In between, on Saturday afternoon, I’ll be signing at the Barnes & Noble at the  Streets of Westchester from 2-5 p.m. If you’re in Cincinnati, come on out!

Coming Up: The 13th on the 13th…
I’ve also got signings for The 13th scheduled at Old Towne Books and Tea in Oswego, IL on February 13th (happy anti-Valentine’s Day?), in San Francisco at Borderlands Books on March 13th (the day before my birthday!) and then near Dallas at Eerie Books on May 13th (um, nothing special. It’s just mid-May).

For info on these and all my signings, check my Appearances webpage.

The link and info is here:

But the good news is, I’ve rescheduled those stops for January 29-30. So if you were planning to come out to the Newport, KY or West Chester, OH Barnes & Nobles this weekend… I hope you’ll come by the last weekend of the month  instead! See the Appearances page for the exact days and times.

I will still be signing in Merrillville, IN Borders this Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m., since it looks like the mess will be cleaned up by Saturday… so to anyone planning to drop by to that store on Sunday… I’ll see you then! 

You’ll notice the Dark Chicago banner now on the main menu pages across my web site; give one a click and check out all of the dark stuff seeping out of the Windy City. There’s an impressive lot of dark culture here!

Spearheaded by Chicago horror artist Chad Savage, the Dark Chicago portal of sites offers news feeds from sites like Chicago Horror, Chicago Zombie, Chicago Vampire, Chicago Horror Film Festival, The Horror Society, Zombie Army Productions, Zombie Pinups and many more.

For those that need their horror feeds 24/7, there’s also a cool DarkChicago.com toolbar available to add to your web browser, so you’re always in touch with what creepy happenings are going on in the area.

As a Chicago-area horror author and occasional horror web designer and book cover artist, I’m excited to be part of this network of kindred dark spirits!

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 over the country — in San Francisco, Atlanta, Nashville, St. Louis, Springfield, Indianapolis, Louisville and Cincinnati, not to mention all around the Chicago area. And I’ve been an author guest at Dragon*Con, Hypericon, ZombieConX and the Chicago Horror Film Festival.

Needless to say, it was a fast-paced year for me. As I sit here sipping my coffee on Christmas Eve, I wish I could thank everyone who’s supported me over the past 12 months. A couple days ago, I sent everyone on my e-newsletter a special Christmas story, just for them. It’s been a privilege to meet and talk to so many interesting people at conventions and bookstores and correspond with lots of others on email and Facebook and Twitter and MySpace. I’ve been lucky to have been able to meet and connect with so many.

I’m looking forward to the next few days of Christmas vacation to unwind, kick back, and reflect on one of the best years of my life.

Holiday traditions
Everyone has their own traditions at this time of year. One of mine used to be watching It’s A Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve. I haven’t done that in awhile (after seeing the movie more than 30 times, I think the need has diminished!) I hope all of my friends and family enjoy their own favorite traditions these next couple days.

Another more recent tradition of mine to post the MP3 of a rockin’ little Christmas song that I wrote and recorded with the help of some friends a few years back called “Show Me Christmas”.  For several years in the ’90s I wrote and recorded an original Christmas song each season. Click here to check it out if you want to hear some holiday cheer. (It’s embedded on my MySpace page, but if it doesn’t start auto-playing, just scroll down a little and hit play - the player is in the left column.) Thanks to my friends John and Lexi Zehren, and Mark Konzen and Chris Fry for serving as the backing band for this recording of an original Everson Christmas song!

Another tradition of mine has been sending out a link to my holiday fantasy story “Christmas the Hard Way,” which I originally wrote as a gift for family and friends. If you haven’t read it, I hope you’ll click below and enjoy it.

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

I’m hoping this is just the first of many collaborations:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c259iJQWreg

 This week she did a short interview with me to post at the Frightening Journeys site. You can check it out and say hi to Nerine here.

http://paranormalwriters.blogspot.com/2009/12/john-eversons-world-of-horror.html

Here’s the leadup to my “Golden Gate” video: After flying from O’Hare to SFO and picking up a rental car early Sunday afternoon, November 15th, I drove to a couple of San Francisco bookstores to sign their copies of The 13th. Then I headed north out of the city on Route 1 (detailed in a previous blog).

I woke up on Monday, November 16 in a small but beautiful motel resort called Rio Villa in Guerneville, CA. I would love to spend a week writing there; in the morning I woke up to find a gorgeous view off the back balcony of a fog-wreathed river and a lower patio surrounded in flowering trees and bushes. I sat on the wooden deck furniture, drank my pot of coffee and used the wi-fi to plan my route for the day.

As I was leaving, the owner, Ron Moore, surprised me with a gift for the road. He’d read my blog from the night before (I’d mentioned when I saw him off the balcony that I’d blogged about what a great place he had).

Ron asked me to hang on for a second after I paid the bill for the night. He ducked into one of the cabins, reached into a freezer and when he came out, presented me with an It’s It ice cream sandwich (if you read my last blog you know that I’d been looking for one the day before!) 

 Talk about sealing the deal… if I ever get back up that way, you know where I’m staying!

After I left Rio Villa, I drove up to Jenner to see the tiny town in daylight (I’d driven through it in darkness the night before), and was treated to some beautiful views.

The locals live high above the estuary where the Russian River meets the ocean, and many of the roads are single lane “goat” paths with houses dug into the cliff beside. It was quiet and peaceful up there, and I really didn’t want to leave… especially when I spotted the sea lions sunning themselves on the silt where the river meets the sea.

But the morning was getting on, so I finally left Jenner and drove down to Bodega Bay, where Hitchcock’s The Birds was filmed. I  took a few pictures of surfers just outside of town, and bought my son a dragonfly “spinner” kite at Candy & Kites before heading inland towards the 101.

I grabbed a great homemade cup of clam chowder for the road at the Valley Ford Market, and 30 or 40 minutes later, I jumped off the 101 when I saw a Borders Books on the side of the road in San Rafael. I stopped in and met a couple of the managers and signed a couple copies of Covenant and Sacrifice… but the store’s shipment of The 13th wasn’t in yet.

After leaving the Borders, it was a race to get across the Golden Gate Bridge and through the city to get my car back to the airport rental car place on time. I made it with barely a minute to spare and then took a shuttle back to the city to check in to a cool room at the Argonaut Hotel (in the old Cannery at Fisherman’s Wharf).

I quickly stowed my stuff and changed before heading down to the San Francisco Center Borders Books to do a signing.

It was great to be back at that Borders (I signed Covenant there last year) and I ran into a number of interesting folks there before I called it a day and walked back to my hotel via the insanely steep Nob Hill (where I found a mint It’s It bar!! Score!!) I stopped at the venerable City Lights bookstore along the way and had dinner at a streetside Italian dinner in North Beach, before walking back to the room.

The next morning I did what I was actually SENT there for - participate in a 5-hour meeting for the dayjob… and then it was back to the airport for the long flight home. Talk about a whirlwind trip of experiences!

When I got home just before midnight that night, I found a couple treats waiting — the DVD of The ZomBeatles movie (which I saw at ZombieCon and promptly ordered) and a copy of Loren Rhoads’ Morbid Curiousity Cures the Blues, a book of amazing true stories culled from the late Morbid Curiousities Magazine. I was pleased to see they used my blurb at the top of the book’s first page - it reads:

“It’s a cliche that truth is stranger than fiction, but this compendium of real-life accounts of the bizarre, horrific and just plain freaky proves it. Heartfelt, heartaching and heart-attack fare all, these stories will haunt you long after the last twisted confession is told.”

Check it out — this one’s worth a read! Several, really.

Just a couple days after I got home, I drove down for another manic signing weekend to Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Louisville. But that’s another story…

Thanks to Jeff Strand for finding and poaching this first!