IT’S BEEN ALMOST four months since our baby blue parakeet, B.B., managed to fly over my head and out the door when I was taking out the garbage. I detailed that horrible day in a blog on Sept. 3rd. But what I haven’t written about is the amazing turn of events that followed a week later — and led to a month of “pet” adjustments in our house. As I sit here on Christmas Eve,…
MY 7TH NOVEL Violet Eyes is on a Kindle Countdown Sale this weekend for just 99 cents! Yesterday, because of the sale, it was featured on the BookBub e-book newsletter service and sold over 500 copies, which vaulted it into the the Amazon Bestsellers lists for Horror and Science Fiction. That’s always a great thing because then the book gets seen by more new readers who might decide to check it out. For about 24…
I AM A HUGE FAN of Dario Argento’s 1977 film, Suspiria. So when I heard that director Luca Guadagnino was remaking it, I have to admit, I was not excited. Suspiria is one of those “crowning achievement” films. It’s a garishly gorgeous, if still flawed, work that did not need to be remade. Nevertheless, I had to see what they did to it and so last night, I went to the theater at 10 o’clock…
IT WAS A PRETTY awesome Halloween week. For the first time in years (maybe decades) I ended up so busy that we never carved pumpkins. While that was a bit of a bummer (because it means I also didn’t make pumpkin seeds, which I always do!) lots of cool stuff DID happen. On Halloween (Wednesday) around 5 p.m., I did a live reading of the Prologue of The House By The Cemetery during a presentation…
IT’S BEEN AN amazing couple of weeks for me while I have done a series of book signing events for The House By The Cemetery! I already wrote about the launch party at Bucket ‘O Blood Books that kicked things off. But since then, I’ve also signed at my local Barnes & Noble store in Naperville, IL (the first time in a decade that I’ve signed there!), the Vogt Woods Visual Arts Center in Tinley…
THERE HAS NEVER been a horror movie more beautifully shot than Suspiria. There has never been a release of Suspiria more beautifully realized than Synapse Films’ 4K remaster of the film. The film’s power has always been all about the color and the lighting, and the Synapse edition brings out the power of those elements like no previous release. The Blu-Ray is sharp, crisp and eye-poppingly colorful. Suspiria looks like it was shot using exclusively…
WHERE BETTER TO HOLD a book launch party for a horror novel than a store called Bucket O’ Blood Books and Records? On Thursday, October 11, 2018, that’s exactly where I held mine! Bucket O’ Blood is a very cool used and new books and records and DVDs store in Chicago and they agreed to host the first booksigning stop for my new novel The House By The Cemetery. I actually did signings and readings…
IT’S OCTOBER. In just a few days, my 10th novel, The House By The Cemetery will finally be released and available at bookstores everywhere! To spread the word, my publisher, Flame Tree Press, has set up a blog tour running over the next week. Follow along and check each stop out. I’ll add the links to each stop to this as they go live: October 2: Not Another Book Blogger October 3: Donna’s Book Blog…
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, was just like any Saturday. I ran up to the store to get some groceries, and after unloading, I went to take a full bag of garbage out to the garage. And a second later, life took one of those forks in the road that you can’t ever turn back from. As I stepped down into the garage with the bag, our baby parakeet, B.B., shot like an arrow from the cage…
“MY DAUGHTER IS A CHILD at whatever age.” That simple, and yet slightly deceptive sentence sums the pain at the core of Death Occurred Last Night (La morte risale a ieri sera) a 1970 Italian murder mystery/giallo directed by Duccio Tessari (also known for The Bloodstained Butterfly). The film has been restored and released on Blu-Ray with one video interview extra by Raro Video. At the outset of the film, we meet Amanzio (played by…
