Ellroy
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I’ve become pretty good friends with James Ellroy over the past couple of years, and it’s something I don’t really talk or write about too much.
Read Moreclassic style, pop culture, and writing
Noir Fatale
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The silky note of a saxophone. The echoes of a woman’s high heels down a deserted asphalt street. Steam rising from city vents to cloud the street-lit air. A man with a gun. A dame with a problem . . .
NOIR.
Read MoreNoir Fatale Anthology
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Back in January I was invited to write a story for an anthology which will be called Noir Fatale, edited by Kacey Ezell and Larry Correia and published by Baen Books. I've held off posting about the anthology since when Larry announced it I had not yet turned in my story. But, I turned in my story, which is near future science fiction, and the editor loved it, so I feel okay posting about it!
Read MoreUniversal Monsters
/My first exposure to the classic Universal Monsters came in the form of a card game.
Yes, in 1964 Milton Bradley released a monster version of Old Maid! I found this card game at my grandparents' house when I was a little kid in the mid-1970s. The game must have belonged to one of my aunts. I'd look at these cards and get scared and a few were creepy. I mean, they were mostly the disembodied heads of monsters, and when you're four or five years old it's scary! I sometimes wonder what happened to those cards.
My next exposure to the Universal Monsters was through watching Abbott & Costello at my grandparents' house on Sundays after church. To this day I enjoy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and that was my first real exposure to the film monsters. Watching Abbott and Costello was a good way of being introduced to these guys. It's a fun film, try it some time, it has Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr., and Vincent Price does the voice of the Invisible Man at the end of the film. It's funny, and as a kid it was both funny and scary.
A few years ago, Universal released a few sets of the famous Universal Monsters, some came in a plain old case, but I found the Coffin Collection and knew that was the set I needed!
The set contains the classic films: Dracula (and a second, Spanish version of Dracula that was shot on the same sets, but only when the main production wasn't filming, and to be honest, it's really good!). Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolfman, The Phantom of the Opera, and The Creature From the Black Lagoon(includes the original 3D version on Bluray!).
The coffin case contains a few goodies, like a booklet, and eight poster cards, one for each of the main films. I love this set, and while the films aren't as truly frightening as some that have followed, they're fun and even some of the special effects are still pretty cool!
Cross-Genre Fiction And Skipping The Prologue
/Right now I'm at Bouchercon, the annual crime/mystery convention, which is being held in Toronto this year. So why am I bringing up cross-genre fiction while I'm attending a mystery con?
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