James Dorr reviews Dracula: Entre L’Amour et La Mort

Dracula in French?  And Canadian French to boot?  And with songs!  Yes, all that and more is available to those who enjoy a delightful shiver on seeing a bat’s silhouette on the moon, while nights are chill and days may bring more freezing rain or snow.  And it’s on DVD, “inspiré du roman de Bram Stoker, le spectacle musical Dracula:  Entre L’Amour et La Mort.”  Yes, the musical version of Dracula -- in French.  Actually produced in Quebec where it ran from January 13 to December 16 2006 (with the DVD version filmed in November that year according to the credits, although the DVD itself didn’t come out until 2008), it has since been performed as well in France and elsewhere.  Translated as “Dracula:  Between Love and Death,” it was created by Bruno Pelletier (who also plays the part of Dracula) with music by Simon Leclerc and lyrics by  Roger Tabra.

But there is a down side, it’s only available in French (and québécois to boot, as well as a few lines in Ukrainian) with -- at least in the only version of it I’ve been able to find -- no English subtitles, and as for me the title is about as far as my language skills are going take me.  So what I’ll offer here may be not so much a review as an outline of differences between it and the plot of Bram Stoker’s novel, so one can follow it just enjoying the stagecraft and music.  And I will say that, even without a translation, the music is great, the dancing and acting, the costumes and settings all great too.  For me at least -- but then I like things like les trois vampiresses (a.k.a., in the movies, the “Brides of Dracula”) done up BDSM style with Medusa-like headdresses!

Also the plot should be sufficiently familiar that it can be followed well enough without really knowing the words.  There are some variations from Stoker, though, to be aware of (the large puppet-creature that starts it off, by the way, is not a character per se but rather a sort of announcer-commentator).  It follows the conceit of, for example, Francis Ford Coppola’s movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula in seeing the vampire as a Vlad Tepes extension whose wife has been lost and who discovers, 500 years later, Mina Murray as a kind of soul-descendant, thus setting up a major conflict as being between Dracula and Mina’s husband-to-be Jonathan Harker; Lucy in this version is Van Helsing’s daughter (Van Helsing, seen as very religious, has tried to keep her from the evils of the world, but she rebels with results that are not good); Renfield as a drug addict plays a more modern sort of madman; other parts are thus eliminated but the three vampire women have their roles expanded to almost an equivalent of the three Fates, at some moments standing in in a way as a kind of Greek chorus.  So one part is literal, a telling of a variant of the original novel in music, but another level is allegorical taking in the larger themes of good and evil, weakness and strength, love and pain and death, and ultimately redemption.  And it is ultimately Mina who must choose, whereas the original “Elhemina,” as the warlord Dracula’s promised bride, is the one who was cursed from the beginning and so had “turned” him.

And then there’s one thing more.  While I haven’t been able yet to find a subtitled version, I have found a blog in which much of the libretto has been translated to English on a song by song basis, though not necessarily in production order.  So for die-hards like me, one can copy the songs out (with a warning that, even as of now, it may still not be entirely complete), re-shuffle them as needed into act and scene order, and watch the show with lyrics in hand to glance at as one will.  And so I’ve provided a link below. 

However I will recommend for a first look, especially as Valentine’s Day approaches with appropriate spirituous refreshments on hand (or even if not -- hot dark chocolate is nice with whipped cream and optional sprinkles on top, and mulled cider is excellent, spiked or otherwise), don’t worry about the actual words.  You know the story.  So just sit back with a special friend, relax, and enjoy.        

http://www.allthelyrics.com/forum/french-lyrics-translation/73573-dracula-entre-lamour-et-mort-all-tracks-and-tracklist.html

James Dorr is a short story writer and poet working largely in horror and dark fantasy with occasional forays into mystery and science fiction.  His latest collection, THE TEARS OF ISIS, was released by Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing in May 2013, joining two earlier collections from Dark Regions Press, STRANGE MISTRESSES: TALES OF WONDER AND ROMANCE and DARKER LOVES: TALES OF MYSTERY AND REGRET, as well as his all-poetry, all-vampire VAMPS (A RETROSPECTIVE) from Sam’s Dot/White Cat. His own cat, Wednesday (for Wednesday Addams of the TV show THE ADDAMS FAMILY), is more a dark gray herself and spends her days (when she’s not asleep) slinking about Dorr’s fairly extensive DVD and VHS collection. 

More on Dorr can be found on his blog at http://jamesdorrwriter.wordpress.com .

Wayne C Rogers Reviews Don't Stand So Close by Eric Red

Don’t Stand So Close by Eric Red

Short, Scary Tales Publications

Trade Paperback, 2012, $14.95, 277pp

Review by Wayne C. Rogers

Have you ever had a crush on your junior high school teacher, or a high school teacher, or even a professor in college?  This question is directed as much to the ladies as to the men.  I know I did when growing up.  My first crush goes as far back as the sixth grade when I had a total crush on the teacher in the next room.  I couldn’t get my mind off of her.  I even used to ride my little bicycle past her house on occasion.  Today, that would be called stalking.   

Well, Don’t Stand So Close by Eric Red raises it up a notch and increases the stakes as this dark novel delves into obsession, perverted sex, and murder in the first degree. 

The story centers on seventeen-year-old Matt Poe, who has just moved from California to a small town in Iowa, and it’s not near Field of Dreams, either.  Matt’s mother is a teacher, and this is where her new job has taken her.  I come from a southern town where everybody knows you and your business.  I therefore understood the culture shock Matt goes through at being the new kid on the block in a small mid-western community.  Since Matt is a good-looking California teenager, it isn’t long before he makes friends with Rusty and Grace.  Rusty is a strange kid, who stays by himself, but is smart with a high IQ.  Grace is also smart, a cheerleader, the girlfriend of the football captain, and the daughter of the local sheriff.  Matt, however, only eyes for his teacher, Linda Hayden.  Naturally, she’s older, great looking, sexual in every sense of the word, and seems to have an eye for the new kid in school. 

It isn’t long before Ms. Hayden offers to tutor Matt after school, and it isn’t long before one thing leads to another and the two are doing the hanky-panky.  In fact, Matt quickly becomes obsessed with the teacher and the hot sex they have.  Things, however, aren’t what they seem.  Within a short span of time, other kids start dying in ways which seem like an accident but isn’t.  Matt soon grows leery of Ms. Hayden, especially when he finds himself developing feelings for Grace in an unexpected way.  The teacher is certainly steadfast in what she wants.  She refuses to let Matt go.  You see Ms. Hayden has plans for Matt…plans that will destroy his life in ways he could never dream or suspect.  Ms. Hayden is a sexual predator of the worse kind and Matt isn’t her first victim.  What started out as a fantasy fulfilled quickly turns into a nightmare that simply won’t go away.

As the old saying goes, “Be careful what you wish for.  You might get it.” 

Eric Red, the author, is generally known for his screenplay writing and directing.  He wrote the great cult films The Hitcher (1986) and Near Dark (1987) and Blue Steel (1989), plus the revised version of The Hitcher (2007) with two other screenwriters.  Though he’s also written a number of short stories in the suspense genre, Don’t Stand So Close is his first novel.  My only question is what took him so long to finally write a book? 

Mr. Red is clearly a very talented author who sees descriptive imagery with the eyes of a screenwriter and director.  He captures everything perfectly in his novel from the personalities of the characters, the hunger a student has for his teacher, the atmosphere of small-town life, and the edge-of-your-seat suspense that keeps you wondering what will happen next.  I not only hope Don’t Stand So Close won’t be Eric Red’s only novel, but that it will be turned into a feature film in the near future.  Though this actress is older than I imagined Linda Hayden to be, I kept seeing her face in the role of the teacher—Lena Olin.  She would be the perfect Linda Hayden.

All in all, Don’t Stand So Close was a pleasant surprise I greatly enjoyed.  This novel does for high school students what the movie, Fatal Attraction, did for married men back during the late eighties.  Keep the fantasy in your mind and your zipper pulled up no matter how strong the allure. 

That’s how you stay sane and alive.   

    

 Wayne C. Rogers is a Las Vegas casino employee who has been writing professionally (with the intent to sell) for twenty-five years. It's only been within the past three years that Mr. Rogers (no, not the famous TV host of programs for children) made the decision to work towards being a full-time writer of horror, suspense, psychological, and erotic horror fiction.

He has written several novellas (three of which are posted on Amazon's Kindle), dozens of short stories (some of which are also on Amazon), an erotic/horror novel--The House of Blood--for the wild crowd that lives on the kinky side of reality, and five completed screenplays based on his stories The Encounter, The Tunnels, A Step in the Shadows, Trick or Treat, and The Garbage Disposal (the last three are short screenplays). He is currently at work on a sixth screenplay, The Code of Honor, as well as a seventh, Dolan. During the year of 2012, Mr. Rogers sold over twenty short stories with some of them appearing in the paperback anthologies: I'll Never Go Away, Grindhouse and Peep Show, Volume 2.

Being somewhat of a couch potato at his old age of sixty-two, Mr. Rogers enjoys the pastime of writing, reading (he has over a few hundred books stored in boxes a few feet from his writing table), great movies from any time period, and well-made television programs such as Justified, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Game of Thrones, Justified, and American Horror Story. Finally, Mr. Rogers is rather unusual in that he doesn't own a house or a car, A friend just recently bought him a cellphone, but he hasn't turned it on as of yet. He spends his free time at the computer writing his stories, and usually doesn't leave his apartment till it's time to head to work. Thank God for ham & cheese sandwiches and chicken noodle soup!!!

The Wake #4 Reviewed by Simon Frost

Click to cover to get the latest review of The Wake a new horror series by Scott Snyder

Wayne C. Rogers Reviews Bag of Bones

Bag of Bones

Sony Pictures

Based on the novel by Stephen King

Directed by Mick Garris

Starring Pierce Brosnan, Annabeth Gish and Melissa George

Review by Wayne C. Rogers

The mini-series, Bag of Bones, is based on the Stephen King novel of the same name.  Surprisingly, it took the director, Mick Garris, five long years to get the financial backing needed to make this adaptation.  The project first started out with the intent of being a feature film, and then over time, the script was rewritten for the small screen.  Thank goodness A&E was willing to fund this project, or it wouldn’t have happened. 

Now, I’ve been a big fan of Pierce Brosnan since his Remington Steele days on television.  There’s no doubt in my mind he was the perfect choice for the role of Mike Noonan in Bag of Bones.  I’ve seen the strong, dramatic acting that this man is capable of doing in other films and knew he could handle the performance without any question.  The fact is Mr. Brosnan has simply gotten better with age. 

Was Mick Garris able to pull off the adaptation from novel to television?

Yes, he was.

Unlike the previous television networks, A&E gave the director pretty much all the freedom he needed to make this mini-series a success.  True he had a small budget and a tight shooting schedule, but he got the absolute most out of every dollar spent and each day on the set.  The quality of the cinematography and production design is certainly much better than in Desperation.  There’s also a touch of class with this production that clearly shines through.  Like Pierce with acting, Mr. Garris is simply getting better as a director with age.

Now, what viewers need to understand is that Bag of Bones is not a horror novel, though there are elements of the supernatural in the story.  Stephen King wanted to write one great book before he turned fifty and Bag of Bones was what he created.  It’s the same with the television movie.  Though there are strong elements of the supernatural in the mini-series, it’s not really a horror movie. 

The TV movie centers around successful Maine author, Mike Noonan (played by Pierce Brosnan), who experiences a mind-numbing tragedy when his wife, Jo, is unexpectedly struck by a bus while he’s autographing novels across the street in a bookstore.  Annabeth Gish (I remember her in the television series, Flash Forward) plays his lovely wife.  The movie has to establish rather quickly just how much the two of them are in love with each other, and I think it succeeds.  You could see these two people together, enjoying their lives with each other.  That makes the death of Jo more shocking and disturbing for those who haven’t read the novel.

 Pierce Brosnan performed a magnificent scene when he found his wife lying in the street dead.  Anyone who has ever lost a loved one will see the grief etched on his face as clearly as day.  I don’t think he was acting here, but rather displaying the actual grief he’d felt when losing his first wife to cancer.  I mean the scene made me cry.  I knew what he was going through, and I believe that’s when I truly bonded with the character.    

The plot point that propels the story forward, however, is when Mike Noonan discovers his dead wife was pregnant.  Since Mike couldn’t have children because of a low sperm count, he begins to suspect Jo of having had an affair with someone.  Jo had also been spending a lot of time at their summer house on Dark Score Lake.  Over a period of time, Mike begins to wonder if that’s where her lover lives and decides to visit the place for an extended period.  The time frame was much longer in the novel.  I think it was a couple of years.  It’s also important to note that since Mike was a fast writer, he had several novels stashed away in a safety deposit box in the novel version.  In the movie, however, he only had one old trunk novel that he gives to his agent and publisher to keep them happy while he’s unable to write.

Once Mike arrives at his house on a lake, he soon finds himself involved with a young lady and her daughter (Mattie & Kyra Devore played respectively by Melissa George and Caitlin Carmichael).  Mike manages to save Kyra’s life by pulling her out of the highway before she can be hit by a car.  After he does this, he quickly finds out that Kyra’s grandfather is Max Devore, the most powerful man in the region.  Max is attempting to get custody of Kyra by claiming Mattie is an unfit mother. 

Since Mike Noonan has problems of his own to deal with, he really doesn’t want to get involved in Mattie’s situation.  Things, unfortunately, don’t work out as he desires.  When old-man, Max Devore (played by William Schallert—no, not Captain Kirk) pressures him to testify in front of a paid-off court official about the traffic incident, Mike takes Mattie’s side to piss the man off.  Of course that makes an enemy of Mr. Devore and his female assistant, Rogette Whitmore (played by Deborah Grover).  The assistant seems to be even more evil than the old man.

While all of this outside stuff is going on, Mike is experiencing supernatural events at his house on the lake.  He knows his wife is there with him, but there’s also another spirit, Sarah Tidwell, who wants him to seek revenge for her death.

In time, Mike discovers that Tidwell (played by the lovely and talented Anika Noni Rose) was murdered in 1939.  That’s when all hell begins to break loose and Noonan finds out things about his own family’s past and how it ties into the singer’s death and Max Devore’s unusual family tree.

As I said earlier, Bag of Bones isn’t a scary novel and neither is the movie.  Director Mick Garris throws in some supernatural aspects regarding Mike Noonan’s dreams about his wife and Sarah Tidwell, the spirits in his summer house and how they often communicate with him by ringing a bell that’s hanging from a moose’s head over the fireplace.  There’s also a very strange looking tree near the lake that’s shaped like a woman’s body and offers a jolt or two in the show.  In many ways, the novel and mini-series are actually about Mike Noonan coming to grips with his own grief over the death of his wife, the past that catches up to him by the end of the movie, and how his family inadvertently brought on some of the tragedy he experiences.  In the book, he falls in love with Mattie Devore, but not so in the movie.  She’s simply a piece of the bizarre puzzle that deals with Sarah Tidwell.

I feel that Mick Garris did a fantastic job on condensing a long novel into a two part mini-series, not to mention the great cinematography and set decoration in Nova Scotia that makes it look like Maine.  I thought most of acting was top notch, especially with regards to Pierce Brosnan, who had to carry most of the film on his shoulders.  I have to admit that Deborah Grover as Rogette Whitman gets the trophy for the creepiest performance.  Whenever she was in a scene, she pretty much stole it from the rest of the actors with her strangeness.  She needs to play in more horror movies.

One last thing I enjoyed was Matt Frewer performing as Mike Noonan’s brother.  I kept thinking I knew Matt from somewhere.  It turns out he played the Trashcan Man in The Stand mini-series.  During that series, he shot a scene in the old Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas, where I was working at the time.  This is a very talented actor who needs more roles offered to him. 

There isn’t much in the way of extras, other than some deleted scenes.  Still, the DVD is perfect for the Stephen King collector who wants to have all of the author’s movies on disc.   

Wayne C. Rogers is a Las Vegas casino employee who has been writing professionally (with the intent to sell) for twenty-five years. It's only been within the past three years that Mr. Rogers (no, not the famous TV host of programs for children) made the decision to work towards being a full-time writer of horror, suspense, psychological, and erotic horror fiction.

He has written several novellas (three of which are posted on Amazon's Kindle), dozens of short stories (some of which are also on Amazon), an erotic/horror novel--The House of Blood--for the wild crowd that lives on the kinky side of reality, and five completed screenplays based on his stories The Encounter, The Tunnels, A Step in the Shadows, Trick or Treat, and The Garbage Disposal (the last three are short screenplays). He is currently at work on a sixth screenplay, The Code of Honor, as well as a seventh, Dolan. During the year of 2012, Mr. Rogers sold over twenty short stories with some of them appearing in the paperback anthologies: I'll Never Go Away, Grindhouse and Peep Show, Volume 2.

Being somewhat of a couch potato at his old age of sixty-two, Mr. Rogers enjoys the pastime of writing, reading (he has over a few hundred books stored in boxes a few feet from his writing table), great movies from any time period, and well-made television programs such as Justified, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Game of Thrones, Justified, and American Horror Story. Finally, Mr. Rogers is rather unusual in that he doesn't own a house or a car, A friend just recently bought him a cellphone, but he hasn't turned it on as of yet. He spends his free time at the computer writing his stories, and usually doesn't leave his apartment till it's time to head to work. Thank God for ham & cheese sandwiches and chicken noodle soup!!!

Halloween Bash...Scott M. Baker

When M.R. asked me to write a posting about what Halloween means to me, at first I was stymied. Anybody who knows me knows that I am a certified Monster Kid, and have been as far back as I can remember. I live, eat, and sleep this stuff. Most people wake up from a nightmare and turn on a light to drive the demons away; I wake up and jot down the details for my next short story. However, this year Halloween means something more to me.

Let me explain. Several years ago, shortly after the publication of The Vampire Hunters, I received a message from a young lady who had read the book and wanted to tell me how much she liked it. She was from Florida and, at the time, I lived in northern Virginia. We struck up a conversation, and during the course of time this young lady mentioned that she was writing her own vampire novel. I volunteered to read it, and provided her honest and critical feedback.

As time went on, this young lady and I became good friends.  She agreed to be one of my beta readers. We exchanged plot ideas, and would review sections of each other’s work that were causing us problems. As time passed, we discovered that we also had similar interests.  We both loved vampires.  We were both fans of World War II history.  We both loved it when you mixed vampires or zombies with Nazis.  And we both had a twisted sense of humor. 

Even more important, this young lady offered me comfort during a very difficult time in my life. She challenged me to be a better person and to stand up for myself. She made me realize I was special, and I deserved to be happy. She supported me when I needed it, and kicked me in the butt when I needed it more. 

Through it all, me and this young lady shared our love for horror.  She read the next two books in The Vampire Hunters trilogy and Rotter World, and beta read the various short stories I wrote (including the one about the giant spider from space, even though she hates spiders).  We started watching The Walking Dead and True Blood together on Sunday nights.  Well, not physically, but we texted each other during the shows as if we were together.

Once the difficult time in my life had passed, she suggested that we meet and see what happened.  That was in November 2011.

So what does this have to do with Halloween and why the day is special to me? Two things.

First, the young lady whose manuscript I reviewed is Alison Beightol.  Today, her second vampire novel (Blood Betrayal) is being published. I am very proud of her, and am confident her career will be a success.

Second, Alison and I met because of horror, and it has been a constant through our relationship. Which is why, this afternoon, the two of us are getting married. Of all the dates to get wed, Halloween seemed the most appropriate. 

So am I still the creepy little Monster Kid who enjoys Halloween because it represents something that is very near and dear to me? Yes. But now I have someone special and even more  dear to me to share it with. 

Born and raised just outside of Boston, Massachusetts, Scott M. Baker now lives in Florida with his fiancee and fellow author Alison Beightol, his stepdaughter, two house rabbits, two boxers, and a cat. His first zombie novel, Rotter World, was released by Permuted Press in April 2012. He has also authored The Vampire Hunters trilogy and several short stories, including “Dead Water,” “Rednecks Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things,” “Cruise of the Living Dead,” “Deck the Malls with Bowels of Holly,” "The Hunger," and "Last Flight of the Bismarck." He is currently working on a post-apocalyptic Young Adult novel titled Hell Gate and a sequel to Rotter World.

The Thing: Collector’s Edition DVD, starring Kurt Russell

Directed by John Carpenter

Review by Wayne C. Rogers

I picked up a fairly new copy of the DVD for John Carpenter’s The Thing: Collector’s Edition, which was released in 2004, last week for a couple of bucks.  The movie itself came out on June 25th, 1982.  That was the summer filled with blockbusters, or at least great movies: Blade Runner, E.T., Poltergeist, and John Carpenter’s The Thing.   

 I’d already read John W. Campbell’s short story, Who Goes There, several years before the Carpenter movie came out and had also seen the original 1951 film, The Thing From Another World, that was directed by Howard Hawks and starred James Arness as the creature.  

John Carpenter’s The Thing also blew me out of my seat.  The special effects for the creature were awesome, and the actors had me believing I was right there with them at the Antarctic research station, trapped in a snow blizzard with the Thing coming after my sorry ass. 

Anyway, when I purchased the DVD I hadn’t seen the movie since it had been out in the VHS format, which was at least fifteen years.  I also saw that this particular edition of the film had an 80-minute behind-the-scenes documentary, and I wanted to see it.  That's what caused me to buy it on DVD.

For those of you who don’t know the movie, it’s about a group of American  scientists and a helicopter pilot who find themselves stranded at an Antarctic research station during a snow storm.  What creates the tension for this movie is that a very aggressive alien is also at the station with them.  The alien and its space craft were discovered by a Norwegian station several miles away.  The alien wiped out everybody there, except for two men who chased it in the form of a dog across the snow to the American station.  The two Norwegians die, and then the Americans take the animal in, not knowing a pissed off alien is inside of it.

I mean the alien was frozen in the snow for like 70,000 years, so it was a little cranky when the Norwegians thawed it out.

The alien is a shape changer and can take any form it desires.  So, it doesn't take long before the scientists realize the alien is amongst them.  They just don't know who's real or who's an alien.  In other words, they know whom to trust.  The film is therefore filled with a strong sense of claustrophobia and distrust, not to mention violence when the alien rags on someone.  To add to the utter sense of isolation is a great musical score by Ennio Morricone that’s both haunting in nature and adds to the sense of loneliness at the research station.

Besides Kurt Russell who plays the helicopter pilot, MacReady, John Carpenter was able to assemble a strong cast of secondary actors who brought their superb skills to the set and delivered performances that were Oscar worthy.  You have Wilford Brimley (before he grew his white mustache) as Blair, Keith David (Platoon, Marked For Death, Pitch Black) as Childs, Donald Moffat as Garry, Richard Masur as Clark, and Charles Hallahan as Norris, whose head rips off during the movie, falls to the floor, develops crab-like legs, and then scuttles hurryingly out of the room, hoping to escape the flame thrower.

The great Stan Winston did the creature/dog special effects as a favor to Robb Bottin (The Howling, The Fog and Robocop), who was busy doing the special effects for the rest of the movie.  In many ways, this was Robb’s picture because without his special effects, it would’ve been just a good film, instead of a great one.  His creatures (remember, this was pre-CGI) took special effects to the next level with their awe-inspiring believability and astounding gruesomeness.

Though a lot of the movie was filmed on sound stages with the temperature turned down, much was also filmed in Stewart, British Columbia because of the snow there.  Though it was a grueling shoot, the actors loved it and felt it made their character’s reactions more real to the audience.

The Thing was John Carpenter’s first big studio project, and everyone was expecting great things from it at the Box Office.  When it didn’t happen, it was a letdown for all involved as they tried to figure out what went wrong.  Of course, the movie has since become a classic and has sold a ton of DVDs to its legion of fans.

I need to point out that the screenplay was written by Bill Lancaster, who is the son of the late Burt Lancaster, and who had written The Bad News Bears.  He gave the film its foundation, and then it was up to the cast and crew to bring the movie to life.

The Collector’s Edition of this DVD has a great documentary that’s nearly an hour-and-a-half long and tells you everything you need to know about the making of the movie and about its after affects.  There's also a look at the production design, some other special effects, and trailers.

This is a great horror movie that still holds up well after thirty years with special effects that will knock you right out of your little white cotton bobby socks.  It’s good that the movie has finally found its audience and the deserved recognition for such fine directing, acting and mind-blowing special effects.  The Thing is a true classic in every sense of the word and a fantastic movie to watch on Halloween night!  

Wayne C. Rogers is a Las Vegas casino employee who has been writing professionally (with the intent to sell) for twenty-five years. It's only been within the past three years that Mr. Rogers (no, not the famous TV host of programs for children) made the decision to work towards being a full-time writer of horror, suspense, psychological, and erotic horror fiction.

He has written several novellas (three of which are posted on Amazon's Kindle), dozens of short stories (some of which are also on Amazon), an erotic/horror novel--The House of Blood--for the wild crowd that lives on the kinky side of reality, and five completed screenplays based on his stories The Encounter, The Tunnels, A Step in the Shadows, Trick or Treat, and The Garbage Disposal (the last three are short screenplays). He is currently at work on a sixth screenplay, The Code of Honor, as well as a seventh, Dolan. During the year of 2012, Mr. Rogers sold over twenty short stories with some of them appearing in the paperback anthologies: I'll Never Go Away, Grindhouse and Peep Show, Volume 2.

Being somewhat of a couch potato at his old age of sixty-two, Mr. Rogers enjoys the pastime of writing, reading (he has over a few hundred books stored in boxes a few feet from his writing table), great movies from any time period, and well-made television programs such as Justified, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Game of Thrones, Justified, and American Horror Story. Finally, Mr. Rogers is rather unusual in that he doesn't own a house or a car, A friend just recently bought him a cellphone, but he hasn't turned it on as of yet. He spends his free time at the computer writing his stories, and usually doesn't leave his apartment till it's time to head to work. Thank God for ham & cheese sandwiches and chicken noodle soup!!!

Wayne C RogersReviews Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

Dr. Sleep by Stephen King

Scribner, Hardcover, 531pp, $30.00

Review by Wayne C. Rogers

For those who grew up with Stephen King as a stable in their reading curriculum, Dr. Sleep is to be savored like an exquisite meal.  Unfortunately, you’ll probably find yourself flipping through the pages as fast as you can, unable to put the book down. 

That’s what I did.

I love it when that happens!

The journey of Dr. Sleep starts out with Danny as a young boy, coping with being a fatherless child and the horrible things his dad attempted to do to him and his mother at the Overlook Hotel.  It then advances in years to when Danny’s an adult, drinking and fighting, unconsciously carrying his dad’s legacy with him wherever he goes.  In time, Danny bottoms out as an alcoholic.  It’s only then that he’s able to make a decision to change his destructive ways.

Over the next few months, Danny Tolerance travels to Frazier, New Hampshire. 

This is a fine, New England town where he eventually gets a job in the local hospice, while discovering AA meetings.  Though Danny does many things around the hospice, it’s his specialty for helping the dying to pass over that draws the attention of the nurses and the cat, Azzie, who can sense when a patient is in the last stages of life.

As the years pass by, Danny begins to receive visions of a child with strong psychic abilities.   The little girl, Abra, is born close to Frazier and gradually grows into a lovely teenager with strong powers of the shining.  Think of Carrie on steroids.  

  

Unfortunately, Danny isn’t the only one who becomes aware of Abra.    

Rose, the beautiful leader of the True Knot, also has the shining.  In fact, all the members of the True Knot have some degree of the shining, but Rose is the strongest.  Once she becomes aware of Abra, she gets it into her mind to kill the child and to use the girl’s powers for the benefit of the group.      

When Abra begins to suspect the danger she’s in, she seeks out Danny’s help.  He knows firsthand what it’s like to be a child and to have an unimaginable evil hunting you down.  Once he’s called in to help, Danny will devote himself to destroying the True Knot.

For readers expecting an out-and-out horror novel, this isn’t it.  Though there are plenty of frights in Dr. Sleep, the book deals more with the personal journeys of Danny Tolerance and Abra Stone and how they cope with the changes within themselves.

    

Danny’s journey is one of redemption.  It begins at rock bottom and then gradually works its way into sobriety.  It’s only then he can find his true calling, which is to help the dying to pass over. 

Abra, on the other hand, experiences a journey of understanding in how pure evil can manifest itself within our world.  She learns how to fight it, using her gift of the shining for both revenge and to protect the helpless.    

The two journeys are filled with indispensible meaning and personal growth as each person overcomes tragedy and heartache to push beyond their imagined limits.  You see there can be no growth without handling the challenges placed before you.  Each individual must do this on their own, even if they have the full support of their family and friends.  Most of life is an internal struggle that one battles every single day.   

     

Dr. Sleep is certainly Stephen King’s masterpiece. 

It’s a story that will resonate within a reader’s mind long after the last page is turned.  This is what great storytelling is about.  Not the horrors of mankind, but rather the connections we make with each other that are filled with love and giving.

Highly recommend!     

 Wayne C. Rogers is a Las Vegas casino employee who has been writing professionally (with the intent to sell) for twenty-five years. It's only been within the past three years that Mr. Rogers (no, not the famous TV host of programs for children) made the decision to work towards being a full-time writer of horror, suspense, psychological, and erotic horror fiction.

He has written several novellas (three of which are posted on Amazon's Kindle), dozens of short stories (some of which are also on Amazon), an erotic/horror novel--The House of Blood--for the wild crowd that lives on the kinky side of reality, and five completed screenplays based on his stories The Encounter, The Tunnels, A Step in the Shadows, Trick or Treat, and The Garbage Disposal (the last three are short screenplays). He is currently at work on a sixth screenplay, The Code of Honor, as well as a seventh, Dolan. During the year of 2012, Mr. Rogers sold over twenty short stories with some of them appearing in the paperback anthologies: I'll Never Go Away, Grindhouse and Peep Show, Volume 2.

Being somewhat of a couch potato at his old age of sixty-two, Mr. Rogers enjoys the pastime of writing, reading (he has over a few hundred books stored in boxes a few feet from his writing table), great movies from any time period, and well-made television programs such as Justified, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Game of Thrones, Justified, and American Horror Story. Finally, Mr. Rogers is rather unusual in that he doesn't own a house or a car, A friend just recently bought him a cellphone, but he hasn't turned it on as of yet. He spends his free time at the computer writing his stories, and usually doesn't leave his apartment till it's time to head to work. Thank God for ham & cheese sandwiches and chicken noodle soup!!!

Halloween Bash...with James R Tuck

HALLOWEEN AND BROTHER HANK (or my weirdest association with October 31st)

Okay, some of you will relate to this. You will know where I am coming from immediately because you will have a similar back story. Some of you won't and this will be just a strange glimpse at life in the South in the early eighties.

Here's some things you need to know going in:

I grew up attending a Pentecostal church. No, we didn't handle snakes but folks did speak in tongues and fall out during service whenever things really got to humming. Other than that we were pretty much just excited Baptists.

This was before everyone had a magic, instant communicator device with the power of Google in their hand. We weren't ignorant, but information was harder to come by and if someone stood on a stage and spoke to you authoritatively on any subject, their words had more weight than today.

And lastly, this is about the time period and what happened to me, not a knock against religion.

With that set up here is what would happen around Halloween every year from the age of 12 (1982) to about 15 (1985) for me.

The weather turns in Georgia every October. It may be 80+ during the day, but as the sun drops so does the temperature. It's as if the whole state loses its ability to hold heat. Some nights it will drop to below 40 degrees, requiring a jacket. Also during October in the Eighties the Marietta Church Of God would bring in the (at the time) honorable Brother Hank Davis to hold forth a revival designed to save the immortal souls of the young people in their pews.

Now Brother Hank Davis was a fucking rock star to us wide-eyed church youth. He was young, meaning he was under 40, and had a full head of thick hair that swept up and back like some feathery helmet of awe. Many of the girls and some of the boys fancied him, finding him handsome. Most of this was the simple fact that he was ON STAGE which puts a sort of Gaussian blur filter on anyone, lifting their attractiveness level several notches.

The other thing that made him a rock star wasn't his cool, casually hip way of talking, it was the lurid subjects he spoke on, subjects that when strung together should have blared out from a grindhouse poster in a psychedelic carmine red.

ROCK N ROLL

BACK MASKING

SATANISM

DRUGS

and since it was October when he visited

HALLOWEEN: THE DEVIL'S HOLIDAY.

Can you see the movie tear sheet in your mind?

He would stand on the stage in rolled up shirt sleeves, his jacket tossed to the floor, discarded like a shed skin. The subject of All Hallow's Eve was far too serious for staid dress clothes. He began with the shocking "history" of trick or treating.

You know this old story: Druids would wander from castle to castle demanding a young woman that they would then sacrifice to the Devil.  If a castle refused, because, you know, it was their children and all, then the Druids would place a carved turnip outside the castle door that held a candle made from rendered human fat. This jack o' lantern would call down a demon who would enter the castle and kill the youngest person there before the sunrise. (those damn dirty druids!)

Brother Hank would tell us these stories, explaining that if we went to our neighbors and asked them for a Kit Kat Bar while dressed in our rubber masked finest then we would be carrying on the satanic tradition of Halloween and we would be guilty of trafficking with the Devil's own bastard children. Why we would be performing satanism!

Strangely enough, even the year that Brother Hank preached the night before Halloween, we all were out in the streets, begging candy by virtue of our costumes bought and homemade and our tightly clutched pillowcases.

I never bought Brother Hank's alternative history of All Hallow's Eve, I know some folks at my church did, but I knew better. I read widely and even without the internet I knew who the druids were. I did find it all very fascinating. His sermons of warning were like super condensed, audio stage versions of a Hammer Horror film.

In the end, you could never have that perfect combination of misinformation, showmanship, and religious fevor in this day and age. Brother Hank survived in a world without wikipedia. But even today, the 31st of October doesn't roll around without my mind turning back to those revivals. They did form some kernel of what I write about today, just like Elvira's Saturday afternoon show, the Munsters, and Hammer's psychadelic, lesbian, vampire flicks.

It's all in there if you look hard enough.

Thank you so much for tuning in. Things have been very hectic for me lately, lots going on. I've written a LOT, remodeled my tattoo shop, and taken up photography. I know your life is just as busy as mine. That's why I appreciate you taking the time to read this and, hopefully, review the e-arcs I've sent. I'm very proud of these two books. These are completely mine. I wrote them and laid them out and published them all myself. It's a weird turn as an artist when you craft something that is so completely in your control. The artwork you see on the covers is mine. I drew the image for THAT WAY LIES MADNESS and I took the photograph I used for HIRED GUN. The layouts are mine. The font choices are mine.

These are the most personal books I've put out so far.

But you know how I feel. You do the same thing with your blog. YOU choose the things you cover. YOU choose the images and the look of your blog. YOU put yourself in it. I appreciate that. I really do. I did the same thing for these two books.

I certainly hope you enjoy them, they are a bit different than my Deacon Chalk stories, but you can still tell they are born of me.

If there is anything I can do for you just ask. If I can I will. If you would like a guest blog or an interview just drop me a line at James@jamesrtuck.com

You completely rock.

Thank you.

James R. Tuck

James R. Tuck is a Professional Tattoo Artist, Photographer, and a multi-published author. He lives outside Atlanta with his lovely wife and cool kids.

The DEACON CHALK series (Kensington Books), The CHAMPIONS OF HOLLOW EARTH series (Pro Se Press forthcoming 2014), the editor of the double anthology THUNDER ON THE BATTLEFIELD Volumes 1 and 2 (Seventh Star Press), and his short fiction has appeared and will appear in several anthologies such as: ONE BUCK ZOMBIES (One Buck Horror), THE BIG BAD (Dark Oak Press), HOOKERPUNK (Dark Oak Press forthcoming), ROBOTS UNLEASHED! (Mechanoid Press forthcoming), and BADLANDS:TROUBLE IN THE HEARTLAND (Zelmer Pulp forthcoming).

Halloween Bash with Peter Mark May

What Draws You In?

What makes you watch a horror film or read a chilling novel full of blood or a ghostly short story?

The author of a book draws me in first. I know so many of them since I’ve got published. I’ve always had my favourites like; King, Straub, Herbert, Lumley, Wilson, Clark and Keene all regulars on my bookshelves, before and now. Added to those are new people you try, either because they come recommended or I’ve met them and got on well, or they’ve bought me a cold beer (always a winner).

But after that it’s the cover that draws the ordinary horror fan in. I remember not reading a certain Pan Book of Horror anthology once, because the gross cover put me off and the book smelt earthy, much like the mud covered skulls on the cover. So if the cover speaks to me, then what onto the next tester the back cover blurb.

Now that has to grab you by the short and curlies and pull you into the book when you are not familiar with the author. But what pulls you in? Is it a certain monster, or is it slasher gore, or gentle ghost horror, with people you can relate to. Do heroes or anti-heroes turn you on? Are you more likely to love first person POV, or third person? Do you like zombies or guns, or people fighting against all the odds, or is a bit of titillation part and parcel of your horror bag.

It’s weird but I prefer sci-fi films slightly over horror ones. Yet I read no science-fiction books. I mainly read horror 85% of the time, and my non-horror outings are the odd fantasy book or ancient Egyptian murder mysteries.

So once horror has drawn you in, especially books: what keeps you going back for more?

Is it a type of book, say zombies you like, or the author? Do you read everything by an author you love, even though he/she has a one in three hit and miss ratio? I read tons of Dean R Koontz books years ago; then read one that really sucked and never went back. Also I think I had over-read him and had got bored with the repetitiveness of his storylines. Don’t get me wrong Watchers, Strangers, Lightening and Phantoms are great books, but my journey had ended, I moved on.

Whereas, with F Paul Wilson, Stephen King, Peter Straub and few others I just keep going. Maybe less; sometimes is more. A once a year book, is more than of an event than if you have three books out in a  short space of time and you have to find the money to buy them and the time to fit them in your reading schedule. Having published two books with Samhain in the USA, there is another long line of great authors I have to try and find time for.

I always make spaces for at least two authors I’ve not read before. The horror genre maybe a bit more bottom heavy with publishing deals, but there is some great stuff out there. Dig down, some of the stuff you get at conventions from small presses are full of groundbreaking new talent...go on make space for more horror in your life...I do. 

Peter Mark May was born in Walton on Thames Surrey England way back in 1968 and still lives nearby in a place you’ve may now of heard of called Hersham. He is the author of Demon, Kumiho, Inheritance [P. M. May], Dark Waters (novella), Hedge End and AZ: Anno Zombie [Samhain].

He also runs Hersham Horror Books publishing five anthologies so far (editing three himself: Alt-Dead, Alt-Zombie and Fogbound from 5) and has somehow found the time to co-found Karōshi Books with Johnny Mains and Cathy Hurren.

 He’s had short stories published in genre Canadian & US magazines and the UK & US anthologies of horror such as Creature Feature, Watch, the British Fantasy Society’s 40^th Anniversary anthology Full Fathom Forty, Alt-Zombie, Fogbound From 5, Nightfalls and Western Legends The Bestiarum Vocabulum.

Website: http://petermarkmay.weebly.com/