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It’s rare when an anthology is firing on all cylinders, but Haunted Legends, the new anthology of folkloric horror and dark fantasy edited by Ellen Datlow and Nick Mamatas, does just that. While some stories didn’t resonate with me as strongly as others, there really isn’t a dud in the bunch. Of course, I’ve come to expect no less from anthologies with Datlow’s name on them. (As for that Mamatas guy, well, nobody’s perfect.)

Gathering together twenty stories based on local legends, reworked and rewritten by some of the best authors you’ve heard of, and a few you may not have, Haunted Legends is a perfect read for the Halloween season, with something for every taste. In its pages, homage is paid to the Headless Horseman and Spring Heel Jack, vampires and ghostly schoolchildren, cursed lakes and animal spirits.

Among the standouts for me were Kaaron Warren’s “That Girl,” which puts a new and very sociopolitical spin on the familiar folktale of the ghostly hitchhiker who disappears once the car reaches the cemetery; Caitlin R. Kiernan’s “As Red As Red,” which flirts with both lycanthropy and vampirism in its tale of Rhode Island legends and history; John Mantooth’s “Shoebox Train Wreck,” a haunting and deeply humane tale of ghostly children killed when a train and a school bus collide, told from the point of view of the train conductor; Catherynne M. Valente’s “Fifteen Panels Depicting the Sadness of the Baku and the Jotai,” a sumptuously written love story between a dream-eating demon and a living folding screen in Japan, stands out as one of the best fantasy short stories I’ve read in ages; Carrie Laben’s “Face Like a Monkey,” a perfectly voiced tale about a boy who encounters the Big Bird of Texas; Gary A. Braunbeck’s “Return to Mariabronn,” another deeply humane and haunting ghost story about an accident and the guilt that still resounds down the years like ripples in a pond, which richly deserved its Bram Stoker Award nomination; M.K. Hobson’s “Oaks Park,” about a haunted amusement park, is a ghost story unlike any I’ve read before; and Ramsey Campbell’s masterpiece “Chucky Comes to Liverpool,” which explores a very modern day legend in the UK stemming from the murder of a small boy by two ten-year-olds in 1991 whom reports alleged (wrongly) were inspired by the film Child’s Play 3 and resulted in all Chucky movies being banned. Campbell’s dexterous handling of the material reminded me very quickly why he’s a legend in his own right.

Haunted Legends is a treat for anyone interested in local legends or just plain old great storytelling by some fantastic writers. It’s one of the better genre anthologies I’ve read in recent years.

The first thing that’s surprising about the pilot episode of 666 Park Avenue, ABC’s new supernatural soap, is that the address of the building around which the story centers is actually 999 Park Avenue. It’s just that when the light hits the sign just right the shadows form a 666. The second thing that’s surprising is — actually, no, that’s pretty much it. Everything else is exactly what you think it is, for better or worse. Mostly worse.

Take one part Fantasy Island‘s wish-fulfillment of the week structure, one part The Sentinel‘s conceit of a New York apartment building being the gateway to Hell, mix vigorously through the lens of a flailing TV landscape that has come to believe pretty actors are better than talented ones, and you’ve got 666 Park Avenue. Or at least you’ve got it for the next four to six weeks, before it’s canceled and replaced with more Dancing With the Stars.

Jane and Henry are a young Midwestern couple who come to New York City to manage the Drake, an old and beautiful Manhattan building that for some reason is still a rental instead of a co-op. Perhaps it’s a thematic choice, so that we’re treated to lots of scenes of people signing contracts leases. (The Drake is stunt-doubled by the famous Ansonia on Broadway and 73rd, previously seen in Single White Female.) When we first meet Jane and Henry, they’re driving up to the Drake in a beat-up old jalopy, the only such car on a street filled with sleek town cars and sedans, and I guess we’re supposed to think this makes them more authentic, less pretentious than the snooty New Yorkers all around them. They’re real people, goddamn it! What the producers don’t understand, of course, is that every car parked on my street is a beat-up old jalopy, and they’re all owned by New Yorkers. This is the first sign that 666 Park Avenue has no true understanding of the city in which it takes place. It is, unfortunately, not the last.

The great Terry O’Quinn plays Gavin Doran, the building’s owner and secret servant of Satan. He has the power to grant people’s selfish wishes, and then — mwahahahahaha! — comes to collect their souls when it’s time. There’s a violinist whose time has run out (signified by bleeding fingertips — wha?) and who tries to escape, but gets sucked into the lobby door. There’s a man who kills on Gavin’s command so his dead wife will come back. He gets sucked into his bedroom wall. There’s a lot of sucking going on in 666 Park Avenue.

What you won’t find going on is subtlety of any kind. I can’t help thinking how much more interesting it would be if these poor schmoes died under mysterious circumstances with nothing directly leading back to Gavin, and yet our heroes start to suspect a connection. But no. Instead we get Terry O’Quinn practically twirling his mustache as he announces to the unfortunate schmoe of the week, “We made a deal. Now I’ve come to collect!”

Aside from Terry O’Quinn, who gives it his all and is the best thing 666 Park Avenue has going for it, the cast is lackluster. Our leads, Rachael Taylor and Dave Annable, have no charisma whatsoever. Gavin’s wife Olivia, played by Vanessa Williams, does little more than stand around looking beautiful or shop at expensive boutiques. Erik Palladino plays a concierge whom I assume is named Mr. Exposition, because that’s what he does every time he shows up. (I’ve never in my life met a concierge who told me the building’s entire history while taking me to my room.) There’s also a struggling playwright who has writer’s block. Oh, no! Cue the Devil’s contract to make him a Broadway success!

You’ve no doubt heard how in some entertainment women are basically things, but here it’s literal, as one female character exists solely to be stared at through the window by the playwright! She goes to bed in the middle of the day and makes sure to wear skimpy lingerie — or nothing at all — in order to give him a show. She’s not just a thing, people, she’s a Satanic thing, there only to tempt him into cheating on his wife so the Devil can have his soul. Foul, evil temptress! How dare you be all sexy and not close your curtains! Don’t you know I can’t control where my eyes go? Christ, it’s like a nighttime soap written by the Taliban.

I could have forgiven this show pretty much anything, though, on the grounds of it at least being campy, but near the end of the pilot, when it’s revealed that the only other person of color besides Vanessa Williams is a burglar stealing things from people’s apartments, I realized I was never going to tune in again. Sure, its hinted that she’s actually psychic and is using the stolen items to investigate what’s happening in the building, what with people getting sucked into the structural details and all, but there are other ways they could have gone about it that wouldn’t have buckled so hideously under the weight of hundreds of years of racism. “I know, let’s make the girl of color a thief!” is not what I’d call creative thinking.

So yeah, for me 666 Park Avenue is one and done. I won’t be tuning in again. Terry O’Quinn deserves a much better program to star in. Luckily, I don’t think he’s going to have to wait long before another opportunity arises.

My darling wife Alexa ran her third-ever half-marathon this week, the Divas Half-Marathon in Long Island. We got up before dawn to take the LIRR out to Uniondale in Nassau County, where some 4,000 other female runners (and one or two male runners, somehow) were waiting for the 8:00 AM start. This being a diva-themed half-marathon, there weren’t just the usual water stations along the route. There were also tiara and boa stations! At the finish line, runners were given a flute of champagne and a red rose, and were presented with their medals by shirtless firemen. I’m not even kidding. Here’s a picture of Alexa and our friend Amanda, who ran the half-marathon with her, in the finishers’ circle:

Alas, I do not have a photo of a shirtless fireman presenting Alexa with her medal. You’ll just have to use your imagination for that one.

I have no idea if online customer reviews at sites like Amazon actually help sell books. I’m sure studies have been done, but in a practical sense I haven’t seen these types of reviews do much for me, not on either side of the cash register. As a book buyer, I usually already know what I want to buy when I go to an online bookstore. Most of the time it’s because of reader word-of-mouth or other reviews I’ve read. Never have I been swayed to or against buying a book because of an online customer review at the point of sale.

Similarly, as an author, I can’t say I’ve seen customer reviews do much either. Back in 2004, after Walk In Shadows came out, I decided to try an experiment. Sales were sluggish, it was the first book by a mostly unknown author, and my publisher wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire with any kind of marketing and publicity plan, so I announced in my blog that anyone was welcome to write a joke review of the book on Amazon, even if they hadn’t read it. There were only two rules: 1) the reviews couldn’t be negative (unless they’d actually read the book and disliked it, in which case they weren’t part of the experiment anyway) and 2) the reviews had to be completely absurd. Rather than talking about the quality of the stories inside the book, they were to talk about how the book cured their hangovers or was a handy weapon for knocking burglars unconscious. That kind of thing. (A couple of these joke reviews are still on the Amazon page, though they found and removed a lot of them in the intervening years.) The purpose of the experiment was to see if the presence of positive, four- and five-star customer reviews mattered on Amazon, regardless of what those reviews actually said.

What I discovered was that it had no affect whatsoever. The joke reviews did not hinder sales, which were already low, nor did they increase sales. Neither the people who rushed to the Amazon page to write joke reviews nor their network of friends who went to read those reviews bothered to pick up a copy of the book while they were there. No parties uninvolved in the experiment ever commented on it. It was all thoroughly ignored. The book went out of print the next year.

I suspect, though I don’t know for sure, that things are different today. In the past, standing in the virtual aisles and shouting “Hey, everybody, this is actually good!” might have been ignored, but now, in a glutted marketplace, especially when it comes to e-book exclusives, customer reviews for books are probably more important to bookbuyers than ever before. Because, let’s face it, there’s a lot of crap out there, and it’s a lot easier than the crap-makers think for readers tell the difference between a legitimate five-star review and a friends-and-family five-star review. For starters, look for lots of Random Capitalizations and at least one ALL-CAPS EXCLAMATION!

But I digress. Ultimately, what I’m saying is this: I think online customer reviews matter more now, and my e-book Still Life: Nine Stories could use some help with getting the word out. If you’ve read it and enjoyed it, please consider leaving a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or wherever else you like to review books. (Blogs, too. Blog reviews can create a strong buzz.)

Whatever you decide to do, and wherever you decide to review it, I sincerely thank you for helping me get the signal out in a field obscured by a heck of a lot of noise.