David A. Riley's Blog, page 145

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...

Small Presses and Wordsworth Books

There's an interesting thread just started on the Vault of Evil. Although it began as a discussion about the latest issue of Prism, it very soon moved on to that marvellous publisher, Wordsworth, who have brought out some of the very best collections of single-author ghost stories at unbelievably cheap rates. They specialise, of course, in publishing writers who have been dead so long their works are now out of copyright. This naturally saves them any royalty payments. It also means that we, ...

Prism - September Issue Sent to the Printers

The next issue of Prism has been posted to the printers today, so it should be available for distribution to members by early September, well before FantasyCon.

One bit of good news is that the print run has gone up by 50 copies since the last issue, which shows that the BFS is doing okay at the moment. Let's hope its membership continues to climb. Of course, one important job to ensure that this happens isn't only by gaining new members but by ensuring that existing ones renew their membershi...

A Fascinating Interview with Jonathan Maberry

On Strange Horizons there's a really fascinating interview with horror author Jonathan Maberry, discussing zombie fiction.