Looking Forward Is The New Looking Back (in which we talk about Deadite, Ghoul, Stoker Eligibility, Levi, and Facebook)
2011 was a good year for Deadite Press. In the aftermath of their Dorchester coup, they published 24 titles, including books by myself, Bryan Smith, J.F. Gonzalez, Edward Lee, Robert Devereaux, Wrath James White, and Nate Southard. Carlton Mellick posted a retrospective of all 24 titles here. It makes a handy gift-buying guide for this holiday season. To the left is the cover for the Deadite reissue of Dark Hollow, which will be available in just a few short weeks (along with Ghoul and The Cage).
Speaking of Ghoul, things are happening behind the scenes. I am forbidden by my masters at NBC – Universal – Chiller – Moderncine to say anything or post any details online. For example, if the premiere was going to happen at a certain film festival in Park City, Utah on a weekend in January 2012, I wouldn't be able to tell you that. And if it were going to debut on television during the first quarter of 2012, I wouldn't be able to tell you that, either. But things are certainly happening behind the scenes…
Things are happening behind the scenes in the HWA, as well. A friend, who wishes to remain anonymous, writes via email: "There is a discussion on the HWA message board about whether or not Stephen King's 11/22/63 should be eligible for a Bram Stoker Award because it isn't horror. Of course, the subtext is: If King is eligible then *I* (various people represented by "I") don't stand a chance." This is a case of people not knowing their genre's history (something which I spoke about at length last month). A portion of HWA members feel that Stephen King's new novel should be ineligible for the Bram Stoker Award because it's not horror. Well, if that's the case, then what about works which were eligible in the past? What about Douglas E. Winter's Run, Robert R. McCammon's Mine, Bruce Boston's The Guardener's Tale, Paul Tremblay's The Little Sleep, or Thomas Harris's Silence of the Lambs? All of these were in the running for or won a Bram Stoker Award. None of them were horror. Boston's novel was dystopian sci-fi, and the rest were solid crime-thrillers. I could see not nominating a novel such as The Help, but King's new novel features several genre staples and is clearly part of the overall weird fiction canon.
In other news, Kim at Camelot Books reports that Is There A Demon In You? is more than halfway sold out. You can get a copy here. This new anthology features four demonic possession novellas by four different authors. My contribution is The Witching Tree, a novella featuring Levi Stoltzfus (the occult detective from Ghost Walk and A Gathering of Crows). You don't need to have read those books to enjoy this story, but if you have, you should know that The Witching Tree bridges the gap between A Gathering of Crows and the next Levi novel, Bad Ground, which should come out in early 2013. If you order the book from the link above, you also get one of four free chapbooks — one of which is by me and is called Fast Zombies Suck. Makes a nice holiday gift.
Been enjoying a creative windfall over the last week, with energy levels not experienced since the heart attack. The scripts for The Last Zombie: Neverland #1, 2, and 3 are finished, as is a story for an anthology Christopher Golden is putting together (just needs one final polish). This week, I'll be focusing my full attention on The Lost Level.
You may have noticed that I've changed the storefront here, splitting it into two sections: BOOKS and COMICS. Feel free to browse, and certainly feel free to buy something. You may also have noticed that I'm back on Facebook. Previously, I'd deactivated my private profile and left Jeff Heimbuch in charge of the fan page. However, in order for me to make changes to the fan page, Facebook forced me to reactivate my private profile. Please feel free to "Like" the fan page, but please withhold friend requests to my private profile, unless we are somehow related.
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For one thing, nothing he writes is scary; and wouldn't something at least have to be fear-inducing to qualify for an award with the name Bram Stoker on it?
No, I haven't read 11/22/63, but I've read more than 35 of his other books, and I can tell you with assurance that not one of them has scared me.
Or at least, not one has scared me since I became an EMT, and the reason is simple. If you know a scene is impossible; like the last one where she escapes the handcuffs in Gerald's game; like the first one of Rose Madder, like several in every other book he's written; then how are you supposed to be afraid?
I'm only afraid of things that appear realistic, and none of his medical scenes even reMOTEly resemble realism, so I feel no fear when I'm reading his books for that reason.
Beyond that, I highly dislike his idea of what a joke is.
I wouldn't give him an award if he were the last damn person on earth. At least not one with the name Bram Stoker on it, a person whose story scared me when I first read it and every time afterward. And the movie still scares me.
It doesn't make sense to give somebody that award when they're work doesn't scare just about everyone who reads it.
I'm not the only one who doesn't get scared of Stephen King's books. Nobody I work with gets scared either.
In fact my supervisor was "pleasantly surprised" when he read a book by one of Stephen King's sons, and saw that the medical scene he included was "realistic enough to actually work in the story."
We don't assume that writers are going to give accurate and detailed medical information, that would be a silly thing to expect, but getting a little of it right is better than nothing.
The story my boss was referring to was in a book called '20th Century Ghosts and the story was called 'In the Rundown.'
I read it, and it was mostly accurate--and the parts he left out, like I said, are more detailed than you'd expect any writer to know since medical care isn't their true professions.