David A. Riley's Blog, page 144

Johnny Mains - With Deepest Sympathy

My friend Johnny Mains's debut collection With Deepest Sympathy will be published in hardback by Obverse Books around the end of September this year. They have previously published The Panda Book of Horror and The Obverse Book of Ghosts. Johnny's stories have previously appeared in Pantechnicon and The Black Books of Horror. He also published Back From the Dead earlier this year, a hardback tribute to the Pan Horror series and is responsible for Pan Macmillan reissuing the very first P...

FantasyCon 2010

Below is a direct link to the dedicated FantasyCon 2010 website:

It's only another 15 days before FantasyCon starts in Nottingham. It's shaping up to look like a really great convention, especially with the lineup of guests and the number of important book launches that are going to tbe held there, including the reissue of the First Pan Book of Horror by Pan Macmillan, which for me is a really important event. The Pan series was a vital part of my early involvement with the genre, along with a...

Autumn - new British zombie movie

Just watched a DVD of the British zombie horror film Autumn, starring Dexter Fletcher and guest starring David Carradine.



This is a very gritty, slow-moving but, in many respects, more realistic development of the zombie trope. For the most part it only has a small cast of characters, and they behave in the kind of way in which I imagine most of us would react to that kind of catastrophic situation. I also like how the reanimated dead gradually become more motivated, more able to act, more...

The Dead of Night - Oliver Onions

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I got this latest collection of ghost stories from Wordsworth Books yesterday - and what an amazing bargain it is. Just over 600 pages of stories by one of the greatest ghost-story writers ever for less than £3! (£2.99)

I really can't believe how Wordsworth can manage to produce books of this quality at such incredibly low prices.

I am really looking forward to delving into this book. The first story is the famous Beckoning Fair One.

The Walking Dead

Going from this trailer, this new TV series looks good. I just hope that if it is as good as it looks that it runs its full length. Too many great series have been axed partway through their story arcs recently, which is really annoying.

If Lovecraft Had Lived into the 1960s

I came across a fascinating thread on ChthulhuWho1's Blog in which downloads of a discussion on this subject was made in 1978 at the 36th World Science Fiction Convention in Phoenix. On the panel were Fritz Leiber Jnr, Professor Dirk W. Mosig, Professor Donald R. Burleson, J. Vernon Shea, and S.T. Joshi. I have never had the chance to hear the late Fritz Leiber before, and it is great that someone has been able to make decent recordings of this available online, especially when the subject un...

What Do Zombies Represent

There's an interesting thread on the Ramsey Campbell Boards about a new zombie anthology that's coming out soon Zombie Apocalypse edited by Stephen Jones for Robinson Books (part of their mammoth series, I think). There is a basic premise upon which a number of writers, including John Probert and Mark Samuels, have written stories. In the thread about this book, Joel Lane puts forward the suggestion that zombies represent for some people "a hated and feared 'common herd'".



Going off most...

Leisure Books in Trouble

More bad news from the States where it looks like Leisure Books, who have published some really splendid horror novels over the past umpteen years, are in desperate trouble.

Check out this link to Brian Keene's website, where he discusses this.

More on the Small Presses and Wordsworth Books

There's been quite a bit more on this ongoing discussion on the Vault of Evil, and some good points are being raised on it.

This is from one of my own last entries in the debate:


Today at 6:13am, jamesdoig wrote:
I imagine choosing a title for publication must be the product of a careful business decision. Derek mentioned, and I hope I'm not misquoting, that in recent times some Wordsworth titles haven't sold so well. There must come a time when you've exhausted the choicest crop of...

Moonlight - No Series 2

Now, I'm not a big fan of the newfangled vampires who twinkle and don't scare people or do evil things. Twilight can stay in the twilight for all I care. But I did get into Moonlight. I can't say why. Perhaps it was the main characters or the storylines. I know when one main character was abducted, then killed quite randomly, I was shocked - and  impressed. Whatever the reasons may be, I did enjoy this series and was looking forward to its return with a second. Unfortunately, this never happe...