Monthly Archive for December, 2009

Dark in the Dark is a Year Old

As of today, December 27, 2009, Dark in the Dark dot Com is a year old! When I started this blog, I thought that I would try it and see how it went for six months. If I was still having fun with it, I would continue. Now it’s a year later. The site has had over 105,000 page views by over 66,000 unique visitors. (Of course, I don’t know where I would be without my love for the Other Mother.) I have big plans for 2010!

During the year I designed and released two papercrafts of my own, read a lot of books, met a bunch of other great bloggers, and been contacted by publishers and authors to read some good (and not-so-good) books. I’ve written reviews and provided insights into what it’s like to be a monster. Best of all, I’ve heard from readers by email and in the comments. Keep them coming!

My favorite reads from this year (unfortunately, none of these were published in 2009):

My favorite posts from this year:

Three for the Future:

Thanks for a great year. Here’s to 2010.

Published on December 27, 2009 in News. 1 Comment

Happy Darkest Day!

A Very Festive Darkest Day Staircase

As you may or may not expect, it isn’t traditional in my tribe of monsters (specifically haunters of basements and attics) to celebrate Christmas. Yes. Yes. I know it might seem shocking, but monsters can be like that.

It does turn out that we have a holiday very near Christmas that we call Darkest Day. There are even traditional songs to go with Darkest Day. Such as Oh Darkest Day, I’ll be Haunting You, and Crawling up from the Depths. The second song, I’ll be Haunting You, is traditionally screamed, as opposed to anything resembling singing. The other two require quite a bit of moaning and bumping about. Crawling up is singular in that it requires the performer to slam a door at the very end. Ah! It makes me nostalgic talking about such things.

Darkest Day commemorates a special day that happened thousands of years ago in a great monster civilization that has since disappeared. It seems that a team of astronomers had noticed that the sun seemed to be going away. The days had grown shorter and shorter. It was on this day that they noticed that the sun had seemed to stop, and they excitedly announced that it would never come back. Monsters all over the world would gain hours of creeping and haunting time, and our monster GDP would skyrocket. Little did they know that they had unwittingly marked the very day that the sun started coming back. I can only imagine that this was very embarassing.

We monsters don’t generally give gifts around Darkest Day. There are a few traditional things that we do to mark it, however. For example, monsters with hair will get a haircut. It happens that some monsters who do not have hair (or for whom a haircut would be painful, like a Medusa), can get wigs. The wigs are generally black and have very very long hair so that the wearer can have a real cutting experience. (Haha. Get it?) Of course, this is one of those items where richer monsters can show up the neighbors with more expensive wigs. Some very wealthy monsters even hire ghosts to haunt their wigs.

A traditional item we share with humans around this time is the giving of cards. Of course, we do it very differently. We give cards that are made of black paper and put in black envelopes. We do not mail them or even scrawl addresses on them. A proper Darkest Day card is delivered by sneaking up the the recipient’s domicile and sliding it under a door or in a window in such a way that the receiver will be unaware that they even got a card. Unfortunately, such cards are hard to see in the dark. I’m a big fan of paper, though, so I like getting cards and leave them all over my floor to step on during the coming year.

One last tradition that monsters share on this holiday is climbing up stairways in towers. It’s best to have a very long stairway hidden away in a haunted castle or deserted lighthouse, but a good staircase in a derelict hotel or even an apartment building will do. When done properly, a lot of moaning, clanking, and bumping around in the dark creates an especially harrowing tone, and a monster should properly imagine climbing these dark stairs all the way up into the sky, even if their staircase only goes up a few floors.

So there you have it. I hope everyone has a very happy holiday.

Published on December 23, 2009 in News. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Pin-Up of the Week: Astounding Stories March 1936

Astounding Stories March 1936 03
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Published on December 18, 2009 in Pin-up of the Week. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Book Review: Snake Agent by Liz Williams

Snake Agent by Liz WilliamsTo retrieve his wife, a man journeys to hell. How many more times can this tale be told? It’s almost like a band choosing to cover Stairway to Heaven. It has been told perfectly a few times. Countless other writers have tried their hand at it, and most have failed. When I see a man-goes-to-hell-to-retrieve-his-wife story coming, I think to myself. “This better be good.”

Fortunately, it is. I love this book! It begins the way a normal detective novel does, with a vaguely downtrodden detective, Detective Chen. Detective Chen tries not to be cynical. As his police department’s “snake agent”, Chen is in charge of dealing with supernatural crimes. He is brought into a case involving a wealthy woman who has found that her daughter’s soul ended up in hell instead of heaven. Hoping for a simple bureaucratic mix-up, Chen investigates and discovers that someone is trading in souls. Soon he uncovers a conspiracy that may lead straight to the emperor of hell himself.

There are many charming things about this book. Not the least of which is the matter-of-fact way the book lays out its own internal mythology. For example, when asked about what happens when you die, Detective Chen tells it like it is: Souls take a journey through regions with names like the Sea of Night and the Night Harbor on their way to the afterlife, where they are processed by the bureaucratic departments of heaven or hell and then eventually reincarnated. Along the way they are shown their past life, what they will most likely be reincarnated as, and given a special drink which makes them forget everything before they are shuttled back to the living. It is in this sort of play that the book excels.

My only real complaint is that there are too many dues ex machinas. I personally enjoy a dues ex machina here or there, but when there are too many, I think it can be a suspense killer. On the other hand, I enjoyed that conventional detective fiction characters abound in Snake Agent. There is the oafish sergeant, the rogue cop, the captain who is beholden to local politics, and the vaguely threatened detective’s wife. Once the book builds up steam and really kicks into gear, though, a lot of these conventions are broken or twisted. For example, the detective’s wife goes from being vaguely threatened to being on an adventure of her own, and the rogue cop turns out to be a more complex character than one would expect. The book eventually stops being a detective novel and turns into a fantastic journey through hell.

Creepy Factor: 4 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 4 out of 5
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 2 out of 5
Funny and/or Strange Factor: 5 out of 5

Final result: Great adventure, Chinese mythology, evil alchemists, soul trading, great cover art… This book has it all! Mmmmmm. Fans of dark fantasy such as Clive Barker’s Imajica will be excited to get their hands on some intelligent writing. Fans of detective fiction will be gratified to find a new series of novels with a fresh twist on the genre. The story is ancient, the plotting is Shakespearean, the humor is thick, and it’s a real page-turner. I love this book! I am simultaneously excited and scared to read the next one.

Snake Agent by Liz Williams – Night Shade Books – 2005
Get Snake Agent on Amazon

Thanks for reading another one of my book reviews. See you next time!

Published on December 15, 2009 in Book Reviews. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

Pinup of the Week: Terror Tales July 1938

Terror Tales July 1938 07-08 vol 9 no 3 goldie

Mmmmmmanufaturing duplicates of a hot redhead with a strange drill. Fascinating.

HELL’S STATION MASTER
FEATURE-LENGTH
HORROR NOVEL
by ARTHUR LEO ZAGAT

*

DEATH IS A WOMAN
A BLOOD-CHILLING
MYSTERY NOVELETTE
by WAYNE ROGERS

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Published on December 11, 2009 in Pin-up of the Week. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .