The Cemetery Dance Interview: Revisiting Richard Chizmar

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Richard Chizmar
Richard Chizmar

On the heels of reading Cemetery Dance’s recent publication of Stephen King: Revisited Volume One, I was loaded up with tons of questions, the first of which was who would be daring enough to go back in time and re-read every Stephen King book in order of publication? Richard Chizmar, that’s who. As a best selling author and publisher of Cemetery Dance, Chizmar has published several King stories and books over the years and would not only become a friend of King’s but also a collaborator who’s written books with King — the Gwendy trilogy. So yes, I was curious to chat with Rich about his take on King over the years given his unique perspective.Continue Reading

WIN a $20 Gift Certificate from Cemetery Dance!

cover of Widow's PointTo celebrate the Spooky Season, the Kindle version of Widow’s Point by Richard Chizmar & Billy Chizmar is on sale for a limited time for only 99 cents! If you’ll help spread the word, you could win a $20 Cemetery Dance Gift Certificate.

All you have to do is use the widget below to tweet about the 99 cent sale. The more you tweet it through this widget, they more points you earn, and the better your chances to win! This special promotion runs until October 28th. Thanks, and good luck!

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Exhumed: Bonus Content! Me & CD, a Brief History of an Unlikely Love Affair

banner reading Exhumed - The Fiction of Cemetery Dance by K. Edwin Fritz

Exhumed is my humble attempt to read and review every short story and novel excerpt ever published by Cemetery Dance magazine. In their 33+ years of publication, there have been a total of 577 (and counting!) pieces spread out over 77 issues. Since each Exhumed post covers just two stories (one “old” and one “new”), I think I’m going to be doing this for a while. I sure hope you’ll join me along the way. And, by the way, I’m always looking for requests, so go forth and comment which story you’d like me to unearth.

Normally at this point I’d jump into the nuts and bolts of the stories I’m reviewing this time around, but this time around I have something very different for you. In recent months I’ve had several people ask how I can review the really old stories when those issues are so hard to find. Do I own them all? Does Cemetery Dance hook me up? It’s a great question with a rather complicated (and, dare I say it, entertaining) answer.Continue Reading

The Cemetery Dance Interview: Richard Chizmar Talks Button Boxes and Boogeymen

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Richard Chizmar
Richard Chizmar

If I have to tell you who Richard Chizmar is, it’s possible you fell down a worm hole to arrive in this place of unknown origin and are now understandably questioning every major life choice you made that brought you screaming to a halt to this exact moment in time and space.

Of course, not only is Rich the founder and editor extraordinaire of Cemetery Dance (yup, this place) but he’s also the publisher of several books via the CD banner. Oh, and he also happens to be a best-selling author himself. Recently, Chasing the Boogeyman, a metafictional masterpiece of a thriller, has been and continues to be extremely well praised by readers and critics alike. On the heels of that success, Rich also saw the light of publication for the third and final instalment of the Gwendy trilogy with Gwendy’s Final Task, which he co-wrote with his pal and yours, Stephen King.Continue Reading

Bev Vincent explores Gwendy’s Final Task

Stephen King News From the Dead Zone

“The Tower Is Strong”

There’s a lot going on in Ben Baldwin’s artwork on the cover of the Cemetery Dance edition of Gwendy’s Final Task, coauthored by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar. The dominant figure is the enigmatic Richard Farris, who has burdened Gwendy Peterson with custody of a mysterious and dangerous box of buttons on two previous occasions. In the foreground we see an illustration of a town or a city and what looks to be a rocket or a shooting star.

But what’s that behind Mr. Farris? Could it be…could it possibly be…the Dark Tower? This image generated a lot of discussion and debate when it was first revealed. The Gallery Books cover for the final book in the Gwendy trilogy puts the question to rest—the central image is the Tower and, in the foreground, a field of red roses.

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Stephen King: News from the Dead Zone #227

Stephen King News From the Dead Zone

Happy New Year to all my readers. It’s been a while since my last news update, primarily because there hasn’t been a lot going on in the Stephen King Universe. However, I now have some cool things to talk about, so pull up a chair.
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Stephen King: News from the Dead Zone #213

Stephen King News From the Dead Zone

Sometimes it’s hard to stay on top of everything that’s going on in the Stephen King Universe. There are so many projects underway or about to get underway or that could possibly some day get underway that it boggles the mind. This is a new Golden Age for King, especially when it comes to the various adaptations of his work to screens large and small, silver and otherwise. I’m here to help you keep track!
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Stephen King: News from the Dead Zone #212

Stephen King News From the Dead Zone

Sometimes it’s hard to stay on top of everything that’s going on in the Stephen King Universe. There are so many projects underway or about to get underway or that could possibly some day get underway that it boggles the mind. This is a new Golden Age for King, especially when it comes to the various adaptations of his work to screens large and small, silver and otherwise. I’m here to help you keep track!
Continue Reading

10 Horror Authors — One Exquisite Corpse

Exquisite Corpse: an old parlor game in which players take turns writing on a sheet of paper folded to conceal part of the writing, and then pass it to the next player for another contribution. The results of the first use of the technique was a sentence in French: “Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau,” meaning “the exquisite corpse will drink the young wine.” — Artopium

On Friday, October 19, Serial Box presents its latest literary experiment, a terrifying celebration of Halloween featuring 10 award-winning horror authors playing a game of Exquisite Corpse. This multimedia storytelling event will see a new, FREE episode released each hour between 11 a.m. and 8 p.m. EST. Readers can sign up for this special email list which will not only let you know when the story begins, but will provide chances at all kinds of free horror goodness — think stickers, promo codes, signed books and more!Continue Reading

Review: Silverwood: The Door

Review by Blu Gilliand

There’s collaboration, and then there’s art by committee.

Art by committee rarely works. The committee might have formed in order to pursue a common goal, but it’s typically made up of people with different agendas and different ideas on how to reach that goal. These individuals are often more interested in how this committee is going to elevate them to the next, more important committee than whether or not this committee achieves its goal.

Collaboration also involves individuals working together in pursuit of a common goal, but the difference lies in the approach. Collaborators blend their ideas and visions and voices in service of that goal. The idea isn’t to stand out, but to choose the right ingredients to achieve the best possible end result.

Silverwood: The Door is a collaboration…and a successful one, at that.Continue Reading

Silverwood: The Door – An Interview with Richard Chizmar

Silverwood: The Door is the follow-up to Silverwood, an original video series from Tony Valenzuela’s Black Box TV (episodes are available on YouTube). Brian Keene acts as showrunner for a writers room featuring Richard ChizmarStephen Kozeniewski, and the Sisters of Slaughter – Michelle Garza and Melissa Lason. The result is a 10-episode series, released in weekly installments in both prose and audiobook formats beginning in October.  The team promises a mix of horror styles encompassing slashers, splatterpunk, psychological, Lovecraftian, and more.

Richard Chizmar is a New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Amazon, and Publishers Weekly bestselling author. He is the co-author (with Stephen King) of the bestselling novella, Gwendy’s Button Box. He has edited more than 35 anthologies and his fiction has appeared in dozens of publications, including multiple editions of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and The Year’s 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories. He’s also an accomplished screenwriter and the founder/guiding force behind Cemetery Dance. Recently, he took on another project: answering these questions about his work on Silverwood: The Door.

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Serial Box, Brian Keene introduce new fiction series SILVERWOOD: THE DOOR

If you follow Brian Keene on social media, you probably noticed he’s been teasing us all a lot lately. I don’t mean teasing in a mean, name-calling, bullying kind of way; I mean he’s been dangling a mysterious new project in front of us like a carrot on a stick. Finally, during a May 11 telethon that featured a rap battle and Keene wearing tights, among other things (oh, and that raised over $21,000 for the Scares That Care charity!), the beans were spilled: Keene has joined forces with Serial Box and a room full of talented horror writers to produce a new prose fiction series called Silverwood: The Door.Continue Reading

Stephen King: News from the Dead Zone #197

Stephen King News From the Dead ZoneThere’s been so much news lately, I hardly know where to begin. What merits top billing? Let’s start with that trailer for It. First we had a teaser for the trailer, that stirred up interest. And then we got the 2-½ minute trailer itself, and boy what a beauty that was. In its first 24 hours, it racked up an astonishing 197 million views around the world, smashing all previous records. That speaks a lot to anticipation for this movie.Continue Reading

Interview with Stephen King and Richard Chizmar

Constant Readers the world over are rejoicing over the news that Stephen King is returning to Castle Rock, the small town he created, nurtured and nearly destroyed in works such as The Dead Zone, The Dark Half and Needful Things. Joining him as co-writer of the new novella “Gwendy’s Button Box” is Cemetery Dance founder and publisher Richard Chizmar, fresh off his successful short story collection A Long December. Recently, the two authors answered a few questions from our Bev Vincent about their highly anticipated collaboration.Continue Reading

Exploring the Dark Side of Sci-Fi with Michael Bailey and Richard Chizmar

YouHumanDark Regions Press has enlisted Bram Stoker Award-winning editor Michael Bailey to christen the new Dark Regions Sci-Fi imprint with You, Human, a genre-bending anthology of dark science fiction and poetry. The collection, featured as part of an Indiegogo campaign (which also seeks to produce Return of the Old Ones: Apocalyptic Lovecraftian Horror and The Children of Gla’aki: A Tribute to Ramsey Campbell’s Great Old One) is illustrated by world-renowned artist L.A. Spooner, with poetry and spot illustrations supplied by Orion Zangara.

The campaign is entering its final days, and stands very close to its funding goal as of this writing. We were able to send a few questions to Bailey and one of You, Human‘s contributors, Cemetery Dance’s own Richard Chizmar, about their journey into the dark side of sci-fi.Continue Reading