Many colorful descriptors have been affixed to describe the work of ten-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author Joe R. Lansdale, but reigning champion of mojo storytelling (as coined by Lansdale’s friend and webmaster Lou Bark) is the most fitting way to express his dynamic style. Throughout a prolific career, Lansdale has produced an astounding assortment of unique tales gracefully two-stepping between the pulp and the profound. His work is gritty, funny, and violent, characterized by biting dialogue and Lansdale’s ability to seamlessly cross genres while remaining conscious of history and storytelling tradition. Lansdale’s distinct literary voice regales his readers with tales of rough-and-tumble anti-heroes ready to throw down against dangerous criminals, serial killers, and occasional otherworldly monsters running amok in East Texas.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
Interview: Ania Ahlborn
An Interview with Ania Ahlborn
Ania Ahlborn is the bestselling author of the horror thrillers Brother, Within These Walls, The Bird Eater, The Shuddering, The Neighbors, and Seed, and the novella The Pretty Ones. Her latest release is The Devil Crept In, out now from Gallery Books. Recently, Ania was kind enough to take time out from exploring the dark corners of her imagination to share a few words with us.
Interview: Greg Nicotero on Classic Horror and ‘The Walking Dead’
Greg Nicotero is perhaps best known as executive producer, occasional director, and special effects makeup artist for AMC’s The Walking Dead. But this is just the most recent accomplishment in a career that is now in its fourth decade. Nicotero cut his professional teeth in 1985 as an assistant to Tom Savini on George Romero’s classic Day of the Dead and went on to work on a number of late ‘80s horror franchises that have come to define the era. Since that auspicious beginning, he’s gone on to become a legend in the field of special effects makeup (both in the horror genre and in more mainstream fare). Yes, he’s worked with George Romero, Clive Barker, John Carpenter, Don Coscarelli, and Sam Raimi. But (as he discusses in this interview) he’s also worked with Quentin Tarantino and Steven Spielberg. On top of all that, he also co-founded the prestigious KNB EFX Group in 1988, and has won four Emmy awards.Continue Reading
Interview: Victoria Price
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
Miles Hyman: Getting Graphic with Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”
Modern horror wouldn’t be what it is today without the influence of Shirley Jackson’s writing. Her grandson, Miles Hyman, pursued a career in art and has worked on many books and graphic novels, including a recent graphic novel adaptation of James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia, published by Archaia. Now he’s releasing his graphic novel adaptation of “The Lottery,” out from Farrar, Straus and Giroux on October 25, to scare new readers and show old ones a new way of looking at the iconic short story.Continue Reading
Exploring the Dark Side of Sci-Fi with Michael Bailey and Richard Chizmar
Dark 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
‘Con’ Man: Adam Cesare on Fans, Cons and ‘The Con Season’
‘Con’ Man: Adam Cesare on Fans, Cons
and ‘The Con Season’
Adam Cesare’s new novel, The Con Season, is available to read for free right now—well, the first couple of chapters, anyway. If you want to read the rest, you first have to do your part in helping it get published.
Like many authors (such as Norman Prentiss), Cesare is testing the waters of the Kindle Scout program with his latest work. Readers can check out a portion of the book and throw a nomination its way if they would like to see it published. Cesare talks more about the program in our interview, but suffice to say that it’s another innovative approach to publishing made possible by today’s technology.
You can check out The Con Season at Amazon, but before you do, take a few moments and enjoy this chat with Cesare, who talks about the slightly unreal world of horror conventions, the mindset of horror film and literature fandom, and much more.
Continue Reading
Ramsey Campbell on bookstores, scary limericks, and 'The Booking'
Ramsey Campbell on bookstores, scary limericks, and ‘The Booking’
For the third book in the Black Labyrinth line of psychological suspense novellas, Chris Morey, owner/publisher of Dark Regions Press, turned to a master of the form: Ramsey Campbell. It was a move Morey has long envisioned making.
“Ramsey Campbell was a must for the Black Labyrinth imprint,” Morey said. “I knew I wanted an original piece from Ramsey for the imprint on the day that the imprint first materialized.”
Morey got his wish, and earlier this week the preorder period for Campbell’s The Booking began. The story sounds like classic Campbell:
Kiefer is desperate for a job when he comes upon an opening at a curious bookstore in England, BOOKS ARE LIFE. He approaches the owner for a job and gets it, learning quickly that the owner is stranger than the books that he sells in the shop. As he continues to help the bookstore’s transition to the internet, he discovers oddities in the shop and has increasingly strange visions and encounters.
We here at Cemetery Dance Online were honored to get a few words from Campbell on The Booking and its inspiration.
Ramsey Campbell on bookstores, scary limericks, and ‘The Booking’
Ramsey Campbell on bookstores, scary limericks, and ‘The Booking’
For the third book in the Black Labyrinth line of psychological suspense novellas, Chris Morey, owner/publisher of Dark Regions Press, turned to a master of the form: Ramsey Campbell. It was a move Morey has long envisioned making.
“Ramsey Campbell was a must for the Black Labyrinth imprint,” Morey said. “I knew I wanted an original piece from Ramsey for the imprint on the day that the imprint first materialized.”
Morey got his wish, and earlier this week the preorder period for Campbell’s The Booking began. The story sounds like classic Campbell:
Kiefer is desperate for a job when he comes upon an opening at a curious bookstore in England, BOOKS ARE LIFE. He approaches the owner for a job and gets it, learning quickly that the owner is stranger than the books that he sells in the shop. As he continues to help the bookstore’s transition to the internet, he discovers oddities in the shop and has increasingly strange visions and encounters.
We here at Cemetery Dance Online were honored to get a few words from Campbell on The Booking and its inspiration.
Norman Prentiss on "Odd Adventures with Your Other Father"
Norman Prentiss on Odd Adventures with Your Other Father
Author Norman Prentiss has taken his decidedly unconventional road trip/horror novel, Odd Adventures with Your Other Father, and brought it to audiences via a new, non-traditional publishing route: the Kindle Scout program. A little over a month after its official publication on May 31, it looks like the book—and Prentiss’s chosen method of publication—can be called a success: early readers responded favorably to the book, and now it’s opening up new audiences for the talented author. Recently, Prentiss took a few moments to speak to Cemetery Dance Online about his recent Odd Adventures.
(Interview conducted by Blu Gilliand)Continue Reading
Norman Prentiss on “Odd Adventures with Your Other Father”
Norman Prentiss on Odd Adventures with Your Other Father
Author Norman Prentiss has taken his decidedly unconventional road trip/horror novel, Odd Adventures with Your Other Father, and brought it to audiences via a new, non-traditional publishing route: the Kindle Scout program. A little over a month after its official publication on May 31, it looks like the book—and Prentiss’s chosen method of publication—can be called a success: early readers responded favorably to the book, and now it’s opening up new audiences for the talented author. Recently, Prentiss took a few moments to speak to Cemetery Dance Online about his recent Odd Adventures.
(Interview conducted by Blu Gilliand)Continue Reading
Norman Prentiss and Michael McBride: Collaborating on 'The Narrator'
Norman Prentiss and Michael McBride:
Collaborating on The Narrator
The Narrator, written by Norman Prentiss and Michael McBride, was first released by Cemetery Dance in 2014 in a trade paperback edition. Now it’s back in a new digital edition, and the authors took this chance to sit down and look back on their work together.
The Narrator: The children in Julia Linder’s sixth grade class have grown increasingly agitated. The symptoms are spreading and the source seems to be stories that seize upon the children’s deeply seated fears and intensify them….
An Interview with Richard Chizmar and Brian James Freeman: Talking "Odd Numbers" and "How the Wind Lies"
An Interview with Richard Chizmar
and Brian James Freeman:
Talking “Odd Numbers” and “How the Wind Lies”
In April, Keith Minnion’s White Noise Press is publishing a “flipbook” of two stories: “Odd Numbers” by Richard Chizmar and “How the Wind Lies” by Brian James Freeman. White Noise Press produces beautiful, hand-crafted chapbooks in very limited numbers, attractive to own and collect. And as the line-up for this latest chapbook attests, readers get great fiction from well-known genre authors.Continue Reading
An Interview with Damien Angelica Walters: Taming the 'Paper Tigers'
An Interview with Damien Angelica Walters:
Taming the Paper Tigers
Dark House Press will release Damien Angelica Walters‘ new novel, Paper Tigers, on February 29. An author’s life is always extra hectic when a new release is close, so we at Cemetery Dance Online were glad to snag a few minutes with Walters to talk about her latest book and her approach to the craft of writing. We invite you to spend some time with Walters today, and check back on February 22 for an exclusive excerpt of Paper Tigers.Continue Reading