A Halloween Thing A Day: ‘Season’s Greetings’

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In 1996, Michael Dougherty released a short animated film called “Season’s Greetings,” which introduced a creepy, child-like character with a burlap mask and a love for Halloween. That character was named Sam, and you can see his introduction to the world below:Continue Reading

A Halloween Thing A Day: ‘Monster Problems’

Halloween Thing A Day

Monsters in the closet….monsters under the bed….I think we all, at some point in life, believed in these things. We also believed that certain things would protect us from such creatures: keeping your feet under the covers…night lights…Continue Reading

A Halloween Thing A Day: Silver Shamrock!

Halloween Thing A Day

Happy, happy Halloween, Halloween, Halloween
Happy, happy Halloween, Silver Shamrock!

If you’re a fan of Halloween III: Season of the Witch, you might be
cursing me right now. That little ditty (from the Halloween countdown
commercials that play a huge part in the movie’s plot) is one of the
hardest-to-ditch earworms in earworm history, and I’ve just infected you.Continue Reading

Stars In My Eyes by David Morrell: Signed Limited Edition From Borderlands Press & Gauntlet Press!

We’re pleased to report we will be receiving some copies of Stars In My Eyes by David Morrell, a new SIGNED LIMITED EDITION being published by Borderlands Press and Gauntlet Press:

Stars In My Eyes

Read more or place your order while our supplies last!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and enthusiasm!

A Halloween Thing A Day: Giving Credit to ‘Halloween 4’

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1988’s Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers is neither the most beloved nor the most reviled entry in the franchise. It’s a bit on the bland side for me (Michael’s mask, in particular, lacks any personality whatsoever), but man—I do love these opening credits.Continue Reading

Camelot

End of the Road

“So,” author John Urbancik said as we drove across Florida from Tallahassee to Land O’ Lakes, “let me see if I understand this correctly.” (That’s how John talks. If you’re writing dialogue for John Urbancik, he would never say something like, “Let me get this straight” or “You’ve gotta be shitting me.” He would say, “Let me see if I understand this correctly.”)

“You’re on the second leg,” John continued, “of a book signing tour for The Complex and Pressure. In the first week of this second leg, you’ve been orphaned by the publisher of one of those books, and you’re waiting to hear the outcome of that. You have also seen three previously scheduled signings unceremoniously cancelled by the venues. A bookstore and a vehicle caught on fire, the radiator in your Jeep blew up, and you are running low on money, hope, and gas—and running even lower on fucks to give.”Continue Reading

A Halloween Thing A Day: Neil Gaiman’s “Witch Work”

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Earlier this month, we featured Neil Gaiman, in a graveyard, talking about All Hallow’s Eve. Now, with Halloween peeking around the corner, we return to Mr. Gaiman, broadcasting from the woods on Halloween 2015, reading a poem called “Witch Work.”Continue Reading

Stephen King: News from the Dead Zone #193

Stephen King News From the Dead Zone

Hearts in Suspension-the new Stephen King book that contains his long essay “Five to One, One in Five,” the novella “Hearts in Atlantis,” four of his “King’s Garbage Truck” essays from the University of Maine newspaper, and essays by a dozen fellow students—will be out from the University of Maine Press in a few weeks. The book also contains a photograph and document gallery that chronicles his university years. UMaine will host the book launch on November 7 at the Collins Center for the Arts in Orono.Continue Reading

A Halloween Thing A Day: Is Your Halloween Candy Poisoned?

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poisonAmong the top Halloween urban legends that circulate each year is the idea that the candy your child accepts from strangers while trick-or-treating could be poisoned.

It was in wide circulation when I was of trick-or-treating age; I vividly remember my parents inspecting my candy haul piece-by-piece while I stood by impatiently. Of course, this was back in the ’70s, which means we didn’t have the Internet and we didn’t have Snopes.Continue Reading

The City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin Signed Limited Edition Hardcover Announced Today!

Hi Folks!

We’re pleased to report we have some copies of The City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin left available for the general public, but these will not last long as collectors who bought the previous volumes elsewhere scramble to complete their sets by purchasing these copies at the regular retail price instead of chancing the second-hand market down the road!

The City of MirrorsAbout the Book:
The world we knew is gone. What world will rise in its place?

The Twelve have been destroyed and the terrifying hundred-year reign of darkness that descended upon the world has ended. The survivors are stepping outside their walls, determined to build society anew—and daring to dream of a hopeful future.

But far from them, in a dead metropolis, he waits: Zero. The First. Father of the Twelve. The anguish that shattered his human life haunts him, and the hatred spawned by his transformation burns bright. His fury will be quenched only when he destroys Amy—humanity’s only hope, the Girl from Nowhere who grew up to rise against him.

One last time light and dark will clash, and at last Amy and her friends will know their fate.

Special Features Exclusive to this Collector’s Edition:
• epic cover artwork by Tomislav Tikulin
• at least ONE DOZEN black & white interior illustrations by Jill Bauman
• deluxe oversized design with a fine binding
• Smyth sewn with a bound-in satin ribbon page marker
• extremely collectible print run that is a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands of copies of the edition you’ll see in bookstores — and you will NOT see our edition in chain bookstores!

Read more or place your order while our supplies last!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support and enthusiasm!

‘Pet Sematary’ and Why Sometimes Dead is Better

What I Learned From Stephen King

bookThere is a bit of lore that exists around the origins of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary. It was a novel he never intended to publish, the one he felt was “too dark” to unleash upon us Constant Readers. That is somewhat difficult to believe, considering it was only two years before Pet Sematary’s publication in 1983 that King picked up his typewriter and hit us over the head with Cujo, wherein five-year-old Tad Trenton dies by the novel’s final pages. King has said on numerous occasions that he received a lot of flack for that one, to be sure. One of the most popular questions he would get asked at the time is: Why, Steve, why? Why did you have to go and kill the kid?Continue Reading

A Halloween Thing A Day: Froggy Fresh’s ‘Halloween’

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Hip hop music and horror movies go way back. Sometimes the two came together as a promotional gimmick (see Freddy Krueger’s collaborations with Will Smith and The Fat Boys), sometimes it was a case of an artist paying homage to (or making fun of) the horror icons of their time.Continue Reading

5 Ways to Get Your Halloween Spirit Back: Chasing the Black and Orange Dragon

Paper Cuts

Paper (n): material manufactured in thin sheets from the pulp of wood or other fibrous substances, used for writing, drawing, or printing on

 Cut (v): make (a movie) into a coherent whole by removing parts or placing them in a different order.

Guys and gals, we’re less than a week away from Halloween.

I don’t make the news. I just report it. A week! And while I see that all my horror-loving buddies challenging themselves to watch a horror movie a day, or creating lists for All Hallow’s Read, I myself… I’m…

This is hard for me to admit, but: I’m not feeling it this year. At least not yet.Continue Reading

A Halloween Thing A Day: ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ – Live

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Is it a Christmas movie or a Halloween movie? I know several people who struggle with that distinction, but for me it’s easy: The Nightmare Before Christmas is a straight-up Halloween move, and a very good one at that.Continue Reading

Review: ‘Dream Woods’ by Patrick Lacey

Cemetery Dance Reviews

dreamDream Woods by Patrick Lacey
Sinister Grin Press (October 2016)
318 pages; $16.99 paperback; $2.99 e-book
Reviewed by Frank Michaels Errington

I love amusement parks, especially the old ones from my youth. The local ones were the best, where sometimes it seemed the rides were likely to fall apart while you were still riding them. The ones within an hour’s drive from where I grew up—Lakewood Park, West Point Park, and Willow Grove Park, all in Southeast Pennsylvania. In its dying days, the later was known as Six Gun Territory. I remember they used to have a small wooden coaster, The Scenic; exciting not because of it’s speed or height, but because of the way it always seemed like it could leave the track at any moment.Continue Reading