Review: ‘The End of Halloween: Four Tales of All Hallows’ Eve’ by Greg Chapman

Cemetery Dance Reviews

The End of Halloween: Four Tales of All Hallows’ Eve by Greg Chapman
Self Published (September 2016)
60 pages; $1.99 e-book
Reviewed by Frank Michaels Errington

halloweenWriter Greg Chapman loves Halloween. Not exactly a bold statement; the man is a horror writer, after all. What makes this interesting, however, is that Greg is from Australia, where Halloween is not nearly the big deal it is in the United States.

In his novella length collection of short fiction The End of Halloween: Four Tales of All Hallows’ Eve, Greg writes with the passion of a long-time devotee of the holiday on which Americans are expected to spend 8.4 billion dollars in 2016.Continue Reading

A Halloween Thing A Day: Ray Bradbury’s Halloween Tree

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From Ray Bradbury’s The Halloween Tree:

ray-bradbury-halloween-tree-wide-night-mThey rounded the far side of the house and stopped. For there was the Tree. And it was such a tree as they had never seen in all their lives.

It stood in the middle of the vast yard behind the terribly strange house. And this tree rose up some one hundred feet in the air, taller than the high roofs and full and round and well branched and covered all over with rich assortments of red and brown and yellow autumn leaves.

“But,” whispered Tom, “oh look. What’s up in that tree?” For the Tree was hung with a variety of pumpkins of every shape and size and a number of tints of hues of smoky yellow or bright orange.

“A pumpkin tree,” someone said. “No,” said Tom. The wind blew among the high branches and tossed their bright burdens, softly. “A Halloween Tree,” said Tom.

And he was right.

Continue Reading

Looking Back on Scares That Care 2016

Horror Drive-InA funny thing happened at Scares That Care Weekend 3. I was in the Celebrity Room, and I noticed something. The room was laid out with media personalities all around the perimeter, against the walls. Writers were mostly in the center. It occurred to me that, at least at the moment in question, there were more people engaging in conversations and sales with authors than with the actors and such.Continue Reading

A Halloween Thing A Day: Halloween Urban Legends

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What better time for urban legends—those unproveable, often unbelievable tales that get passed from generation to generation, surviving despite their inherent absurdity—than Halloween? Continue Reading

Interview: Victoria Price

Cemetery Dance Interviews

Victoria Price (Photo Copyright Robert Cushing)
Victoria Price
(Photo Copyright Robert Cushing)

Decades before the Dos Equis commercials, Vincent Price was “the most interesting man in the world.” Or at least, in my world.

I think I was six or seven when I first saw him on TV. Was it his guest appearance as a sinister archaeologist on an after-school rerun of The Brady Bunch? Or maybe some Saturday afternoon when the late, lamented channel 48 in Philadelphia showed House of Wax as part of Creature Double Feature? I can’t say for sure.

All I know is that he made an impression. Having grown up in a working class family where the dial was set to pro wrestling more than PBS, I wasn’t introduced to that many examples of erudite sophistication. And while Price’s filmography is certainly rife with camp, that wasn’t clear to me as a kid. What was clear to me was that Vincent Price played educated characters. Often artistic or scholarly characters. His film personas may have given me the first examples of such people.Continue Reading

SIX SCARY STORIES selected by Stephen King FIRST PRINTING Selling Out Pre-Publication!

IMPORTANT NEWS FOR COLLECTORS!
SIX SCARY STORIES
Selected and Introduced by Stephen King!

1st Edition, 1st Printing Hardcover Selling Out Pre-Publication!

Hi Folks!

We have some exciting news about SIX SCARY STORIES selected and introduced by Stephen King! Orders from our distributors are arriving faster than we can keep up, and it looks like the 1st Edition, 1st Printing Hardcover Edition will be SOLD OUT pre-publication! We do not yet know if we’ll be running a second printing, so this is the time to place your order if you want to add this edition to your collection!

Six Scary StoriesAbout the Book:
Number 1 bestselling writer Stephen King introduces and presents six gripping and chilling stories in this captivating anthology!

Stephen King discovered these stories when he judged a competition run by Hodder & Stoughton and the Guardian to celebrate publication of his own collection The Bazaar of Bad Dreams. He was so impressed with the entries that he recommended they be published together in one book, which Cemetery Dance Publications and Hodder & Stoughton are pleased to report has become a reality. The six stories are:

WILD SWIMMING by Elodie Harper
EAU-DE-ERIC by Manuela Saragosa
THE SPOTS by Paul Bassett Davies
THE UNPICKING by Michael Button
LA MORT DE L’AMANT by Stuart Johnstone
THE BEAR TRAP by Neil Hudson

Reader beware: the stories will make you think twice before cuddling up to your old soft toy, dipping your toe into the water, or counting the spots on a leopard…

Read more or place your order on our website!

 

 

A Halloween Thing A Day: 18 Haunting Costumes of the Past

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People spend a lot of money these days to put together scary Halloween costumes. From deluxe masks to professional-grade makeup to screen-ready clothing, it’s easy to drop a bundle if you really want to impress the people at your office costume contest or neighborhood block party.

Back in the day, though, costumes were usually homemade, often assembled with little know-how and not much in the way of supplies. And the effect, in many instances, was far scarier than anything you can buy off the rack today.Continue Reading

A Halloween Thing A Day: Do-It-Yourself Scary Skull

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Plastic skulls. Ceramic skulls. Candle holder skulls. Skulls that talk. Skulls that glow when you plug ’em in. Right now, you can find just about any kind of skull you want to add to your Halloween decorations.Continue Reading

A Halloween Thing A Day: Anti-Halloween Propaganda

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I think it’s safe to say that the people coming to this site every day to read 0ur stuff (and thanks to all of you for doing so) love Halloween. But, uh, not everybody does.Continue Reading

A Halloween Thing A Day: Vincent Price Reads “The Raven”

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Edgar Allan Poe is one of the first masters of horror, and, in my opinion, “The Raven” is his masterpiece; for years, it has been captivating and haunting readers with its sense of loss, unease, and mounting dread.Continue Reading

BRAND NEW Cemetery Dance Select Series Announced!

Cemetery Dance Select Series
Signed Limited Edition Hardcover Starter Bundle!

Receive ALL SIX of the launch titles for
this new series as they are published!
Save BIG off the retail price AND your shipping fees,
plus lock in matching numbers for your entire set!
Launch Titles Already 60% SOLD OUT!

Hi Folks!

Due to customer demand, we’re thrilled to announce our Cemetery Dance Select Series, an exclusive new line of signed hardcover Limited Edition books published by Cemetery Dance Publications!

Cemetery Dance Select SeriesEach volume features three to five short stories personally selected by the author as his or her favorites from a lifetime of work. Long-time fans will enjoy revisiting some classic tales. New readers will find this series a handy introduction to each author’s best work. Each volume also includes an exclusive afterword where the author explains the reasoning behind each selection, and provides insights into the writing of each story.

These signed Limited Edition hardcovers feature some of our lowest print runs ever and will be hand-numbered to increase the value of a complete set, so we expect this series to be a huge hit with collectors!

* The first six titles in this new series will be:

Cemetery Dance Select: Michael Marshall Smith
Cemetery Dance Select: Lisa Morton
Cemetery Dance Select: Terry Dowling
Cemetery Dance Select: Kealan Patrick Burke
Cemetery Dance Select: Peter Atkins
Cemetery Dance Select: Jeff Strand

* Special “Starter Bundle” Offer to Launch Your Collection and Save Your Budget!

Although each title can be ordered separately for the retail price of $30 plus shipping, for a very limited time only, you can reserve ALL SIX of these launch titles for one low price — plus, with this deal, you only pay a one-time heavily-discounted shipping fee that is considerably less than the shipping fee you would pay on individual orders. This is a great way to start your collection and save big at the same time!

Also, even though you’ll pay a much lower shipping fee with this bundle, each title will still ship to you as it is published — no waiting for all of the books to be ready!

So with this deal you’ll save big off the retail price, and even bigger off the shipping cost, and… maybe best of all… you’ll instantly lock in your book number to make your entire set more collectible! Whatever your book number is for the first title, you can continue to receive that number for as long as you want, which will help make your set even more valuable down the road!

We do not expect these very limited bundles to last long, so if you’re interested, please place your order today! After they’ve all sold, we won’t offer more!

Read more or place your order while our supplies last!

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

Brian Keene’s End of the Road: Balance

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Welcome to End of the Road, a nine-month weekly column in which I talk about my ongoing cross-country promotional tour for my new novels Pressure and The Complex. If you’re just joining us, a quick recap—everything was going swimmingly and our hero was triumphant until he received a dire warning from what is either a) the spirit of his deceased best friend, or b) his subconscious tricking him into thinking it is the spirit of his deceased best friend. Since that warning, things have gone from swimmingly to terribly awry. Our hero—having consumed two bottles of bourbon after learning that a) a major signing has been cancelled, and b) he is now orphaned at his mainstream publisher (who published one of the books he is currently out on the road promoting)—is currently passed out in a hotel room in Chattanooga. We now rejoin the column, already in progress…Continue Reading

New CemeteryDance.com Website Updates & Features!

New CemeteryDance.com Website Updates & Features!
IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ!

Hi Folks!

We’re extremely pleased to report that the new CemeteryDance.com is running at just about 100% now. We’re still tweaking a few things, but in the meantime, here are some really important notes to keep in mind about the new website:

* Please do not worry that your “Order History” in your “My Account” is empty. That is a huge database that will take several weeks to be moved from the old server and imported to the new store. Regardless, the website is not how WE track your orders. We have an offline order management system that downloads the orders from the store, and that’s where we keep track of what you have on order, etc.

* When you redeem your Gift Certificates on the new website, the credit is instantly added to your customer account, so you do not need to redeem your Gift Certificate again on future orders! Your “store credit” will already be there in your account, just waiting for your next order.

* We’re adding some really neat photo features including multiple photos of products, so you can get a better sense of the look and feel of new books. You can click on any of the images to see them larger, too. Visit the Cemetery Dance #74/75 product page or the Darkness Whispers product page for an example of this feature in action.

* CemeteryDanceOnline.com is now part of CemeteryDance.com and growing faster than ever! Check it out today!

* There will be more new features to come, so please stay tuned! Thank you, as always, for your continued support and enthusiasm!

Visit the new CemeteryDance.com to get a feel for all of the changes!

A Halloween Thing A Day: All Hallows Read

hthing_bannerWe all have our Halloween traditions, whether it’s reading certain books, watching certain scary movies, having friends over for a bonfire, setting up a haunted house in your garage…we all have those things we anticipate each year as the scary season rolls around. A few years back, on his blog, Neil Gaiman proposed people adopt a new Halloween tradition: giving someone a scary book to read.Continue Reading

The Mad Monk of Comics: The Life of Alan Moore

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alanmooreWith the Killing Joke movie selling like proverbial hot cakes, DC has managed to prove that what might be too risky for big screen adaption is a welcome addition to adult animation. Almost 28 years after the initial release of the graphic novel, the storyline is still considered one of the most pivotal stories in Batman history and has not only redefined the Caped Crusader but launched (with other notable works) the career of Alan Moore. But who is Alan Moore? What motivates the author to get up in the morning and what secrets does his beard keep? While we probably won’t know the answer to a lot of questions thanks in part to his propensity for being mysterious, we can at least look back at his history and make some educated guesses. Continue Reading