Holiday Gifts for Horror Fans
As the song says, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year!” The holidays are in full swing, and that means it’s present-buying time. Have a horror fan in your life? Then allow me to recommend some books from Pan’s publisher, StarWarp Concepts, that might grab their attention—by the throat, of course!
Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1: This critically acclaimed novel by yours truly explains how teenaged Goth girl Pandora Zwieback, along with her parents and friends, are drawn into a conflict between an immortal, shape-shifting monster hunter named Annie and warring vampire clans searching for the key to an ultimate weapon (or so the legend goes)—a key that just so happens to have been delivered to the horror-themed museum owned by Pan’s father! It’s a character-driven action-fest featuring the kind of gun-toting vampires that would make Selene from the Underworld movies feel right at home, and it leads immediately into the second novel:
Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2: Pan faces even greater challenges as the vampire clans draw up plans to go to war with humanity. Leading the charge is a fallen angel named Zaqiel, whose previous attempt at subjugating the world was stopped by Annie—who, back in the day, was Zaqiel’s lover! But Pan isn’t about to let some ancient monster win the day, not when the lives of her parents and friends—along with those of every human on the planet—are at stake, so she leads a charge of her own. Yes, there’s more vampire gunplay involved—the undead sure do like their firearms—but that’s only part of the dangers Pan has to contend with, as her adventures take her to a mysterious South Pacific island where monsters dwell!
Carmilla: The blood-drenched temptress of this 19th-century novella by author J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla Karnstein is a vampiress who desires not just blood but love from her victims, and when she enters the life of a young woman named Laura, Carmilla decides that her new friend will become her next great love—and won’t take no for an answer. Regarded as the one of the earliest lesbian vampire tales—if not the first—Carmilla was an influence on author Bram Stoker in the creation of the vampire brides in his seminal novel, Dracula, and remains a popular character in fiction to this day. The StarWarp Concepts edition features six all-new illustrations by artist Eliseu Gouveia.
King Kong: The ultimate version of Beauty and the Beast (with killer biplanes—and dinosaurs!) celebrates its 85th anniversary this year, is currently a hit musical on Broadway, and has its star getting ready for his upcoming bout with the King of the Monsters in 2020’s Godzilla vs. Kong. Know a Kong fan or a devotee of the Great White Way? Then they’ll definitely enjoy this digital-exclusive Illustrated Classic: the 1932 novelization of the original Kong movie! Written by Delos W. Lovelace, based on the screenplay by James A. Creelman and Ruth Rose, it includes scenes cut from the final print and, as a bonus, our edition features six exclusive illustrations by pulp-influenced artist Paul Tuma.
White Fell—The Werewolf: Looking for a tale of female empowerment? Then how about this SWC Horror Bite by renowned author, artist, and suffragette Clemence Annie Housman that’s regarded by scholars as the first feminist werewolf story ever published! Abeautiful woman wanders into a snowbound village—and into the hearts of twin brothers, one of whom immediately becomes smitten by her. The other brother, however, soon grows suspicious of the enigmatic White Fell. Where did she come from? And is her sudden appearance somehow related to the recent sightings of a bloodthirsty wolf in the area?
Blood Feud, Blood Reign, Carmilla, and White Fell are available in print and digital formats. King Kong is a digital exclusive. Visit their respective product pages for ordering information, as well as sample pages and chapters.
It’s Turkey Day!
We all knew the day would come when science found a way to combine main courses with desserts in an unholy marriage of sweet and savory—and thus is born the Turpumpkin™! All we can say is…
Happy Fearsgiving!
DriveThru’s 2018 Cyber Sale Is Underway!
Beating the rush before the post-Thanksgiving shopping season goes into overdrive this weekend, e-book distributor DriveThru Fiction—along with its sister sites DriveThru Comics and DriveThru RPG—has launched its annual Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sale, during which you can purchase a ton of digital books and comics at special prices! It runs from now to November 26—and yes, you’ll need to set up an account (it’s free) to take advantage of this promotion.
Included among the many participating publishers is StarWarp Concepts (of course), which means you can take advantage of some sweet discounts while the sale’s running. So head on over there now and get to shopping!
A Movie Treat for Monster Fans
If you’re a fan of classic monsters like Dracula, the Wolfman, and Frankenstein’s Monster, then you’re probably aware that 2018 is the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s iconic novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, first unleashed on the public in January 1818.
With that in mind, the timing couldn’t be better for the U.S. Library of Congress to make available a restored print of world-famous inventor Thomas Edison’s 1910 silent-movie adaptation—the first time Frankenstein’s Monster stalked the silver screen!
Frankenstein was a self-described “liberal adaptation of Mrs. Shelley’s famous story” by writer/director J. Searle Dawley that was produced by Edison and starred Augustus Phillips as Frankenstein (no first name of Victor given; he even signs a love letter “Frankenstein”!); Mary Fuller as his bride-to-be Elizabeth; and Charles Ogle as the monster. It runs just over 13 minutes but packs in a lot of melodrama—and scenery chewing—in that short time. (Well, overacting was a staple of silent movies.)
It’s also surprisingly gruesome in one scene. Although Frankenstein doesn’t dig up graves and sew corpses together but instead uses chemical magic to “grow” his monster in cauldron-like pot—one of those liberties taken by Dawley in his screenplay—the transformation of the creature from smoking chemical vapors to full-size horror involves a stage when it bubbles up into a gore-covered skeleton whose twitchy right hand seems to be grasping for the audience—I’m sure it scared the crap out of moviegoers back in the day!
Do yourself a favor and check it out!
Beast Wishes On This Special Day
It’s Halloween in Queens!
That’s right, Halloween is coming to Pan’s hometown borough of Queens, NY! And in my wanderings around the area, here’s a picture I took of a window at an auto parts store in the Western Queens neighborhood of Astoria. Truly, it’s the season of the witch!
Halloween Horrors: Holy Infinity War!
Creepily timed for Halloween, may I present the graves of…Antman and the Wasp!
Yes, the graves are real, but they have nothing to do with the Marvel superheroes, or the outcome of the “Snapocalypse” carried out by the “mad titan” Thanos in the box-office megahit Avengers: Infinity War. I took the Antman photo in 2013 at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, NY, and the Wasp photo in 2016 at Calvary Cemetery in Queens, NY.
Pretty wild, huh? And any similarities to (spoilers!) the ending of Ant-Man and the Wasp are purely coincidental…
DriveThru’s 2018 Halloween Sale Is Underway!
With the Spooky Season officially in high gear, e-book distributor DriveThru Comics has launched its annual Halloween sale, during which you can purchase thousands of horror-themed digital books and comics at special prices! It runs from now to November 1—and yes, you’ll need to set up an account (it’s free) to take advantage of this promotion. Included among the many participating publishers is StarWarp Concepts (of course), which means you can get the following titles at lower prices:
Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1 is my young adult novel that’s perfect for lovers of dark urban fantasy.It introduces readers to Pandora Zwieback, a 16-year-old Goth girl who’s spent the last decade being treated for mental health problems because she can see monsters. It’s only after she meets professional monster hunter Sebastienne “Annie” Mazarin that Pan discovers she’s never been ill—her so-called “monstervision” is actually a supernatural gift that allows her to see into Gothopolis, the not-so-mythical shadow world that exists right alongside the human world. In Blood Feud, Pan, her parents and friends, and Annie are drawn into a conflict among warring vampire clans searching for the key to an ultimate weapon (or so the legend goes)—a key that just so happens to have been delivered to the horror-themed museum owned by Pan’s father. It’s a character-driven action-fest that leads immediately into the second novel:
Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2: Pan and Annie face even greater challenges as the vampire clans draw up plans to go to war with humanity. Leading the charge is a fallen angel named Zaqiel, whose previous attempt at subjugating the world was stopped by Annie—who, back in the day, was Zaqiel’s lover! But Pan isn’t about to let some ancient monster win the day, not when the lives of her parents and friends—along with those of every human on the planet—are at stake, so she leads a charge of her own. But whose side is going to emerge the victor remains to be seen…
The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1 is a spinoff from the novel series. In this 56-page, full-color comic special, the teenaged Goth adventuress battles Gothic Lolita vampires in a shopping mall and a jealous, man-stealing siren in the middle of New York’s Central Park. It features stories by me and Sholly Fisch (Scooby-Doo Team-Up, Mighty Mouse), art by Eliseu Gouveia (The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0), comic-art legend Ernie Colon (Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld), and Elizabeth Watasin (Charm School), and cover art by award-winning artist Henar Torinos (Mala Estrella).
Troubleshooters, Incorporated: Night Stalkings is a general readers’ graphic novel about a group of supernatural-superheroes-for-hire taking on their first case. The team consists of a wizard, a female ninja, a sorceress, a werewolf, and a rock ’n’ roll lighting designer wearing high-tech armor. Sure, they might not be on a power level with the Avengers or Justice League of America—they’re more like superpowered Ghostbusters—but they get the job done. The graphic novel is written by the husband-and-white team of Richard C. White (Terra Incognito: A Guide to Building the Worlds of Your Imagination, For a Few Gold Pieces More, Harbinger of Darkness) and Joni M. White, and illustrated by Reggie Golden and Randy Zimmerman.
And Snow White is the classic story by the Brothers Grimm that’s been adapted numerous times. The SWC edition features incredibly lush full-color illustrations first published in 1883.
Again, the Halloween sale runs through November 1 (the Day of the Dead!), so head over to the StarWarp Concepts publisher page at DriveThru Comics and start shopping!
Spooktacular Reads from StarWarp Concepts for Halloween
Now that October has arrived and the Spooky Season is in full swing, are you looking for chilling tales of the supernatural to enjoy, as you anxiously wait for Halloween? Then look no further than StarWarp Concepts’ backlist of titles that are perfect for horror fans young and old!
Illustrated Classics
Carmilla: J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s 19th-century classic vampiric tale of love gone wrong. Laura is so desperate for a friend that when a young woman named Carmilla practically turns up on the doorstep of the castle owned by Laura’s father, she thinks her prayers for companionship have been answered. But as she comes to realize, Carmilla isn’t as interested in making friends as she is in spilling blood. Regarded as the one of the earliest female vampire tales—if not the first—Carmilla was an influence on author Bram Stoker in the creation of the vampire brides in his seminal novel, Dracula, and remains a popular character in fiction to this day. Just like with A Princess of Mars, the SWC edition contains six original illustrations done especially for StarWarp Concepts by super-talented comic artist Eliseu Gouveia, whose work you’re familiar with if you’ve downloaded The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0, or purchased The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1.
King Kong: SWC’s e-book-exclusive Illustrated Classics edition of the official novelization of the renowned motion picture, which is celebrating its 85th anniversary this year. Written by Delos W. Lovelace, based on the story by Edgar Wallace and Merian C. Cooper and the screenplay by James A. Creelman and Ruth Rose, the SWC edition of King Kong features scenes that didn’t appear in the final cut of the film—including the notorious “spider pit” sequence in which Kong’s human pursuers are attacked by horrific arachnids and insects. What makes this version special is that it contains six exclusive, original black-and-white illustrations by comics artist Paul Tuma, whose pulp-influenced style has appeared in the pages of The Twilight Avenger, Flare, and Dan Turner: Hollywood Detective.
Snow White: The classic story by the Brothers Grimm. Featuring full-color illustrations first published in 1883 (and they really are beautiful drawings), this digital-exclusive titleis available for immediate download for the wickedly low price of just 99¢!
SWC Horror Bites
White Fell—The Werewolf: Originally published in 1896 as The Were-wolf, it was written by renowned author, artist, and suffragette Clemence Annie Housman, and is regarded by scholars as perhaps the first feminist werewolf story. It’s also the launch title of our SWC Horror Bites line of chapbooks. In it, twin brothers encounter a beautiful, mysterious woman known only as White Fell—a woman one brother believes is a murderous werewolf. Complications arise when his twin falls in love with White Fell. Can he save his brother before he falls completely under her spell?
Young Adult Novels
Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1: This critically acclaimed novel is the beginning of Pan’s story, explaining how she, her parents and friends, and Annie are drawn into a conflict among warring vampire clans searching for the key to an ultimate weapon (or so the legend goes)—a key that just so happens to have been delivered to the horror-themed museum owned by Pan’s father. It’s a character-driven action-fest that leads immediately into the second novel:
Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2: Pan and Annie face even greater challenges as the vampire clans draw up plans to go to war with humanity. Leading the charge is a fallen angel named Zaqiel, whose previous attempt at subjugating the world was stopped by Annie—who, back in the day, was Zaqiel’s lover! But Pan isn’t about to let some ancient monster win the day, not when the lives of her parents and friends—along with those of every human on the planet—are at stake, so she leads a charge of her own. But whose side is going to emerge the victor remains to be seen…
Carmilla, White Fell, Blood Feud, and Blood Reign are available in print and digital formats; King Kong and Snow White are digital exclusives. Visit their respective product pages at StarWarp Concepts for ordering information.