Annie Wilkes, the deranged fan who keeps a novelist prisoner and forces him to write a book in Stephen King’s Misery, is set to begin a new reign of terror, this time in the theatre. William Goldman, who penned the screenplay for the Oscar-winning film version, as well as The Princess Bride and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, has written the new adaptation of Misery for the play, which will have a limited run at the Bucks County Playhouse in Pennsylvania this autumn. The news was announced by the theatre division of Warner Brothers, Castle Rock Entertainment and Playhouse Productions. Stephen King’s Misery Coming To The Stage in November.

“Billy the Vampire Slayer” will be written by Jane Espenson and Drew Greenberg, who worked together on Seasons 6 and 7 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so already you know that the story will be in great hands. According to the anouncement in Out, Jane Espenson explains how a line from her web series, Husbands (which is also getting a comic from Dark Horse, incidentally), got her thinking about the possibilities in the Buffyverse. Billy the Vampire Slayer: Slaying’s Not Just For Girls Anymore

With the success of American Horror Story on cable, it’s not surprising that broadcast networks would take another stab (no pun intended) at bringing a new horror story to the masses. ABC will attempt to do just that on Sunday nights with 666 Park Avenue, a mystery drama based very loosely on the Gabriella Pierce novel of the same name. In the series, an innocent Midwestern couple, Henry (Dave Annable) and Jane (Rachael Taylor), get hired as resident managers of a The Drake, an Upper East Side apartment building in New York owned by Gavin (Terry O’Quinn) and Olivia Doran (Vanessa Williams). Unbeknownst to them, the residents have all made deals with The Devil to have their desires fulfilled. Why ABC’s 666 Park Avenue Is Not American Horror Story Lite

Many moviegoers love being scared, always have, always will, as long as they can be terrified from the safety of their theater seats. It’s vicarious, it’s cathartic and it makes the real world a comparable relief. In Reel Terror, David Konow displays undeniable fervor for his subject and its fans, aptly calling his book “a love letter to a great and underappreciated genre.” The Scary, Bloody, Gory, Hundred-Year History of Classic Horror Films

The premise of J. Robert Lennon’s new novel, Familiar, reads like a thought experiment: If you suddenly found yourself in an alternate universe, in a life similar to but not quite the same as your own, how would you react? Embedded within that premise are deeper, thornier philosophical implications: How much control do we have over our circumstances? And if you could prevent a tragedy from happening, would your life turn out better? Read the book review…

Just seconds before our appointed interview time, Gaiman, the “rock star” fantasy/sci-fi/horror author and comics writer, is sharing with his 1.7 million Twitter followers the embarrassment of having just sent a digital image of his real-rock-star wife’s rump to an in-law. The intimate photo of Amanda Palmer, Gaiman tells me, “was not intended to go to her mum,” who was quite a good sport about the whole slip. Literati, Twitterati: Neil Gaiman’s multitasking successes

Michael J. Bassett, who wrote and directed the new film Solomon Kane, was a fantasy fan all through his teenage years. “I grew up in the ’80’s and ’90’s and, in my opinion, fantasy was not really being served by film terribly well,” Bassett said during a recent interview with Examiner.com. “It was a little bit light, it did not take itself terribly seriously and it was more of a children’s form than it was a way of telling dark, compelling stories.” Writer/director Michael J. Bassett mixes fantasy with horror

Darren Shan’s ambitious new 12-book series, which will run until 2015 and see a new book published every three months, gets off to a cracking start with the opening book, Zom-B. It’s a clever mix of horror, fantasy and realism – about the damaging ‘virus’ of racial hatred and social paranoia. And it’s full of terrifying cannibalistic crazies. Zom-B by Darren Shan, review

The Last Catholic, a collection on display at Ebersmoore Gallery, finds artist Michael Rea mining memories of William Peter Blatty’s novel The Exorcist, William Friedkin’s subsequent 1973 film adaptation of the book and his own Catholic upbringing. The source material is dark, grim, and rigid, but Rea’s work is the exact opposite — which makes it all the more unsettling. Horror on display

LaMartina (along with his writing partner Jimmy George) has produced no less than five feature length horror-comedy films in as many years, including the “cursed beer” gore fest Witch’s Brew and the school election gone murderously wrong movie, President’s Day. Most of the films are of such exceptional quality you won’t believe these are micro-budget movies starring people you may know. The Horror: Chris LaMartina

When constructed properly, there’s something very magical about the anthology horror format, whether it’s boiling the genre down to its essentials or simply using of a clever hook. These collections of bite-sized terrors can be ingested at any time or place when you have a few minutes to spare. Good or bad, I love ’em all, and thankfully, Joe Bannerman’s self-published It Follows sides with the former. It Follows (Book Review)

At 53 and in robust health Owl Goingback spends his days preparing and meticulously maintaining the final destinations of the less daredevil deceased as head caretaker at Greenwood Cemetery in Orlando. “My philosophy is to treat every grave as if it were my mother’s,” he said. Beyond the grave in his off hours, Goingback is a prize-winning horror novelist. Day job gives inspiration for writing novels…

With the success of converting such classic titles as Quartermain, Sherlock Holmes, Back to Mysterious Island and Juliet into sold out comic book series, Bluewater has expanded further into the world of literature with Dorian Gray. The classic story about the literary world’s original bad boy gets a modern makeover in this interpretation. Reimagined Dorian Grey by Bluewater Now in Book Form

If you visited the Quirk Books booth at BEA earlier this year, you may have noticed the two-by-three-foot blowup of the lenticular cover for Professor Gargoyle, which shows a suit-wearing science teacher transforming into a red-faced, horned demon as you walk by. The book is the first installment in the Tales from Lovecraft Middle School series, which Quirk associate publisher and creative director Jason Rekulak both conceptualized and authored, under the pseudonym Charles Gilman. Gargoyle is the first middle-grade novel from the indie house, which is best known for its offbeat bestsellers like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and the YA hit Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, both of which Rekulak also created. Quirk Books Ventures into Middle-Grade Fiction

If ever there was an immediate sequel to a novel that fit perfectly into the box of continuity, it’s Clive Barker’s Books of Blood Volume Two. The second installment in this series picks up right where its predecessor left off, blending mind numbing psychological scares with hideous creatures few possess the imagination to conceive. Quite honestly, this just feels like a fantastic extension of the first BOB, and I love that. There’s no need to fix what isn’t broken, and Mr. Barker apparently agrees. Revisiting Clive Barker’s Books of Blood (Volume Two Review)

Widely billed as “From the producer of Paranormal Activity and Insidious”, supernatural horror Sinister bravely slams together two worn horror genre clichés: a struggling writer and a haunted house. Ethan Hawke plays Ellison, a true crime author who’s struggling to recreate his earlier success. Ten years before the events of Sinister, his book Kentucky Blood was a bestseller, resolving a crime the police had been unable to figure out, and briefly making him a media celebrity. Now married to wife Tracy (Juliette Rylance) and with two kids to feed, he’s keen to get started on a book that will again establish him as a writer of merit. Sinister review

A price war among digital publishers that has driven down the cost of some popular e-books to 20 pence has writers worried about the future of the industry. Sony has offered a 20-pence promotion this summer, and Amazon.co.uk has followed with matching discounts. Sony’s most recent addition is James Herbert’s bestseller Ash. The horror novel joins The Expats by Chris Pavone and Sarah Thornhill by Kate Grenville on the list of e-book discounted by at least 97%. Steep e-book discounts have writers worried about making Profits

Imagine you wake up with a walking corpse in your apartment, a real one. As bad as that scenario is, it gets even worse for Meg Highbury when she finds out she has to trade places with the corpse. Meg and her neighbor Armando come to the conclusion that Meg is a Valkyrie and must serve death duty. Throw in some humor and unlikely romance, and you have one very original and entertaining Zombie novel. Let’s find out what author Kristi Jones has to say about her imaginative read, The Corpse Goddess.

In Redwine Hill: The Secrets at Primevel Asylum by L.L. Stomeier, something strange is happening to teens all over the world. As soon as they turn 16, they go mad. For some the madness isn’t as bad as for others. Charlotte Carrion is one of the ones like this. Book Review: Redwine Hill: The Secrets at Primevil Asylum by L.L. Stolmeier

The ’60s saw a different standard emerging for the horror genre. The fantastical monsters and outer space creatures that had been haunting drive-ins for years were being replaced by more intelligent sources of terror. Hitchcock did his part to inject psychological themes into the genre, while directors such as Roman Polanski and George Romero introduced new methods of getting beneath the audience’s skin. Top Horror Films from the 1960s

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