IT HAS BECOME one of those annual events that the Everson house looks forward to throughout the year. My friend Brad introduced Shaun and me to Pinball at the ‘Zoo, an April gathering of pinball enthusiasts at the Kalamazoo Expo Center. This year, I drove Shaun, Brad, and his son Levi up last Friday night, so that we could start Pinball at the ‘Zoo bright and early Saturday morning. On Friday and Saturday nights, we…
THE PUMPKIN MAN is a horror thriller featuring a Ouija Board and a mysterious killer who cuts off the heads of his victims and replaces them with pumpkins carved in the likeness of their faces. It was my fifth and final novel for Dorchester Publishing, and it’s a story I’ve always wanted to do a sequel to (but so far, never have quite found the time!). When it was first released, New York Times bestselling…
SEVEN YEARS AGO, we brought him home from the pet store in a small box with holes for air in it. My son Shaun had fallen for him and so our house was soon filled with the happy warbles of a parakeet for the first time in many years. My first bird, Beebs (short for Zaphod Beeblebrox), was a blue parakeet that I got while I was in college. He lived in a handful of…
SO LAST WEEKEND, I got home late Saturday night from a work trip to Vegas. But I didn’t stay put for long. After a one-day rest, on Monday, I rented an SUV and drove four hours to Ann Arbor, Michigan. The reason? Meteor. Meteor is a pinball table that I’ve been looking to add to my basement mini-arcade for the past couple years. There were a lot of them produced back in 1979 by Bally…
I HAD TO GO to Las Vegas for a couple days this week to work at a meeting for my dayjob. I’m not a gambler, so Vegas doesn’t hold the allure for me that it does for many, but it is a fun place to wander around in. You can’t help but enjoy the lights and energy of the place. I went to see the Zombie Burlesque show the last time I was in Vegas…
LAST MONTH, I got a peek at the cover for The House By The Cemetery, my 10th novel overall, and my first for Flame Tree Press. I’ve been itching to share it ever since, but had to wait for a final version from the publisher. And at last… here it is! What do you think? The House By The Cemetery was the very first book signed for Flame Tree Publishing’s new Flame Tree Press imprint…
THERE IS NOTHING better on a cold January weekend than a belly-warming bowl of chili. But not everyone can handle the same levels of heat. So when I make chili for my annual winter chili and ale fest for a bunch of guys from the neighborhood, I make a really big vat of it. After the initial base preparation, I separate the chili into three or four different crock pots to simmer for an afternoon…
SOMETIMES, ON A WET or wintry Sunday, I walk into the kitchen after my morning coffee and say, “this feels like the perfect day for a stew.” A good stew fills the house with rich savory scents that can warm up the most dismal day! A good stew is always somewhat unique, depending on what happens to be in the fridge and freezer at the time. But the keys are meat, potatoes, onions and carrots.…
IT’S 1:30 AM on the first day of 2018 as I start to write this and think back on all the cool things that happened in 2017 (like this photo with my friends from Synapse Films). It was truly a year of transitions for me. The DVD of the Grateful Dead Farewell Concert at Soldier’s Field in Chicago is playing a few feet away on my big screen TV right now — watching that seemed…
IT’S BEEN LONG overdue, but I’ve officially launched the JohnEverson.com redesign! My site has had a few different looks over the years but the last time I gave it a full redesign was August 2008. The web has changed a lot since then, so JohnEverson.com really needed a facelift. The last design was my longest-lived look, thanks to the design help of Alina Ciejka Gonciarz and the awesome artwork from Travis Anthony Soumis (repurposed from…
