James Dorr's Blog, page 163

An Independence Day Extra: Halloween Forevermore Interviews Anne Serling

As I write this, the SyFy Channel is running its 4th of July THE TWILIGHT ZONE marathon special on TV.  So what better time to have run across an interview by Robin Dover on Terry M. West’s HALLOWEEN FOREVERMORE, via the HWA on Facebook, of Rod Serling’s daughter Anne?  To let Robin introduce it himself:  “I’m extremely humbled and deeply honored for the opportunity to interview Anne Serling.  I was touched that she agreed to talk with me about her life, about her family and especially about her father, Rod Serling.  I found from reading her book, AS I KNEW HIM, MY DAD, ROD SERLING, Anne intimately incorporates her personal life experience encompassing the limitless depths of her memories, imagination and creative expression and pulls the reader in, holding them with honesty and enthusiasm.  They inevitably emerge transformed.  There is something about knowing you are being shown images that have existed for a person’s entire life.  Personal images, sounds and memories from a person’s private past that remains an important part of their present — and always will.”

To read it, press here — and a happy 4th of July weekend, again, to all.  And, for a complete run down of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, with episode lists, reviews, and more, check here.

Independence Day: For a Vampiric 4th of July

A happy holiday weekend to all!

Visions of the Future? — Or, Just Because It’s Cool

This is something I just came across which is kind of cool. To quote compiler Dennis Green of BUSINESS INSIDER, via Anna Gigi James in TROVE: INTERIOR DESIGN/ARCHITECTURE LOVE:  “The World Architecture Festival — held this year in Singapore — won’t name 2015’s Building of the Year until November, but the nominations are officially in.

“With 338 buildings in the running, we combed through the contenders and made our own shortlist. From a ribbon-inspired wedding chapel in Hiroshima to Zaha Hadid’s £240 million London Aquatics Centre, these are the 27 buildings that really jumped out and caught our eye.

“Scrolling through these hotels, schools, office buildings, and more, you’ll see plenty of dramatic slopes, sharp corners, and swooping curves.  Oh, and glass. Lots and lots of glass.”

And so, perhaps to inspire a properly futuristic setting for that next science fiction story, or just for its own sake, herewith “27 of the Coolest New Buildings on the Planet,” displayed for you right here.

Reviewers, Others: The Tears of Isis Available on NetGallery to End of July Only

“Do you love to discover new books?  Do you review and recommend books online, in print, for your bookstore, library patrons, blog readers, or classroom?  Then you are what we call a ‘professional reader,’ and NetGalley is for you.  Registration is free, and allows you to request or be invited to read titles, often advance reading copies, on your favorite device.”

Does this describe you?  If so, to continue their description, “NetGalley is a service to promote titles to professional readers of influence.  If you are a reviewer, blogger, journalist, librarian, bookseller, educator, or in the media, you can use NetGalley for FREE to request, read and provide feedback about forthcoming titles.  Your feedback and recommendations are essential to publishers and readers alike.”

Thus in today’s email, Max Booth III and Lori Michelle of Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing have announced the availability of THE TEARS OF ISIS, my (ahem!) Bram Stoker Award® nominated fiction collection, on NetGallery for reviewers until the end of the month of July.  Which brings the point that, should you have sort of thought maybe you might want to read THE TEARS OF ISIS (that is, of the Egyptian goddess, no relation to recent Mid-Eastern geo-politics) yourself sometime, to see what the buzz is about and all that and maybe add to it, now would be a good time!  As noted above, registration is free.

If interested, curious, just hankering for something to do on a lazy summer afternoon, more on NetGallery (including registration, should one desire) can be found here.  Or for inspiration, to see what some other reviewers have said about THE TEARS OF ISIS before, one can also press here.

Beyond Bizarro, or, Strange Paths Through the Literary Jungle

Add flash to your writing.  Be not like all others but dare to venture beyond the beaten path.  Well, some have done this — one might recall even I had a story in Bizarro Pulp Press’s BIZARRO BIZARRO (see  January 30 2014, December 27 2013, et al.).  But that’s just the tip of the much-clichéd iceberg, as witnessed by Nathaniel Woo in “10 Bizarre Literary Movements and Genres,” published on LISTVERSE and for which see here.

(And should you be tempted, or, hey maybe I can sell a book too, for more information on BIZARRO BIZARRO one may press here.)

One Municipal, Two Vamp Poems Taken by Nothing’s Sacred

The first word of this came from the HWA’s Facebook page, via Editor-in-Chief Nathon Allen Balka:  “Submissions are still being taken for NOTHING’S SACRED Vol. 3 (due out October 2015).  However, with the number of short stories received, our primary focus is shifting to the other categories listed.”  I checked out the details and they looked inviting, poetry in particular (an “other category listed”) paying $10.00 each, so, going to the poem vault, I exhumed five thus far unpublished ones.  And so, off they went.

Lateish Tuesday, exactly one week after, the word came back.  “After reviewing the five samples, it was decided that there are three that we would enjoy using in the upcoming NOTHING’S SACRED Vol. 3.  Those are:  The Vampire’s Excuse, The Vampiress Reflects, and Necropolis.”

Contract, etc., will come in a few weeks and, if all goes well, the issue itself should be out just in time for Halloween!

Ten Top Movie Vampires Ranked

As a tip of the hat to the recently deceased Sir Christopher Lee (cf. below, June 11), as brought to my attention courtesy of Dotti Enderle-Dax Varley via Facebook, FLAVORWIRE.COM has posted a list of the ten best cinematic Dracula performances of all time.  Their opinion, to be sure.  Some may please, some may surprise, some you may disagree with (I myself lean more and more to the original “Count Orlok,” Max Schreck, but was also pleased by the presence of Zhang Wei-Qiang at around number 8), and some may wish the list had been expanded to the top fifteen or twenty or more.  Be that as it may, one works with what one has.

So here for one’s pleasure and illumination (as well as, as said, its own reminiscence of Christopher Lee), to peruse press here.

Now It Can Be Told: Victorians Gets Nod for Chilling Ghost Stories

“With a new foreword by Dr Dale Townsend, this is a chilling selection of brand new stories, and essential ghostly shorts from the infamous pens of Charles Dickens, Henry James, Wilkie Collins, Washington Irving (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow), Algernon Blackwood, Elizabeth Gaskell, William Hope Hodgson (The Gateway of the Monster), M.R. James, Sheridan Le Fanu, Oscar Wilde (The Canterville Ghost), and other phantasmagoric authors. . .  This powerful new book is a dazzling collection of the most gripping tales, vividly told.”  So says UK art and music and art calendar, as well as illustrated Gothic and fantasy book publisher, Flame Tree Publishing’s blog, but that’s not all.  From a shortened version received in middish-May, concerning perhaps those “other phantasmagoric authors,” came the call, but with a deadline of May 25:   “We need new, or recent short stories.  We do not require exclusivity.  You retain copyright.  We don’t mind if the story has been published online or in magazines before.  As long as you have the right to license your story for an anthology, then we’re happy to read it.”

Such is the exciting life of a writer.  “Stories between 2000 and 4000 words are the perfect pitch.  Anything outside this range will be considered, but will be disadvantaged,” the call went on, and with a SFWA-defined pro pay rate to boot.  But less than a week to decide and submit!

So submit I did, with a 4000-word tale originally published in Charlie Grant and Wendy Webb’s GOTHIC GHOSTS (Tor Books, 1997; also reprinted in 2001 in my first prose collection, STRANGE MISTRESSES:  TALES OF WONDER AND ROMANCE), “Victorians,” a psychological examination of memories repressed and Queen Anne mansions.  And Thursday the word came back, but with this proviso, that “[w]e ask for your confidentiality on this matter for the next two days because we have to disappoint many other authors this time.  We wanted to inform you first though.”  But now the two days is up, and more, so at last it can be told:  “Victorians” has been accepted for the above-described deluxe anthology (“. . . covers will be embossed, gold foiled and printed on silver, a sumptuous offer in a crowded marketplace.  The current print run is set at a minimum of 3000 copies”), CHILLING GHOST SHORT STORIES.

Thus Friday the contract was signed, with an invoice, and both put into the mail to England, with publication set if all goes well for August 15.

Saturday Only OmniLit Sales Includes Year’s End, Peds, Vanitas, More. . . .

Jay Hartman of Untreed Reads Publishing sent this along, that OmniLit is holding a “Welcome To Summer” sale for this Saturday only, offering all titles they sell at 25 percent off.  These include all four of my titles from Untreed Reads as well as one from Northern Frights Publishing.  Three are chapbooks, the stand-alone short stories VANITAS and I’M DREAMING OF A. . . . and the dystopian science fiction novelette PEDS, to which are added the Untreed Reads New Year’s Eve anthology YEAR’S END:  14 TALES OF HOLIDAY HORROR, with my lead-off story “Appointment in Time,” and Northern Frights’s WAR OF THE WORLDS:  FRONTLINES with my dimensional fantasy “The Candle Room.”  Books are available in PDF, EPUB, and Kindle versions unless otherwise noted.

More can be found on the OmniLit site (if you wish to look for me in the search box at the upper right, use “James S. Dorr” in the “Author” category — they refuse to recognize me without my middle initial).  But remember the sale is for Saturday only, June 20, ending at midnight Central Time.

Visiting Spirits and Scary Movies — Two Lists to Check for a Summer Night’s Viewing

How about a movie date on a romantic June evening — but which one to see?  If you like them scary, here’s a checklist of “The 14 Greatest Horror Movie Trailers Ever Made,” including at least two we’ve met (or at least had mentioned) on these very pages.  Brought to us by — which is to say, the opinion of — THE HORROR MOVIES BLOG, weighing in at number 13 is IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE, reviewed here on March 26 as part of this spring’s IU Cinema Ray Bradbury Festival.  And for number 1, also mentioned below on June 8 (as well, with some foreshadowing of the second list following just below, March 15 2011), CLOVERFIELD., the trailers of which, with twelve more films, can be viewed by clicking here.

But if that weren’t enough (and one might suppose as a public service of sorts as well) what if there’s entertainment enough in the strange sounds and manifestations in your own apartment?  Again to the rescue, THE HORROR MOVIES BLOG offers a list of “16 Signs a Ghost or Spirit Is Paying You a Visit,” which may be perused by pressing here.