We’re accepting BEST OFFERS for each piece between now and 3 PM EST on Thursday, February 2, 2012. “Best Offer” means you let us know the amount you’re willing to spend for each piece item/set. The highest offer wins. You can make offers on as many items/sets as you want. You do not need to make offers on all of them, but if you win multiple items, we can combine the lots for shipping to save you on postage.

* HOW TO SEND YOUR OFFER:

1) Click on the EMAIL LINK above the image. This link should fill-in the proper email address to send your bid to, along with the proper subject line, in your email program. (If you use a web-based email program like AOL or Hotmail, please see alternate entry method below.)

2) In the BODY of your email, enter your very best offer for that item/set. A minimum bid for each item/set is listed below.

3) Please send a separate email for EACH item/set you are bidding on.

* HOW TO SEND YOUR OFFER IF YOU USE A WEB-BASED EMAIL SYSTEM OR IF THESE LINKS DON’T WORK FOR YOU:

1) Copy the “My Best Offer For (Item Name)” text ABOVE the image and put that in your SUBJECT LINE.

2) The “Send To” address for the email should be mindyj@cemeterydance.com

3) Enter your very best offer for that item/set in the BODY of the email and hit send.

4) Please send a separate email for EACH item/set you want to bid on.

Mindy will compile the offers. Winners will be notified on Friday.

Email Your Bid: My Best Offer For IT F&G
Minimum Bid: $500

First up for bidding is the “Folded and Gathered” Proof of IT: The 25th Anniversary Special Edition, which was made during a one-time printing by our printer for final approval *before* they started printing the real books. All of the color elements are in place, the artwork is where it would be bound into the book, and the pages are gathered into signatures, but the pages haven’t been bound into a hardcover. Only ONE of these exists anywhere in the world.

Email Your Bid: My Best Offer For IT Cover and Binding
Minimum Bid: $500

Next up for bidding are the “Cover and Binding Prototypes AND stamping dies” Proof of IT: The 25th Anniversary Special Edition. These are the test covers they make for our approval before printing begins, and as you can see below we changed the foil for the Gift Edition so there are two versions included. You will also receive the STAMPING DIES that were used to actually stamp the foil designs on all three editions. (The dies came “wrapped” in another set of the FINAL covers, as you can see below.) Only ONE of these sets exist anywhere in the world.

Email Your Bid: My Best Offer For IT Bluelines, Artwork Proofs, and Other Proofs
Minimum Bid: $500

Our last item up for bidding are the “Bluelines, Artwork Proofs, and Other Proofs” for IT: The 25th Anniversary Special Edition. This includes the Bluelines for the interior (the proof we’re sent for approval before the F&G is printed), the bluelines for ALL three dust jackets, the approval prints of the interior color artwork, the color printout stamping die positioning sheets, a full set of the final set of dust jackets for approval, and some other production/proof material. Only ONE of these sets exists anywhere in the world.

To best sell these for Glenn, we’re accepting BEST OFFERS for each piece between now and 11 AM EST on Thursday, January 26, 2012. “Best Offer” means you let us know the amount you’re willing to spend for each piece of artwork/set. The highest offer wins. You can make offers on as many pieces/sets as you want. You do not need make offers on all of them.

* HOW TO SEND YOUR OFFER:

1) Click on the EMAIL LINK above the image. This link should fill-in the proper email address to send your bid to, along with the proper subject line, in your email program. (If you use a web-based email program like AOL or Hotmail, please see alternate entry method below.)

2) In the BODY of your email, enter your very best offer for that piece of artwork. A minimum bid for each item/set is listed below.

3) Please send a separate email for EACH item you are bidding on.

* HOW TO SEND YOUR OFFER IF YOU USE A WEB-BASED EMAIL SYSTEM OR IF THESE LINKS DON’T WORK FOR YOU:

1) Copy the “My Best Offer For (Number)” text ABOVE the image and put that in your SUBJECT LINE.

2) The “Send To” address for the email should be mindyj@cemeterydance.com

3) Enter your very best offer for that piece of artwork in the BODY of the email and hit send.

4) Please send a separate email for EACH piece/set of artwork.

Mindy will compile the offers. Winners will be notified on Friday, January 27, 2012.

My Best Offer For SOD 1 (email your bid)

Item:Original Cover Artwork for The Secretary of Dreams (Volume One)

Size: 11 X 14

Medium: acrylic on illustration board

Minimum Offer: $500

My Best Offer For SOD 2 (email your bid)

Item:Original Cover Artwork for The Secretary of Dreams (Volume Two).

Size: 11 X 14.75

Medium: acrylic on cardstock

Minimum Offer: $500

Please note that the top right corner was dinged a bit in transit. See photo. This can be covered with matboard when framed.

My Best Offer For FDNS Set (email your bid)

Item:Five pieces of artwork from Full Dark, No Stars including a color painting

Size: 7 X 10

Medium: ink and ink/acrylic for color art on cardstock

Minimum Offer: $500

My Best Offer For Color Christmas Art (email your bid)

Item:Cover artwork for unannounced Christmas project

Size: 11 x 17

Medium: ink and colored pencil on cardstock

Minimum Offer: $200

My Best Offer For Stephen King Character Art Print (email your bid)

Item: Stephen King Character Art Print — colorized and signed by Glenn, a one-of-a-kind item!

Size: 8.75 X 11

Medium: colored pencil colorizing the B&W print

Minimum Offer: $200

Review: Norman Partridge, LESSER DEMONS, (Subterranean Press).
By Jason S. Ridler

Norm Partridge has fought the good fight of writing smart, tough, and dark stories of the fantastic for over twenty years now, and like a good slug of scotch, he’s is getting better with age. Best known for his short novel DARK HARVEST (Tor Books), Partridge is a free range writer of fiction, a mercenary of genre stories that range from the gentle and atmospheric to the true grit of the fiction he’s best known for, hard boiled horror. With an equal love of horror and rugged literature, the influences etched on his sleeve range from Ray Bradbury to Lee Marvin, Poe to Peckinpah, and his body of work, from novels, novellas, to short stories, should sit comfortably on the shelf of any fan of Joe Lansdale, Richard Matheson, or John Skipp.

But Partridge has always been his own writer, following his own lodestar, and his most recent collection of short fiction and novellas, LESSER DEMONS, shows not only breadth but depth from a natural born storyteller whose got mean chops and knows how to use them. Each of Partridge’s short fiction collections has been stunning. The Man with Barbed Wire Fist and Mr. Fox and Other Feral Stories are contemporary classics of dark fiction, and chock full of great insight from Partridge’s essays on his stories. But in Lesser Demons, I think Partridge has made what might be the best introductory collection to his worlds and works. Don’t get me wrong. Go and buy both the two previous collections. But Lesser Demons has a span and variety that, in lesser hands, would come off as disjointed, and instead links together as strong as a swinging chain.

The opening shot, “Second Chance,” is lean and mean. A tale of hard boiled horror, psychic voodoo, and bad love, it’s a quick and dirty introduction to Partridge’s world, originally written for a collection of stories in honour of the late horror maestro Richard Laymon. “Big Man” harkens us back to Z-grade SF apocalypse movies of big bugs and frontier justice, and a young kid’s attempt to survive the monsters created by radiation, and cheap whisky. In the title story, “Lesser Demons,” Partridge tasked himself to write in a similar vein as H. P. Lovecraft, and instead creates a story less about honouring the style of the haunted man from Rhode Island, but of the differences between himself and the horror legend. The result is a weird crime story that’s worthy of the collections marquee. “Carrion” is a fun and twisted quasi zombie story riffing on one of Partridge’s great mentors, Robert E. Howard. Partridge has mentioned that, unlike a lot of the great names of the pulps, Howard’s body of work still captures his imagination. And this gruesome tale honours that pulp master’s own love affair with horror.

Then the collection shifts gears and voice in a way that lets you catch your breath and still grips our mind. “The Fourth Stair up From the Second Landing” is a quiet, unnerving tale more akin to the works of Poe, but completely in Partridge’s voice. Here, the clipped sentences and kinetic pacing of the previous stories transforms into a saunter, the cadence of ghost stories and tales of the disquiet. A haunting story of family loss, it’s a jewel in the center of the collection. It is followed by a tougher edged but no less unnerving story, “And What Did You See in the World?” Indeed, both stories employ a great use of omission to generate suspense through inference as we try and piece together the mysteries surrounding the characters.

And like a Cadillac going from zero to 90, we blast off in the high paced, action driven “Road Dogs.” Werewolf stories will never reach the iconic status of vampires, but in Partridge’s hands they are the cunning underdogs of genre, offering a refreshing twist to a classic trope, and done in dirty noir fashion. “The House Inside” shoots us off into the realm of toys that come alive at the end of the world, a story of how to face the end when you can’t outrun it, and while it tilts its hat to Ray Bradbury and Rod Serling, the hard edge, the desperate sense of noble action wrestling with futility makes it pure Partridge. “Durston” keeps the action dark and dirty in a noir fable with a western back drop, leading to the star attraction of the collection: “The Iron Dead.”

A novella that reads like the best horror-action film you’ve never seen, “The Iron Dead” is Partridge firing all cylinders. A ragged tale of a satanic machine and the outlaw from hell sent to finish it off, it crackles off the page and into your brain like a mad mash up of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN meets HELLBLAZER. When the action is done, and the guns go silent, you’ll demand to read a novel or see a movie based on this story. Trust me, pilgrim, it’s that good.

The cinematic inferences here should bolster your idea of the dramatic visual power of Partridge’s stories, but don’t let them fool you into thinking they aren’t rich lit of the printed page. Partridge is one of the few writers of short fiction who can deftly handle using multiple view points in a single story without losing cohesion or a compelling hook. “The House Inside” masterfully weaves the POV of different toys and bugs so that the ending feels truly like they end of their world. These are tactile worlds that get under your finger nails and stain your blood.

While Partridge has got the most heat for his novels, he’s a great short story scribe, and the results in this collection are stellar. And as usual, Subterranean Press has done a stellar job in the packaging of the collection, a haunting cover by Vincent Chong gives you the first glimpse into the stories, evoking the kind of gritty realism Partridge infuses with high octane and operatic genre elements. If you’re a fan of Joe Lansdale, John Skipp, David Morrell, Jim Thompson, Tom Piccirilli, and other writers who can mash genres like a master chef, pick up Lesser Demons and make Norm Partridge part of your healthy diet of the dark fantastic.

Shipping these two books will be a huge undertaking, so we’ve also leased additional warehouse facilities and equipment to allow us to keep up with the regular orders at the same time to minimize delays as much as possible. We will do our very best to stay on top of all of your orders, and we appreciate your patience while we work through this busy season.  We’re processing the orders and the paperwork as quickly as we can, but please keep in mind we have several thousand orders and it’s going to take some time to get through all of them.

If you missed our recent shipping updates, they can be found on our website: September 2010 Shipping Update and October 2010 Shipping Update.

For photos of the actual books, please visit the The Secretary of Dreams (Volume Two) photo gallery.

PLEASE NOTE: When your order ships, you will receive a shipping confirmation email if we have your current address on file.  If you ever have any questions about the status of your order, please feel free to reply to your original Order Confirmation email and we’ll be happy to help you out. If you don’t have that Order Confirmation email, you can just email your name and what you ordered to order@cemeterydance.com and we’ll look up the information in our records.

If you have any questions or concerns after you receive your shipment, or if something isn’t the way you expected or damage occurred in transit, please just contact our office so we can correct the problem for you!

October 21, 2010:
Our shipping team has now shipped all of the UPS orders for the Gift Edition and is working through the PO Boxes, etc.  Non-US orders are being charged shipping in batches and then shipped.  You will be contacted if your credit card was declined, etc. We have not reached the Non-US PayPal orders yet, but we’ll get there as soon as we can.

The shipping team is 75% complete on shipping the signed Limited Edition.  This edition is always slower because the books need to be numbered, numbers to be matched to customers, etc.  Thanks for your patience!

October 18, 2010:
Our shipping team has been putting in 12+ hour days, and they came in both days this weekend, so we’re pleased to report we have now shipped 90% of the US orders for the Gift Edition.  We are working through the Non-US orders as quickly as we can, but those will take a few more weeks to finish due to the paperwork involved.  The Limited Edition has started shipping as well and we should have all of the US orders for that edition shipped in the next couple of days.  Thanks for your patience!

Shipping has begun a few days early!  See photos below:

OCTOBER 12, 2010:
Here are some photos of the warehouse now that the books and slipcases have arrived.  The 22 pallets took almost 2.5 hours to unload from the truck.  The traycases are due to arrive later this week, right on time to begin shipping on October 15th.  In the meantime, we’re already processing the order paperwork and our staff will begin preparing the Gift Edition for shipment immediately.  Please note that it will take several weeks to ship all of the orders, but we’ll be working as quickly as possible.

SEPTEMBER 21, 2010: To start this special photo gallery, here are some photos of the extra warehouse space we’ve obtained for shipping these very special projects.  It’s not much to look at right now, but in a matter of weeks it’s going to be full of books, packing supplies, and our shipping help!

It’s June, but it feels like Halloween.

Norman Prentiss stands at a podium inside The Shoshana S. Cardin School in North Baltimore, preparing to read from his recently released novella Invisible Fences (Cemetery Dance Publications, 2010). The room is large and bright, with standard issue beige walls, fluorescent lights, and vintage posters of Orioles heroes Frank Robinson and Eddie Murray. But the black-robed, skeletal Grim Reaper hanging above Prentiss’s head hints that the story he is about to tell will fall on the darker end of the literary spectrum.

The lights lower, and Prentiss begins. “There’s an invention for today’s dog owners called an invisible fence,” he reads, laying bare the book’s central metaphor. He describes the Pavlovian system for keeping dogs from straying with carefully delivered painful shocks, then lifts his eyes from the page and gazes directly at his audience. “But it seems a bit cruel to me.”

Doctor Prentiss, as he is known to is students, teaches English at the private Jewish high school, and he looks like the stereotypical warm and fuzzy high school teacher—graying goatee, wiry glasses, mirthful eyes, and an infectious laugh. And he is warm and fuzzy, at ease and joking among the hundred or so people, including more than a handful of his students, who turned up at his reading on a warm Sunday evening. But as he continues, what unravels is a story that is anything but nice—a deeply disturbing tale of a young boy, Nathan, caught in the tight trap of his parents’ poisonous fears.

Prentiss’s voice is quiet and reserved, but enticing as much for what it withholds as what it reveals—I have a secret, and it’s not a pleasant one, and I’m going to let you in on it.

“When I was growing up, my parents invented their own kind of invisible fence for me and my sister. All parents build some version of this fence—never talk to strangers, keep close to home after sundown, that kind of thing. But my parents had a gift with words and storytelling. . .”

The only sound in the classroom is the low buzz of the air conditioning. With barely a hint of what is to come, Prentiss has built his own storytelling fence around his captive audience.

Invisible Fences comes at a time when Prentiss is gaining a significant readership and recognition (he won the 2009 Stoker Award for his short story, “In the Porches of My Ears,” which also appears in the anthology Best Horror of the Year). It’s to his credit that the psychological phantoms that emerge are more frightening than the supernatural monsters or deranged murderers found in much contemporary horror fiction. The fears caging in young Nate are horrifying because they are familiar—dope fiends lurking in our collective childhood woods, waiting to shove syringes full of corruption beneath our skin; a dark stain in the shape of a run-down kid on the street, where the cleanup crews couldn’t soak up all the blood; and the screeching jigsaw in the workshop seemingly begging for a finger to sever. When I was a kid, those phantom fiends and dismembering blades were more terrifying than any ghost, vampire, or boogeyman, and Prentiss skillfully weaves into his tale the barriers that well-meaning adults build to protect their children—and the dangerous results of fanatical over-protection.

Are the horrors within our minds real, and can they attain a form of objective reality? Can ghosts from our past take physical form, or are they phantoms of perception? Invisible Fences doesn’t offer easy answers, but instead plunges us into the disintegrating reality of the grown-up Nathan as he finds himself literally and figuratively trapped in the darkness of his past.

The reading ends with a story told by Nathan’s senile father, a gruesome metaphor for the dark secrets we try to cut away from ourselves, only to find that they always come back. Like any good reader, Prentiss leaves his fans wanting more, and as the line for signed copies stretches around the room, it’s clear they do, indeed, want to discover the rest of the macabre secrets enclosed within Invisible Fences.

Visit the product page for Invisible Fences to learn more about the book or to place your order.

When Jason and I met in 2003, we were both working in high-tech. I was a Microsoft geek, and he was a photography and digital imaging expert for Fuji Film. We were both frustrated artists: Jason wanted to be a filmmaker, and I wanted to use my imagination for something more than just user interface design.

A little over a year later, we moved to Los Angeles to follow Jason’s promotion at Fuji. I worked for a few media related tech companies (one of them a spin-off of the Lucas empire which required me to commute to the Bay Area twice a month), and we worked on amassing equipment and knowledge. Jason had some ideas about the early science fiction scene in L.A. and wanted to write some scripts about it. When we met Ray Bradbury and Forrest J Ackerman at San Diego Comic-Con, it seemed a good time to start. Jason and I thought we should cut our teeth with a documentary, so JaSunni Productions was formed and we started filming some of the genre legends of the area. As our Forry documentary started to take shape, we kept hearing more and more about Charles Beaumont. In fact, so many people told us we should do a Beaumont documentary first that we eventually switched gears.

As we got more into the process, we decided that we needed more time to work on our projects. Jason and I needed to get away from working for other people, and we needed to move away from L.A. for a while. We moved back to Vancouver, WA and made regular trips across the West Coast to finish filming for our documentaries.  During one of those trips, we interviewed George Clayton Johnson, who told us that we should talk to William F. Nolan. “He’s living up there in Bend, Or-e-gon. God knows what he’s doing up there.”

Bill Nolan was one of our last interview subjects, but he has since become a close friend and invaluable resource in understanding “The Group”.  Listening to Bill’s stories and meeting with Roger Anker (the official biographer of Charles Beaumont), gave me enough context to get at the daunting task at hand: turning some fifty-plus hours of raw footage into a movie.

I read somewhere that an experienced editor spends about an hour working on the project per minute of finished film. This was my first feature length project. It took many scrap piles. It took hours and hours and hours of meticulous note taking to log every interview. It took several false starts. It took a few years.

I looked at my role as honing in on the story. Jason set the vision: he had an idea of how he wanted to start the movie (after we scrapped an earlier cut based on feedback from John Tomerlin and a few key others), and he wanted lots of dynamic visuals to break up the talking heads. We agreed that we didn’t want to copy Ken Burns; we wanted something of our own style, and we wanted it to be self-guided without an omniscient voiceover. We wanted it to be intimate, personal – the story of a man.

Contrary to what some critics may believe, I am not a frustrated animator; I’m not all that interested in animation, but I can do it competently if forced – and Jason V Brock can be a damned demanding director. I would no sooner finish a short sequence and show it to him, than he would say, “I like this but can you make it spin around and angle it…” Sure, just give me another four hours and I’ll have that five seconds just the way you want it…

The most enjoyable aspect of working on a film is uncovering the story from the raw footage. Like Michelangelo said about sculpting, “I saw the angel in the marble, and carved until I set him free.”

Jason and I are proud of the result. There’s a beginning, a middle, and an end. It’s a tale of the life of man who was full of drive and passion, and manages to inspire even in tragedy.

But what would the public think? To paraphrase a popular indie film handbook, “You’ve made a movie. So now what?”

We had an early screening of the rough cut (well over two hours long) at the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, OR. The audience seemed to love it. Potential programmers for other venues and festivals wanted it shortened to 90 minutes.  Now we have two versions of the film: we screen the 90 minute version on the circuit and sell the longer Director’s Cut on DVD.

We read many articles and books about promotion and distribution. We watched Official Rejection – a documentary about film festivals. We pondered the issue of where to give up the “World Premiere” cherry.

The Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, CA (part of American Cinematheque) was absolutely perfect! We fit right in with a weekend Charles Beaumont tribute. They believed in us and our film: it was a great feeling and a vindication of years of effort. We lined up a ten day event schedule in Los Angeles, printed posters, postcards, and ruthlessly promoted online. Five days before the event, we visited the theater. We wanted to see the poster on the marquee. We wanted to make sure the Blu-ray copy was playing OK for them. We wanted to pinch ourselves and make sure it was real.

We parked off Hollywood Boulevard, and walked into the courtyard of The Egyptian. Behind the glass, on the back wall, beyond the lights and the red carpet, there it was – Charles Beaumont: The Short Life of Twilight Zone’s Magic Man, on a big movie poster! We checked the schedule: everything was in place. We posed for each other and took photos in front of the placard. We peeked into the glass doors.

Then, from out of nowhere, a very large black man in a tight black shirt with an earpiece started towards us. For a moment, I wondered why the theater needed a bodyguard, and then I realized that there was an entourage gathering at the entrance. They were all wearing tracksuits, one had a giant afro, and there was a tall skinny guy with sunglasses – Snoop Dogg!

“You’ll have to step back, we’re taking some photos here,” said the big bodyguard.

So what’s a woman to do when facing the nerves of a pending movie premiere and being kicked out of the theater by Snoop? I turned to Jason and said, “I want to go find some new shoes…” We managed to make it past the crowd that was now gathering on the sidewalk to gawk at the Dogg posse, and headed down to the myriad of shops.

***

Nearly a week later: it was less than an hour before the official start of the premiere and people were starting to come into the theater for the signing of The Bleeding Edge (the anthology that Jason and Bill Nolan had co-edited, which included new/unpublished content from every living Twilight Zone writer) that had been arranged before the movie.  I stayed busy selling books, jumping up for photos, and greeting authors and guests as they arrived.

Jason and Bill signed copies of The Bleeding Edge along with authors George Clayton Johnson, Earl Hamner, John Tomerlin, and Cody Goodfellow. Marc Scott Zicree mingled and signed copies of The Twilight Zone Companion. Jason was running around like crazy. People kept coming. I kept selling books. More people kept coming.

Later, after an introduction by the programmer for The Egyptian and Aero Theatres, Grant Moninger, Jason went to the front to introduce the documentary and I escorted friends and authors to the balcony. The theater was nearly full (over 400 people turned out). I was amazed at the interest in our little film…

It’s hard enough to walk in stiletto heels, let alone down a carpeted staircase in a darkened theater. I have a secret preference for them I’ll admit, though. “Sunni’s wearing stripper shoes!” William F. Nolan announced as we were all posing in the lobby of the theater for the photographers and moving into the auditorium. Thanks, Bill.

The lights went down, the place fell silent as a five minute preview of our next film, The AckerMonster Chronicles (the Forry Ackerman doc) rolled, and Jason made his way to sit next to me and Diane O’Bannon (wife of the late Dan O’Bannon) in the Egyptian’s amazing balcony. Finally, it was time to start the film. I hoped that the people here would like it as much as at the Lovecraft festival. I crossed my fingers and prayed that any technical difficulties were minor.
The opening credits looked great! The Blu-ray gods were smiling it seemed, or perhaps it was Ray Bradbury’s well wishes from the day before (he was schedule to speak, but was unable to attend due to an injured leg). In any case, it seemed to be playing well. People chuckled at Rod Serling’s snarky remarks interspersed with the beginning titles. I sighed in relief.

There were moments in the movie where I planned to gauge the audience reaction: the part where John Tomerlin is laughing so hard that he has tears in his eyes and he turns to his wife, Wilma and they both smile; the hilarious interchange between Nolan and William Shatner regarding the shooting of The Intruder; the underwater sequence to simulate a near-drowning incident. Would they get it? Would they laugh and gasp and snicker and hold their breath in all the right places?

They did. And it was wonderful.

Afterwards, the theater played George Clayton Johnson’s, “Your Three Minutes Are Up” based on his moving short story about receiving a late night phone call from beyond in which the long-deceased Charles Beaumont encourages George to get back together with the remaining members of ‘The Group’:  William F. Nolan and John Tomerlin.

As the end credits rolled, we took our places at the front of the theater for the question and answer session moderated by Marc Zicree. As I climbed onto a stool, I looked out at the seats. A few people were leaving, but most of the audience stayed to participate (including radio great Norman Corwin and his personal assistant, Chris Borjas). I was shocked at how many people were in the front row – press and media people with cameras and recorders, from American Cinematheque, to the L.A. Times and many genre magazines and web sites! Wow. This was it.

Fittingly, George, John, and Bill – the surviving core group, took their seats alongside me. Marc Zicree introduced us and started the session as Jason came up.

Marc talked about Charles Beaumont and his influence on the genre. George, Bill, and John told stories about the group and how Chuck compelled them to do things. Jason and I related how we came to know them and what it was like to create the movie.

A lot of bulbs flashed. Questions were asked and people were really interested. Afterwards there was a round of applause and a crowd started forming at the base of the screen. We signed autographs and shook hands. We posed for pictures. We set up interviews for later.

We had done it. We had made a movie and had a premiere – and now we were getting a great reaction! We even sold enough books and DVD orders that we actually broke even on the trip. Success. Phew!

But we still have a long road of festivals and special screenings ahead of us, and much incurred debt to satisfy (we completely self-financed the films, and in spite of what people may believe, we’re not wealthy)… Negotiations and legal fees… Late nights screaming at crashing render jobs and fiddling with finicky tape decks…  More flame mail with angry film producers over he-said, she-said insider politics and delicate egos… Tempers have flared, tears and laughter have flowed, feedback has been great, and reviews have been mostly excellent.

But alas, we aren’t out to make a fortune (we’ll never make it back, in fact) or become A-listers (that kind of fame is fleeting anyway). No, we wanted to make an impact on intelligent people and influence the influential. We want to tell stories that need to be told. This is our freshman effort, and we’re proud of it. Is it perfect? No, but what ever is? As Jason likes to say, “Always have a follow-up ready,” and we do have more tricks (and treats) in store.

Stay tuned.

Monday, April 26, 2010, 7:29 AM Update:
As of this morning, Mindy has finished processing all of the “new” US orders since the book began shipping, so we’ll be shipping those orders today and tomorrow.  We are working our way through the thousands of Non-US orders, but it will take time.  Thanks for your continued patience!

Thursday, April 22, 2010, 1o:48 PM Update:
We’re now into “this week” for US orders and also working on the Non-US preorders.  Thanks for your continued patience!

Wednesday, April 21, 2010, 10:31 PM Update:
We are now over 98% done shipping the US preorders and we’ll finish the stragglers tomorrow when we start shipping the “new” orders from this week.  We’ve also started on the Non-US customers.  For Non-US customers, if you originally paid via PayPal you will need to pay your shipping invoice before your copy ships. We will send you that PayPal invoice as we reach your order.  (Credit card orders will be charged automatically as we get to your order. We will contact you if there is a problem with your card.) Non-US shipments will take longer to prepare and process due to the customs paperwork and the additional trips to the post office required to ship them.  Thank you for your patience.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010, 9:44 PM Update:
We are well over 90% done shipping the US orders and we’ve started on the Non-US customers.  We have over 1,000 MORE Non-US orders for this title than we’ve ever had for any book in 22 years of publishing and it will take us time to get through them all.  We appreciate your patience during this process!

Since we were starting on the Non-US orders this morning, it was only fitting that Les Ryan and Ruth Curran from the UK volunteered their services to pack for a few hours since they’re stuck in the States and unable to fly back to the UK.  They were joined by Norman Prentiss again and everyone did a terrific job.

Monday, April 19, 2010, 8:02 PM Update:
Well, we’re not done for the day yet, but I figure now is as good as a time as any to update this page.

The local Postmaster — who, for the record, has always been awesome — went above and beyond today.  He just showed up with a couple of empty mail trucks this afternoon.  We had warned him of how much shipping we’d be doing this week, so he wanted to help make things move as smoothly possible.  In the end, we only had to make one trip in the cargo van and the pick-up truck instead of the 3 or 4 trips we had planned for.  He saved us a lot of time, which we were able to use to process another batch of orders.

Over 5,000 orders went out the door today, but as some people are discovering in their mailbox, we actually snuck about 500 orders to the post office on SATURDAY.  One customer in Oregon somehow received his order this afternoon, which must be a record for media mail.

We couldn’t send shipping confirmation emails for this first batch of orders until this evening, but those emails are sending now.  If you receive a shipping confirmation today, it means your copy has indeed gone out.  If you receive the email tonight and you already received your copy, um… surprise!

Many more orders are going to be shipped tomorrow, which is the official publication date.  In the meantime, here are two shots of Cemetery Dance magazine associate editor (and recent Bram Stoker Award winner!) Norman Prentiss packing in our warehouse.  This is way outside his job description, but he happily drove up from the city to help anyway.

Sunday, April 18, 2010, 9:50 PM Update:
No new photos to post right now, but the tower of shipping containers by the dock door is really impressive.  We’ll make sure we get a shot before we start loading a borrowed cargo van for the many trips to the post office tomorrow morning.  We’ve packed about 4,000 orders now (many for multiple copies) and will be back at it bright and early tomorrow.

Saturday, April 17, 2010, 9:41 PM Update:
We started around 8 AM and most everyone is heading home now.  We are making great progress on the orders (tons of processing is done and over 3,000 copies have been bagged) and we plan another long day for tomorrow.  Please note that it is far too late to combine your orders, etc, and if you call or email asking for an update on where your order is in the process, that only takes away time we could be using to ship your order.  Here are some new photos:

Friday, April 16, 2010 Update:
The books are here, we’re processing paperwork like crazy, and bubble-bagging of the books has begun.  We have over 7,500 individual orders to ship (some for 2 or 3 copies) and we’ll be working all weekend to get them ready for next week.  We have extra help coming in both Saturday and Sunday to assist with the packing process and we plan on working 12 hour days to get a head start on the week ahead.  Below are some photos of the first box of books we opened, a couple of the pallets, etc.

How many living legends can you cram into one small bookstore on a Saturday afternoon? An amazing number, it turns out.

Saturday, February 20^th, 2010 saw legendary writers alongside up-and-comers at the mega-signing event for The Bleeding Edge anthology at Mystery and Imagination bookstore in Glendale, California. Editors (and contributing authors) William F. Nolan (Logan’s Run; he had just received a Lifetime Achievement award from the Horror Writers Association) and Jason V Brock (Charles Beaumont: The Twilight Zone’s Magic Man), hosted the event in cooperation with book shop owners, Malcolm and Christine Bell.

Brock had earlier dedicated the gathering to the memory of Dan O’Bannon (Alien), who contributed to the book and was scheduled to attend the signing before his untimely passing in December 2009. In his stead, his wife, Diane, chatted with all of the writers and the store had a portrait up in his honor.

In attendance were authors Ray Bradbury, George Clayton Johnson, John Shirley, Earl Hamner,  John Tomerlin, Cody Goodfellow, James Robert Smith, and Lisa Morton. Appearances were also made by John Skipp (The Light at the End), Pete Atkins (Clive Barker’s A-Z of Horror),  Dennis Etchison (The Dark Country), Paul G. Bens (Kelland), Paul J. Salamoff (Logan’s Run: Lastday), and many other writers and Hollywood insiders. Although Richard Matheson (I Am Legend) was unable to attend, he received birthday greetings via a phone call.

The event was a huge success, both in sales (nearly 100 copies of The Bleeding Edge were sold!) and excitement (by estimates, over 300 people). It was covered by Famous Monsters of Filmland, and the local newspapers. John King Tarpinian kept the crowd in line with threats of “Soylent Green” for those who didn’t keep the order. Fans were lined up out the door and down the block to get their copies inscribed, as author/fan Paul G. Bens became a volunteer crowd controller, noting that the Fire Marshall was concerned about the throngs of eager patrons jammed into Mystery and Imagination. James Beach, the publisher of Dark Discoveries, was also assisting with crowd control and mingling with the authors and fans.

The Bleeding Edge has been called “A Landmark Anthology” by the genre press, and certainly this was a landmark signing. Ray Bradbury wore his medal for Arts and Letters from the country of France and signed for over two hours while warmly greeting his fans.  Best known for Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and Dark Carnival, Ray invited everyone to attend his musical, Wisdom 2116 playing in Pasadena that evening.

Many fans lined up to see Norman Corwin (On a Note of Triumph), a radio great and contemporary of Orson Welles. The 99-year-old was chipper as ever and also signed copies of his book, Thirteen by Corwin.

George Clayton Johnson, co-author of Logan’s Run, writer of eight episodes of The Twilight Zone, and the first Star Trek original series episode to be aired, sat next to Corwin. The self-proclaimed “Dog without a Collar” greeted enthusiasts with vigor, and signed with his trademark doodle and dated copyright.

John Shirley, whose contribution entailed a ghost that follows a family home from Costco, was equally inundated with fans. Readers also snatched up Shirley’s novel, Bleak History, to get autographed copies.

Co-editor Jason V Brock rounded out the authors at the front of the store. Fans and colleagues congratulated him on the fine book, his editorial debut – and the overwhelming success of the event.

There were so many authors at the event (over 14 including surprise guests), that an additional line was formed for more writers to be seated in the second floor of the store. Upstairs, James Robert Smith, whose novel, The Flock, has been optioned by Don Murphy for a summer tent pole movie release, was blown away by the number of people. Cody Goodfellow (Perfect Union) and Lisa Morton (The Castle of Los Angeles) were equally astonished by the turn out and the company they were keeping.

Earl Hamner (The Twilight Zone, The Waltons, Falcon Crest) enthusiastically penned his name and chatted with numerous aficionados in his warm Southern drawl. John Tomerlin, who helped create The Twilight Zone’s classic, “Number Twelve Looks Just Like You”, signed alongside William F. Nolan. “This is the biggest signing I’ve ever attended for a single book!” exclaimed Nolan. Tomerlin concurred, adding that his hand hurt from signing so many times.

Marc Scott Zicree, television writer and author of The Twilight Zone Companion, noted that, except for Richard Matheson, all of the living Twilight Zone writers were present.  “You’ll never see all these people in one place again,” Marc said to Jason during the group photo session. James Robert Smith kept repeating: “This is amazing! Amazing!”

There will be another signing opportunity for The Bleeding Edge in Los Angeles at The Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, prior to the world premiere of JaSunni Productions’ documentary Charles Beaumont: The Twilight Zone’s Magic Man. The signing will begin at 2pm, with the movie starting at 3pm.

Brock and Nolan plan to follow-up The Bleeding Edge with another anthology based on cross-genre fiction and featuring authors writing out of their comfort zones. The next book is titled The Devil’s Coattails and should go to print Fall of 2010.

Let’s get this out of the way: Under the Dome is not the second coming of The Stand. Both novels have impressive page counts and huge casts; however, there are fundamental differences between them.

King used the entire continental US as his tableau in The Stand, whereas in Under the Dome he is confined to Chester’s Mill, Maine. The Stand was a chess game, with King taking months of story time to maneuver his characters into position.  Under the Dome is a rapid-paced game of checkers—with one piece in the back row already crowned before the start of play.

The books explore good and evil, but in The Stand these concepts were taken to an absolute level. God does not appear in the Dramatis Personae of Under the Dome. The most sincere “religious” character is a minister who doesn’t even believe in Him any more. The town leaders loudly proclaim their faith and “get knee-bound” in times of crisis, but are corrupt and decidedly un-Christian. Not Evil; merely evil.

The mysterious Dome that descends over Chester’s Mill on a sunny Saturday morning in mid-October somewhere between the years 2012 and 2016 is semi-permeable. People can communicate through it, but it is unmovable and, apparently, unbreakable. It isn’t really a dome; it has the same sock-shaped perimeter as the town’s borders with places like Castle Rock and TR-90, and extends upward over eight miles. There is limited air exchange, and a jet of water directed at the outside produces a fine mist inside. The electric lines are down but—thanks to the prevalence of generators in Western Maine—cell phones, cable TV and the Internet all work.

The world is aware of the town’s plight. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper report on the phenomenon from outside the Dome and, later, from Castle Rock after armed forces establish a perimeter.

Though the town’s residents feel like ants under a magnifying glass, they have more pressing worries, like how long will their food and propane last, how will the Dome affect their weather, and when will the air no longer be safe to breathe? Those trapped by the Dome aren’t so different from people stranded in New Orleans after Katrina or on Little Tall Island in Storm of the Century.

There’s price gouging for commodities and a storeowner sells his overstock of questionable, stale-dated frozen food to unsuspecting customers.

These badly behaved people are small potatoes, though, compared to Big Jim Rennie, used car dealer, town selectman and operator of one of the largest meth labs in the country. When (if) the Dome is breached, Chester’s Mills will fall under intense scrutiny. He needs to dismantle the drug lab and return the town’s reserve propane tanks, which he appropriated for his illicit purposes. Like Flagg in The Eyes of the Dragon, Rennie is the power behind the throne, allowing a weak man to take the leadership position on the town council, and forcing through a malleable replacement when the sheriff’s pacemaker explodes after he gets too close to the Dome. He surrounds himself with stupid people who won’t question his orders or motives.

The book’s hero, Dale “Barbie” Barbara, an Iraq war veteran employed at the town diner, was already persona non grata in Chester’s Mill after a run-in with Rennie’s son and other punks. Recognizing his situation as untenable, he was hitchhiking out of town when the Dome appeared. Colonel James Cox, his former commanding officer, reactivates him to duty, and they share intelligence about the situation in the town and external efforts to penetrate the Dome.

One of the book’s themes can be found in the lyrics of a James McMurtry song: Everyone in a small town is supposed to know his place, and everyone supports the home team. When the President declares martial law in Chester’s Mill and installs Barbie as the interim leader, Rennie’s diseased heart goes into palpitations. Outside forces can’t implement this directive, though, so Rennie starts discrediting Barbie while turning the town into a municipal dictatorship. To discourage resistance, he beefs up the police department with ruffians and thugs. He stages riots to demonstrate the necessity of his actions. He also seizes the opportunity to settle old grudges.

Tempers fray as days pass and efforts to break through the Dome fail. People commit suicide. Others die in accidents and altercations, or are murdered when they threaten Rennie’s plans.

A small group of rebels forms around Barbie, including Julia Shumway, owner/editor of the town newspaper. Not only did she not vote for Rennie, she editorialized against him during election campaigns. The previous sheriff’s widow and the Congregationalist minister are co-conspirators. As the situation degrades, other people begin to question their allegiance to Rennie.

King uses the metaphor of addiction to explain the townspeople’s behavior. Anyone can become a drug addict after an injury because the body and the brain conspire to create imaginary pain to rationalize taking more painkillers. Rennie is the town’s brain and most residents go along with his deception. This is the way people like Rennie are allowed to take power, King says. On a larger scale, he might have turned into another Pol Pot or Hitler.

The book is populated with fascinating, three-dimensional characters, including a trio of precocious and resourceful children, two out-of-towners forced to become surrogate parents, a physician’s assistant pressed into running the hospital when the town’s only doctor dies, the owner of a megastore that stocks everything imaginable, an unstable man suffering from a brain tumor, and a few dogs who offer more than comic relief.

Crossovers to other King novels are slight, except for a symbol that should inspire discussions about the true nature of the Dome. Children experience visions of the near future, but there are few other supernatural elements—beyond the Dome itself.

One character with literary ambitions muses about the risks involved in writing a novel. “What if you spent all that time, wrote a thousand-pager, and it sucked?”

King need have no such fears. This thousand-plus-pager most definitely does not suck. For such a massive book it is an incredibly fast and breezy read. It has the urgent pace of Cell without the wonky pseudoscience, and the insightful depiction of small town politics of Needful Things—except the characters in Under the Dome are sympathetic.

It’s not The Stand II, but people who liked that book—or Desperation or ‘Salem’s Lot—will love this one.

•••

Bev Vincent has been writing News from the Dead Zone since 2001. His first book, The Road to the Dark Tower, an au­thorized companion to Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, was published by NAL in 2004 and nominated for a Bram Stoker Award. He contributes a monthly essay to the Storytellers Unplugged, contributed to the serial novellas Looking Glass and The Crane House, and has published hundreds of book reviews and over 50 short stories, including appear­ances in Shivers (vols II and IV), Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Tesseracts Thirteen, Doctor Who: Destination Prague, and this magazine. His latest book is The Stephen King Illustrated Companion, available in November at Barnes & Noble. Visit him on the web at www.bevvincent.com

We received a copy of the brand new Under the Dome by Stephen King Limited Edition from Simon & Schuster today and we thought our readers might enjoy seeing a few photos:

the front cover of this huge volume

the package that held the artwork playing cards

the full color endpaper at the front of the book

Stephen King's signature

The title page and the first exclusive drawing

The drawing of the woodchuck

Madness, Blindness, Astonishment of Heart artwork

The character artwork playing cards.

The back of the cards have descriptions of the depicted character.

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