Sad things have to happen, sometimes. So says Emiliana Torrini, whose song Dead Things is the suggested musical accompaniment to my story Under the Leaves in the current issue of Sybil’s Garage.
I’m in pretty damned good company, too. You can check out the full table of contents, and even purchase a copy of your very own here.
Filed under Short Story News, Writing
Christmas gets twelve days and an advent calendar, but where’s the love for Halloween? Why should St. Nick get all the pre-event buzz when Old Nick’s got a perfectly good holiday worthy of a countdown of its own? (And no, stores putting out their candy and plastic skeletons in July doesn’t count. Same goes for the Christmas trees that come out the second Halloween is over.)
In order to right this grievous wrong, throughout October I will sporadically make various Halloween-related posts in anticipation of the big day. After all, if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing in a half-assed way!
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Filed under Halloween, Recommended Reading
With a title like that, this should be a rant against big bookstores, but it’s really not. I love independent bookstores. I love chain bookstores, too. When it comes right down to it, if you are a place (real or virtual) that is offering to sell me books, chances are you won’t have too much trouble getting me to part with my money. Barnes and Noble, Borders, and Amazon tend to get a bad rap for killing independent bookstores. Borders especially appears to draw a lot of ire. It doesn’t seem reasonable to argue that chains stores in general don’t have an impact on independent stores (usually a negative one), but chains stores aren’t all bad.
I’ve been consistently impressed with the Center City/Avenue of the Arts Borders on South Broad in Philly (here). It’s walkable from my workplace (big bonus points there). They’re clean, well organized, and they have great SF/F section. They seem to be in the process of improving their Horror section, expanding it and making it more prominent, and their Graphic Novel and Manga sections looks freshly reorganized and expanded too. Mass market, trade and franchise/tie-in novels all have their own shelves and they all have roughly equal amounts of space. They also carry quite a few small press titles to boot.
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Filed under Random Rambling
I spend more time than most people thinking about zombies. Possibly not more than the average horror fan, but more than the average non-horror affiliated human being. I pass parked cars at night, and think about zombies crouched in the back seat. I pass closed-up stores and think about zombies waiting to smash their way out through the plate glass. These thoughts entertain me.
The Living Dead, edited by John Joseph Adams, is designed for people like me. If you’re not a zombie fan, this anthology probably won’t win you over. In fact, it doesn’t want to win you over. It doesn’t need you.
Filed under Recommended Reading
