AS I SIT DOWN to write this, in just a few minutes, the ball will drop in New York, signalling the end of 2013. How did 12 months slip by so fast? 2013 was the year that we lost one of my personal heroes, Roger Ebert. He was a Chicago critic who I really admired, and he was also a fellow alum of the University of Illinois. I read his reviews and columns my entire…
2012 WAS A STRANGE YEAR of dichotomy for me. I can point to parts and say it was one of the best years of my life. Conversely, I can also point to moments that made it one of the worst. It was a year of transition in many aspects … but then, isn’t every year? It’s all just a journey, right? With good and bad detours along the way. The trick is always to enjoy…
THE WEEK AFTER CHRISTMAS is always a week of cleanup for me. Putting away the remnants of one year to prepare for another. I spend hours organizing and backing up computer files, updating my iPod, cleaning off my desk from weeks of detritus… and I also think back a lot on the last 12 months. Of the things unanticipated. Of the dreams met, and dreams lost. We only get so many seasons, and I think…
A YEAR AGO AT THIS MOMENT, I was sitting in my home office listening to the final hour of my favorite radio station ever, AuralGasms.com. After a lifetime of musical obsession and two decades of hearing just about everything released as a music critic, during the last half of the 2000’s, I found something I never expected to find — this online radio station that perfectly matched my personal tastes — and I listened to…
IN CHICAGOLAND, the ground is covered by snow… and my house is festooned (how often do you get to use that word?) with lights…It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Good thing too, since today is Christmas Eve. It’s hard to believe it’s the end of 2009 already. Since last December, both Sacrifice and The 13th have been released and I’ve written and turned in a fourth novel, Siren. I’ve done book signings all…
2008 IS GONE. I’ll miss it. But 2009 is shaping up to be a great year too. Leisure Books will be releasing my second novel Sacrifice at the end of April, while my third novel, The 13th, will be issued in a limited hardcover edition from Necro Publications this spring as well as in a paperback edition from Leisure at the end of the year. Meanwhile in Poland, Replika Books will be issuing Polish translations…
IT’S ACTUALLY New Year’s Eve as I write this on my laptop on the couch, watching the “return of Dick Clark” New Year’s Eve countdown show (there’s a zombie movie inherent in Clark’s return, isn’t there?) As I watched all the “top moments of the past year and the past decade” shows tonight, I had to reflect back on my own experiences over the past 12 months. And 2005 was a year of amazing personal…
I CAN’T BELIEVE the end of the year has rolled around so fast! But here it is…less than two weeks from 2005. I hope you all have a great Christmas, and look forward to hearing from you in the New Year! It’s been an incredible year for me; my first horror novel, Covenant, came out last month from Delirium Books, and in October, Twilight Tales published an anthology I co-edited and designed with Tina L.…
AS USUAL, I’VE LET nearly half a year slip by without writing here. Not that a lot hasn’t gone on. I recently had the (?) pleasure (?) of spending eight days in San Diego on business, and arrived just about a day before the worst brush fires in San Diego history broke out. One night I went to bed and everything was summery and fine, and the next morning when I left my hotel, the…
