for my 11th novel, finished the final rewrites and  copy edits on my 10th novel The House By The Cemetery, and had dinner with my editor to catch up and talk about both books. Kind of a whirlwind!

Some of the craziness came because my new publisher, Flame Tree Press, is holding a special signing later this month at Book Expo America to promote the debut of their new horror/sci-fi imprint.  The House By The Cemetery is part of the Flame Tree fall launch, so Flame Tree is bringing me, Tim Waggoner, Hunter Shea and Jonathan Janz to NYC for a day of signings at BEA on May 31. The wrinkle is, the new line doesn’t actually launch until fall,  which necessitated some scrambling to get ready if we are going to stage a big signing for unreleased books there! So at the end of April we needed to quickly get all of the final copy edits and rewrites done on The House By The Cemetery — in less than a week — so preview copies could be printed prior to the show!

I took a day off work to focus on the book edits and also spent a few nights after work going over all of the edits and tweaking things. And then a few hours after I turned the final thing in… I flew off to New York last Friday morning for my dayjob and consequently had the opportunity to meet with my editor, Don D’Auria, and talk through some of it. Pretty good timing on the work trip!

To up the ante even more, on the very day I was finishing my edits, Don offered me a contract for my next book The Devil’s Equinox, which I’ve outlined and am a few thousand words into writing.

So… a pretty crazy couple of weeks.

While I didn’t have much time to wander New York (since I was there to work!), I did get out and about a bit after hours. Here’s my quick travelogue:

Friday, April 27

On Friday night, I had dinner with Don and tried a couple IPAs at the District Tap House in midtown Manhattan. It was great to have a leisurely amount of time to catch up (it’s been a couple years since I saw him in person!) Loved the venue so much, I took a work group there the next night!

On the way back to my hotel on Friday, I stopped in at the Beer Authority (well, I was walking past, and it said they were the “authority”… how could I not take a look?!) Cool place… I tried an Avery Hog Heaven Imperial IPA there, which was just a little “thicker” than I wanted at that point, though.

Saturday, April 28

On Saturday night after work, I walked down to the TKTS booth on Times Square (half price Broadway tickets) and scored a good balcony seat for Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. Really enjoyed the show, which was especially appropriate to see in NYC since it told Carole’s story through the ’60s as she worked in a “songwriting factory” not far from where the musical was put on. The number of hit songs she wrote in her tenure there before finally graduating to her own smash album (Tapestry) is amazing.

After the show, I stopped at Heartland Brewery, one of my other favorite NYC places for a burger and beer… and was excited to find that they still had some of their seasonal Old Red Nose Ale in bottles (I used to go to New York in December for a few years in a row and always had that beer there.)

Sunday, April 29

On Sunday, my work team and I explored The Keg Room for dinner (awesome place).

After dinner, I walked them down another block or so to introduce them to one of my favorite bars in the country – The Ginger Man.

I have actually never been there before when the place wasn’t sweaty-crowded, so experiencing it on a Sunday night (very quiet!) was weird. We also had the least talkative / most unfriendly bartendress I think I’ve ever met. So… not the best experience, but I still love the place. And a shot of Maker’s Mark balanced out the “fuzzy” factor of the Other Half Green City IPA.

Monday, April 30

The convention I was working closed down Monday at 5, so after we packed up, a couple of us had dinner at a great Thai/Vietnamese place called Obao. Had a solidly spicy Pad Kee Mao for dinner there with Kimchi Fries and spring rolls! And a drink with jalapenos floating on top.

It was the perfect  “warm” end to a long day!

Afterwards, I headed to find a bar to write in for a couple hours. Originally, I was going to go to the Keg Room again, but halfway there I found Rattle & Hum, which looked like a great place for beer and some work…

Alas… while the music was great, I couldn’t find much on the menu that I wanted to drink. That actually had been a theme the past few nights… the craft beer places in NYC feature a lot of local IPAs (which is cool) and it seems like New York IPAs all have a thick, hazy “fuzzy” quality to them that Midwest IPAs do not (ours seem crisp, clear and more overtly hoppy).

So begrudgingly, I quickly gave up my good seat at that bar and walked across the street to the Tir Na Nog Irish Pub (also a cool place), where I had a Stone IPA and actually got a few hundred words written on The Devil’s Equinox.

 

Tuesday, May 1

I had a meeting with one of my dayjob vendors on Tuesday morning down on Park Ave. (was cool to see their offices for the first time) and afterwards, walked quite a few blocks through New York on the first completely sunny day since we arrived.

A highlight of the walk? Finding an Amazon brick and mortar bookstore! I walked in and noted that contrary to many bookstores, all of their titles are faced out. That means less overall books can fit in the space, but every book shows off its cover and typically had a card beneath it with some kind of review. The store was divided up into genre topics, but also into areas like “People who like this…” and “Top Rated” by Amazon readers sections. Very Amazon.com!

 

After walking through the Amazon store, we grabbed a quick lunch back at Heartland Brewing and headed to the airport. It was great to be back in New York again — I love the city! Looking forward to going back again for BEA in a couple weeks!

 

More Pix:

 

       

 

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SACRIFICING VIRGINS is on an Amazon and Amazon UK .99 sale!

Sacrificing Virgins, my most recent collection of horror and dark fantasy fiction, is on sale for the next couple days on Amazon for just $.99 or £.99! I’m hoping that readers will give it a shot and check it out this week while it’s cheap on Amazon US or Amazon UK.

Today it was featured on a BookBub promotion in the UK, which drove it into Amazon’s Top 10 Bestsellers lists tonight in Horror/Occult:

One five-star Amazon reader review said this about it…which is better than any back cover description could be:

 


“I really think that John Everson is one of the most under-rated horror authors today. I’ve always enjoyed his novels but it’s his short story collections that leave me amazed. And with SACRIFICING VIRGINS, he does not disappoint. This collection shows a wide range of horror, each one original and set apart from the others. He can write really touching, quiet stories like “She Found Spring,” “Still They Go,” and “The Hole to China” and come right back and deliver a nauseating hardcore horror romp like “Whatever You Want,” “Sacrificing Virgins,” “Grandma Wanda’s Jelly Belly,” and “The Eyes.”

He also has the finesse to mix horror and eroticism with lurid tales such as “Nailed,” “Star On the Beach,” and “To Earn His Love.” Then there are stories like “Bad Day,” “Camille Smiled,” and “The Tapping” that can be straight up creepy and a little unnerving. And for fans of his previous novels, he has a few stories that have branched from those ideas like “Field of Flesh” (NightWhere), “The Pumpkin Man” (Pumpkin Man), and “Ligeia’s Revenge” (Siren).

There are a few stories that stood out to me as favorites though just because they were told so damn well: “The White House,” “Green Apples & Red Nails,” and “My Aim is True.” But I have to say the story I enjoyed the most out of this collection is the weird and quirky “I Love You.” Other stories that were a little weird are “Eardrum Buzz,” “Faux,” and “Voyeur but I Love You” really stole the show for me. Can not begin to say how great this collection is, really enjoyed it cover to cover.”



It was a kick to see “I Love You” picked as someone’s favorite from this book, because that story was written as a tribute to a Chicago area author I greatly admire (and publish via Dark Arts Books) named Martin Mundt. And the story languished in several magazine and anthology slush piles before finally appearing in this book as one of the only original, not previously published tales.  I’ve always said that every story finds its right home eventually.

Anyway, I hope some new readers will discover that story and all the tales in this book on Amazon US or Amazon UK before it ends its big sale on Saturday!

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Pinball at the ‘Zoo 2018

IT HAS BECOME one of those annual events that the Everson house looks forward to throughout the year. My friend Brad introduced Shaun and me to Pinball at the ‘Zoo, an April gathering of pinball enthusiasts at the Kalamazoo Expo Center. This year, I drove Shaun, Brad, and his son Levi up last Friday night, so that we could start Pinball at the ‘Zoo bright and early Saturday morning.

On Friday and Saturday nights, we spent hours at a friend’s place who has dozens of machines in his amazing “home arcade.” A visit to Mike’s house is really the highlight of the weekend, and this year Shaun endeavored to play every one of his pins at least once.

Saturday is actually the final day of the three-day pinball show at the Kalamazoo Expo, and after a traditional stop at Sweetwaters Donuts, we spend the whole day there, walking the convention floor to play as many games as we could, with just a short break at a local hole-in-the-wall bar and grill for lunch. This year (unlike the last two years we’ve gone), I wasn’t hot on the hunt for a new pinball table, since I just brought home a Stern Meteor pinball machine a few weeks ago. So I was probably more relaxed at the show than ever and just played hundreds of balls (including a couple Meteors — just to compare how those tables played compared to mine).

One of the highlights of this year’s show was the new Alice Cooper’s Nightmare House machine, which was demoed on the floor. There are only two of them in existence at this point… so of course we all played it! Somehow I didn’t get a picture of it while it was set up, but a friend of ours ended up volunteering to drive it back to a store in Illinois… so we were involved in some “intimate handling” of this (current) rarity!

After a couple long days and late nights of pinball playing and much pinball talk, we staggered into The Crew restaurant on Sunday morning, had probably our best meal of two days, grabbed a few giant cookies, and hit the road home. Now we’ll be looking forward to the next one for the rest of the year.

Here are a few pictures from the weekend:

     

   

 

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The Pumpkin Man is now FREE to Amazon Prime subscribers!

THE PUMPKIN MAN is a horror thriller featuring a Ouija Board and a mysterious killer who cuts off the heads of his victims and replaces them with pumpkins carved in the likeness of their faces. It was my fifth and final novel for Dorchester Publishing, and it’s a story I’ve always wanted to do a sequel to (but so far, never have quite found the time!).

When it was first released, New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Maberry said of the book, “With The Pumpkin Man, John Everson carves his name into the list of great horror writers. A deliciously creepy novel!”

This week, The Pumpkin Man was added to Amazon’s special “Prime Reading” program in the US and UK, which means that anyone who is a Prime subscriber can download it for free! (Just look at the purchase box on Amazon when you’re logged in and for Prime members it will say  “Prime: Free… Included with your membership.”

The book is also on a 99 cent sale on Amazon US until the end of March for anyone who is not a Prime subscriber… so… check it out today if you don’t have a copy!

Here’s the link to it on AMAZON US

Here’s the link to it on AMAZON UK

Here’s the back cover description:

After her father’s gruesome murder, Jenn needed a place to get away from it all with some friends, to take her mind off her sorrow. The empty seaside cottage she inherited seemed perfect. Jenn didn’t know that the cottage held arcane secrets, mysteries long hidden and best left alone. She didn’t realize until it was too late that the old books and Ouija board she found there really do hold great power. And it was only after her friend’s headless body was discovered that she knew the legend of the local bogeyman was no mere legend at all. An evil has been unleashed, a terrifying figure previously only spoken of in whispers. But now the whispers will become screams. Beware…The Pumpkin Man.

I hope you’ll give it a read while it’s on this special promotion! And if you already have a copy, please spread the word ~ I’d love for as many people as possible to check this one out while it’s promoted!

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