British new kids on the block This Is Horror are seeking to cement their position as major champions of home grown and worldwide genre literature with the announcement of an exclusive, limited edition quarterly run of horror chapbooks.

Kindertrauma is currently carrying an interview with Nancy Strickland author of Landfill.

Book Review: Westlake Soul, by Rio Youers

Horror came to the Cannes Film Festival this year, courtesy of Italian cult director Dario Argento who told AFP in an interview that his 3D Dracula is a man for our times. “It’s an experiment with Dracula. What fascinates me about the character is his way of seeing reality, his bisexuality … his wild nature,” said the director of the film that premiers out-of-competition at midnight Saturday.

Werewolf by Night #42 was the culmination of an arc under writer Doug Moench and artist Don Perlin where the book transitioned from the story of a young man who transforms into a werewolf based on the lunar cycle to a book about a young man (Jack Russell) who can control his transformation into a werewolf and decides to use his werewolf abilities to fight crime.

Now that he’s resurrected Jane Austen’s adored heroine Elizabeth Bennet as a formidable foe of zombies and reimaged the 16th president of the United States as a lethal hunter of vampires, writer Seth Grahame-Smith is undergoing a transformation of his own. The best-selling novelist of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter is getting into the movie business, with not one but two flicks opening this summer.

People are reading. In fact, more people are reading now and buying books than ever before. According to an online British article by The Guardian’s Lloyd Shepherd titled, “The Death of Books Has Been Greatly Exaggerated”, there was a 42% increase in book sales over the last ten years (in Britain, and no I don’t know how many emails were hacked to get the figures). It’s All About the Money: The Shrinking Horror Niche

Writers Craig Pay and Dave Schofield Launch Cutaway Magazine!

Mark Andrew Smith (Gladstone’s School for World Conquerors) and James Stokoe (Orc Stain) have been working on their baseball-horror graphic novel Sullivan’s Sluggers for a couple of years and it’s finally ready to go into production.

David Cronenberg looks like he’s back to his old form with Cosmopolis, now in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Adapted from Don DeLillo’s 2003 novel, it tells of an asset manager who cruises through New York City in a high-tech limousine as the world crashes around him. He is losing money after shorting the yen, and everywhere he is pursued by activists rioting and waving rats wherever they go.

Horror Author Lia Scott Price has released the first issue from her new Vampire Comic Series Vampire Guardian Angels. Entitled The Guardian, the book is the first of 3 issues to be published in 2012. The first issue is published through createspace.com.

ParaNorman, the newest stop-motion animated feature from LAIKA, is a horror/comedy about a lonely boy who becomes his town’s only hope when a witch’s curse unleashes the walking dead. It’s the brainchild of writer/director Chris Butler and co-director Sam Fell, who sat down with reporters at LAIKA studios in Portland, Oregon, taking a break from shooting the film’s final scenes.

Diablo, much like all of Blizzard’s franchises, has a deep and vast history behind it. So deep that even small side characters end up having a lengthy section just about them. Between the plotlines of the games themselves focusing on the prevention of Diablo and his minions from exerting their control over the mortal realm, though, there is not always a chance to go deeper into the relationships between the various entities of a franchise, or what happened prior to a game’s events. Diablo III: The Order – book review

How to create the perfect zombie was the unusual lesson for students when they had the chance to meet comedian turned children’s author Charlie Higson. Charlie, who is best known for writing and appearing in programmes such The Fast Show and Randall and Hopkirk Deceased, dropped into Great Baddow High School and King Edward VI Grammar to talk about the paperback release of The Fear, the third book in his zombie adventure series: The Enemy.

It’s official: the Stephen King Movie Renaissance is now in full swing. With the announcement that two producers headed to the Cannes Film Festival to sell a big screen version of King’s short story “The Reach” (a tale King is often quoted as saying he would “most like to be remembered for after his death”), a new era of the author’s movie adaptations has begun.

David Vann excels at writing about the darkest side of the human heart. His earlier works, short-story collection Legend of a Suicide and novel Caribou Island, explore the lives of those driven to embrace death. The theme of Dirt is similar to those of its predecessors, its journey less introspective. Book review: Dirt, by David Vann

Mira Grant is really not Mira Grant. She is really Seanan McGuire – and according to legend, she is not afraid of the monster under your bed because she is the monster under your bed. Beware of Mira Grant! Feed your zombie hunger: An interview with Mira Grant

Karl Edward Wagner was among the most talented writers of the generation that helped to put horror on the popular fiction map in the 1970s and ’80s. For this comprehensive two-volume retrospective of his short horror fiction, editor Stephen Jones gathers the full contents of Wagner’s collections In a Lonely Place (1983) and Why Not You and I? (1987), plus most of the contents of Exorcisms and Ecstasies, a compilation of Wagner’s previously uncollected short fiction that Jones assembled in 1995. Stefan Dziemianowicz reviews Karl Edward Wagner at Locus Online

Popular blogger Johnny B. Truant and self publishing “Kings of the Serial” Sean Platt and David Wright have launched a podcast aimed at educating writers on how to self-publish in the “new frontier” of digital publishing.

Self publishing is accessible to everyone, and the podcast helps savvy, hard-working writers learn how they can make full-time livings from fiction to nonfiction – something that was close to impossible before the eBook age.

“Digital publishing, through Kindle and other e-formats, hasn’t just revolutionized self publishing; it’s revolutionized all publishing,” said Truant. “Even established authors are now turning to this model and away from old-school publishing deals. And why not? Traditional publishers pay authors around 15% of a book’s sale price and hardly do any publicity, widespread distribution, or marketing for anyone other than their blockbuster clients. If those publishers are really only adding overhead, why not do it yourself? Why not build your own audience, spread the word yourself through the tools available on the Internet, and make 70% royalties while retaining total creative control?”

The trio launched the new podcast, located at SelfPublishingPodcast.com, in mid April. Born from a desire to help others achieve the success they were achieving themselves, Wright, Platt, and Truant decided a weekly podcast packed with advice, best practices, and interviews with experts would help others avoid the trial and error they’d had when publishing their own work – primarily on Amazon’s Kindle e-Book platform, but also on others like Barnes & Noble’s Nook Store and the Kobo platform, which is popular in Europe.

“Self-publishing used to be expensive and ineffective, but also relatively straightforward,” said Wright. “You paid someone to publish your books, you stored them in your garage, and then you traveled around and tried to sell them. It’s completely different today. The best platforms are digital. Anyone can publish with very little out-of-pocket expense and be exposed instantly to millions of potential buyers. But now it’s trickier too, and you’ll never sell to those millions if you don’t put the pieces together correctly.”

The Self Publishing Podcast, which publishes new episodes every Thursday, covers topics such as how to get started, how to make a compelling book cover, how to market your book, writing and editing tips, how to format for different platforms, and much more. It’s peppered with Truant, Wright and Platt’s trademark wit and friendly camaraderie. It’s available on the iTunes, Blackberry and Zune podcast directory, as well as non-subscription play through the website at SelfPublishingPodcast.com.

Johnny B. Truant has a large readership on his blog at JohnnyBTruant.com and writes regularly for 100,000+ subscriber blogs like Copyblogger.com and Problogger.com. Platt also writes for the same blogs, and is founder of The Digital Writer. Both are known as marketing experts in the blogging niche. Professional cartoonist and blogger Wright rounds out the podcast’s hosts.

Wright and Platt self-publish several books each week through their publishing companies Collective Inkwell and Sterling & Stone, including their own extremely popular post-apocalyptic horror serial Yesterday’s Gone, which is one of the Top 100 Reviewed Amazon Fiction Titles of all time. Truant’s humor novel The Bialy Pimps debuted in a splash through blog publicity in February. He’s also the author of the Epic Series, a series of personal development and human potential essays that hit #3 on the Amazon free list for Entrepreneurship.

“This is a brave new frontier,” said Platt. “The good news is that any good writer can now make a full-time living purely as a writer, but you must first nderstand how to make it work in order for that to happen. That’s why we started this podcast – to help writers understand, and to finally realize their dreams of publication.”

Neil Marshall, the noted horror filmmaker behind The Descent, is attached to direct the long-gestating The Last Voyage of the Demeter, which is being set up at Millennium Films.

Looking for some warm weather reading? Then look no further than Indie Comics Magazine’s Summer Issue, which will include Joe Sergi’s The Zombie War of 1812 along with seven other complete stories. It’s the American Revolution. General Harrison’s Brigade has joined with British forces to battle an unexpected force: undead soldiers gather near Lexington.

Adapting books into films is big business for studios, and this week two of the authors who are considered the cream of the genre crop will be seeing their written work turned into full features on the silver screen. First, author Stephen King is set to have his story “The Reach” turned into a feature by British financer Park Entertainment, who will be producing alongside DownEast Village Productions. Meanwhile, MGM is hoping Ray Bradbury’s From The Dust Returned will be a success. Dust is a collection of short stories focusing on a seemingly average boy named Timothy who is adopted into a family of monsters.

Veteran producer Edward R. Pressman has optioned the rights; Alfonso Gomez-Rejon is set to direct the horror thriller. Veteran producer Edward R. Pressman has optioned the rights to Archaia Entertainment’s graphic novel Feeding Ground.

Back in 2009, Stephen King revealed that he was working on “Doctor Sleep,” a sequel to his The Shining novel, which was eventually turned into a horror film by Stanley Kubrick. The book is set to hit stands on January 15th, 2013 and a film may follow soon after. For now though, you can catch the official synopsis here.

Kino Lorber of Redemption Films has restored a series of Jean Rollin’s notable films, including three due on May 29: His 1968 debut, The Rape of the Vampire; 1973′s Requiem for a Vampire; and the most arresting of the three, Demoniacs, about two ghostly women who try to persuade the devil to kill a gang of rapists.

With the upcoming release of the creepy Hammer film The Woman in Black on DVD May 22nd, Dread Central thought it would be a good time to look back at some of their favorite frightening women from horror films of the past. Believe me; these aren’t your average scream queens. These women bite back … hard! Horror’s Top 10 Most Frightening Women

The Image Comics horror noir series Fatale debuted in January 2012 and swiftly became acclaimed creators Ed Brubaker’s and Sean Phillips’ best-selling collaboration to date. Its first story arc, contained in issues #1-5, is being collected into a trade paperback, Fatale: Death Chases Me, to be published by Image this June.

Based on Emile Zola’s sensational novel, Therese Raquin, Therese is set to film in Belgrade, Serbia and Budapest, Hungary. Elizabeth Olsen stars in the 1860s Paris-set thriller as the titular character, a beautiful but sexually repressed young woman trapped in a loveless marriage with Camille (Felton), her sickly cousin.

Twenty years after high-school graduation, if anyone has become famous or infamous, odds are it isn’t the star quarterback. So maybe it was almost predictable that Jeffrey Dahmer — one of the oddest of oddballs in the late 1970s at Revere High School in Richfield, Ohio — would go on to infamy. Still, as Cleveland artist Derf articulates in his skillful graphic novel, My Friend Dahmer, no one ever really expects a classmate, however weird, to become a serial killer with a human head in the fridge.

The Devil’s Rock director Paul Campion’s adaptation of US horror author Brian Keene’s novel Dark Hollow took another step toward the big screen by being hand-picked as one of only 14 films selected projects for Frontières: The 2012 Fantasia Film Festival Co-Production Market.

Another Burton/Depp collaboration is already said to be in the works. Rumor has it that the boys will recreate the famous Vincent Price villain, Dr. Phibes. All horror fans recall 1971′s The Abominable Dr. Phibes, with Price as a mad doctor set on avenging the death of his wife. It was one of the late actor’s most beloved characterizations. (He reprised the role a year later in Dr. Phibes Rises Again.)

Madison County may not be the most original horror movie but it certainly gets the job done. That is to say that writer/director Eric England borrows (and by “borrows,” I really mean “snatches up and holds onto for dear life as if it were its own like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings”) each and every one of his motion picture’s elements from other horror flicks. Fortunately, that does not prevent his project from scaring the living daylights out of viewers. Read the full review…

The world of books has been roaring its terrible roars in tribute to the much-loved Where the Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak, who died this week at the age of 83. Accolades poured in for the American writer and illustrator, winner of children’s books’ most prestigious awards, from the Caldecott medal to the Astrid Lindgren memorial award.

Strange Amusements has a candid discussion with horror author Carrie Green about her work, some advice for up and coming writers, and honest discussion about horror fiction and the future of marketing and publishing.

Under a Vampire Moon is the 16th installment of Lynsay Sands’ Argeneau/Rogue Hunter series. Yes, 16th. If the series were a person, it could drive. And it does kind of drive … readers to distraction when they should be doing other things. Joyce Lamb interviews Lynsay Sands for USA TODAY.

It’s not lightning and a sweet mad-scientist setup that’s again giving life to Frankenstein’s monster. It’s the friendship of two horror gurus, writer Steve Niles and artist Bernie Wrightson. Their new 12-issue IDW miniseries Frankenstein Alive, Alive! continues the story of the famous monster from the end of Mary Shelley’s classic 1818 novel — or, more fittingly, from Wrightson’s seminal 1983 illustrated adaptation.

Gregory Lamberson is the author of five published horror novels and one nonfiction book on independent filmmaking. A two-time winner of the IPPY Gold Medal for Horror for his novels Johnny Gruesome and Personal Demons, and a three-time Bram Stoker Award finalist, he has three books scheduled for 2012: his zombie novella Carnage Road, from Creeping Hemlock Press; The Frenzy War, Book Two in his werewolf series “The Frenzy Cycle” from Medallion Press; and Tortured Spirits, Book Four in his occult detective series “The Jake Helman Files,” also from Medallion. Tracee Gleichner interviews Lamberson for Examiner.com.

Schedule of Events

6 PM – I Walked with a Zombie: Zombies and humans may visit Eljay’s Books in Dormont to enjoy 20% off horror titles all day. Pose for photos in the store then follow the staff in a zombie crawl from Eljay’s to the theater.

6:30 PM – Doors open at the Hollywood

7:00 PM – Meet & greet and autographs: Cast and crew of George A. Romero’s 1985 zombie classic Day of the Dead will be on hand to meet fans and sign autographs, and they will be generously donating a portion of the proceeds benefitting Scares That Care. Meet:

• John Amplas
• Lori Cardille
• Antone DiLeo
• Michael Gornick
• Mark Tierno

Silent auction opens for bidding

Scaricatures by Ed Quillin

8:00 PM – Day of the Dead screening: Grab your popcorn and head into one of the last surviving single screen theaters in the Pittsburgh area which also features a balcony!

10:00 PM – Q&A with cast & crew: Moderated by Michael Exler and Drew Seidler of East Coast Horror Group

Silent Auction winners announced after Q&A session

And finally an after party at Cain’s Saloon – 3239 West Liberty Avenue.

For more information: info@horrorrealmcon.com

Horror’s favorite demon barber has returned to the environs of Fleet Street: His razor is finely sharpened and ready; the glint in his eyes decidedly mad. Welcome back to London, Sweeney Todd. Reveling in insane glory at the Adelphi Theatre, the sinister shaver is singing his heart out while cutting many a throat. Stephen Sondheim’s musical masterpiece is brilliantly staged in this production, bolstered by two incredible performances: Michael Ball as Sweeney, and Imelda Staunton as amoral pie-maker, Mrs. Lovett. Forget the others who have previously played the parts. Wipe away the Tim Burton film starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter; even let go of Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury who created the roles on Broadway. Ball and Staunton blow them out of the water.

This revival of the show is set in the 1930s, rather than in the Victorian Age. The famous screeching factory whistle, inaugurated in the Cariou-Lansbury incarnation, works for either period. Its scream is an exclamation point, punctuating the harshness of either/both eras. What initially looks like English fog, in this version, later is perceived as air pollution. The murky filtered lighting reflects the prevailing ethical contamination. Sweeney is a wronged man hungry for revenge, and his alliance with unethical-yet-resourceful business woman Mrs. Lovett is a union of common needs. There is, however, a kink in their relationship. Mrs. Lovett is enamored of Todd, but the feelings aren’t reciprocated. When they become business partners, she cooking up the flesh of his victims to unknowing, but enthusiastic, diners, the delusional woman conjures up romantic scenarios with “happy” endings. The amazing chemistry between Ball and Staunton is perhaps the show’s greatest strength, yet both actors deliver unique takes on their respective roles, and do marvelous interpretations of the songs.

Imelda Staunton embodies the complexities of a loopy, smitten, crafty, and strangely maternal woman. She embraces the character’s lusty love for Sweeney, even though he still carries a torch for his lost wife. Ball brings his own heat and fever to the title character. When reunited with his cutting blade and declares his arm “complete,” one gets the sensation that another part of the anatomy is also feeling most satisfied.

In general the cast is excellent, the only weaknesses are the performers playing the young lovers Anthony and Johanna. Luke Brady as Anthony loses command of the beautiful ballad “Johanna,” and seems oblivious to the malevolence surrounding his beloved. Lucy May Barker, as the object of his desire, has an unappealing voice that strains and distracts.

Aside from those criticisms, the show is stellar; engaging the audience from the outset as the ensemble assembles on stage while audience members are taking their seats. There is in-character chatting among the performers while the theatre-goers settle in and get their attention drawn to the stage; the scene is set in a sort of interactive way.

It is always grand to “attend the tale of Sweeney Todd,” and this fabulous production of it is the stuff of legend.

Sheila M. Merritt, reporting from London.