"Untitled": The Horror Comics Column by Mark L. Miller

“Untitled”: The Horror Comics Column by Mark L. Miller

HouseOfMystery-174Hi there. I’m Mark. Some of you might know me as Ambush Bug at Ain’t It Cool News, acting editor of AICN COMICS and AICN HORROR’s various posts, reviews, interviews, and podcasts. Others might know me as the writer of comic books such as Black Mask’s Pirouette, Zenescope’s Jungle Book, and various other projects. Still others might know me from my day job as a licensed counselor at a residential home for boy and girls in Chicago, the town where I hang my various hats. Whether you know me from these places or are meeting me here for the first time, the only thing you need to know is that I love horror in all forms and when Cemetery Dance approached me to write a monthly piece on horror comic books, you better bet I jumped at the chance.Continue Reading

"Terminal" by Kealan Patrick Burke

Cemetery Dance Online Exclusive Fiction
“Terminal”
by
Kealan Patrick Burke

“So, would you like my number?” she asked.

Perched on the side of the bed with his back to her, the rumpled sheets still reeking of sex, Adam closed his eyes and sighed silently. “Sure,” he said, tugging on his socks. He would give her his number because that’s how these things were supposed to go, but as soon as he was on the road, he would block hers. Getting whiny texts from some air stewardess (or whatever the hell they called themselves nowadays) would be just what he needed when he got home to his wife. Glenda was already suspicious, and with good cause. He had learned to be careful not to bring any evidence of his exploits home with him after the one time she found a pair of pink frilly panties in his suitcase, put there by one of his conquests while he’d been in the shower.Continue Reading

Review: 'Little Girls' by Ronald Malfi

Little Girls by Ronald Malfi
Kensington (June 2015)
384 pages, $10.35 paperback/$9.83 ebook
Reviewed by Frank Michaels Errington

LittleRonald Malfi is the award-winning author of the novels Floating Staircase, Snow, The Ascent, and several others. He currently lives along the Chesapeake Bay where he is at work on his next book.

Laurie Genarro’s estranged father has passed away, an apparent suicide, and Laurie, her husband, Ted, and ten-year-old daughter Susan have traveled from Connecticut to Maryland to deal with the estate. When they pull up to the house on Annapolis Road Susan comments, “It looks like a haunted house.” Little did they know what they’d find.Continue Reading

Review: 'Working for Bigfoot' by Jim Butcher

Working for Bigfoot by Jim Butcher
Subterranean Press (June 2015)
Reviewed by Blu Gilliand

Working_for_Bigfoot_by_Jim_ButcherLong-time fans are likely to be the biggest benefactors of Working for Bigfoot, Jim Butcher’s collected trio of Harry-Dresden-meets-Sasquatch stories, but newbies (like me) may find it the perfect gateway into the world of the author’s popular Chicago-based wizard.Continue Reading

An Interview with Josh Malerman

An Interview with Josh Malerman

Josh Malerman is the author of Bird Box, a standout, Stoker Award-nominated horror debut. He is also the lead singer and songwriter for the band The High Strung. Bird Box continues to receive acclaim and win new fans more than a year after its initial release, and we’re pleased that the author was able to take some time away from preparing his follow-up novel to talk with Cemetery Dance Online.Continue Reading

Horror Drive-In: Reading in Public

HorrorDrive-In-web

Reading In Public

Like most Cemetery Dance readers, I am sure, I rarely leave the house without a book in hand. Sometimes I leave a deluxe edition home and have a travel book to take with me. I guess it is similar to how some people feel about carrying a gun. Better to have a book and not need it, than need one and not have it.Continue Reading

News from the Dead Zone #180: DRUNKEN FIREWORKS Review

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Featured review: Drunken Fireworks

drunken-fireworksThose of us who’ve read our work in public understand how difficult it is to keep an audience engaged for longer than about 15 or 20 minutes. Unless you’re a skilled performer (Tom Monteleone comes to mind among that group), the audience will get restless if you go on much longer than that.

Which is why the producers of audiobooks so often turn to actors as narrators. Or, as in the case of “Drunken Fireworks,” the new audiobook-only story from Stephen King, to someone like Tim Sample, who has produced the “Postcards from Maine” segment for CBS Sunday Morning. Other people in his category who come to mind are Garrison Keillor of The Prairie Home Companion or, a personal favorite, Stuart McLean from The Vinyl Cafe. These are raconteurs, people you don’t mind listening to for extended periods of time as they spin out their stories.Continue Reading

Review: 'White Knuckle' by Eric Red

White Knuckle by Eric Red
Samhain Publishing (June 2015)
Reviewed by Blu Gilliand

whiteknuckleIf White Knuckle reads like the tie-in novel to a classic 1980s slasher flick, it’s understandable – author Eric Red counts the original screenplays for 1980s horror classics The Hitcher and Near Dark among his accomplishments. White Knuckle benefits from Red’s cinematic background, as he tells the story – a rig-driving serial killer plays a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with a determined, if inexperienced FBI agent – at a breakneck pace right from page one.

Continue Reading

Paper Cuts: My Least Favorite Meme

PaperCuts-web

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.

My Least Favorite Meme (and the “Best Movies” Listicle that will Hopefully get You to Read this Article)

Film_Book_MemeDid you know that Facebook has a “I don’t want to see this” button?

It’s true. Using it blocks a specific post from your timeline, but doesn’t unfollow or silence the person who shared it. After the third of my friends posted the meme you see to your right, I started clicking that button. Liberally.

Continue Reading

CemeteryDanceOnline.com Launching Today! Horror Columns, Reviews, Interviews, Short Stories, and More!

LAUNCHING TODAY! SURPRISE NEW WEBSITE!
Cemetery Dance Online Will Feature Horror Interviews, Essays, Columns, Short Fiction, Reviews!

Hi Folks!

The staff of Cemetery Dance Publications would like to invite you to visit CemeteryDanceOnline.com, our new website where we’ll be posting free reading material including interviews, essays, columns, short fiction, reviews, and other items of interest to horror fans!

Think of this as a free online version of what we’ve been doing with Cemetery Dance magazine since 1988. The magazine isn’t going anywhere, but we always have a lot more great material submitted to us than we can use in a print magazine, so this gives us a new venue to publish that material — plus much, much more!

Cemetery Dance Online

Read more at CemeteryDanceOnline.com and let us know what you think!

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

Welcome to Cemetery Dance Online!

Hi Folks!

Cemetery Dance LogoThe staff of Cemetery Dance Publications would like to welcome you to Cemetery Dance Online, our new website where we’ll be posting tons of free reading material for all kinds of horror fans including interviews, essays, columns, some short fiction, and book and movie reviews. Think of this as a free online version of what we’ve been doing with Cemetery Dance magazine since 1988. The magazine isn’t going anywhere, but we always have a lot more great material submitted to us than we can use in a print magazine, so this gives us a new venue to publish that material — plus much, much more!

Blu Gilliand of October Country fame is the managing editor of Cemetery Dance Online and he’s working with a great group of columnists and contributors to provide you with new reading material every week. We don’t want to ruin any of the surprises, but there are some very exciting free reads in the works.

To be notified of new posts, please enter your email address in the subscription box on the RIGHT and click SUBSCRIBE. This mailing list is separate from any Cemetery Dance Publications list you might already be on and will only be used for CemeteryDanceOnline.com updates.

(If you’re on the mobile version of the site, you’ll want to look for the subscription box down at the bottom of the page.)

Stay tuned because we have a lot of irons in the fire and we have big plans for this website. Thank you, as always, for your continued support and enthusiasm!

— Brian James Freeman

Working Stiff: The Special Edition by Kevin J. Anderson

Working Stiff: The Special Edition
by Kevin J. Anderson

Signed Special Edition From Gauntlet Press!

Hi Folks!

Working StiffWe’re pleased to report we’ll be getting a handful of copies of the signed special editions of Working Stiff by Kevin J. Anderson from Gauntlet Press, and we don’t expect these to last very long!

About the Book:
Back from the dead… and back on the case!

Even being murdered doesn’t keep a good detective down, and in the Unnatural Quarter—inhabited by ghosts, vampires, werewolves, mummies, and all sorts of creatures that go bump (or thud!) in the night—a zombie P.I. fits right in. Dan Chambeaux, a.k.a. “Shamble,” solves a string of madcap cases with his ghost girlfriend Sheyenne, his Best Human Friend Officer Toby McGoohan, and his firebrand lawyer partner Robin Deyer.

WORKING STIFF contains seven cases from the files of Chambeaux & Deyer Investigations. Dan Shamble has to solve the mystery of a stolen deck of fortune-telling cards and the undeath-defying feats of a vampire trapeze artist, finds himself sealed in a coffin in the back of a truck with no idea where he’s being taken, and is even hired by Santa Claus to find his lost ”
naughty and nice” list. Being trapped in an unbreakable monster-proof crypt, deciphering a string of mysterious zombie graffiti, investigating the murder of a costumed fan at a science fiction convention where the monsters are the normal attendees, or tracking down a kidnapped hellhound for legendary vigilante werewolf cop Hairy Harry—it’s all in a day’s work for Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I.

Both editions contains an all-new story not included in the original edition of Working Stiff, an introduction by the author, and an Afterword by Jonathan Maberry.

Both editions will also include the only print appearance of the original 42-page comic script of the Dan Shamble and Kolchak the Night Stalker crossover story from Moonstone Comics, written by Kevin J. Anderson and Richard Dean Starr. Kolchak is used to people skeptical about his newspaper stories about monsters. How does he handle a case with a real zombie PI?

The lettered edition also includes the never-before-published pitch and treatment optioned for a Dan Shamble television series.

Read more on our website or place your order while supplies last!

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

The Night Listener and Others: Special Edition From PS Publishing in the UK!

The Night Listener and Others
by Chet Williamson

Special Edition From PS Publishing in the UK!

Hi Folks!

The Night ListenerWe’re pleased to report we’ll be getting a handful of copies of The Night Listener and Others by Chet Williamson from PS Publishing the UK and we don’t expect these to last very long!

About the Book:
Chet Williamson’s first story collection, Figures in Rain, won the International Horror Guild Award and was shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award. But while that collection was primarily made up of ghost stories, The Night Listener and Others is an assemblage of tales that cover all aspects of the fantastic and horrific by a writer whose work critics have favorably compared to such disparate writers as Camus, Cheever and King, and who Supernatural Literature of the World hailed as “the rare writer whose fiction reflects an intimate familiarity with the supernatural literary tradition, and who extends it with works that occasionally subvert its principles.”

In these pages you’ll meet a number of “night listeners,” including:

Eustace P. Saunders, a New York illustrator whose desire to see the “real” Wild West he has depicted plunges him into unimaginable horror…

Bernie Worster and Jeaves, whose master/servant relationship takes the strangest of turns, due to a razor dedicated to decapitation…

Lattimore, whose guilt and sorrow over lost lives lead him into a mythical Japanese underworld that threatens his sanity and reality itself…

Andy and Kyle, teenagers who are waiting in a hospice for Kylie to die, but who learn that going “into the light” might be the worst thing you could do…

Tim Corcoran, an Irish-American musician who learns that in certain places old hatreds never die, but linger like smoke to claim new victims…

As R.C. Matheson states in his introduction, “Chet Williamson transcends the taxidermy that passes for much of contemporary writing, stirring admiration in peers, famished demand in readers and cloudbursts of devout ink from critics. For those privileged few lucky enough to be new to the miraculous Chet Williamson, you are about to enter worlds of glorious and sinister wonder. I envy you.”

Read more on our website or place your order while supplies last!

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