Television writer Michael Dempsey turned novelist with NECROPOLIS, a sci-fi/noir blend published by Night Shade Books. Its protagonist is alcoholic NYPD detective Paul Donner, who, after dying … well, let’s let the author take it from here in this guest feature:

Paul Donner was a Brooklyn police detective who got dead — shot to death in a “random” crime. But 50 years later, Donner was back — revived courtesy of the Shift, a process whereby inanimate DNA was re-activated. This new “reborn” underclass was not only alive again, they were growing younger, destined for a second childhood. The freakish side-effect of a retroviral attack on New York, the Shift had turned the world upside down.

Quarantined in Necropolis beneath the protective geodesic Blister, clocks ran backwards, technology was hidden behind a noir facade, and you could see Elvis at Radio City Music Hall every night. In this unfamiliar retro-futurist world of flying Studebakers and plasma tommy guns, Donner took on the toughest case he’d ever had: solving his own murder.

But along the way, an unusual romance blossomed between Donner and his holographic “Girl Friday,” Maggie. Donner took a moment to jot down some tips for other reborns like himself who might be new to the romantic ins and outs of dating artificial women:

• • •

Finding out I’d been murdered, then becoming a hated “reeb” detective in some strange retro future where everyone talks like a reject from a Raymond Chandler novel … well, it took the wind out of my sails at first. I mean, a dead mafia stool pigeon I could handle, but guns that fired plasma bullets? I handled it bad at first … too much hooch, too many smokes (I know, I know, they’re illegal — so drop a dime on me to Surazal security, why don’t you?)

On top of that, I met Maggie and was suddenly forced to ponder the subject of dating artificial women. (And I’m not talking about the inflatable kind you get by mail order.) Maggie’s a smarty, of course — local parlance for an artificial intelligence. I learned the hard way that smarties have their own peculiarities, which humans don’t always tumble to. So for all you reborn skirts and shirts out there, here’s my two cents on the subject:

Smarties are people.

If you can’t get past the biological/spiritual/philosophical issues of what AIs are and whether they’re “alive,” stick with humans. Look, I sympathize — I wrestled with this, too. You flirt with her and she blushes. Is it a galvanic skin response triggered by a true emotional reaction, or some clever mechanical facsimile? But all the second-guessing eventually drives you crazy. We’re machines, too, aren’t we? Just biological ones. And who the hell knows what’s “real” anyway in this crazy world? So dive off the high board. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. Date the duck.

Smarties being people also means that they have feelings. They feel anger and confusion and fear, and they cry when you act like an asshole. So don’t act like an asshole.

Avoid smarties who won’t physicalize.

AIs can incorporate in several formats. They can exist simply within the mainframe of a computer or a smart device, as a holographic projection, or as something called a tensile hologram. I had to pick my jaw up off the floor the first time I saw Maggie strutting around a downtown bar in full 3D. In this form, they look, sound and feel the same as you or me. That’s what you want. It’s tough enough to deal with the idea of a person that can morph into whatever shape they want or exist as a floating shadow, so if the AI babe you have your peepers set on isn’t comfortable spending most of her time with two arms, two legs, a head and all the other necessary female attributes, move on. (Oh, and like humans, smarties are conceived down to the genetic level as either male or female, so you don’t have to worry about a smarty fiancée who suddenly decides she wants to be a dude.)

Don’t ask her about her orb.

Tensile holograms can move about freely because they project the nanobits of plasma and light and whatever else makes up their physical form (I’m no scientist) from a floating orb inside themselves. It looks like a grapefruit-sized ball bearing, but you’ll probably never see it. Smarties are very sensitive about their orbs. To them it’s the equivalent of their heart and soul. It’s a personal issue they generally don’t share with humans, so no matter how curious you are, avoid the topic unless she brings it up. But should she be comfortable enough to raise the issue — buddy boy, you’re in like Flynn! It means she really trusts you. In my adventures, I had the experience of having Maggie materialize around me, with me holding her orb against my chest, and well … It was the most intimate moment of my life.

Be confident.

Women like confident men. Smarty women go beyond this — they simply don’t understand men who are insecure about themselves. Think about it. Clearly a smarty woman likes the way she looks, because she chose that look! And she knows she’s intelligent — there’s no such thing as a stupid smarty. (If she’s giggling, batting her lashes and doing the dumb broad routine, it’s an act. Flee.) So be confident. But skip the macho routine — they don’t like it, and despite being pacifists they could break you in half anyway, so leave your inner caveman at home.

There are times, though, when a smarty can be as insecure as any human female. Maggie stammered and fidgeted like a school girl around me at first — not because she didn’t feel she was interesting and attractive, but because she was afraid that I wouldn’t find her interesting and attractive. If that sounds like a contradiction, welcome to the wonderful world of the female.

Be honest about yourself.

If you’re a reeb, be a reeb. I know this is hard in a city where Surazal security could drag you into an alley and beat you senseless just because you came back from the dead, but it’ll go a long way to demonstrating you have the self-confidence necessary to keep up with your date. You have white hair, black fingernails and golden eyes. So what? Skip the contacts and the Just For Reborn Men hair color kit and you’ll earn extra points. Plus, smarties have senses so attuned that they’re pretty much walking lie detectors anyway, so they’ll catch you in a fib every damn time. So if you’re thinking about setting up housekeeping with a bimbo chippy on the side in some secret Hell’s Kitchen cold water flat, think again, soldier.

Don’t try to impress her with your technical savvy.

You might think throwing around phrases like “nanoplasmatic membrane” and “buckypaper lattice” will demonstrate that you’re sensitive and deeply fascinated by what it means to be an AI, but she knows more about what makes her tick than any human ever will, so nix the techno-babble small talk. Too her, it’s just a load of hooey. Besides, the Singularity Point that was the threshold of sentience in machines is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, anyway. So stick to things you know. Unless it’s sports or hunting. Smarty women don’t get sports or hunting.

Make sure she’s not a fleshpot freak.

Smarties come in all types, just like humans, and while they’re all nonviolent, some of them can still be a little … twisted. They can develop sexual fetishes, and some of them get really hung up on having sex with humans — “fleshpots,” as we’re sometimes called by the cruder AIs. A smarty who’s only into you because you’re biological is not the basis for a healthy relationship. You wouldn’t want a human girl who only screwed midgets, would you? Don’t be a sap.

Oh, and stay away from holowhores. The idea of a women who will look like, and do, whatever you want may sound appealing, but you just feel cheap in the morning.

Learn how to make love to a hologram.

That’s really a whole other article, but suffice it to say, there are similarities and differences, and you’d better know what they are. The good news is, there are more similarities than differences. The bad news is, if you haven’t located the human clitoris yet, you’re gonna be shit out of luck with smarties, too …

Leave the bling at home.

So you wear the town’s nattiest snap-brim fedora, carry a nickel-plated snub nose .38 and tool around in a maglev Studebaker with chromium pylons. So what? Smarty women aren’t impressed with material possessions. They don’t need you to take care of them, or keep them in mink stoles, or be a good provider for a harem of kids. They’re as independent as modern human females, and there’s not even any vestigial DNA instinct urging them to find the alpha male. They care about deeper things. For some reason, Maggie took a shine to me, and it wasn’t because I’m the high pillow or drive a fancy flivver. She claimed it was because I have this schoolboy reverence of truth, justice and the American way. I smirked and replied, “That’s me. Supercorpse. Up, up and decay.” She liked that. Smarties have great senses of humor.

Compliment her clothes.

She’s a smarty, but she’s still a woman, right?

So there you go. I’m just a small-time shamus learning his way around again, so I’m no expert. But it’s what I’ve learned. Now I’ve got to go find my murderer. And make him pay.

And brother, he will pay. —Michael Dempsey

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William Peter Blatty’s novel THE EXORCIST recently earned a hardcover reissue from HarperCollins in a 40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION. To celebrate, a few BOOKGASM staffers weighed in on their experiences with the book and, naturally, the Oscar-winning movie it spawned. Turns out we need to read more.

I’ve never seen THE EXORCIST. And I realize that makes me a giant pussy. I started watching it once. At a Halloween party in high school (circa 1987). And it scared the shit out of me. I’ve heard all about the pea-soup vomit and the spinning-head stuff — the stuff that entered the pop-culture lexicon and, if you really think about it, it’s pretty effed up that it did, you know? 1973 was strange, glorious times.

I am easily disturbed. I’d watch a great white shark eat poor little Alex Kintner on a 24-hour loop if I could, and I got a huge visceral kick (pun intended) watching Ryan Gosling stomp a dude’s head in during DRIVE last year. But the super-creepy, disturbing stuff crawls under my skin and I just can’t take it. Not even naked Maria Bello has gotten me to watch any David Cronenberg after suffering through EXISTENZ and I don’t know if I’ll try THE EXORCIST again anytime soon.

It scared the shit out of me so much that I’ve never finished watching it — that may be the best possible compliment one can give a movie like it. —Brian Winkeler

• • •

THE EXORCIST is a story that I’m only familiar with in regards to the movie. Never read the book, and never had a desire to read the book. I’ve had people tell me that the movie scared the bejeezus out of them, but when I finally caught it on cable (again, as a kid), it didn’t appear to be, you know, “all that.” I liked it, certainly. But scary? Not compared to modern horror. Of course, stuff that scared me as a kid seems tame compared to today’s horror. But anyway …

THE EXORCIST is an enjoyable film and has an underlying tension that builds and builds, unlike modern horror, which tends to rely on special effects and shock tactics. I would catch it on cable from time to time, and especially loved it when it would air on Joe Bob Briggs’ cable show because of his commentary and factoids about it. I still dig it, and fondly recall the clever dialogue between the demon and the priest: “What a wonderful day for an exorcism.” —Slade Grayson

• • •

Everyone was reading THE EXORCIST the summer it was first published in paperback, including those who I knew hated horror fiction. So naturally, I avoided it. When I finally got around to reading, I knew I hadn’t missed much for putting it off.

But obviously, its uncanny popularity, bolstered by the success of the William Friedkin movie adaptation, paved the way for the endless cycle of novels and movies about demonic possession that followed, much like THE DA VINCI CODE and the TWILIGHT books would later do for their respective themes. —Alan Cranis

• • •

Before I popped in the VHS rental of THE EXORCIST in the early ’80s, my mom told me it was the one movie she would never watch again. Suitably impressed, I proceeded through the film underwhelmed. My lesson was to always expect every film to be a turd, and most of the time you’ll be either satisfied or impressed. But at least THE EXORCIST pointed me towards Blatty’s THE NINTH CONFIGURATION, a wonderfully nutty film which the author has sometimes called the true sequel to the Friedkin movie. —JT Lindroos

• • •

I have never read William Peter Blatty’s THE EXORCIST, but it sucks. I know this because I have seen the film version and it sucks. I realize this opinion puts me in the minority, but the majority opinion sucks, too. Sucks. Sucks. Sucks.

The only thing that doesn’t suck is Linda Blair, who’s one of my favorite B-movie actresses, which makes the fact that she’s so closely associated with the worst film on her résumé so hard to bear. And, yes, I stand by that last sentence’s suggestion that THE EXORCIST is a worse film than ZAPPED AGAIN!, REPOSSESSED, NIGHT PATROL and SORCERESS. How could I possibly justify such an obviously wrong-headed opinion? Because those films are merely terrible, while THE EXORCIST is terrible, pretentious and fucking boring at the same time!

And do you know what isn’t fucking boring? THE EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC. That movie is awesome. If I ever find a copy of the novelization of that (I’m sure it had to exist at some point), I’d totally read the shit out of it and offer my thoughts in an insightful BOOKGASM review. Bet you can’t wait. Suckers. —Allan Mott

• • •

Every year in Oklahoma City, the library system has a huge sale of donated books at the state fairgrounds. In junior high, I went once, and it’s where my mom bought me paperbacks of THE EXORCIST, David Seltzer’s THE OMEN, Jay Anson’s THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, and other books for movies I hadn’t yet seen. (Also in that stack that day was Blatty’s nonfiction paperback ON THE EXORCIST: FROM NOVEL TO FILM, which I never read and wish I still had.)

I’d certainly heard about THE EXORCIST’s most notorious scenes at the time. So of course, when I get home, one of the first things I did was find how on Earth a guy would depict masturbating with a crucifix in print. It wasn’t tough to find.

That said, I never completed reading it until about 15 years later. While the book didn’t have the power as the movie, I can’t imagine one without the other. Blatty stuck pretty close to his work when adapting it for the screen. It still boggles me they actually gave him an Oscar for it; I mean, I’m glad, but did Hollywood realize it was horror? —Rod Lott

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Kurt Kamm’s new novel, CODE BLOOD, tracks rookie fire paramedic Colt Lewis through the corridors of high-stakes medical research laboratories, the shadow world of body parts dealers and the underground Goth clubs of Los Angeles, in which he uncovers a tangled maze of needles, drugs and maniacal ritual, all of which lead to death. But what led to writing the book? Here, Kamm gives us the lowdown.

In 2008, I moved to Malibu, California. The city is well known for its beautiful beaches, beautiful people and multimillion-dollar homes. What is less known is that Malibu suffers devastating wildfires on a regular basis. Twelve months of warmth and sunshine every year results in incredible brush growth in the hills.

Shortly after I moved in, a fallen power line and 70-mph winds set off a fire which roared through our canyon. At 4:30 a.m., we had 15 minutes to evacuate. Two homes and a church on my street burned. The fire burned to my front door. A month later, a campfire started a fire in the next canyon that destroyed almost 100 homes and did $500 million in damage.

I decided I had to learn about the lives of firefighters.

Since 2008, I have been privileged to spend time with the Los Angeles County Fire Department and CalFire. Both organizations have let me attend their training academies, meet their personnel, do ride-alongs, and face some real fires.

I went through the training academy at Camp 8, where wildland firefighters are based with Blackhawk fire helicopters for quick response. I have visited Camp 13, where female inmates are trained to respond to wildfires. The result was my book ONE FOOT IN THE BLACK: A WILDLAND FIREFIGHTER’S STORY. This was a story about a young man who trains at Camp 8 and loses his captain in a burnover on a mountainside.

I had the opportunity to attend a weeklong CalFire training session for arson investigators, and had the chance to go out into the field with LA County arson investigators as well. As a result, I was able to write RED FLAG WARNING: A SERIAL ARSON MYSTERY. This story tells of a deranged arsonist trying to burn down Malibu. (There are people like that!)

I have just finished a stint with the fire paramedics, riding with them, visiting emergency rooms at local hospitals, the county morgue, and the UCLA Paramedic Training Center. As a result, I was able to write CODE BLOOD, my new novel about a fire paramedic who loses his first patient in an accident where her foot is severed and cannot be found. He sets out to find it and discovers an underworld in Los Angeles.

I am now attending hazardous material response classes and am writing my fourth novel, HAZARDOUS MATERIAL, about a firefighter who gets involved with biker gangs and meth labs.

I have had the incredible good fortune to spend time with hundreds of first responders. They are all dedicated, hard-working people whose mission is to save and help others. As a result, I have written books about these people based on my experiences. I’m writing what I know … and I am learning every day. —Kurt Kamm

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True reading, as the late Jorge Luis Borges once observed, is actually re-reading. This is a crucial part of the criteria I use when considering my list of favorite readings from the past year: not only how much I enjoyed reading it the first time, but more importantly, if it is among those select titles that I look forward to reading again. With that in mind, in no particular order:
 
THE CUT by George Pelecanos — This introduced a new series character and recalled the vigor missed in some recent stand-alone works.
 
HEADSTONE by Ken Bruen — To date, this is the darkest of the Jack Taylor series, just when you thought they couldn’t get any darker.
 
FUN & GAMES / HELL & GONE by Duane Swierczynski — I’m cheating a bit here with two titles in a single entry, but these two-thirds of Swierczynski’s madcap, relentlessly paced Charlie Hardie trilogy were undeniable delights.
 
A LITTLE TOO MUCH by John Shannon — Jack Liffey may be getting older, but his professional and private life shows no signs of easing up — nor does this excellent series by this unforgivably overlooked author.
 
THE OUTLAW ALBUM by Daniel Woodrell — Various criminal activities and the weight of family highlight this first collection of short fiction by the renowned novelist of WINTER’S BONE.
 
THE GENTLEMAN’S HOUR by Don Winslow — The combination of dark and light elements displayed so expertly in his standout SAVAGES actually has its basis in this DAWN PATROL sequel, finally published in the U.S. this past year.
 
A DROP OF THE HARD STUFF by Lawrence Block — This maestro of crime fiction can still move us as he proves in this recalling of Matt Scudder’s early years of hard-fought sobriety.
 
THE END OF EVERYTHING by Megan Abbott — Proves conclusively that Abbott, along with Laura Lippman, is one of the few crime-fiction authors bound for acclaim by mainstream literature critics and readers.
 
THE URBAN FANTASY ANTHOLOGY edited by Peter S. Beagle and Joe R. Lansdale — Perhaps the oddest editorial paring results in a collection of stories that is as surprisingly illustrative as it is entertaining in this highly misunderstood, but potent subgenre.

COWBOYS by Gary Phillips and Brian Hurtt — Demonstrates how a graphic novel can effectively and memorably present a complex and involving story when using the talents of one of crime fiction’s finest and most underrated authors, along with an artist who knows the cinematic potential of the medium. —Alan Cranis

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Best Nonfiction 
A ROCKET IN MY POCKET, Max Decharne’s energetic, in-depth appreciation of rockabilly manages to cover the genre from both personal and historical angle. It roams from detailing one-shot curios like Jerry “The Phantom” Lott to excavating the genius of Charlie Feathers. That it spends time appreciating the Tav Falco and The Cramps is just icing on the BBQ. Superbly paced and deeply appreciative of the more eccentric side of the field, this book is all killer, no filler.

Also, given my interest in the oddball fringe sciences and forteana, there’s no time like now to mention the book I’m currently reading: Jeffrey J. Kripal’s MUTANTS & MYSTICS: SCIENCE FICTION, SUPERHERO COMICS, AND THE PARANORMAL. It spends a dozen pages on Philip K. Dick’s pink-beam experience, hops over to compare John Keel to Jack Kirby with uncanny insights, wanders about into psychedelic research and Ray Palmer’s connection to the UFO subculture while pondering on the connective tissue between paranormal and religious experiences and how they often are linked to creative genius (Dick, Barry Windsor-Smith, Grant Morrison and Alan Moore, to name just a few). I’ll be spending quality time with this beautifully designed tome, but it’s by far the most fascinating book on any subject I’ve had a chance to read this year.

Best Euro Comics
More than anything else, I read comic books and graphic novels this year. Among the many greats out this year, Luke Pearson’s delightful HILDA AND THE MIDNIGHT GIANT stands on the top of the heap. This large-size hardcover from Nobrow is, whether it sells a million copies or not, a rare case of an instant all-ages classic. If you enjoy Miyazaki-style whimsy and can find a copy, grab it.

Cinebook kept its pace of publishing an array of classic bandes-dessinees in affordable editions. THE EMPIRE OF A THOUSAND PLANETS by Jean-Claude Mezieres and Pierre Christin was one of the many highlights of the season, eclipsed only by the latest Blake & Mortimer adventure, GONDWANA SHRINE, (which may be the best episode yet in this 65-year old series!) from Yves Sante and Andre Juillard.

Fantagraphics continued its Jacques Tardi lineup, and I was particularly delighted by the proto-steampunk THE ARCTIC MARAUDER, although I think one should own every single book in the series. I was also happy to see some less well-known artists get their chance, and both SIBYL-ANNE VS. RATTICUS by R. Macherot and MURDER BY HIGH TIDE by Maurice Tilleux were wonderful surprises in the classic Franco-Belgian “bigfoot” style. Fantagraphics is quickly becoming the Criterion Collection of comics publishing.

Humanoids spearheaded its METAL HURLANT-inspired lineup with a reprint of THE COMPLETE INCAL by Moebius and Alexandro Jodorowsky, but the new Jodo-penned Western, BOUNCER, was almost equally wonderful. I couldn’t afford some of Humanoids’ ultra-deluxe reprints and am waiting for some trade-edition treats out next year.

Finally, Rebellion brought several classic 2000 AD books to the US market, including the JUDGE DREDD COMPLETE CASE FILES series. As wonderful as those were, I was taken off-guard by HONDO-CITY LAW which compiled numerous adventures set in the Japanese equivalent of Dredd’s Mega City. Despite having numerous different artists, the contents were uniformly great and give me enduring hope for the future of this long-standing UK publication.

All of these publishers, except for Fantagraphics, seem to be coming in under the radar in the U.S., and I’d urge you to seek out and investigate each and every one.

Best e-books
I’m biased. Go Blasted Heath. So sue me.

And the WORST of the year?
All the books I didn’t bother finishing. You know who you are. —JT Lindroos

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I know my column has been dormant for a while. You can post all the blame on all the great reissues that have come out this past year. Once again, it’s time to pick out books and other items for the holiday season — not for friends and family, but you, for all the gift cards and money you got as presents.

1. WALT DISNEY’S DONALD DUCK: LOST IN THE ANDES by Carl Barks — Bar none, this is the one book that should be bought by all. This is the first in what Fantagraphics promises will be the definitive reissue line. All you need to know is this: Carl Barks. The man who is Donald Duck comics. Everyone in the family will enjoy this one.

2. KAMANDI, THE LAST BOY ON EARTH OMNIBUS: VOLUME ONE / THE STEVE DITKO OMNIBUS: VOLUME ONE — These two books are part of DC Comics’ never-ending reissue series of classic material. First up, you get KAMANDI, Jack Kirby’s post-apocalyptic tale of the last boy on the planet Earth. The book collects the first 20 issues of Kirby’s run of this truly out-there series. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait for a VOLUME TWO. The second book is all Steve Ditko, collecting his work on SHADE, THE CHANGING MAN and his foray into sword and sorcery in the series THE STALKER. Ditko’s OMNIBUS VOLUME TWO comes out mid-January and will serve as a great complement.

3. CAPTAIN PHILIP STRANGE: STRANGE WAR by Donald E. Keyhoe — For the pulp lovers out there, this novel is a no-brainer. I’ll just leave it at this description: biplanes vs. dinosaurs. ‘Nuff said.

4. SHOWCASE PRESENTS: DOC SAVAGE — Part of DC’s budget line of reprints, this book collects all the Marvel Magazine stories from the 1970s in one big, 448-page paperback. Note that it only collects the comics, and none of the accompanying articles that were part of the original magazine.

5. KISS ME DEADLY / THE KILLING — Ah, Criterion Collection: You rarely disappoint. It’s also put out two noir classics this past year. First up is the best of all the movies made from a Mickey Spillane novel, KISS ME DEADLY. Second, THE KILLING is one of the earlier efforts from Stanley Kubrick and one that truly holds up with its tight-knit storytelling and plot. Both are packed with plenty of extras to keep a viewer coming back for more.

6. THE OUTFIT — Probably one of the better adaptations of a Richard Stark (aka Donald E. Westlake) book. This one is filled with a who’s who of B-movie wonders, including who Westlake considered the best performance of a Parker-like character in Robert Duvall. This is a straight-up crime film which does not cater to the artsy-fartsy crowd. I like POINT BLANK, but let’s be honest: THE OUTFIT is far superior. Our editor, Rod, likes it, too.

7. MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000, VOL. XXI: MST3K VS. GAMERA — All the GAMERA films that were given the MST3K treatment in one handy box set. Sadly, the DELUXE EDITION tin is already out-of-print. But the standard edition still has all five films together — fun for all movie monster-loving fans. And, of course, Mike Nelson’s impression of a certain piano player is classic:

8. THOR BY WALTER SIMONSON OMNIBUS / X-STATIX OMNIBUS — So you’ve got some money burning in your pocket and you love comics? These two Marvel Comics hardcovers are worth the time and wait for them to be collected in such a fashion. First up is probably the greatest run of THOR ever, all of Simonson’s work, which introduced us to fan favorites Beta Ray Bill and Frog Thor. Meanwhile, X-STATIX is the complete run of the comic which went out on a limb in all senses. Imagine a team of mutants more concerned with fame and fortune than saving the day. The book is filled with Mike Allred’s Pop Art-like comic work with fill-ins by the likes of Darwyn Cooke and Paul Pope.

9. THE DARK TOWER OMNIBUS by Peter David, Robin Furth and Anthony Flamini — On that note, our editor, Rod, weighs in with this pick: “Based on arguably Stephen King’s most popular work, Marvel Comics’ THE DARK TOWER OMNIBUS certainly will appeal most to those who have digested the man’s series, although doing so is not required (I’m stuck on the third novel myself). This hardcover collection is so absolutely massive at nearly 900 pages that it’s broken up into two volumes, which stand snug in their own slipcase. On their own, the two miniseries runs I’d read previously (like the prequel THE GUNSLINGER BORN) didn’t impress me much, but together like this, their sheer size (not to mention Richard Isanove and Jae Lee’s art) pulls you into the fantasy world like a magnet to the fillings in your teeth. The spider imagery in the SORCERER storyline, in particular, really creeps me out. As these issues fill in the holes and/or expand the mythology of King’s books, Roland Deschain emerges as such a rich character, you can’t wait for HBO to get a hold of this thing. Like a Western dipped in lysergic acid, these lively illustrated tales come chock-full of mutants, killer wolves, nuns, witches and a big ol’ shiny Grapefruit. And that’s just the first book! The second, even bigger volume collects sketches, stories and other miscellaneous material to act like sealant to the new tile flooring.”

10. Captain America hoodie — Okay, so this is not a book or a movie based on a book, but it’s one of the coolest items out there. No one was happier then I when CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER hit the screens. As I sat in the theater waving my “Hail Hydra!” pennant, I wished I was wearing this ultra-cool hoodie. Personally, I’d also like to see an A.I.M. or a Hyrda one done, too. —Bruce Grossman

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Best-selling author Steve Alten knows about the Mayan Calendar and its doomsday prophecy. His DOMAIN series has sold millions of copies worldwide. But it is Alten’s new release through Tor/Forge, PHOBOS: MAYAN FEAR, that he says provides details of an actual threat to humanity that could have many readers hiding under the covers on the Dec. 21, 2012, date … not that it will matter. Here’s more from the author on the theories that fuel his new novel.

The Mayan culture began around 500 BC, and is believed to be an off shoot of the Olmec, which lived in Central America and MesoAmerica. The apex of Mayan society occurred around 900 AD in the Yucatan Peninsula. This was the time of Kukulcan, a mysterious wise man and teacher who arrived in Chichen Itza possessing a wealth of knowledge of astronomy, engineering and agriculture.

The Kukulcan pyramid is a testament to his knowledge. The four-sided temple has ninety-one steps on each side; add the platform on top and you get 365 — as in the days of the year. Erected precisely to the equinox, the shadow of a serpent appears on the northern balustrade each fall and spring equinox as an ancient warning pertaining to the calendar’s prophecy.

In 1519, Hernan Cortez invaded the Yucatan Peninsula for Spain and within 50 years over 90% of Mayan people were obliterated. This event was predicted by the Mayan calendar. Cortez, a bearded white man, was mistaken for Kukulcan by the Maya and Quetzalcoatl by the Aztecs.
 
ABOUT THE MAYAN CALENDAR:
The Maya were obsessed with time, they believed time was cyclical, and that nature possesses its own rhythms. The Calendar itself consists of three calendars built in one, like the working gears of a clock. Added to this was one more means of charting time — the Long Count Calendar. Composed of five great cycles, the Long Count calculates back to a date equating to August 13, 3114 BC, and ends on the winter solstice of 2012. December 21st in 2012 — Doomsday.

The Long Count calendar is made up of Katums —20 year epochs that repeat or recycle every 260 years. It is these Katums that they used to predict the future. KATUM 5 predicted the assassination of Lincoln. KATUM 10 encompassed WWII — a time of great sadness. Our present Katum, KATUM 4, began in 1993 and ends on December 21st in 2012. It predicts great change. Katum 4 encompasses 9/11, a day known as 6 IMOX…referring to great change. On the day of 6 KEY, the US invaded Afghanistan, a day that translated into a time to settle ones debt.
 
DEC. 21, 2012: DOES A THREAT EXIST?
In PHOBOS: MAYAN FEAR, Steve Alten introduces readers to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a $10 billion science experiment located underground in Geneva, Switzerland, designed to smash protons together at near-light speed. While the experiment will provide physicists with a means to recreate the early moments following the Big Bang, it also creates miniature black holes, which could grow in size as they pass through the LHC chamber into Earth’s core. One of the side effects are seismic event — earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions.

PHOBOS: MAYAN FEAR describes two frightening events: the eruption of the Yellowstone caldera (think 2,000 Mount St. Helens) and a thousand-foot-high mega-tsunami unleashed by the landslide eruption of a volcano in the Canary Islands that some scientists believe poses a catastrophic threat to the Eastern Seaboard of the United States.

As bad as these things sound, Alten saves the very worst for Dec. 21, 2012. —Steve Alten

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THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO by Stieg Larsson (#10, Fiction)

She’s gonna rock you, boy,
She’s a little temptress! (She’s a real temptress!)
With a drink in her hand,
Dancin’ in her black dress!

Oh, yeah!

SMOKIN’ SEVENTEEN by Janet Evanovich (#13, Fiction)

Let me tell you ‘bout my lady,
The jailbait from your dream,
A babysitter princess who
Dips her cherry in my cream!

When’s your daddy comin’ home?

HEAVEN IS FOR REAL by Todd Burpo with Lynn Vincent (#4, Non-Fiction)

I know it’s hard,
I know you’re done,
I know you’re packin’ your bags
And makin’ a midnight run …
You say I don’t love you,
Well, baby, you’re wrong,
If I didn’t love you,
Why am I singin’ this song?

Oh, yeah, heaven is for real …
It’s right here, baby… —Louis Fowler

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Whether your hobbies include movies, music, books (yeah, as if), theater, politics and reanimated corpses, plenty of new nonfiction books await purchase as gifts, even if the recipient is the same person as the purchaser: you. Peruse these publisher-provided summaries to see if any are up your alley and on your wish list. —Rod Lott

STEVE MCQUEEN by Marc Eliot — Eliot captures the complexity of this Hollywood screen legend. Chronicling McQueen’s tumultuous life both on and off the screen, from his hardscrabble childhood to his rise to Hollywood superstar status, to his struggles with alcohol and drugs and his fervor for racing fast cars and motorcycles, Eliot discloses intimate details of McQueen’s three marriages, including his tumultuous relationships with Neile Adams and Ali MacGraw, as well as his numerous affairs. He also paints a full portrait of this incredible yet often perplexing career that ranged from great films to embarrassing misfires.

BEST MUSIC WRITING 2011 edited by Alex Ross — Celebrating the year in music writing by gathering a rich array of essays, missives and musings on every style of music from rock to hip-hop to R&B to jazz to pop to blues, this annual is essential reading for anyone who loves great music and accomplished writing. Scribes of every imaginable sort — novelists, poets, journalists, musicians — are gathered to create a multi-voiced snapshot of the year in music writing that, like the music it illuminates, is every bit as thrilling as it is riveting.

THE B.S. OF A.: A PRIMER IN POLITICS FOR THE INCREDIBLY DISENCHANTED by Brian Sack — Whether you voted for “hope” in 2008, or “change” in 2010, this book takes full advantage of our poorly understood First Amendment to fearlessly cut through the bull on both sides of the aisle and ask serious questions: Why does this enormous country have only two real parties? How does a bad idea become a terrible law with a misleading name? How can you identify the Seven Habits of Highly Partisan People? What’s the deal with this Constitution thing people keep citing? Can we stop comparing people we don’t like to Hitler?

SHOCKAHOLIC by Carrie Fisher — It’s been a roller coaster of a few years for Fisher since her Tony- and Emmy-nominated, one-woman Broadway show. She not only lost her beloved father, but also her once-upon-a-very-brief-time stepmother, Elizabeth Taylor. And as if all that weren’t enough, she also managed to lose over 40 pounds of unwanted flesh —not by sawing off a leg (though that did cross her zapped mind) but by doing what might be termed “wishful shrinking,” all the while staying sober and sane-ish.

BROADWAY MUSICALS, SHOW BY SHOW: SEVENTH EDITION by Stanley Green and Cary Ginell— This updated edition of one of the best-selling and comprehensive Broadway reference books, first published in 1985, has been expanded to include new entries and photos on numerous musicals from recent years, including AMERICAN IDIOT, BILLY ELLIOT, MEMPHIS, NEXT TO NORMAL, ROCK OF AGES, THE ADDAMS FAMILY and FETA! It features a wealth of statistics and inside information, plus critical reception, cast lists, pithy commentary about each show, and numerous detailed indexes that no Broadway fan will want to be without.

IRON MAN: MY JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN & HELL WITH BLACK SABBATH by Tony Iommi — This autobiography reveals the man behind the icon, yet still captures Iommi’s humor, intelligence and warmth. He speaks honestly and unflinchingly about his rough-and-tumble childhood, the accident that almost ended his career, his failed marriages, personal tragedies, battles with addiction, band mates, famous friends, newfound daughter, and the ups and downs of his life as an artist.

THE GARNER FILES by James Garner and Jon Winokur — After suffering physical abuse at the hands of his stepmother, Garner left home at 14. He became Oklahoma’s first draftee of the Korean War and was awarded with two Purple Hearts before returning to the United States and settling in Los Angeles to become an actor. He became a star in his own right, despite struggles with stage fright and depression. In this autobiography, this revered actor and quintessential self-made man recalls “trying to decipher” William Wyler with Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine, breaking Doris Day’s ribs, having a “heart-to-heart and eyeball-to-eyeball” with Steve McQueen, being “a card-carrying liberal — and proud of it,” and much more.

PACMAN: BEHIND THE SCENES WITH MANNY PACQUIAO — THE GREATEST POUND-FOR-POUND FIGHTER IN THE WORLD by Gary Andrew Poole — With his shellacking of Antonio Margarito in November 2010, Manny “PacMan” Pacquiao became the only boxer ever to win eight world championships in eight different weight classes. Proclaimed the “fighter of the decade” by ESPN and recently elected Congressman in the Philippines, he is an inspiration to his countrymen. But to many, he remains an enigma.

THE ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE JOURNAL by Max Brooks — Watch out as a mob of ravenous, flesh-eating undead comes to life. This lenticular journal cover sets in motion images of slithering, shuffling zombies from the bestselling graphic novel THE ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE: RECORDED ATTACKS. Filled with lined pages, this all-purpose journal is perfect for jotting down notes, making to-do lists, plotting your own survival strategy, and is just the creepy thing for zombie fans everywhere.

DEAD LETTERS: THE VERY BEST GRATEFUL DEAD FAN MAIL by Paul Grushkin — This book collects more than 300 mind-blowing envelope masterpieces, all presented in 14 thematic chapters. Fully authorized by The Grateful Dead, DEAD LETTERS also includes, for further historical context, many rare historical photos and memorabilia, all creating a trip, as it were, down memory lane. A foreword from basketball legend (and supremely dedicated Dead Head) Bill Walton rounds out this one-of-a-kind package.

RIPLEY’S BELIEVE IT OR NOT! STRIKINGLY TRUE by Geoff Tibballs — For anyone who loves unbelievable facts and jaw-dropping images, the latest annual in the bestselling series is a feast of delights. Be amazed at a portrait made from 200,000 dead ants, the man who traversed the English Channel by holding onto a bunch of balloons, and the single human hair featuring paintings of all 42 American presidents. A compendium of incredible and bizarre facts, stories, interviews and features, presented in a stunning new design, this book includes intriguing interviews with some of the astounding individuals who reveal more about what motivates them. 

FUG YOU: AN INFORMAL HISTORY OF THE PEACE EYE BOOKSTORE, THE FUCK YOU PRESS, THE FUGS, AND COUNTERCULTURE IN THE LOWER EAST SIDE by Ed Sanders — FUG YOU traces the flowering years of New York’s downtown bohemia in the 1960s, starting with the marketing problems presented by publishing the arts magazine FUCK YOU, as it faced the aboveground’s scrutiny, and leading to Sanders’s arrest after a raid on his Peace Eye Bookstore. The memoir also traces the career of the Fugs — formed in 1964 by Sanders and his neighbor, the legendary Tuli Kupferberg (called “the world’s oldest living hippie” by Allen Ginsberg) — as Sanders strives to find a home for this famous postmodern, innovative anarcho-folk-rock band in the world of record labels.

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THE AVENGERS #239 (1984) — As all comic geeks know, The Avengers are Marvel Comics’ version of the Justice League of America — in other words, a team of superheroes fighting crime together, rather than individually. In #239, the likes of Hawkeye, Black Widow, the Beast and Black Panther comprise the lineup, joining forces to … appear on LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN? Yep, the whole issue is about them guesting on Dave’s show, and the only thing more cringe-worthy than seeing Paul Shaffer in a Captain America shirt is seeing Dave foiling the bad guy by knocking him over the head with a giant door knob and exclaiming, “I guess that’ll teach you not to mess with David Letterman!” Too bad Jay Leno wasn’t on TV then — this crap is right up his alley.

CAPTAIN CARROT AND HIS AMAZING ZOO CREW! #1 (1982) — Cute animals as superheroes. The Plastic Man-esuqe Rubberduck. The Wonder Woman-like Yankee Poodle. The unending puns like President Mallard Fillmore. Geez, the shit I would buy when I was 11.

THE MARVEL FUMETTI BOOK #1 (1984) — “Fumetti” is Italian for “shit.” Or, more specifically, “photo-funnies.” This one-shot comic stars Stan Lee and the bearded, bespectacled nerds who comprised the Marvel staff at the time. Imagine if your high school chess club just went crazy with a couple rolls of B&W film and you’ve got the idea. The center spread with Lee lounging on a couch in a full Hulk outfit will turn you off centerfolds — and maybe even photography — for the rest of your life.

OBNOXIO THE CLOWN VS. THE X-MEN #1 (1983) — The abrasive, miserable, cigar-smoking Obnoxio was the mascot of Marvel’s CRAZY magazine, a short-lived MAD rip-off. I’m not sure why they wanted to team him up with their critically acclaimed band of mutant heroes, but they did, and here he helps Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler and the gang fight a villain known as Eye-Scream, so named because he can turn into, well, ice cream. Obnoxio celebrates their victory over the ne’er-do-well by putting a giant cherry on the guy’s head. Hee-larious, no? Here’s hoping the X-MEN film franchise doesn’t get so far that this is considered as a potential storyline.

POWER PACK #1 (1984) — By conversing with some sort of talking space horse, four kids become superheroes. They call themselves Gee, Lightspeed, The Energizer and Mass-Master (which sounds pornographic). Those names suck because kid superheroes suck. On the plus side, there’s an ad letting me know that my favorite Atari hits are now playable on my Texas Instruments computer.

SPIDER-MAN: CHRISTMAS IN DALLAS (1983) — When I was 12 years old, I went with my parents to Dallas for some reason. This comic book was in that Sunday’s DALLAS TIMES HERALD. In it, Spidey fights Kingpin! At Christmastime! In, uh, Dallas! And also makes a kid’s day by giving him a box of Crunch ‘n Munch. The last page says the next issue would have Spider-Man, Firestar and Ice Man at the Dallas Ballet’s production of THE NUTCRACKER. I’m sure that would’ve made this list, too.

SPIDER-MAN AND THE INCREDIBLE HULK: CHAOS IN KANSAS CITY (1982) — This is just like the Dallas thing, but was in THE KANSAS CITY STAR. Spidey and Hulk fight Kraven the Hunter in the Jones department store, which explains all the crudely drawn ads with kids in Britania jeans and Izod shirts.

SUPER-HEROES BATTLE SUPER-GORILLAS #16 (1975) — What’s sadder: That I forked over a quarter to read four stories about Superman, Batman, The Flash and Wonder Woman each fighting powerful apes, or that DC Comics had a quartet of stories laying around about Superman, Batman, The Flash and Wonder Woman each fighting apes?

SUPER-STAR HOLIDAY SPECIAL #1 (1980) — What were your Christmas traditions? Sipping egg nog by the fire? Making popcorn balls for the tree? Reading Batman in “Wanted: Santa Claus – Dead or Alive”? Yeah, mine, too (if you answered “yes” to that last one). This compilation of holiday-themed stories features Jonah Hex, Superboy, Sgt. Rock and the House of Mystery hosts learning the true spirit of the season through such plot devices as raccoons and candle-wielding nuns. Today, I’m more intrigued by Hawkman saving the life of a falling skydiver, who commemorates his close call by enjoying the “chocolaty cake, fudgy icing” of Hostess Cup Cakes. —Rod Lott

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Since the Oct. 3 release of TREASURE HUNTER: CACHES, CURSES, AND DEADLY CONFRONTATIONS, a number of media outlets have requested interviews. Normally reclusive and not inclined to answer such requests, noted treasure hunter and author W.C. Jameson has agreed to use this space to respond to selected questions.

BOOKGASM: TREASURE HUNTER is an adventure memoir of some of your most memorable expeditions. Why did you write it?

JAMESON: At first, I did not want to write TREASURE HUNTER. The principal reason is related to the fact that one of the best advantages a professional treasure hunter can have is anonymity. The truth is, most of what I do as a professional treasure hunter is illegal; therefore, the less that is known about me and what I am involved with, the better.

My wife has encouraged me for years to write about my adventures as a treasure hunter. I resisted, but finally gave in a few years ago for a couple of reasons. Because of age and increasing obligations relative to writing, speaking and other things, I am no longer as active as I once was. The partners I worked with for years are either dead or have moved on to other things. Most of my recovery expeditions required the cooperation of several men — since they are no longer active, I have cut back on my own my involvement.

While I still have a couple of treasure recovery projects on the burner, neither is likely to be affected by the release of this book.

BOOKGASM: You mentioned most of what you do is illegal. How so?

JAMESON: Because so much land is private or government-owned property, I am often involved in trespassing. Furthermore, national and state salvage and recovery laws, which cover removing lost treasure, are often restrictive and, in some cases, don’t allow the finder to keep anything. If one finds and removes a historic treasure cache from private or government-owned property without permission, it is technically stealing. If one locates treasure in a foreign country and returns with it to the United States, it becomes smuggling.

BOOKGASM: Do you plan a sequel?

JAMESON: There has been talk of a sequel, but at this point, I am not certain whether I want to write one or not. As a result of the successes of my other books, I have been offered contracts for several more. These will keep me busy for quite a while. If the right offer comes along, I may consider it.

BOOKGASM: Do you still hunt for lost mines and buried treasures?

JAMESON: Yes. I have a couple of ongoing projects I won’t discuss. In addition, there are still a number of caches of Spanish gold and silver we had to abandon in Mexico for a variety of reasons. I am tempted to try to go back and retrieve some of those, but recovering and transporting such things in Mexico is very difficult these days.

JAMESON: One of my current projects is located in Arizona, another in Texas. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

BOOKGASM: Are you still conducting research on lost mines and buried treasures?

JAMESON: Yes. I have been doing so for over 50 years and can’t seem to stop. I have file cabinets filled with information on these subjects, and I receive more information and insight from other professional treasure hunters almost on a weekly basis. I continue to be challenged by the possibility of going in search of some of these mines or caches.

BOOKGASM: What is your next book?

JAMESON: At this writing. I am awaiting the release of three books: LOST MINES AND BURIED TREASURES OF ARKANSAS, LOST MINES AND BURIED TREASURES OF MISSOURI and BILLY THE KID: THE LOST INTERVIEWS.

BILLY THE KID: THE LOST INTERVIEWS can be considered a sequel to my best-selling BILLY THE KID: BEYOND THE GRAVE. Searching for lost or missing people is very similar to researching about and searching for a lost treasure cache. In this case, the man we searched for was the outlaw Billy the Kid who, in truth, was never killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett, but went on to live in hiding for another 69 years.

The evidence for this is found in BILLY THE KID: BEYOND THE GRAVE. A few so-called experts on historical American outlaws have gotten upset at my findings. They have been challenged to debate me for years, but none have responded.

BOOKGASM: You are regarded as the best-selling treasure author in the world. How many books about the subject have you written?

JAMESON: Of my 70 books, at least 22 have dealt with lost mines and buried treasures. The first was published in 1988. All but two are still in print. During the next few years, at least 12 more will be released.

I have had the good fortune of publishers contacting me about writing books for them. These books sell well and make the publishers money. With a renewed interest in this country about searching for lost mines and buried treasures, the books are in demand.

BOOKGASM: Has anyone ever found treasure by using one of your books?

JAMESON: Yes, on several occasions.

There are a number of professional treasure hunters in this country and elsewhere who employ my books as a starting point for their own searches for certain lost mines and buried treasures. They know that I do a considerable amount of research, including site visits and analyses, that saves them a lot of time and trouble.

Treasure hunters have gone into places where I have searched for years and have managed to locate caches that eluded me. Everyone looks at a site differently, and sometimes it just takes another person’s perspective to solve a mystery relative to where something might be buried.

A recent discovery wherein the finder used information in one of my books may eventually yield as much as $200 million in gold and silver.

BOOKGASM: Does it bother you that someone may locate a treasure that you have sought for years?

JAMESON: Not at all. There’s plenty of treasure out there. We know this because, in addition to finding some of it myself, I know others who have had successes. Several of us exchange information relative to treasure sites.

For the most part, we professional treasure hunters have the notion that we are all in this together, and that we sometimes succeed as a result of assistance or contributions from others. I have provided information on several occasions that led to discoveries of lost caches. In just about every case, I was paid a finder’s fee.

BOOKGASM: What is the largest treasure you have ever found?

Hard to tell. Over the years I, along with my partners, have found caches of Spanish gold and silver that amounted to several millions of dollars each. What the average person does not realize, however, is that finding something is often a lot easier than returning home with it.

We have found valuable caches in places so remote one cannot get a vehicle into them, and sometimes not even a horse or mule. Some of these locations are far from sources of food and water. What we carry out sometimes is a function of how much we can tote in a backpack. When you consider that an ingot of gold can weight 25 to 40 pounds or more, by the time you load two of them, you have a full pack. You are often forced to trade precious food and water for gold. Then, you are faced with walking miles to wherever you parked your vehicle. We have done this on numerous occasions, but it limits how much you can remove.

We have removed bars of gold in this manner from a cache that contained over 500 of them. To the best of my recollection, there are still 465 ingots left. In another case, we found 880 bars of silver in a cave in Mexico. Over two trips, we carried out a total of 60 ingots on foot and via horseback. The rest are still there.

BOOKGASM: What have you done with the treasure you have found?

That’s personal and private. I can tell you that in some cases, I have converted it to cash that I used to pay off houses, vehicles and send my children to college. One almost needs to find a lost treasure cache to fund a college or university education these days. In many cases, the profits from one expedition went to fund the next.

BOOKGASM: Because of your fame and notoriety as a treasure hunter, you have served as a consultant for television and film. Any plans for more?

Most of those gigs have come about by accident. I don’t seek them, don’t even particularly enjoy them. Between September 2010 and June 2011, I turned down four offers to be involved with television shows about lost mines and buried treasures. I didn’t like any of their ideas, and the programs seemed silly. I am in dialogue right now with producers for the National Geographic Channel about a series based on one of my books, but don’t know where that will go, if anywhere.

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Author photo by K. Horner.

Just because today is Halloween doesn’t mean the spirit of the holiday has to end with October’s close. Reading books rooted in and/or about horror can keep the bad vibes and ill feelings alive — or undead — as the months grow more chilling. From fiction to nonfiction, here are several recent releases that may help do just that. —Rod Lott

ZOMBIES! ZOMBIES! ZOMBIES! edited by Otto Penzler — There is never a dull moment in the world of zombies. They are superstars of horror and they are everywhere, storming the world of print and visual media. Their endless march will never be stopped. It’s the Zombie Zeitgeist! Now, with his wide sweep of knowledge and keen eye for great storytelling, Otto Penzler offers a remarkable catalog of zombie literature. Including unstoppable tales from world-renowned authors like Stephen King, Joe R. Lansdale, Robert McCammon, Robert E. Howard, and Richard Matheson to the writer who started it all, W.B. Seabrook, ZOMBIES! ZOMBIES! ZOMBIES! features deadly bites, satanic pigeons, a parade of corpses, zombies, zombies and more zombies.

HARBOR by John Ajvide Lindqvist — One ordinary winter afternoon on a snowy island, Anders and Cecilia take their 6-year-old daughter, Maja, across the ice to visit the lighthouse in the middle of the frozen channel. While the couple explore the lighthouse, Maja disappears — either into thin air or under thin ice. Two years later, alone and more or less permanently drunk, Anders returns to the island to regroup. He slowly realises that people are not telling him all they know; even his own mother, it seems, is keeping secrets. What is happening in Domaro, and what power does the sea have over the town’s inhabitants?

BLACK LIGHT by Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan and Stephen Romano — If you have a supernatural problem that won’t go away, you need Buck Carlsbad: private eye, exorcist and last resort. Buck’s got a way with spirits that no one else can match. He was normal, once. Until Something Horrible killed his parents and left him for dead. Buck has spent years using his gift to trace his family. It’s his only hope of finding out what happened to them, and what made him the way he is. Now the voices say that Something Big is coming: a super high-tech bullet train running express across a stretch of unforgiving desert known for the most deadly paranormal events in history.

EYES TO SEE by Joseph Nassise — Jeremiah Hunt has been broken by a malevolent force that has taken his young daughter and everything else of value in his life: his marriage, his career, his reputation. Desperate to reclaim what he has lost, Hunt finally turns to the supernatural for justice. Abandoning all hope for a normal life, he enters the world of ghosts and even more dangerous entities from beyond the grave. Sacrificing his normal sight so that he can see the souls of the dead and the powers that stalk his worst nightmares, Hunt embarks upon a strange new career: a pariah among the living, a scourge among the dead, doomed to walk between the light of day and the deepest darkness beyond night.

THE NIGHT ETERNAL by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan — It’s been two years since the vampiric virus was unleashed in THE STRAIN, and the entire world now lies on the brink of annihilation. There is only night as nuclear winter blankets the land, the sun filtering through the poisoned atmosphere for two hours each day — the perfect environment for the propagation of vampires. There has been a mass extermination of humans, orchestrated by an ancient vampire possessed of unparalleled powers. Those who remain are entirely subjugated, interred in camps, and separated by status: those who breed more humans, and those who are bled for the sustenance of the Master’s vast army.

MIDNIGHT MOVIE by Tobe Hooper and Alan Goldsher — The good news: Director Tobe Hooper has been invited to speak at a screening of DESTINY EXPRESS, a movie he wrote and directed as a teenager, but that hasn’t seen the light of day in decades. And Hooper’s fans are ecstatic. The bad news: DESTINY EXPRESS proves to be a killer … literally. As the death toll mounts, Tobe embarks on a desperate journey to understand the film’s 30-year-old origins — and put an end to the strange epidemic his creation has set in motion.

THEM OR US by David Moody — Hundreds of Hater fighters have settled on the East Coast in the abandoned remains of a relatively undamaged town under the command of Hinchcliffe, who’ll stop at nothing to eradicate the last few Unchanged and consolidate his position at the top of this new world order. Danny McCoyne is the exception to the rule. His ability to hold the Hate and to use it to hunt out the remaining Unchanged has given him a unique position in Hinchcliffe’s army of fighters. As the enemy’s numbers reduce, so the pressure on McCoyne increases, until he finds himself at the very center of a pivotal confrontation, the outcome of which will have repercussions on the future of everyone who is left alive.

THE CALL OF CTHULHU AND OTHER WEIRD STORIES by H.P. Lovecraft, edited by S.T. Joshi — Frequently imitated and widely influential, H.P. Lovecraft reinvented the horror genre in the 1920s, discarding ghosts and witches and instead envisioning mankind as a tiny outpost of dwindling sanity in a chaotic and malevolent universe. S.T. Joshi presents a selection of the master’s fiction, from the early tales of nightmares and madness such as “The Outsider” to the overpowering cosmic terror of “The Call of Cthulhu.” More than just a collection of terrifying tales, this Penguin Classics volume reveals the development of Lovecraft’s mesmerizing narrative style and establishes him as a canonical and visionary American writer.

THE WHITE PEOPLE AND OTHER WEIRD STORIES by Arthur Machen, edited by S.T. Joshi — Actor, journalist, devotee of Celtic Christianity and the Holy Grail legend, Welshman Arthur Machen is considered one of the fathers of weird fiction, a master of mayhem whose work has drawn comparisons to H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. Readers will find the perfect introduction to his style in this new Penguin Classics collection. With the title story, an exercise in the bizarre that leaves the reader disoriented virtually from the first page, Machen turns even fundamental truths upside down. “There have been those who have sounded the very depths of sin,” explains the character Ambrose, “who all their lives have never done an ‘ill deed.’”

JACK AND JILL WENT UP TO KILL: A BOOK OF ZOMBIE NURSERY RHYMES by Michael P. Spradlin and Jeff Weigel — Mother Goose is doing the undead shuffle! Every kiddie loves nursery rhymes — even the little ones in advanced state of decay who enjoy chowing down on human viscera. Now the madmen who brought you IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE ZOMBIES and EVERY ZOMBIE EATS SOMEBODY eviscerate the beloved poems that once filled our tiny oozing childish brains — “Little Miss Muffet Turned on a Tuffet” into something putrid and smelly, and it’s “Three Undead Mice” scampering across our kitchen table.

VAMPIRE ART NOW by Jasmine Becket-Griffith and Matthew David Becket — From the elegant beauties of Victoria Frances to the decaying savages of Anne Stokes, this book illustrates the vampire in his or her many moods: either wooing lovers with a hypnotic stare, biting long necks (willing and unwilling), or staring straight at the viewer as if ready to bound off the page in a nocturnal frenzy. By presenting multiple artists’ takes on what it means to be a vampire, this collection illustrates how one cultural icon can vary so greatly across different cultures, classes, media and artistic aesthetics.

SAD MONSTERS: GROWLING ON THE OUTSIDE, CRYING ON THE INSIDE by Frank Lesser and Willie Real — Monsters have it tough. Besides being deeply misunderstood, they suffer from very real problems: Mummies have body image issues, Godzilla is going through an existential crisis, and creatures from the black lagoon face discrimination from creatures from the white lagoon. At heart, these monsters are human; after all, you are what you eat. Quirkily illustrated, SAD MONSTERS documents the trials and tribulations of all the undead creatures monster-mad readers have grown to love, from vampires and werewolves, to chupacabras and sphinxes, and even claw-footed bathtubs.

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Charles Stross, somehow, in between putting out mind-blowing science fiction (like GLASSHOUSE and SATURN’S CHILDREN) and crazy, hilarious, Dilbert-meets-007-meets-Cthulhu “Laundry Files” novels (THE ATROCITY ARCHIVES and THE JENNIFER MORGUE), has managed to put out a volume of “The Merchant Princes” series on a more-or-less annual basis since 2004, from THE FAMILY TRADE to last year’s sixth entry, THE TRADE OF QUEENS.

Obviously taking a few clues from Roger Zelazny’s AMBER books and  H. Beam Piper’s PARATIME sequence, this series starts with Miriam, an American journalist who discovers that she can travel to an alternate universe that stuck in basically a medieval level of society, and that, as a lost relative of a clan of world-hoppers, she’s royalty of a sort.

This parallel world’s geography is roughly congruent with our dimension, so her clan of dimension-hoppers has become enormously rich by, among other things, taking packages and letters in the medieval world, coming over to our side, and FedEx-ing the packages across the world in days, where they’re transported back to the medieval dimension in which such parcels would take weeks or months to be delivered by coach, boat or horseback.

As Miriam becomes ensconced in the politics and mores of this new world and her place in it, it begins to unravel, and quickly. Other worlds are discovered, the Bush administration figures out what’s going on and figures out a way to travel between dimensions to exploit the resources of this new world and cover up some other neocon secrets, and all the while Miriam is forced to play roles that she’d consider horrific in her previous life.

Each book in the series is a breezy, thrilling read, and Stross clearly has no intention of creating a “safe” fantasy series that can stretch to infinity without upsetting the status quo — when things go to hell, it’s all-out. Nobody’s safe, and there are no limits on his ideas of how the Bush-Cheney administration would handle the discovery of a parallel dimension or what a super-powerful clan of world-walking stealth assassins could do to stop them.

Meanwhile, as other dimensions are found and explored, greater questions societal development of are brought to light, such as how there seems to be no magic bullet for turning an “undeveloped” nation into a modern, stable, industrialized society.

These really aren’t standalone works, although intrepid readers could tackle them that way — the huge cast of characters, motivations and political machinations grows into such a complex web that readers will be totally immersed by the final chapters but newbies might flinch at the abundance of names, ranks, and allegiances.

As a whole, however, THE MERCHANT PRINCES saga combines the vividness of Stross’ prose prowess and the old-school ’60s/’70s sci-fi/fantasy themes of Zelazny and company and creates a new, modern fable that recalls past greatness while reminding everyone Stross is a modern master. —Ryun Patterson

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1. The uncooperative chauffeur thought Knobs was just rubbing his fur on the man’s legs, but in actuality, he was dusting his fine-pressed trousers for gunshot residue.

2. As the tennis pro proclaimed his innocence with an arrogant cry of, “No jury in the country will convict me without that weapon,” Scoots was busy digging something up from his litter box. There, among the freshly rolled turds, was a Luger P08 pistol! With seven bullets left in the cartridge!

3. “Well, well,” sniffed Rog, the male hairdresser, as the police took him away in handcuffs and Tinkles jumped atop the patrol car, “looks like pussy was my downfall after all!”

4. Key by deliberate key, Miss Triscuit Britches pawed out a message on the typewriter. She mewed to signal she was through — cats cannot remove paper from the machine, after all — I glanced over her spotted shoulders to see what she had typed: “THE BUTLER’S DOG DID IT,” it read. Caps lock or no, our killer was now crystal-clear.

5. Mittens was cold and wet, but the deed was done. The catnip was his and it was going to stay that way.

6. Each of Crazy Old McGillicuddy’s 34 cats wanted her dead and decided to share the guilt equally, each taking a turn swiping at her throat.

7. June saw that the last two of the ceramic canine figures was shattered. It was her turn! She ran toward the hall and screamed as she saw the lifeless corpse of Princess Fluffball hanging from the ceiling. “I won’t die like that!” she screamed out to the unknown killer. “I’ll kill myself first!” With that, she pulled out the gun she had hidden in her purse and lifted it up to her temple. “See! You didn’t get me!” she shouted triumphantly just before she pulled the trigger. The gunshot echoed throughout the mansion. Her body fell to the floor and all was silence. She had failed to notice the satisfied smile on Princess Fluffball’s face.

8. “Puuurrrrrrrrrr,” the beautiful, black cat cooed as she rubbed herself against Sam’s legs. “You can stop that,” he picked her up coldly and held her at arm’s length. “I know it was you, Rhubarb. You killed Diego and Manfredi because they were on to you. They knew you were the one who ruined the couch and you silenced them before they could tell. You’re a beautiful cat, but that don’t mean you ain’t gonna fry. I’ll see to that!”

9. Detective Patterson looked around his office and his heart stopped. He could see the details in Meowy Kint’s entire story right there all around him. There was Mr. Mouse, Cheezy Sandich, Chair Chairington and Coffee Cupperson. Meowy had made it all up and he had let him go!

10. Pepsi spent hours trying to lick the blood off his paws, but nothing he did could make them feel clean. Nothing would ever make them feel clean.

11. “But you couldn’t let it go, could you, Buttons? The thought of them buying a dog was the last straw! Not after all of the sacrifices you had made. Not after all you had done for them. So you snapped! Just admit it! Just admit that you murdered them all! They had it coming!” Cried Buttons, “MEOW! MEOW! MEOW!”

12. “Forget it, Whiskers. It’s Chinatown.”

13. Peter threw open the door and ran to his goldfish bowl. He fell to his knees when he saw it contained nothing but water and a little plastic castle. He was too late. “Goldy!” he screamed as he pounded the floor, causing a small, white notecard to fall off the table in front of him. He picked it up and read it. There, written in fish guts was just one word. “Purr,” it read.

14. “You fooled ‘em, all right! Made ‘em think you were one of them swank, high-society kitties, but Leroy learned the truth. You were nothing but another dirty pussy from the back alley and you couldn’t go back to that life. Not after tasting the big time. So you killed him and I suppose you think you’re going to kill me, too.”

15. “What’s that, Mr. Tickles? You saw the butler do it?”

16. All the authorities had to do to find the blood-specked candelabra was follow the trail of coughed-up hair balls, directing them to peer behind the curtain in the corner, next to the Steinway piano. “By gum, Buster! You did it! I’ll see to it your next can of tuna is on Scotland Yard!”

17. With claws bared, Tiddly-Pops lunged toward the murderer, tearing at his member as if were a scratching post filled with primo catnip. Needless to say, the killer dropped his weapon and Tiddly-Pops earned that can of sardines.

18. “You shoulda seen Sparkles go, Cap’n! This city ain’t never seen a hostage situation defused by spraying urine in the no-good crook’s eyes, but somethin’ tells me it ain’t the last!” —Rod Lott and Allan Mott

Until I read MATTER, Iain M. Banks’ Culture series of sci-fi novels seemed daunting and unreadable. But MATTER proved me wrong, as often is the case, and I noticed that what I thought of as an unassailable literary cliff was really a gym climbing wall with plenty of handholds.

The series isn’t numbered, although there are some books that are rough sequels to others and some that share characters, in passing (or so I’ve read). Seriously opinionated Internet commenters debate ad nauseum as to what the correct reading order of the books should be; After MATTER, I basically chose the two that looked coolest to me: USE OF WEAPONS and CONSIDER PHLEBAS.

To give a bit of background, “The Culture” is a galactic civilization that has evolved well beyond the human conception of what humanity is. People change bodies, have no real economy, and do basically what they please. They live side-by-side with artificial intelligences, many of whom exist in the form of intelligent starships with self-chosen, humorous names (such as “No More Mister Nice Guy” and “Youthful Indiscretion”). The Culture has a Special Circumstances unit of agents who intervene in less-developed societies’ affairs in an attempt to stabilize them, and these agents appear in many of the books.

USE OF WEAPONS, which I read first, is about a retired Special Circumstances operative named Cheradenine Zakalwe who is brought back into service to handle a matter that only he is deemed to be able to take care of. Here’s a good time for a warning: USE OF WEAPONS is perhaps not the best choice for your first in the series; the narrative is extremely nonlinear — as the Zakalwe proceeds with the mission at hand, the chapters flash back to other moments in his career, and not in chronological order. But as he navigates from wartorn memory to wartorn present and the portrait of his life takes shape, USE OF WEAPONS ends with an ending that could not have been possible with any other plot structure.

This sounds super-deep and heavy, but Banks’ writing is so good that he can pull off funny, tear-jerking and thrilling all at once, and the plot, once you get accustomed to not knowing exactly when something is happening, rolls along as a great pace.

CONSIDER PHLEBAS is the first of the Culture books, but really, the Culture is more of a peripheral player; the main character, a shape-shifter named Horza, tries to complete a crazy-dangerous mission amid an all out war between the Culture and the warlike Idrians. This is epic-scale war, with casualties measuring in megadeaths and strategies mapped out in decades the nth degree.

A Culture artificial intelligence, called a Mind, has been trapped on a remote world, and Horza’s tasked with retrieving the mind for the Idrians, while the Culture’s agents go after the Mind themselves. While the Big Concepts of the book attend to identity, honor and resilience in the face of ridiculous odds, CONSIDER PHLEBAS is also about badass fight scenes, cybernetic games of chance with human lives used as poker chips, EMPIRE STRIKES BACK-style spaceship escapes, explosions, disgusting apocalypse cults and tons of other really fun, sci-fi adventure tropes. It’s really good, and works on whatever level at which you wish to read it.

Of the three Culture books I’ve read so far (there are plenty more), I’d say go for CONSIDER PHLEBAS first, then make a stab at USE OF WEAPONS. If USE doesn’t grab you, head over to MATTER, and circle back to WEAPONS later, because it’s truly radical.

Which one should I hit next? I’m leaning toward THE PLAYER OF GAMES or LOOK TO WINDWARD, but I haven’t decided. I will also accept bribery as a means to influence my choice. —Ryun Patterson

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In his book, GLUED TO GAMES: HOW VIDEO GAMES DRAW US IN AND HOLD US SPELLBOUND, psychology consultant Scott Rigby and clinical psychologist Richard M. Ryan offer a balanced research-based analysis of games and gamers, addressing both the positive and negative aspects of habitual playing, by drawing on significant recent studies and established motivational theory.

BOOKGASM: In your book, you say that modern games pull users in more than we were by the arcade games of decades past. How is that?

RIGBY: As gaming has evolved, both game developers and gamers themselves have gotten more sophisticated. Of course technology has allowed for much more “fantastic” graphics and complexity, but more importantly this technological capacity has enabled games — when well designed — to satisfy multiple needs simultaneously, thus creating even greater value for the player and motivational pull.

So for example: First-person shooter games used to be largely about competence satisfaction. They didn’t offer a lot of choices about where to go, nor did they let you play with others. You just picked up a gun and started firing away. Today’s FPS games provide more open environments with more meaningful choices, thus adding autonomy satisfactions, and also allow for complex team play with other players in which team members really rely on each other — which also simultaneously satisfies relatedness needs. When games can hit this kind of “trifecta,” they can be particularly compelling.

BOOKGASM: Ever since video games exploded into our daily culture, there’s been the argument that video games are addictive. According to your research, are they?

RIGBY: Addiction has a very specific clinical definition, and so at the level of whether games addiction is a true clinical disorder — such as alcohol or drug addiction — is still being debated and examined. And I think it is important for this issue to be explored thoroughly.

However, on a day-to-day level, there is no doubt that many people are overinvolved with games, with gaming crowding out relationships, work, and other important life experiences. So in this sense, we need to acknowledge that — as with any deeply compelling and satisfying experience — there is a legitimate issue to be addressed here with a subset of gamers who become overinvolved.

In our research, we are interested in identifying the core motivational and emotional “draws” of games so that there is a foundation for both greater empathy for this issue, as well as a stronger basis for intervening in ways that are both compassionate and effective.

BOOKGASM: And then there’s the other ongoing debate: whether real-world violence is caused by playing such violent video games as CALL OF DUTY.

RIGBY: Well, first, let me say that as psychologists, we are not trying to either grind an ax, so to speak, against violence in games, nor do we dismiss the concerns about violence in games which we feel are legitimate to raise and to research. Our research was really to get at something more basic: Do players really value the blood and gore itself? This has always been the assumption, but it didn’t really make sense to us because many people who are kind, gentle folk love blowing people’s heads off in video games.

Our hypothesis was that the value of the violence wasn’t the blood and gore per se, but that gore was just an effective way in which the game provided competence/mastery feedback. In other words, if I shoot you in the shoulder, I can see the impact immediately — I get immediate informational feedback on my effectiveness — and that is satisfying of my basic need for competence. If I blow your head off, I get even more powerful feedback on my competence. So if it’s really the competence feedback that matters, then if you can provide that in other ways besides blood and gore, the game should be just as enjoyable.

That’s the kind of experiments we did — and that’s exactly what we found. In one study, for example, we designed two versions of basically the same game, only one had lots of blood and gore, and the other didn’t. Because we included competence feedback in both, players enjoyed the less bloody version just as much as the bloody version. And what was really interesting was this was true even for young, adolescent male players of violent games who scored high on trait aggression, i.e. those who stated that the loved violent games!

So even for those players who are the “core audience” for violent games, the enjoyment of a less bloody version was the same as long as basic need satisfactions were met. For us, it shows the value of how you can apply a basic understanding and model of game engagement to answer a lot of interesting questions with greater precision.

BOOKGASM: Who’s most likely to fall into this trap?

RIGBY: Our research suggests that when people are not getting their basic needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness satisfied in life, this is more often related to becoming over-involved in video game play. So while more research is needed to really understand the causal links and risk factors, we emphasize that overuse of games is quite possibly a symptom of a life that isn’t finding basic need satisfactions elsewhere. This perspective allows for an approach that begins by addressing the core issue of basic need satisfaction, rather than simply criticizing, attacking or shaming too much game play.

BOOKGASM: What about kids overusing them? Should parents be concerned or is it just no big deal?

RIGBY: First, I think it is important to understand why kids are so compelled to spend time in games, and this is part of why Rich and I wrote the GLUED TO GAMES book: to make the motivations for games less of a mystery so that parents and kids could engage the topic more honestly and clearly.

This connects to healthy gaming because parents can better talk to their kids about what kids are experiencing and “getting out of” games, and this can lead to healthier choices and less of a rift between parents and kids about gaming. Then, I think when games start to “crowd out” other meaningful relationships and activities that this should be considered a danger sign and a red flag that there is a problem, one that perhaps is rooted in basic needs not being satisfied in the kid’s life, thus leading to them to turn to games too frequently.

BOOKGASM: And speaking of play, why is it that more men play video games than women?

RIGBY: More and more woman play games every year, and I think that it is just a matter of time before this difference, which is shrinking, goes away entirely. Some data shows we’re almost there already, perhaps at a 60/40 male-to-female split.

Remember that video games started in computer labs that in the ’60s and ’70s were predominantly male, and many early games revolved around themes of war, violence, and power — which is still true today in many areas of gaming. So it follows — and I’m speculating here — that this would draw a male audience that is socialized more in that direction to start.

But what’s amazing is how quickly gaming is becoming a mainstream activity for men and woman alike, and what a strong and growing force woman have in gaming today.

BOOKGASM: Do you play games yourself?

RIGBY: I am a gamer — have been ever since I played SPACE INVADERS back in the ’70s at a big arcade in Penn Station in New York City. I still play games regularly both because I enjoy them, but also because I think it’s important to play them if we are going to try to understand them and their psychological dynamics.

My favorite game of all time — hands down — is CIVILIZATION, by Sid Meier. It’s the only video game I still play after 20 years. For me, it is definitely the incredible autonomy the game provides in making meaningful decisions and responding to a very dynamic play field, moment to moment.

Or maybe I just like the idea of world domination. Yeah … unfortunately, that is probably the real reason.

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Luke Williams’ debut novel, THE ECHO CHAMBER, streets Aug. 8.

BOOKGASM: I understand you started writing THE ECHO CHAMBER while you were attending University of East Anglia. How helpful was the creative writing course?

WILLIAMS: The course was hugely helpful. It gave me confidence — the right kind, in the end; I think I began with entirely the wrong kind and soon had this knocked out of me — as well as the space and time in which to think and research and write intensively. All invaluable to a novice writer and one reason to recommend that aspiring novelists consider developing their projects on such a course.

It also threw me into the path of other writers who’ve since become good pals, trusted colleagues and, in one particular case, my first reader and on/off collaborator. But I’d say the course’s most significant impact on me was the term I spent studying with W.G. Sebald, our workshop tutor. I was already a huge fan and drew much inspiration from his books, but his teaching also shaped my work and my approach to it.

BOOKGASM: Your book is the result of both research and imagination. How easy was it to merge the two into a singular story?

WILLIAMS: I wouldn’t say it was easy, but since it was my objective from the outset to do just that, in a way, I had no choice. This approach — the fusing of historical research and my creative response to this — defined the project at every stage. For me the imaginative process is essential in our consideration of the historical record, which can only ever be a partial account of events. Imagination allows us to question and challenge what the historical record presents.

BOOKGASM: Lagos is an odd setting to choose. With all the other spots the story takes place in, why that one?

WILLIAMS: The idea for the novel emerged as a result of my undergraduate studies in history — a course I took in African Imperial History, specifically the British colonial legacy in West Africa. I originally wanted to pursue postgraduate studies in history in order to interrogate more closely the records relating to this period, in particular, the interstices or gaps existing within these.

And then I realised that, for me at least, writing fiction was a more fruitful — and fun — way in which to explore this. It’s very much a fictional Lagos which I present in the book — I’ve not been there, and I didn’t want to go while writing THE ECHO CHAMBER since I couldn’t visit the Lagos I wanted to write about.

Calvino’s Invisible Cities, and the notion that the idea of a city can in many ways be more compelling than the actuality, was influential here. I thought the Lagos in THE ECHO CHAMBER should be more faithful to Evie’s childhood memory of it than the actual Lagos, whether in the ’50s or now.

BOOKGASM: Sound and hearing are ever-present themes in your novel. From where did that idea emerge?

WILLIAMS: This boils down to my beginnings as a large-eared child! I’ve always had a difficult relationship with my ears. For a long time, I thought of them as appendages that really didn’t belong to me or weren’t really part of me, kind of like a snake’s skin or a hermit crab’s shell. I guess I hoped that one day I might shed them. At the same time, I had a strange pride in my outsize ears and there were private moments when I convinced myself that I could hear things that no one else could.

Another reason, more related to the book, is that I wanted my narrator to be a kind of History’s child, like Oskar from THE TIN DRUM or Saleem from MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN or Azaro from THE FAMISHED ROAD. History’s children are freaks. They have — or think they have — special powers. And so Evie has — or thinks she has — amazing powers of hearing.

BOOKGASM: You’ve also written the novel from the female POV. So, being a man, was that tough?

WILLIAMS: My first attempt at a novel featured a protagonist not unlike myself at the time of writing: a neurotic, self-absorbed, 20-something bloke. With literary ambitions. I didn’t get far into the book before I got sick of him and myself, and realised that if I wanted to explore the themes which interested me, and to remain engaged throughout a long-term novel-length project, I’d have to make the protagonist considerably different to me. Hence the 50-something woman.

BOOKGASM: You have some strange, almost unreal elements in the book, like Evie being able to hear inside her mother’s womb, but they feel grounded. How did you achieve that, again, blending of the factual and fictional?

WILLIAMS: Part of Evie’s project is to question narratives of power, and by extension, the role of narrative in enforcing power. Given Evie’s self-appointed status as freakish outsider, it was crucial that her story transgress the boundaries of “reality,” which, after all, in fiction, is never really “reality,” but just one account of it.

BOOKGASM: What other writers do you admire or have influenced you in some way?

WILLIAMS: I’m far more a reader than I am a writer, and this is a list I’m constantly adding to: W.G. Sebald, Gunter Grass, Georges Perec, Sei Shonagon, Susan Sontag, Beckett, Bellow, Bruno Schulz, Lawrence Sterne, Bulgakov, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Lydia Davis, Arundhati Roy, Ken Saro Wiwa, Dambudzo Marechera, Hannah Arendt, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Francis Ponge, Thomas Bernhard, James Kelman. And Natasha Soobramanien, writer of the Damaris Diary section of my novel, who’s just written a stunningly beautiful novel called GENIE AND PAUL.

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Ready to feel old? It’s now been a full two decades since Vintage Books first published AMERICAN PSYCHO, Bret Easton Ellis’ satirical novel told from the perspective of Patrick Bateman, Wall Street mover and shaker by day, serial killer by night. To celebrate, we asked some of BOOKGASM’s contributors to share their recollections about the controversial work, whether they read it or not, so put away your chainsaws and enjoy.

I’ve unfortunately never actually read it. Saw the movie. When it came out my friend Christi read it and all I remember her mentioning was something about jumper cables on bare breasts and his obsession with name brands. —Brian Winkeler

I was working in a Greek restaurant as a dishwasher when I read AMERICAN PSYCHO. I was 23 and broke and quickly skipped past the infamous torture/murder sequences in favor of Ellis’ equally infamous descriptions of yuppie consumerism run amok. I found myself torn between really, really wanting to be a cokehead asshole in a suit paying $500 for a barely satisfying meal at the latest trendy restaurant, and the more noble, less commercial instincts within me that were informed by my young, wannabe-a-writer idealism. Turned out it was the exact same feeling I had whenever I watched SEX AND THE CITY. That was when I discovered I didn’t want to be (a non-murderous) Patrick Bateman. I wanted to be Carrie Bradshaw. —Allan Mott

I rushed out to read LESS THAN ZERO not long after it was first published, as it was being promoted and talked about as probably the most important contemporary novel I was ever likely to read. So I did. And I hated it! Thought it was wholly unoriginal, derivative, and had absolutely nothing to say. So I have not read anything by Bret Easton Ellis since. —Alan Cranis

Every once in a while, a writer comes along that somehow tricks the publishing world into thinking he has talent. Nicholson Baker is one. Joe Eszterhas is another (although to be fair, he tricked Hollywood first). And still another is Bret Easton Ellis. In my recent review of HELL’S DOCTOR, I told the story of how I was compelled to buy AMERICAN PSYCHO after reading a newspaper report of how Ellis’s publisher was so disturbed by the book’s subject matter, they refused to publish it, and thereafter, a small publisher picked it up. I remember heading to Waldenbooks (remember them?) that night and finding three copies on the shelf. Another customer picked one up at the same time ­­— a woman, who commented on reading the same news story. We laughed about “bad press” being the same as “good press.” I bought two other books along with it, just for cover, like the way I would buy other magazines along with my copy of PLAYBOY: “A copy of THE NEW YORKER and VANITY FAIR, please … oh, and that issue of PLAYBOY. I heard they’re running a Normal Mailer interview this month.” The first half of the book was tedious, filled with endless name dropping of brands and clothing labels. Then the violence kicked in and I was disgusted: disgusted at what I read, and disgusted with myself for reading it. It was torture porn. I waited for the twist, the final reveal, the last punchline that would show me that Ellis had a meaning to the whole thing. But it never came. Years later, at a friend’s urging, I watched the movie version and saw the humor, satire and plot twist (that the killings are a figment of Bateman’s sick imagination) that were not evident in the book. It’s one of the few times that I’ve loathed a book, but enjoyed the movie. —Slade Grayson

As far as AMERICAN PSYCHO goes, I’m not a big fan. I first read it while moving to Cambodia in 1999, and the whole time I was like, “What’s the big deal? This book needs more aliens!” —Ryun Patterson

Believe it or not, I’ve never read the book, and only saw five minutes of the film. Serial killers creep me the eff out. Serial killers and snakes. Mostly germs, though. —Joshua Jabcuga

I was in college at the time, when I probably read one novel a year, at best. Simply because of the controversy, and because the title intrigued me, I went to Waldenbooks in Sooner Fashion Mall and bought it. They had it behind the counter, as if it were pornography. I read it in my dorm over the course of maybe three days, much to the dismay of my Christian roommate. I enjoyed it, but have never read anything by Ellis since. Then I loaned it to my brother, who never returned it, and most likely pawned it. What I most remember about the book aren’t the list of grooming tips or the gratuitous Huey Lewis references, but the Habitrail sex scene. To this day, I’m at once still disturbed by that part, yet still peeved it didn’t make it in the movie. —Rod Lott

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Drs. Scott Rigby and Richard M. Ryan’s GLUED TO GAMES: HOW VIDEO GAMES DRAW US IN AND HOLD US SPELLBOUND is being touted as the first truly balanced, research-based analysis on games and gamers, addressing both the positive and negative aspects of habitual playing by drawing on significant recent studies and established motivational theory. Here, the authors discuss the five warning signs for assessing risk to game addiction.

Games are powerfully motivating of deep engagement that can last for hours on end, day after day. The first step to really understanding how to manage gaming in your life (or that of a loved one) — and to identify when there may be a problem — is understanding what is really at the root of games strong motivational pull.

It’s not some mystical force, or a secret desire to blow things up, as many non-gamers might fear. The research we’ve been doing for the last eight years, has helped to identify the basic psychology of game motivation and engagement. This serves as a critical foundation to understand the incredible “pull” of games, as well as serving as a guide for when addiction may be emerging.

Simply put, hundreds of motivational studies have demonstrated that we all have basic psychological needs for competence (a feeling of mastery, growth, and efficacy), autonomy (that sense of personal volition and feeling there are many interesting opportunities from which to choose), and relatedness (a feeling that “I matter” to others, and they matter to me). Decades of research have shown these needs are always operating, whether we’re playing games, at work, playing sports, or just being social. They are, in other words, fundamental or basic psychological needs.

Good games draw us in because they are designed to satisfy these needs really, really well. Specifically, they satisfy needs with immediacy, consistency, and density. Let’s talk about each of these briefly …

• “Immediacy” means that games are readily available. I bet all of us could be playing a video game — either on our phones or computers — within the next ten seconds if we wanted to. Sure beats the hour of driving just to get back and forth to the movies or out to the soccer field.

• “Consistency” means that games give us clear paths to success and achievement, and treat us fairly. A game doesn’t tell us we got passed over for promotion because of office politics, or benched during the baseball game unfairly. Games give us the rewards they promise, each and every time. And we can count on them in that way.

• “Density” means that games give us a rich field of opportunities to pursue, activities to undertake, and challenges to conquer. While “real life” often seems sparse, games are there to offer us this density as well as instant feedback that makes us feel effective and even important.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with games ability to satisfy us in these ways. In fact, it can make gaming a very rich and meaningful experience. But it is also true that we need to watch out for becoming over-involved with gaming. Since we now know why gaming is so compelling psychologically, we can look out for “warning signs” more effectively. Here are five tips:

1) Do you see a big “satisfaction gap?” — When you think about how needs are satisfied in your “real life” versus games, do games come out way ahead? In our research, we consistently find that over-involvement in games goes hand-in-hand with feeling a lack of basic need satisfactions for competence, autonomy, and relatedness in other areas of life, such as school, work, social relationships, and non-gaming hobbies and activities. The data suggest that if our basic needs are too sparsely satisfied by life, there may be a susceptibility to over-involvement in video games. Why might this happen? Well when life isn’t meeting our needs, the immediate and dense availability of satisfactions for competence, autonomy, and relatedness in games often become a stronger pull that draws us in too long and too often. 

2) Are games “crowding out?” — Do you miss deadlines at work or school because of gaming? Do you often choose to game rather than spend time with friends or family? One gamer I know reflected wistfully that he had missed most of the first five years of his daughter’s life because he spent so much time gaming. If you’re having these kinds of feelings about relationships, or not meeting other responsibilities because of playing video games, it is a sure sign that you might have a problem with too much gaming.

3) Are you feeling personal pressure, guilt or shame around your gaming? — It may sound like a funny thing to say that some gamers feel they “pressure” themselves into gaming, but it happens. There is a feeling that games are something you’re compelled to do, even if you don’t particularly enjoy or want to play at that moment. You may feel a sense of guilt or shame about firing up another game, but do so anyway. If this feels like a common experience for you, it is a sign that you are over-involved in gaming.

4) Are you playing four or more hours a day? — A simple rule of thumb is how much time you spend on average every week playing video games. We find that up until about 25 hours, there is no direct association between time spent playing, and negative feelings or decreased well-being. Above that line, however, we see a relationship begin to emerge between 25+ weekly hours, and bad outcomes. So as one quick check: How much time on average are you spending gaming each week? If it equals a half-time job or more — it really deserves a look. 



5) Is gaming isolating important others? — While you are running around virtual worlds, perhaps in the company of dozens of other online friends, slaying dragons and completing missions, it is sometimes hard to remember that you are leaving the molecular world — and often the loved ones that are under your own roof — alone and isolated from you. If you are immersed in a fantasy world, you aren’t in this one. Be sure to check in with family and friends about this. Listen to them if they express concern or even some feelings of abandonment. If you feel you can’t respond to their requests to have more of your time, it is sign you are too deeply involved with games. —Drs. Scott Rigby and Richard M. Ryan

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Like most Americans, every chance I get, I go on vacation. Unlike most Americans, however, my preferred mode of travel is via Greyhound. I know how that must make me look in your eyes.

And with good reason: Every Greyhound bus is basically an unemployment office on wheels, filled to capacity with the teeming lower classes that many of you walk by everyday on the street, desperately avoiding eye contact with for fear of either being asked for a quarter or being raped — your pick. It’s a dangerous, diseased form of travel. It’s also the only one that makes me feel alive and human again.

We’ve gotten soft. We’ve gotten complacent. A Greyhound ticket is roughly the same price as an airplane ticket, but, with the exception of the possibility of another government-staged terrorist attack of some sort, there’s no adventure, no danger in flying the friendly skies. I’d rather be braving the deadly roads of America, sleeping with one eye open, clutching tightly to my backpack as I’m circled by loitering Crips in a badly lit bus station in East St. Louis at 3:38 a.m. It gives me an adrenaline erection covered in fear sweat just thinking about it.

That said, there’s also a lot of downtime on a Greyhound where, as most are wont to do, you can relax and let the road roll on by, letting it gently lull you off to a distorted slumber wherein you might wake to find your pants unbuttoned and missing a shoe. Those times are few and far between for me, as I suffer from sleep apnea. Yes, if I go to sleep without my trusty CPAP machine, chances are I will choke to death and die mid-snore, and I’m sorry, but if I die on a Greyhound, it ain’t gonna be from snoozing like some punk-ass bitch.

So I read. For miles. For hours.

Whenever you travel by airplane, you’re likely to find just about every beautiful, well-to-do white person using an e-reader like a Nook or a Kindle. Being able to download your favorite reading material into one slim, portable digital device must be nice. I don’t own one.

No, I’m still an analog reader, preferring to hold the actual archaic tomeage in my hands. This, of course, causes numerous back problems from carrying stacks in my backpack, as well as making me out as an obvious easy mark, because, when it comes to the typical Greyhound passenger, their reading materials typically consist of the back of a Cheetos bag and a knife. I pretty much get what I deserve for knowing how to read.

I recently traveled (round trip) from Colorado to Indiana for a Horrorhound Weekend convention and thought that this would be a great time to get all those review books I had sitting on my shelf out of the way in one fell swoop. I succeeded, mostly.

DENVER, COLO.

After a teenage girl from Utah overdosed on Xanax and had to be carried off the bus at the Denver station, I figured I’d start off with something light, something like cult filmmaker Mike Pacitto’s fantastically fun foray into the world of children’s fiction, DINONAUTS.

I am a firm believer in the idea that a grown man should not own or read children’s literature because — and let’s be honest — the only reason a 35-year-old man owns a copy of HARRY POTTER is to entice children into his house so he can molest them. Lucky for me that, while DINONAUTS may be marketed as kids’ fare, it reads more like a serialized, sci-fi yarn from a rather lighthearted issue of HEAVY METAL JR. magazine.

It’s the story of a monkey named Rufus who befriends a T-Rex in the middle of a brain operation that grants him anthropomorphic abilities like firing guns and bon mots alike. They traverse the galaxy, gathering other dinosaur warriors, waging a never-ending battle against the Mecha-Unagi and other grotesque alien life-forms.

Way violent and wonderfully sarcastic, DINONAUTS reads more like the outline to a kick-ass Ralph Bakshi movie than a typical children’s book. Chock-full of pop-culture references that undoubtedly will go over most little one’s heads, it’s probably more fun for adults anyway. Kids are stupid like that.

BURLINGTON, COLO.

Yes, it took me a few hours to finish a 150-plus-page children’s book (with pictures). Sorry, but we all can’t be cybernetically enhanced robo-readers like BOOKGASM editor Rod Lott. Some of us have to take our time to actually absorb and analyze what we’re reading.

Moving onto more adult material, I finally dug into TEXAS TORNADO: THE TIME AND MUSIC OF DOUG SAHM, by Jan Reid with Shawn Sahm.

Over the past few years, my tastes in music have veered wildly in an unexpected direction. After hosting the DAMAGED HEARING radio show for so long, I have heard it all and played it all. And, recently, I’ve become bored by it all. One of the few things that has kept me going, kept me inspired, is the music of Tejano supergroup the Texas Tornados and, as of late, the ’70s solo work of Tex-Mex rocker Doug Sahm.

From his work in the groundbreaking Sir Douglas Quintet, to his trippy-hippie ’70s excursions, on up to the aforementioned Tornados and his death in 1999, TEXAS TORNADO is a warts-and-all bio of the man, co-written by his son Shawn who, while reverential to his father, is also honest about who he really was.

It’s one of the most noteworthy rock bios I’ve read in a long time, one that actually depends on truly interesting anecdotes and music-geek behind-the-scenes facts rather than half-remembered, pseudo-salacious, druggy recollections to further one’s own fading legend. Keith Richards, I’m looking in your direction.

ST. LOUIS, MISS.

Although, on a classist basis, they aren’t really deserving of it, I still try to show my bus-riding neighbors a certain sense of morality-based respect. I wouldn’t want to have a guy sitting next to me reading proletariat smut like HUSTLER’S BEAVER HUNT out in the open, and, in return, I’m sure that he wouldn’t want to see sexy stills from obscure Swedish flicks like MERA UR KÄRLEKENS SPRÅK or EVA — DEN UTSTÖTTA.

That made the reading of the absolutely seminal SWEDISH SENSATIONSFILMS: A CLANDESTINE HISTORY OF SEX, THRILLERS, AND KICKER CINEMA a bit challenging, forcing me to sit in obtuse, neck-cricking angles against the window, lest someone’s sensibilities be offended.

An exhaustive catalog of every type of Swedish exploitation flick you never even knew existed, Daniel Ekeroth has written and curated the only book you ever need on the subject, one that will do nothing but damage to your wallet as you scour badly formatted foreign websites to purchase half of the movies featured in the thing.

Based on his reviews alone, I’ve been looking for the complete filmography of Mats-Helge Olsson — Sweden’s most reviled (and, now, my most loved) action filmmaker — and anything that featured the ultraviolent street-gang “kickers” obsession, where angry youths kicked the shit out of phone booths for, well, kicks.

As I was reading SWEDISH SENSATIONSFILMS, I couldn’t help but think that this needs to be made into a NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD-like documentary, and fast! It’s the most important film guide you can buy this year. Possibly next year, too.

INDIANAPOLIS, IND.

Dirty, tired and hungover, there I was, sitting in the Indianapolis bus station. My weekend was over and I had a 24-hour bus ride ahead of me. I just wanted to sleep, but it wasn’t happening, so I chugged two, warm, $4 Rockstars back-to-back, but all that did was put me into a faux, adrenaline-fueled frenzy, with my already well-worn heart beating at a million miles a minute. I thought I was going to die.

“This would be a great time to start Nicanor Loreti’s CULT PEOPLE: TALES FROM HOLLYWOOD’S EXPLOITATION A-LIST,” I thought. What better way than to read interviews with Michael Rooker, Billy Drago, Wes Craven, etc. than in a pulse-pounding fever pitch?

It didn’t help as much as I thought it would. While I have read Loreti’s interviews in zines like SHOCK CINEMA for years now, when I read them back-to-back-to-back here, I started to realize not only how boring a writer he is, but how boring all of his subjects are. He asks the typical, uninspired questions — “How did you get started?” and “What are your inspirations?” — and gets the same continually and monotonously rote answers.

Does anyone really need another interview with Dario Argento or Ted Raimi? Even his interviews with outré gods like Ken Russell and Paul Naschy are just …bleh. Chances are, you’ve read and heard all this before and honestly don’t need to again.

HAYES, KAN.

The title is DARK STARS RISING: CONVERSATIONS FROM THE OUTER REALMS. Before you even continue on reading this piece, I want you to click the link above and just order it.

Don’t think about it; don’t hesitate; just order it.

Done? Okay. Now this is how you put together a book of collected interviews, succeeding on every front where CULT PEOPLE failed for the simple reason that Shade Rupe talks to people no one else does and asks them the personal questions no one else will. He’s the Barbara Walters of transgression.

Richard Kern, Peter Sotos, Hermann Nitsch, Udo Kier — every dark, dangerous, utterly fringe pop-culture celebrity, none of them expected, has his or her psyche conversationally explored in-depth, actually introducing the reader to neglected art forms and subversive ideas that he or she probably never said out loud for fear of societal reprisal. Thanks, society, you asshole.

As I was finishing up the final interview with Crispin Glover — possibly the biggest name in the book, mind you — the Greyhound pulled into Denver proper and that was the cue for the older gentleman who had been sitting across from me to change his sweatpants because, apparently, somewhere back in Limon, Colo., he pissed them. The wetness covered the plush seat and, as he started to head for the bathroom, I noticed his soaked seat was … moving. I rubbed my eyes, thinking my sleep deprivation had taken its toll but, holding my nose as not to quaff any errant urine, I leaned in closer to notice that, yep, it was bedbugs. Dude had bedbugs.

I’m all for danger and excitement, but bedbugs? You’re on your own on that one, Greyhound. —Louis Fowler

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Guido Henkel writes the JASON DARK: GHOST HUNTER series of supernatural mysteries, in which Dark faces demons, vampires and other diabolical monsters. The latest is CURSE OF KALI, now just 99 cents for Amazon Kindle. Here, Henkel discusses why Dark’s adventures often take him to Victorian England.

Writing period novels has a very unique attraction to me since they allow me to escape reality even more than when I am writing contemporary fiction. Both are extremely satisfying, but there’s something about the research you need to do to write historical fiction. Something about diving into the past and explore events and people from a time long gone.

With my Jason Dark novels, I frequently get to visit Victorian England. In the occult detective’s first mystery, DEMON’S NIGHT, I remember I was overwhelmed with the wealth of information I was able to dig up on the subject and it allowed me to add a good amount of historical spice to the story.

With every new Jason Dark supernatural mystery that I wrote, I was able to explore the times of Queen Victoria a little more, both in historical terms, as well as in fictional terms, as I often also include literary references and characters in these books.

Take Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes, for example, both characters from that period. I first made reference to Dr. Watson in the briefest of cameos in THEATER OF VAMPIRES, and brought him back for an encore in FROM A WATERY GRAVE, where he actually helped save Jason Dark’s hide.

Holmes also made an appearance in FROM A WATERY GRAVE — very briefly, noticeable only to the most aware readers — but an actual meeting of these master detectives had never really happened. Of course, it had always been my plan to bring them together at one point and I felt that the 10th Jason Dark mystery would be the perfect story to celebrate it.

As a result, the latest adventure, CURSE OF KALI, is a supernatural case featuring both detectives as they try to pit their wits against each other, trying to crack the same case. While Holmes completely rejects the notion of supernatural beings and assesses the case purely from a logic standpoint — his forte — Jason Dark tries to find out if perhaps more sinister and preternatural forces were at work in the case. 

I am not going to give away more about the story here — you will have to read it for yourself — but I hope this shows you how a blend of historical and literary references can lead to exciting new stories surrounding beloved characters.

I’ve done a lot more work in that vein in the previous Jason Dark adventures, in case you are interested. Every one of these supernatural mysteries is filled with little cameos that offer a nice treat to readers familiar with the territory. Oftentimes it is necessary to read between the lines while at others the reference will be rather obvious, such as in THE BLOOD WITCH, for example, where the main character is based on Elizabeth Bathory, a notorious 16th-/17th-century serial killer.

Equally exciting are locations and I always take great pleasure in pulling up a historic map of London and looking for places I could use. I will then further research them to check their suitability and more than once have I found wonderful set pieces for my stories that way, like the grand opening of the London Museum of Natural History on Easter Sunday of 1881. This opening — and the crowd it attracted — played a major part in the “Dead by Dawn” mystery where it added credibility and the necessary dynamics for one of the story’s crucial scenes.

But oftentimes, it can be much more subtle. In DEMON’S NIGHT, I make reference to the Ratcliff Highway Murders, which occurred in 1811. I decided to use the unmarked grave of the murderer as a temporary hideaway spot for the story’s titular demon. I mean, how cool is that? 

The list is endless, and I could ramble on forever. As I pointed out earlier, each Jason Dark mystery is filled with numerous references such as these and part of the fun — at least from my point of view — is to read and discover these little gems as they are carefully embedded in the story. I always try to be subtle with this approach because I never want these references to stick out like a sore thumb or even turn readers off. It’s not always easy and occasionally I had to drop references, for that very reason. The story always comes first, of course, and if it allows for a nice cameo, I will gladly accommodate it. —Guido Henkel

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Charlie Chaplin. Buster Keaton. The Marx Brothers. Billy Wilder. Woody Allen. The Coen brothers. Where would the American film be without them? Yet the cinematic genre these artists represent — comedy — has perennially received short shrift from critics, film buffs and the Academy Awards. Journalist Saul Austerlitz attempts to right that wrong. In ANOTHER FINE MESS: A HISTORY OF AMERICAN FILM COMEDY, he retraces the steps of the American comedy film, filling in the gaps and following the connections that link Mae West to Doris Day, or W.C. Fields to Will Ferrell. Here’s his appreciation of Albert Brooks.

A man sits alone in his apartment. Sits is perhaps not the optimal word; he bounces off the walls, a product of the two Quaaludes he took and the breakup he just initiated with his longtime, long-suffering girlfriend. He lies down on his bed. “I can’t sleep!” he wails, having closed his eyes for approximately ten seconds. Wobbly, crashing into doors and furniture, he flips through the vinyl albums on his bookshelf. “God, I have so many great albums. I love ‘em, I love ‘em!” He decides on the cheeseball-disco anthem “A Fifth of Beethoven,” flailing wildly before yanking the disc off the stereo, whining: “I don’t like this song, it makes me sad.” He riffles the entries in his Rolodex, intoning the phrase “look how many friends I have” as if it were an incantation, protection against the onset of melancholy, or worse, boredom. Stopping at one entry, he picks up the telephone. “I have deep feelings for you,” he tells Ellen, whose name had looked vaguely familiar. He offers to take her out on a date. “You’re going to have the best time you ever had,” he croons into the receiver. “And Ellen, this could be serious!” The man hangs up the telephone.

Blinkered optimists and monsters of emotionally needy narcissism, the heroes of Albert Brooks’ movies are all brothers. The scene described above takes place near the start of Brooks’ 1981 MODERN ROMANCE, but with only minor changes, could be cut and pasted into any one of his films. Brooks’ movies are all about different topics — moviemaking, relationships, the rat race, families — but they are all very much about the same character, one whom we’ll call, for lack of a better appellation, Albert Brooks. Whether or not the actual Albert Brooks is himself an emotionally crippled, self-obsessed egotist is not up for discussion here; for the sake of friends and family members, one can hope he is caring, self-sacrificing, and given to adopting stray puppies. What is clear, though, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that “Albert Brooks” is all of those things and more, and the films which Brooks has directed — particularly his first three efforts, REAL LIFE, MODERN ROMANCE and LOST IN AMERICA — are separate entries in a single epic satire of yuppie ambition, confusion, and self-absorption.

Like Woody Allen, with whom he is often compared, Albert Brooks’ films document a single milieu with obsessive rigor. For Brooks, it is the monied classes of West Los Angeles who are his kinfolk. Also like Allen, Brooks is given to playing variations on a single character—one who bears at least a surface resemblance to the man himself. Unlike Woody, Brooks prefers hitting the road to staying at home, and many of his films break out of L.A. in search of the world at large. Pity, then, that our guide remains stuck at home; you can take the yuppie out of Los Angeles, but you can’t take Los Angeles out of the yuppie. Wherever Brooks’ characters go, there they are; be it the open road, New Delhi, or the afterlife, the miasma of L.A. ambition, entitlement, and selfishness trails behind like a noxious perfume.

His movies are also all failed experiments. Not for the filmmaker — considering the cohesion of his work, we can only assume that Albert Brooks has accomplished precisely what he had hoped to — but for his characters, who all set out in search of something they are too self-absorbed to find. Brooks is not much of a technician — no one would ever mistake him for Allen as a director — but the blandness of his filmmaking technique only serves to belie the unity, simplicity, rigor, and pitilessness of his films. To watch an Albert Brooks film is to be a helpless onlooker to the utter degradation of a human soul. The joke is that only we, the audience, appear to be aware of that fact.

Having graduated from stand-up comedian to feature filmmaker with 1979′s REAL LIFE, Brooks brought along his proclivity for self-referential meta-comedy. Brooks was inspired by the groundbreaking 1972 PBS reality series AN AMERICAN FAMILY, which had been the first television program to depict the mundane lives of everyday Americans. With his debut film, Brooks was not only parodying himself — his “Albert Brooks,” in search of an ordinary American family whose lives he can document on film, is delusional, self-obsessed, manically predisposed to entertain, and incapable of comprehending anything beyond the purview of show business — but, like Preston Sturges in SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS, the comedian’s inaptitude for the complexities of real life.

“Be yourselves!” Albert shouts over and over again at the Yeagers, his designated ordinary family, but his sense of reality has been warped by Hollywood. A limousine is dispatched to the airport to fetch the Yeagers from their vacation, and a huge crew, most of whom will have nothing to do with the production of the film, is introduced to the family for the sake of keeping up appearances. A troubled wife and mother turns to Albert for guidance, wanting to leave her husband and hoping to seduce a Hollywood star to boot, but Albert is not entirely sympathetic. When she cries, Albert offers some half-hearted air-pats of her back; when she snarls, “I’d like to be alone,” he asks, “Can we come with you?”

Brooks was called Robert Cole in his next film, MODERN ROMANCE (1981), and was a film editor, not a director, but otherwise little had changed. The narcissism and self-absorption had been preserved untouched, with the focus shifting from crafting a film to crafting a line of patter to win a woman’s affections. Robert breaks up with his long-time, on-again-off-again girlfriend Mary (played by Brooks’ then-girlfriend, Kathryn Harrold), and then immediately regrets it. The Quaalude-fueled interlude is only the beginning of Robert’s self-serving effort to simultaneously get over Mary and win her back.

Robert is inordinately painful to watch, and Brooks derives a great deal of pleasure from watching us squirm. “I can’t work now,” he tells his assistant editor Jay (Bruno Kirby). “I’m a mess!” The joke is that Robert looks utterly unflappable, here and everywhere else in the film. His theoretical trauma hardly appears to touch him, which is why he must insist, in ever-louder tones, on the sincerity of his emotion. Mary, too, is finally just an impediment to Robert’s pursuit of the greatest love of all: self-love. “There’s something wrong with you,” she bluntly tells him. “No, there isn’t,” he crisply responds, pulling out the sharpest arrow in his arsenal. “I’m in love.”

Brooks inverts another staple of American cinema and television with LOST IN AMERICA (1985). That late 1960′s classic of rebel culture, EASY RIDER, is turned inside out for the go-go 1980′s, becoming a parable of easily tempered yuppie rebellion. Brooks is David Howard, an L.A. advertising executive cruelly denied a promised promotion. Distraught at the collapse of his ambitions — he’d picked out the new Mercedes and everything! — David manically bursts into his wife Linda’s office, shouting at her to follow suit: “Quit right now!” David and Linda (Julie Hagerty, ideally cast as a self-destructive naïf) hit the open road to the strains of Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild,” and other Easy Rider hand-me-downs farcically stud the film. After gambling away the couple’s entire savings in a single frenzied night at a Vegas casino, Linda insists that Captain America and Billy had no such nest egg; later in the film, David bonds with a cop intent on giving him a ticket over their shared love for the counterculture motorcyclists.

Brooks is mocking the very foundations of the dream factory he works in. Truth, romance, freedom — these are only products the movies sell us, his films mordantly inform us. David and Linda are lost in America because there is no real America to find. As a stand-up comic, Brooks had specialized in a bit called “Danny and Dave” (eventually revived for his 2005 film LOOKING FOR COMEDY IN THE MUSLIM WORLD) in which a ventriloquist visibly moved his lips while his dummy “spoke.” “Danny and Dave” wasn’t funny in and of itself, but only as a reflection on all the mediocre performers Brooks was winking at. Brooks’ films exhibit a similarly nervy metaphysical stance, in which they succeed primarily by failing. The crashing and burning of his characters’ ambitions, and those of the films in which they reside, does not mark a failure of nerve on Brooks’ part; rather, the failure is itself the comedy. —Saul Austerlitz

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Author Joshua Jabcuga delves into horror, where every Friday is Friday the 13th!

Bob Fingerman’s novel PARIAH was given the prestigious honor of being named “Zombie Book of the Year” in the 2010 ’Cuga’s Cuts year-end awards. I have no doubt that that was the highlight of his year. PARIAH also received quite a bit of buzz from other places as diverse as ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY (an A- review), to FANGORIA (“Book of the Month”), as well as blurbs from Robert Kirkman, Brian Keene, Jonathan Lethem, Trey Parker and Augusten Burroughs.

BOOKGASM: The success of PARIAH clearly demonstrates the crossover appeal of your writing. You couldn’t ask for a better response from critics and your peers. Now that the dust has settled, do you think the book has found its audience?

FINGERMAN: After that wonderful buildup, I hate to sound negative, but no. The praise it’s gotten is wonderful, but I feel PARIAH could and should reach a much larger audience than it has, thus far. I’m sure every author feels that way about his or her work, but publishing is such a weird state of affairs at the moment, it’s hard to figure out how to find your audience or, more to the point, have them find you.

That said, it’s not doing badly. I don’t expect to sell Stephen King numbers, but I would like a more robust readership. I think that opportunity is coming, though, as the mass-market paperback is coming out on June 28, so that will put it in a lot more outlets at a cheaper price. Hopefully, that will encourage more people to pick it up and read it. I need bigger numbers so I can do the sequels, which I’m dying to do.

BOOKGASM: Time is definitely on your side, Bob. Not to sound cliché, but zombies are hotter than ever. I believe much of this has to do with AMC airing THE WALKING DEAD. It’s as if the mainstream finally “gets” it. If I had to pinpoint when this “new wave” started, at least in terms of publishing, I’d have to give credit to one of the relatively newer masters of horror, Brian Keene, and the essential THE RISING. In my opinion, that’s basically the launching pad.

FINGERMAN: It’s always hard to pinpoint that kind of thing. I read and thoroughly enjoyed Keene’s zombie offerings, as well as Dave Wellington’s. Theirs are more magicky takes on the subject matter. More metaphysical and paranormal. Ancient spirits guiding the undead. I thought that was interesting as it’s completely at odds with what I do.

One of the reasons I’ve always responded favorably to David Cronenberg’s work was he always went for a more scientific-type approach. That’s not to say the “science” wasn’t totally sketchy, but it made the horror easier to swallow for me. That’s why as much as I admire Stephen King’s work, the presence of the divine always ruins it a bit. God can always come to the rescue and the devil or his evil lackeys are almost always to blame. Cronenberg really nailed the “disease of the cell” approach in modern horror.

I got there a little before the curve, but zombies in the late ’90s weren’t hot. PARIAH is actually a sequel, pretty much, to the zombie graphic novel I wrote in 1997 for Dark Horse Comics, WINTER’S DREGS, for their abortive ZOMBIE WORLD series. PARIAH was pitched first, but the editor wanted a prequel, and by the time I was ready to do PARIAH, the series was cancelled.

Just was well. It worked better as a novel. Much better.

BOOKGASM: You worked for Harvey Kurtzman on NUTS!, Al Goldstein’s SCREW, HEAVY METAL, NATIONAL LAMPOON and HIGH TIMES, just to name a few. I’d imagine that provided some invaluable lessons for you as a young writer in the trenches. And it is an amazing portfolio and a snapshot at a different era, really. Do you look back at those experiences fondly?

FINGERMAN: I’m actually planning on writing a straight literary novel based on my experiences at SCREW. That was quite an office. I’ll tell you, in retrospect, I’m glad that I worked for all those places, especially the seedier ones. They had color. At the time, I wasn’t so happy about it. I mean, I liked the people I worked with, but those weren’t exactly tony employers to add to your CV or portfolio.

Some classier clientele would have been sweet, but you can’t put a price on the outsized characters I met over the years at those joints. But those places paid my bills. I wish I’d had my skill set where it is now to work for LAMPOON. I revere that magazine, but only did one job for it and it wasn’t really up to snuff. Still, I tried.

BOOKGASM: I was at a Joe Hill reading — actually, it was his first Comic-Con “panel” ever — and someone was looking for advice on writing. If I remember correctly, I believe Joe said he wrote about a million words before he felt he found his voice. He certainly paid his dues, though from what I understand, writing runs in that family — wink. At what point do you think you found your voice, and who were some of your influences?

FINGERMAN: I think I’ve always had a voice, for better or worse. I have what you might call a “strong personality.” I’ve always had a thing for words, since way back. But as to my voice, I think there’s a through line in all my work. Like there’s “that Barton Fink feeling,” I think there’s a Bob Fingerman feeling, too. Maybe it’s the initials.

That said, sure I’ve got influences: Terry Southern, Bruce Jay Friedman, Donald Westlake, Phil Dick, to go back a ways. Chuck Palahniuk is a contemporary influence. But my innate narcissism calls the shots and dictates how I put it down on paper. I don’t want to imitate anyone. For better or worse, I want it to sound like me.

There are writers out there who tell a brisk story — really propulsive plotters, that kind of thing — but they don’t have much style. They are all about telling the story and not into creating crafty prose. I like tasty sentences. Though I’ve kind of moved on from Martin Amis, he crafted some beautiful prose. That seeped in.

BOOKGASM: I mentioned Brian Keene earlier. Last Thursday, he launched a campaign for writers, retailers and readers to boycott Dorchester/Leisure. Unfortunately, I have friends affected by this whole situation, and maybe you do, too. It’s a raw deal and really shows the underbelly of publishing. Would you care to comment or offer some words of encouragement to those writers?

FINGERMAN: It sounds feeble, but of course, I totally feel for those writers. It’s a lousy predicament they’re in. And it looks, at least from an outsider’s point of view, like Dorchester is being less than forthright when it comes to how they’re handling their situation.

My friend Laura, also a writer, pointed out some of the language Dorchester’s used — “In bankruptcy, but not actually filing for bankruptcy” — and decoded that as meaning reorganizing debt with no protection for creditors. So, yeah, my sympathies, big time. It’s a precarious time to be doing anything creative and expecting to make a living at it.

BOOKGASM: Last but not least: Recommend a good book to me.

FINGERMAN: Just read a couple by R. Scott Bakker that I really enjoyed: DISCIPLE OF THE DOG and NEUROPATH. Also Walter Greatshell’s latest, MAD SKILLS, which was really fun. Currently reading I KNOW I AM, BUT WHAT ARE YOU? by Samantha Bee. Very funny stuff.

Oops, that’s not genre. Is that a no-no? And that was more than one. Fuck it, I’m a rebel.

Coming up in ’Cuga’s Cuts: SHOCK TOTEM! —Joshua Jabcuga

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With the film version of Michael Connelly’s THE LINCOLN LAWYER hitting theaters today, we asked the best-selling author how he feels about the finished product. Oh, and we asked him about his novels, too.

BOOKGASM: How does the film adaptation of THE LINCOLN LAWYER compare to the one Clint Eastwood did for BLOOD WORK? Is one truer to your vision than the other?

CONNELLY: There is no doubt that THE LINCOLN LAWYER adaptation is a truer take on the book. BLOOD WORK had a different villain and different ending from the book. THE LINCOLN LAWYER is very loyal to the book, though as with all adaptations, there are changes, things added and lost.

BOOKGASM: If Harry Bosch were to make the leap to film, who would be your dream actor to fill the role, and your dream director to make it happen?

CONNELLY: I can’t answer the question about the actor because I’ve lived with Harry for 20-plus years and the image I created is really rock-solid. I think he kind of looks like Billy Burke, however. As far as directors go, after seeing THE LINCOLN LAWYER so wonderfully done, Brad Furman would be my choice. He’s got a feel for gritty, realistic L.A.

BOOKGASM: The Harry Bosch stories often use recent policies of the Los Angeles Police Department as their sort of inspiration. Do you intend to continue this? And does this approach put your novels in danger of being dated in the near or distant future?

CONNELLY: Yes and yes. I always want the books reflecting what is going on in all political and social levels. The books are of the moment. I can’t really worry about whether they are relevant or dated years down the line. I just assume they will be at some point.

BOOKGASM: You love to unite characters from your separate novels, most recently Mickey Haller with Harry Bosch. What is the appeal for you vs. the appeal for your readers?

CONNELLY: For readers, it is an ah-ha moment every time they make a connection to a prior book or a character or place. From the writing standpoint, it is fulfilling to me to unite the books, make them all part of one big mosaic or one story.

BOOKGASM: You’ve written in/for newspapers, television, film, short stories, novels and as an anthology editor. Which is your favorite? Which holds the most challenges?

CONNELLY: Definitely writing a crime novel is my favorite and it’s where I get the most challenge and the most fulfillment. Everything else I kind of moonlight at. —Rod Lott and Alan Cranis

Author photo by Terrill Lee Lankford

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Author Joshua Jabcuga delves into horror, where every Friday is Friday the 13th!

Time for a candid, uncensored conversation with storyteller Philip Nutman: co-screenwriter of THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, author of ChiZine Publication’s CITIES OF NIGHT and 29-year veteran of FANGORIA magazine.

BOOKGASM: ChiZine Publications published your first short story collection, CITIES OF NIGHT, last year. The opening, “Unearthly Powers: Prelude to a Nocturne,” is quite trippy. It’s set in the future, and it’s written from the point of view of a character who bares a striking resemblance to you. When you were assembling this collection, which is very much like a greatest-hits, career-retrospective project, did you find yourself looking at the stories in a new light? Was it a bit like going through a personal scrapbook or a shoebox of photos?

NUTMAN: It was akin to digging up the dead and asking corpses questions. Sounds like a HELLBOY story, doesn’t it? Yes, “Jamie Hurst” is my literary alter ego.

And, yes, I have seen the future … and it isn’t pretty. I plan on leaving the U.S. of Assholes before the second American Revolution comes crashing down in a sea of bullets and blood. I have already “bought” my house on the edge of Dartmoor. I move in when I turn 60 years old in 11.5 years’ time.

And just so you know: I am not a K-tel “greatest hits” collection of one-hit wonders, and CITIES OF NIGHT is certainly not that. Those stories are the stations of the cross as I move toward the final, greatest years of my life. To quote Harlan, “I curse the lesson(s) and bless the knowledge.” I have never felt more alive or at the top of my game as far as being a storyteller is concerned.

It was … painful … to revisit my past. All those stories are inspired by personal experience. Some of them were very troubling to revisit.

BOOKGASM: You’ve credited Clive Barker with teaching you to believe in yourself, during a time in your early 20s when you were going through, in your words, “a terrible period of self-doubt.” Since then, you’ve had a lot of critical success. I’ve noticed that writers are similar to stand-up comedians in many ways: One moment, we can be very insecure, and the next moment, we can have very large egos, and then there’s the aspect about using our pain and demons to create. Do you ever experience moments of self-doubt any more?

NUTMAN: Doubt? No. And God, that was a long-winded question! I thought only us Brits rambled like that!

No doubts whatsoever. I have been to Heaven and know I shall serve my time in Hell, because I’d rather reign over a lake of fire than suck … oh, never mind LOL! For the record: Without him, I wouldn’t have the greatest, most talented filmmakers of their generation as friends and colleagues in my life — the “sons of celluloid,” as I call them — and they know who they are.

I can’t see the top of the mountain; I take every day one step at a time. Honestly, if I die tomorrow, please inscribe my memorial with “He led an interesting life.” But the universe has a plan for me, and try as I might, I have this horrible feeling you lot are going to be stuck with me for a long, long time.

And yes, Clive entered my life at just the right point.

A sick, disturbed closet homosexual I worked with at the BBC spread nasty rumors that I tried to suck him off in the Gents. The retarded, working-class, homophobic scum I had the misfortune to work with, took this as truth: I was nearly beaten to death at the BBC TV Center at White City one Tuesday afternoon. Several people ended up going to the hospital. I wasn’t one of them, for a change.

Ironic, then, that an openly gay man took me out to dinner and gave me the advice which has kept me strong for 25 years. Clive gave me a push in the right direction. And I’ve never looked back.

BOOKGASM: “Full Throttle” is included in CITIES OF NIGHT. Many will recognize it because it debuted in 1990 in the seminal SPLATTERPUNKS anthology. That was a pretty influential crew. Do you keep in touch with any of those guys, or have you all gone your separate ways?

NUTMAN: Craig Spector launched my fiction career over 25 years ago by aggressively insisting I contribute a story to the John Skipp and Craig Spector Romero-inspired anthology BOOK OF THE DEAD. John Skipp was my editor on the “Wet Work” short story and pushed me beyond my then limits and helped me shape that sucker into what was published — my first short story.

I love John and Craig dearly, but John and I are a tad estranged these days. When we see each other, there is love and warmth, but I’m in my own orbit and John is like Saturn: He needs rings around him, and I am not ever any writer’s ring on their finger. Craig and I just collaborated for the first time on a screenplay — breaking news soon — and we’re closer than we’ve ever been. We finish each others’ sentences and have some kind of Vulcan mind-meld going on.

Dave Schow is a whole ‘nother story. Next question, please?

BOOKGASM: In the opening of CITIES OF NIGHT, you thank actor Malcolm McDowell. Can you elaborate a bit on how he inspires you in your work?

NUTMAN: Malcolm McDowell is my favorite actor. Period. That man has had more influence on my creativity then I can put into words. All I will say is IF …, O LUCKY MAN! and, of course, a certain movie about an orange.

But Malcolm wouldn’t be in my life without the late, great Lindsay Anderson. Mr. Anderson rearranged my consciousness in regard to theatre and film, and Malcolm loves me for that. Kubrick would not have made A CLOCKWORK ORANGE if Anderson had not discovered, cast Malcolm, and made IF… Anderson and Kubrick totally fucked my synapses when I was 7 years old — a long story which I have no desire to share.

Malcolm and I met at a convention prior to my nearly dying, thanks to the shit-arse publicist on Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN II. Malcolm hugged me and kissed me on each cheek — one from Alex DeLarge, and the other from Caligula, unless he was feeling a bit H.G. Wells that day.

BOOKGASM: Younger writers, such as myself, look up to you, and you’ve always had an open door for us, just like Jack Ketchum. You continually take time out of your schedule to offer guidance or act as a sounding board. Do you ever just want to tell us to fuck off, or are you just a really nice guy who can’t say no?

NUTMAN: I am actually a nice guy who has no qualms about telling time-wasters to fuck off if I believe you have nothing to contribute to the cultural gene pool. I wouldn’t have agreed to this interview if I thought you were a dumb cunt, would I, Mr. Jabcuga?

Next question?

BOOKGASM: HELLBOY completists will be interested in knowing one of your stories in CITIES OF NIGHT (“A Mother Cries at Midnight”) takes place in Mike Mignola’s sandbox. You’re the quintessential writer, in my opinion, for working on Hellboy. I’d love to see you work on a miniseries or get a more substantial run there. Have you ever talked with Mignola about doing more? What do we need to do to make this a reality?

NUTMAN: Thank you. That means a lot. That story is my favorite piece I have written during the past 15 years. Actually, I didn’t write it; Big Red did. I wrote that in one sitting, and I think my favorite big red hellspawn dictated it to me.

As far as your other question is concerned: Well, I think you need to address that to Mr. Mignola. I am totally in awe of Mike’s creative powers. If I ever get to write a comic book/graphic novel again, HELLBOY would be my first choice. Then Dr. Doom, the Silver Surfer and try to reconfigure the Lee/Ditko Dr. Strange. Oh, and if Steve Gerber would grant me a “get out of jail free” card, I think the 21st century needs the return of Howard the Duck.

Oh, Buddha, I sound like a sad sack don’t I, getting all emotional over a comic-book duck. Do you think there’s any hope for me?

BOOKGASM: Having written screenplays, comic books, novels, nonfiction and now this collection of short stories, you’ve seemingly done it all. But you’re dying to direct a feature film, aren’t you?

NUTMAN: Er … hmm! Would you like to rephrase that? I don’t plan on dying anytime soon — the fire of love is keeping me aflame. I will direct my dream Western within the next two years.

Now, before I piss off and go make another cup of Earl Gray. let me share this with you, a universal truth: Do not covet your ideas. Give away everything you know, and more will come back to you. —Joshua Jabcuga

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Eff that whole “jump ahead an hour” thing we had to go through yesterday — and will be adjusting to all week — but the one good thing that comes out of it is, of course, spring! With better weather comes more opportunities to sit outside and enjoy a slight sunny breeze while you read a book. Aah, that’s life. And real life makes for great reading; here are nine recent true-story titles to feed your mind with facts, in the categories of music, movies and mayhem. We’ll let the publishers’ pitches speak for themselves … —Rod Lott

WHY JAZZ?: A CONCISE GUIDE by Kevin Whitehead — What was the first jazz record? Are jazz solos really improvised? How did jazz lay the groundwork for rock and country music? In WHY JAZZ?, author and NPR jazz critic Kevin Whitehead provides lively, insightful answers to these and many other fascinating questions, offering an entertaining guide for both novice listeners and long-time fans. Organized chronologically in a convenient question and answer format, this terrific resource makes jazz accessible to a broad audience, and especially to readers who’ve found the music bewildering or best left to the experts.

THE BAND THAT PLAYED ON: THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF THE 8 MUSICIANS WHO WENT DOWN WITH THE TITANIC by Steve Turner — When Titanic collided with an iceberg at 23:40 on April 14, the eight members of the band had already retired for the evening. Still, they put on overcoats and mufflers came out to play in the lounge. When most of the First Class passengers had taken to their lifeboats, the musicians simply moved to the deck and continued to play, calming the passengers as the ship sank. One second class passenger said: “Many brave things were done that night, but none were more brave than those done by men playing minute after minute as the ship settled quietly lower and lower in the sea. But who were they? What journeys brought them to this deck on this icy ocean?

JOHN LENNON: LIFE IS WHAT HAPPENS by John Borack — LIFE IS WHAT HAPPENS celebrates the life and times of one of the most influential musicians in pop music history. This fascinating read features more than 500 photographs and rare images of Lennon juxtaposed by the myriad pop-culture memorabilia created from the height of Beatlemania into the late 1970s and the Plastic Ono Band. Chronicling his musical career, the book includes hundreds of classic photographs, dozens of quotes by and about Lennon, and personal reminiscence from fans and celebrities recalling Lennon’s impact on their lives.

HALFWAY TO HOLLYWOOD: DIARIES 1980-1988 by Michael Palin — The second volume of Michael Palin’s diaries covers the bulk of the 1980s, a decade in which the ties binding the Pythons loosened, making their last film, MONTY PYTHON’S THE MEANING OF LIFE, in 1983. For Michael, writing and acting took over much of his life, culminating in his appearances in A FISH CALLED WANDA, in which he played the hapless, stuttering Ken, and won a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor. HALFWAY TO HOLLYWOOD follows Palin’s torturous trail through seven movies and ends with his final preparations for the documentary that was to change his life, AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS.

AN IMPROVISED LIFE by Alan Arkin — Alan Arkin knew he was going to be an actor from the age of 5: “Every film I saw, every play, every piece of music fed an unquenchable need to turn myself into something other than what I was.” This memoir is the Oscar winner’s wise and unpretentious recollection of the process — artistic and personal — of becoming an actor, and a revealing look into the creative mind of one of the best practitioners on stage or screen. In a manner that is direct, down-to-earth, accessible and articulate, Arkin reveals insights not only about himself, but also truths for the rest of us about work, relationships and sense of self.

FOOL ME ONCE: HUSTLERS, HOOKERS, HEADLINERS, AND HOW NOT TO GET SCREWED IN VEGAS by Rick Lax — Rick Lax was paranoid to begin with. He saw lies everywhere. And when he saw them, he spoke up. But when his girlfriend gets conned by a violent drug dealer, nothing Rick does seems to help. So what if he misses the next lie? What if spotting them isn’t enough to protect against them? What if exposing lies puts him in even more danger? Terrified of being conned himself, Rick bolts for Vegas, deception capital of the world, to learn the game and how to guard against it. Rick meets deceivers of all kinds, from back-alley hustlers and poker pros to the biggest headliners on the Strip.

A HISTORY OF THE INTERNET AND THE DIGITAL FUTURE by Johnny Ryan — This book tells the story of the development of the Internet from the 1950s to the present, and examines how the balance of power has shifted between the individual and the state in the areas of censorship, copyright infringement, intellectual freedom and terrorism and warfare. Johnny Ryan explains how the Internet has revolutionized political campaigns; how the development of the World Wide Web enfranchised a new online population of assertive, niche consumers; and how the dot-com bust taught smarter firms to capitalize on the power of digital artisans.

BEHIND THE PALACE DOORS: FIVE CENTURIES OF SEX, ADVENTURE, VICE, TREACHERY, AND FOLLY FROM ROYAL BRITAIN by Michael Farquhar — Beleaguered by scandal, betrayed by faithless spouses, bedeviled by ambitious children, the kings and queens of Great Britain have been many things, but they have never been dull. Some sacrificed everything for love, while others met a cruel fate at the edge of an axman’s blade. From the truth behind the supposed madness of King George to Queen Victoria’s surprisingly daring taste in sculpture, this book ventures beyond the rumors to tell the unvarnished history of Britain’s monarchs, highlighting the unique mix of tragedy, comedy, romance, heroism and incompetence that has made the British throne a seat of such unparalleled fascination.

BRINGING ADAM HOME: THE ABDUCTION THAT CHANGED AMERICA by Les Standiford with Det. Sgt. Joe Matthews — Before Adam Walsh there were no faces on milk cartons, no Amber Alerts, no National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, no federal databases of crimes against children, no pedophile registry. His 1981 abduction and murder — unsolved for more than a quarter of a century — forever changed America. While our lives have been significantly altered by the case, few of us know the whole story — how, after more than 27 years of relentless investigation, decorated Miami Beach homicide detective Joe Matthews finally identified Adam’s killer.

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THINK YOU KNOW IT ALL?: THE ULTIMATE INTERACTIVE QUIZ BOOK is now out from Perigee Books, but the roots for it were planted long, long ago. London-based writer Dan Smith now recalls how a childhood love for trivia eventually grew into this fun, new volume.

I remember as a child devouring books of facts, reading them from cover to cover. And at Christmastime, the Trivial Pursuit would be unleashed.

These days, you’ll more likely find me at a pub quiz, in the company of other trivia freaks testing the boundaries of their knowledge.

So when I got the opportunity to put together my own quiz book, THINK YOU KNOW IT ALL?, I jumped at the chance. Especially as I got to design quizzes that don’t just examine the width of your knowledge, but the depth, too.

Each quiz consists of only one question that has lots of answers. So, for instance, you might be asked to name all the planets in the solar system, or all the bones of the human body, the plays of Shakespeare, the original cast of STAR TREK.

From high culture to low, science, language, history, religion, transport, sport – I hope there are quizzes here that will appeal to pretty much anybody. Beware, though: You won’t know all the answers to all the quizzes, and some might play on your mind for hours. In fact, for me the greatest pleasure to be gained from a quiz is to finally dig out the answer three days after you started it. That is a slow-burning satisfaction!

The only problem is that even though I wrote the book, I still can’t keep all the answers in my memory bank. And now if I go to a pub quiz, my teammates expect me too be brilliant. That is, I am sad to report, rarely the case! —Dan Smith

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In science fiction, Alan Dean Foster has written about many predators, such as the one in his famous ALIEN novelization. But in his e-book exclusive, PREDATORS I HAVE KNOWN, out Feb. 22, he writes about ones found in the real world, from his trips to India, Australia, Africa and the like. Below, Foster tells us why he chose to stray from fiction to tackle fact.

Growing up reading about the adventures of Frank Buck, Roy Chapman Andrews and others, I was always enthralled by how they interacted with the environments they were exploring. That was never a concern when reading science fiction, because for the protagonists in such tales, interacting with their exotic environments was often the point of the stories.

When I began traveling the world, in 1973, I was astonished at how isolated all too many of my fellow travelers were from their surroundings. To me, one of the main reasons for traveling in the first place was to immerse myself in unfamiliar surrounds. I didn’t only want to interact with them; I wanted them to interact with me. Not to the point of being eaten (a little too much interaction), but at least the point of observing how they would respond to my presence.  

With other humans, it was a simple matter. With representatives of the animal kingdom, it often took a lot more effort. That effort was invariably repaid, as I have tried to detail in PREDATORS I HAVE KNOWN. —Alan Dean Foster

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Dave Zeltserman is the acclaimed author of the “man out of prison” crime trilogy: SMALL CRIMES, PARIAH and KILLER. His recent THE CARETAKER OF LORNE FIELD has been shortlisted by ALA for best horror novel of 2010, while this year’s OUTSOURCED has already been called “a small gem of crime fiction” by BOOKLIST and optioned for film. His latest, however, is BLOOD CRIMES, an e-book exclusive that marks a bit of departure for him. Here, Zeltserman delves into the concept behind it, and gives us an excerpt that’s quite a big bite.

BLOOD CRIMES places vampires in a noir universe populated with doomed lovers, hard-boiled PIs, dangerous drug biker gangs and truly scary sociopaths — except the vampires aren’t supernatural creatures in this universe, but instead damaged and severely flawed individuals suffering from a virus that emulates vampire-like powers.

At the center of BLOOD CRIMES are doomed lovers, Jim and Carol. Jim’s infected with the vampire virus, Carol isn’t. Jim needs to kill to eat, and he and Carol travel the country finding the most dangerous predatory scum for Jim to feed on. In order to assuage his guilt over killing his victims, Jim further needs to catch these predators in the act of harming Carol so he can rescue her before killing and feeding on them. Carol has her own serious emotional and psychological baggage and she needs this every bit as much as Jim does.

Hot on their trail is PI Donald Hayes. He is smart, capable, honest — someone that Lew Archer would’ve probably enjoyed having a few beers with. Hayes has been hired to track Jim down and is beginning to suspect that Jim is a serial killer leaving dead dangerous bad guys in his wake. Hayes’s client is Serena, a beautiful and deadly femme fatale vampire who leads a clan of hedonistic vampires in Manhattan, and is not at all happy that Jim escaped from her compound (hell hath no fury like a woman scorned? Try Serena!).

In the shadows of all this is Metcalf, my most sociopathic creation to date. In some ways, Metcalf could almost be a twin of Victor Petrenko from OUTSOURCED, but ultimately, he’s scarier and more cold-blooded. This cast of characters end up colliding with a vicious drug biker gang in Cleveland for my most violent and highest-octane book climax.

BLOOD CRIMES had been burning inside my mind for over 10 years before I wrote it, and is the first of a five-book series. This is a fast, violent and very noir take on the vampire legend. Any fans of my crime novels or really any tough-minded horror books are going to enjoy BLOOD CRIMES. Here’s an excerpt where I show Jim before being infected with the vampire virus:

After his stint in the army, he wandered aimlessly for the next eight years. For a while he took whatever odd jobs came his way; short order cook, bartender, bouncer, fisherman, lumberjack, even a short time as a bodyguard for one of Hollywood’s leading divas, but he couldn’t stay put in any one place for too long. He couldn’t sleep at night and was too antsy during the day to be able to concentrate on anything. After a few months in one place, the pressure inside would get to where he felt like he couldn’t breathe, like he had a knife pressed against his heart. He’d have to move then. After six years of this, he stopped giving a shit altogether. He stopped working and instead started doing smash and grabs, burglaries and purse snatches for his drinking money. Nothing too violent, but still enough too leave him filled with even more self-loathing. A short time later he started worshipping the needle and the release that gave him. The heroin numbed him out and kept him from slicing his wrists each night. For almost a year after that he was in freefall, and by all rights he should’ve ended up dead, contracting AIDS or in prison for a good five to ten year stretch, and if it wasn’t for a chance encounter in Austin, Texas, one of those fates probably would’ve happened.

That day started off worse than most of the others. He had hooked up the night before with another addict, a deathly thin blonde woman about twenty years older than him. He didn’t remember much about her other than how damn hollow her eyes looked, how her lips were so unnaturally pale with this hint of blue tingeing them and hard it was for her to find a vein to tap. When he woke up the next morning she was gone along with his roll of over three grand and his stash. There was nothing in her apartment worth any money. She wasn’t coming back. His cash and junk were long gone. He was just lucky she didn’t take his clothes, and even luckier she didn’t take his army-issued boots. He sat on the floor for a long time holding his head, needing a fix as badly as he ever did. Eventually the stench of garbage got to him and he staggered out of the apartment.

Most of what happened that day was lost to him, but he remembered that night ending up in a diner. He tried to palm a couple of bucks from the counter and that was when a burly tattooed arm went around his shoulder, corralling him.

“Hey, buddy, I think that was left behind for that pretty little waitress over there working her tail off. What do you say you put it back?”

It was said in a soft friendly rumbling tone, and the man saying it was the size of a small grizzly. Long beard, long dirty blonde hair, sunburned face, and wire-rimmed sunglasses that looked like gray coins placed on the eyes of a dead man. The man peered at Jim, who was wearing one of his old military camouflage shirts.

“You in Desert Storm?” he asked.

“Yeah, special forces.”

The man nodded. “Third Armored Division. Spent some time there myself. Why don’t you put that little gal’s tip back and join me and my friends for some dinner. My treat.”

Jim put the money back on the counter. The man introduced himself as Big Daddy Larkin. Three guys and a long-haired slender gal with granny-style sunglasses and a wicked off-balance smile sat at the table, all members of Big Daddy’s rock band. The band’s name was the Walking Wounded and tried for a mix of Southern Rock and heavy metal. Allman Brothers meets AC/DC was the way Big Daddy described it. He played base, the girl, Elise, sang, and the three other guys—all Desert Storm vets also—played instrumentals. Big Daddy explained the name of the band by tapping on his leg and showing Jim that it was a prosthetic. The drummer, Kyle, was missing a hand. Stevie and Danny, who played electric guitar and keyboard, were also each missing a leg. Jim, as he listened, tried hard to keep from shivering.

“You need a fix pretty bad, huh?” Big Daddy observed.

Jim nodded.

“Can’t help you there. We’re mostly drug-free, do a little weed, but not much more than that. Why don’t we get some coffee in you in the meantime.”

Big Daddy signaled the waitress over and had her pour a cup of high octane for Jim. He ordered Jim some scrambled eggs and bacon, along with a stack of pancakes, and had her leave the pot of coffee behind.

“We’ll see if your stomach can hold down some food,” he said with a wink to Jim after the waitress left.

Jim poured a heavy dose of sugar in his coffee and sipped it slowly.

“Fuck, I hope so,” he said.

Elise was sitting next to Jim. She rubbed a small hand gently across his back. Big Daddy considered him thoughtfully.

“Our band manager took off when we were in Dallas last week. We need a new one, and with the theme of our band, I think you’d fit right in. Looking for a job?”

Jim smiled weakly. “I didn’t lose any body parts over there.”

“Maybe not, but you lost something.”

Jim ended up accepting the job. The next three days were hard ones, and he spent most of the time curled up on rubber sheets while he sweated, vomited and crapped out his addiction. He half-remembered Elise being there a lot, wiping off his forehead with a cold compress, cleaning the vomit off his face and feeding him soup and apple juice.

After those three days Jim was shaky but able to stand on his feet. “Damn good thing,” Big Daddy grumbled. “We’ve got a show tonight. About time you got off your ass and pulled your weight.”

His job as band manager turned out to be doing everything except playing on stage. He moved the instruments from the van to the stage and back, booked the club dates and hotels, collected their pay, bought their weed, among dozens of other small chores. The job didn’t pay much but it had more than its share of perks. Elise was cute as hell with a singing voice that brought a lump to his throat. Her and Big Daddy were an item, which was okay with Jim. He just enjoyed her company, and overtime thought of her as a younger sister, and fuck, Big Daddy and the other guys in the band as his brothers. They all shared the same experience of being over there—or in Elise’s case, having her fiancée over there and killed in Dhahran. Each of them had lost a piece of themselves, and more important, had survived what they lost. For whatever it was worth, they saved his life. To say he would’ve taken a bullet for any of them would’ve been an understatement.

Every four or five days Jim would pack them up and they’d travel to the next city and their next club date. The constant moving around was good for him. It kept him from feeling antsy and from having the pressure inside build up too much. He started sleeping better and his nightmares were mostly gone. There were some nights where he’d find himself blissfully out of it for as much as six hours. For the first time in a long time he was relaxing and having fun. His biggest kick came when the band performed a song he wrote and the audience went wild over it, including several panties being thrown onstage. Big Daddy brought him up with the rest of the band to take a bow. After that he worked on more songs with Big Daddy and Elise. It was the best time of his life, and not just because of the music and the sex-crazed groupies and the free lifestyle. Big Daddy and Elise and the rest of the band had become his family in a way that his alcoholic parents and the army never were.

Three and a half years ago they had a club date in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan. A little hole in the wall basement nightclub that could hold maybe a hundred people, and somehow managed to squeeze in twice that amount to hear them. Elise was on fire that night and the band was hitting on all cylinders. Normally it would’ve been one of those magical nights where as band manager Jim would be able to just sit back and enjoy the ride, but he couldn’t concentrate on the music. Not with this wild looking dame standing maybe twenty feet from him. And not with the way she was staring at him. Jesus, she was something, sexy as hell in a matching yellow skintight leather pants and vest that left little to the imagination. Narrow hips and long legs and green eyes that could’ve been lasers the way they pierced through him. He wouldn’t exactly say she was gorgeous—she had this weird cat-like look about her, but every time he’d look over and meet her eyes and catch her thin impish smile, he’d feel himself growing as hard as a brick between his legs. It was embarrassing, and he couldn’t explain it. He tried not to look in her direction. His sixth sense told him to stay the fuck away. He found himself sweating, tensing, praying that she’d keep her distance. A hand touched his shoulder, then the feel of her lips brushing against his ear. It froze him. She whispered her name to him, told him that she had her eye on him for the longest time and that she was completely mesmerized by him. He knew she was mocking him, but her being so close to him left his head pounding.

He followed her to the club manager’s office. Maybe she paid the manager to leave, maybe she asked him politely, or maybe something else had happened, but whatever, the office was empty. Once the door closed she was on him, her legs wrapping around his thighs, her hands ripping his shirt as if it were tissue paper. If he were thinking clearly he’d realize that what she was doing to his shirt was reason enough to bolt the hell out of there, but his blood was pounding too hard in his head for rational thought. He barely even realized it when she worked him out of his jeans. Next they were on the hardwood floor, her nails digging into his shoulders and her tongue probing deep down his throat. His own skin had become so feverish that he only faintly realized how cold to the touch her flesh was. In a way it felt good, her lips like ice as they cooled him. Blindly, he freed her from her leather pants, and then she was on him, pushing him inside of her and bucking like a wild animal, her eyes rolling inwards until only the whites could be seen. She rode him like that until he thought he was going to pass out, all the while her moaning rising to something obscene. Shuddering as if she’d been shot, she collapsed on him but continuing to writhe across his body, her nails clawing at him, her tongue riding up his chest and towards his neck, all the while licking the blood from his scratches.

The touch of her tongue made his skin crawl.

He was in ecstasy.

He was in agony.

She bit him at the base of his neck. —Dave Zeltserman

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After spending three years covering the reality TV smash AMERICAN IDOL for THE LOS ANGELES TIMES — writing hundreds of columns and conducting thousands of interviews with cast and crew — entertainment columnist Richard Rushfield has written the new book AMERICAN IDOL: THE UNTOLD STORY. Here, he runs down the 10 biggest scandals of its mega-successful run.

IDOL was perhaps the first show on television to have as much of a life off the screen as on. These days we are used to THE HILLS girls, BACHELOR contestants, REAL HOUSEWIVES and JERSEY SHORE housemates seeing their dramas spill over from the shows that made them famous to the covers of the tabloids and the greater celeb-obsessed blogosphere.  

But when IDOL debuted on the U.S. airwaves in 2002, such a phenomenon was relatively unknown. The Internet was still in its infancy and network programming was a remote, pristine world, largely untouched by the hurly burly press.
 
What brought IDOL out of its shell was the steady stream of scandals it provided as fodder for the ravenous new media. Each year it seemed, some gotcha shattered IDOL’s peace, some disqualification brought it face to face with the public beast.

Ten years later, the stream of scandals doesn’t seem to have hurt entertainment’s greatest juggernaut. If anything, the blow-ups have kept us all talking about the show, even when the singing got a little dull.

Here then, in order of appearance, are the 10 greatest scandals of IDOL’s first decade:

10. Justin Talks Back
When POP IDOL debuted in the UK, judge Simon Cowell quickly became the man the nation loved to hate, and contestants who talked back to him became heroes for fighting the grinch. Such was not to be the case in the U.S. Riding high as the season 1 front-runner, when Justin Guarini suffered his first off night, he was visibly shaken, and responded to Cowell’s harsh critique with a relatively mild retort, “I want see what the audience thinks.”

9. The First Ringer: Kelly Clarkson
It has become an annual tradition: the discovery each year that a certain contestant is not as amateur as the driven snow, but has performed onstage. Some even on stages in Hollywood. In general ,this recurring scandal stems from a general misunderstanding of the IDOL rules. Contestants are not, as producers explain each year, required like Olympic athletes to be untouched amateurs, never paid for their work. The rules only demand that contestants not be under any current contract when they join the show. In the end, this confusion comes down to IDOL’s audiences being more catholic than the pope; having expectations of the singers above what is actually required by the show.

The very first IDOL was also the very first accused ringer. While on the show, Kelly Clarkson was portrayed as a happy-go-lucky Texas tomboy in pigtails. However, when the news came out just after the season ended that she had in fact not only lived in Hollywood, but recorded music with A-list producers, many in the press cried foul. Kelly proved, however, to be the Teflon champion, so likable and beloved that no accusations would ever stick to the first IDOL.

8. Frenchie Davis
The godmother of all IDOL sex scandals. In the years since, risqué photos have surfaced of many a contestant. But when the videos of season 2 early front-runner Frenchie Davis came to light, it was no ground for the show which prompted a round of soul searching among the producers. Ultimately, the nature of the videos — a sex act performed upon a beverage container on a site entitled Daddy’s Little Girl — proved too hot for IDOL and Frenchie became the first public disqualification in the show’s history. While no serious contender has been eliminated for similiar reasons since, no images have since surfaced to rival the triple-X octane of Frenchie’s.

7. Corey Clark
Just a couple months after IDOL’s first disqualification with Frenchie, the show eliminated yet another contestant when it came to light that sleepy-eyed bad boy Corey Clark was wanted in his home state of Kansas for battery of his 15-year-old sister and assaulting a police officer. Clark was given a chance to explain on the air before he was sent home to face the music (he ultimately pleaded no contest and was sentenced to six months’ probation). The arrest apparently hadn’t come up on background checks because the police had misspelled Clark’s name on the official report. Getting one last moment on the IDOL stage did little, however, to assuage Clark’s sense of injustice at being disqualified. He left the IDOLdome, but would come back to haunt it again years later, when he would provoke the mother of all IDOL scandals.

6. Clay Aiken Cheated?
Accusations of vote fraud would become the permanent background noise of AMERICAN IDOL finales, but in season 2, a rare Ryan Seacrest flub started the ball rolling. Twice in show, Seacrest misstated the gap between Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken, saying first that out of 24 million votes cast, only 13,000 separated them. Later in the show, he attempted to correct that statement, clarifying that the winner had won with 50.28 percent of the vote, which would add up to a number some 10 times larger than the previously stated 13,000. The following day, Fox felt compelled to put out a statement explaining that Ruben had in fact won by 130,000 votes. But it was too late: A thousand conspiracy theories had been launched, and to this day, tribes of Claymates roam the land believing their hero was cheated of his rightful crown.

5. Corey Clark, Part 2
Beaten but not bowed, Corey Clark darkened IDOL’s doorstep once more. In 2005, he reappeared, giving an interview to ABC’s PRIMETIME LIVE claiming that while on IDOL, he had had a clandestine affair with judge Paula Abdul, who secretly coached him through the contest. On the show, he played a voicemail message purported to be from Paula, in which she seemed to be telling him to keep quiet about their relationship. In the furor that followed, pundits opined that Fox would have to dump its star if the show was to remain credible. But IDOL stood by its gal and toughed it out, denying Clark’s charges. Ultimately, the media narrative turned against ABC, accusing them of sleaze in trying to damage a rival show. Paula survived and even turned up on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE to mock the accusations, but it was a very close call.

4. Sanjaya and the Rise of “Vote for the Worst”
Each season had seen a contestant that the caused the pundits to tear their hair out wondering, “How does this no talent survive?” But none caused more heartburn than season 6′s Sanjaya Malakar, who openly seemed to mock the hallowed IDOLdome stage. Looking for an explanation for Sanjaya’s longevity, the press turned to a heretofore little-known site called Vote for the Worst, which led an anti-IDOL movement, encouraging haters to subvert IDOL from within by supporting the least-talented contestants. Early in the season, the site had thrown its weight behind Sanjaya, as had radio host Howard Stern. Sanjaya made it to only to seventh place, but not before becoming the show’s permanent anti-hero.

3. David Hernandez Breaks the Gay/Straight Barrier
When evidence emerged that season 7′s David Hernandez had worked as a gay stripper, it was IDOL’s first open encounter with the question of sexual orientation.  Many wondered whether the family friendly show could afford to keep Hernandez on. In the end, the scandal turned out to be a non-event. IDOL let the viewers decide the question, and they kept Hernandez around for another week.

2. Paula and the Performance That Wasn’t
Since its earliest days, Paula’s tongue-tied seemingly ditzyness was one the show’s great subplots. However, in season 7, when she critiqued a performance that had not yet occurred, it seemed like something worse was afoot. Speculation varied from on-air substance abuse to evidence that the producers were fixing the contest. Paula later explained that a last-second change of format had led to the confusion. The show, again, stood by its judge, but this time, there were no jokes about the subject to be heard on AMERICAN IDOL.

1. Cell Phone Gate
Since the defeat of Clay Aiken, no loss has sparked as many conspiracies theories as Adam Lambert’s in season 8 at the hands of Kris Allen. The scuttlebutt among Lambert’s fantatical following was flamed when Immediately after the finale it came out that IDOL sponsor AT&T had handed out special phones at Kris-boosting parties in Arkansas, which allowed the recipents to place huge numbers of calls.  No evidence has surfaced that the number of votes cast was sufficent to influence the outcome in an election where tens of millions of votes were tallied, but again, the cat was out of the bag and the Glamberts joined the ranks of IDOL’s permanently aggrieved. —Richard Rushfield

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Egads, another vampire novel? Hang on a sec — author Jon F. Merz tells you why you should care, and how his new work, THE KENSEI, takes the genre in a much different direction.

Vampires have always held something of a fascination for me. By my recollection, my earliest nightmare I can recall having was of The Count from SESAME STREET. Not that I cringed when he would come on the screen, but in the midst of a fever-induced bad dream, he became quite terrifying. Throughout my childhood and beyond, the idea of vampires was one that simultaneously scared and intrigued me. I recall seeing any number of great Christopher Lee movies, as well as productions on the local PBS station that further fueled this interest. I first saw and later read ‘SALEM’S LOT and found the creature in Stephen King’s novel utterly terrifying … in a good way.

But when I finally decided to turn a short story of mine, “Past Imperfect,” into a novel back around 2000-2001, I realized that I needed something of a unique angle. The undead vampire had already been done to death — and has, since then, been done to death several times over — but I thought the legends still had potential for exploration.

I recalled reading about early man, hunting animals and drinking their blood to gain their strength, so I found it an easy leap to suppose that some tribes of early man might have hunted other early tribes. This has recently been supported by scientific supposition that our nearest ancestors hunted Neanderthal to virtual extinction and even dined on them.

Lawson, then, became a member of a race of living vampires that have evolved in secret alongside humanity for millennia. His race is intertwined with humanity, and yet they are separate. Lawson — a Fixer — is destined from birth to defend his people and protect the Balance — the secret of vampiric existence, from the rest of humanity. He’s part-spy, part-cop, part-commando. James Bond with fangs, in other words.

Lawson doesn’t go a long way on angst. Or sparkles. He’s a hard-boiled cynic with a sarcastic streak a mile long. His pulp background comes from my own love of hard-boiled characters from the likes of Mickey Spillane, Robert Leslie Bellem and many, many more. Fusing my background of sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, horror and espionage into one cohesive character and series has been one of the most fun things I’ve done in my life. And I think Lawson is a pretty cool blend of them all.

THE KENSEI brings Lawson to Japan, ostensibly for some rest and relaxation, but what he finds is neither and so much more. Reunited with his human girlfriend, ex-KGB assassin Talya, Lawson must confront his own inner doubts and external threats in order to save the day.

Vampires continue to be a popular trope to mine in books, TV and films, but I hope that more creators will try to take the genre into different directions. There are legends the world over about creatures that feast on blood, and yet, not all of those legends have made it into the pages of books. With Lawson and THE KENSEI, I’m hoping to change that, at least in some small part.

While some roll their eyes at the presence of yet another vampire novel, I’m confident that a fresh take on the species — like Lawson in THE KENSEI — will at least give them pause to reflect … and hopefully read. —Jon F. Merz

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THE TEMPLAR CONSPIRACY is Paul Christopher’s fourth novel in best-selling “Templar” series, in which former Army Ranger John Holliday must unravel a deadly plot by the Templars to extend their influence to the highest power. Where does an idea like that come from? Christopher tells us below. (A word of warning: If you haven’t yet had your Celebrex today, don’t read past this sentence.)

I’ve always been a fan of dystopic novels from George Orwell’s 1984 to John Wyndam’s novels and most particularly and most affectionately to DEATH OF GRASS by John Christopher. On the movie side, it’s been a long love affair with flicks like Wyndam’s THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS, known in the U.S. as VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, and on the “realistic” side, SEVEN DAYS IN MAY, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and FAIL-SAFE.

One way or the other, all of those stories inform and inspire the “Templar” series, particularly the latest, THE TEMPLAR CONSPIRACY, which, in many ways, despite what PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, said has more to do with SEVEN DAYS IN MAY than THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE.

I’ve had a growing sense that with the advent of the Patriot Act and the very 1984-style Homeland Security (the word “Homeland” rings a bell very much like the German Fatherland and the Russian Motherland), we have been steadily stripped of our basic human rights to the point where life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness may very well depend on what you look like, the sound of your name, your religion and the possibility of having your name accidentally put on a “No Fly” list.

THE TEMPLAR CONSPIRACY is really more about the ease with which enormous events can happen and how lives can change direction on the turn of a dime. Of all the themes in my writing, that has always been one of the most important. As time passes, I’ve also come to the regrettable decision that the Internet, in all its fundamental richness and freedom, will probably be the death of culture, truth, history and everything else I find important.

One of these days, some future, bigger and nastier entity in the WikiLeaks mold is going to appear and the whole, fragile thing is going to collapse in a Babel of Tweets, Twitters, Skypes, texts, e-mails and E-trades, putting us all back in the Stone Ages.

Oh, yes, and Happy New Year. —Paul Christopher

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ROD LOTT’S PICKS

Rather than present my opinions all over again, I thought instead I’d present my choices for the best books of 2010 as if hack film critic Gene Shalit were blurbing them. (Okay, you caught me: I just ran out of time.) So without further ado and in no particular order:

HOLLYWOOD HILLS by Joseph Wambaugh: “Head for the hills! HOLLYWOOD HILLS, that is! Hooray for HOLLYWOOD!”

GAME CHANGE: OBAMA AND THE CLINTONS, MCCAIN AND PALIN, AND THE RACE OF A LIFETIME by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin: “The votes are in! And my chad hangs for GAME CHANGE! You betcha!”

STORIES edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio: “Once upon a time, you read this anthology … and loved it! The end!”

THE DEVIL AND SHERLOCK HOLMES: TALES OF MURDER, MADNESS, AND OBSESSION by David Grann: “Whodunit? David Grann, that’s who! THE DEVIL may care … and so do I!”

BODYWORLD by Dash Shaw: “Dash off to the bookstore and buy this one! It’ll rock your BODY and your WORLD!”

DESTROY ALL MOVIES!!!: THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO PUNKS ON FILM by Zack Carlson and Bryan Connolly: “DESTROY ALL MOVIES? More like destroy all other books! Don’t believe me? Then PUNK you!”

WEDNESDAY COMICS by various: “It’s WEDNESDAY, I’m in love! No wonder they call it Hump Day! Because I want to hump this book!”

TWIN SPICA by Kou Yaginuma and PEEPO CHOO by Felipe Smith: “SPICA must be Japanese for ‘spectacular!’ And PEEPO CHOO must be Japanese for ‘chew poop,’ so call me a coprophiliac! Nom-nom-nom!”

“YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER!”: WRITINGS ON BRUCE WILLIS, BADASS CINEMA AND OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS by Vern: “More like yippee ki-yay, motherfucker! I’ll DIE HARD reading this one!”

And the worst:

THE GIRL IN ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S SHOWER by Robert Graysmith: “This SHOWER’s so cold, my wiener shrunk! Brrrrr!” —Rod Lott

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ALAN CRANIS’ PICKS

The criteria? Simple: Beyond the usual “can’t put it down” excitement from a first reading, these are the books I most look forward to reading again.

NOVELS:

SAVAGES by Don Winslow — His previous novels highlighted individually either his hip sense of humor or his moving intensity. In SAVAGES, he brought them both together into perhaps his best novel to date.

OVERWINTER by David Wellington — The second in Wellington’s werewolf series continues the saga started in FROSTBITE, enriches the central characters, and takes the entire lycanthropy mythos into new territory. 

INNOCENT MONSTER by Reed Farrel Coleman — The author proves his mastery of disillusionment and personal despair in this story of Moe Prager’s investigation of the disappearance of a child prodigy in the world of high art and higher profits.
 
ON THE NICKEL by John Shannon — Shannon’s latest restricts his Jack Liffey protagonist to a wheelchair with no voice, yet has him as actively involved as any of his previous series entries. Notable also for its gut-wrenching yet compassionate portrayal of L.A.’s skid row homeless.
 
ABLE ONE by Ben Bova — This longtime science-fiction master presents a sort-of techno-thriller distinguished by its concern more for its characters and narrative suspense than for the hardware involved.
 
THE DEVIL by Ken Bruen — Jack Taylor finally meets the nemesis that has hounded him all these years in Bruen’s murder/horror story with only vague but effective traces of the supernatural.
 
THE DEPUTY by Victor Gischler — After a couple of irreverent and wonderful forays into science fiction and horror, it’s great to have Gischler back with a wicked, high-octane tale of dusty criminal low-lives and corruption.
 
STORY COLLECTIONS:
 
THE BEST AMERICAN NOIR OF THE CENTURY edited by James Ellroy and Otto Penzler — You might take issue with the editors’ definition of “noir,” but there is no denying the pleasure of having these classic and contemporary dark jewels, by such a diverse group of authors, in one collection.
 
AMOS WALKER: THE COMPLETE STORY COLLECTION by Loren D. Estleman — A terrific way to mark the 30th anniversary of Estleman’s enduring P.I. and a needed reminder of Estleman’s formidable talent and contributions to the genre.
 
THE BEST OF JOE R. LANSDALE by Joe R. Lansdale — Some of your favorites might not be here, but while earlier collections of his excellent short works become harder to find, we should be grateful for this recent gathering.
 
SELECTED STORIES by Fritz Leiber — As is the case with the Lansdale collection above, longtime Leiber readers will take issue with this collection. But it nonetheless provides a valuable introduction to this superb and influential modern horror, SF, and fantasy author and might possibly rescue him from relative obscurity.
 
GRAPHIC NOVELS:
 
FORTY-FIVE by Andi Ewington — Unorthodox in its narrative style (mostly interviews) and illustrations (various artists with differing styles), this thought-provoking meditation of superheroes will be seen as a watershed work — much like WATCHMEN — in years to come. —Alan Cranis

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ALLAN MOTT’S PICKS

When Rod announced he was planning on starting the movie-themed site Flick Attack, I immediately sent him an e-mail thanking him, since it meant I could finally stop pretending I enjoyed reading books— a great burden I took upon when I became an infrequent BOOKGASM contributor.

I was joking, of course, but there is no denying that in the past few months of its existence, I’ve already written 65 reviews for Flick Attack, which is at least double the amount of ‘GASM reviews/articles I’ve written in the past four years. The problem isn’t that I’m an illiterate philistine, but rather that my literary tastes have become so minutely specific over the years that the amount of average bookstore space I consider worthy of my attention can best be measured in inches (the Canadian wrote only because most of you won’t know what a centimeter is).

Which is why I’m surprised I’ve managed to compile such a relatively long selection of titles for my best-of-the-year list. Turns out 2010 was a banner 12 months for my very selective tastes, churning out as it did a great book about food and cooking, several great books about this business we call show, a hugely entertaining nonfiction political page-turner and at least one novel of the only kind I usually read: British social satire. It’s an eccentric list, likely to end up as callously ignored as the reviews I originally wrote for most of the included, but if you do happen to decide to give one of these books a try I guarantee that I really, truly loved it and — if you’re both awesome and cool — you might like them, too.

Best Book About My Third Greatest Personal Obsession:

MEDIUM RAW: A BLOODY VALENTINE TO THE WORLD OF FOOD AND THE PEOPLE WHO COOK by Anthony Bourdain — Assailed by some (assholes) as Bourdain’s sad attempt to justify his so-called “selling out,” I instead found this, his first true sequel to KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL, to be a moving account of what can happen when a once perpetual malcontent is forced to re-evaluate his cynicism in the face of genuine success and happiness. Add to that some of the best, least pretentious food writing you’re likely to find and you have a book that both thrilled my inner foodie and allowed me to indulge in a tasty helping of reluctant optimism.

Best Book Everyone Knew Was Inevitable as Soon as the Shit Hit the Fan:

THE WAR FOR LATE NIGHT: WHEN LENO WENT EARLY AND TELEVISION WENT CRAZY by Bill Carter — As soon as word spread that NBC was planning on dumping Conan O’Brien from THE TONIGHT SHOW in order to give it back to Jay Leno, knowledgeable folks everywhere became certain that the author of THE LATE SHIFT — perhaps the greatest book ever written about network television — now finally had a subject worthy of a sequel. And Mr. Carter did not disappoint, delivering both an epic tale of destiny run amok and a bittersweet eulogy for a long-beloved format nearing the end of its cultural relevance.

Best Book I Would Have Totally Reviewed If Rod Hadn’t Done So First:

PARTY ANIMALS: A HOLLYWOOD TALE OF SEX, DRUGS, AND ROCK ‘N’ ROLL STARRING THE FABULOUS ALLAN CARR by Robert Hofler — As someone who can honestly claim to have seen CAN’T STOP THE MUSIC more times than he’s seen CITIZEN KANE, I was clearly the target audience for this biography of legendary ’70s/’80s movie producer Allan Carr, but unfortunately, Rod reviewed it before I could get my hands on a copy. And while he gave it a positive review, I personally would have been much more effusive in my admiration of Hofler’s work. While always appropriately gossipy, he still manages to keep the book from feeling sleazy or exploitative (no mean feat when your cover explicitly features Olivia Newton John’s camel toe) and does the close to impossible by making his subject feel both human and sympathetic, despite such abundant evidence to the contrary.

Best Book from ‘09 I Didn’t Know Existed Until ‘10, So It Totally Counts:

ADRIAN MOLE: THE PROSTRATE YEARS by Sue Townsend — Copyrighted in its native England in 2009, I couldn’t find a copy on a Canadian bookshelf until the beginning of this year, so I’m flagrantly ignoring Rod’s rules and counting it amongst the best of 2010 (fight the power!). The latest entry in Townsend’s decades-spanning social satire of British life that began with 1982′s THE SECRET DIARY OF ADRIAN MOLE, AGED 13 3/4, finds our “hero” entering his 40s still as unhappy and unsuccessful as ever. Adding to his misery is the inevitable failure of his latest marriage, the loss of his job at a used bookstore and — most seriously — a bout with serious illness. Inspired by her own health troubles, Townsend has made this the most overtly melancholy book in the series, but balances its more serious moments with her trademark humor and the fan-pleasing suggestion that Adrian might finally end up—if only briefly—with his first love, the impossibly glamorous Pandora Braithwaite. Right up there with previous series highlights GROWING PAINS and THE CAPPUCCINO YEARS, this latest entry definitely marks a welcome return to form after the highly disappointing THE LOST DIARIES.

Second Best Book I Would Have Totally Reviewed If Rod Hadn’t Done So First:

GAME CHANGE: OBAMA AND THE CLINTONS, MCCAIN AND PALIN, AND THE RACE OF A LIFETIME by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin: There’s no doubt that the 2008 presidential election was easily the most historic ever experienced by many of us and will be discussed and dissected in hundred of books over the following decades. How well GAME CHANGE will fare in comparison remains to be seen, but as an opening shot, it mixed the right amount of history, hearsay and outright gossip to keep even the most jaded of political flacks engrossed from cover to cover. Even-handed enough to piss off both the right (who didn’t like how Sarah Palin is portrayed as being grossly unprepared for the office she was inexplicably chosen for) and the left (who most objected to the depiction of the late Elizabeth Edwards as a selfish Lady Macbeth type), no one in the book escapes unscathed, although Heilemann and Halperin do ignore some of the Clinton campaign’s more blatant acts of hypocrisy.

Biggest Surprise of the Year:

THE BEDWETTER: STORIES OF COURAGE, REDEMPTION, AND PEE by Sarah Silverman: When I picked up Silverman’s inevitable literary cash grab, I assumed it was going to be dark and outrageously funny, what I didn’t expect was that it would also be heartfelt and genuinely emotional. THE BEDWETTER turned out to be the rare comedic autobiography that works better as a memoir than a book of comedy, since its best chapters are the more serious ones dedicated to Silverman’s childhood and the nighttime incontinence that plagued her until she was 16. Usually, I can’t wait to get past the typically boring “early years” chapters and get right to the showbiz anecdotes, but in this case, I would have been perfectly happy if Silverman never mentioned her comedy career at all.

Best Re-Release:

DANSE MACABRE by Stephen King: One of the biggest no-brainers of the year for me was to buy and download the unabridged audiobook version of King’s classic dissection of the horror genre as it stood in the early ’80s (a new and lengthy introduction by King being the only nod to the time that has passed since the book was originally written). Still a healthy mixture of occasional brilliance, respectable insight and occasional generational blindness, the most surprising part of revisiting the book for me was the realization that I am now two years older than he was when he first wrote it at the age of 33 (a disturbing revelation only somewhat mitigated by the fact that I wrote my own — admittedly lame — book on horror movies just before I turned 30, so nyah-nyah-nyah-na).

Also Worthy of Mention, But Not Enough to Write Big, Long, Freaking Paragraphs About:

• ROLE MODELS by John Waters
• LOVE BITES by Adrienne Barbeau
• I KNOW I AM, BUT WHAT ARE YOU by Samantha Bee
• CONFESSIONS OF A PRAIRIE BITCH: HOW I SURVIVED NELLIE OLESON AND LEARNED TO LOVE BEING HATED by Alison Arngrim
• TEARS OF A CLOWN: GLENN BECK AND THE TEA BAGGING OF AMERICA by Dana Milbank
• WEDNESDAY COMICS by various

WORSTS

One of the benefits of being such a picky reader is that it means I seldom experience the displeasure of reading a truly terrible book. While there have been some books that disappointed me this year, such as David Bianculli’s DANGEROUSLY FUNNY, James Sullivan’s 7 DIRTY WORDS and Nicole LaPorte’s THE MEN WHO WOULD BE KING, none of their crimes were egregious enough to merit inclusion in a list such as this. I also don’t feel right singling out Meghan McCain’s unfortunate DIRTY SEXY POLITICS, since I only read and reviewed it to rile up BOOKGASM’s collection of passionate right-wing readers and knew exactly what I was getting into when I started it. No, there’s really only one book that I came across this year that I can honestly say I regret having read and — not surprisingly — it was one Rod sent to me because he couldn’t be bothered to review it himself (I will, however, graciously give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he thought I’d like it).

Worst Book of the Year:

GOING HOLLYWOOD by Josh Becker — It says something about my affection for bad movies and the people who make them that I honestly thought I would enjoy a book written by the man who gave us the truly atrocious PLANET OF THE APES rip-off ALIEN APOCALYPSE, never once considering that his inability to create an entertaining low-budget sci-fi movie might suggest the same for a short memoir. It only took a few pages, though, for me to figure out that Becker was both: a) a terrible writer and b) someone with whom I probably would not get along. In telling the tale of his earliest years in Hollywood, he manages to pull off the difficult trick of creating a series of reminisces that never once feel credible, despite being far too banal to fabricate. Once you’ve discovered that he can’t even make a boring conversation about movies with a friend sound authentic, it becomes very easy to understand why he decided to settle on being another Ed Wood, rather than the next Orson Welles. —Allan Mott

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There was a smorgasbord of science fiction in 2010. There was a bleak, but awesome winter, a strong spring, a thrilling summertime and a hearty, stick-to-your-ribs autumn. Looking back, this was one of the best year’s for science-fiction fans since I started writing these lists, and limiting this one to just five books was tough (even after cheating a bit — see #4). Also, it apparently helps if your name was “Ian” or some derivation thereof. Here we go:

5. GEOSYNCHRON by David Louis Edelman
Edelman’s “Jump 225″ trilogy came to an end in 2010, and this might be the best book of the series. The density of the universe he created for these books is such that getting into one after a decent amount of time away from the series requires the use of GEOSYNCHRON’s excellent appendices. It’s a good thing, then, that the appendices are put together just as skillfully as the main story.

Readers who get their brains properly locked into place can expect a book with lots more of everything that the first two books had: more action, more scheming, more crazy-awesome speculation. The series’ “hero,” an uber-capitalist named Natch, finally finds out what he really wants, and comes to understand what he really deserves, while the world goes nuts around him.

4. BLACKOUT and ALL CLEAR by Connie Willis
These books occupy one slot on the list because: a) It’s really one continuous story (there’s just a smidge of resolution at the end of BLACKOUT, but it’s mostly cliffhanger. In fact, anyone who digs the book should buy ALL CLEAR before they finish BLACKOUT to avoid said hanging), and b) I’m already leaving too many good books off the list as it is.

Willis makes a triumphant return to the time-traveling-historians mythos that she had great success with in the 1990s with DOOMSDAY BOOK and TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG. This time, three historians go on three separate research assignments amid World War II in England. Things don’t quite go as planned, and as they try to puzzle out what’s going on, they also have to deal with the Blitz, German rocket attacks, and some particularly bothersome street urchins.
 
Willis’ research provides a very real (or at least real-seeming) window into England during wartime, and while the concept of time-travelers stuck in the past is hardly new, Willis is never content to fall back on temporal clichés. The historians begin to question the nature of time travel and the rules that they thought ruled their profession, and this uncertainty adds a layer of delicious tension to the mix.
 
3. SURFACE DETAIL by Iain M. Banks
This is the ninth novel set in Banks’ “Culture” universe, and, like most of the others, it’s as good a place to start as any. There are references to previous events (and a couple of Easter eggs for fans), but it stands alone quite well. The Big Theme this time is life after death, both on a micro level (a slave is killed, comes back to life, and thirsts for revenge) and a macro level (societies wage a virtual war over the existence of virtual Hells that torment the digitized dead for what seems to be eternity).

SURFACE DETAIL is one of the better “Culture” books — a lot of them are so dense up front that it takes some effort to get really invested in them — but SURFACE DETAIL kicks things off with a bang, and it’s off to the races from there. Banks’ usual blend of drama and humor is evident, as is his ability to make even jaded readers get emotionally invested in the plights of fairly ridiculous fictional characters. Also, there’s an awesome space battle.
 
2. BITTER SEEDS by Ian Tregillis
Where did this come from? Definitely the biggest science-fiction surprise of 2010, BITTER SEEDS has the sinister British magic of JONATHAN STRANGE & MR. NORRELL; the crazed, abused superheroes of some of Warren Ellis’ best work; and a slick World War II vibe straight from INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS. Tregillis pulled some sort of killer rabbit out of the hat with this one.

In an alternate World War II in which the Germans have engineered a team of mentally unstable super soldiers that they use to plow through the Ardennes and wreak general havoc, the Brits rediscover ancient magic to turn the tide. But as we all know, sinister British magic always comes with a price. This is the only book I read cover to cover in one sitting this year, and if it weren’t for the genius of the year’s top book, SEEDS would definitely sit in the top spot.
 
1. THE DERVISH HOUSE by Ian McDonald
McDonald’s writing improves with each outing, and while this can sometimes mean that we don’t get giant doorstops like RIVER OF GODS, what THE DERVISH HOUSE lacks in girth it more than compensates for in worth. McDonald’s culture radar has led him to Turkey, from whence he shares with us all his dreams and visions of a futuristic Istanbul. Tightly plotted, superbly characterized, and wonderfully imaginative, McDonald has capped off an epic five-year span of books (encompassing RIVER OF GODS, BRASYL and THE DERVISH HOUSE) that will be tough for any author to top.
 
Best Cover Artist
Stephan Martiniere
Martiniere wins this one hands down. Not only did he do awesome work on THE DERVISH HOUSE and GEOSYNCHRON, but he came up with a fantastic cover for the U.S. printing of ARES EXPRESS and much, much more. As a side note, did you know that he also “directed hundreds of episodes of WHERE’S WALDO and DENNIS THE MENACE,” according to Wikipedia? He’s one bad-ass, jack-of-all-trades mofo.
 
Honorable Mention
SLEEPLESS by Charlie Huston
Huston’s one of my favorites, but of course, he wrote a science-fiction novel in a year already jam-packed with greatness. SLEEPLESS is very worth it, however, especially if you feel like you’re not pessimistic enough.
 
Not Included Because I Haven’t Finished Reading It Yet, But It’s Pretty Great So Far
VERSION 43 by Philip Palmer
This is a really cool noirish police procedural about a cyborg cop and a race of unstoppable sand rats. Or so I assume — I’m only up to page 200. It’s good so far, though; it’s got this kind of Heinlein vibe to the dialogue.
 
Not Included Because It’s Not Science Fiction
ZERO HISTORY by William Gibson
It’s not science fiction. Put it on whatever shelf you want, and explain to me how reality is the same as sci-fi nowadays as much as you want, but it’s not. It is a good book, though. More of a techno thriller. Sort of hyper-real and focusing on fashion and the secret world of really rich people and clothes that only super-cool or super-rich people can have. —Ryun Patterson

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Author Joshua Jabcuga delves into horror, where every Friday is Friday the 13th!

Novel of the Year:
RED SKY by Nate Southard

If you’ve been paying attention, Southard has been building quite the buzz over the last couple of years. It started with a short story here and there, and then — bam! — when he earned his way up to the plate, he just knocked that fucker right out of the park. Southard is clearly a student of the game, honing his craft, voice and talent through old-fashioned hard work, and there’s no bullshit about that. I’d tell you to look out for this guy, but I think you’ll be hearing plenty about him in the very near future.

Think of him as Quentin Tarantino, right before he blew up and became a household name. Yeah, this guy is going places, and he deserves it. My suggestion is you jump aboard this Michael Mann (vintage Mann) meets Norman Partridge thrill ride so you can witness a first-class talent on the rise. His prose is gritty and no nonsense, as if you’ve got sand in your teeth and nothing but tequila to gargle with.

I was so impressed, that after reading a PDF review copy, I dropped $60 to order the hardcover of the book for my personal collection. To butcher someone else’s saying, I took the ride, so I thought it was only appropriate that I pay for the ticket.

Short Story Collection of the Year (tie):
CITIES OF NIGHT by Philip Nutman and FUTILE EFFORTS by Tom Piccirilli

ChiZine Publications seemed to come out of nowhere in 2010, releasing some stellar books. They put together quite the catalog and became quite the name. In particular, Paul Tremblay’s IN THE MEAN TIME garnered a lot of buzz. As a result, I think to some extent, CITIES OF NIGHT by Philip Nutman unfairly slipped under the radar for many readers. So here’s your wake-up call and a chance to redeem yourselves. As Nutman might say, “Saddle up wankers, it’s time to ride!”

Some of you die-hards out there might know his now-landmark novel, WET WORK. Nasty (and smart) stuff, that. Reading CITIES OF NIGHT, you may experience a sense of awe, like witnessing a mash-up of The Clash and Miles Davis (although Nutman notes: “The book was fuelled on Guinness, Sauza Tequila, Echo & The Bunnymen [very LOUDLY], and Monty Python).” It’s a killing moon, indeed. CITIES OF NIGHT serves as both a career overview and a greatest-hits collection. The prose is elegant and dangerous, like a high-priced escort with a razor pressed against your balls.

You get “Full Throttle,” originally published in 1990 in the now-infamous SPLATTERPUNKS, along with newer material exclusive to the collection, weaved in seamlessly. And for the uninitiated, if you’re saying to yourself, “That name sounds so familiar,” it’s because Nutman was one of the brave souls (along with Daniel Farrands) who masterfully adapted Jack Ketchum’s THE GIRL NEXT DOOR for film. I’ve referred to Nutman as the Lester Bangs of genre writing, and the folks at FANGORIA have lovingly given him the title of the Hunter S. Thompson of horror. Buy CITIES OF NIGHT, and just maybe the “evil Dr. Phil” will give you more of the bad medicine that makes you feel so good.

Four-time Stoker Award winner (and inaugural “’Cuga’s Cuts” winner, ha!) Tom Piccirilli has become the king with a crown of barbed wire. FUTILE EFFORTS is monstrous, in terms of its disturbing content, and in sheer size alone: 17 stories and 45 poems with insightful intros from a highly respected cast of scribes including the likes of Ray Garton, Christopher Golden and Edward Lee. Just shy of 500 pages, this cinderblock of pulp is a no-brainer, bells-and-whistles must-have for any self-respecting horror fan. Brutal and beautiful.

There’s not much I can say that would do it justice because it needs to be seen (and read) to be believed. Like Nutman, Piccirilli is a writer’s writer, and the man has become a master storyteller, at the top of his game for quite an impressive stretch now. He’s like a champion fighter who can’t be beaten, one who sharpens his arsenal with each bout. And Piccirilli is a fighting champion. This book gets the deluxe treatment, and rightfully so. Bravo, Cemetery Dance!

Nonfiction Book of the Year:
BELA LUGOSI AND BORIS KARLOFF: THE EXPANDED STORY OF A HAUNTING COLLABORATION by Gregory William Mank

Yes, technically, this book was originally released in 1990, but the revised edition is even more definitive and exhaustive (which is difficult to fathom if you’ve seen its previous incarnation). Quite simply, this is a text devoted to two legendary silver-screen icons. It’s important that we preserve the past. Lugosi and Karloff certainly have their place in history, and I’m glad this book exists, to help reinforce and perpetuate the legends. It’s funny how time slips away, isn’t it?

Reprints of the Year (tie):
JOYRIDE by Jack Ketchum and THE BRIDGE by John Skipp and Craig Spector

Stop prowling around the used bookstore hoping to get your hands on these and grab fresh copies (or download them for that eReading device you scored for Christmas). JOYRIDE includes the ultra-disturbing novella WEED SPECIES.

Outstanding Project of the Year:
THE SECRETARY OF DREAMS: VOLUME TWO by Stephen King, illustrated by Glenn Chadbourne

Worth the wait, worth the money! That’s it in a nutshell. But that’s not fair. Why? Well, besides the fact that Cemetery Dance did a marvelous job with the production (as they did with the first volume), it’s necessary to point out the contributions from Chadbourne. This is really his baby. I want there to be dozens of volumes from Cemetery Dance, and I want Chadbourne to perform his black-ink magic on all of them.

If you were to buy only one “collector’s book” this year (you know what I mean: the kind where you say to yourself, “Do I not eat for a few days and purchase the book?), this is that book. Sure, it looks all purty on your shelf there with its slipcase, but this book begs to be read. Dive in. Open it up on your coffee table. Pour over every last detail in Chadbourne’s stunning illustrations, and lose yourself inside not just the world of King, but the world of Chadbourne.

Anthology of the Year:
HAUNTED LEGENDS edited by Ellen Datlow and Nick Mamatas

Think of it as a concept album, with a bunch of rock stars covering folk songs. Trust me, it’ll make sense once you pick up the book. And there’s a Ramsey Campbell piece called “Chucky Comes to Liverpool” about an urban legend surrounding the CHILD’S PLAY films and video nasties (I’m not making this up!), and it’s charming and it made me laugh and then it bit me in the ass. Quite clever, that Campbell. I think the lad’s got a future. Same with HAUNTED LEGENDS. It begs for a follow-up. And here’s a request for the band: Jack Ketchum covering the Jersey Devil. Please?

Zombie Book of the Year (this category will never die!):
PARIAH by Bob Fingerman

It’s this year’s zombie novel. Need I say more?

Horror Website of the Year
www.BrianKeene.com

Whether or not you agree with everything Keene says, in his often engaging, occasionally hilarious, sometimes bitter, always honest rants, the man never ceases to entertain. And his website is a portal to bigger things. It’s not just about him. That’s the thing: He gets it. Always has. His website is a community, and it’s evolved into a much bigger universe, this Keenedom. As one industry vet told me, when it comes to promoting, “Keene is a machine.” I admire that.

But you know what I dig the most? The part that gets overlooked, because critics or message-board trolls are too quick to point their fingers at him when things go wrong in the horror industry (granted, you live by the sword, you die by the sword), but that thing is a passion and a respect for this business that I dare anyone to match. Keene does more to promote the great things about the genre than almost anyone associated with it. He’s got a soapbox and he’s not afraid to step up and put his ass on the line. He’ll go out on a limb and shine a light on up-and-coming writers that deserve props, when others don’t want to take a chance, forgetting what it was like trying to break in. Keene has taste, and he’s been in the trenches.

If you’re smart, you’ll tune in, shut up, listen and learn. He is a machine, but he’s also a tireless, selfless ambassador. I try to visit Keene’s website everyday, just to see what’s up, and to get his take on things. The horror community is a better place because of him (and I may get some of his “haters” posting here as a result of that comment, but if I’ve learned one thing from reading Keene, it’s that you shouldn’t be afraid to stand up for something you believe in; everyone else can piss off). And with each passing day, the horror community and the Keenedom are becoming synonymous with one another. Bookmark that bad boy!

Magazine of the Year (tie):
CEMETERY DANCE and SHROUD: THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF DARK FICTION AND ART

Wow, one of the toughest categories, and that’s a beautiful thing. Readers, writers, you owe it to yourself to buy these.

Publisher of the Year:
Cemetery Dance

The publishing industry is in a state of flux right now. Writers are scared. Royalties are late. Bookstores are closing down. What does Cemetery Dance do? Oh, they decide that 2010 is going to be their best year yet, even though they’ve been widely recognized as the most respected and reputable publisher for years. I mean, they went pedal-to-the-metal and never let up. Every month there was another astonishing release, right to the very end. There were months with multiple five-star-quality releases.

Besides some of the titles we’ve mentioned already in this column, honorary mentions belong to LAST EXIT FOR THE LOST by Tim Lebbon, BONE SOUP: THIS AND THAT AND BRIC-A-BRAC by T.M. Wright, THE SECRET BACK OF THINGS by Christopher Golden, an exclusive version of BLOCKADE BILLY by Stephen King, LILJA’S LIBRARY: THE WORLD OF STEPHEN KING by Hans-Åke Lilja and a free download of Brian James Freeman’s THE PAINTED DARKNESS.

Hell, their magazine picked up steam, too. Cemetery Dance even announced a limited edition of Justin Cronin’s THE PASSAGE, but good luck getting your hands on a copy of that, which sold out in about four hours (and no, I blinked and missed that sucker, sad to say). 2010 was the year that Cemetery Dance cemented themselves as the premiere heavy hitters in the industry. Well played!

Publisher to Watch Closely in 2011 (tie):
ChiZine Publications, Apex Publications and Thunderstorm Books

Apex has their finger on the pulse. I’m expecting them to really break out in 2011. I’m looking forward to seeing how ChiZine tops themselves in the coming year. Thunderstorm recently announced their Maelstrom line, in association with Brian Keene, which is a great concept and has proven to be buzzworthy. And quite frankly, the quality of their product is top-shelf.

Authors to Watch Closely in 2011:
Wrath James White and Christa Faust

So there you have it! As you can see, horror, speculative fiction, and thrillers are far from dead, my friends.

Please remember, this isn’t a competition. Also, these are books and magazines that were published (or I received review copies of) prior to Nov. 1. Anything after that will be eligible for next year. These are just my picks, and I’d love to hear yours. Feel free to post away with feedback and recommendations of your own. (Note: Apologies in advance, but I won’t be responding to any anonymous opinions. As the saying goes, “We card here.”) —Joshua Jabcuga

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So around Halloween, my beloved hard drive decided to crash. Short story shorter, I lost all my data, including a slew of reviews I had written from summer to fall, but not yet posted. Rather than try and piece them together, I give up and instead offer this list of them all, using publisher-provided plot summaries so you can decide on your own whether your interest is piqued. And these are just the ones I remember … —Rod Lott

DRACULA’S GUEST AND OTHER VICTORIAN VAMPIRE STORIES edited by Michael Sims — Michael Sims brings together the very best vampire stories of the Victorian era — from England, America, France, Germany, Transylvania and even Japan — into a unique collection that highlights their cultural variety. Beginning with the supposedly true accounts that captivated Byron and Shelley, the stories range from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Oval Portrait” and Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” to Guy de Maupassant’s “The Horla” and Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s “Good Lady Ducayne.” Sims also includes a 19th-century travel tour of Transylvanian superstitions, and rounds out the collection with Stoker’s own “Dracula’s Guest,” a chapter omitted from his landmark novel.

HANDLING THE UNDEAD by John Ajvide Lindqvist — In his new novel, John Ajvide Lindqvist does for zombies what his previous novel, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, did for vampires. Across Stockholm the power grid has gone crazy. In the morgue and in cemeteries, the recently deceased are waking up. One grandfather is alight with hope that his grandson will be returned, but one husband is aghast at what his adored wife has become. A horror novel that transcends its genre by showing what the return of the dead might really mean to those who loved them.

THE OSIRIS RITUAL by George Mann — A steampunk mystery adventure featuring immortality, artifacts and intrepid sleuths Sir Maurice Newbury and Miss Veronica Hobbes. Sir Maurice Newbury, Gentleman Investigator for the Crown, imagines life will be a little quieter after his dual successes solving The Affinity Bridge affair. But he hasn’t banked on his villainous predecessor, Knox, who is hell-bent on achieving immortality, not to mention a secret agent who isn’t quite what he seems. So continues an adventure quite unlike any other, a thrilling steampunk mystery and the second in the series of Newbury & Hobbes investigations.

SHIFT by Tim Kring and Dale Peck — In the 1960s, Chandler Forrestal’s life is changed forever when he is unwittingly dragged into a CIA mind-control experiment. After being given a massive dose of LSD, he de­velops a frightening array of mental powers. With his one-in-a-billion brain chemistry, Chandler’s heightened perception uncovers a plot to assassi­nate President Kennedy. Propelled to prevent the conspiracy of assassi­nation and anarchy, Chandler becomes a target for deadly forces in and out of the government and is pursued across a simmering landscape peopled by rogue CIA agents, Cuban killers, Mafia mad men and ex-Nazi scientists … all the while haunted by a beautiful woman with her own scandalous past to purge, her own score to settle. Chased across America, will Chandler be able to harness his “shift” and rewrite history?

FIRST THRILLS: HIGH-OCTANE STORIES FROM THE HOTTEST THRILLER AUTHORS edited by Lee Child — Showcasing many of the International Thriller Writers’ bestselling authors as well as rising stars in the genre, here are 25 brand-new, never-before published, stories packed with murder, mystery and mayhem. A cunning criminal thinks he can use a child to take the rap for his crimes. A hospital intern turned body-snatcher. A confederate soldier comes home to his love, but changed by more than just the war … he comes back wrong. The discovery of a flying saucer in the deep sea brings one man to the brink of a massive revelation. A clandestine operative finds himself caught in a wicked game of confusion … but who is calling the shots?

THESE CHILDREN WHO COME AT YOU WITH KNIVES, AND OTHER FAIRY TALES by Jim Knipfel — From the irresistibly droll mind of Jim Knipfel comes a series of twisted fables that echo with pinpoint acuity. A masterful storyteller whose memoirs and novels have earned him widespread acclaim, this is Knipfel’s first foray into the short story, and he delivers in spades: This wickedly dark satire on the notion of happily ever after turns the traditional fairy tale on its head. Among the array of lonely losers wallowing in discontent, the enterprising reader of this volume may meet a talking chicken who learns the world has little patience for intelligence, a foul-mouthed gnome set on world domination, and a magical snowman wrestling with the horror of being alive.

THE FACULTY CLUB by Danny Tobey — At the world’s most exclusive law school, there’s a secret society rumored to catapult its members to fame and fortune. Everyone is dying to get in. Jeremy Davis is the rising star of his first-year class. He’s got a plum job with the best professor on campus. He’s caught the eye of a dazzling Rhodes scholar named Daphne. But something dark is stirring behind the ivy. When a mysterious club promises success beyond his wildest dreams, Jeremy uncovers a macabre secret older than the university itself. In a race against time, Jeremy must stop an ancient ritual that will sacrifice the lives of those he loves most and blur the lines between good and evil.

BOOK OF SHADOWS by Alexandra Sokoloff — Homicide detective Adam Garrett is already a rising star in the Boston police department when he and his cynical partner, Carl Landauer, catch a horrifying case that could make their careers: the ritualistic murder of a wealthy college girl that appears to have Satanic elements. The partners make a quick arrest when all evidence points to another student, a troubled musician in a Goth band who was either dating or stalking the murdered girl. But Garrett’s case is turned upside down when beautiful, mysterious Tanith Cabarrus, a practicing witch from nearby Salem, walks into the homicide bureau and insists that the real perpetrator is still at large.

THE TILTING HOUSE by Tom Llewellyn — Talking rats. Growth potions. Buried treasure. Brothers Josh and Aaron Peshik are about to discover that their new home with the tilting floors hides many mysteries. When the boys and their neighbor Lola discover the hidden diary of F.T. Tilton, the brilliant but deranged inventor who built the house, they learn a dark secret that may mean disaster for the Peshik family. Can the kids solve the riddles of the tilting house before time runs out? Mad science, mischief and mishaps combine in this suspenseful and imaginative tale.

A TALE DARK AND GRIMM by Adam Gidwitz — In this mischievous and utterly original debut, Hansel and Gretel walk out of their own story and into eight other classic Grimm-inspired tales. As readers follow the siblings through a forest brimming with menacing foes, they learn the true story behind (and beyond) the bread crumbs, edible houses, and outwitted witches. Fairy tales have never been more irreverent or subversive as Hansel and Gretel learn to take charge of their destinies and become the clever architects of their own happily ever after.

ZOMBIES VS. UNICORNS edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier — It’s a question as old as time itself: Which is better, the zombie or the unicorn? In this anthology, edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier (unicorn and zombie, respectively), strong arguments are made for both sides in the form of short stories. Half of the stories portray the strengths — for good and evil — of unicorns and half show the good (and really, really bad-ass) side of zombies. Contributors include many bestselling teen authors, including Cassandra Clare, Libba Bray, Maureen Johnson, Meg Cabot, Scott Westerfeld, and Margo Lanagan. This anthology will have everyone asking: Team Zombie or Team Unicorn?

MR. MONSTER by Dan Wells — John Wayne Cleaver saved his town from a murderer even more appalling than the serial killers he obsessively studies. But it turns out even demons have friends, and the disappearance of one has brought another to Clayton County. Soon there are new victims for John to work on at the mortuary and a new mystery to solve. But John has tasted death, and the dark nature he used as a weapon — the terrifying persona he calls “Mr. Monster” — might now be using him. No one in Clayton is safe unless John can vanquish two nightmarish adversaries: the unknown demon he must hunt and the inner demon he can never escape.

TERMINATOR SALVATION: COLD WAR by Greg Cox — Russia 2003. When it appears that the United States has unleashed its entire nuclear arsenal upon the world, Captain Dmitri Losenko, commander of the nuclear submarine Gorshkov, has no choice but to retaliate. His target? Alaska. Alaska 2018. Fighting for survival in the frozen wilderness, Molly Kookesh struggles to protect her makeshift Resistance cell from the Terminators. Inspired by John Connor’s radio broadcasts and following a brutal encounter with a fearsome machine, she decides it’s time to fight back …

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These are not made up:

“My first Oval Office decision was to replace the desk chair — a bizarre contraption that vibrated when plugged in — with something more practical.”

“After dinner, we decided to watch a movie. We decided on MEET THE PARENTS.”

“I turned to a beautiful friend of Mother and Dad’s and asked a boozy question: ‘So, what is sex like after fifity?’”

“The wingtip was helicoptering toward me. I ducked. The guy had a pretty lively arm. A split second later, he threw another one. This one wasn’t flying as fast. I flicked my head slightly and it drifted over me. I wish I had caught the damn thing.”

“We lived in a tiny apartment and shared a bathroom with – depending on whom you ask — either one or two prostitutes.”

—Ken Davis

Buy it at Amazon.

Author Joshua Jabcuga delves into horror, where every Friday is Friday the 13th!

Nate Southard is the author of RED SKY, now available for pre-order from Thunderstorm Books. It’s the best novel I’ve read this year.

BOOKGASM: Elements of your soon-to-be-released debut novel, RED SKY, reminded me of early Jack Ketchum, visceral and gritty. It’s also very cinematic. If I had to describe it, I might say it’s THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE if Ketchum had directed it, and not just because of the setting. It’s also got a dash of Sam Peckinpah tossed in for good measure. How much of your writing is influenced by where you live?

SOUTHARD: Quite a bit, actually. I think it’s pretty normal for a writer to be influenced by their location. For me, it comes down to small-town Indiana, where I was born, and this romanticized idea of Texas that keeps lingering in my head.

Not romanticized in a “cowboys on the open range” sort of way, but just the landscape and the roads that go on forever. There’s some amazing depth to the Texas landscape. The place is big enough to be a country, and it’s just as dynamic. I can travel 20 minutes outside Austin’s sprawl and find these tiny little one-stop towns that time forgot, right on the edge-of-the-hill country. It’s scenery that’s really ripe for storytelling.

BOOKGASM: Do you ever feel like releasing limited editions is a double-edged sword, in the sense that it creates buzz, but that it also limits the amount of eyeballs who may be exposed to the work for the time being. Hopefull, there are plans for a second printing.?

SOUTHARD: I don’t mind limited editions nearly as much as I mind the “print enough to cover pre-orders and no more” trend I’ve seen here and there. It can be frustrating for a writer who’s trying to grow an audience, but it’s not like a sold-out book can’t be released in a new edition, either. With any luck, we’ll see RED SKY released in a more affordable edition somewhere down the line. There are no plans currently, though.

BOOKGASM: I know you’re a student of the game, and have listed influences ranging from Norman Partridge to comics writer Warren Ellis. But as I mentioned before, your style is very cinematic, and could lend itself to Hollywood adaptations very easily. Are there certain filmmakers who have influenced your approach to storytelling?

SOUTHARD: I have a degree in radio, television and film with an emphasis in screenwriting, and I was interested in comics scripting for a long time, so I’ve kind of trained myself to think visually. I can’t really think of any filmmakers that I would call an influence, though.

There have certainly been movies that influenced me, especially some of your more horrific flicks that aren’t promoted as horror movies. I always use THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY? as an example, because it’s just a movie about a dance contest, but it’s one of the most horrifying things I’ve ever seen.

BOOKGASM: You like crime and gangster movies, don’t you?

SOUTHARD: I do dig me some crime movies, but I’m not an overt gangster fan. A lot of Mafia films play like political thrillers with extra guns. I much prefer flicks about novices in over their heads, where the panic can be overwhelming. I guess you could say I’m less “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse,” and a lot more, “Dude, we’re robbing the bank!”

BOOKGASM: What are your thoughts on e-publishing and the future of the industry? Do you use an e-reading device like a Kindle or an iPad, or are you someone that prefers the tactile experience of holding a book?

SOUTHARD: No e-reader for me. I don’t really have anything against them, but they’re not at the level where I can justify dropping that much cash on one. I like that electronic editions are making such headway, though. It’s good that there’s any positive sign coming out of the publishing industry today. Here’s hoping the momentum continues. Still, I like having a shelf full of books to look at and admire. I can’t say the same thing about a portable hard drive.

BOOKGASM: You’ve been busting your ass for years, honing your craft, and things are really taking off, with RED SKY; a re-release of HE STEPPED THROUGH; inclusion in Ellen Datlow’s SUPERNATURAL NOIR anthology and Cemetery Dance’s SHIVERS VI; the novella THIS LITTLE LIGHT OF MINE coming out soon from Burning Effigy Press; another novella, FOCUS, co-written with Lee Thomas; and a piece in an upcoming issue of BLACK STATIC. I get the impression you’re going to keep hustling, full-throttle, no cruise control. What motivates and drives you?

SOUTHARD: I’m just hungry. I want to tell stories, and I want them to be read by lots of people. At this point, I’ve sort of made peace with the idea that making a living as a full-time writer could be nothing more than a pipe dream. That just doesn’t happen so much for folks who write what I write. What I really love is just getting stories out there where they can be read by as many people as possible. The last year has been very exciting for that, especially with SHIVERS VI and SUPERNATURAL NOIR, which look like they’ve got the potential to gain a lot of readers. Exciting time, man!

BOOKGASM: We mentioned FOCUS, co-written with Lee Thomas. If you could collaborate with any writer, living or dead, who would be at the top of your list, and why?

SOUTHARD: Peter Straub. I don’t really long to collaborate with anybody, because if I love a writer I want to read their work without another writer in the mix. That’s just my preference. When I think about the sheer volume of things I could learn by working with Straub, however, I get a little slack-jawed. I can’t imagine our styles working together at all, because I’m a foul-mouthed hooligan, and he’s Peter Straub, but I’d do anything for that learning experience.

BOOKGASM: What advice can you give to aspiring writers?

SOUTHARD: Write every day and read every day. Read as much of every genre as you can. If you love something, try to switch it up and read things that aren’t just paying lip service to your tastes. Challenge yourself. You don’t have to write everything thinking about world domination, but you need to keep yourself interested. —Joshua Jabcuga

Buy it at Thunderstorm Books.

The cliché goes that there are two things you can be certain of in life: death and taxes. Well, taxes is too dry a topic for this freewheelin’ website, so we’re subbing sex instead. Why? Because a number of new books have passed our desk dedicated to the act that brings you into this world, while others deal with the close of that long, strange trip. Here’s a quartet of recent releases dealing with both ends of the spectrum. —Rod Lott

THE SEX DOLL: A HISTORY by Anthony Ferguson — This scholarly study of the centuries-long history of fornicatory dolls examines the enduring obsession with creating an idealized, silent female sexual object and the manifestations of this desire through the ages in mythology, literature, art, philosophy and science. This particular sexual impulse has been expressed in a great variety of forms such as statues, mannequins, sex dolls and gynoids (robots). This book focuses on the evolution of the sex doll through its original incarnation as a sack-cloth effigy, through the marketing of inflatable dolls, to the current elaborate cybertechnology figures, in an attempt to discover the hidden drives and desires which fuel this ongoing fantasy of creating a perfect, powerless, silent partner.

MORTUARY CONFIDENTIAL: UNDERTAKERS SPILL THE DIRT by Kenneth McKenzie and Todd Harra — From shoot-outs at funerals to dead men screaming and runaway corpses, undertakers have plenty of unusual stories to tell — and a special way of telling them. In this macabre compilation, funeral directors across the country share their most embarrassing, jaw-dropping and irreverent stories. Discover what scares them and what moves them to tears. Learn about rookie mistakes and why death sometimes calls for duct tape. Enjoy tales of the dearly departed spending eternity naked from the waist down and getting bottled and corked. And then meet their families — the weepers, the punchers, the stolidly dignified, and the ones who deliver their dead mother in a pickup truck.

BENEATH THE SANDS OF EGYPT: ADVENTURES OF AN UNCONVENTIONAL ARCHAEOLOGIST by Donald P. Ryan, Ph.D. — With its spectacular temples, tombs, monuments and mummies, ancient Egypt has enticed the human imagination for centuries. This book interweaves Ryan’s tales from the field with reflections into the arcane world of Egyptology, from the writings of Herodotus to the tools of the trade, the intricacies of obtaining a digging permit to the thrall of popular myths. In addition, he introduces a diverse cast of eccentric colleagues, helpful locals, wily entrepreneurs and enlightened benefactors who have touched his life, including the legendary Thor Heyerdahl, Ryan’s childhood hero who eventually became his friend, mentor and boss.

DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN: A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF A MORTUARY TECHNICIAN by Michelle Williams — Michelle Williams is young and attractive, with close family ties, a busy social life … and an unusual occupation. When she impulsively applies to be a mortuary technician and is offered the position, she has no idea that her decision to accept will be one of the most momentous of her life. “What I didn’t realize then,” she writes, “was that I was about to start one of the most amazing jobs you can do.” No two days are alike, and while Williams’ sensitivity to the dead never wavers, her tales from the crypt range from mischievous to downright shocking.

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People always seemed to be surprised when they hear that an actor has written a novel, as if a talent in one field precludes having one in another. Personally, I’m far more surprised that more actors don’t try their hand at fiction, considering how the nature of their craft allows them to get into the heads of characters whose behavior and attitudes are often anathema to their own.

That and they often have a lot of free time on their hands.

Still, despite this there is an annoying tendency to treat novels written by actors as amusing novelties rather than as serious works of genuine merit. Hopefully the efforts of celebrated cult movie actress Adrienne Barbeau will go some way toward changing that.

Getting her literary start with her entertaining memoir, THERE ARE WORSE THINGS I COULD DO, Barbeau found herself encouraged to try her hand at fiction and the two resulting novels, VAMPYRES OF HOLLYWOOD and LOVE BITES, aren’t merely good for having been written by a celebrity, they’re as good as anything else you’ll find on bookshelves written by some homely author who never guest-starred on THE LOVE BOAT or made sweet cinematic love to a SWAMP THING.

Ms. Barbeau was kind enough to (patiently) answer some questions I sent to her via e-mail. I had the option of talking to her on the phone, but feared that such an interaction might devolve into a very pathetic recreation of THE CHRIS FARLEY SHOW sketch. Turns out, with one question at least, this pretty much happened anyway.

BOOKGASM: Your first novel, VAMPYRES OF HOLLYWOOD, was a collaboration between yourself and Irish writer Michael Scott (THE SORCERESS). How did the two of you end up working together and what made you decide to tackle the sequel, LOVE BITES, as a solo project?

BARBEAU: Michael approached me after WORSE THINGS made the L.A. Times bestseller list. He has a background in sales and he told me he thought I’d written the wrong book, that I should write a horror novel for all the fans of the many horror films I’ve done. I’d never thought about it before and I expressed some hesitation about writing a novel. I knew I could write the dialogue and the characters, but I wasn’t so sure about plot. He said he’d do it with me, and VAMPRYES OF HOLLYWOOD was born. When time came to write the second book in the series, Michael was busy with other commitments, so I took it on by myself.

BOOKGASM: Both of your novels “star” Ovsanna Moore, the 500-year-old “Chatelaine” of Los Angeles, who moonlights as a cinematic “scream queen” and CEO of Anticipation Studios. Which do you think makes her more fantastic: her ability to turn into a dragon or her ability (as an actress of a “certain age”) to develop her own film projects?

BARBEAU: Lot harder to get a movie made than morph into a dragon. You haven’t seen VAMPYRES OF HOLLYWOOD onscreen yet, have you?

BOOKGASM: The title of your first novel refers to a group of Hollywood legends who were all forced to fake their own deaths to avoid revealing their true blood-sucking nature. What made you choose those specific icons and why do you think you found yourself drawing more from the 1920s and ’30s than other eras?

BARBEAU: I did as much research as I could to select film icons whose lives (and deaths) could satisfy the logic of the vampire existence as we had created it. I don’t remember now if Michael chose some of them, but I do remember sitting at my computer in some hotel when I was working on location and scouring the Internet for celebrities who met my criteria. And most of them had to have been successful in the ’20s and ’30s because they are all the elders of the clan.

BOOKGASM: With her dark curly hair, Armenian heritage, preference for calf-length boots and natural curves it’s hard not to notice a distinct physical resemblance between Ovsanna and the sexy star of such films as CANNIBAL WOMEN IN THE AVOCADO JUNGLE OF DEATH and BURIAL OF THE RATS. Coincidence? Seriously, though, as wildly different as you and your protagonist are in real life, is it difficult not to picture yourself when you’re writing about her?

BARBEAU: Well, they say write what you know. There’s definitely a lot of me in Ovsanna. And actually, I’d like to think Ovsanna and I aren’t that wildly different. I’d love to think that I have half her fearlessness and at least some of her strength. If only I had her skin.

BOOKGASM: One of the major plot threads of LOVE BITES is whether or not Ovsanna will ever be able to physically consummate her nascent relationship with Beverly Hills police detective Peter King, so when it does finally happen, it really happens. Did you look forward to writing this sequence or dread it? Did you have to push yourself to go farther or hold yourself back from going too far?

BARBEAU: You know, I honestly don’t remember. I think I worried a bit about it before I got to it, and I remember being much more aware of how other authors I read handled those kinds of “culmination” scenes. I knew what I didn’t want on the page, that’s for sure. And once I got into it, it just sort of came naturally, if you’ll pardon the pun.

BOOKGASM: Both of your novels are filled with references to your friends and family. Did you choose to surprise them or warn them ahead time? Have you heard any feedback from them? I’m especially curious to know how a certain music composer living in Tokyo feels about his mom using her protagonist to shamelessly brag about his talent or how the star of NIGHT OF THE CREEPS feels about his unexpected (but delightful) cameo in LOVE BITES.

BARBEAU: I did call Tom (Atkins) to tell him I wanted to use him as himself in LOVE BITES. And when I’d written his scenes, I sent them to him to make sure he didn’t mind. I hope he got a kick out of it; I can’t wait to hear what his fans say to him when they read it. And as for Cody (Carpenter), well, he read the first draft for me and he never objected, so I guess he wasn’t too embarrassed. But hey, that’s what I learned about writing fiction: You can tell any tales you want, and boy, is that fun.

BOOKGASM: How much do you know what is going to happen in your novels when you begin them? Do you map out every plot twist or do you allow yourself to be surprised?

BARBEAU: I’m still surprised. I go back and read what I’ve written and there’s a lot of it that I would swear didn’t come from my fingers on the keys; I don’t have any recollection of writing it. With LOVE BITES, I knew how I wanted to begin and I knew the relationships I wanted to explore and I knew where I needed to end up. I plotted sections of it at a time and then my outline kept changing as the logic of my characters demanded following. Logic is very important to me.

BOOKGASM: Both of the novels are written as a “he said/she said,” alternating between Ovsanna and Peter King. Do you find writing in Peter’s male voice to be more unnatural than writing in Ovsanna’s, or do you even notice a difference at all?

BARBEAU: I think once I had a strong sense of who I wanted Peter to be, his voice came pretty easily. That’s probably where my acting chops come in handy; I’ve spent most of my life dealing with dialogue.

BOOKGASM: Despite the conventional horror trappings of your novels, they seem to have much more in common with the thriller/crime novels both of your protagonists enjoy reading. Which authors would you name as your most direct literary influences?

BARBEAU: When I started on VAMPYRES OF HOLLYWOOD, I’d only read one vampire novel in my life: FEVRE DREAM by George R.R. Martin. I am a series thriller/crime novel junkie. I don’t know if the authors I mention in LOVE BITES are my literary influences, but they are my idols.

If I could write like John Sandford or Lee Child or Randy Wayne White, or Robert B. Parker, Robert Crais, Alex Berenson … well, the list goes on and on, and if I could write one iota as well as one of them, I’d never act another day in my life. Uh … maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but I’d damn well be writing a lot more!

BOOKGASM: LOVE BITES features a moment where we see Orson Welles disguised as a chauffeur singing the theme song to STAR WARS. That isn’t a question, but it was awesome and I wanted to point it out.

BARBEAU: Well, thank you! I honestly don’t know how or why that came out of me, but there was no question in my mind that that’s what he’d be singing in that situation. It wasn’t a case of thinking “Oh, what song would work here?” I just heard him singing that theme as I saw him driving up the road.

BOOKGASM: The general consensus at BOOKGASM is that your memoir has what can be considered one of the greatest covers in publishing history. So much so that I briefly questioned purchasing the book because I feared the attractive young woman behind the register might assume I was doing so for decidedly unwholesome reasons. Yet that same book features a chapter where you question your status as a sex symbol. Seriously?

BARBEAU: Yep. Well, I explain it all in the book. I mean, come on, until CARNIVALE in 2005, the only love scene I’d ever done on film was with a huge, green monster in the middle of a swamp. I guess it all comes down to your definition of a sex symbol.—Allan Mott

Buy it at Amazon.

Photo by Pamela Springsteen

Now that Halloween’s about out of the way, Christmas is just around the corner. For the true music fan on your list — you know, the one who knows what vinyl and AM radio are — consider these half-dozen (plus one) hardbacks new to stores. They make rockin’ gifts, and four of them are even fab. (If you don’t get that reference, your Shakira download’s almost done.) But, hey, enough of my yakkin’ — let’s allow the publishers to make their payola-free pitches … —Rod Lott

THE BEATLES VS. THE ROLLING STONES: SOUND OPINIONS ON THE GREAT ROCK ‘N’ ROLL RIVALRY by Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot — Two of the world’s pre-eminent music journalists tackle the liveliest debate in rock history: Which band is the greatest ever, The Beatles or the Rolling Stones? More than two dozen topics of debate are addressed, with cases being made both for the lads from Liverpool and rock’s proto bad boys. From the Cavern and Crawdaddy clubs through head-to-head comparisons of specific albums (e.g., EXILE or THE WHITE ALBUM?), members’ roles within the groups, the Svengali-like managers, influential producers, musical influences and more, this book confronts the topics over which fans have agonized for years. Illustrated throughout with photography and memorabilia, the book also features a lenticular cover piece that alternates between the two acts.

MOZIPEDIA: THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MORRISSEY AND THE SMITHS by Simon Goddard — Steven Patrick Morrissey is undoubtedly one of the most original musicians of all time. With The Smiths, he led the most influential British guitar group of the 1980s, and his enigmatic wit and style defined a generation. As a solo artist, he has continued to broach subjects no other singer would dare. The summation of years of interviews and meticulous research by acclaimed music journalist Simon Goddard, MOZIPEDIA is the most in-depth and exhaustive book about the man, the myth and the music that’s ever been published. Bringing together every song, every album, every collaborator, and so much more in more than 600 entries, this is a must-have for Morrissey’s legions of devoted admirers.

FAB: AN INTIMATE LIFE OF PAUL MCCARTNEY by Howard Sounes — FAB is the first exhaustive biography of one of the most famous, talented and wealthiest men alive. It tells Sir Paul’s whole life story, from childhood to present day, from working-class Liverpool beginnings to the cultural phenomenon that was The Beatles to his many solo incarnations. McCartney is a man of contradictions and a consummate musician far more ruthless, ambitious and moody than his relaxed public image implies. Based on original research and more than 200 new interviews, FAB also reveals for the first time the full story of his two marriages, romances, family feuds, phenomenal wealth and complex relationships with his fellow ex-Beatles.

AC/DC: HIGH-VOLTAGE ROCK ‘N’ ROLL: THE ULTIMATE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY by Phil Sutcliffe — Formed in 1973 by brothers Angus and Malcolm Young, AC/DC has become one of the most popular rock bands in history. This massive title follows the act from its roots in Australia to its most recent releases and sold-out world tours. No stone is left unturned, from the AC/DC’s formation and early club gigs to its worldwide success. A special cover incorporating Angus on a spinning disc gives way to more than 400 illustrations, including handbills, posters, backstage passes and vinyl from around the globe, as well as rare candid and performance photography. Sidebars from top rock scribes examine all studio releases and delve into the guitar gear of the Young brothers. The result is an awesome tribute to the band renowned for a live-wire stage show and a sonic attack that have attracted fans from all rock camps.

DECEMBER 8, 1980: THE DAY JOHN LENNON DIED by Keith Elliot Greenberg — In a minute-by-minute format, this book follows the events leading to the horrible moment when Mark David Chapman calmly fired his Charter Arms .38 Special into the rock icon, realizing his perverse fantasy of attaining perennial notoriety. The day begins with a ROLLING STONE photo session that takes on an uncomfortable tone when photographer Annie Leibowitz tries to maneuver Yoko Ono out of the shot. Later, Lennon gives the last interview of his life, declaring, “I consider that my work won’t be finished until I’m dead and buried and I hope that’s a long, long time.” We follow the other Beatles, Lennon’s family, the shooter, fans and New York City officials through the day, as the hours progress. Once the fatal shots are fired, the clock continues to tick, leading to the durable legacy that persists today.

STAR GUITARS: 101 GUITARS THAT ROCKED THE WORLD by Dave Hunter — These are the guitars so famous that their names are often household words: B.B. King’s Lucille, Eric Clapton’s Blackie, Stevie Ray Vaughan’s First Wife, Billy F. Gibbons’ Pearly Gates, Neil Young’s Old Black, and many more. Other guitar histories look at the rank-and-file models, but this illustrated book profiles the actual “star guitars” — the million-dollar babies, such as the 1968 Stratocaster that Jimi Hendrix burned at Woodstock, which sold at Sotheby’s auction house in 1993 for $1,300,000. Amateurs buy guitars to emulate the stars — Clapton’s Strat, Slash’s Les Paul — and this book explains the stars’ modifications, thus showing how others can re-create those famous tones.

IN HIS OWN WRITE AND A SPANIARD IN THE WORKS by John Lennon — Few musicians have impacted popular culture as much as John Lennon. As a singer-songwriter and member of The Beatles, he penned the soundtrack to countless lives. He also produced two classic books of poetry, prose and sketches, first published separately in the 1960s and now reissued in an omnibus edition to commemorate the 70th anniversary of his birth. Illustrated with Lennon’s drawings, both explore the mind of the enigmatic artist. His gift for verse stands out, as does his quirky sense of humor. His imaginative stories and poems are, like his best songs, utterly irresistible. Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono provide the introductions.

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Author Joshua Jabcuga delves into horror, where every Friday is Friday the 13th!

After selling his first novel in 1991, World Fantasy Award winner Graham Joyce has pursued writing full-time. He teaches creative writing to grad students at Nottingham Trent University, and his current novel is HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS WITH DEMONS, published by Night Shade Books.

BOOKGASM: I’ve described HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS WITH DEMONS as Frank Capra’s IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE if it had been filmed by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, and I mean that in all the best possible ways. The prose is so eloquent. And it’s a deceptive tale because it has whimsical moments, while also revealing a real darkness. As a writer, how did you maintain this gravitas with some of the light-heartedness, keeping the tone and the plot from wilting?
 
GRAHAM JOYCE: Well, I’ve long maintained that the experience of life is an eerie balance between horror and humor. Or maybe humor is a coping mechanism we have developed. Either way, however dark the subject matter of my books, I do like to trigger levity and I can’t abide humorless books. I suppose I was saying this — or my Arab character was — when he was talking about the endless war between gravity and levity. You know: trying to maintain a sense of humor in a grim situation.
 
BOOKGASM: Speaking of deception, your main character, William Heaney, has been living since college with a lot of personal deception of his own. He’s bright enough to know he has issues, but has carried this frustration and guilt around for far too long. Some might say he’s sabotaging himself. It’s as if these setbacks and mistakes needed to be made in order for his life to truly blossom, though. Some of your work seems to be about escaping the past; here, ultimately, it’s about embracing the past. Are you of the belief that everything in life happens for a reason? A hopeless romantic or romantically hopeful?
 
JOYCE: Most certainly the latter. We have to have optimism for carrying on, and it is the responsibility of every writer to find that. Often the evidence is against us, and even in our best efforts, the Raptors amongst us drive us back to war and conflict and misery, just so long as they can profit from the world’s resources. But for every example of that, you can find an example of the contrary power in some humanizing, compassionate or illuminating force. The human race is a bad lot, but we do carry the wonderful spark of light.

BOOKGASM: In HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS WITH DEMONS, you thank the Pixies for the song “Monkey Gone to Heaven.” Lyrics in the song read: “If man is five / Then the devil is six / Then God is seven / This monkey’s gone to heaven.” Do you think people need some sense of cosmic order or religion in their life, or do they get weighed down by the sum of the numbers, so to speak? Like in William’s case, the 1,567 “demons” he needed to come to terms with.

JOYCE: I’m an atheist, but one who sometimes can’t entirely escape from magical thinking. What’s more, I know that although rationality is a fantastic tool, it will never explain the darkness or the sheer energy of creation. But it’s that irrational way of knowing that sparks art, music, literature. Sometimes I think there is enough religion inside that. I don’t think we have to have cosmic order. We can’t possible “know” and that’s all right. The mystery is enough.

BOOKGASM: Your work seems to blend genres and erase lines, from fantasy to horror. Were publishers initially hesitant to look at your work because of this cross-pollination style of writing, maybe because they didn’t know how to quote-unquote label or market your books? If so, how did you deal with rejection? Do you give any advice to your students or aspiring writers for dealing with rejection?
 
JOYCE: I was lucky not to get much rejection from publishers. The sort of rejection I might have experienced is when people won’t touch your books because either they hate fantasy or, more often, they think my stuff isn’t fantasy enough. I tend to say to my students, “Look, you’re on this road, and you’d better make sure that it’s your road and not someone else’s road. That way, you’ll always remember what it is you set out to do, and that way, any rejection can be reduced in its significance.”

BOOKGASM: Your work has been compared to the likes of Nick Hornby to Gabriel Garcia Marquez to Algernon Blackwood. I won’t ask you to describe your style, but I’d be curious to know who some of your influences are, and if there might be any current fiction that you are enjoying?
 
JOYCE: I read very widely both inside and outside of the genres. I’m just reading LITTLE DORRIT by Dickens, and it’s magnificent. Again, it’s just so funny in a grim context of universal imprisonment. He has me laughing my head off, but he offers compassion, which is the thing no novel should be without, though too many are.

BOOKGASM: Are writers just wanna-be musicians — guitar players who can’t play a lick, or rock ‘n’ roll front men who can’t carry a tune?
 
JOYCE: That sounds like me. —Joshua Jabcuga

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Comics scribe Joshua Jabcuga delves into horror, where every Friday is Friday the 13th!

Author/filmmaker Mick Garris chatted with us to promote RIDING THE BULLET: THE DELUXE SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE from LonelyRoad Books, which includes Garris’ screenplay for the movie with Stephen King’s original novella.

BOOKGASM: Was your ultimate goal to be a filmmaker, did you just fall into it in large part to your break on Steven Spielberg’s AMAZING STORIES, or did you just want to be a storyteller, regardless of the medium?

GARRIS: I actually started writing fiction when I was about 12, after having been all about drawing. My father had gone to art school, and was a pretty good artist who was never able to make a living at it. Once I started writing, I quit drawing; I originally wanted to be a cartoonist and animator.  

But at 18, I joined my first and only band, Horsefeathers, and that completely changed my priorities. I started writing songs and performing, as well as doing music journalism and interviewing people like Hendrix, Janis Joplin and lots of other dead rock stars. But I always loved movies, and thought that if the band made it big, it would allow me to write and eventually direct movies. I studied film in college, but from a distance. AMAZING STORIES came after years of unsold spec scripts.

BOOKGASM: Stephen King’s RIDING THE BULLET was a very personal project for you, due to the passing of loved ones around the time the novella was released. After reading it, how soon did the wheels start spinning where you said to yourself, “I can do something with this.” Did you feel an urge to do it out of tribute to these people, was it meant to be a cathartic experience, or did it develop into those things only in hindsight?

GARRIS: It hit me immediately as I read the story with a big emotional wallop; I thought it could be a movie, but with a lot more added to the story, which is really only 30 pages long. I had my late brother, Craig, and father very much in mind when I wrote the script, which came out in a rush of about three weeks when I wrote it.

The more I worked on it, the more it turned into something about my family, my experiences, and death in general. It wasn’t intended to be cathartic, so much, but it surely turned out to be. Watching the movie for the very first time, when the print had just come from the lab the day before, with an audience of 700 people, with my mother and sister in the audience, was nerve-wracking and emotional, much more so than anything I’d made before or since.

BOOKGASM: With all due respect to Mr. King, you made “Riding the Bullet” into something uniquely your own. The novella stands on its own, but your writing and directing make this an entirely new experience. Although in some ways, it feels like a direct collaboration between you and King, as if he started the sentence, and you finished it.  

Do you think part of that came from being so well-versed in his works, with the many adaptations you’ve done — up to that point, THE STAND, THE SHINING, SLEEPWALKERS and QUICKSILVER HIGHWAY? In other words, and putting life experience aside, would the Mick Garris of, say, 15 or 20 years ago, have been able to make this film?

GARRIS: Well, it certainly would have been very different a couple decades ago, and probably a lot more superficial. Death deepens you when it’s close to you. I mean, it’s not really meant to be an arthouse film or anything; it’s meant to be an entertainment that hopefully has a bit more of an emotional connection than most “horror” movies, and emo horror movies, if you will.

But it resonated with me when I read Steve’s story; we seem to have very similar backgrounds, though on different coasts. That’s what attracted me to it in the first place. There was plenty of room to add to it, and I thought I had a lot to add. I’m so glad it works for you. The film was a complete flop when it was released.

BOOKGASM: Here at BOOKGASM, we’re big fans of your literary works such as DEVELOPMENT HELL and A LIFE IN THE CINEMA. I feel like it’s this great mix of writers Charles Beaumont and  Budd Schulberg. Who, in fact, are some of your influences?

GARRIS: Well, I’m a huge fan of both of those authors; they played a big part in my growing up. Bradbury was probably my biggest enthusiasm and influence, as well as Richard Matheson; the great noirists, Chandler and Cain; later, the early Ellroy books; and of course, King. I’d tend to get on a kick for one author, and read everything he’d ever written back-to-back. That certainly was my Shulberg experience.

BOOKGASM: Can you shed some light on what fans can expect next from you? King’s FROM A BUICK 8 or BAG OF BONES? 

GARRIS: BUICK 8 seems to have hit a roadblock. It’s a bit too different from the teen horror sequels and remakes that have littered our cineplexes for a while, so it will be a while before we’re able to get that off the ground. But when we do, Tobe Hooper is attached to direct.  

But BAG OF BONES looks like it’s finally going to happen, as a four-hour miniseries for television. It’s got a great script by Matt Venne; it’s Matt’s favorite book, and it shows. Again, a very emotional, passionate ghost story, which these days, would not get made as a feature. We tried for three years.  

There’s some other stuff I’m working on that we can’t really talk about yet, but I just started writing a piece of fiction this week. I’m not sure where it’s going yet, but it might actually grow into a short novel. It’s not a horror story, but more a Hollywood desert noir, if that makes sense.

Coming soon: interviews with Graham Joyce and Nate Southard, a review of SHOCK TOTEM #2 and more! —Joshua Jabcuga

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Photo of Garris by Damon D’Amato

History tends to repeat itself, and for some writers, it’s fascinating to place personalities, relationships and events inspired by the present into a historical setting. Often, there are discernable connections and patterns that make history a cyclical process, so a next-door neighbor could be the inspiration behind a main character in the Victorian era.

Historical fiction can offer sharp insights into current social issues and events, and it’s also fun to let an author take you back a few centuries into what he or she imagines it must have been like. Well-known historical figures can say or do anything, whether it’s built around a truly historical premise or completely invented by the author.

If you want to go back in time and let a writer’s imagination help you construct your own version of the past, check out a few of these recent historical fiction bestsellers.

THE LACUNA by Barbara Kingsolver — What’s a lacuna? It’s an underwater cave that leads the main character of this novel, Harrison William Shepherd, to a sinkhole in the Mexican jungle where he comes face-to-face with the brevity of human life. Set in the period from 1929 to 1951 in Mexico and the U.S., the novel follows Shepherd through his writing ventures and various jobs, such as mixing plaster for Diego Rivera’s murals. The death of Communist leader Leon Trostsky drives Shepherd out of Mexico, inspiring him to settle in Asheville, N.C., where he writes successful novels set in Mexico until his death.

Kingsolver’s book is a compilation of Shepherd’s notebooks, a commentary on communism, racism, Stalinism, privacy, the media’s role in revealing personal error, and other strongly relevant issues. It’s a creatively constructed work of historical fiction, echoing Kingsolver’s popular THE POISONWOOD BIBLE in genre and innovation.

ALL OTHER NIGHTS by Dara Horn — Set in the late 1800s, this novel begins with an increasingly complex main character, Jacob Rappaport, and his strange quest to murder his uncle. A Jewish Union soldier, Jacob is informed by superior officers that his uncle is involved in a plot to murder President Lincoln, then he’s sent to prevent the murder by killing his own uncle. Jacob’s adventure takes place during the Passover, and he ends up taking refuge from Confederate soldiers in a Jewish cemetery, rediscovering his heritage and firmly weaving this rich culture into the novel.

The protagonist is horrified by the slavery that seems to permeate the country he now lives in and is eventually able to view himself and his uncle within their own cultural context, making his own decisions. This is a successful third contribution from Horn and lets readers see a new side of this talented author.

SASHENKA by Simon Montefiore — In this debut novel set in 20th-century Russia, three generations of a Russian-Jewish family are traced through the Soviet revolution. Rasputin and Stalin make substantial appearances and heavily influence the progression of the novel, which moves from the innocent boredom of a well-to-do Jewish family’s 16-year-old daughter to full-blown horror that confounds the girl for the rest of her life.

Events from her childhood are later revealed as disastrous catalysts that ignited her family’s destruction, and the novel tackles the helplessness and tragedy of being completely obliterated by the state. This powerful work may seem like a hackneyed and superficial novel for the first few pages, but keep reading to discover what’s later revealed beneath the pretty facade. —Alexis Bonari

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Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident education blogger and performs research surrounding college scholarships. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming and avoiding her laptop.

Didja know horror novelist Scott Nicholson now does comics, too? Read on to learn about that … and a chance at winning an Amazon Kindle DX!

My old college roommate used to introduce me this way: “Scott wasn’t born, he just wandered out of a comic book somewhere.”

It took a few years, but it’s finally true. Or maybe it’s the opposite. I wandered from real life into a comic book.

See, I am The Digger (and, yes, yesterday I was sweet, innocent L.C. Glazebrook — but as The Digger would say, “The page turns, and so does the worm.”) The Digger is the narrator and occasional character in my series DIRT, illustrated by Kewber (CHAOS CAMPUS, SLEEPRUNNERS).

Comics were one of my early literary experiences and also one of my first creative endeavors, matching crude crayon drawings with word balloons and four-panel comics where strange characters did very little. I put away comics after puberty, though I never made a conscious decision that comics were “kids’ stuff,” because I saw clearly they had depth and magic.

I started reading comics again shortly before I started writing, mostly because I was dealing baseball cards and began trading them for comics. Then I ended up with thousands of comics I never read. A few years ago, I noticed everybody was making movies out of comic books, and I had the brilliant idea to turn all my screenplays into comics, get the comics purchased by Hollywood, and then — bingo — I sell the scripts. Yes, I often do things the most difficult way imaginable.

To warm up, I figured tackling short stories would be easy and also give me a chance to test drive some artists. I found Kewber on ComicSpace and we clicked instantly. We put together the first issue with an upside-down cover (on purpose), and planned a four-issue series. After 72 pages, I realized that it is very hard to sell comics and I’d have to enter an entirely new world, so I promptly started organizing comic book conventions. Remember what I said about doing things the hard way?

At any rate, The Digger is a cool old gravedigger storyteller (developed from photographs of me I sent Kewber) and he finds this book (called DIRT, of course) and shares the stories in it. He’s not a horror punster like the Cryptkeeper or Cain or any of those hokey ’70s hosts. Between the horror anthology shows and FANGORIA, I am quite sure no horror pun remains unearthed.

Since all the stories were adapted from existing work, it was a chance to explore a new medium and a new style of writing. I can’t draw my way out of a paper bag, so I am very fortunate to have found Kewber, and reviewers say our styles go together. We did a zombie story, a girl and her dead best friend, some poignant supernatural tales, a funny dark fantasy, a haunted car tale. And more, adding sketches, a story and a script as bonuses in the trade paperback version. Digital issues of the comics (99 cents each), as well as the signed trade paperback ($6.95) are available from the Haunted Computer.

I hope to return to this series and finish the four-issue arc, because the original goal was to have The Digger (that’s me) become a more active part of the story line and bring in the Second Chance angel and have them square off for a final showdown. In the meantime, Kewber and I have finished the first issue of THE GORGE, colored by his wife, Schimerys (artists in Brazil like to go by only one name). We’re hoping to sell that through an agent and finish a four-to-six issue adaptation of my novel THEY HUNGER.

The best thing about comics is they stay fresh. Every time I flip through the book, I see some little detail Kewber added, or a visual effect that I missed. It’s a totally different experience, and very satisfying.

Kewber also illustrates DIRT. The comic series. Dig it. —Scott Nicholson

Buy them at Haunted Computer.

Scott Nicholson is author of THE RED CHURCH, THE SKULL RING, SPEED DATING WITH THE DEAD, DRUMMER BOY, nine other novels, five story collections, four comics series, and six screenplays. A journalist and freelance editor in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, he often uses local legends in his work. This tour is sponsored by Amazon, Kindle Nation Daily and Dellaster Design.

For each book that cracks the Top 100 in the Kindle store, I’ll throw in an extra Kindle 3 giveaway. So tell your friends and help out. Thanks for playing. Complete details at http://www.hauntedcomputer.com/blogtour.htm.

First gaining mainstream critical acclaim with his script for the debut episode of Showtime’s MASTERS OF HORROR series, Stephen Romano rode the buzz(saw) straight to the grindhouse with his exploitation opus, STEPHEN ROMANO’S SHOCK FESTIVAL, which RUE MORGUE magazine heralded as its “Best Fiction Book of 2008.” Romano is currently promoting the release of STARCRASH on DVD and Blu-ray, of which he serves as producer, and chief historian, providing a 12-page booklet of liner notes and some of the most insightful DVD audio commentaries you’re likely to find on this side of the galaxy!

BOOKGASM: Stephen, in a conversation we had a couple of years ago, you were extolling the virtues of an Italian-made space opera from the tail end of the ’70s called STARCRASH. Now you’re the proud papa of the film’s release on DVD and Blu-ray, as producer and commentator. But tell us about the book you were going to write on it.

ROMANO: When I became a pro writer, I thought doing a book about the making of STARCRASH would be interesting. It was a really novel idea, writing this tell-all thing about a STAR WARS rip-off nobody seemed to remember anymore.

Kind of like canonizing the works of Ed Wood or something. Ever read NIGHTMARE OF ECSTASY? That’s the book Tim Burton’s ED WOOD is based on. Just amazing stuff.

I knew I could do something similar because STARCRASH had been a troubled production — it would be a really juicy story at any rate. I spent many years doing the research, and I covered the whole thing in a lot of depth. The book was actually written and finished.

But I decided for my own reasons not to publish it. It wasn’t my destiny to be a film journalist. I wasn’t prepared to be despised by all these people I truly admired for telling the unvarnished truth. Caroline Munro was particularly shocked by the details I revealed about her personal life in there. I just had to call the whole thing off and get on with my real career. I felt like I was jerking off.

BOOKGASM: Producing the official release of STARCRASH is a natural progression for you, because of your exploitation opus, STEPHEN ROMANO’S SHOCK FESTIVAL. I fell in love, and awe, immediately with it.

ROMANO: There’s always been an audience for SHOCK FESTIVAL. Everybody loves it. The damn thing never got a single bad review.

BOOKGASM: And you wrote a novelization of the film BLACK DEVIL DOLL. I read it and was floored when I saw a nod to THE FAN MAN by William Kotzwinkle. He has had quite an impact on you personally, hasn’t he?

ROMANO: Yes, he has. The Kotz is my favorite living writer — a true magician with words. And THE FAN MAN is my favorite book of all time. So … um … I made a reference to Horse Badordties in BLACK DEVIL DOLL? Damn, I don’t remember that at all. Then again, that was a pretty quick affair I did mostly for the money. I was stinking drunk the entire time I was writing it. You can probably tell, can’t you?

I just now went over to the bookshelf and thumbed through BDD and some of it’s still pretty funny. You know, bathroom humor. Really, really over the fucking top bathroom humor. Every writer should do that at least once, right? I think most of my other writing tends to be really, really over-the-top bathroom humor, only I ask you to take me seriously. And I’m in love with movie novelizations. It’s the trashiest, most fly-by-night form of art in literature!

Anyhow, the Kotz. William Kotzwinkle is a man who has done everything there is to do as a writer. He’s done drama, comedy, weird historical fantasy porn, horror, science fiction, crime fiction, and he even wrote one of the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET movies. And he does it all with the chameleonic, do-it-in-my-sleep expertise of a fucking Jedi Knight. He’s so good he makes it seem easy, and for that reason is the best writing teacher I’ve ever had in my life. Just reading his books is worth several graduate courses in creative writing, man. His magic rubs off on you.

He’s most famous now for a series of books about a farting dog. Just amazing. And he wrote the novelizations of E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL and SUPERMAN III. So this guy is my fucking goddamn hero. Some books of his that you must recommend on BOOKGASM are NIGHTBOOK, JACK IN THE BOX, THE GAME OF THIRTY and THE EXILE. Oh, and THE BEAR WENT OVER THE MOUNTAIN, too. That one is fucking incredible.

BOOKGASM: Will fans ever get to read JUST LIKE THE ANIMALS or have you shelved that for the time being in favor of something else. And will THE RIOT ACT ever get a deluxe reissue?

ROMANO: JUST LIKE THE ANIMALS was a very personal book and reflected a dark time in my life which I am just starting to come out of. I’m in no hurry to revisit that territory. But I’m sure I will be again someday. It’s still there. I wrote it very quickly, in just 20 days, and it knocked my dick in the dirt. I’ll publish it one day, just not now. I have other priorities. 

There’s a new novel coming out via small press called SAFE IN THE WOODS, which is extremely dark pulp crime stuff — also very personal, but it’s genre. JUST LIKE THE ANIMALS was not genre. It was dark drama. The new one is about people killing each other with guns and chainsaws. I wrote that one last year.

This year’s literary project is something much bigger than anything else I have done in the print medium, even SHOCK FESTIVAL. I can’t talk about it until we get the ink on the dotted lines, but it’s been in development for most of 2010 and is just now becoming a reality. It won’t come out until next year probably. It’s kind of the final result of a long look at my life’s work and a firm decision to veer in a more commercial vein, so I can start selling a few books and not worry about the rent so much. I’ve spent most of my life as an artist following my instincts and desires, which has led to some really great stuff.

SHOCK FESTIVAL was a project I developed personally, outside the system, which was also one of the reasons why it failed to fit into the system. Still, it is a project which I am extremely proud of. If I died tomorrow, I could take that book with me. I wanted to do it since I was a kid and had the opportunity to spend two years working on it and my vision is on every page. I went as far as I could go in terms of unadulterated personal commitment and artistic endeavor on that project. I answered to no one but myself. But I also nearly starved to death for my commitment — literally!

I’m just switching venues for a while. It is a great project with my own unique imprint. Just not as many exploding heads. I’m okay with that. Stuff like THE RIOT ACT and SAFE IN THE WOODS will still be available from the small press. In fact, I’ll be republishing THE RIOT ACT myself at some point in the future. But that’s really dark, nasty stuff, man. I think there’s a lot of truth in that kind of writing, but it’s not for everybody, and if you’re not already famous or whatever, you won’t get very far with it.

Coming soon: interviews with Mick Garris, Graham Joyce, Philip Nutman, Nate Southard and more! —Joshua Jabcuga

Buy them at Amazon.

Getting a first novel published is never easy. Merrie Destefano found that out with AFTERLIFE: THE RESURRECTION CHRONICLES, the first in a planned trilogy from Eos/HarperCollins. Here, she recalls AFTERLIFE’s ever-changing life cycle in its journey from brain to book.

I wish I were one of those people who could slam out a book in three months, whose first draft was pretty near perfect. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. The truth of the matter is, I drive my writing group nuts. What book is this, they’ll ask after I start reading a few pages for critique. Oh, it’s the same book, I’ll tell them, just completely different.

I have a tendency to write and rewrite and then write some more, changing names and moving characters around and slashing plot lines. While it might seem like I’m having a great time, throwing away thousands of words at a time, I’m not.

I’m driving everyone I know, me included, nuts. They probably all wish that I would take up something meaningful to do in my spare instead of write. Something like playing miniature golf. Or raising bonsai trees. Or studying organic chemistry.

Just in case you don’t believe me, listen to the genesis of AFTERLIFE: THE RESURRECTION CHRONICLES.

In the first draft — under the title WHITE BURN — this story took place on Mars. (Do I hear snickers already?) It was a detective story, where the main character was tracking down a cult leader who had stolen a serum that could raise the dead. Besides falling into the hands of a dangerous cult leader, this serum also happened to be stolen by a gang leader, which led to one grisly gang war — a little bit like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. Only on Mars.

Needless to say, that book didn’t garner much attention from agents or editors.

In the second draft — under the title ONCE TO DIE — the story was moved to Los Angeles. Here, I had a homicide detective, a woman named Addy, chasing a serial killer who could raise the dead. This story must have been tighter and better written, because at least a few editors talked to me at this point. They even smiled. Right before they told me, no way were they going to publish this book. One of them was even kind enough to give me a few pointers. He said something like, try setting it in the future and throw out everything except the resurrection drug.

I confess, I’m the brooding sort, so I mulled and groused over his well-meaning rejection. I thought about it for so long that I actually came up with a story idea based on that simple one-line suggestion.

In AFTERLIFE, I built a future where the technology for resurrection has been around for awhile, long enough for it to have a serious impact on our culture, our major world religions, our family system, our judicial system, you name it. After working on the story for a month or so, I realized that if I removed this one small element — death — from our culture, it changed everything.

Writing the actual book took me about a year and a half, with the prerequisite three-four month period of writer’s block tossed in the mix. Once I found my agent, Kimberley Cameron, she sold my book in a relatively short time period to Diana Gill of Eos/HarperCollins. I think we sold the book in August 2009, and the book is now out.

AFTERLIFE is a Hydra of sorts: one part urban fantasy, one part romance, one part science fiction, one part mystery. It’s a tale about a man who watches over people during that fragile first week after resurrection, when memories from previous lives are still sifting to the surface. And it’s a story about the woman who has just resurrected, who holds a secret in her subconscious that could change the world.

But for me, it’s a story that tells me that my wild and disorganized writing process somehow manages to work. Even though I drive a lot of people nutty along the way. —Merrie Destefano

Buy it at Amazon.

Charlie Chaplin. Buster Keaton. The Marx Brothers. Billy Wilder. Woody Allen. The Coen brothers. Where would the American film be without them? Yet the cinematic genre these artists represent — comedy — has perennially received short shrift from critics, film buffs and the Academy Awards. Journalist Saul Austerlitz attempts to right that wrong. In ANOTHER FINE MESS: A HISTORY OF AMERICAN FILM COMEDY, he retraces the steps of the American comedy film, filling in the gaps and following the connections that link Mae West to Doris Day, or W.C. Fields to Will Ferrell. Here’s his list of 10 great ones.

Comedy is mostly without honor. Too often, comedy is treated as the bastard stepchild of American film. Rarely nominated for Academy Awards, or accorded the respect of a thoughtful newspaper review, comedies are considered the most disposable product of an industry dedicated to producing alluring but insubstantial goods. Drama, whatever its deficiencies, is granted the respect culture lends to noble intentions. Comedies, meanwhile, are seldom treated with the same deference.

And yet, comedy has always been one of the richest veins of American cinematic culture. Beginning with the silent era, when Charlie Chaplin was, for a time, the most recognizable face on Earth, comedy (alongside those other evergreen genres, the Western and the musical) has been what American films have done best. Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Ernst Lubitsch, Preston Sturges, the Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, Mae West, Cary Grant, Billy Wilder, Jerry Lewis, Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Eddie Murphy, Albert Brooks, Ben Stiller — the list of standout comedic performers and directors overlaps with the list of exceptional American cinematic performers and directors, period.

Without further ado, then, here is a starter list of great American comedies — a sampler box of goodies, with one film chosen from each decade. It is hardly meant to be complete list of classics: for that, see my book ANOTHER FINE MESS: A HISTORY OF AMERICAN FILM COMEDY, which has my selection of the 100 greatest American comedies ever made. Instead, it is an introduction to that most underappreciated of genres — the comedy.

1. THE IMMIGRANT (Charlie Chaplin, 1917)

THE IMMIGRANT, the greatest of Chaplin’s shorts, is a film whose herky-jerky rhythms match those of the boat the Tramp takes to America: the Cy Young windup Chaplin uses to throw dice, the soup bowls skidding from one end of the dinner table to the other, serving two diners simultaneously, the alternation of whimsical and heartrending sequences. As a director, Chaplin nurtures an irony and delicacy that complement his balletic physicality and otherworldly grace as an actor. Chaplin was just beginning to experiment with films that were greater than the sum of their routines — an effort that would pay off with future masterpieces like THE GOLD RUSH and CITY LIGHTS. But if a comedy was more than just a comedy, could it still be funny? The answer was an unambiguous yes.

2. SHERLOCK JR. (Buster Keaton, 1924)

SHERLOCK JR., Keaton’s funniest, and arguably his most accomplished, picture, was a master class in filmmaking doubling as a comedy. Walter Kerr described it as “simultaneously brilliant film comedy and brilliant film criticism.” Buster’s motion-picture projectionist dreams himself onto the big screen, emulating his favorite detectives while solving crimes with panache. The effect would be repeated numerous times by other filmmakers (most notably Woody Allen with THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO), but SHERLOCK is uniquely consumed by the fundamental oddity of the motion picture as an art form.

3. DUCK SOUP (Leo McCarey, 1933)

Too quick for their dim-witted persecutors, the Marxes had unleashed a barely controlled chaos over the course of four films. They had yet to meet a foil agile enough to parry with them, or a director able to corral their energy. Leo McCarey and DUCK SOUP would change all that. It is the Marx Brothers’ masterpiece, and one of the small handful of undying works of comic genius produced by the American cinema. It channels their peculiar genius and mobilizes it for prescient, biting satire. Battling paper tigers no longer, DUCK SOUP finds the Marx Brothers unleashing the dogs of war.

4. THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER (Ernst Lubitsch, 1940)

If aliens ever come to Earth and demand a fuller understanding of the moving pictures that seemed to occupy so much of our time in the 20th century, it would be best if we cut directly to the chase and screen the inimitable Ernst Lubitsch’s THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER (1940) for them. THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER is pure cinematic magic: the kind that, seen once, is indelibly burned into our brains, stored in the grottoes of recollection with the care and sentimental affection normally accorded only to our own fondest memories. The stupendous array of supporting characters in THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER provide a milieu in which yearning lovers James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan insert themselves. THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER is a melancholy romantic comedy that takes place on the brink of an abyss, and while Lubitsch is too much the comic raconteur to send his film over the edge, he pauses long enough for a sustained look. If you think you’ve seen this because you saw the Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan remake YOU’VE GOT MAIL, do yourself a favor and see the real thing.

5. SOME LIKE IT HOT (Billy Wilder, 1959)

Perhaps it makes the most sense to think of Joe and Jerry (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon), the itinerant musicians of SOME LIKE IT HOT, as the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in a free replay of Howard Hawks’ SCARFACE. Adrift in a gangster epic not their own, these comic fools have been cut loose from their moorings, left to their own devices in a distinctly hostile world.A deliriously gender-bending exercise in over-the-top comic mania, Billy Wilder’s film features the best-ever performance from that underrated comedic master, Marilyn Monroe. Monroe sparkles as a romantic heroine with a self-deprecating streak, and Lemmon and Curtis are an ideal odd couple, years before Lemmon starred in THE ODD COUPLE. “Nobody’s perfect,” as the film deliciously reminds us, but SOME LIKE IT HOT comes close.

6. DR. STRANGELOVE (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

DR. STRANGELOVE is a Cold War comedy of frustration, whose scramble to avoid nuclear calamity is repeatedly spoiled by homegrown idiocy, knavery, and right-wing quackery — much of it in the form of star Peter Sellers, who plays three roles here. Director Stanley Kubrick once said of STRANGELOVE star Peter Sellers, “There is no such person.” Seeing DR. STRANGELOVE, one begins to understand. Each character Sellers played bore so little relation to the others that it was nearly impossible to believe the same actor was behind them all. Possessed with a bursting enthusiasm for the glories of the post-apocalyptic, Sellers’ Dr. Strangelove is the dark angel of the mushroom cloud. Confined to a wheelchair, with an enormous upswept quiff of hair, and a single black glove, he is a lavishly ornamented peacock in a sea of buzzcuts.

7. ANNIE HALL (Woody Allen, 1977)

ANNIE HALL had begun life as a loose-jointed mystery story before preview screenings decisively demonstrated that audiences preferred the relationship drama to the ostensible suspense plot. Even without the mystery story, ANNIE HALL is still two films in one: one a loose-jointed comedy in the vein of Allen’s earlier SLEEPER, and the other a tender romance offering the first glimmers of Allen’s serious side. The looseness of Allen’s earlier work is unchanged, but the Marshall McLuhan cameos, animated sequences, flashbacks, and direct addresses to the camera are now all newly relevant, puzzle pieces for ANNIE HALL’s mixed-up jigsaw of human frailty. Annie Hall is one of the director’s funniest, and most touching, films, and the addition of Allen and Diane Keaton’s charming, messy, unsalvageable relationship to the template established by BANANAS and SLEEPER transforms ANNIE HALLinto something entirely new for Allen: a somber comedy.

8. LOST IN AMERICA (Albert Brooks, 1985)

The criminally underrated Albert Brooks takes that late 1960′s classic of rebel culture, EASY RIDER, and turns it inside-out for the go-go 1980′s, crafting a parable of easily tempered yuppie rebellion. Distraught at the collapse of his ambitions — he’d picked out the new Mercedes and everything! — Brooks’ brittle yuppie convinces his wife to leave Los Angeles behind and explore the wide-open spaces of America. What they find is tragically, hilariously meager. The more delusional his characters, the happier Brooks is as a filmmaker.

9. THE BIG LEBOWSKI (Joel Coen, 1998)

Looking for the missing trophy wife of a wheelchair-bound industrialist also named Lebowski, Jeff Bridges’ Dude encounters the Coen brothers’ broadest-ever array of screwballs and cranks: vaginally fixated performance artists, sex-offending bowlers, and wandering cowboys, drifted over from some other Wild West. THE BIG LEBOWSKI is a wormhole down which one can disappear and never return. LEBOWSKI is a marvel, being essentially a single, film-length shaggy-dog tale enclosed within an astonishingly tight script. THE BIG LEBOWSKI is Raymond Chandler refracted through the perspective of a drug-addled hippie, THE LONG GOODBYE if Elliott Gould’s Marlowe had chosen not to refrain from smoking a joint with his neighbors. The Dude abides.

10. ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY (Adam McKay, 2004)

Like LEBOWSKI, another bottomless treasure-trove of quotable lines. Will Ferrell’s performance as a narcissistic San Diego newscaster is nothing short of brilliant, with notes of carefully honed self-absorption mingling with defensiveness, clumsy aggression, and a trace of wounded romanticism. Ron Burgundy is a marvelous caricature, half-cad and half-buffoon, the kind of guy who, when summoned onstage at a jazz club, professes surprise as he pulls a flute out of his jacket pocket. Ferrell is the ringmaster here for a glittering cast that includes Steve Carell, Paul Rudd and Christina Applegate, his parody of oily self-assurance putting the entire film into air-quotes. —Saul Austerlitz

Buy it at Amazon.

In this excerpt from their book THE SEXY BOOK OF SEXY SEX, comedy-showbiz couple and real-life fornicators Kristen Schaal and Rich Blomquist discuss job opportunities that are a stroke of genius. Prepare for your oral exam.

Though getting paid to have sex may sound like a dream gig, anything you do because it’s your job has a way of becoming a lot less fun. There are three main types of sex work, each with its own job description and perks. The dress code tends to be pretty lax.

Erotic “Dancing”
Though erotic dancers insist they’re “artists,” their performances are little more than group ogling set to music. Add some clothes to the choreography and you’ll see just how many art lovers stick around for the next song. To be fair, strip shows do possess a certain avant-garde quality given that they can happen anywhere: a table, a pole, a giant cake, the ever-changing contours of the human lap. Not even Shakespeare could have imagined that much of the world being a stage.

Prostitution
If you’re willing to go the extra mile for a little more cash, then you may want to try your hand, mouth, penis, vagina, or any other body part you’re willing to have violated at the sex-for-money racket. One of the few female-dominated industries, prostitution is the world’s oldest profession, which isn’t surprising considering every woman is born with a working storefront.

Like exotic “dancers,” some prostitutes sugarcoat their job descriptions by saying they provide “massages” or “bodywork.” This is absolutely correct. As far as customer satisfaction is concerned, prostitutes give some of the best, most relaxing massages known to man.

But be advised: in many parts of the world prostitution is illegal, and hookers turn to pimps for protection, fur care tips, and unsolicited physical motivation. (Think of them as “broken-life coaches.”) In return, pimps receive a generous share of the profits, and if they’re true 2 da pimpin’ game, the remaining share of the profits. For this reason, prostitute retirement plans often rely on being a hooker with a heart of gold, meeting a wealthy businessman, and being whisked away to a life that doesn’t involve buying penicillin in bulk. Unfortunately, this seldom happens, as any hooker with a real golden heart would see it confiscated by her pimp and melted down into teeth and goblets.

FUCKTOID
In cities like Amsterdam and Las Vegas, prostitutes have formed their own trade unions, a movement that ironically means dealing with even more scabs.

Pornography
You’ve jiggled your breasts for Japanese businessmen, you’ve had more sailors inside you than a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, but despite all your efforts, you still don’t feel like you’re getting enough attention. If this is you, then you have what it takes to be a star! No, not a real star. A porn star.

As celebrities of the sex industry, porn stars enjoy the skin-crawling satisfaction that comes with knowing thousands of people have stared at you while masturbating (and a few of them may have actually paid for it!). Yet for all the exposure, there are quite a few downsides to being a smutsperson: the constant anal bleaching, the lurking possibility of contracting an STD, and perhaps worst of all, never getting to eat any of the freshly delivered pizza that so often introduces “extra sausage” into the plot.

On the bright side, adult film performers get to pick a fun porn name. In recent years, most aspiring stars have done this using the Zmenckamynkcis formula. Developed in 1980 by porn producer and mathematician Bob Zmenckamynkcis, the formula provided a group of people not known for their career savvy with an easy recipe for concocting a memorable nom de splooge:

fp + ST = Pn


(name of first pet) + (street you grew up on) = (your porn name)

For erotic performers the world over, Zmenckamynkcis’s formula proved a veritable Ellis Island (somewhere Zmenckamynkcis’s ancestors had obviously bypassed). Overnight, fresh young talent like Mittens Morningside, Nibbles Elm, Shadow Pudding, and even Ron Jeremy became household names, all thanks to Zmenckamynkcis’s earthshaking discovery.

Yet for all its triumphs, the Zmenckamynkcis formula is not perfect. Like Einstein’s theory of relativity, the pet/street paradigm has been shown to break down under extreme conditions, at which point it can produce some of the least sexy porn names ever conceived. Names like:
• Rascal Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard
• Rags West 34th
• Buster Service Ramp

—Kristen Schaal and Rich Blomquist

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Vampires may be all the rage at the cinema and on TV these days, but zombies still reign supreme on bookshelves. And not every zombie book is like the other, either. Witness this deadly half-dozen — plus one — of books that step out (albeit on decrepit heels) and stand out in the subgenre. —Rod Lott

SHAKESPEARE UNDEAD by Lori Handeland — William Shakespeare was one of history’s greatest writers, a master of words with a body of work that is truly impressive … some may say a little too impressive for a single man to accomplish in one lifetime. Perhaps, as many have speculated, he had assistance. Or perhaps the explanation is more … unusual. Who was William Shakespeare? Who was the Dark Lady of the Sonnets? Why are the undead stalking the alleyways of London? And can they be stopped? Something is definitely rotten in the state of Denmark. 

THE LOVING DEAD by Amelia Beamer — Kate and Michael are roommates living in the Oakland hills, working at the same Trader Joe’s supermarket. A night of drunken revelry changes their lives forever, but not in the way that anyone would expect. A slow-spreading plague of zombie-ism breaks out at their house party, spreading amongst their circle of friends, and simultaneously through the Bay Area. This zombie plague — an STD of sorts — is spread through sex and kissing, turning its victims into mindless, horny, voracious killers. Thrust into extremes by this slow-motion tragedy, Kate and Michael try to stay alive and reunite in the one place in the Bay Area that’s likely to be safe and secure from the zombie hoards: Alcatraz.

BRAINS: A ZOMBIE MEMOIR by Robin Becker — College-professor-cum-zombie Jack Barnes is a different breed of undead: He can think. In fact, he can even write. And the story he has to tell is a truly disturbing — yet strangely heartwarming — one. Convinced he’ll bring about a peaceful coexistence between zombies and humans if he can demonstrate his unique condition to Howard Stein, the man responsible for the zombie virus, Barnes sets off on a grueling cross-country journey to meet his maker. Along the way, he recruits a small army of “super” zombies that will stop at nothing to reach their goal. United, they embark on an epic quest to attain what all men, women — and, apparently, zombies — yearn for: equality.

THE ZOMBIES OF LAKE WOEBEGOTTON by Harrison Geillor — The town of Lake Woebegotton, Minn., is a small town, filled with ordinary (yet above average) people, leading ordinary lives. Ordinary, that is, until the dead start coming back to life, with the intent to feast upon the living! Now this small town of above average citizens must overcome their petty rivalries and hidden secrets in order to survive an onslaught of the dead.

MARRIED WITH ZOMBIES by Jesse Petersen — Meet Sarah and David. Once upon a time, they met and fell in love. But now they’re on the verge of divorce and going to couples’ counseling. On a routine trip to their counselor, they notice a few odd things: the lack of cars on the highway, the missing security guard, and the fact that their counselor, Dr. Kelly, is ripping out her previous client’s throat. Now, Sarah and David are fighting for survival in the middle of the zombie apocalypse. But, just because there are zombies, doesn’t mean your other problems go away. If the zombies don’t eat their brains, they might just kill each other.

DOG BLOOD by David Moody — The Earth has been torn into two parts by an irreversible division. Whether due to nature, or the unknown depths of the mind itself, everyone is now either Human or Hater. Victim or killer. Governments have fallen, command structures have collapsed, and relationships have crumbled. Major cities have become refugee camps where human survivors cower together in fear. Amidst this indiscriminate carnage, Danny McCoyne is on a mission to find his daughter Ellis, convinced that her shared Hater condition means her allegiance is to people like him. Free of inhibitions, unrestricted by memories of peace, and driven by instinct, children are pure Haters, and may well define the future of the Hater race.

THE LIVING DEAD 2 edited by John Joseph Adams — Acclaimed editor Adams is back for another bite at the apple — the Adam’s apple, that is — with 43 more of the best, most chilling, most thrilling zombie stories anywhere, including virtuoso performances by zombie fiction legends Max Brooks, Robert Kirkman and David Wellington. Ghoulishness has never been more relevant. Within these pages, samurai warriors face off against the legions of hell, necrotic dinosaurs haunt a mysterious lost world, and eerily clever zombies organize their mindless brethren into a terrifying army. You’ll even witness nightmare scenarios in which humanity is utterly wiped away beneath a relentless tide of fetid flesh.

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