A few weeks ago the ARCs (advanced reader copies) of COVENANT were mailed to reviewers (hey – if you got one, you can say you received the ARC of the COVENANT!!!) I’m happy to say that the first early reviews are coming in!

Horror Fiction Review wrote that “COVENANT won a Bram Stoker Award in 2004 and it’s easy to see why: Everson’s writing is fast paced, the several characters are very believable (which in itself is a rarity), plus wall-to-wall chills and some moments that will haunt any sufferer of claustrophobia.”

Read the whole review here.

Meanwhile, Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review said “‘Covenant’ weighs in at only 296 pages long (making it an ideal ‘commuter book’!) but Everson seems to find plenty of room to spice things up with chills and horror. It’s basically a tale of what people will do to fulfil a deal with the devil and how they live with this afterwards. What this means for the reader is a mixture of some really nasty supernatural occurrences (demons work off their boredom in some sick ways!) and the dark side of humanity. Sometimes it’s hard to work out which is worse… There are also moments of genuine tension where you don’t know what is going to happen next, just that it could be anything (such as the events following Joe’s pot-holing expedition)…”

Read the whole review here.

I just put a “countdown” clock on my website which at the moment says… 39 Days, 5 hours and 4 minutes til the release of Covenant.

Well, despite a month-long countdown on my website, this year’s Naperville Ribfest didn’t go down quite as planned (for me) last weekend. I’d hoped to go 3 or possibly all 4 of the days of the fest but… my son was sick with a headcold the first half of the weekend, and I spent a day and a half picking up (took 3 trips to cram it into an SUV!) and putting together a new patio set. We ended up watching the fireworks on the side of a road in Woodridge on Friday the 4th (which turned out to be OK, because I heard later that they were turning people away at Ribfest which had reached capacity crowd!)

I did finally get to Ribfest on Saturday night, where my 3-year-old son got to see his first concert: Joan Jett! I thought that was a pretty good intro to rock-n-roll for a kid… and he was dancing to “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll,” “Crimson & Clover” and “Bad Reputation.” I had to laugh when Joan opened with “Bad Reputation,” “Cherry Bomb” AND played “Fetish” for the family crowd… I’m not sure anyone at Ribfest headquarters reviewed the set list very closely.

Ironically, on that same weekend, my son COULD have seen the same band for his first concert as I did 20 odd years ago if we’d gone to Lisle the night before — on the 4th of July Kansas was playing in Lisle (the town just east of us). I first saw them at an outdoor shed when I was 16 (kind of late for a “first concert” but then, 3 is probably kind of early…). But… I don’t think progressive rock and headcolds go well together.

Hopefully I’ll get to ingest hundreds of additional calories at Ribfest next year…

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My friend Bill Breedlove sent this to me the other day… if you love horror or claymation, it’s a must-see:

CHAINSAW MAID