The Dragon Page "Cover to Cover"

Conversations with Authors of Science Fiction and Fantasy

Horror

Review: “Horns” by Joe Hill

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“Horns” starts with two of the most ingenious opening paragraphs I’ve read in a long while about Ignatius Perrish waking up from having spent the night before doing horrible things and getting ready to do a lot more. Also, Ig (as he’s called) has a pair of horns growing out of his head.

Review: “The Strain” by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan

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Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan originally conceived “The Strain” as a serialized television series for the Fox network. After Fox execs balked at the original vision, insisting the writers inject more humor into the storyline of a modern-day vampire apocolypse, del Toro and Hogan decided to take their toys and go home. Rather than create a movie version of this modern day retelling of “Dracula,” the two decided to go literary.

Cover to Cover #334A: Charlie Huston

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Interview: This week, Mike, Summer and Mike talk with Charlie Huston about Every Last Drop, the newest novel in his series about the vampire PI Joe Pitt, and the horror noir world he’s created where vampires are born from contracting the Vyrus.

Charlie tells us how Joe has ended up “in exile” in the Bronx and is trying to work his way back into enough good graces so he can go back to Manhattan without being killed; and how Joe starts getting closer to some of the most closely guarded secrets of the clans, all leading up to some explosive revelations in the planned 5th and final book in the series.

Cover to Cover #294A: Matt Wallace

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Interview: Matt Wallace, award-winning writer for Variant Frequencies joins Michael, Summer and Michael to talk about his first print foray, a short story collection titled The Next Fix coming out from Apex Publishing in March.

Matt also talks about his upcoming work at Stranger Things, projects possibly being turned into film, and more.

Cover to Cover #254: Scott Sigler

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Interview: Scott Sigler joins us to talk about his latest endeavor, pimping the print version of Ancestor. In a drive to rise to #1 on Amazon, he’s embarked on an web and podcasting push to get everyone who wants a print copy of the book to order it from Amazon starting at 9am Pacific on Sunday, April 1.

Cover to Cover #247: Charlie Huston

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Interview: This week, crime thriller author Charlie Huston drops by the studio to talk with Michael, Summer and Tim about the second of his vampire noir novels, “No Dominion” (also see our review of “No Dominion”). The highly regarded sequel to “Already Dead” continues the story of vampyre PI Joe Pitt, and our immersion and discovery of a world containing a new vampyre mythology.

Review: “No Dominion” by Charlie Huston

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The book is marvelously written and very heavy on dialogue and vivid, yet dark, descriptions. Twists and turns abound, unfolding the story at a steady pace. It is also written as a first-person, present tense story, a style that I usually find jarring and unbelievable.

Slithering Through the Buffy Omnibus: An Interview with Alice Henderson

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Alice is a fascinating individual. While earning her Bachelors degree at Webster University she studied the worldwide distribution of folkloric creatures such as lake serpents like Ogopogo, Bigfoot and the Chupacabra, topics near and dear to my heart. She went on to earn her Masters in Folklore from the University of Oregon, were she translated the Mabinogi. Who else do you know that can cuss in Medieval Welsh?

The Rebel With A Clue: An Interview With Richard Calder

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Roger Cardinal originally coined the term “outsider art” in 1972 to describe Jean Dubuffet’s eccentric but excellent work, but it should have been coined for Richard Calder. Richard has made a career of providing us with a super-surging, neuron burning, paradigm shift when it comes to ground-breaking genre fiction. Legendary genre writers like Michael Moorcock and Norman Spinrad have sung his praises on the public record and with good reason. Calder is a literary maverick.

Snipe Hunting With City Slickers on the Appalachian Trail: An Interview with Scott Nicholson

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Every so often a genre writer comes along whose work just jumps out at me. Greg Bear is one, Neil Gaiman is one. Scott Nicholson is another. I was born in Appalachia and lived a decent amount of my life in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, so Scott’s work is near and dear to my heart. Growing up there, ghost stories were an almost nightly entertainment. My grandmother loved to spin a good yarn. Living in the mountains of North Carolina, Scott too, is a product of that environment.

Review: “‘Salem’s Lot: Illustrated Edition” by Stephen King

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To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the publication of Stephen King’s classic horror novel ‘Salem’s Lot, Doubleday is publishing a new edition of the book in hardcover that includes black-and-white illustrations, a new introduction, fifty pages of additional material deleted from the original manuscript, and two short stories related to events in the novel.

Cover to Cover #175: Wil McCarthy / Tom Piccirilli

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First up this week is Wil McCarthy telling us about his book, To Crush The Moon. Wil’s book tells us a story of how future man will shrink the moon so that it can hold an atmosphere. Sounds impossible, but Wil is a hard science kind of guy and assures us that the book’s concepts are possible. Tune in and hear the details.

After that, Tom Piccirilli takes us down south for some good old-fasioned horror in November Mourns. (And you thought that the south was already scary.)

Review: “Scream Queen” by Edo van Belkom

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So, why am I writing about a card game I played weeks back when I should be informing you about the latest novel sitting on top of my all-to-high reading stack?

When you use cheesy horror tropes to make a card game that spoofs horror stories, you get a fun and exciting game, when you use cheesy horror tropes to make a paperback novel that seriously attempts to be scary, you get a shitty paperback novel, like Scream Queen.