BIO
Conor Metz grew up in Kent, Washington. From a young age, he was drawn to genre stories. His parents exposed him to a variety of outlandish films and as he grew older those interests led him to many novels and comics books of a similar nature. These stories have shaped him into a writer who loves composing compelling narratives that contain interesting characters and catchy dialogue.

WEBSITE LINKS
https://www.amazon.com/Conor-Metz/e/B08KJ18XDN?ref_=dbs_p_pbk_r00_abau_000000
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17998183.Conor_Metz

CHILDHOOD FEARS
As a child, I always found it interesting that the things that frightened me were always different than my older brother. While he had what I felt was an irrational fear of movie monsters, I always was more afraid of things that either really existed like serial killers, or things I felt could exist like ghosts, witches, or other supernatural forces. To me things that had no real place in history were strictly fantasy, my brain could assure me there was nothing to worry about from the things I’d see on TV, they could never hurt me in the real world. But when it came to things that had a real place in history, whether through superstition or first-hand accounts claiming to have seen or dealt with these things, I found the thought of coming face to face with any of them bone-chilling.

I had the blessing and curse of growing up in a small community that felt very secluded from the cities which surrounded it. My house was directly in front of dense woods that seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see. Looking now on Google Maps, I think it was probably only a few hundred feet till the woods ended at other houses, but when you’re a kid things seem bigger, scarier even. The road I lived on seemed massive to me, this wide asphalt threat where any speeding car could be my end. Now having revisited this old neighborhood as an adult, that road is only about twenty feet wide. The steep, scary hill which could prove death if I rode my skateboard down? It’s at an incline of maybe 30 degrees. So yeah, I guess things are just generally scarier when you’re a child. And I was one who always had an overactive imagination.

Ever since I could walk, I wanted to adventure to lands unknown and the woods behind my house gave me that opportunity time and again, but the problem with woods is they can let a young imagination run wild and this started making me think unimaginable terrors could be lurking in those woods. Which occurred in no small part due to the things I grew up watching.

My mother loved movies, she got that from her mother, and our TV always seemed to be playing movies of some kind. Usually my parents kept things kid friendly, but through the fault of comic books, my brother and I discovered Predator when we were way too young and my parents relented to letting us watch the climax of the first film since it didn’t have the violence that preceded those twenty or so minutes, nor too much of the swearing (apart from the classic one ugly mother line). Of course, being the belligerent child I was, I wore my dad down one day when I was five and he was home alone with me. He ended up letting me watch the whole film, and Predator became not only the first R-rated film I saw, but the first monster movie too.

So, while Predator wasn’t the first true horror film I watched, it was the one I can pinpoint as starting my love for monster movies. Part of what I loved was that the designs of monsters could be so cool, but never too scary—unlike some of the other things I was afraid of. Unfortunately, my love of monsters opened the door to things that did scare me.

The first time I can remember being scared by a film, like really scared to the point I couldn’t sleep and had a string of nightmares was Pet Semetary. By this point I was in fourth grade and had watched a whole slew of horror films, not to the extent I dove into them a few years later, but I’d seen a lot of the bigger hits. I figured Pet Semetary was no big deal.

I was wrong.

This film scared the crap out of me and it was so bad that apparently, I’d blocked the worst offender, Zelda, from my mind until somebody brought her up when I was college and the horrific depiction of that character came flooding back. But again, this came down to what I felt could be real. Stuff like ghosts, I’d heard stories about, so maybe they possibly existed. The visions the main character had of the dead student with his brains hanging out stuck with me to the point where I’d be scared he’d pop out of the woods on my walks home from the bus stop every day after school. This was, as I look back on it now, completely irrational, but at the time seemed a very reasonable assumption.

The things we’re scared of as children inform our adult lives as much as anything we experience back then, but I do find that there’s something about experiencing these fears and facing them which fuels the fire in any horror-lover’s heart. My brother was terrified of The Thing as a child ever since he walked in on my parent’s watching it during the infamous dog transformation scene. Years later, he built up the courage to watch it and now it’s his favorite film.
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I can’t say I have a story exactly the same as my brother, I am still freaked out by Pet Semetary, probably no thanks to its bleak ending, but I do still love a good scare. Probably two of my favorite movies, The Shining and Suspiria, I watch every year not just because they’re brilliant horror films, but they unsettle me so much and I love the experience. I guess when it comes down to it, the fears we carry as a child we either overcome and become addicted to, or we run from, never to look back. Maybe that’s why horror is a genre people either love or hate.

Maddie Durant is trying to enjoy a snow day in December when she finds herself suddenly trapped in a world of endless, inescapable nightmares. Unfortunately for the small community of Edgewood, she's not the only one. As four other young girls go missing in the span of a few hours, the Wakefield Police have their hands full trying to find out who took them.
And things aren't looking good.
The lone detective on the police force has few clues and little hope of locating the girls, but Maddie’s brother thinks he may know where she's hidden. With the help of her best friend, the pair aren't going to let their parents or the police stop them from finding the missing girls.
Meanwhile, the girls will have to work together and summon their courage if they hope to escape a horrible fate. But without any answers to who took them and why, it's anyone's guess who will make their way out of the Edgewood nightmare.

Artist Luke Spooner, Biography –


Luke Spooner, a.k.a. ‘Carrion House,’ currently lives and works in the South of England. Having graduated from the University of Portsmouth with a first-class degree, he is now a full-time illustrator for just about any project that piques his interest. Despite regular forays into children’s books and fairy tales, his true love lies in anything macabre, melancholy, or dark in nature and essence. He believes that the job of putting someone else’s words into a visual form, to accompany and support their text, is a massive responsibility, as well as being something he truly treasures. You can visit his Carrion House website HERE.


Pre-Order Available Now –


Raw Dog Screaming Press: http://rawdogscreaming.com/books/attack-from-the-80s/
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Attack-80s-Eugene-Johnson/dp/1735664448/
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/attack-from-the-80s-eugene-johnson/1140155862


What’s the Anthology Have on Rewind?


Modern technology has brought some new twists and turns to horror. Found footage, cell phone-based viruses, literal ghosts in the machines but maybe it’s time for a throwback. It’s time for some new tales of slumber party horrors, VCR monsters, and problems that can’t be solved with a smart phone. We want tales of unstoppable monsters, sewer-dwelling creatures, looming threats of cold-war chaos. Give us fear under the neon lights of an arcade, people fighting for their lives against the backdrop of a hot city night and a cheesy sax solo. Take us back to a time when latchkey kids had to fend for themselves and the only thing left to stop an unspeakable horror was a plucky band of high school kids. Make it bloody. Make it gnarly. Make it 80s!


Johnson’s enthusiasm for the decade and the theme, as well as the process of putting this anthology together, shines through. “I grew up in the 80’s, having been raised off and on by my grandparents,” Johnson said. “My grandma passed on her lover of horror and creativity to me. Because of this, the 1980s have always had a special place in my heart. I’ve been wanting to create this book and others like it for a very long time. It’s a passion project.”




Table of Contents -


Introduction “Yin and Yang: The Eighties” by Mick Garris
“Top Guns of the Frontier” by Weston Ochse
“Snapshot” by Joe R. Lansdale and Kasey Lansdale
“The Devil in the Details” by Ben Monroe
“Return of the Reanimated Nightmare” by Linda Addison
“Taking the Night Train” by Thomas F. Monteleone
“Catastrophe Queens” by Jess Landry
“Your Picture Here” by John Skipp
“Permanent Damage” by Lee Murray
“Slashbacks” by Tim Waggoner
“Munchies” by Lucy A. Snyder
“Ten Miles of Bad Road” by Stephen Graham Jones
“Epoch, Rewound” by Vince A. Liaguno
“Demonic Denizens” by Cullen Bunn
“The White Room” by Rena Mason
“Ghetto Blaster” by Jeff Strand
“Haddonfield, New Jersey 1980” by Cindy O’Quinn
“When He Was Fab” by F. Paul Wilson
“Welcome to Hell” by Christina Sng
“Perspective: Journal of a 1980s Mad Man” by Mort Castle
“Mother Knows Best” by Stephanie M. Wytovich
“Stranger Danger” by Grady Hendrix
“The Garden of Dr. Moreau” by Lisa Morton


Advanced Praise for Attack from the ‘80s -
“Attack from the '80s sends us rollicking back into the pop culture madness of that genre, and does it with creeps, fun, and great storytelling from today's top horror writers!” —Jonathan Maberry, NY Times bestselling author of Ink and Rot & Ruin

“Deliriously, deliciously gruesome, Attack from the '80s is a treat for horror fans looking for the hard stuff. An all-star lineup of writers inspired by that gnarliest of decades. Rad!" —David Wellington, Marvel Zombies, Monster Island


“Reading Attack from the '80s brings on a nostalgia tinged with blood. It's like being impaled on a time machine and dragged through sickly houses haunted by serial killers, spooky fairgrounds where kids vanish, woodlands stalked by unnameable beasts ... and it is wonderful. I'm in my teens again, and the horrors are more terrifying than ever."
—Tim Lebbon, author of Eden


About the Editor, Eugene Johnson -


Bram Stoker Award®-winner Eugene Johnson is a best-selling editor, author, and columnist. He has written as well as edited in various genres, and created anthologies such as the Fantastic Tales of Terror, Drive in Creature Feature with Charles Day, the Bram Stoker Award®-nominated nonfiction anthology Where Nightmares Come From: The Art of Storytelling in the Horror Genre and many more. As a filmmaker, Eugene Johnson worked on various movies, including the Requiem, starring Tony Todd and directed by Paul Moore. His short film Leftovers, a collaboration with director Paul Moore, was featured at the Screamfest Film Festival in Los Angeles as well as Dragoncon. Eugene is currently a member of the Horror Writers Association. He resides in West Virginia with his partner Angela, daughter, and two sons.


About the Publisher, Raw Dog Screaming Press –

Make sure you subscribe to our newsletter to keep up to date on all our news and new releases: http://eepurl.com/yhfCX.


Visit Raw Dog Screaming Press online or find us on most social media platforms.




Media –


Digital review copies can be obtained upon request, and interview and podcast inquiries with the anthology editor can be coordinated, through Erin Al-Mehairi, publicist, at hookofabook@hotmail.com or twitter (@erinalmehairi).

In 1913 Australia, the Model T Ford had just been introduced and the single-shot Martini-Henry rifle was the most common firearm. I investigated those two items in depth because they feature heavily in Man-Beast. Researching your era’s technology will uncover obscure facts to elevate your story. For instance, many Australian farmers believed the Model T Ford was sentient, like a horse, and could drive itself. Wow! Pick a few pieces of technology that matter to your plot and research them well. These will be the touchstones of your story’s verisimilitude. Another example: my short story about harpies versus an Amazon warrior, “In the Company of Women”, was set in the twelfth century BC during the Trojan War. Part of my research focused on the weaponry to make sure my Amazon had the correct equipment.
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My short story “Stagecoach from Castlemaine” is set in Melbourne’s 1880s. The lead character, Minnie Sutton, wears accessories including a bonnet and gloves. She owns a dress shop and plans to introduce her customers to the latest fashion: the Princess Line silhouette. In my mermaid story “What the Sea Wants”, set in the treacherous North Sea off the English coast in about the same time period, the fisherman wears a gansey (a woollen jumper) knitted by his wife. In my novelette The Again-Walkers, set in ninth-century Denmark, my protagonist Svana opts for a dress with a belt and arranges her hair in braids while her lover, Agmundr, favours a tunic and bucks the trend with a clean shave. In Man-Beast, my protagonist Pearl Bennett wears cheap cotton dresses, while a wealthy female character owns boned-bodice gowns and her husband a three-button cutaway frock coat. How are your characters dressed?
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Unless you’re writing anachronistic historical fiction, you can’t use modern slang (e.g., lit, salty, shook, etc.). At the same time, however, be wary of packing your dialogue with period-specific idioms because you risk confusing – and losing – your reader. I have a fondness for American noir published in the early twentieth century, but some of the slang is so obscure that I need to consult Google. Who knew that to kick someone ‘in the slats’ is to kick them in the ribs? I didn’t. As much as the phrase delights me, it’s also a reminder not to be specialised with slang. Choose swear words and colloquialisms that make sense in context. For example, when a character in Man-Beast discusses another who has cracked under stress, the gist of his idiomatic comment “as mad as a gum tree of galahs” is understandable to the reader.
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Your characters don’t exist in a social vacuum. Philantha of “In the Company of Women” is a fighter from the Trojan War. My Man-Beast characters, Big Stanley and Mavis the Mauler, are broke bare-knuckle fighters who make a living in rural Australia before the first world war. My neurologist Dr Ian Webb in my story “November 9th 1989” is haunted by events that occurred around the fall of the Berlin Wall, back when he was a young man and living in London. A major social event can serve as a thematic backdrop to your story’s plot and/or characters. It’s a simple yet dynamic way to create historical verisimilitude.
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My noir-horror novel Contrition has two timelines: the present day, and Australia in the early 1980s. The latter is borne from my experience as a teenager. A story in my upcoming collection Liminal Spaces, “A Small Village in Crete”, is inspired by the European travels I undertook in my twenties. Personal experience can spark a story idea, or give an existing story a more genuine feel. Digging deeper, being an Australian may feel mundane to me, but anyone who lives in another country might find some of the everyday details of Australian cultural life interesting and exotic. Your personal history has the potential to fascinate a reader who doesn’t share the same background.

In my crime novella, The Long Shot, the actions of my protagonist Simone are shaped by her traumatic childhood. In Man-Beast, my boxer Big Stanley is a washed-up heavyweight champion who ekes out his living as a bare-knuckle fighter in a travelling troupe. Historical horror isn’t just about the era; it’s also about each character’s earlier life. Research little personal details to give punch to your story.


Horror stories set in historical times are manageable and powerful. In short: don’t drown in research, allow yourself to be inspired by oddball facts, and give readers just enough verisimilitude to suspend their disbelief. Then you can write a story that resonates.

Taylor’s Travelling Troupe of boxers has set up its tent at an isolated sheep station: bored farmers always bet to excess. Headlining the bare-knuckle fighters is Bluey, marketed as ‘The Man-Beast’, a Sasquatch-like monster, chained and kept drunk enough to fight punters without killing them. But the troupe has returned to where Bluey was first captured. Recognising the mountains, he calls again and again. And when his call is answered, all hell breaks loose.


Man-Beast Amazon page: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09FP3F95R/


Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/~/e/B0035MWQ98

In early versions of my novel Gigantic, its lead character, Kevin Stubbs, suburban Bigfoot hunter and Arch-Knower, robustly asserted a hatred of all music beyond ‘Theme from King Kong’ by Geoff Love and his Orchestra and ‘In the Air Tonight’ by Phil Collins, the lyrics of which provided something of a mantra. Beyond a reference to Kevin’s collaborator, Derek Funnel, trying to join legendary Sutton Jamiroquai tribute band Hominid Rex when he confuses them with a gigantopithecus research group, and a later relaxation of Kev’s anti-music puritanism – he now admits to some familiarity with the songs and cover art of Marillion – providing a playlist that matches the action of Gigantic is a challenge. High Fidelity this ain’t.

I rarely listen to music when I write and never when I am writing my own fiction. I am sitting here listening to John Barry’s King Kong OST as I type this and it’s giving my concentration a right load of stress and grief. If I do listen to music, if I am editing or ghost-writing, it will be neo-classical, ambient or drone, Dustin O’Halloran, Harold Budd or Winged Victory for the Sullen, etc., nothing that will remind anyone of anything that happens in Gigantic. The role of music in my own stories is often not to provide the background vibe but an initial prompt, an encounter with an atmosphere that leads to a mental glimpse or image, or a lyric or title that comes to have associations or suggestions for me. Music becomes text. Obsessively listening to the Burial songs ‘Come Down to Us’ and ‘Subtemple’ did lead to the story Subtemple (Black Static, 78/79). I once coded the titles of all ten Felt albums into ten consecutive short stories, most obviously in Forever Breathes the Lonely Word (Fleeting, 2012). No one noticed this striking move for mass-acceptance on my part. I am quite synaesthesic and can easily experience music as something else: narrative, cinema, an environment, an inner world, language, architecture, muscle. None of my characters in Gigantic have this sort of relationship with music. They have this sort of relationship with information, with intelligence and facts, or lack of.

Gigantic is the story of Kevin Stubbs and his associates, top cryptozoologist Derek Funnel and proper scientist Maxine Cash, and how they respond to the possible sighting of a legendary apeman in Sutton, the co-called North Surrey Gigantopithecus. It’s told dossier-style, a report with annotations. It’s the last great quest story, a bold adventure. If it needs a soundtrack, these are the songs.


Click here to listen to a Gigantic soundtrack Spotify playlist. Here’s why I chose the songs.


1. Gigantic - Pixies THEME FROM GIGANTIC: Title music to establish the sense of earth-shattering revelation that only a bigfoot sighting in Sutton can conjure. The Pixies didn’t record a song called ‘North Surrey Gigantopithecus’ because the phrase doesn’t quite work as a punchy chorus, so this will have to do.


2. Last of the Legendary Bigfoot Hunters – Luke Haines and Peter Buck KEVIN’S THEME: At last, a proper song about cryptid hunting in northern Surrey, and what a belter it is, too. ‘Snap the hairy fucker with my wide fucking angle’. Haines is from north Surrey and he gets it. Kev would have chucked away his one Phil Collins 7” single if he’d heard ‘Last of the Legendary Bigfoot Hunters’. Just imagine it playing in Kev’s head as he sweeps Banstead Common with two grand’s worth of thermal imaging camera, aka The Heat Ray.


3. Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World – The Divine Comedy
THEME FROM ARTHUR C. DAD: Episode Three of the 1980 ITV documentary series Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World: The Missing Apes has almost religious significance for Kevin, and its title music – ‘a kind of Bontempi organ version of Thus Spoke Zarathustra from 2001’ – still resonates in his soul. That music isn’t available on Spotify, so we have to suffer this fey weedy bollocks instead.


4. Thus Spoke Zarathustra – 2001: A Space Odyssey Soundtrack
BONUS TRACK: Included to compensate for ‘Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World’ by The Divine Comedy. It is not a coincidence that Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey and Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World: The Missing Apes, and both feature proper sightings of relict hominids.


5. In the Air Tonight – Phil Collins
MANIFESTATION: What plays in Kev’s head when entertaining the prospect that there is something in the trees and it’s gigantic. The brink of fulfilment, realisation, dream-actualisation. The end of the hero’s rainbow.


6. Theme from King Kong – Movie Soundtracks Unlimited
REVELATION: Geoff Love’s version of ‘Theme from King Kong’ isn’t on Spotify but at least there isn’t a Divine Comedy attack on this sacred passage of canonical gigantopithecus music. It’s best experienced on repeat in the cab of Kev’s white van while it’s parked up near Beddington Sewage Works or at Chaldon Trig Point.


7. Grendel – Marillion
DEREK FUNNEL’S THEME: ‘Weird music was playing. It was like The Funnel was stuck in an early Genesis LP, or the track by that Marillion, “Grendel”, the one that bollocks on for so long that you want to top yourself, but it had been playing over and over and over again and it was driving the whole world suicidal.’ Thus spoke Kevin Stubbs. ‘Grendel’ is as long as watching the Patterson-Gimlin film seventeen times. I know this because Kevin knows this. Mark E. Smith once compared Marillion to a miserable Scottish hotel.


8. She Blinded Me With Science – Thomas Dolby
MAXINE’S THEME: Maxine Cash, team leader of the Gigantopithecus Intelligence team and arch-nemesis and baffling female object to Kevin and Derek Funnel, always attempts to blind with science, with mixed results. This song possesses something of her chilly grace.


9. The Man who Sold the World – David Bowie
GORGO’S THEME: Maxine’s predecessor and second, non-Arthur C. Dad father figure to Kevin is Eddie ‘Gorgo’ Gartree, the man who started it all and the man always on the look out to make contact, contacts and do deals with bent coppers and the masons. Mr Big. The Presidential Candidate.


10. R.O.D – The Fall
THEME FROM GIGANTOPITHECUS: ‘It’s approaching, six-hundred pounds, gas and flesh.’ Nuff said.

If you would like to learn more about Ashley's fascination with cryptids and bigfeet in general read this brilliant article from Ashley 

[FEATURE] FINDING GIGANTOPITHECUS BY ASHLEY STOKES

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“I wasn’t sure you would get this far, so thanks a million already. You opened the mystery bag… Inside the bag, along with this letter, is a dossier that describes the whole story.”

Kevin Stubbs is a Knower. He knows life hasn’t always treated him fairly. He knows he wants to be allowed access to his son again. But most of all, he knows that the London Borough of Sutton is being stalked by a nine-foot-tall, red-eyed, hairy relict hominid – the North Surrey Gigantopithecus.

Armed with a thermal imaging camera (aka the Heat Ray) and a Trifield 100XE electromagnetic field reader (aka the Tractor Beam), Kevin and his trusty comrades in the GIT (aka the Gigantopithecus Intelligence Team) set out to investigate a new sighting on the outskirts of Sutton. If real, it will finally prove to the world that the infamous Gartree-Hogg footage was genuine, and a British Bigfoot is living in suburban London: FACT. But what he discovers undermines everything he believes in – and forces Kevin to face up to his own failures, and the very real, very scary prospect that he might have got it all terribly wrong.

“Rocklyn is angry, lyrical, honest, and heartbreaking, riding the line between fantasy and true horror.”
--Catherynne M. Valente, New York Times bestselling author



“This novella will whet the appetite of fans of classics like Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby, P. D. James’ The Children ofMen, and Octavia Butler’s Bloodchild.”
--Booklist

“A lush, mesmerizing novella about survival and the hope of righteous anger. An auspicious debut baring beauty and razorfangs.”
--Paul Tremblay

“A gorgeous, powerful debut...You don't want to miss it.”
--Cassandra Khaw 

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In this lush horror-fantasy an ostracized and pregnant refugee’s fate is darker than she can imagine. From Ignyte Award finalist and Bram Stoker-nominated author Zin E. Rocklyn comes a dazzling, gothic-horror debut novella that reads like Rosemary’s Baby by way of Octavia E. Butler, FLOWERS FOR THE SEA (10/19/21). OfTrinidadian descent and hailing from Jersey City, Rocklyn began writing because they did not see themselves in the horror content they loved, and they have seamlessly evolved from Fear Street fanfic by incorporating the haunting stories they were told growing up, with real fears, timely themes, and raw talent.

In FLOWERS FOR THE SEA, survivors from a flooded kingdom struggle alone on an ark. Resources are scant, and ravenous beasts circle...and their fangs are sharp. Rocklyn centers the story on Iraxi, a refugee that is ostracized, despised, and a commoner who refused a prince. Iraxi is also pregnant with a child that might be more than human, and her fate may be darker and more powerful than she can imagine.

Zin E. Rocklyn’s extraordinary debut is a story about choice in a world where all the choices have been taken away. Rocklyn has created an epic gothic-fantasy that is unafraid to challenge the legacies that came before it. Brimming with incredible prose, rage, and fear, Rocklyn has penned an alluring debut in which a Black woman does not save the world--she devours it.​

THE FIRST HORROR BOOK  I REMEMBER WATCHING

Well this is tricky because the first horror book I read was a series of short stories, Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark. I think that book freaked out every kid in my generation with its creepy tales and even creepier art. However, if you mean an actual full length novel, it would be Dracula, thanks to the 1992 movie I was too young to see at the time.



THE FIRST HORROR FILM I REMEMBER WATCHING

This is also tricky because lots of films have horror elements without being horror. So the first monster movie I remember watching at the age of five was Predator. Which certainly had some horror elements, but was also an action movie, same with Aliens which I watched when I was nine. However, for actual horror films? That’s harder to remember because I got really into binging various horror films in junior high. I’d rent a stack of them from our local video store with my brother since he was old enough to get them. Prior to that, it’s hard to remember any pure horror films I saw, except Pet Semetary, which gave me nightmares in fourth grade.



THE GREATEST HORROR BOOK OF ALL TIME 

For me that’s got to be hands down ’Salem’s Lot. It’s also my favorite Stephen King book. It’s just that perfect vampire story, not only making the threat of them feel very real, but the horror of watching this peaceful small town just wither and die over the course of the book is truly shocking.

Vampires have been my favorite movie monsters since Bram Stoker’s Dracula came out in 1992. I was obsessed with Keanu Reeves at the time thanks to the Bill & Ted movies, but there was no way my parents would let me see the film, so they instead bought me the book. That was my big introduction to vampires and it was an instant obsession that only grew deeper with my love for movies like The Lost Boys and Fright Night, and TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (still my favorite show of all time). It’s sad that vampires have gotten a bad rap in recent years due to stuff like Twilight, but like any monster they are always in danger of exhaustion due to overexposure (that’s now happened with zombies too).

I also wanted to note, the irony is not lost on me that the actor who made me want to see Bram Stoker’s Dracula was also the worst part of it and woefully miscast. However, that movie did at least introduce me to my favorite actor of all time, Gary Oldman.


THE GREATEST HORROR FILM OF ALL TIME 

For me, it’s got to be either The Shining or Suspiria. Those two films are just a full audio/visual assault on the senses. Too many horror films don’t do enough with the music to really scare the audience, often just opting for loud stingers to highlight scares, but the scores to The Shining and Suspiria I find truly unsettling from the opening credits to the very end. That combined with the incredible atmosphere both present with the production design and cinematography is just second to none.

Of course, if we’re picking favorites, the one I always come back to the most is Fright Night, that is just my perfect horror film, aware of the genre tropes and using it to its advantage to combine humor with some truly unsettling moments.


THE GREATEST WRITER OF ALL TIME

If we’re talking horror again, it’s Stephen King, right? Like that’s not even debatable.


THE BEST BOOK COVER OF ALL TIME

Ooh, this is a good one. As a huge fan of old pulp novels, there are some truly wonderful covers there. My favorite artist of all time though, is hands down Frank Frazetta, and his cover to one of my favorite books, A Princess of Mars, has to be my pick for best cover of all time. If you don’t believe me, look it up. Star Wars wouldn’t have its famous poster without it.


THE BEST FILM POSTER OFF ALL TIME

Well this is going to be very subjective for me because, for one, my favorite poster artist is hands down Drew Struzan and he did an amazing poster to my favorite film of all time, Big Trouble in Little China. So I’m going to have to pick that one. However, I could also see myself going with The Thing.


THE BEST BOOK / FILM I HAVE WRITTEN

Well this is kind of a messed-up question. I don’t know if I can rate my own material. I think if you ask any writer what their best work is and they’ll probably say the last thing they’ve written. So that’s what I’m going to go with. The last book I wrote, Castillo Cove, is probably my best one—it’s certainly my most ambitious—but you’ll have to judge for yourself when it’s released.


THE WORST BOOK / FILM I HAVE WRITTEN

Wow again, c’mon give me a break here! Okay, because it was the first book I wrote, I’ll go with my unreleased novel, The Assassination on Bunraku. I thought it had a great sci-fi story to it and maybe I could turn it into a comic book someday, but wow my prose was awful at the time. I was trying to transition from screenwriting to novels and was having a hard time really diving into the heads of my characters, so a lot of it was just explaining things happening. I can only assume it was painful for my dad to read, who was thankfully the only one to look at it.

Since the question said worst book/film and I did used to be a screenwriter, I’ll also throw my first script into the race, The Road Less Traveled. It was a mess, frankly cobbled together from scenes that I liked in other movies and tried to put my own spin on with pretty awful dialogue.


THE MOST UNDERRATED FILM OF ALL TIME

Hmm, this is an interesting question and difficult to answer. A film someone might say is underappreciated is really just only appreciated by the right crowd. Cult films come to mind. Those were never meant for wide audience appeal. The people who should like them do and word usually travels fast among those circles.

Okay, you know what, I know there are fans who love this, but since it’s my third favorite film of all time, I have mention the original 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film. I think that film is pretty much perfect, and somehow manages to combine the much darker comic books with aspects of the cartoon show for a great action/comedy about family. It’s amazing how much critics crapped on it at the time and most people these days will dismiss it, but any true fans of the turtles look favorably on the film as the only turtles film that is actually a really great movie and not just some silly stuff aimed at kids.

Sadly, the film has gotten mostly shoved under the rug by the rights owners. I don’t know if this has to do with the turtles being own by Nickelodeon who are owned by Paramount and the original film was made by New Line who are owned by Warner Brothers, but yeah, whatever the case may be, the film has never really gotten any sort of proper release for the fans that celebrates what a great movie it is.


THE MOST UNDERRATED BOOK OF ALL TIME

This is probably not a good candidate, but I don’t care, I want people to know that Moonraker is the most underrated James Bond novel of all time. Here’s the reason: this book is nothing like the movie! Yes, that’s right, the silliest James Bond movie has absolutely nothing in common with the book other than the name of the villain. Moonraker however, is easily my favorite Bond book. It’s not as good as On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (that’s easily the best), but it has all the right elements to make it stand out from the other Bond stories. It’s the only book where Bond is rejected by the Bond girl for one (she’s already got a boyfriend who’s revealed at the end). It also has a unique structure keeping the first third of the book solely focused on Bond trying to best the villain, who’s cheating at baccarat, and honestly it’s a more thrilling sequence than all of Casino Royale. The rest of the book has all the usual Bond elements of a nefarious plot, a villain who isn’t what he appears, a seemingly inescapable situation, and a great car chase. If you haven’t read it and like James Bond, do yourself a favor and pick it up.

THE MOST UNDERRATED AUTHOR OF ALL TIME

Hard to answer because I’m sure authors can be forgotten over time. I think Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard are both geniuses and did more to influence the science fiction and fantasy genres than just about anyone else. Yet you don’t see them talked about too much anymore. I’d say, especially for horror fans, H.P. Lovecraft gets a lot more press (at least partially due to how racist he was). Yet Burroughs and Howard created some excellent and truly horrific moments in some of their stories that people don’t seem to talk enough about yet were clearly just as influential as stuff Lovecraft did.

THE BOOK / FILM THAT SACRED ME THE MOST
I’ve said this before it was Pet Semetary and no, I have no desire to revisit it (I did this once ten years back, but never again thanks).


THE BOOK / FILM I AM WORKING ON NEXT
I’m currently working on my fourth horror novel, tentatively titled Bleeding Hart. I don’t want to give anything about it away other than to say it’s based on my time in LA and features a fresh take on a classic movie monster.

Maddie Durant is trying to enjoy a snow day in December when she finds herself suddenly trapped in a world of endless, inescapable nightmares. Unfortunately for the small community of Edgewood, she's not the only one. As four other young girls go missing in the span of a few hours, the Wakefield Police have their hands full trying to find out who took them.
And things aren't looking good.

The lone detective on the police force has few clues and little hope of locating the girls, but Maddie’s brother thinks he may know where she's hidden. With the help of her best friend, the pair aren't going to let their parents or the police stop them from finding the missing girls.
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Meanwhile, the girls will have to work together and summon their courage if they hope to escape a horrible fate. But without any answers to who took them and why, it's anyone's guess who will make their way out of the Edgewood nightmare.