News & Blog

Are you looking for a good Halloween party to go to in the New York City area on Friday, October 28th? Well, look no further, because all your spooky prayers have been answered! Come see me, Chandler Klang Smith, John Langan, and our curator Daniel Braum read spooky tales of spookiness for your well-spooked entertainment. There will also be music from Janna Pelle, who may also be spooky, I don’t know, I haven’t met her. Here are the details:

Friday, October 28th
9 PM – 12 AM
Be Electric Studios, 1298 Willoughby Avenue in Bushwick, Brooklyn

Refreshments will be served. SPOOKY refreshments! Halloween costumes are encouraged but totally optional. SPOOKY optional!

I hope to see you there! Here’s the Facebook event page if you’re into that kind of thing: Oh, the Horror! A Spooky Salon with Stories & Music

Steve Lichman – Volume I by David Rapoza
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Hilarious and brilliantly written and drawn, STEVE LICHMAN is a graphic novel that tells the story of a Lich named Steve who lives in a dungeon with his friends: a mind flayer obsessed with anime, a mummy who’s constantly spouting 9/11 conspiracy theories, a beholder who’s always high, and their loser hanger-on pal Count Dracula. Their lives are frequently interrupted by adventurers seeking gold and monsters to fight, until one day a cool, young, blond-mulleted vampire in a leather jacket named Kiefer shows up and turns their world upside-down. It’s impossible to express just how amazingly pitch-perfect all of this is. If you’ve ever played Dungeons & Dragons — or hell, if you’ve ever just browsed through the Monster Manual — you’re going to love this. I can’t wait for volume two!

View all my reviews

Monica Kuebler, Rue Morgue Magazine‘s managing editor and resident bibliophile, has a new online venture called Library of the Damned that features a welcome focus on horror literature instead of the usual movies and video games. It soft-launched with a few news items in September, including an announcement about the release of In the Shadow of the Axe, but now that October has arrived the site has launched for real with a month-long series of author interviews called “31 Days of Halloween” — and the very first author she interviews is yours truly!

Swing by the site to learn which scene in a horror novel scared me the most, what I consider the all-time scariest horror story, and more! Here’s a sneak peek, which you can click to take you to the interview:

It’s very rare that the written word truly frightens me. I think, for me, real fear relies on other parts of the brain than reading does: visual or aural stimuli, mostly. A glimpse of movement from the corner of my eye or an incongruous sound will scare me a lot more than words on a page, probably because I can have some control over the images those words put in my mind, even if that control is limited, while sights and sounds are completely out of my control.

Monica will be featuring a new horror author every day for the rest of the month. I’m deeply honored she chose to start with me. Here’s wishing Library of the Damned long life and much success!