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The Many Covers of John D. MacDonald
Recent years have seen the re-release of a vast number of novels by the great (and currently under-appreciated) John D. MacDonald. Most of these have been from MacDonald’s oft heralded Travis McGee series. Many of the new McGee covers are excellent. Sharp photography, compelling images, great use of color and mood. They certainly catch the eye, […]
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The King of Television: Stephen King on the Small Screen
In a co-appearance event in 2012 the novelist Tom Perrotta said that Stephen King was the one author in America that everyone–readers and non-readers alike–had heard of. Regardless of how you felt about King or his work, you knew his name and you knew his works. Few critics anymore dismiss King’s output, which has been […]
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Oh the Horror! 10 Cloverfield Lane, It Follows and The Resurgence of Horror Film
Is horror finally making a comeback? Horror film has always had a bit of a spotty record. Known more for cheap slasher flicks that appeal to a narrow but aggressively devoted audience, the genre has struggled to produce outright masterpieces. Earlier eras saw ebbs and flows, giving us the consistently brilliant John Carpenter and the […]
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Bradbury Essay Takes Runner-Up in International Essay Competition
Thresholds, home of the international short story forum, has announced that my essay “The Radical Horror and Loneliness of The Martian Chronicles” has taken runner-up in the Thresholds International Short Fiction Feature Writing Competition! The judges noted that the essay was: “A lucid and fresh discussion of the groundbreaking work of Ray Bradbury. It’s reminder of a story’s […]
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Backstabbing, Shagging and Petty Hate: The Casual Vacancy on HBO
Watching the HBO adaptation of JK Rowlings fabulous novel The Casual Vacancy is a very particular kind of pleasure. There is a wincing kind of beauty in the attempt to accurately and honestly portray the most odious and despicable of human behaviors. You want to look away, but only because the arrow lands too close to home. […]
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Story of the Week: “Til Death Do Us” Selected By Horror Novel Reviews
HorrorNovelReviews.com has selected “Til Death Do Us” from my collection The Other Side of the Door: Dark Stories as their Story of the Week for March 14 through March 18. You can read the entire story here: Til Death Do Us. Opening Lines: The box arrived Thursday morning without any kind of label. It was small and […]
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Hemingway’s Library: The Books Papa Bought and Read
Inevitably, every writer is eventually asked what they like to read. Who are the favorite authors? The most beloved books? What would they suggest other writers read? It’s a fine opportunity to lie. Having spent a fair amount of my life around writers and English majors, I can attest to the desire to want to […]
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The Uncanny Shirley Jackson
Recent years have seen a renewed interest in the writing of Shirley Jackson, whose most famous works–the short story The Lottery and the novel The Haunting of Hill House–are well-known classics. Jackson wrote primarily in the short form, publishing stories, tales, essays and reviews in the magazines of her day. Some of these stories found their way into […]
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The Collected Stories of Stephen King: A Speculative Table of Contents
It is a sad truism that while many mainstream literary short story writers eventually publish a Collected or Best Of anthology, very few popular genre writers do the same. In this way, we end up with The Collected Stories of Flanery O’Connor and The Complete Stories of Jorge Luis Borges–both excellent–but sadly no such compilation from a writer like Stephen […]
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Wolfman’s Got Nards! The Decline of Boy Movies
“I never had any friends later on like I did when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?” — The Body, by Stephen King When I was a boy, there existed a particular breed of movie within the genre of coming of age stories. For lack of a better term, I’ll call it the Boy Movie, […]
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The Black Cat Moan 