No Rest for the Wicked

The New Dead

2009-05-18T07:55:00.000-07:00

So, last year, I was approached by Michael Homler, an editor at St. Martin's Press. They had an interest, he said, in publishing an anthology of zombie stories and wanted me to put one together as editor. My initial reaction was hesitant. I enjoy zombie stories as much as the next weird bastard, but I was skeptical about doing something just to capitalize on the current trend. If I were to attempt it, my interest would be in compiling a collection of stories that touched on WHY zombies are so damn popular at the moment. Vampires, of course, remain popular because of their glamour and eroticism and the promise of eternal life. But zombies...um, they eat your brains.

Thus...THE NEW DEAD.

We live in odd times. Strange days, indeed. Times of torture and deceit and celebrity and constant exposure to the worst the world has to offer, thanks to a media that never tires of feeding our hunger for the horrible.

My favorite work of zombie fiction ever is the poem "The March of the Dead" by Robert Service. In a way, it set the tone for this new anthology, though it was published long, long ago. Service wrote of the glorious homecoming of victorious soldiers, celebrated by the townspeople as they parade through the streets...only to be followed by the ravaged, horrible, lumbering dead, the soldiers who did not survive the war.

This isn't to say that the stories in THE NEW DEAD are all focused on such modern concerns (hah...modern...tell that to Robert Service). But each has its own unique perspective on the zombie story, and many are certainly informed by the cultural concerns unique to our era. On the other hand, some are about love. And, of course, they're all about Hunger, in one form or another.

Aside from taking a different slant on the zombie story--or, I should say, because of it--my other goal was to assemble a very eclectic array of contributors, a zombie anthology version of Forrest Gump's box of chocolates. Fantasy writers. Mainstream literary writers. Horror writers. Mystery and thriller writers. I can only hope you'll be as pleased with the results as I am.

Without further ado...the Table of Contents for THE NEW DEAD, shipping in February, 2010 from St. Martin's/Griffin:

Table of Contents

"Lazarus" by John Connolly
"What Maisie Knew" by David Liss
"Copper" by Stephen R. Bissette
"In the Dust" by Tim Lebbon
"Life Sentence" by Kelley Armstrong
"Delice" by Holly Newstein
"Closure, LTD" by Max Brooks
"The Wind Cries Mary" by Brian Keene
"Family Business" by Jonathan Maberry
"The Zombie Who Fell From the Sky" by M.B. Homler
"My Dolly" by Derek Nikitas
"Second Wind" by Mike Carey
"Among Us" by Aimee Bender
"Ghost Trap" by Rick Hautala
"The Storm Door" by Tad Williams
"Kids and Their Toys" by James A. Moore
"Shooting Pool" by Joe R. Lansdale
"Weaponized" by David Wellington
"Twittering from the Circus of the Dead" by Joe Hill

Want a Free Copy of the Next Hidden Cities Book?

2009-04-14T10:35:00.000-07:00

Check out the sexy alternate, unpublished cover to THE MAP OF MOMENTS. Sweet, isn't it?

Psst, hey!

How'd you like a free book?

Tim Lebbon and I are working hard on our third novel together, an urban fantasy called TELL MY SORROWS TO THE STONES. It's a new Hidden Cities book, this time set in Venice.

So how do you get one for free?

The first 50 (fifty) people to review the current Hidden Cities book, THE MAP OF MOMENTS and post the review at both their blog (or website) *AND* at Amazon will get a free signed copy of TELL MY SORROWS TO THE STONES when it is released in 2010.

Once you've posted your review, send your link(s) to citieshidden@yahoo.com The reviews must be at least one paragraph of at least five sentences. This contest is open to residents of the United States, Canada, and Europe. Must be at least 15 years old to enter.

Read an exclusive excerpt from The Map of Moments. Click here to download the PDF.

If you'd like to spread the word of this contest, please feel free! Download the Word .DOC

For more information about the novels, visit http://www.thehiddencities.com/For more information about the authors, visit http://www.christophergolden.com/ and http://www.timlebbon.net/

Things That Make Me Happy

2009-01-30T06:31:00.001-08:00

Well, there are a lot of things, yes. (Get your minds out of the gutter.) Way too often, days fly by and I don't take time to properly appreciate those things, but here are a few of them.

The ALA has made POISON INK one of its Quick Picks, putting it on the list of Best Books for Reluctant Readers for 2009. It's not the first time I've made the list, but it always makes me smile. There's nothing that pleases me more than hearing from someone, kid or adult, who "doesn't like to read" that they enjoyed something I wrote. It always feels like a win. So, yay! :)

Eksmo, my Russian publisher, has sent me copies of the beautiful hardcover edition they've done of ANGEL SOULS AND DEVIL HEARTS. (This is the fourth book of mine they've done, after STRANGEWOOD, WILDWOOD ROAD, and OF SAINTS AND SHADOWS.) Next up is THE MYTH HUNTERS, and she tells me they intend to publish the entire Veil trilogy, as well as the other two Shadow Saga novels. I'm taking that as a good sign.

The lovely (and slightly goofy) Amber Benson has actually started blogging. I thought the day would never come, and now I suppose I'll have to blog more. Bad enough Tim Lebbon blogs all the damn time. And both Amber and Tim are on freakin' Twitter, which I just don't understand. What would mine say? Working. Working. Working. Working. Hmm, maybe that should worry me. All work and no play...you know how it goes. Ah, well, going out to dinner tomorrow night with my wife and some friends (you'd be surprised how good some of the restaurants in Haverhill, MA are), so I do have SOME tiny social life.

Anyway, Amber's blog... http://amberbensonwrotethis.blogspot.com/ Her first solo novel, DEATH'S DAUGHTER, hits shelves next month. Buy. Read. Smile.

Just bought the new CD from the Derek Trucks Band, and it makes me very happy. It's been a long, cold, shitty winter, and playing the CD creates a little bubble of summer in my office.

Comics people, and horror people, make sure to check out the new DEAD OF NIGHT: WEREWOLF BY NIGHT miniseries from Marvel. Always loved the character, and hard boiled Duane Swierczynski has started the thing off with a bang.

So there you go. Must go write, now. Am about to do some very horrible things to Cait McCandless...things for which she will never forgive me. And, perhaps unsettlingly for you, that makes me happiest of all.

Maps and more Things To Come

2009-01-25T06:17:00.000-08:00

So, I'm long past the point of making promises about being a better blogger. I've seen where that gets me. Let's forge ahead, shall we? And if I happen to manage this a bit more often, all the better. :)

It's going to be a very interesting year, I have a feeling...in lots of different ways. For me, as always, it's going to involve lots of writing. There's also some fairly interesting travel this summer, taking me from London to St. Petersburg and back. As for conventions...more on that in a bit.

THE MAP OF MOMENTS hits bookstores this week. My collaborator on that novel, the devilishly handsome Tim Lebbon, and I are anxiously awaiting reader feedback. We're pretty damned thrilled with the book and the reviews it's been receiving, so we hope you like it.

What else is up for this year? I've been hearing rumors about an upcoming YA supernatural trilogy that's supposedly written by me, under the name Thomas Randall. I'm curious about that. But for now, some quick updates...

**Tim Lebbon and I will soon begin the third Hidden Cities book, TELL MY SORROWS TO THE STONES, and there will definitely be a fourth one, at least.

**No word yet on release date for THE SECRET JOURNEYS OF JACK LONDON, but I'll keep you posted.

**I've done a short story, "Quiet Bullets," for Joe R. Lansdale's upcoming SON OF RETRO PULP TALES anthology for Subterranean Press.

**Mike Mignola and I just finished a short story, "Mechanisms," for a new anthology of HELLRAISER stories, though Mike's still working on illustrations.

**It appears I'll be returning to comics late in 2009.

**I've delivered the new version of the BALTIMORE script to the producers. I'm sure there will be changes before it goes on to the studio.

**My co-writer on the CW pilot (Stephanie K. Smith) and I await the network's decisions.

**BRITISH INVASION, the anthology I edited with Tim Lebbon and James A. Moore, has finally been published by Cemetery Dance. Hopefully the Cemetery Dance editions of PRINCE OF STORIES and MIND THE GAP will follow quickly, especially since there's another book of mine in the works at CD which is going to be the coolest limited edition I've ever had.

**Rich Horton has chosen my story "The Hiss of Escaping Air" for his FANTASY: THE BEST OF THE YEAR anthology. It's the first time any of my short fiction has been selected for one of these collections, and I'm honored. Note: the original chapbook is still available from PS Publishing's site, and with the way the pound has dropped against the dollar, it's MUCH cheaper for US readers than it was upon publication back in the fall.

I'm sure there are other things I should be reporting, but I've been under the weather this weekend and my head's all muddled. So, moving on...

Right now, I'm planning to attend three conventions this year--Necon, World Fantasy (it's in San Jose, California!), and I'll be Horror Guest of Honor at Context in Columbus, OH, August 28th-30th, 2009. I find it interesting that I'm the horror guest, since so little of what I've written seems to actually qualify as horror, but as I've said in the past, the horror people are my people, which makes it a double honor as far as I'm concerned.

Thanks for reading.

The Map of Moments gets its star

2008-12-08T07:20:00.000-08:00

The past few months have gone by in a blur, and now Christmas is nearly here. I'm working on a new draft of the BALTIMORE movie script, just finished the first draft of a pilot script for the CW, and Lebbon and I are just days away from completing the first book in our new YA series THE SECRET JOURNEYS OF JACK LONDON. But this morning, I'm taking a few minutes to celebrate the wonderful review that Tim and I received from Publishers Weekly on our second collaboration, the adult fantasy novel THE MAP OF MOMENTS. Here's a bit of what they had to say...

Starred Review. "Urban realism meets dark fantasy in this spine-tingling second collaboration between Golden and Lebbon as they merge the repercussions of Hurricane Katrina with New Orleans' terrifying ghostly past. Golden and Lebbon have far outstripped their past efforts with this wonderfully creepy thriller of a ghost story."
--Publishers Weekly

A New Dawn

2008-11-05T06:28:00.001-08:00

I am jubilant this morning, my friends. Filled with a kind of hope and vigor that I have not felt in a very long time. Hope prevailed over hate and ignorance last night, and my sons stayed up to watch it. Nicholas is 14 and has an Obama poster hanging on his wall, and he and I were both near tears during the speech. He had to get up at 6am, but he wasn't going to bed until Obama spoke, and I let him stay up. Daniel, who is 12, had to get up at 7am, but likewise did not want to go to bed. I let him stay up so that he could see it live, and have this piece of history to remember for the rest of his life. After the speech he looked up at me and said "Barack Obama is now officially my hero."

We've elected someone our children can look up to, who can be a guiding light in so many ways. I feared those days were behind us, and though I know there are hard years to come, I also know, now, that there are better days ahead.

America has sent the world a signal. We've been derelict in our duties, to use the power of ideas for the greater good, but we've remembered, now, what it was all for.

We're back, and we're ready to work again.

How's Tricks? (and a Halloween Treat)

2008-10-24T14:03:00.000-07:00

So, I had a little medical procedure today that required them doping me silly, making it hard to focus on writing. Instead, I thought I'd do a little update on all the news, cool and crazy, happening now.

First, the biggest news...but with only slim details, as I can't say more about it right now. One of my book series has just been optioned by a TV network and I'm soon to begin work co-writing the pilot. The central character is very dear to me, and I can't tell you how thrilled I am by this development, and with the group of people who have come together to make it happen. More on that later.

I wish I had concrete news on some of the other film and TV projects in various stages of development--BALTIMORE, TALENT, OUTCAST, THE SISTERHOOD, THE HOLLOW, and GHOSTS OF ALBION--but though there is definitely action, there's nothing to report at the moment. Hopefully that will change soon.

Tim Lebbon and I are hard at work on our first YA collaboration, THE SECRET JOURNEYS OF JACK LONDON, and it's turning out to be very cool and, I believe, unique. It's a very creatively rewarding partnership, I think. In fact, in addition to those, Tim and I have also made a deal with Bantam for the next two novels in our HIDDEN CITIES series (though "series" is such a strange word for books that are so UNconnected).

The next Hidden Cities book, THE MAP OF MOMENTS, will be out at the end of January. Every book in the series stands on its own, without any need to have read or even know about the others. They are only thematically connected. Tim and I both feel MAP is one of the best things either of us has ever done.

SOULLESS and PRINCE OF STORIES: THE MANY WORLDS OF NEIL GAIMAN, both hit stores this month. I haven't heard whether or not Neil has seen the book or what he thinks of it, but it's important to us all that he like it, so fingers tightly crossed.

Speaking of new deals (as I was just a bit above), I've also signed on with MTV Books (publishers of SOULLESS) for a new book with them. It's modern dark fantasy with a classical twist, but it's too early to say more about it.

There you are. That's probably all the update my drug-addled brain can manage at the moment. I should add, though, that on November 16th, both Joe Hill (Heart-Shaped Box) and I will be signing at the Portsmouth Comic Book Show (in Portsmouth, NH). If you're not too far away, come by and visit.

And now, as promised, a Halloween treat...an essay I wrote a number of years back for a big fat Cemetery Dance anthology. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!

HALLOWEEN MEMORIES
by Christopher Golden

Was I eleven?

I don’t think so. At least not quite. Let’s say nine, then, though perhaps I’m erring on the side of vanity, not wanting to admit just how long I held on to the more gleefully childish parts of Halloween.

So, yes, nine.

Before I begin, though, you need to know about my mother’s hand. Or, rather, her lack of one. The left. From birth she has been forced to manage with what one might call a truncated version of a left hand, dealing both with the practical impact of that loss as well as the emotional. She’s done very well, thank you. Though an attorney now, in her youth she was a singer and performer whose efforts took her to Off-Broadway shows in New York.

In order to prevent audiences from being distracted by her handicap, she had one made for her. It was plastic and felt not unlike a turkey baster to the touch.

By the time I was nine—we all agreed on nine, did we not?—my mother had long since abandoned the stage. But the hand remained in my basement for me to discover it one early fall. It was a fascinating piece of equipment, particularly to one of my darkly mischievous mind set. Thus, that Halloween, when I put on my father’s torn black jacket that hung to my knees and pulled my Frankenstein’s Monster mask over my head, I also slipped that hand over my own . . .
Poor Mrs. Nye.

I lived in a suburban Massachusetts town twenty miles west of Boston, on a quiet, dead-end street with plenty of kids. My road was part of a warren of them that comprised a single, enormous middle-class neighborhood called Pheasant Hill.

Halloween on Pheasant Hill was truly something to behold. My brother and I took huge white pillowcases out before dark and began our rounds, filling up once, twice, even three times before finally settling down to fish through our booty and trade what we didn’t like for things we did. If I close my eyes now I can remember the bustle of garishly costumed children roving up and down the streets in small packs.

Cabbage Night, what we called the local night of mischief and misdemeanors the evening before Halloween, had just passed. And yet we had the unmitigated gall to approach the front doors of homes we had egged or soaped the windows of or toilet-papered the trees of not twenty four hours earlier.

One house, on the far end of Briarwood Road, offered cold sodas instead of candy, and at least one Halloween was hot enough for us to be sweating in our masks and costumes. I had a devil’s mask as well, but I think that came later, after the Frankenstein.

Of course there were sinister elements as well. The LaVolley mansion—which wasn’t much of a mansion at all, to be honest—had shattered windows and an overgrown lot and that was our haunted house, the one we all sprinted by when we had to pass it. If we dared go down that way at all on Halloween night.

The whispers of razor-blades in apples and poison in candy. But we were foolish enough to think a wrapper that wasn’t ripped meant the candy was safe to eat. We were children. And children in a time when parents thought most of those stories were just urban myths.

It didn’t matter. Halloween was a glorious night. The best night of the year. When cable television came in, I could go home from trick-or-treating and watch Halloween or Magic on HBO. Conveniently, one or the other always seemed to be on that night. There were others, of course, but those are the ones I remember.

I got older, of course. Old enough, eventually, to bitterly accept that the solicitation of candy was reserved for younger children. And then older still.

But I never stopped loving Halloween. I usually take my children out trick-or-treating because I’m too dangerous to leave at home on Halloween night with my gore-drenched ghoul mask and lots of gullible little garishly-dressed neighbor kids to frighten.

Which brings me back to Mrs. Nye. What a sweet old woman she was.

I rang the bell, a group of other kids behind me. She came to the door and I was the one who yelled “trick or treat” the loudest. With a kindly smile she dropped a Zagnut and a Reese’s cup in my bag. I thanked her and thrust out my hand for her to shake.

My left hand.

She shook it, of course. It came off in her hand and I shouted as if I’d been injured and she shrieked in shock and terror and dropped it on the ground.

Mrs. Nye stared at me in horror.

And I liked it.

A lot.

To My Friends in California

2008-10-18T05:40:00.000-07:00

It's inconceivable to me to think that anyone in the fair state of California would wish--now that they have made such a proud step into a future that is kinder and more just--to return to a darker era of prejudice and inequality.

The opponents of gay marriage want to make it about religion, but it is not about that. If there's one thing I learned in twelve years of Catholic school, it's that Christ was about inclusion, about opening your arms to people others would look down upon.

What IS marriage? It is a vow of love and a union of spirit. It is a legal bond that provides protections under the law where children, health, and crisis are concerned. It is the freedom to proclaim a commitment to one another that is deeper than mere intention, or words like "girlfriend," "boyfriend," and "partner" can communicate.

The people who are trying to pull the state back into an era of intolerance are fighting for the right to HATE. Those who need your support--who need you to VOTE NO ON 8--are fighting for the right to LOVE. Whose motives do you respect more?

California, VOTE NO ON H8TE.

VOTE NO ON 8.

Quiet. Too Quiet.

2008-08-24T08:35:00.000-07:00

Damn, I'm lame. Yeah, yeah, don't all agree at once. Three months since the last post. I wish I could say that was the longest amount of time between blogs for me. Sadly, not the case. How on earth does Neil Gaiman do it? I wish I could figure out how to get all my work done, spend time with my family, have a little downtime for myself, read TMZ (heh), and STILL have time to blog. Ridiculous. I should do it monthly at least. Weekly would be ideal. When he's not in China, freakin' Gaiman does it every DAY.

Show off.

So...some news, perhaps. At least if I talk about what I've been working on it won't seem like I've been just lazing around the house. (We did go to Disney World for a week back in June...don't ever go to Disney World in the summer.) Anyway, news...

**I absolutely cannot wait until September 19th, when I arrive in England for Fantasycon, at which I'm among the Guests of Honor (I suppose I should spell it "Honour") this year. I'm looking forward to seeing so many good friends there, and then heading off to Wales with Lebbon for a couple of days before coming home.

**Next week, look for the all new trade paperback of THE FERRYMAN, the one thing I've ever written that I would say is purely a Horror novel, with a new afterword by Charles de Lint and a striking reworking of the original cover into something super cool.

**Mike Mignola and I turned in the first (really the second, but for the studio's purposes, the first) draft of the screenplay adaptation of BALTIMORE to New Regency. Now we're in the midst of all the conversations about what to do for the second draft.

**Tim Lebbon and I finished the second Hidden Cities book, THE MAP OF MOMENTS, which will be out at the end of January. We're both extremely proud of the novel. It's among my very favorite books I've ever worked on, alone or in collaboration.

**SOULLESS, my MTV teen zombie novel, will hit stores in October. It's getting some great early reaction and I'm looking forward to the feedback...some of which, I'm sure, will be telling me how inappropriate it is for young readers. C'est la vie.

**POISON INK, the YA supernatural thriller I did for Delacorte, came out last month to great reviews and has some interesting Hollywood inquiries. We'll see what comes of that.

**October will also see the publication of PRINCE OF STORIES: THE MANY WORLDS OF NEIL GAIMAN. I wrote the book with Hank Wagner and Stephen R. Bissette and will be out at the NCIBA event in California the first weekend in October for a signing. I've got the ARC sitting here on my desk, and honestly, it's one hell of a book. The hours of interviews with Neil alone are worth the price of admission, but it's also pretty damn comprehensive, and there are several unpublished pieces in those pages, including a small snatch of the beginning of an as yet unwritten novel, and major revelations about the current state of the whole Miracleman legal entanglement.

**Though Cemetery Dance do tend to take forever, the anthology BRITISH INVASION, which I co-edited with James A. Moore and Tim Lebbon, should be out very, very soon, followed swiftly by the CD limited edition of MIND THE GAP.

**FIVE STROKES TO MIDNIGHT, a collection of stories by five writers--Tom Piccirilli, Deborah LeBlanc, Gary A. Braunbeck, Hank Schwaeble, and me--not only won the Stoker for Best Anthology, but has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award as well. Fantastic. Congrats to all of the contributors and especially to Gary and Hank, who were the editors on the book.

**I've done a brand new story, "The Hiss of Escaping Air," for Pete Crowther and PS Publishing. It'll be released in a special edition for Fantasycon and available only at the convention or through PS directly. More info to come soon.

**What else? Lebbon and I are starting work on our new YA adventure series, and Jim Moore and I are finally ready to write BLOODSTAINED WONDERLAND. We're a little too gleeful about our plans for that book, but we felt the same way about BLOODSTAINED OZ, and it worked to our advantage, I think. :)

**Hollywood stuff: TALENT and OUTCAST are still in development at Universal, THE SISTERHOOD at Intermedia, and BALTIMORE at New Regency. No news I can actually report, but I expect to have some major news on at least two of those projects very soon. Also, THE HOLLOW, the YA horror series I did with Ford Lytle Gilmore, is in development at Lionsgate TV. That's looking very promising as well, but I learned a long time ago not to assume anything when it comes to film and television.

WATCHING: Psych, Saving Grace, old episodes of Rescue Me and The Wire. Waiting for the fall TV season to begin.

READING: A Short History of Myth. Jack London: A Life. Mark Morris's upcoming short story collection (damn, he's good).

LISTENING TO: My iPod's been on "shuffle" forever. I haven't picked up anything new that I liked in a while. Suggestions welcome.

RECOMMENDING: A Kiss Before the Apocalypse by Thomas E. Sniegoski, of course. Plus, since it's about to come out, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. It may well be my favorite thing that he's ever written. As always, his style is elegant and amusing and chilling and touching all at the same time, but here more than ever.

Gene Colan: The One and Only

2008-05-17T13:32:00.000-07:00

Last week, before I headed off to NYC to help chaperone my son's 8th grade class trip (and caught a hellish cold), the lovely Liana K forwarded me a link to an online discussion of the deteriorating health of Gene Colan. As Liana knew from our conversation at Ad Astra in Toronto earlier this year, Gene has been a hero of mine since I was nine or ten years old.

We are all the sum of our parts, and it is no exaggeration to say that without TOMB OF DRACULA and the art of Gene Colan, I might well never have become a writer. (So, yes, you have Gene to blame, along with the creators of Kolchak, Stephen King, and Charlie Grant.)

Back up. When I was a kid, whenever I was sick enough to need medicine, my mom would come home from the pharmacy with a small stack of comic books. She knew nothing about them, of course, except that I liked them, so in addition to Justice League and Avengers, I would get Richie Rich and even the occasional Jughead. One summer--when, as I said, I was either nine or ten--my parents rented a house on Cape Cod and my brother and I walked down to the country store with some loose change. It was the first time I had ever picked out a comic book for myself, and it was TOMB OF DRACULA #15, written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by Gene Colan, who had already had legendary runs on a number of series, including Daredevil.

It altered me. The story was always entertaining, of course, with the great Marv Wolfman at the top of his game. But Gene's art drew me into the world of that series in a way that no comic book before or since has ever managed. It was like watching Christopher Lee in Hammer films, only better, a sexy, textured, ominous world in which Dracula was both the ultimate evil and the ultimate tragic hero. He was written that way, of course, but Gene *made it work.*

The only piece of original comic book artwork I've ever bought is a page from TOMB OF DRACULA #15, which I bought from Gene himself at a convention, the very first time I met him. It hangs, signed and framed, in my home.

My good friend Tom Sniegoski can (and apparently could, back then) tell you who wrote and drew every issue of every comic book he read throughout his youth. Not me. Truth is, at that age, I didn't even know who Jack Kirby was. I paid no attention to the names of artists, except for one: Gene Colan. While the rest of the industry was trying to learn to draw like Kirby, Colan was just being Colan.

Fast forward. I don't have the dates in front of me, but let's call it mid-nineties. Marvel had drastically altered the characters of Blade (who first debuted in the pages of TOMB OF DRACULA of course) and Hannibal King (ditto) for a series called Nightstalkers...but the Blade movie was in the offing and Marvel wanted to hit the restart button, to get back to the character's origins. Editor Ralph Macchio asked me to do a one-shot that would be its own story, but that would also retell the origin of Blade and reintroduce some of the characters from his past. I was thrilled, but worried. As a novelist, I was always being told my comics writing was too wordy (it was) and what Ralph wanted--in a 40 page comic--would be pretty text heavy. He assured me he wanted it that way. With meat on its bones.

The pitch was called BLADE: CRESCENT CITY BLUES. I turned in the breakdowns for the plot, and a couple of days later, Ralph called. "It looks like we're going to have Gene Colan draw it."

I thought he was joking. Gene hadn't done anything for Marvel in a while at that point. When I realized he was serious, I was so overwhelmed that I nearly wept. Mock if you will, but *that's* how much it meant to me. Working with Gene was a dream come true. He was a consummate gentleman, a blast to brainstorm with, a pleasure to talk to, and every page came in just as beautiful as any he had done on TOMB.

When we were done...after the comic book had come out...I called Gene one day to thank him again. I asked him if, once he got the artwork back, he'd be willing to sell me a page or two of the comic we'd done together. Gene had gotten 22 of the 40 pages. The inker, Mark Pennington, received 18. Gene refused to let me pay him. He said that he'd had such a good time and liked the one-shot so much that he wanted to send me a couple of pages, and he wouldn't let me talk him out of it.

The next day, a FedEx box arrived containing NINETEEN pages of Crescent City Blues. Gene had kept the three he liked best, and sent me the rest. It was an extraordinary gift, and I'll never forget it.

In the time since then, I've only spoken to Gene once or twice, and not for years. He remains my favorite comic book artist of all time.

Various folks are spreading the word online, suggesting that people send Gene cards and get well wishes. I think that's a fantastic idea. You can send cards and letters to:

Gene Colan
2 Sea Cliff Avenue
Sea Cliff, NY 11579
USA

The Hidden Cities website, trailer, & contest!!

2008-04-17T07:28:00.000-07:00

I've been quiet lately, I know. Nose to the grindstone. But here's one of the really cool things that's been percolating.

Tim Lebbon and I have the first of a new interrelated series of books we're doing for Bantam coming up at the end of next month. It's called MIND THE GAP, and the series is THE HIDDEN CITIES. The second, set in New Orleans, is being edited now and will be out early next year. That one's called THE MAP OF MOMENTS.

Thanks to the incredible Deena Warner, we're building a very cool new site at http://www.thehiddencities.com/ and we'd love you all to participate. How, you ask?

*First, go watch the damn spiffy book trailer created by filmmaker Martin Roberts, with the vocal talents of actress Jasmine Hyde (Ghosts of Albion) and audio assist from Rob Francis. Let me know what you think.

*Second...spread that trailer all over the net. Youtube, your MySpace pages, Facebook, your blog, your friend's blog. If you want to be all mysterious, post it in places and don't even say what it is. Especially at youtube.

*Third...the MAP. On the Hidden Cities site is a map of the world. We're asking people to submit stories--NOT FICTION, but local legends, ghost stories, folk tales from places you've been or lived or currently live...plus your own personal experiences, brushes with the supernatural or just plain weird, if you've had them. The success of this part of the site depends entirely upon contributions, so spread the word.

*Fourth--WIN! The two best submissions will each win a copy of the signed, hardcover, limited edition of MIND THE GAP from Cemetery Dance!

Check it out! Spread the word! Let me know what you think.

Chris

Only the End of the World Again

2008-01-24T19:14:00.000-08:00

Neil Gaiman wrote a short story once upon a time entitled "Only the End of the World Again." [Neil is on my mind a lot these days, since I've been working for months--in 'spare time' stolen mostly from what would otherwise be family time, and often on mornings before I turn to whatever novel I'm writing--on a book that was originally titled The Neil Gaiman Companion. The title of the book, which I've written with my friends Hank Wagner and Steve Bissette, is apparently changing, but I'm waiting for final confirmation of the new title.]

In any case, this post has nothing to do with Neil, really, except that rereading a lot of his work in the past nine months has given me a new appreciation for exactly how remarkable his achievements truly are. I particularly love his short stories and the magnum opus that is The Sandman. I read Sandman in single issues when it was first published, and if you did the same I urge you to start again, reading the series in its current graphic novel format. The whole truly is far greater than the sum of its parts. It's a work unequaled in comics, either before or since.

But I digress. For some reason this post, which is not about Neil Gaiman, continues to insist upon making itself about Neil Gaiman.

So I'll get to the point, and the reference to "Only the End of the World Again." The title is almost a sigh, a sort of surrender to the constant state of impending doom that humanity has existed in since the beginning of time, really. I think, also, of one of my favorite lines from Buffy the Vampire Slayer: "If the apocalypse comes, beep me." [Back when people carried such things as beepers. Weird to think how fast they came and went.]

So, the end of the world. I'm not talking about Global Climate Change, though its threat is imminent. Rather, I'm talking about the general state of human society. Sometimes it depresses the hell out of me to think about the way so many seem to have surrendered to the opinion that the human race is atrophying from lack of conscience, that entropy has truly taken hold, and the world is winding down.

Yet, as disheartening and disconcerting as all of that is...it's nothing new.

Chinua Achebe wrote the great THINGS FALL APART in 1958.

But let's go a little further back than that, to a wonderful quote I found tonight while researching a future project. In the sixth century, the poet Theognis wrote:
"Hope is the only good god remaining among mankind;the others have left and gone to Olympus. Trust, a mighty god has gone, Restraint has gone from men,and the Graces, my friend, have abandoned the earth. Men’s judicial oaths are no longer to be trusted, nor does anyone revere the immortal gods; the race of pious men has perished and men no longer recognize the rules of conduct or acts of piety."

Damn, does that sound on target or what? Trust and restraint are gone. Judicial oaths are no longer to be trusted! For all of the articles and books and pundits pointing out the degradation of literacy and education (which troubles me deeply) and the paucity of moral virtue in society, is it only ironic or actually deeply twisted that I take immense comfort and reassurance from the words of Theognis?

Even then, the only thing that Greek poet felt humanity had left to cling to was hope for the future.

Which, fittingly, brings me back around to Mr. Gaiman. In the first volume of Sandman, Morpheus faces off against the demon Choronzon in a contest of concepts. Smugly, Choronzon believes that when he says "I am entropy," the Dream King will have nothing to parry his attack. But that's when Morpheus (and Gaiman, and humanity) pulls out his trump card. "What will you be?" the demon asks. And the Sandman says, "I am hope."

I'm terrified on a daily basis by the apathy of people who could make a difference, if only they cared to. I do believe that human society is degrading, and as a result, entropy is taking hold both of world culture and of the planet, and that we are all Nero, fiddling while Rome burns.

And yet, like Gaiman and Morpheus, and Chinua Achebe and Theognis, I have hope.

After all, it's only the end of the world again.

2008 and Beyond

2008-01-08T09:42:00.000-08:00

Somehow, Neil Gaiman manages to write on his blog almost every day. How in hell he does this is absolutely beyond me. Between writing and my family, I haven't made time to blog since AUGUST of last year. *hangs head in shame* Once again, the writing fiend vows to do better.

How sad is it that it takes a note from my friend Jim Cobb saying "hey, dumbass, what are you working on for '08" for me to actually return to the blog?

All right. I'm back. Keep bugging me, Jim, and hopefully I'll get into the swing of things.

Anyway, 2007 was an incredibly busy year, and 2008 will, I hope, show the fruits of those labors. The year starts off with several reprints. In January, Bantam will publish a mass market edition of THE BORDERKIND, the Second Book of the Veil. In February, they'll bring out mass market editions of THE BOYS ARE BACK IN TOWN and WILDWOOD ROAD, both never before available in that format.

But those three are all reprints, you say, what about new stuff?

In March, the Third Book of the Veil, THE LOST ONES, arrives in trade paperback, completing the trilogy. In May, Tim Lebbon and I have our first collaborative effort, MIND THE GAP: A NOVEL OF THE HIDDEN CITIES. Then, later in the year, I'm returning to young adult fiction for the first time in a while. Delacorte will publish POISON INK in July, and MTV Books will publish SOULLESS in October, just in time for Halloween.

Also in the fall, Roc will be publishing a brand new trade paperback edition bringing back into print THE FERRYMAN, with a brand new introduction by Charles de Lint.

Early 2008 will also see the publication of a new comic book series with my friend Tom Sniegoski called THE SISTERHOOD. It's a three issue miniseries from Archaia Studios Press, and the film version is in development now, with Sniegoski and me producing.

Once the WGA strike is over, Mike Mignola and I will be completing work on our screenplay for BALTIMORE, OR, THE STEADFAST TIN SOLDIER AND THE VAMPIRE for New Regency Pictures.

In limited editions, 2008 will see a number of them, though several I can't talk about just yet. They include my first short story collection and the Earthling Modern Classics edition of STRANGEWOOD, with an introduction by Graham Joyce and a Foreword by Bentley Little. James A. Moore and I have made a new deal for the two novella sequels to BLOODSTAINED OZ, though when we'll get started on those is still up in the air.

All of those things are already complete, of course. As to what the future holds beyond those things...I'm working with Tim Lebbon on THE MAP OF MOMENTS, the second HIDDEN CITIES novel. There are already plans in place for other things to keep my busy all through 2008, and into 2009, including a second collaboration with Mike Mignola, and some things that might surprise longtime readers.

WATCHING: PRIME SUSPECT (series one), LIFE ON MARS (series two), and not much else at the moment. It's January, in the middle of a strike, what do you expect? :)

READING: A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES by John Kennedy Toole (thanks Poppy).

RECOMMENDING: Poppy Z. Brite's LIQUOR and its sequels. Fantastic books. If you'd suggested to me that a book about two guys opening a restaurant would have me flipping pages in suspense, I'd have certainly arched an eyebrow. What a testament to Poppy's talent.

LISTENING: Sara Bareilles was the standout from '07 for me, along with the Bonnie Prince Billy disc a friend gave me.

Go. Read. Ask questions.

Welcome to 2008.

The Writing Fiend Comes Up For Air

2007-08-13T10:43:00.000-07:00

I've done enough talking about trying to blog more. Four months in between posts is pitiful, isn't it? Let's see if I can do better...

There's so much to talk about. Leave a comment or a question. I read 'em all.

Well, here we go. :) Lots of news, release dates, projects, other things creeping closer to reality. It's been a very busy time.

**************

BOOKS:

**On August 28th, Bantam Spectra will release the hardcover novel BALTIMORE, OR, THE STEADFAST TIN SOLDIER AND THE VAMPIRE, a collaboration between myself and Hellboy creator Mike Mignola. In addition to co-writing the novel, Mignola has done the cover and 150 (yes, 150) interior illustrations for the book. I've said elsewhere that this is probably the coolest project I've ever been involved with. (see the end of this e-mail for reviews and blurbs, including a couple of new ones.) BALTIMORE has already sold to Germany and Italy and is a featured alternate selection of the Science Fiction Book Club.

**Diamond Distributors, the company that supplies comic book stores across the U.S. with their product, has offered a special edition of BALTIMORE with a different cover, a Mignola sketchbook section, and the original Hans Christian Andersen story that helped inspire the novel, complete with four or five additional illustrations by Mignola. This edition can only be ordered from comic book shops (including those who sell online).

**The fourth book of THE MENAGERIE will also be out at the end of August. Tom Sniegoski and I have been living with these characters in our heads for at least a decade now, probably more, and CRASHING PARADISE is both my favorite thus far in the series and an opportunity to share ideas and character stories we've been yearning to reveal for all of that time. This one includes the secret history of Creation itself, as well as revelations about Eve and Clay, a legion of ancient enemies of the Menagerie, a new member (who spends much of her time naked), and the battle for Eden. Look for an update soon at www.the-menagerie.net

**Pocket Books is, apparently, ending their Buffy the Vampire Slayer publishing program. At least that's the rumor. As such, I couldn't resist the temptation to share one final adventure with the old gang. DARK CONGRESS is set post season seven and features more than one story that I've had in my head for a while. In addition to the characters you'd expect to see--Buffy, Xander, Willow, and Giles--there are also appearances by several others I wanted to say goodbye to, Oz and Faith, for instance. The return that's had the most buzz, some of it very happy and some of it not so much, has been the resurrection of Tara. I guess I wasn't the only one who needed to say goodbye. Dark Congress hits in the next few weeks. Watch for it!

**"The Mournful Crow of Owls" is the title of a new short story I wrote for MANY BLOODY RETURNS, an anthology edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner. Other contributors include both Harris and Kelner, as well as Jim Butcher, Kelley Armstrong, Tanya Huff, and PN Elrod. I'm proud to be among them. The book is a blast, and hits stores September 4th.

**Haunted Pelican Press has been more than patient with me regarding the new anthology FIVE STROKES TO MIDNIGHT. The book was supposed to be out in July and I'm at least half the reason it's a little late. For me, the wait was worth it, as the three stories I wrote for the collection are, I believe, some of the best short work I've ever done. I hope you agree. The book includes thirteen stories by five authors--Gary A. Braunbeck, Deborah LeBlanc, Tom Piccirilli, Hank Schwaeble, and myself--an introduction by Tim Lebbon, and cover and interior illustrations by Hellraiser star Ashley Laurence. http://www.hauntedpelicanpress.com/catalog.html

**The first week in October brings the trade hardcover edition of Joe Hill's extraordinary short story collection 20th CENTURY GHOSTS. I wrote the introduction to the limited edition a couple of years back, before most people had heard of Joe, and I can't wait for the rest of the world to get their hands on this collection, which shows so many facets of a brilliantly talented writer. I'm pleased that Morrow has kept my introduction for the trade edition. If you weren't already planning to do so, you must check it out.

**At the end of January, Bantam will publish the mass market edition of THE BORDERKIND, the second volume in THE VEIL TRILOGY. A month later, they'll follow up with the first ever mass market editions of my first two novels for them, THE BOYS ARE BACK IN TOWN and WILDWOOD ROAD. Apparently BOYS will sport a new cover, which I'm dying to see.

**THE VEIL concludes at the end of March with THE LOST ONES. After the first two ended on cliffhangers, the third act of Oliver Bascombe's story finally plays out. The Two Kingdoms are at war. Wait until you see the cover for this one. It's beautiful. Keep an eye on my site this fall for much more information, the cover, and more regarding THE LOST ONES.

**My first novel with Tim Lebbon, MIND THE GAP, will arrive from Bantam in May, 2008. Tim is one of the finest writers to appear in the fantasy and horror world in the past decade and I can't tell you how pleased I am with the result of our first collaboration. MIND THE GAP is an urban dark fantasy, a little bit of magic, a little bit a ghost story, and is the first book in a series of books we call THE HIDDEN CITIES, which are only thematically connected. We'll get under way with the second book, THE MAP OF MOMENTS, shortly, and already have several ideas for future volumes. MIND THE GAP is set in London and THE MAP OF MOMENTS in New Orleans.

**Earlier this year, I wrote a teen supernatural thriller called POISON INK. At the time of the writing, I hadn't seen or read The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, but recently saw the film with my kids. I've now taken to saying that POISON INK is sort of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants with EVIL. Actually, the only similarity is that both involve a group of five girls of very different backgrounds and the way that a brush with magic changes their relationships with one another. In POISON INK, that brush is decidedly darker and more permanent than a funky pair of jeans. POISON INK hits in July, 2008 from Delacorte.

**And that brings us to now...At the moment, I'm writing another book aimed at teens--a darkly unpleasant story about spirits, life after death, priorities, and zombies called SOULLESS. MTV Books is the publisher, and my guess is that it'll hit around October, 2008. It's an insidious, gruesome bit of work that differs in several vital ways from most zombie stories. It's also an ensemble piece. But I'll save that conversation for another time, as this one's still brewing.

**Other things brewing include my short story collection and an anthology I've co-edited, but I'm not allowed to speak of such things yet, according to the publisher. One thing I can speak about is the incredibly beautiful limited edition hardcover edition of STRANGEWOOD, my favorite of all my novels. Earthing Publications will be putting it out at the very end of this year or the beginning of next as part of their Earthling Modern Classics series. Graham Joyce has done an introduction and Bentley Little and afteword, and the many illustrations by Richard Kirk are literally breathtaking. http://www.earthlingpub.com/cg_strangewood.htm

FILM & TELEVISION:

**Universal Pictures recently renewed their option on, and continue to develop, the feature film version of OUTCAST, based on the young adult series of the same name I wrote with Tom Sniegoski. At the moment, there isn't anything else I can reveal.

**Universal also continues to develop TALENT, based on the comic book miniseries I wrote with Sniegoski. A writer has been tapped for the project and he's got some pretty amazing credentials, but since Universal hasn't announced his name, I can't either.

**A third project co-written with Sniegoski is in development at another studio. Though it's the one that seems closest to coming to fruition (we have a director and a script), once again I'm forbidden to discuss it until someone else does so first. (All the secrecy stuff is frustrating, isn't it? More so for me than for you, I guarantee.)

**GHOSTS OF ALBION has been optioned for film and television by Celtic Rose Entertainment, an L.A. production company.

**More news, and details, forthcoming....

COMICS:

**Seriously, does it SOUND like I've had any time to devote to comics lately? As much as I love the medium and want to do more, other things have taken up my time. However, there are a couple of small news items...

**Boom! Studios has released the trade paperback of TALENT, the aforementioned miniseries written by Sniegoski and me and illustrated by Paul Azaceta.

**Archaia Studios has just announced that they'll be publishing THE SISTERHOOD, another collaboration with Sniegoski. More on release dates for THE SISTERHOOD soon, along with covers and preview art.

SIGNINGS:

Tuesday, September 4th, 2007--7pm....I'll be signing at the Barnes & Noble in Framingham, MA with writer Toni L.P. Kelner. This event serves a dual purpose, promoting both BALTIMORE, OR, THE STEADFAST TIN SOLDIER AND THE VAMPIRE (in stores 8/28) and the short story anthology MANY BLOODY RETURNS. Toni and I both wrote stories for MBR, but she also co-edited the book with Charlaine Harris.

Wednesday, September 19th, 7pm--Barnes & Noble in Kenmore Square, Boston (the Boston University Bookstore). Come spend some time in Beantown. Kenmore Square is easily accessible by T.

I'll have one or two others in October, and will send those on as soon as dates are confirmed. Also...

World Fantasy Convention--WFC is November 1-4 and this year is located in Saratoga Springs, NY. I'll be there all weekend. If you're in attendance, come up and say hello.

BALTIMORE REVIEWS:

"Starred Review. Prolific dark fantasist Golden’s popular style is impeccable, and horror comics creator Mignola’s copious illustrations confirm the tale’s dark atmosphere throughout. A new classic of vampire literature." -- Booklist

"Mignola and Golden create a haunting allegory on the nature of war, fusing the poignancy of Hans Christian Anderson's "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," the supernatural chills of Dracula and the horrors of WWI and the subsequent influenza epidemic . . .Stark monochrome illustrations from Mignola enhance this dramatic tale of war and fear." -- Publishers Weekly

"The lush, labyrinthine BALTIMORE evokes the best from two of our most gifted artists. Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola have created a book that will be enjoyed and admired for decades to come." -- Peter Straub

"I have admired Mike Mignola both as an artist and as a tremendous story teller pretty much since his career began. In this collaboration with Christopher Golden it's fair to say he surpasses himself. He and Golden have produced a witty classic of supernatural fiction." -- Michael Moorcock

"Baltimore is an old time rootin' tootin' sense of wonder story dragged through a modern blender, then slow baked in hell. I loved it. It was velvet bullet -- speedy and rich in sensation. Go boys, go." -- Joe R. Lansdale

"With Baltimore, Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden lay siege to the reader's imagination with a grim battalion of gothic images and a thunderous barrage of narrative artillery. This is not a novel: it's a war machine. Surrender immediately." -- Joe Hill, author of Heart-Shaped Box

"(Golden's) collaboration with Hellboy creator Mike Mignola has apparently brought out the darkest sides of both men as Baltimore, or The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire is one of the most haunting, exciting, and bleakest tomes either creator has done to date. And I loved every minute of it. An alternate reality the likes of which I've never seen before."--Dread Central

Patrice Duvic

2007-04-23T13:04:00.000-07:00

I wish I were posting about anything else today. I wish some foolish bit of whimsy had brought me back here. Instead, it's grief once more, our intimate friend and nemesis.

I first began corresponding with Patrice Duvic some years ago when he bought several books of mine to be translated for publication in France. He was an editor who acquired for several publishers, and an author in his own right, though he hadn't done much writing of his own in a while. Patrice brought many horror writers to French audiences for the first time, including Graham Joyce, Bentley Little, and me. He had an unrivaled passion for the genre, and was surrounded with books at all times.

When, during our correspondence, Patrice learned I would be attending a convention in England, he suggested that I visit him in Paris and that he would arrange for a book signing for me there. I had agents there, and thought it a perfect opportunity to meet them as well as Patrice. He traveled to London to meet me, and we rode the Chunnel train back to Paris together, where he set me up in a small flat near the river that he used as an office and occasional sleeping quarters.

Patrice was a gracious host, but he was more than that. He was an instant friend. A kinder, gentler man I have never met. He had the casual irony and world weary wisdom of a man who has truly lived, and a kind of good-humored surrender to the ebb and flow of the world that I normally associate with clergy--though Patrice was hardly that. With his white hair, beard, and glasses, he looked more than a little like a professor, and I looked to him with the same respect I would any teacher with such experience.

My first night in Paris, alone in that flat after Patrice had gone, I suffered from terrible homesickness. But by day Patrice's company made me feel at home. We ate at outdoor cafes and he mocked my American culinary tastes, we sat together and talked as he smoked cigarette after cigarette.

The last time I saw him, at World Fantasy Convention in the fall of 2005, he looked unwell. We had dinner together, and I was so very happy to see him. He was simply one of those people you wished you could see all the time, whose company made you think and become inspired. He had just recovered from surgery related to cancer, which he reported as in remission. He had given up smoking. Too late, alas.

I've only just learned that Patrice died of cancer in February of this year. I wish I'd had more conversations with him. Many more. I'm so glad to have known him, and if you didn't, I'm sorry you will never have the chance.

"It is a one way ticket, my friend," he told me once, speaking of life, punctuating the words with the burning tip of his cigarette.

Patrice Duvic was 61 years old.
He is missed.

Bursts of Inspiration

2007-04-19T18:47:00.000-07:00

Recently I traveled to Toronto for the World Horror Convention, making the road trip from Boston with my friends John McIlveen and Nate & Nicole Kenyon. You'd think after nine hours in the car, we'd want to kill each other. Chances are they were on the verge of beating me to death with my I-Pod or empty can's of John's MONSTER drink, but for my part, I had a wonderful time.

I spent much of the convention with friends I don't get to see often enough, because they don't live on the same continent (thoughtless and selfish, aren't they?). They know who they are, and how much I miss them, so I won't recap the whole weekend.

The point is this: whenever I attend such a gathering of writers, I come away inspired. I spend so much of my time at the computer, writing, and during those times it's just me and the keyboard. I've talked before about how solitary writing is. So when I get the chance to spend time with other writers, whether we're talking about our own books or someone else's, or about the business, or just about our lives, I always come back with a renewed energy and enthusiasm, ready to work.

To all of you who shared a moment or a drink or a rambling conversation in Toronto, I want to say thank you for the inspiration.

*************************

I returned from Toronto and immediately put that enthusiasm to work on a couple of different projects. Tim Lebbon and I had already been working on MIND THE GAP, the first of our HIDDEN CITIES novels for Bantam Spectra. Now we're chugging along, tearing through it, and having a fantastic time. The story has a momentum we're both enjoying, so that it feels like the story really belongs to Jazz, the main character, and we're just along for the ride.

I'm also writing my stories for the five-author anthology FIVE STROKES TO MIDNIGHT. (Hank, I swear, I'll be done soon.) Two quiet, sorrowful tales of ghosts and legends, and one nasty, ugly monster story, right in the middle.

There's a great deal of news on the way, but not a lot I can say at the moment. I'm going to do my best to start blogging more, and more briefly, with short updates. It's going to be an incredibly busy year with the release of my novel with Mike Mignola--BALTIMORE--and a variety of other projects, including a short story collection.

I'll be back soon to talk about a new teen horror project, SOULLESS, and the next book I'll be doing for Bantam.

***************************

READING: Joe Lansdale's LOST ECHOES (he's an American treasure..no one writes like Joe)
RECOMMENDING: Sarah Pinborough's THE TAKEN
LISTENING: Jonathan Coulton and Amy Winehouse (not together; that would just be weird)
WATCHING: The Shield, Entourage, Heroes, and all kinds of other stuff...and wishing Friday Night Lights would come back for a second season. Have I mentioned I watch too much TV?

Patriots, 2007 Plans, and Five Things You Don't Need to Know

2007-01-23T05:24:00.000-08:00

They almost had it. The New England Patriots had a year of rebuilding, a year they shouldn't have even been in contention for the Superbowl, with no effective Wide Receivers and no real superstars except Tom Brady. But that's the time when superstars are born, or reborn. That's the time when teams show their mettle. The New England Patriots won three Superbowls in four years because they are a team, first and foremost, and other than Brady, they don't rely on the performance of one individual. This season they managed to put together a brand new team, train a new crop of players, and win enough games to make it to the playoffs in the meantime. They made a lot of mistakes, had a lot of injuries, and by the time they limped into Indianapolis--half the defense sick with the flu, exhausted from a bruising game and road trip to San Diego the week before, and dealing with the sauna-like temperatures inside the dome--they had only one chance. They had to shake up Peyton Manning in the first half, break his confidence, remind him of all the times they'd denied him in the past. They had to come out in front big time, get the momentum, because the defense might not have what it took to make it through the game. It wasn't difficult. Peyton Manning is the whiniest crybaby in football. He's an excellent quarterback, without doubt the most precise passer in the game. But he's not the field general Brady is, not half as cool under fire. The first half, Manning looked like he might just pick up the ball and go home. And then...BAM! Second half. Manning comes out like he's just starting the game, determined and deadly. The Colts' defense can't do much to stop the Patriots offense, but they don't have to as long as Manning is controlling the ball, eating the clock, running the game, and wearing down a Patriots defense that simply fell apart. Do I wish the Patriots were going to the Superbowl? Absolutely. Do I think they could have beaten the Bears with two weeks to rest up? No question. Do I hate whiny, arrogant, tv-commercial whore Peyton Manning with a fiery passion? Yes. Yes I do. But in spite of all that, I must give credit where it is due. Peyton Manning played an extraordinary second half and kept Brady off the field most of the time, denying the Patriots their own best weapon. Congratulations, Peyton. I hope the Bears keep that ring off your finger.

Side note to Patriots coaches and management--if you don't sign Asante Samuel this year, you're insane.

******************************************

2007 update!

I'm madly at work (no, not right now--I'm writing the blog at the moment) on a new young adult supernatural thriller called POISON INK for Delacourt. With all the widescreen epic stuff I've been writing lately, it's a pleasure to be working on something as intimate and insidious as this.

Travel plans--I'll be at New York Comic-Con next month. At the end of March, I'm headed to Toronto for World Horror Convention. In July I'll be at both Necon and San Diego Comic-Con, and I'm tentatively planning to attend the World Fantasy Convention this fall. Whew.

***********************************************

Five Things You Don't Need to Know

So, my good friend Craig Shaw Gardner www.craigshawgardner.com has tagged me at his own blog with a challenge to provide a list of five things you probably don't know about me. So here goes....

1. According to family lore, on my father's side of the family, we're distant cousins of Buffalo Bill Cody, going back to a time when his ancestors and mine lived on Prince Edward Island in Canada.

2. I spent my high school years singing in a rock cover band called CROSSFIRE. We weren't half bad. Our lead guitarist, Bob Colburn, had extraordinary natural talent.

3. I love musical theatre, and performed in shows in from junior high all the way through high school, including roles as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, Rolf in a local production of The Sound of Music, and the Cowardly Lion in both The Wizard of Oz *and* The Wiz.

4. As a kid I had several ambitions. For a while, when the TV show Simon & Simon was on the air, my brother Jamie and I were determined to open our own private detective agency when we grew up. I also considered careers as a police officer, film director, college professor, and priest. Yes, seriously. For about an hour, I thought about being a priest. Those of you who know me well will find this hilarious. My mother always wanted me to be a lawyer. Thankfully, she also was always supportive of my ambitions as a writer. A friend of hers sent a couple of my earliest stories out to magazines when I was 13 or 14. Ellery Queen, Playboy, Alfred Hitchcock, and several others rejected me, but all with encouraging, handwritten notes expressing surprise at my age. That was probably vital for my confidence, but sadly it meant the Golden & Golden Detective Agency was never to be.

5. In high school (sophomore year, I think), Steve Williams, Jeff Galin and I skipped school (we called ourselves in sick, claiming to be our fathers--and they believed us), got drunk, and then set off to walk to McDonald's. While we were cutting through back yards, a dog started barking furiously at us. We barked back. The owner of the house called the police. There had been a series of recent break-ins in that particular suburban neighborhood. Soon, we were running from the police. Jeff ended up in the back of a patrol car, Steve and I were trying to climb a chain link fence . . . and the dumbass local cop pulled his gun on us. "No need for the piece, man," Steve told the cop. When we turned around, the cop realized how old we were and quickly holstered his weapon. Scared the shit out of us. The cops asked us where Jeff lived. He was drunk as a skunk, you see, and looked sort of lost in the back seat of the patrol car. They wanted to take him home. We lied and said we'd just met him that day. When they told us the other option was to take him to the police station, we quickly coughed up his address, complete with our assurance that his mother was home. Then it was down to me and Steve. When asked why we ran, I started to tear up a little, eyes all watery. Adrenaline pumping, freaked out and scared, it wasn't difficult. Steve got all worried about me and patted me on the back, comforting me. I gave him a sidelong glance and a wink, and he had to bite the inside of his mouth to keep from laughing. It hadn't been difficult to summon up tears under the circumstances. When asked where we belonged, we told them Marian High School in Framingham, and we also begged them to call and ask for the chaplain, Father Hughes, instead of the principal. Father Hughes would kick our asses, but he would also referee for us. He was fair and just. (He later baptized one of my children--a wonderful man.) Somehow, for whatever reason (my tears? our willingness to have them call the chaplain?), the cops let us go with a warning. What did Steve and I do? Why, we walked down to McDonald's, just like we planned, while Jeff was sleeping it off at home, his mother waiting for him to sober up before showing him the error of his ways. And on the way back from McDonald's . . . the same cop who'd pulled the gun stopped to offer us a ride home, delivered us to my front door, and asked if we'd been drinking with our buddy that day. He and his partner hadn't been sure. We thanked him for the ride.

Apparently, I need to now tag some other people to create a similar list on their own blog or journal. So, Tim Lebbon, Sarah Pinborough, and Allie Costa...TAG!

******
WATCHING: HBO's ROME and EXTRAS, and far too many other things.
READING: AGE OF MISRULE by Mark Chadbourn...very glad I didn't read this before writing The Veil Trilogy. Completely different story, but similar elements.
LISTENING TO: the new Madeleine Peyroux
RECOMMENDING: Rick Hautala's FOUR OCTOBERS

The Writing Fiend Gets Coal in His Stocking

2006-12-15T07:09:00.000-08:00

Yes, yes. Been a while. As previously noted, I've been writing like a fiend this year, and travels to L.A. have eaten up additional time. I'm aware that Santa Claus will be putting coal in the stocking of "The Writing Fiend" this Christmas...or maybe not. Even the Bumble got to put the star on top of the Xmas tree.

So, what's it all been about, then?

*Way back at the beginning of the year, I finished up THE BORDERKIND, The Second Book of The Veil (the first was THE MYTH HUNTERS). The book hits in March, with an ending that I relished writing. MYTH will come out in mass market paperback next month, which I hope will lead even more people to THE BORDERKIND.

*Just yesterday, I delivered the manuscript of the third and final book of The Veil, tentatively entitled THE LOST ONES. Writing the trilogy was an extraordinary experience for me. I would have thought, prior to writing it, that anxiety would have forced me to create a very specific outline and follow it religiously. The opposite happened. The story and its characters grew and took on life of their own, guiding me instead of the alternative. THE LOST ONES is also the longest novel I've ever written, but with so many characters whose lives I wanted to follow, it didn't feel that way to me. (I'm certain, however, that it seemed long to my editor, the incredible Anne Groell, as she patiently awaited the manuscript through many e-mails telling her it kept growing.)

*Somewhere in the midst of the insanity this year, I wrote a new Hellboy novel, HELLBOY: THE DRAGON POOL, which comes out in the spring. As always, Mignola did the cover, and it's fantastic.

*Amber Benson and I collaborated on a novella for Subterranean Press called THE SEVEN WHISTLERS which ought to be shipping any day now. I confess that, as much as I enjoy writing the Ghosts of Albion stuff, writing THE SEVEN WHISTLERS was much more fun. It's a present day dark fantasy story, set in Vermont, about a young woman named Rose Kerrigan mourning the death of her grandfather.

*Tom Sniegoski and I wrote the fourth book of THE MENAGERIE series, CRASHING PARADISE. We love these characters so much. I haven't heard a schedule for publication yet, but hope to find out soon.

*I wrote a rather long story called "The Mournful Cry of Owls" for a new anthology, MANY BLOODY RETURNS, edited by Toni L.P. Kelner and Charlaine Harris. The book hits in hardcover in September 2007, and also features a number of other familiar names, including (if I remember correctly) Kelley Armstrong, Jim Butcher, Tanya Huff, P.N. Elrod, and a new Sookie Stackhouse story from Charlaine.

*I've also just finished a new story called "Ka-Pow." That one, and another--as yet unwritten--are for a project I can't comment on just yet. In the next few months I have several other new stories to write for an interesting new anthology project called FIVE STROKES 'TIL MIDNIGHT, which will feature stories by five authors, including Tom Piccirilli, Gary Braunbeck, Deborah LeBlanc, Hank Schwaeble, and myself.

*After a long break from the comics field, Sniegoski and I wrote the miniseries TALENT for Boom Studios. TALENT received some of the best reviews I've ever gotten for anything, sparked a Hollywood bidding war, and ended up at Universal Studios within a week or so of the publication of the first issue. Tom and I were very happy to land at Universal with the same executive who is developing our YA fantasy series OUTCAST there. We were fortunate to meet some of the people in the film industry who DON'T fit the stereotype. A writer has been attached to TALENT, but hasn't been announced yet, so we're keeping mum.

*Another project of ours--which shall remain nameless because it also has not yet been announced--has just been optioned by Intermedia for a feature film. Everyone's incredibly enthusiastic about making this film together, and a director is already on board. Hope to be able to discuss it at greater length soon.

*On the GHOSTS OF ALBION front, it appears that Eden Studios is finally almost ready to publish the Role Playing Game. As frustrating as all the delays have been, the work that has gone into this thing explains the time it has taken. Vampires, sorcerers, fairies, Victorian England...it's got something for everyone.

*So, what's coming up? Tim Lebbon and I are starting up on our new collaborative novel MIND THE GAP. More news on that later.

*And here's an announcement that many will not have seen coming...in interviews over the past four years--because it's been that long--I've been asked many times if I would ever go back to BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. My replies have always been cautious. Never say never, right? One of the reasons for my caution was that there have always been a few Buffy stories I still wanted to tell but never had the opportunity to tell. One of them has been told by someone else, so that's out. However, earlier this year I had a long conversation with Patrick Price at Pocket Books, and the result is BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: DARK CONGRESS, which will hit stores in trade paperback in Summer 2007 and in which I get to do a lot of things I've been wanting to do for a while, one of which is something I'm going to guess most Buffy fans never thought would happen. Chances are good that it'll be my swan song.

*Last, and MOST importantly, in the first half of the year, I worked with Mike Mignola on something I can honestly say is the most unique book I've ever written. BALTIMORE, OR, THE STEADFAST TIN SOLDIER AND THE VAMPIRE is a very gothic, alternate-history vampire hunter novel that I wrote with Mignola. It will be published in hardcover by Bantam in the fall of 2007 with 150 illustrations by Mignola. That's right. 150. Spot illos, full pages, quarter pages, half pages, all striking and many unsettling as hell. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to seeing the final product. Bantam has some ambitious promotional plans, including something special for Comicon International in San Diego next summer. Everything between now and the release of BALTIMORE will be a kind of blur for me, I think. It's by far the strangest thing I've done, and yet it is most influenced by classic works of gothic literature, including everything from Stoker and Shelley to Matthew Lewis's THE MONK. I feel like I had one long unsettling dream that went on for months, and BALTIMORE was waiting for me when I woke.

********************
So, I hope that all explains why I've been such a bad blogger.

Plans for 2007 are already gearing up. I'm happy to say they include a number of conventions that I'm looking forward to. Right now I plan to attend the NEW YORK COMICON in February, WORLD HORROR CONVENTION in late March/early April, NECON in July, SAN DIEGO COMICON in July, and probably WORLD FANTASY CONVENTION next fall. There may be one or two others, but that's already a hell of a lot more conventions than I attended in 2006.

I read a great many excellent books in 2006, including Joe Hill's upcoming HEART-SHAPED BOX, Charles de Lint's WIDDERSHINS (finally! That's all I'm saying!), Phillip Pullman's Sally Lockhart trilogy, James Lee Burke's CRUSADER'S CROSS, several books by the great Walter Mosley, several by Tim Lebbon (including the excellent DUSK, FACE, and BERSERK), several by Joe Lansdale, Peter Straub's IN THE NIGHT ROOM, Neil Gaiman's ANANSI BOYS, Graham Joyce's incredible short story collection PARTIAL ECLIPSE, Brian Hodge's WORLD OF HURT, Carol O'Connell's WINTER HOUSE, Sarah Pinborough's THE HIDDEN, Mark Morris's NOWHERE NEAR AN ANGEL, and a whole lot more that I can't think of at the moment.

I watched too much television, but 2006 was the year that any doubts were finally erased--there's a lot more good TV out there than there are good movies. The only really good films I saw at the theatre this year were THE PROPOSITION, THE PRESTIGE, THE ILLUSIONIST, CASINO ROYALE and THE DESCENT. Television has been far more rewarding, with HEROES, LOST, THE SHIELD, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, GREY'S ANATOMY, HOUSE, VERONICA MARS, PSYCH, LIFE ON MARS, AFTERLIFE, ENTOURAGE, DEADWOOD, and I'm sure I'm leaving something out. There's been some excellent television in 2006, and some real surprises. Of them all, I'll say this...do yourselves a favor and track down the BBC's LIFE ON MARS. Aside from THE SHIELD and HEROES, it may be my favorite TV experience this year.

Obviously, my resolution f0r 2007 is to be a better blogger. But I'm not going to promise to watch less television.

Missing Charles L. Grant--One More Empty Saddle

2006-09-17T05:07:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted a blog since March. I know. I'm an ass. I've been writing like a fiend in that time, and soon, I hope to give you an update on all that's been written, all the news, and what I'm cogitating about these many months later.

But that will have to wait.

What brings me back today is a terrible bit of news I received yesterday morning. Charles L. Grant, a towering legend in the field of horror, has died. Charlie's contributions as a writer are well known, both novels and short stories (and novellas, as in my favorite Grant book, NIGHTMARE SEASONS), but his greatest influence came through his work as the master anthologist of the horror genre. Charlie edited so many fantastic anthologies, not only the extraordinary SHADOWS series (in which Charlie published the first ever stories from so many wonderful writers) from the GREYSTONE BAY books to HORRORS and TERRORS and others. TERRORS, in fact, was the very first adult horror I ever read. I recall so clearly the day I picked it up from a spinner rack in Thayer Pharmacy on Cape Cod. I couldn't have been more than ten. I read those stories on the beach and already, in that one day, started to think of Charlie Grant as the Great and Powerful Oz, the man behind the curtain. If not for the first taste of horror that Charlie offered me, I might never have gone on to Stephen King, and from King to so many others. I might never have been set upon the path my life has taken.

In 1985, the fall that I started college, I attended my very first real convention--Boskone. Charlie was the first professional writer I had ever met, and he was gracious and generous with his time, talking to this eighteen year old kid like I had anything to say that he might want to hear.

Maybe you've heard--or you will hear--that Charlie was a curmudgeonly bastard. Well, yeah. Absolutely. But his gruffness was part of his charm and was always undercut by a smile or by the benevolence in him.

Charlie liked to play the curmudgeon, but he was one of the kindest, gentlest guys around. In the early years at Necon (a small writers convention I've attended almost every year since 1989), when I was just dreaming about getting published, Charlie was always supportive and encouraging, a friend to me. Two of the best memories I'll ever have of Necon were of Charlie--one a long conversation about our shared love of Abbott & Costello, and the other a conversation that lasted until five a.m., the only time in all my years at Necon that I stayed up until sunrise.

The first book signing I ever did was a group thing. There were perhaps six writers, and Charlie was one of them. During my stint as Secretary of HWA, he was always supportive, always had the time to share the wisdom of his experience.

I got the news yesterday morning, and posted on a board "It's been years since I last saw him, but I find myself missing him horribly today." Another day has passed, and I miss him more. Strange, because while we were always friendly, I'm not sure we were ever close enough to really be called friends. Maybe it's just that he almost seemed so much bigger than life, to me. He occupied more room in this world than most of us are allotted, not just in my view, but for anyone who met him. With his cowboy boots and his jeans and that hair and beard, he looked like a badass Texas preacher more than a writer.

I have so many great memories of Charlie, not only from Necon, but other times as well, including a trip a bunch of us made to SpookyWorld. We were all in a long (more than an hour) line for the haunted hayride and they played music for the crowd. When they did YMCA and the Macarena, many in the crowd danced along, knowing all the right steps. Charlie knew every one of those moves, and had a blast. It amused me like hell seeing the eternal grump doing those dances, grinning and so completely at ease.

I wish the SHADOWS series still existed, giving the mass market regular doses of the best and often newest voices in horror fiction. Where are the next generation going to learn what makes a horror story transcendant, if not from Charlie Grant?

Yesterday morning when I woke up--a couple of hours before I received the news about Charlie in two phone calls from Rick Hautala and Craig Gardner--I found myself thinking about Charlie Daniels, a country rocker who was a Southern rock legend in the 70s and early 80s. Yes, I used to listen to Charlie Daniels back in the day. Daniels played with Elvis and Janis Joplin and many others in the studio before launching his own career. He'd seen a lot of road. Most of his albums back then would have a little poem inside or on the back, usually in what seemed to be his own handwriting. They were pretty good, and at the time I thought they were sublime. I knew them all.

Yesterday, for apparently no reason, lines from one of those poems started going through my head. It's from an album called FULL MOON and it's called "To A Brother." It ends with the following lines--

"But we're so much less than human,
When we lose one of our own.
Now there's one more empty saddle.
This old cowboy has gone home."

Two hours later the phone rang, and I learned an era had passed.

Publishing lag time, American Idol, and hints of spring!

2006-03-09T07:20:00.000-08:00

Okay, so, yes, I'm completely irresponsible when it comes to blogging. I'm a bad blogger. I confess. I really do intend to get back here more, but if I make promises, I'll just break them...and you know where that road paved with good intentions leads. :)

So, where've I been? Here, at my desk, writing my butt off. The last couple of months have been incredibly busy, finishing up the second Ghosts of Albion novel, WITCHERY, with Amber Benson, the third Menagerie novel, STONES UNTURNED, with Tom Sniegoski, and the second book of THE VEIL trilogy, THE BORDERKIND, all by my lonesome.

Whew.

That was my winter. All different projects, all wonderfully rewarding experiences, but leaving little time for anything else. That's probably good in winter. I hibernate in my writing, since I can't go anywhere else. New England. :)

What's really strange for me as writer, though, is the lag time in publishing. I can't begin to tell you how much I love THE MYTH HUNTERS, the first book of THE VEIL, which hit stores back at the very end of January. I'm having the time of my life on that trilogy. But I finished the book a year ago. THE SHELL COLLECTOR, a novella I did for Cemetery Dance almost a year ago, is about to be published. BLOODSTAINED OZ, a novella I wrote with Jim Moore for Earthling Publications, was finished in the fall and will come out in May.

This is all perfectly reasonable. It takes time to edit, copyedit, design, layout, and print a book. But there's something about surreal about that lag time, too. When something is finished, all of the writer's enthusiasm is wrapped up in it. The baby has been born. But nobody else is around just then to say what a cute, darling little baby it is. That happens much later. In a way, that's nice, because you get to be enthusiastic all over again and focus on some of the things that you really loved about the work and hoped people would notice. At the same time...you've got a new baby getting the lion's share of your love and attention, and you'd really be excited to talk about that!

The best of both worlds, really.

Then, of course, there's the work in progress. If ever there was a love/hate relationship in my life, it's with whatever I happen to be writing at the moment. No matter how passionate and excited I am about it, that's always balanced by the constant wrestling with the words and ideas, pushing it into shape. It's wonderful and frustrating at the same time, and ironic--I think--that this, the actual writing, the focused, work of it, is why I do it in the first place.

Why? Because there's nothing in the world like the moment of ephiphany, when you finally realize how the puzzle pieces fit, or how to move them around to make them fit, or which piece is missing. There's nothing like the moment when you realize that that ONE change will make it all work so much better, make it richer and more purposeful, more effective.

For me, anyway.

At the moment, I'm working on a new novel, BALTIMORE, OR, THE STEADFAST TIN SOLDIER AND THE VAMPIRE with Mike Mignola. What a process of discovery it is, wrestling with all the pieces of this one. Mike's imagination, style, and sense of story make him a fantastic creative partner, and we're building something here that's unlike anything I've ever written . . . or read. And I can't wait to see his art for it. More on that later.

So...two more small things.

First, AMERICAN IDOL. I've watched bits and pieces in the past. This is the first year I'm watching regularly. I've got to say, there's some incredible talent on the show. I just wish the judges' personalities weren't such a big part of it. A lot of the time, I agree with Simon Cowell. He *is* an asshole, but I appreciate that he seems to be the only one taking the thing seriously. Randy Jackson and his whole dog pound thing needs to just stop. And Paula Abdul is useless 90% of the time because she coddles them all. Now, that said, they all need to get over the skinny little blond girl who has the weakest, thinnest voice of all of the remaining performers. Simon must really be into her to be THAT tone deaf. She's awful. But there are A LOT of very talented singers this year. Should be interesting to see where it goes from here.

Finally . . . it's going to be sixty for the next four days, at least. The snow is nearly gone, just patches left. I'm praying this is spring arriving early, but even if it's not, I'll take it.

WRITING: BALTIMORE and HELLBOY: THE DRAGON POOL
READING: THE DRIVE-IN: THE BUS TOUR by Joe Lansdale
RECOMMENDING: CONFERENCE WITH THE DEAD by Terry Lamsley
WATCHING: Too much damned TV.

Is It Too Late to Say Happy New Year?

2006-01-11T07:19:00.000-08:00

Sanity begins to coalesce around me at last. :) I've been awfully remiss in attending to this little corner of things. First there was the GHOSTS OF ALBION book tour. Then a trip to NYC for the premiere of KING KONG. Then Christmas. New Year's. My son's birthday.

I recently finished THE BORDERKIND, the second book of THE VEIL, and turned that in at last. If you've read earlier blogs, all I can say is that it continues to be the sort of story that I could get lost in. I could write a dozen novels (or three 1,500 page books) exploring the concepts and the worlds here, but that's not my style. What I love in this story are the characters. New ones continues to pop up and force themselves into the story at will. In THE BORDERKIND there are two or three unexpected visitors who appear briefly, but that I know I'll return to in the third book.

But that's for later.

At the moment, I'm working on STONES UNTURNED, the third book in THE MENAGERIE, the series Tom Sniegoski and I do for Ace. It had a different title before. We actually both like the original title better, but our editor asserted, rightly so, that the previous title (GHOST SONATA) only reflected one element of the story. Tom and I didn't mind, just because we liked the title so much, but . . . she's right. So, STONES UNTURNED it is. I like that one too, just not as much.

THE MENAGERIE is a crazy bit of business. Once upon a time, Tom created a comic book called TEMPTRESS and I created one called FACELIFT. We joined them together in another comic book pitch called TERRORISTS (obviously, this was pre 9/11). The first couple of issues of TEMPTRESS saw print, but the other stuff never did. We had deals in place two or three times, and it didn't happen.

We spent YEARS creating this world and these characters and storylines. It was so rich and so filled with stuff we loved that we couldn't imagine never being able to tell these stories. So we decided to turn it into a novel series. THE MENAGERIE was born. Temptress became Eve, Facelift became Clay. You've got the mysterious Mr. Doyle, the leader, a magician who was, once upon a time, a famous British novelist. His ex-lover, Ceridwen, an elemental sorceress and princess of the Fey. Dr. Graves, the ghost of a famous scientist/adventurer who is still trying to solve his own 1940s murder. Clay, a shapeshifter who is, quite literally, the clay of God, and who has a certain mystic skill in tracking killers. Danny Ferrick, an angry teenaged boy who has recently discovered he is not a boy at all, but a demon who was switched at birth with a human child. Squire, the shadow-walking hobgoblin who is armorer to the Menagerie and valet to Mr. Doyle. And, of course, Eve . . . mother of humanity and mother of all vampires.

Creating the series and expanding upon that character roster, introducing monsters and villains and threats, has been an incredible experience. It's second nature to us by now. Writing these characters is, in a strange way, not unlike writing BUFFY was for me. We know them so well, as if we've been watching them on TV for years, that it all flows very easily.

It's also a cool experiment. The series started with THE NIMBLE MAN, which, by its climax, introduced a threat to the world called The Demogorgon. The Demogorgon, you see, is COMING. That plot thread continues throughout the background of books two and three. Various parallel, mystical worlds all FEEL the changes in the universe. They can all sense that something terrible is coming. That's one of the catalysts that causes many of these other stories to happen. It builds up in the background, and continues right into book four.

The plan, for the moment, is to do at least six in total. The plots vary, focusing on some of the characters more than others. I won't give away what they are, but you'll see Faeirie Wars, demon fathers, sixty year old murder mysteries unraveled, a return to Eden, and a whole lot more . . . and then in book six, The Demogorgon arrives. And then, of course, it gets really unpleasant. :)

So there you have it. STONES UNTURNED, a novel of THE MENAGERIE.

I'll post more often. It's my New Year's resolution. Now that I can breathe again.

WRITING: STONES UNTURNED
EDITING: THE HOLLOW: ENEMIES
READING: SHOWCASE PRESENTS: JONAH HEX
RECOMMENDING: Graham Joyce's THE STORMWATCHER, Tim Lebbon's DUSK, Charles de Lint's SPIRITS IN THE WIRES
LISTENING: The Neville Brothers, YELLOW MOON
SIGNING: sig sheets from LORDS OF THE RAZOR

Book-us Interruptus, or, One From the Road

2005-11-14T12:42:00.000-08:00

All right, so I'm lying. It's not being written from the road. I'm home for a couple of days before the west coast signings. Amber and I have had a great time at the signings thus far and the turnout has been excellent. Happy to say that most of the questions are actually about writing and/or publishing, and about GHOSTS OF ALBION. There are only so many Buffy questions any one person can answer. :)

Writing wise . . . not a whole lot getting done right about now. From World Fantasy Convention to the east signings and now out to the west coast . . . let's just say I'm REALLY looking forward to the winter so I can just write and hang out with my family. I love to get out and talk about the book, but I'm used to doing it in small doses, a signing here, a signing there, not traveling so much.

Must write.

Meanwhile, I'm also reading. At WFC I spent much of the weekend hanging out with Tim Lebbon, who's a good friend, and Mark Morris and Sarah Pinborough, two friends of his who I've bullied into becoming my friends as well. They adopted me for the weekend, and it was my great pleasure to spend far too much time in the bar and wandering the corridors with them. Both are excellent writers. Recently finished Sarah's THE RECKONING and thought it was really well done. Lovely character stuff in there.

Anyway, that's the story. Going to read Jim Moore's BLOOD RED next. Who knows what else? I can barely think. Not watching or listening to ANYTHING right now. Just trying to answer e-mail and sign the signature sheets for GHOSTS OF ALBION: INITIATION and the Shocklines copies of GHOSTS OF ALBION: ACCURSED . . . which may be hard to do if I'm not here.

On the Road, Ghosts of Albion, and Happy Halloween!

2005-10-31T06:31:00.000-08:00

It's Halloween. My favorite holiday, of course. This year, unfortunately, I haven't had time to do nearly as much of the usual Halloween stuff as I'd like. Bought pumpkins, but didn't carve them. Probably won't have time to watch Carpenter's Halloween tonight, which is an annual event. Maybe, if I'm lucky, I'll watch some Kolchak with the kids. Even so, I love the whole trick or treat thing, the neighborhood swarming with kids in costumes. Brings me back, that's for sure. So to all of you, Happy Halloween.

And then, tomorrow, November 1st, begins one of the busiest months I've had in a very, very long time. I'll be at World Fantasy Convention this weekend, then doing signings with my c0-author Amber Benson the following week in NYC and New England, and the following week, we travel from San Diego to L.A. to San Francisco, all in support of the GHOSTS OF ALBION: ACCURSED. If you live in any of those areas, be sure to come see us.

We're working on the second draft of the second GoA novel, WITCHERY, and so far it's going really well. It's gratifying to see the reviews on ACCURSED. Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Romantic Times, and Kirkus have all given it excellent reviews so far. Now we can exhale. :) Our Suggest-a-Ghost contest has had hundreds of entries, which we have to start reviewing this week. Should be very interesting. I only wish I had more time in a day. But how often do we all say that?

Some interesting announcements coming soon, regarding limited editions, upcoming comics, and assorted other items..

Meanwhile, I'm working away on THE BORDERKIND, which really is writing itself at this point as I draw all the skeins together for the climax of this second book of THE VEIL. The only bad thing is that I haven't had time to go to the movies in forever. There are so many things out there I haven't seen and I can't even keep track of them anymore! Ah, well, there's always DVD.

If you read GHOSTS OF ALBION: ACCURSED, please shoot me an e-mail or post on my message board and let me know what you think.

WRITING: The Borderkind
READING: Spirits in the Wires by Charles de Lint. Just finished Cabinet of Curiosities by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
WATCHING: The New England Patriots pull their fat out of the fire against Buffalo last night! Welcome back, Bruschi, you were missed!
LISTENING: Maia Sharp: Fine Upstanding Citizen
RECOMMENDING: The Best of Gahan Wilson (the man's a mad cartooning genius, folks, a national treasure)

The Real Kolchak, Fall TV, and Love From Russia

2005-10-12T07:46:00.000-07:00

*Hangs head in shame* Every few days, that's what I figured. And here it's been a couple of weeks since blog number two. Things do tend to get away from me, especially when I'm neck-deep in another world. I've been, as noted last time, on the Road to Perinthia, and it's both rough terrain and a wondrous, distracting place. So I haven't managed to get back here in a bit . . . yet somehow I've managed to watch some of the new television shows. Just a few, mind you.

I've latched on to two shows that made their debuts last year but that I somehow did not really discover the quality of until now. House, and Veronica Mars. Excellent stuff. The jury's still out on Invasion, though I like the way it's building. HBO's Rome and Extras are entertaining as hell in entirely different ways.

Then there's Night Stalker. It's based, as some of you may know, on a 1970s tv series called Kolchak: The Night Stalker, which was in turn based on two television movies featuring the character, written by the immortal Richard Matheson. (And the first of those based on an unpublished manuscript by Jeff Rice.) Anyway, enough history. Point is this: the original Kolchak lasted twenty episodes and changed my life. Without that wonderfully creepy show and the performance by Darren McGavin as Kolchak, I would probably have ended up in a very different line of work. I was very young then, but I remember my father waking me up so I could watch the show. "Chopper," an episode featuring a headless, vengeful biker, is a bit silly upon rewatching, but back then it scared the crap out of me. There are other episodes that even to this day are genuinely terrifying, but even those that haven't held up over time still have the charm and wit and atmosphere that made it so enjoyable then.

The original twenty episode run of Kolchak: The Night Stalker has finally come out on DVD. Around my house, there is much rejoicing. It's also very inexpensive, and I urge you to go out and pick it up, sit down and enjoy. In fact, pick up the double feature DVD of the original two tv movies, The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler. Worth every penny.

As for the new one . . . I watched the pilot. That was enough. I went in with an open mind, but sadly, the plotting is weak, the monsters are pitiful, and the lead actor and actress are entirely without the gruff, warm, earnest charm of the original.

Stick with the real Kolchak.

****

Anyway, the other thing making me smile this week is some love from Russia. Nothing to do with James Bond movies, I'm afraid. In the past year, Bantam has sold Russian publication rights to two of my novels--WILDWOOD ROAD and THE BOYS ARE BACK IN TOWN--to Russia. With that interest, I recently was able to secure an agent in Russia. In a matter of weeks, he's sold the Russian rights to four of my books; OF SAINTS AND SHADOWS, ANGEL SOULS AND DEVIL HEARTS, STRANGEWOOD and THE NIMBLE MAN (with Thomas E. Sniegoski). Aside from the obvious business element, there's something about this that really intrigues me. Russia may not be as beautiful and mysterious as it is in my mind, but that's how I think of it. It's my hope that the books will do well and that the Russian publisher will invite me for a visit. What a pleasure that would be.

Thanks for listening. Hopefully I'll be back soon.

****

READING: The Colorado Kid by Stephen King
WATCHING: The Upside of Anger with Joan Allen and Kevin Costner, Kolchak the Night Stalker
LISTENING: Bonnie Raitt's Souls Alike and Liz Phair's Somebody's Miracle
WRITING: Ghosts of Albion: Witchery
RECOMMENDING: Berserk, by Tim Lebbon

The Road to Perinthia

2005-09-27T12:53:00.000-07:00

Here we go, kids, your cub reporter, dazed and confused on the road to Perinthia.

If the name doesn't sound at all familiar to you, it shouldn't. It's the capital of one of the Two Kingdoms in THE MYTH HUNTERS and the subsequent books of The Veil. Working on this trilogy is simultaneously one of the most difficult and most fantastic experiences I've ever had as a writer. Both in THE MYTH HUNTERS and in THE BORDERKIND (the second book, which I'm neck deep in these days, to the detriment of all other responsibilities), the characters are taking over. Writers say that kind of thing all the time, and it's happened to me in the past, but I usually just chalk it up to following my own instincts. This is different. Seriously. Characters who weren't in the outline at all suddenly appear and become vital, characters who were supposed to be barely a footnote do the same. Characters who were important to the story but only as plot support have roles that will carry them all the way through to the end of the third book, with subplots and resolutions of their own. They love. They betray. They lie. They demand attention, and they surprise me with what they're capable of.

Maybe you're rolling your eyes. Maybe that's hard to believe. Or, hell, maybe you're a writer, and that kind of thing happens all the time. But let me say, it doesn't happen all the time to me. It makes for a lot of headaches, staring at the screen, telling the little voice in my head to cut the crap, that the story's not supposed to go that way. But then I realize that no matter how much more work it is, that's the RIGHT thing.

I have a plan. I know where this story is going. But how it gets there, and who's going to be alive or dead, and who's telling the truth and who's lying, are all surprises for me. Whenever that happens, writing a book, I feel fortunate. Of course, eventually, other people will go on this journey, and I'll hope they have just as good a time as I'm having. But right now, that's the last of my concerns. I'm still on the road, and just digging the ride.

****
On other subjects, this second blog took me forever because I am, indeed, a moron. I had TWO accounts on blogger and didn't know it, so I spent a week wondering why I couldn't get into my blog to post a new one. :) Technology is SO not the friend of the absent-minded.

On the other hand, I-pod IS my friend. I have a few more CDs to download, and then I'm going to cherry pick a few old songs off of I-tunes. But even now, it doesn't matter. I set it on "shuffle," and it's like a radio station with no ads programmed by me. Every song is a pleasant surprise. Right now it's a tune by Keb' Mo'. For those of you who are all up on this stuff, you're likely saying "duh" right about now. For those of you who don't have an I-pod, I can't recommend it highly enough.

****

GHOSTS OF ALBION: ACCURSED comes out at the end of October. Can't talk about it now, but there WILL be an opportunity to buy it signed at no additional cost. More news to come. Meanwhile, I'll be at World Fantasy Convention in November, and later in the month, Amber Benson and I will be doing signings to promote the book.

Tuesday, 11/8, B&N Boston University, 7pm
Wed. 11/9, B&N Framingham, Massachusetts @ 7:30 PM
Friday 11/11, B&N Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY 6:30 pm
Thurs., 11/17, Mysterious Galaxy San Diego, 7 pm
Friday, 11/18, Brentano's, Century City, (LA, CA) @ 7 pm
Sat., 11/19, Booksmith, San Francisco, 7pm

Come by and visit. Really looking forward to these events.

****

Go Red Sox!

****

READING: The Island of Dr. Moreau, by H.G. Wells
WATCHING: Lost, Rome, Extras, House, assorted other stuff
LISTENING: Jack Johnson, RENT soundtrack
WRITING: The Borderkind
SIGNING: Signature sheets for THE SHELL COLLECTOR
RECOMMENDING: FOLLOW by A.J. Matthews, and the extraordinary TWENTIETH CENTURY GHOSTS by Joe Hill