Pop Stops Picks the Best CDs of 2008

FOR THE PAST 20 years around New Year’s Eve, I’ve published a “Best of the Year” summation of my favorite albums released that year in my weekly Pop Stops column. Last year was the first time that list didn’t appear in print in The Star Newspapers and/or the Illinois Entertainer magazine… This year will probably be the first time I don’t list 25 releases. Not because there weren’t 25 great albums this year but… after…

Continue reading

Show Me Christmas

I SEEM TO BE a little behind this Christmas. Last night, in the middle of a snowstorm, me and the Mustang slalomed around on the roads (which had six inches of rutted snow) and got temporarily stuck in a couple parking lots because I still had to finish my holiday shopping. Which, considering I only had to buy for three people this year, is kinda pathetic. But by 7:30 p.m. last night, I was home…

Continue reading

Skull-Duggery

LAST WEEK, I DID a book signing at a Borders in Highland, IN, and received an unexpected surprise. Joe, an old high school friend, turned up to say hi, catch up, and… give me a human skull. Now… it’s not every day that someone drops by to hand you a human skull, delicately wrapped in plastic bubbles and consigned to a cardboard box. But there ya go. Even in high school, I knew how to pick…

Continue reading

Of Mice and Michigan

I THOUGHT THINGS were going to slow down after the end of the main leg of the Covenant bookstore tour… but life hasn’t crept to a halt by any means. Over the past month I haven’t blogged because… well… I still haven’t been home! Shortly after my Oct. 24 signing in Racine, I spent more than a week helping to man my dayjob’s annual convention, and a few days after returning from that, I hopped…

Continue reading

Basters, Bad Jokes & Botany? The Zombie Review Interview

JUST BEFORE ALL hell broke loose… OK, before I went away for the past week-plus to work the convention my “dayjob” puts on every year (and no, it’s not horror related in any way!), I did an interview with The Zombie Review that was definitely the most fun I’ve ever had answering a bunch of questions. Silly, irreverent, and including turkey baster citations, you can read it here if you so choose:   Sharing nightmares…

Continue reading

Halloween Dreams at Tour’s End

LAST WEEK, I finished the official “World Tour” for the launch of Covenant, with a final bookstore meet and greet with my friends Bill Gagliani and Dave Benton at a Barnes & Noble in Racine, WI. She didn’t realize it at the time, but the store manager’s gift to us all – special Kringle pastries – made for a perfect bit of celebratory “cake” to close the book tour.  I’ll continue to have some bookstore…

Continue reading

Press is a wonderful thing!

I’VE GOTTEN LOTS of great reader comments and reviews for Covenant this month, as well as a handful of interviews! Here are some links to the chatty stuff: My old friends at Circlet Press did a nice in-depth chat with me this week which you can read here. I did a reading last night in Chicago at Twilight Tales, which posted a short interview here. My former college newspaper, The Daily Illini did an interview…

Continue reading

Circlet Author Interview: John Everson

AN INTERVIEW by J. Blackmore Originally posted on CircletPress by JKB on October 7th, 2008. Reprinted here since it is no longer online. John Everson is the author of two (soon to be three) novels and dozens of short stories of horror and dark fantasy. He has recently re-released his first novel Covenant as a mass market paperback with Leisure Books. Look for him on the shelves of your local bookstore, or online at www.johneverson.com.…

Continue reading

Twilight Tales – A Brief E-mail Interview with John Everson

October at Twilight Tales has always been something special. This year we’re trying something exciting: a featured reader paired with a themed open mic for each week from now until Halloween! John Everson first came to Twilight Tales as a reader and a staff member, and even co-edited the anthology Spooks with Tina Jens before moving on to form his own imprint, Dark Arts Books. His short story collections include Cage of Bones & Other…

Continue reading

Back to the Alma Mater

THIS WEEK WAS like a return to all my old stomping grounds! On Wednesday, I did a signing at a Borders in LaGrange, IL, a town that I remember visiting as a kid because my dad worked and banked near there when I was growing up. There used to be a classic old outdoor clock in the cobblestone courtyard area near the bank that I remember always looking at. I never thought as a kid that I’d grow…

Continue reading