Still a few months to go before Full Dark, No Stars is published. However, Scribner has posted an excerpt from “A Good Marriage” which should whet your appetite for the collection. Craig Wasson (who was the reader for Blockade Billy) and Jessica Hecht will read the audio version, to be released simultaneously with the hardcover. There was a report that King would narrate introductions to each story, but the galleys don’t have story intros, just an afterward.

Remember Wilma (“Just call me Billy, everyone does”) from Creepshow, as portrayed by Adrienme Barbeau? That segment was based on the short story “The Crate,” originally published in Gallery magazine and later collected in a couple of anthologies around 1980-81. The story will see the light of day again in the CD anthology Shivers VI, which is bound for the printer next week. In addition to this relatively rare story, the anthology contains a Peter Straub novella and fiction from other familiar names, including yours truly.

King’s cameo appearance on Sons of Anarchy will air on FX on his birthday, September 21. His character’s last name is an homage to Richard Bachman.

King will be appearing at The New Yorker Festival on October 2nd, 2010. He will be part of a panel discussion on vampires along with Noel Carroll, Matt Reeves, and Melissa Rosenberg, moderated by Joan Acocella. Click here for more information about the Festival.

After the current Gunslinger series finishes from Marvel, there will be a single issue in November focusing on Sheemie Ruiz called Sheemie’s Tale. “This is the story of one of the more powerful breakers in Thunderclap: The mentally handicapped, formerly mute young man known as Sheemie. He possesses the awesome power to shatter the very Beams that hold the Dark Tower in place—the fulcrum of existence itself. But Sheemie does not want to destroy the underpinnings of reality. He is in the prison of Devar-Toi and all he wants is his friends—his ka-tet to come for him. And one of them is coming for him even now. One of them known as the last gunslinger, Roland Deschain. And not all the horrors of Thunderclap will stand in his way! Presented by those twin titans of Marvel’s Dark Tower books—writer Robin Furth and artist Richard Isanove. It’s a journey of searching and salvation you won’t soon forget.”

Time is running out to get your photo submissions in to Stephen’s Empire.

Here’s a neat story about a Canadian musician who got permission to set the words of Sara Tidwell from Bag of Bones to music: Stephen King takes shining to Toronto blues singer.

Recent Entertainment Weekly columns:

• Stephen King on the ‘Blood’s a Rover’ audiobook
• How “Armageddon” Anticipated the BP Crisis
• The Most Obnoxious TV Commercial. Ever.
• Stephen King’s Must Reads
• Rush Limbaugh vs. Lindsay Lohan

When I was a kid, I had a couple of recurring dreams. One of them involved surviving (and sometimes not surviving) a full-on zombie apocalypse. The other involved the Giant Dipper, the great old roller coaster at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.

And, yep, for you fans of eighties horror movies, that’s the same roller coaster in The Lost Boys. My dream had nothing to do with teenage vampires, though. In it, some friends and I were making the slow, initial ascent along the steep grade at the beginning of the ride, gearing up for the big plunge which set the coaster into overdrive.

Except that’s not the way it worked in my dream. Halfway up the track the Giant Dipper started to sway. Quicker than you could scream “Earthquake!”, we knew that we were in trouble. Our car stalled out. Old white-washed two-by-fours creaked beneath us like an arthritic skeleton. Nails screamed and boards started splintering. Scrambling, my buddies and I piled onto the track and started pushing the car to the top of the grade, figuring our only chance of survival was getting it over the hump, jumping back in, and riding the roller coaster to safety before the whole thing collapsed like a pile of Pick-Up-Sticks. In my dream we’d put our shoulders to it and muscle that car, and we’d work against gravity, and we’d gain inches and backslide feet and start again. Sometimes we’d make it, and sometimes we wouldn’t. In that way, I guess the odds of surviving crumbling roller coasters and zombie apocalypses are a lot alike.

Anyway, the last few days I’ve been remembering my roller coaster dreams as I work on a novella. At first I thought it would be a short story — hoped so, anyway, because I had already jumped the deadline — but then it turned into something bigger. Which is kind of like setting out to build a carny ride and building a Giant Dipper instead. Still, I kept at it, hammering up two-by-fours, slapping on white paint, doing some John Henry action nailing down steel rails… In other words making progress, but a little bit too slowly to make me happy, and with too much uncertainty to let me rest easy at night.

Oh, I’d done all right up to a point. I’d laid track for half the story. The plot was going fine, and the characters were developing nicely. An aside: I’m one of those guys who figures out how to write a story by doing just that — writing. I don’t necessarily know a lot going in. Usually I start off with the seed of an idea, or maybe an opening image enticing enough to start me looking for the tale that goes along with it. I play with those initial bits of inspiration, and I wait for the creative cylinders to fire in my imagination that’ll give me more.

Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. If things take off, I settle in and keep at it line by line. I tend to write stories in sections that are two to five pages long, and I craft the early ones as if I’m building a foundation, and then a framework. I outline as I go, jotting notes on 3″ x 5″ catalog cards I’ve scavenged from library jobs (yes, I believe in recycling). Most of these notes focus on plot and character. But as I get in further into a piece, I begin to look for something else… something that will stitch together the aforementioned elements and jolt enough lightning into the whole enterprise to make the story’s blood start pumping.

I don’t like to define what that something else is too exactly. Oh, I could try. I could crank out some terms from Lit Theory 101 and toss them your way, but those always seem a little antiseptic to me. Or too specific. Let’s just say what I’m looking for in that something else is the heart of the story. Beating, bloody, and alive. And, hey, I admit that’s a little visceral, but that’s the way I like it (which is probably no surprise considering that so far in this essay my Metaphorical MixMaster has churned up zombie apocalypses, roller coaster calamities, and even John Henry — all I can say is, at least I’m sparing you any boxing metaphors this time out).

Anyway, that something else is what every story really needs. Plot is fine, so is character, but the heart is what the story’s really about. It’s what makes the other elements live and breathe. And while the heart may develop from the plot or the characters, I don’t necessarily hear it pumping until I’m well into a tale. Working that way can be kind of scary, like performing an operation when I can’t even feel the patient’s pulse.

Which means that sooner or later I have to get in there with the literary equivalent of a defibrillator to get things pumping. And that’s why — for me, anyway — writing the first half of a story is usually a lot harder (and slower) than writing the second half. To get back to my dream of the Giant Dipper, it’s like that long and desperate slog pushing the roller coaster car up the grade, muscling it towards that exhilarating race down the other side that ends with this writer’s two favorite words: The End. For me, that slog is the hardest work there is in writing, and the most frustrating. Plus, there’s no way around it. Either I find the story’s heartbeat and muscle my roller coaster car over the hump, or I don’t… in which case the tale hits the dead file, making the sad transition from “work in progress” to “story fragment ready to join yesterday’s coffee grounds in the garbage pail, along with that tuna-fish can the cat licked out.”

That’s the uncertain territory I’ve been charting with this novella for the last week. It stalled out on me, but I kept my shoulder to it and kept pushing. Even in moments when I wasn’t rereading the manuscript, the story didn’t stray far from my thoughts. I spent several days looking for its heart. Rereading what I’d already written. Thinking about the situation I’d set up. Thinking about the characters I’d created, and who they are, and where they’re going, and why. Thinking about sound and fury (because there’s a lot of that in this story), and what it should signify, and what an empty deal the whole tale would amount to if I couldn’t get a clue about that.

And that’s when I started to hear the first murmur of a heartbeat. The story takes place in the old West, and it’s about a group of characters looking for a mythical place that may or may not exist… a cave where dead men hunger for the blood of the living and humans are treated like so much cattle. Fifteen pages in, I had my guys sitting around a campfire out in the desert, listening to the youngest among them tell a story about the place. He’s the only one who claims to have been there, the only one who knows (at this point in the story) whether the cave is real or not. That’s the scene where I hit a wall, and my unlikely band of adventurers sat there for several days waiting for me to push their story forward. The wind whipped around them and the campfire crackled, and I hunted for words right along with the narrator. I thought about those men — the preacher, the bounty killer, the blacksmith, the dynamite man, and the kid with the scorched face who earns his money telling stories in a bar. And it was that last thing that finally struck home. Because each of those characters had his own story, but for a couple of them those stories were a kind of currency. I thought about that currency, and — most importantly — how those two men used it. And pretty soon I began to hear a heartbeat out there in that desert, and that’s when I knew I’d found my tale.

Right now, I’m hearing that heartbeat loud and clear. So let me say adios and get back to work. I’m over the hump. It’s time to pile into my metaphorical MixMaster of a roller coaster alongside John Henry and those post-apocalyptic zombies, and take it for a ride.

Here are specs for this edition:

This Deluxe Lettered Edition of The Secretary of Dreams (Volume One) is limited to only 52 signed and lettered copies.

This special edition features:

A handbound custom Lettered Edition:
*  black Italian lambskin on spine and corners
*  brown Skivertex Sanigal, Oxford embossing, aqueous coating, for front and back covers
*  Lokta pinto olive paper endsheets manufactured in Nepal
*  pages edged in gold gilding
*  hot-stamped, blind embossed with clear foil on spine
*  custom black imprinted image on cover
*  smyth sewn with cotton thread
*  skrimmed with cotton hinge cloth, sewn headbands and black silk ribbon page marker
*  a unique dustjacket with a different design than the Gift and Limited Editions

A handmade custom clamshell box:
*  burnt-orange baroque satin lining
*  wrapped in a “green” ecological, recycled paper, manufactured in New Hampshire, Safari Elk color
*  box made from 100-point recycled chipboard, manufactured in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
*  hot-stamped, blind embossed with clear foil on box top

Here are some photos, including a shot of all three editions of the book and another shot of the traycase with a Blockade Billy, just to give you an idea of how massive this edition is!

As we come to the fifth in this interview series, I find that I have run dry on the self deprecating quips with which I usually open. Therefore, please mentally fill in the joke of your choice, although I should remind you, if you do it, then it is hardly self-deprecating.

Al Sarrantonio has made his mark in the horror genre both as a writer and a skilled editor. His anthology 999, which won the Bram Stoker Award, is recognized as one of the classics in the field, and he has delighted readers with a series of Halloween-themed books. His latest offerings from Cemetery Dance are Halloween: New Poems, and Stories, edited with Neil Gaiman.

Joe Howe: Your latest book from Cemetery Dance is Halloween: New Poems. Tell us a little about it.

Al Sarrantonio: The goal with this one was simple: to put together a book of brand-new poems about Halloween, something that’s never been done before. Luckily for me, everyone I asked came through. I even persuaded Joe Lansdale to write some poetry—something he’d never done before! And, being Joe, he not only did a great job, but he managed to imbue his half-dozen contributions with the same edge he shows in his fiction. And the book ended up exceeding my hopes as far as format goes—oversized, beautiful cover art by Alan Clark and magnificent interiors by Keith Minnion. These two guys never cease to amaze. I do think anyone who picks up this book will take it down and re-read it every October.

JH: In addition to Halloween: New Poems, you are also the author of Halloween and Other Seasons, Hallows Eve, Halloweenland, and several other stories with a theme centered on the greatest of holidays. Other than the obvious, what is it about Halloween that attracts you as a writer?

AS: Halloween is an iconic time of year, a bridge between hot (summer) and cold (winter) and a hinge on which the entire calendar turns. The present children’s holiday is fascinating enough, but the ancients were very serious about this time of the year, and infused it with a lot of magic, religious significance, and mysticism. If that ain’t fodder for a writer’s imagination, I don’t know what is.

JH: You recently co-edited Stories with Neil Gaiman, and you are known as one of the best editors of anthologies in the field, with 999 being high on the list of indispensible horror anthologies. How do you go about making sure that your anthology will stand out from the crowd?

AS: I don’t do anything but my job as an editor, which is to buy the best stories I can get my hands on, and then present them in an order which is pleasing to the reader. Everything else—and I mean EVERYTHING—is in the hands of the contributors. I’ve been extremely fortunate to work with some of the finest writers in the business, and they always seem to come through. Which makes me lucky and happy as hell.

JH: You’ve also written several books in the science fiction field. How do you go about adjusting from a horror mindset to more scientific orientation?

AS: It’s not much of an adjustment. All of my sf has been of the science fantasy kind, and I manage to mingle some horror elements with the rest of it. Science fiction was my first love, and I just can’t let it go. I’m particularly proud of my Five Worlds trilogy, which had a LOT of horror in it. One of the main characters, the Machine Master of Mars, had his lips snipped off by his brother, whose essence is encased in a huge ant-like carapace!

JH: In an age where the short story is increasingly rare compared to the more lucrative novel length, you are one of the few authors who is just as prolific writing short stories and novellas. Do you feel that one length or another better suits your style?

AS: I like ‘em both, but approach them differently. To me, the short story is an art form with particular demands. Every word counts. Novels provide a broader landscape, and you can wander a bit and stretch out. I’m very serious with short stories. Novel-wise, I tend to smile a bit more.

JH: Finally, what projects lie in the near future for you?

AS: Another anthology is in the works, as well as a new Novella Series book from Cemetery Dance (centered on Halloween, of course). New short stories will be popping up here and there, I can never stop writing those. Looks like my story ”Pumpkin Head” will be made into a short film in the near future. Perhaps a new novel, which is just beginning to take shape. In other words, more of the same—which I hope is a good thing!

Joe Howe was born, raised and lives in Alabama and has been a horror fan since he read his first book—Dracula. When not wasting your tax money as a government employee, he reviews good books and (mostly) bad movies on his website http://deadinthesouth.blogspot.com as his web alter ego Kent Allard. He previously worked as a history professor and a lawyer, and has already heard your lawyer joke.

Hello again from (Global-Warming-is-Alive-and-Well-in) Oregon.

During the hot days of summer, I often dream about the fall. Things like the leaves changing color and the smells of baked goods wafting from the kitchen warm my heart. Brian James Freeman’s latest, The Painted Darkness, has caused this longing for cooler days to increase, but it isn’t what I am going to write about today (although I do recommend that you go and “Download the Darkness” right now…I know that I am one of the over 10,000 who have). With the fall comes pumpkins and scary masks. With the fall comes Halloween. The horror-lover’s holiday of choice. Cemetery Dance is known for their releases related to the holiday. Creepy Halloween covers from Alan M. Clark, Glenn Chadbourne, Alex McVey, and more fill their catalog and delight me every time I see them on my shelves. The announcement of Norman Partridge’s upcoming collection, Johnny Halloween: Tales of the Dark Season, thrilled me to no end. Every year I make a special TBR (“to be read”) pile just for the month of October for my own little countdown to All Hallows’ Eve. During July, I received a book that would have normally gone into that pile, but I couldn’t help myself and had to read it right away. So, I spent the night reading the oversized loveliness of Halloween: New Poems edited by Al Sarrantonio.

This is the book that every horror fan who loves the “Orange and Black” season needs to have.  Ranging from beautiful to horrific, and senses-filling to fun, the poems in this volume are tiny masterworks. No, you won’t find your kid’s Dr. Seuss or Jack Prelutsky type of poetry in here. There are no limericks, very little rhyming (and the rhyming that is there will lure you in with a false sense of security), and only one haiku that has a perfectness to it all its own. This is the more mature side of poetry, but the fun is still in there. You may even find a few that you’ll want to read aloud before letting your little critters go out to Trick-or-Treat (or before they try to sleep the night before)…if they don’t scare too easily (Warning: make sure you read them first too).

I was so inspired by my reading of Halloween: New Poems, that I thought about writing my little column as a poem, but I got as far as “The season of Samhain is upon us” (see below), and then thought better of it. Ha ha.

I was very excited to get this book because it contains a lot of my favorite authors doing something that I’ve never really seen from them before. Poetry. Joe R. Lansdale, James A. Moore, Al Sarrantonio, Peter Crowther, T. M. Wright, David Niall Wilson, Steve Rasnic Tem, Brian Freeman, Elizabeth Massie, Gary A. Braunbeck, Lucy A. Snyder, and all of the rest writing poems about the ultimate time of year, Halloween. Awesome!

One nice thing about this book is that you can crack it open anywhere and just start reading (except for a couple of multi-page poems and a 23 page poem toward the end).  Another cool factor is that the editor put the poems into sections. Do you want to read poems about “Ghosties?” Turn to page 72. “Pumpkins?” Go to page 27. Each section is preceded with some amazing black and white artwork by master illustrator Keith Minnion. This was a great choice and a lot better than having him illustrate the individual poems, which are art themselves. Any kind of direct illustrations would possibly take away from the reader’s own images that the poems create. The Alan M. Clark painted cover captures the “collection of Halloween” feeling that the book contains.

I don’t know if Cemetery Dance asked him, or if he asked them, but Al Sarrantonio was a masterstroke of genius for this collection. He is an award winning anthologist (see 999), and he dwells in the autumn season in his delightful Orangefield Cycle series of books. His books, like Halloweenland, have sections that describe the sights, sounds, and smells of Halloween like a prose poem. This made him perfect as a choice to compile and edit Halloween: New Poems.

You will find yourself coming back to this book every year around October 31st. It really captures the Holiday spirit, and it will re-invigorate your love of the fall season. If you trust your friends and family, you can even leave it out on the coffee table for their enjoyment. You will treasure it, and you will love it. Hopefully, it will be in your October TBR pile every year. I know it will be in mine.

Horror Enthusiast bonus: A poem for you from me because I was so inspired by Halloween: New Poems to do so. No, sadly, this one isn’t in the book, but it is free for you right now.

“Halloween: A New Poem (inspired by Halloween: New Poems edited by Al Sarrantonio)”
by Robert Brouhard

Sharp
and icy fingers
prick your spine.
Tormented
boney bodies
rattle in your mind.
A tome
of dark orange pleasure
is read by a crackling fire.
Ghoulish creepies
knock
upon your door.
Their cemetery song and dance
of, “Trick-or-treat”
scratches your ears.
The season of Samhain
is upon us.

Robert Brouhard is first and foremost a reader. His poetry has been published in Death in Common edited by Rich Ristow, and he has sold other poems that will be published soon. He has only recently worked up the guts to start submitting his short stories around for possible publication. In life, Robert has been a singer in a band, a music store clerk, a pizza delivery boy, a health food store employee, a cubical worker, a family man, and more. He sometimes reviews books at HorrorDrive-In.com and does random things, including interviews with his favorite authors, on his blog at http://bookembob.blogspot.com/

Below are photos of the “test” copy, which passed our inspection with flying colors, and our slipcase manufacturer is now rolling on the real run.  We expect to have the cases by the end of August and we’ll begin shipping them right away.

Once upon a time, bookselling was an honored profession. There were booksellers’ guilds, long periods of apprenticeship, and specialized training programs. Antiquarian specialists learned everything from how to identify scarce first editions to how to describe the various parts of a book in detail.

And then the Internet happened.

Now don’t get me wrong, usually I think the Internet is a great thing. It’s become the most useful research tool in history. But research is like alcohol: When misused, it becomes a plaything of the devil.

In the past, only a bookseller could ascertain the true value of a rare book; a good bookshop had shelves of auction records, dealer catalogs, and other reference materials they could refer to. Usually, years of experience and acquired knowledge were enough.

Now, of course, we often just use an online reference (addall.com’s used books metasearch engine is our preferred tool). But the problem with that is…so does Joe Blow down the street now. Joe, in his infinite wisdom, goes to Amazon (because, of course, they are the only real bookseller in the universe), sees a copy of his book listed for $500, and immediately shows up at our front counter demanding same. And when we try to explain to Joe that: 1) his copy isn’t a first edition, 2) is not even close to the fine condition of the $500 copy, 3) is available for $5 from dozens of other sellers, and 4) is a retail price and not what he’d get from us even if the book were worth that…well, Joe’s not interested.

Because he saw it on the Internet.

So, the next time you use the Internet, remember that it’s like alcohol: Use both responsibly, and don’t drink and price.

Interviewing authors is a tough job. Matching them drink for drink in sleazy bars, violent confrontations when the questions probe too deep, making permanent enemies. Well, I mean, it isn’t that way for me, I just sit here in my comfortable chair and ask questions of gracious and accommodating authors, but for those poor souls who are assigned Nicholas Sparks or Stephanie Meyer, they’re gonna lose some teeth. (Just kidding, Twilight fans. Please don’t burn down my house.)

Welsh author Tim Lebbon has been making waves in the horror field since the publication of his first book Mesmer in 1997. His awards for his fiction include the Bram Stoker Award (for his short story “Reconstructing Amy”), the August Derleth Award (for his novel Dusk) and the Scribe Award (for the novelization of the film 30 Days of Night). His current release from Cemetery Dance is the short story collection Last Exit for the Lost. Tim lives in Monmouthshire with his family, and took time from his busy schedule to answer a few questions.

Joe Howe: Your recent collection from Cemetery Dance is Last Exit for the Lost, 19 of your shorter works in a 560 page volume. Tell us a little about this book.

Tim Lebbon: It’s my first collection since 2003’s White And Other Tales Of Ruin (which was a novella collection from Night Shade Books), and collects my best short fiction from 2000 to 2006, as well as the novella “In Perpetuity”from Night Visions 11. It also contains “Pay the Ghost,” which Dennis Iliad is soon to direct for Sidney Kimmel Entertainment. I don’t write nearly as many short stories as I used to, which is a shame because I love doing them, so this collection is a bit of a milestone, and I’m very excited to see it out at last. Even though timewise it stops around 2007 (when the two original stories were written), it gives a pretty good cross-section of the sort of stuff I write. If a new reader asks “what should I read of yours” I usually point them to one of my collections, and now there’s this new one to share. There’s a new collection coming soon from PS Publishing, too, collecting my work from 2006 to 2010 (with some original work on there). I suspect that might be the last for a few years…

JH: In a recent discussion I had with a friend about your work, we agreed that you are one of if not the best contemporary writers when it comes to novella-length work. Not to slight any of your other stories, but would you agree that the novella seems to bring out your best, and if so, why?

TL: Thanks, that’s very kind of you. I’m very proud of my novellas, and I’ll be writing more in the near future. I’m not sure why it is that they seem to have more of an impact than my novels, and to be honest trying to analyze this troubles me. I guess sometimes in my novels, a weakness of mine is detailed plotting and seeing the big picture. I hate planning a book, so I usually head in with an idea and see where it takes me. With novellas, it’s easier to do this and come out the other end unscathed, because although the ideas can sometimes be as complex as those for a novel, getting there is quicker.

I’m also quite an impulsive writer—and very fast, once I’m in the flow of a story—and I think an intensive writing period suits a novella more than a novel. If it’s flowing well, I’ll write a novella in a week then be exhausted. Not so easy to remain as focused and energized for the duration of a novel.

JH: You are the most prominent Welsh writer of horror and fantastic fiction working today, in a lineage that goes back to the great Arthur Machen. In past times, the English viewed Wales as a land of dark magic and sorcery (see Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I). Is there something in Wales and being Welsh that lends itself to dark and fantastic fiction?

TL: Machen is one of my favorite writers, so thank you. Wales is certainly steeped in history, myth and legend, and perhaps that bleeds from the rocks into the writers who live here. As for me, I’m deeply affected by landscape, and the place where I’m lucky enough to live has some of the most beautiful countryside in the British Isles. I take daily walks in the local woodland, and that certainly recharges batteries and sometimes helps me see my way past, or through, a problem I might have come up against in my writing. From my front window I can see the Sugarloaf mountain, a beautiful scene. I’m very lucky. I’ve always been interested in humankind’s interaction with the natural world, and I guess living where I am, I’m well-placed to see many of the effects.

JH: You are a prolific writer. At what point in your career did you look at what you had written and say “I am a professional writer, and this is my future”?

TL: Making the transition into doing this for a living was a very gradual process. I guess I’ve known since a very early age that I’ve wanted to be a writer, and I worked hard at it all through my twenties, seeing short stories, novellas and my first novel or two published. I’ve been earning a living doing it for almost eight years now—four of them still doing some part-time work, and the past four years writing full-time. It has its pressures—my first month without a paycheck was a bit of a shock—but the positives outweigh the negatives by about, ooohhhh, seventeen million to one.

JH: You are from the UK, but a sizeable proportion of your audience seems to be in America. Do you find that some themes don’t translate as well across the Atlantic, and do you find yourself tailoring your work for those of us who spell “colour” without the “u”?

TL: I certainly don’t tailor my work any particular way, I just write the story I most want to tell. My first few horror novels were set in the UK and published in the USA by Leisure Books, and ironically my new SF/horror novel Coldbrook was first sold in the UK, and is set almost exclusively in the USA. Locations suit the story, or the idea. There’s that interesting language barrier that pops up in editing sometimes, and my good friend and collaborator Chris Golden often screams at me “turn on US spelling, for f***’s sake!” I keep it off just to annoy him. I like him having to cut out all those ‘u’s

JH: What should we look forward to seeing from Tim Lebbon in the future?

TL: Right then…

Out on 27th July (the day before my birthday!), the new Hidden Cities novel with Chris Golden, The Chamber of Ten, and next year sees the fourth book, The Shadow Men. Later this year Bantam will publish my new stand-alone fantasy novel Echo City, and Orbit will publish that in the UK next year. Also next year comes Coldbrook in the UK, a huge SF horror novel. And then HarperCollins in the US will publish the first book of mine and Chris Golden’s series The Secret Journeys of Jack London, called The Wild. This has also sold to Fox 2000, and Chris and I are writing the screenplay right now. There’s another movie going into production this fall, Pay The Ghost (mentioned above). There’s a collection and a novella from PS Publishing, and a few other things still under wraps. Busy times ahead, but exciting times too.

JH: Thanks, Tim.

Joe Howe was born, raised and lives in Alabama and has been a horror fan since he read his first book—Dracula. When not wasting your tax money as a government employee, he reviews good books and (mostly) bad movies on his website http://deadinthesouth.blogspot.com as his web alter ego Kent Allard. He previously worked as a history professor and a lawyer, and has already heard your lawyer joke.