• Sometimes life turns out better than you ever thought possible. It helps to have an amazing wife who makes it all happen! #
• It's pretty cool when your wife can still surprise you after almost 24 years! #love #

• The fanciest looking Chile Relleno I've ever seen – at Isla Mexican Cantina inside the Treasure Island in Las Vegas! http://t.co/nkiK0pip #
• Leaving Las Vegas… And my name's not Sheryl Crowe. I'm a big roller: last night I bet $20 in Roulette and won. I took my $40 and walked. #

• So I left Chicago this morning to work a week in Vegas… And guess where I end up for dinner (it's next to my hotel): http://t.co/Uw36qrK1 #
• It's a sad thing to walk the streets of Vegas & come upon the legendary Sahara – dark, empty, silent. A Rat Pack relic. http://t.co/M3xE3ZPb #

It struck me the other day that Marriage is really a lot like the most popular reality show, Survivor. It’s all about Outwitting and Outlasting!

So, I give you my proposed new logo for Wedding Chapels and bedrooms…

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 it’s healthy to spend a few days each year trying to put yourself in order.

I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions. If there’s stuff I really want to do, I do it… otherwise, no resolution will make me do it. But I do spend some time thinking about what is possible for the coming year, and filing away dreams that I know will never come to pass. Best not to dwell on such things.

New Year’s Eve has always been a melancholy night for me – it has never been a wild party with anticipated “kisses under the mistletoe” kind of night. I remember in high school I stayed over at someone’s house for a New Year’s Eve bash and ended up writing in my journal in the basement while people were throwing up in the bathroom upstairs. I guess I just don’t party hard enough!

2011 has two hours left, where I sit. Writing in a journal again. Some things never change, I guess.

I didn’t get a lot of reading done this past year, which as you’ll see in a minute, was kind of a manic whirl — I didn’t sit still long enough to read. But I did enjoy a few things — Brian Pinkerton‘s novel Rough Cut was probably the best novel I read this year (and I was lucky enough to get to do cover art for it!), followed by Nina Kiriki Hoffman‘s Spirits That Walk in Shadow. I also enjoyed Martin Mundt‘s short The Cranston Gibberer and John Palisano‘s Nailed (which I don’t think is out yet – I read the manuscript) and I’m currently in the midst of Brian Hodge‘s Picking the Bones collection, which is great.

I probably discovered less music this year than ever before, but I became a Ke$ha fan in a big way. I also found New Years Day, who provided music for my Pumpkin Man website and was excited at the return of The Human League and Kate Bush. New offerings by longtime faves Tori Amos and Duran Duran didn’t get me as excited as I’d hoped, but throughout the year I enjoyed hundreds of hours of new and old music on Strangeways Radio. If you’ve never listened, look them up — especially shows by DJ Pinknoise and the Cocteau Twins’ Simon Raymonde.

The Travelogue:
Looking back, 2011 was one of the busiest years of my life. I traveled more than ever, but it was because of changes in my dayjob rather than because of my novel career. I actually did less book promotion this year than I have in the previous three years thanks to the 2010 near bankruptcy of my publisher and the completed 2011 bankruptcy of the Borders chain, which is where I used to do the majority of my booksignings. But I did launch a pretty cool interactive website for the release of my fifth novel, The Pumpkin Man. So I made the “virtual” rounds! One of the things I always try to do when on the road is check out whatever local micro-breweries exist in the area… so this year with all the travel, I discovered a bunch!

Here’s a quick summary of my year on the road:

January: Spent a few days in Nashville, TN to run my last medical residents conference for the dayjob and got to enjoy two of my favorite places — Jack’s Bar-B-Q and rockabilly at Full Moon Saloon as well as discover a new brewpub with a good amber ale — Blackstone.

February: Visited Orange, CA (and got to catch up with my friend Paul Gifford) for a couple days for a dayjob editor meeting. It was a great escape after one of the worst blizzards in Chicago history.

March: Went to Phoenix, AZ for three days to run a medical coding workshop. The highlight was running a registration table in the open air outside of the meeting room, and discovering a Waffle House just down the street.

April: Went to San Antonio, TX to run a coding workshop but ganged up a short family vacation ahead of it and visited Austin for a couple days too. Saw an animal rescue zoo there for the first time in many visits, but got to return to a favorite haunt for a night — Elysium. And then in San Antonio we enjoyed the riverwalk and a stop at the Alamo.

Also went to Boca Raton, FL in April for the first time to present at a meeting. I was only there for 24 hours, but the view from my room out to the ocean was amazing! And I did get to stop over at the beach on my first night in for an hour or two.

Finally, at the end of the month, I went back to Austin to attend the World Horror Convention for the first time in a couple years. I launched the seventh Dark Arts Books release there (Swallowed By The Cracks), hung out a lot at the Bad Moon Books table and enjoyed catching up with some friends I hadn’t seen in a couple years. I also got to have a great Mexican dinner with my editor, Don D’Auria and introduced a few friends to one of my favorite things to do in Austin –  the Sunday Gospel Brunch at Stubb’s Barbecue.

May: Went to Boston for a couple days to demo a new medical education website for a few days at a big annual meeting. Got a chance to tour Harpoon Brewery just before heading to the airport to return home, as well as visit an arm of my favorite international pub chain, Elephant & Castle. The highlight though was definitely discovering the Sunset Grill (which has tons of beers on tap and in bottles).

Just a few days later I took off to spend almost a week in Vancouver, which seemed like a pretty sweet town, though it was pretty cool, wet and gloomy a lot of the time I was there. Found a couple good micro-brews there, including Steamworks and the amazing Granville Island Brewing and got to catch up over dinner with my friend horror editor Bailey Hunter.

And I also did a short roadtrip to Grand Rapids, MI to shoot videotape some breast surgery. On the way back, I introduced my cameraman to Holland, MI’s New Holland Brewing, one of the best Midwest brewpubs.

June: Went back to Boston to run my last coding workshop (my job had now transitioned fully to be running the new medical education website, rather than working on live meetings).

One highlight was having coffee on the last day with S.G. Browne who was passing through town. Another was that the trade paperback re-issue of my novel Siren happened that week. Also returned to Sunset Grill and discovered Jacob Wirth‘s.

I also spent a few days in Naples, FL, again demoing the medical website. It was at a beautiful seaside hotel, and turned out to be the only trip this year where I got to stick my toes in the ocean.

July: Holy crap – I stayed home! I took a week off while my wife had some surgery and worked on a shared world horror book project as well as edits to my novel The Pumpkin Man which came out in trade paperback a couple months later. It was nice to be around to take my son to the neighborhood pool a couple times.

August: In early August we took a family roadtrip Summer Vacation to visit my brother’s family in Kansas City, and then spent a few days in Branson, MO and then a day in St. Louis on the way home. It was a fun, relaxing trip, though we covered a lot of ground (most of Missouri, I think!). And I got to take Shaun down into his first cave at Branson’s Silver Dollar City (which was probably the first cave I ever went into as a boy).

At the end of August, I returned to Santa Fe for (I think) the fifth time. My dayjob holds an annual three-day meeting there, which I’ve attended for various reasons over the past few years. I really love Santa Fe, and was able to enjoy my fave haunt the Cowgirl BBQ  a couple times as well as discover Marble Brewery (I even managed to pack a couple bottles of their amber ale inside my shoes for protection and stowed them in my suitcase for the trip home – boy was I glad to find the bottles still intact when I unpacked!) I stayed over an extra day after the meeting to work on my new novel and probably set a record for my most words produced in a day — over 8,000.

September: At the end of the month I headed to Denver for a week to work my dayjob’s major annual convention. I’d been to Denver before, but never really saw much of the downtown. This time, I got a much better feel for it, and visited a couple microbreweries there — it was great to stop at Breckenridge and have their Vanilla Porter on tap, but I also discovered Wynkoop, which makes a great Chile Beer and Pint’s Pub which brews amazing English ales that I desperately wish were bottled! My old friend Jasmine Sailing and her husband Bruce took me there.

October: I traveled to over 20 virtual places on my big Pumpkin Man book launch blog tour, but I also visited Cincinnati for a long weekend to sign books at my favorite Barnes & Noble store (Newport on the Levee).

In the past, I’ve scheduled signing stops in Indianapolis (at a now-defunct downtown Borders) as well as Florence or Louisville, KY, but this time I was a little more low-key and combined it with a short family getaway – in between my two signings at B&N, we visited the Newport Aquarium and Hofbräuhaus, a great German restaurant on the river. Apparently there are plans to open one near Chicago (in Rosemont) this summer, which is exciting news!

November: I visited New York to help record a surgical video shoot, and got a chance to visit the offices of one of my publishers, Dorchester, and meet the staff there (lots of new faces since the last time I was there four years ago). Also had dinner with a friend who introduced me to a great Cajun place, The Delta Grill,  just off Times Square.

December: I visited New York again, this time to demo the education website at a weekend meeting. For the second time in a year I got to have drinks with my editor at Samhain, Don D’Auria, just hours after emailing him a completed manuscript. I also stopped in over at Dorchester again, and got a chance to see Brooke Shields on Broadway in The Addams Family. And in between searches for the perfect street hotdog (with sauerkraut) I discovered a couple other cool Manhattan watering holes – the Waterfront Ale House and the Heartland Brewery (odd to call themselves Heartland in Manhattan!)

And here we are.

I had a dozen work trips in 2011 and a handful of personal jaunts… which made for one blur of a year. In all, I visited 17 cities, three of them twice: Nashville, Orange, Phoenix, San Antonio, Austin, Boca Raton, Boston, Vancouver, Grand Rapids, Naples, Kansas City, Branson, St. Louis, Santa Fe, Denver, Cincinnati, New York. This may go down as the year in my life that I traveled the most. But I guess we’ll see what 2012 brings!

Somehow in the midst of it all, I wrote my sixth novel and a couple of shared world novelettes, all of which should see print in 2012.  And I co-edited and released the seventh Dark Arts Books anthology, Swallowed By The Cracks. It was a stressful year at times, but also a rewarding one. And every time that I saw the smile of my son, who seems to grow just a little bit more every hour, made the day worthwhile.

I’m hoping for a little more sleep in 2012, but only so that I’m ready to see many more interesting places (and revisit old friends!)

Happy New Year!

I’ve always been a sucker for Christmas. A lot of people don’t expect a “horror” writer to get all warm and mushy for the holidays, but I am a big fan of colored lights, Christmas trees, homemade frosted cookies, warm holiday fireplaces, eggnogg (the real homemade stuff, not that bubblegum syrup they sell in the stores) and everything else that goes with the season. Every year, my son and I even build a Gingerbread house!

I’m also a big fan of Christmas Ales – this year, for the record, my favorite might be  Great Divide’s Hibernation Ale.

Back in the ’90s, I used to write and record an original Christmas song every year that I gave out to family and friends on tapes and CDs. I also wrote a couple of short fantasy Christmas stories, including “Christmas, The Hard Way,” which leads off my Christmas Tales short e-book collection. It’s a fantasy story about a boy who lives in a family where magic is natural — but they all give it up for Christmas to remind themselves of how life is for most people. His aunt is a ghost and he has to find a way to make a present for his baby brother without magic-ing it up.

“Christmas, The Hard Way,” and “Frost” (about a boy and a frost sprite) both appear in my Vigilantes of Love collection, but last year I decided to write a new holiday story (based on one of my song lyrics, actually) and put the trio out as a special “feel-good” holiday collection without any horror in it. Instead, Christmas Tales offers three “ghosts of Christmas” in its three stories celebrating the magic of the season, as well as the lyrics of four original holiday songs. It’s a book that can be enjoyed by all ages.

It’s currently on sale for just $0.99 via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords, and you can also download it from Kobo, Sony and the Apple iBookstore.

If you didn’t get a copy last year, I hope you’ll enjoy my CHRISTMAS TALES as part of your holiday this year! (If you already have the book – please help me spread the word this week!)

And if you’re interested in hearing a couple of those schmaltzy Everson homemade Christmas songs… you can find them on my website (along with some Christmas computer wallpaper) here: http://www.johneverson.com/xmas.htm

Whatever faith you espouse or deny, in just a couple weeks we’ll put a wrap on 2011. Thanks for spending some time with me and my stories this year. I hope you will be able to find some time to sit over the holidays to relax and spend time with the ones you love.

Merry Christmas!

I have to say, this has been a pretty good week! On Monday night (actually, 1 a.m. Tuesday morning) I finished my final edits on my 6th novel, NightWhere! So finally, after a couple weeks of editing and rewriting (and a series of very late nights there at the end!), I turned in  the book to my editor Don D’Auria at Samhain. It’s scheduled for release in June 2012.

The next day, I was on a plane to New York City to work at a small convention for my dayjob. While it entailed long workdays, the trip afforded me some great (if short!) after hours opportunities.

Wednesday night, the day after turning NightWhere in, I ended up sitting in Slattery’s Midtown Pub talking with editor  Don D’Auria (about almost everything BUT the new novel LOL). Ironically, the pub is just a couple doors down from the offices of Dorchester Publications, which is where Don worked when he bought my first five novels for Leisure Books before moving to Samhain.

After a couple hours and drinks with Don, I walked up through the Broadway area to have dinner up on 9th Avenue at The Delta Grill, which a friend introduced me to the last time I was in NYC. They have great cajun food, and Abita Turbodog on tap (it’s so much better on tap than bottled)!

The next day was an insanely long one at the convention (6:00 a.m. til 7:30 p.m.) but afterwards, I did manage to enjoy a good meal before bed… this time down at the Waterfront Ale House on 2nd Street.

I had some smoked beef brisket there, which was good, but their homemade barbecue sauce (especially a shot of homemade hot sauce that was bottled up and sitting on the mantle behind my table) made it awesome.  I also tried the Anchor Christmas Ale which was on tap there — and it’s really good. I’ll be looking for some bottles of that for the holidays!

Two guys were sitting at the table next to me having a long conversation about movies… I kept wanting to jump in when they were talking about Akira Kurosawa, but restrained myself. Finally, after one of them announced that he was a huge Kill Bill fan, I couldn’t hold back. I introduced him to Thriller – A Cruel Picture, which is a Swedish film that inspired the “One-Eye” character from Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill.

Then I went back to my hot-sauced brisket.

On the way home from Waterfront, I poked my head into the insanely crowded The Ginger Man bar, which I’ve seen the past couple trips to NYC (it’s across the street from Slattery’s). They have a long list of micro brews on tap, but I tried their “trademark”  beer brewed with ginger (isn’t that called ginger beer – a wonderfully sweet Jamaican soda? um. no.)  It was an interesting brew… going down clean thanks to the ginger… but I probably won’t imbibe it again.

Ironically, when I first hit NYC, I could have headed over to Rockefeller Center to see the lighting of the Christmas lights … it’s such a big deal that the place was apparently barricaded off for an hour after the event, I found out later… but I was clueless. Helps if you read the paper or watch the news… I guess. I don’t. Ever. And as it turned out… I NEVER got to Rockefeller Center during the four days I was there… though I was within a couple blocks every day!

On Friday, I was able to stop over at Dorchester Publications during my lunch hour to see my editor there, Chris Keeslar, who worked on my current book, The Pumpkin Man. I also got to catch up with the amazing Hannah Wolfson and Allison Carroll, who have been handling all the promotions and website updates for Dorchester over the past few months. It was nice to be able to talk with them in person for a bit, and to see the old offices a last time — since the company has reduced staff and overhead over the past year, they’re now moving to a smaller space in the next couple weeks. There was also an unexpected bonus to the visit — I walked away with a royalty check! Merry early Christmas!

That night at 7:30 p.m., while lying on my hotel room bed at the St. Giles – The Court (a really cool boutique hotel on 39th & Lexington) and trying to decide what to do about dinner after a long day, I suddenly got the impromptu idea to run over and see if there were any tickets left for the 8 p.m. show of The Addams Family, starring Brooke Shields. I got dressed and hustled up to the theater, arriving five minutes before curtain. I scored 3rd row Mezzanine for what turned out to be a great show. Brooke was good as Morticia, but the musical was really Wednesday Addams’ story (she falls in love with a “normal” boy) and Rachel Potter as Wednesday was brilliant. I’d love to see this one again, but it turns out that I really lucked out — the show closes after 725 performances at the end of this month! Wish I had a DVD.

After the show, I was starving, having only eaten a street hotdog (with sauerkraut!) that day at lunch. So on my way home from the show I had dinner at the Heartland Brewery in the middle of Times Square. They actually have several outposts in Manhattan, and I tried out their Old Red Nose Ale… which was awesome! Unfortunately, they don’t bottle their beers like  Anchor, so I probably won’t get another chance to taste that one.

The next day after packing up our exhibits, I headed straight to the airport, so I have no fun Saturday stories, other than that when I got home, I watched a long-lost José Ramón Larraz movie Deadly Manor… it didn’t hold a candle to his classic Vampyres, sadly) .

Today, we took Shaun to see The Muppets movie and I think the parents were more enthralled than the child. I’d go see that one again too.

I laughed. I cried… Kermit still froggin’ rocks.

So there you have it. This week I turned in a book, met with two different editors in NYC, saw a cool Broadway musical AND a Muppets movie and still put in a good 50 hours for the dayjob. Oh, and this afternoon, I also built a gingerbread house with my son. We plugged a LOT of candy into that frosting.

I’m gonna be tired back at the office tomorrow!

I was saddened last week to learn that science fiction/fantasy icon Anne McCaffrey died of a massive stroke at 85. Anne McCaffrey — or more specifically, her fiction — was a key part of my childhood.

I’ll admit, I haven’t read her work for many years now… in my 20s my reading tastes slowly shifted from SF/F to horror. But there was a time in my life, in my early teens, that I was absolutely enthralled by her Dragon Riders of Pern series. I still own the copies of the original three Dragon Riders of Pern books as well as the slimmer Harper Hall offshoot Pern trilogy that I read when I was 13-14.

Those six books (along with the unconnected Dinosaur Planet and Crystal Singer) are like the signposts of my personal “coming of age.” My parents were in the midst of a divorce when I read some of these novels, and the courage and stamina of  McCaffrey’s young heroines were an inspiration to persevere. These books have traveled with me through dorms and apartments and houses, and their printing notices on the copyright pages suggest that I bought them all between 1979-1982. That was one of the rockiest periods in my life, when I lived in three different houses, transitioned from grade school to high school (two different high schools!) and saw my parents separate in a pretty bitter divorce.

I’ve always said that part of the reason I write fiction is to give other people the “sense of wonder” that I got from reading fantastic fiction while growing up. Those places of escape saved me… or at least, helped me carry on. Pern was an important place for me. I hope in a few years, my son will discover its magic.

Thank you Anne, for giving me some of those places of respite.

For giving all of us Pern.

Rest in Peace.

Today was Halloween, one of my favorite days of the year, since everyone celebrates the “strange” in their own ways.

I took a day off work today, mainly so that I could go Trick or Treating with my son Shaun, the ultimate “Angry Bird.”

When 4 p.m. came, we headed across the neighborhood to hook up with a couple of his friends and began to canvass the area houses for treats.   I wore a monster mask as we walked the neighborhood, and we had an energetic discussion about who would trump who – the monster, or the Angry Bird. I’m sure we would disagree on who won that argument.

We had a great time and accumulated a great deal of candy before finally returning home two and a half hours later. (So great, in fact, that I had to hold some of his candy in my coat pockets because his Trick Or Treat sack was too heavy for him to carry!)

Once we stashed the candy, we put our lit pumpkins outside of our own house, but a bit late — I’m afraid we missed the trick or treaters.

The doorbell never rang after we were home.

It’s just not like when I was a kid and we stayed out until 8 or 9 p.m. filling our bags with candy with the hope that the sugar treasure would last us the next six weeks.

After dinner, I printed and cut out a ton of contest entry slips, and then Shaun helped me draw the winners for The Pumpkin Man Halloween Contest (which I’ll post just as soon as I confirm all of the winners… I’ve already had one of my e-mails bounce back).

The contest has been going on all month, and offered a bunch of e-book prizes, as well as a Grand Prize of signed copies of all of my novels.

All the entries to the contest (nearly 350!) were identified for the drawing simply by printed numbers, but as you can see, Shaun was very good about keeping his eyes closed as he pulled the numbers from “The Great Pumpkin” to identify our Grand Prize, First Prize and Blog winners. Thanks to everyone for entering the contest!

Congratulations to all the winners (some of you already know who you are!), and I hope everyone had as fun of a Halloween as I did!

Happy Halloween everyone!

Every year, I try to offer some kind of free story for the holiday, and this year, I’ve gotten permission from the publisher to post, at least for a short time, the short story that inspired my fifth novel, The Pumpkin Man.

Originally written back in 2006 as a story for me to read at library appearances and other public events during Halloween, the short story called “The Pumpkin Man” was eventually printed in Doorways Magazine in January 2008 and is due to be reprinted next year in a major anthology from Wicker Park Press –  All American Horror: The Best of the First Decade of the 21st Century — edited by Mort Castle.

Just go to www.thepumpkinman-horror.com and look in the left hand column navigation. The link to read the short story “The Pumpkin Man,” as well as a link to my Halloween story “Pumpkin Head,” are both there. Hope you enjoy the free fiction for the season!

While you’re on the site, please click the little Facebook “Like” button… I’m hoping to expose as many new people to my fiction as possible this Halloween season.

Chicago Launch Party
I know a bunch of you wanted to come out to my Chicago “Launch Party” for The Pumpkin Man on Friday night – sometimes I wish the United States wasn’t quite so large! It was a fun time filled with Newcastle, Vanilla Porter and a box wine… nevermind the Halloween candy and awesome fiction!

There were several authors there who contributed to the Gothic Blue Book anthology, and I read my story that is included in the book — “The Tapping.”

I also read the prologue to The Pumpkin Man and I threw a video camera out front to record the reading, so I’m hoping I can turn the footage into something watchable; if so, I’ll post it on www.thepumpkinman-horror.com.

Huge thanks to Bucket O’ Blood Books and Records owner Marc Ruvolo for hosting the dual launch party and doing a really cool reading himself, and to Gothic Blue Book editor Cynthia Pelayo (pictured)  for staging the event and bringing her “posse”!

It’s been a pretty packed October for me, between a 20-date “Blog Tour” (if you include this post) and a couple of live signing dates. If you missed them and want to check out the blogs, just visit The Pumpkin Man website and look in the left column. Links to all the blogs I’ve visited are there. And if you want to enter the contest posted on the site… you’ve got just a few hours left – the cutoff is 6 p.m. Central tonight.

Happy Halloween
This is my favorite holiday, and I want to thank all of my friends and readers for sharing it with me — I hope my stories have brought you the occasional “creepy” feeling that I used to get when I read ghost and horror stories. I write because I wanted to give readers the same feeling other authors gave me. So, thanks for reading, and I hope you have a great, ghoulish holiday.

As for me? I carved jack-o-lanterns last night — two of them based on my 6-year-old son’s drawings. He’s quite the artist  – and I’m looking forward to Trick-Or-Treating with him today. He’ll be dressed as an Angry Bird. I just have a silly skull mask. I also cooked up a batch of salted pumpkin seeds, thanks to our pumpkin carving. I tasted a few of them fresh from the pan in the oven last night…all I can say is… mmmmmm! Those are going to go quick.

Over the weekend I tried to work my way through the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. Believe it or not, while I’ve seen bits and pieces, I’ve never actually sat and watched any of them all the way through before. And a few months ago I bought a DVD that has the first four movies. So I’m getting my Nightmare education. Last night I watched Dream Warriors, but fell asleep midway through it. I guess I’ll need to find where I zonked off tonight and finish that one instead of moving on to Nightmare #4! If nothing else, I’m enjoying the ’80s hairstyles in these movies! They’re a Halloween costume all by themselves.

I hope you have a great Halloween.

Trick or Treat!