John Everson's Blog

THIS IS MY “What I Did On My Summer Vacation” blog, edition 2025! This year, the Eversons did not plan a big trip (like last year to NYC) but I did have an action-packed week at the end of June with two concerts, a Shakespeare in the park performance and a pinball tournament!

The Play’s the Thing…

A couple of years ago, when my son Shaun first went to University of Iowa, I discovered that there is an outdoor theatre there in Iowa City modeled after London’s Globe Theatre. The Riverside Theatre performs free Shakespeare plays there every summer. I caught Twelfth Night that first year and fell in love with this program, but couldn’t come back last year for Julius Caesar. This year, I made it a point to drive the three hours and see this year‘s production – Romeo and Juliet.

It wasn’t the best heat index night for an outdoor Shakespeare play (it was 91° when they started performing) but it was still a super fun, amazing experience. The actors did a phenomenal job and really brought life to those centuries-old words. Iambic Pentameter rules!

If you have ever been a fan of Shakespeare, I highly recommend making the trip for whatever the put on next year. It’s a beautiful outdoor theater and a wonderful experience. No microphones, no special effects, just the poetry of the bard as it was meant to be heard.

Going back to Copperhead Road…

I loved Steve Earle back in the early ’90s when he hit it big with “Copperhead Road.” And then, a couple years later, he kind of dropped out of sight. When I saw he was going to be at the Englert Theatre in Iowa City a couple days after the Shakespeare play, I decided to make a “vacation” of it, and stayed in Iowa City at Shaun’s vacant college apartment from Sunday – Wednesday so I could do both.

Earle did not disappoint. He is celebrating his 50th anniversary in the music business, and with just him and a guitar (and occasional harmonica), he ran through a two-hour set playing his key songs in order of release (which was a little unusual since his big hits were in the middle – there was no big song for the encore!) He talked about the genesis of all the songs and explained the drug bust, prison term and rehab that took him out of the limelight just as he’d “made it big.”

His sister Stacey opened the concert and did a duet with him, which was one of my favorite performances of the night. Here’s a supercut of a few of the songs:

It was a great night of Americana!

Always time for a beer…

While I was in Iowa City, I played pinball at SpareMe and TapTap, a couple of my favorite places, and did a little writing at two of my favorite breweries, Reunion and Big Grove. And… I checked out another brewery just north of there, Field Day in North Liberty in the midst of a torrential downpour that finally killed the 90+ degree heatwave. It was definitely a nice break.

Then, on my way home from Iowa City, I stopped off at LeClaire, IA, a little town just off I-80 on the Mississippi River. I’ve been passing it now every couple months for two years, so… it was time. And I’m glad I did! I discovered a great little spot – Green Tree Brewery – with a great river view. I enjoyed their Bodhi Boy IPA so much that I brought home some cans.

Always with the Silver Ball

I was barely home an hour from my Iowa City sojourn when I went right back out to Batavia, IL. I played in a pinball tournament that night, and probably thanks to the two nights of practice in Iowa City, I actually played really well and got in the finals that night…oh, and it was at another brewery by the way – Grainology. I hit five breweries ultimately in four days!

If You Leave…

I chilled out for a couple days but then was back in action on Saturday, because Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark was playing a show at Chicago’s Riviera Theater. I saw them there three years ago and they were great, so I had to do it again since they have released a new CD, Bauhaus Staircase since then (it’s great!)

This time around, I went with my friends Warwick and Dove, who run the amazing Ghoulish Mortals store in St. Charles, IL. And… I got to introduce them to one of my favorite Chicago gastropubs beforehand – Hopleaf. We had a nice dinner overlooking Clark St. before heading to the show.

Here’s a “supercut” video of some of the songs from the show, from “If You Leave” to “Enola Gay.”

All in all… it was a pretty amazing week – and there is plenty of summer fun still to come!

The post Summer 25: Shakespeare, Copperhead Road, Pinball and OMD appeared first on John Everson ~ Dark Arts.

IT’S HARD TO BELIEVE that HorrorHound 2025 is already a week in the past! I had a blast there, as I always do, but this time around had a couple atypical highlights! Aside from fun dinners with my friends from Synapse Films and hanging out all day with horror fans and readers, I got to meet and talk to Christina Lindberg (star of 1973’s Thriller: A Cruel Picture / They Call Her One-Eye) and I managed to set a personal high game on pinball (pinball? at a horror con?) More on both of those in a second.

It’s just over a 5-hour drive for me, and I lose an hour with the time change, so I go in to HorrorHound on Thursday evening and set up on Friday. This time around, on the way into town, I stopped at Jungle Jim’s International Market, an insanely large supermarket that has to be seen to be believed. I was hoping to find Melvin Brewing IPA, an ale I love that I bought there a couple years ago, but no such luck. Instead, I found Troeg’s Perpetual IPA, which I enjoyed when I was in Pennsylvania for the Dark Drafts Horror Authors Festival in January, so that was my “find” of the weekend.

On Friday morning, I had my habitual breakfast at Waffle House (we don’t have them in Illinois, so I HAVE to stop) and this time around I got a picture with the manager, Mel, who is hilarious and seems to be there whenever I’m in town. I always enjoy her antics when I’m there.

I ran into Daniela Fullam (Little Punk People) and her son Elliott (of Terrifier 2-3 fame) a couple times at the start of the show when I was unloading and setting up my booth, which was a cool reunion.  I first met them when Daniela was an artist with a booth next to mine at Flashback Weekend over a dozen years ago and Elliott was just a little kid who played video games that weekend with my son, Shaun. Fast forward a decade and I have her art on the walls of my office, and now Elliott’s much taller than me and a guest VIP at these cons!

Back around the time I met Daniela all those years ago at Flashback Weekend, I also briefly met Christina Lindberg, whose character in Thriller: A Cruel Picture inspired Daryl Hannah’s character in Quentin Tarrantino’s Kill Bill. At the time, I had no idea who she was, and I’ve regretted not saying anything to her all these years, since I now own several of her films (and three copies of Thriller!)

So it was pretty awesome that on the last day of the show, I stole away from my booth for five minutes and was able to talk briefly, and get a picture with her. You can see a full tour of the hall, some great cosplay images and pictures of Christina signing my poster in the video below (that’s her on the freeze frame).

About that pinball thing…

So last year, I discovered that a barcade called Arcade Legacy had opened across the street from my HorrorHound hotel, and the last couple shows I’ve spent all my nights there, because they have dozens of pinball machines (and a bar!) One of my old favorites, a rare Star Gazer, was in the back being worked on this time, so I played more of the newer games than usual Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. I tried to get a feel for the new Dungeons & Dragons table, practiced a little on Jaws and Deadpool, remembered why I’ve always had a soft spot for Dr. Dude, and on Saturday night, while my friend Dave Kosanke was there, I played the Batman table, which I haven’t touched in a long while. I ended up setting my personal best score on it (like, 5x my previous best) as well as the #1 score on the table! Dave is my witness!

So many conversations…

When I wasn’t playing pinball, I was in the convention center talking to my friends at Synapse and Severin Films, and my booth neighbors Michael West and Tony Acree and dozens of readers and fans who stopped by my booth. The weekend went by in a flash thanks to them. Since I don’t have anyone else to “mind my booth” at these shows, I really didn’t get out to see any panels or other guests besides Christina. I would have loved to have met director Ti West, who I’ve followed since I saw his The Roost at a midnight movie showing at SXSW almost 20 years ago, but I did see him walk down our aisle at one point (too late to flag him down!)

Here are just a few shout outs to the people who made my weekend So. Much. Fun!!

Some I didn’t get to talk to enough but… I can’t wait to see them all again: Kay Ratliff, Josh Burton, Linsi Miller, Rena Bands, Sean Provost, Carol LaBranche, Dave Kosanke, Jerry Chandler, Don May, Rafael Diaz, Matt Harding, Erica Kauffman, Rachel Thieme, Daniela Calcaterra Fullam, Elliott Fullam and, of course, my booth neighbors Michael West, Tony Acree and Robin Blankenship.

I can’t wait now for September HorrorHound Weekend to roll around again. Huge thanks to Nathan Hanneman and all of his amazing staff for putting on the best horror con of the Midwest, if not the country!

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LAST MONTH WAS Chicago’s annual January Giallo film series and if you follow my Facebook posts, you know that I had a blast attending and signing books there (here’s a picture of me with one of the awesome guys from Severin Films!)

But this month, it’s time for February Giallo, my giallo novel book sale!

My publisher, Flame Tree Press, has put both my giallo tribute novels, Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds and The Bloodstained Doll on an ebook sale for just 99 cents! on all platforms for the next couple weeks. They’ll be featured in e-newsletters like Crave Books, JustKindleBooks, Bargain Booksy and 13HorrorStreet, so I’m hoping this will get the books in a lot of readers’ hands who don’t know my work yet.

If you don’t have copies of these novels and you’re here reading my blog, I hope you’ll take this chance to get ’em while they are cheap. And if you could help spread the word about the sale, I’d really appreciate it! I’ve posted about the sale on my Facebook, BlueSky, Instagram and other social portals, so if you could repost those and help amplify the message, that would be awesome!

Here are direct links to the book sale pages:

AMAZON:
Bloodstained Doll: https://www.amazon.com/Bloodstained-Doll-John-Everson-ebook/dp/B0D4MGFNQW/

Five Deaths: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B098TZFKNJ/

B&N:
Bloodstained Doll: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-bloodstained-doll-john-everson/1145621575?ean=9781787588899

Five Deaths: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/five-deaths-for-seven-songbirds-john-everson/1139805883?ean=9781787586291

KOBO:
Bloodstained Doll: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-bloodstained-doll

Five Deaths: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/five-deaths-for-seven-songbirds

GOOGLE PLAY:
Bloodstained Doll: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/John_Everson_The_Bloodstained_Doll?id=ASMJEQAAQBAJ

Five Deaths: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/John_Everson_Five_Deaths_for_Seven_Songbirds?id=UGM3EAAAQBAJ

The post It’s time for February Giallo! appeared first on John Everson ~ Dark Arts.

SOMEHOW, IT’S ALREADY been a week since I was in Pennsylvania for the Dark Drafts Festival at Bube’s Brewery. Jan. 24-26, 2025 was really a weekend that I will remember forever because it was an adventure all around. Tiffany Koplin from the Facebook Books of Horror group encouraged me to sign on at the Tomes of Terror event last fall and I was nervous about doing it for a couple reasons:

A) I’ve never driven that far to a con and if I went, I wanted to drive so I could take a good selection of books. And…

B) I didn’t really look forward to traveling in late January, when ice storms and blizzards are often the weather forecast. I drive a Mustang, so if there was a snowstorm that week, I was screwed.

But I lucked out there. The weather stayed great the entire weekend. I left Thursday after work and stayed overnight near Cleveland (the halfway point, which also gave me the opportunity to have dinner at a fave chain – B.J.’s Brewhouse). I hit a few snow flurries, but that was it. Leaving Thursday allowed me to get into town in Mt. Joy, Pa. in the afternoon on Friday instead of driving 11 hours straight, so I had time (and energy) to unload and participate in the VIP functions that night.

Friday – Pre-Game

I have never driven past Cleveland on I-80 before, so I enjoyed the rolling hills of east Ohio and Pennsylvania after the boring flatland of Illinois and Indiana. And it was kind of cool to drive underneath small mountains! There are a handful of tunnels that you go through in Pa.

Before I went to the event site, I decided to make a stop at Vortex Books & Comics in Columbia, Pa., just a few minutes away, to visit my old Delirium Books and Leisure Books labelmate Brian Keene. He just opened the store a year or so ago and it’s a super cool space. Right on the corner of a downtown area, packed with comics and well-curated books. I knew I was going to see him later that night at Dark Drafts, but I wanted to make sure I saw his store before the weekend got crazy.

It was already dark by the time I got to the brewery, and things were in frantic motion there as they finished setting up for the evening’s VIP party. I met Kate Hopkins and Kendra Allen, who put the whole thing together, checked into the hostel-style room upstairs and dragged all my books to my table for setup later.

Then… I headed to the bar to grab a quick dinner and to check out the thing I’d been wondering about for weeks:

Everson IPA.

The brewer, Tony Morrell, had tapped a West Coast IPA two days earlier that was named in my honor, and I was anxious to know if I was going to like it or not…

Luckily, I loved it!

Thanks to J.A. Barrios, who had dinner next to me at the bar, for shooting a picture of me seconds after my first sip!

Brian Keene and Mary SanGiovanni came over for the VIP party that night, so I hung out upstairs with them for a bit and reconnected with Wesley Southard for the first time in ages.

After some fun reminiscing about World Horror Conventions and other things of old, we all went down to the bar for the VIP party and everyone tried on the mic for karaoke (I sang The Cure’s “Boys Don’t Cry”). Several Everson IPAs were quaffed before bed that night.

And bed, I might add, was in a pretty cool location.

The brewery has a few rooms on the top floor that share a communal bathroom. Each is a theme room, and I had the Arabian Nights room for the weekend.

It was comfy and cool:

Saturday – Game On!

Saturday morning began with a VIP breakfast courtesy of Dark Drafts, which was awesome. I don’t usually eat breakfast, but since I was going to be behind a table all day, it was just what I needed. And then I went downstairs with my coffee to finish setting up the table.

The layout for the weekend was kind of like an author treasure hunt. There were over 40 authors at the show and the brewery had rooms all over. There were four rooms on the main floor with a handful of authors each (I was in one of those). Then upstairs in the big ballroom/breakfast area, there were a bunch of authors. And then in the two lower levels (“the catacombs”) there were a bunch more!

So attendees roamed all over the brewery all day.

I was next to Ben Farthing, whose name I had known from Books of Horror, but who I hadn’t read before the show. He was a great table partner, and at the end of the show, we swapped books — I immediately read his I Found A Circus Tent In The Woods Behind My House when I got home last week and loved it.

I talked to a bunch of readers, and met a guy who had had me sign copies of Covenant and Sacrifice the last time I was at an east coast event — Horrorfind in 2012. I signed The 13th for him this time around.

While I didn’t get to meet as many of the other authors as I wanted, due to us being so spread out, I did meet a bunch, and everyone was super cool.

I was especially psyched to finally meet Dan Franklin (whose Down Into the Sea is amazing!) Dan is not only a great author, but he is my editor at Cemetery Dance, so it was awesome to be able to spend a little time talking about the cover and contents of my upcoming short fiction collection, All Triggers, No Warnings, that they’ll be publishing late this spring.

I also had a great time talking with Candace Nola (who told me stories about mustard that I will not repeat) and Leigh Kenny who came in all the way from Ireland. Brad Ricks helped keep me brave enough to do karaoke on Saturday and Sunday nights and Lisa Breanne pullled me into the end of the masquerade on Saturday night. She is an IPA lover, like me, so she brought me some IPAs from the Northwest to try — Fremont’s Lush IPA, Ninkasi’s Total Domination IPA and Scuttlebutt’s Living Daylights hazy IPA. I brought her some of the Midwest’s best — Bell’s Hopslam and 3 Floyd’s Zombie Dust and Turbo Reaper.

Prior to the masquerade (and a turn at the karaoke mic for “Blister in the Sun”), I hopped in the car to explore the area a little. Thanks to the recommendation of an attendee, I went to dinner at Mad Chef Craft Brewing, a pretty hoppin’ brewery about 10 minutes away. I loved their Green Lights IPA so much I brought home a crowler.

While I was there, I did some writing and ended up in a long conversation with another couple at the bar. It’s the unexpected things that you run into on road trips that are the best!

Sunday, Fun Day

I was moving a little slow on Sunday morning after a late night with lots of beer, but so was everyone else! Traffic at the show was a lot slower than Saturday, so I took some time to talk with some of the other authors, traded some books and talked a bit with my (somewhat) local friends Tiffany Koplin and Staci Mae from Books of Horror.

At one point, they pulled me into the brewery to take a professional picture with my Everson IPA, which was fun… and later that night, I actually met the brewer, Tony, who was super cool. We talked for at least a half an hour about beer styles and hops. Definitely another unexpected high point of the weekend.

When the show proper was over on Sunday afternoon, I packed everything in the car and headed back over to Vortex before they closed. I realized that I had not actually gotten the chance to LOOK at what was on the shelves when I got into town, because I just talked to Brian. This time, I bought a copy of Suburban Gothic by Brian Keene and Bryan Smith, which I’ve wanted to pick up for years, so now I have a signed copy. Going to have to connect with Bryan one of these days to get the other signature!

I stopped for dinner at Loxley’s, a cool place that Wes Southard recommended; great beer menu and it looks like a fun place in the summer with all sorts of outdoor space. Tried a couple of IPAs there (Big Oyster’s Hammerhead and Funk’s Super West Coast), but wasn’t blown away by anything like the night before at Mad Chef.

So then I headed back to Bube’s, (which is when I met Tony) and after dropping a growler of Everson IPA in my room, I briefly joined a ghosthunting tour of the brewery. They were using phone apps that can pick up low radio waves that ghosts supposedly can use to communicate with the living. I have to say, I am glad I saw it, and heard some voices from the apps, but… I remain wildly skeptical of using mobile phone apps to talk to spirits. Even though one of the apps did spit out “John” shortly after I walked in the room. It’s a common name, after all. And it said nothing else that seemed non-random. At one point, I stood where there was a cold spot seconds before and felt nothing. The ghosts are gonna have to give me a little more than that to make me a believer.

Eventually, I returned to the bar for a round of karaoke with Brad Ricks (I sang The Replacement’s “I’ll Be You,” and Dire Straits’ “Sultans of Swing.”) I didn’t close the place down that night, since I had to be up at dawn to do the 11-hour drive home. It was actually a good drive; I hopped onto a couple conference calls for the dayjob which helped kill a couple hours. And when I got home, instead of collapsing, I took my wife out to Miller’s Alehouse for dinner. So after a weekend at a brewery, I closed it off with my favorite 3 Floyd’s Zombie Dust pale ale.

All in all, it was a phenomenal weekend. I just wish I’d taken more pictures and gotten to talk to some of the other authors more. Maybe next year?!

Here are some more photos from the weekend, including one of my book and beer haul!

The post Dark Drafts: A Weekend of Authors and Ales appeared first on John Everson ~ Dark Arts.

HERE WE ARE AGAIN. It seems like I write these New Year’s Eve retrospectives more and more frequently… the days slip by faster and faster!

2024 was, overall, a pretty good year for me. The one sad note was that we lost our cockatiel Stormy over the summer, who was truly the light of our house for the past decade. You can read about her here.

The highlight of the year was a family vacation over the summer to New York City – our first vacation since COVID. And this one was especially important to me, because I wanted to be the one to introduce my son Shaun to one of my favorite cities (I fell in love with the Big Apple when I was just a year older than him and lived there for a summer on a magazine internship when I was in college!) We saw three musicals (including Hamilton!), went to three jazz clubs and hit most of the major sites, from Battery Park to Central Park. You can see some pictures and video from that trip here.

Another highlight for me was that I met one of my favorite Italian directors, Sergio Martino. In January, he appeared for two nights at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago to introduce and do Q&A for two of his classic giallo films, The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh and Torso.

A couple years ago, I found Sergio through Facebook and he agreed to look at my “giallo homage” novel … After reading it, he was kind enough to give me a wonderful promotional blurb for Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds. I never imagined at that point that I would ever get to meet him in person but there ya go. You just never know! You can read about my fanboy night here.

Book Tours and More…

This year, I celebrated 30 years as a published author and released two new books – Living Death Race (a Deathrace 2000/Zombie novella) and The Bloodstained Doll (a new giallo murder-mystery-thriller) – so I spent a lot of time on the “book tour” road over the summer and fall. My novel The Night Mother was also nominated for a Splatterpunk Award, so… it was a good year in books!

I also travelled to two weddings: my nephew Collin got married in Ohio in the summer and my friend Jerry Chandler’s daughter Noa (who’s like my niece!) got married in Detroit in the Fall.

Between the weddings, horror conventions, pinball shows, driving my son Shaun back and forth to college and a work trip, this year I visited 8 cities outside of Illinois:

San DiegoCincinnatiIndianapolisMilwaukeeDetroitKalamazooIowa CityCleveland (a suburb, anyway)

I was part of the Grand Opening week of the new Barnes & Noble in Oswego and did a bunch of other book events in Illinois. I got around in 2024.

I also finally caved in to “social pressure” and joined TikTok and BlueSky. I actually enjoyed playing with the video editing tools on TikTok a lot more than I thought I would, and started a “Books with a Bird” book review roundup of my book reads with my cockatoo Kiwi.

Doing those videos probably helped me to finish reading a couple extra books this year (here’s the most recent Books with a Bird if you’re curious). I actually read 15 books this year, more than I have in several years.

Books

My favorite book that I read this year was Scott Kenemore‘s Edge of the Wire, an awesome sci-fi/horror-in-space novel that reminded me of the best of classic SF with the menace of Alien. I highly recommend this one (my blurb for it ended up on the cover!)

Another standout was Michael Laimo‘s erotic thriller Missed Connection. Michael and I started out together 25 years ago on Delirium Books but it’s been a decade since he has published. His switch from horror to thriller worked great – this book was a huge return for him.

I also read a bunch of novels that have been sitting FOREVER on my TBR pile. I totally loved Carl Hiaasen‘s Razor Girl, Richard Laymon‘s Midnight’s Lair, Christa Faust‘s Choke Hold and Bryan Smith‘s Depraved.

I also had the pleasure this fall of publishing an awesome book on my own Dark Arts imprint in 2024. Brian Pinkerton‘s super fun trilogy of zombie novellas has been out-of-print for years, and so I reissued an omnibus edition collecting all three books as the How I Started The Apocalypse omnibus edition.

Read more about it on the Dark Arts Books site!

Movies

I am a huge film fan (which explains why two of my last three novels are homages to the Italian giallo films of the 70s). So every year I track the films I watch. In 2024, I saw just over 90 films. Like most years, the majority of them were made before 1985, because I’m kind of obsessed with 60s-80s cinema.

BUT, I also saw some modern films, and the ones that topped my list with 5-star ratings were three that I watched last January since they were up for Oscar Awards: Poor Things, The Holdovers and, yeah, I’ll admit it, Barbie! I also really loved the Dune sequel and Ghostbusters Frozen Kingdom.

My top 4-star views were Sergio Martino‘s American Rickshaw, Umberto Lenzi‘s Brothers Til We Die, a gorgeous Blu-Ray remaster of Michele Suavi’s Dellamorte Dellamore which I had seen on DVD years ago and didn’t appreciate as much then, and the David Bowie vehicle Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, a film I’ve waited 40 years to see – the soundtrack is one of my favorite soundtracks and all these years I somehow managed to never see the film.

Music

I was a music critic for 20 years for a Chicago area newspaper, so it’s a little disconcerting to be, admittedly, a little out-of-the-loop these days when it comes to new releases. Shaun has turned me on to some new acts, which I’ve enjoyed (seeing Beabadoobee at Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom this fall was awesome and her 2024 album This is How Tomorrow Moves is great).

But while I do like some new acts, my favorite release of the year is a no-contest. The Cure, my favorite band ever, released their first album in 16 years on November 1, and Songs of a Lost World is awesome. It follows the same moody architecture as Bloodflowers, one of my favorite albums of theirs and I absolutely love it.

I saw a crazy amount of concerts this year, many of them on the “80s nostalgia trail” with Brian Pinkerton. Sadly, the last show I went to may have given me tinnitus forever; I stayed way too close to the stage for the Actors/Bellwether Syndicate show in November and thanks to Bellwether Syndicate in particular (they turned up WAY too loud) my ears have been ringing ever since Word to the wise kids…. always bring earplugs. I’ve seen hundreds of concerts and should know better.

Anyway… here in no particular order is my 2024 Live Music Punch List:

Green DaySmashing PumpkinsActorsBellwether SyndicateBlue Oyster CultThe ThePsychedelic FursJesus and Mary ChainPeter Hook & The LightMidge UreMatthew SweetAdam AntKeaneThompson TwinsThomas DolbyWang ChungThe MotelsMen Without HatsNaked EyesJacob collierLadytronHaitus Kaiyote
Travel

I’m not going to go deep into the travelogue this year. I mentioned all the cities I visited above, and I did a lot of the same things I do every year — hung out at HorrorHound in March and September in Cincinnati, visited Pinball At The Zoo in Kalamazoo in the spring, and Pinball Expo in October, did two “SpookyFrog” book fairs near Milwaukee, Tomes of Terror downstate and more. All of them were enjoyable events where I got to talk to old friends and meet new ones. I feel very lucky to have been able to do all that I did.

But I started writing this at 10 p.m. on New Year’s Eve and it’s now 4 a.m. so I’ll end here and just say… Happy New Year!

Thanks to 2024… you gave me memories to treasure for a lifetime.

For 2025, I can only hope that life will continue to be as enjoyable as this year.

Cheers!

The post 2024: Always On the Move appeared first on John Everson ~ Dark Arts.

AT LONG LAST, yesterday I finally launched a full-fledged book store on my website – just in time for Christmas Shopping (for you or the horror lovers you love)! The John Everson Store is officially open for all your autographed book needs!

I have offered autographed copies of some of my books before via separate purchase buttons on various separate pages, but now you can order any/all of my books, direct from me, in one spot with a normal shopping cart system! (Sounds pretty basic and simple in this online age, but this took me a lot of hours to set up!)

I’ve also made some “swag” for The Bloodstained Doll available there via a separate Printify shop.

Take a look and let me know what you think!

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My 15th novel, The Bloodstained Doll, has been released today from Flame Tree Press! If you like mystery, thrillers and horror, I hope you’ll check this one out!

Jonathan Maberry, NY Times bestselling author of the Joe Ledger thrillers read the book before its release and wrote this awesome blurb about it:

“Bloodstained Doll is a twisted tale of murder and paranoia that really amps up the tension! John Everson perfectly captures the twists and shocking violence of the giallo era of potboilers! Lots of dangerous fun!”

The Bloodstained Doll is my second homage to the classic Italian giallo horror murder mystery films of the ‘70s and is available available to order now on:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Bloodstained-Doll…/dp/1787588874/

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/…/the…/1145621575…

Here’s the book description:

When Allyson’s mom dies unexpectedly, she thinks her world has hit rock bottom. But that’s before she goes to live with her estranged Uncle Otto in Germany. When a child’s empty casket is unearthed in the backyard during a violent storm, suddenly people close to her uncle start turning up dead. Is there a connection? As the noose tightens and murders draw closer to Berger Mansion, Allyson and her new boyfriend Andrew discover a dark truth hidden in the attic. Soon their lives are at stake if they don’t discover why each broken body is decorated with a Bloodstained Doll.

Author Gerard Houarner, author of Painfreak and Road From Hell called The Bloodstained Doll “un-put-down-able” and said: “Allyson’s ‘situation’ veers more toward the Gothic than the colorful, but the story remains chockfull of mystery, violence, sex (of a kind), betrayal, and other dire consequences. Just like real life, only without the lawsuits. Don’t miss the ride, you’ll be in masterful hands – and don’t forget, along with that Gothic vibe, there’s going to be a LOT of color to go around.”

There’s also already a 5-star review on GoodReads from a reviewer who got an early copy that says: “I hope Mr. Everson puts out more books like this. He has a wonderful recipe on his hands: two parts mystery, two parts tension, a dash for blood and a dash of sex, and you have a pert near-perfect book!” Read the full review here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6845648043

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ON JULY 30, my first novella, Living Death Race: Beauty & The Brains, was released in paperback and e-book editions by The Evil Cookie Publishing! It’s hard to believe, but it’s a story that I’ve had in the works for 13 years. And after I turned in The Bloodstained Doll to Flame Tree Press early this year, I finally decided to dig in and finish it.

The core of Living Death Race was originally written in 2011 to be part of a multi-author shared novel. But while I finished my piece of the story, a couple other authors dropped out and then, after a few false re-starts over the next six years, the publisher finally threw in the towel in 2017.

My story then sat unread for years, but when I pulled it out early this year, I realized that I still loved Mira, the beauty of the “Beauty and the Brains” Death Race team and I wanted everyone else to meet her too. I decided to do some editing and fill in the “bits” that other parts of the original shared author book would have covered.

Once I started working on it, I got more excited about the project and I reached out to K. Trap Jones to see if it was something The Evil Cookie Publishing would be interested in. I’ve wanted to send him something ever since he picked up some of the pieces of the late, great Necro Publications (which is where I would have sent this if Dave Barnett was still alive).

Trap liked it… and then I really dug in in earnest to finish it. I decided that adding a couple of chapters showing Mira and Tony (“the Brains”) meeting the other teams in the race would broaden the scope and make the story complete. I also implemented the original idea of having a narrator voice talk about the race to provide more context (that was how the original book stories were going to be “stitched together”). By the time I’d finished adding those elements and fleshing out some things in the original chapters, I’d nearly doubled the length of the story, and Zombie Gwen, in particular, gained some more screen time. Now it is a full novella, while maintaining and expanding on all of the things I loved about the original story.

I hope you have as good of a time on the road with Mira and Tony and Gwen as I did.

While the original project didn’t pan out, I have to thank James Roy Daley for coming up with the concept and pulling me into a driver’s seat for this Living Death Race. And I have to thank K. Trap Jones for helping me to finally see the journey through to the finish.

I think it’s a ton of fun and hope you will too!

Available in e-book and paperback on Amazon.com.Available in paperback from Barnes & Noble.

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I’M IN A NEW YORK STATE OF MIND! We got home early this morning (3:30 a.m.!) from the first Everson family vacation in six years and we had a blast. We celebrated Shaun’s 19th birthday in NYC, and called it an early wedding anniversary celeb to boot.

In the five days we were there, we managed to hit 3 Broadway Musicals (Book of Mormon, Hamilton and Moulin Rouge) and 3 Jazz Clubs (Birdland, Blue Note and Dizzy’s Club at Jazz at Lincoln Center). We saw Steve Smith, the drummer for Journey in their heyday with his band Vital Information and celebrated Shaun’s birthday seeing Ray Angry, a jazz pianist who plays with the Tonight Show Band, and had members of The Roots and Prince’s New Power Generation show up as guests at his Blue Note show.

We checked out Carnegie Hall, Rockefeller Center, the Empire State Building, Times Square, Battery Park, the 911 Memorial, Alexander Hamilton’s grave site, Macy’s, Herald Square, Bryant Park and spent an afternoon walking Central Park, before visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art and standing outside the Dakota Apartments, where John Lennon lived and was killed.

We made the most of our time, even though the city was a sweltering 95 degrees the whole time we were there!

Over 35 years ago, when I was a journalism student at University of Illinois, I landed a magazine internship in NYC and lived one summer at an NYU dorm near Washington Square, so visiting New York is always like a homecoming to me. It was a super fun trip for me to introduce Shaun to NY street dogs and pizza, and some of my favorite places, including The Bitter End, a club I saw bands at when I lived there. Here’s a photo and video dump from our whirlwind “return tour”!

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A PIECE OF MY HEART died today.

It’s never easy to lose a friend, but it’s even harder when it is completely unexpected. This morning, when I uncovered the cage of Stormy, our 10-year-old cockatiel… she was not waiting for me on her perch.

She was lying on the bottom of the cage.

I had thought last night that we might be going to the vet today because last night after returning from Father’s Day travels, I found she was fluffed up and clearly hadn’t eaten during the day. She’s had spells like that before and I hoped she’d sleep it off, otherwise, we’d go to the vet.

It didn’t work out that way at all.

Tonight, all I can do is look at the pictures of the past decade with Stormy and wish that today had never happened.

In the beginning…September, 2014

Out of all the birds I’ve had in the past 40 years, Stormy is the one who “chose me.”

My last cockatiel, Lem, was very old at the time and we didn’t think she probably had too much longer, so we’d decided to go to a bird show in September 2014 just to make connections with a breeder for that day when Lem was gone.

We had no intention of bringing home a bird that day. We were just setting the stage for the future.

But almost as soon as we walked into the show we stopped at a cage with baby cockatiels, and one of them kept coming to the edge to be near my fingers. The breeder let me hold her, and Shaun and Geri held her too. But she kept coming back to me.

Needless to say, we left that show with a new bird and a new cage.

Stormy was the softest, sweetest bird I’ve ever had… and I’ve loved all my feather babies. But she had thick downy feathers like no other, and a loving, trusting personality that just made you want to hug her. Watching her waddle around always brought a smile to your face.

She learned early on that if she pulled on my earlobe, I would put my finger out to pick her up, and then she could push her head under my nose and I’d give head scratches. And man was she persistent about that.

She never let anyone else do that; head scratches were only done by me. In fact, while she sat on Shaun that day at the bird show, once she was home, she wouldn’t go to him. She had decided she was my bird.

My original cockatiel, Lem, ended up living a couple years longer than we expected, and during that time, Kiwi, our cockatoo, was actually pretty mean to Stormy. Lem was her bird and so Stormy was unwelcome in the flock. She often got chased when she was in my office where Kiwi and Lem’s cages were.

So Stormy spent her early life with us in the family room. Here’s a shot of her with ol’ Lem:

Taking Over from Lem

After Lem died, Kiwi needed a new pal… and it didn’t take long then before Stormy finally won the big bird over and moved into the office. For many years now, Stormy has perched on Kiwi’s cage, just above the cockatoo’s head. It was always a sign that “all was right with the world” to walk into the office and see the two of them perched together. One inside and one on top of the cage.

Every morning, all the birds would gather on my desk for breakfast, and often, on the kitchen table for dinner. Stormy’s love for pancakes and spaghetti was legendary. She would eat pancakes (and bread) so fast she choked herself; she couldn’t get enough. She could have filmed the bird version of Lady and the Tramp when she sucked down a spaghetti noodle.

Stormy stayed out free in my office all day long, only locked up and covered at night. I could always trust her not to get into trouble.

Not that she didn’t have troubles.

She went from one health problem to another in her ten years of life… first having digestive issues and night terrors (she’d wake in the middle of the night and crash around in her cage breaking blood feathers) and then going through years of chronic feather picking under one wing.

Her feather picking grew life-threatening because she picked herself so bloody on occasion that she ended up in the bird’s version of a “dog cone” around her throat for weeks to keep her from biting herself.

I’ve been to the vet more with her than with all my other birds combined.

The Evil Side of Eggs

In the end, though, the thing that did her in was egg-laying. She turned into a chronic egg-layer a couple years ago and as much as we tried to stop it – including many hormone injections – we couldn’t keep her from falling back into the pattern.

At first it was a good thing. When she was in an egg cycle… she didn’t feather pick. I always knew when she was coming “out” of an egg cycle because I’d start hearing the telltale “ouch” cries from the office. Egg cycle over. Picking begins…

The problem was, the periods “between” egg cycles kept getting shorter and shorter.

Normally birds will lay their spring clutch of eggs, and then stop for the rest of the year. Stormy exhausted her body because she just kept jumping from one egg cycle right into the next. It was hard on all of us because she chose the pan under Kiwi’s cage to nest in… so Kiwi spent hours frustrated, staring down at her through the bars. I missed my cuddly pet because I didn’t get to give her head scratches very often because she was so fixated on sitting on eggs that could never hatch.

It couldn’t go on like that forever. Something went wrong inside her in this most recent cycle, and finally broke my sweet, loving bird.

Now Kiwi the cockatoo and Coraline the parakeet are sitting here on the desk next to me tonight with a huge hole in our universe. We’ve all stared at the empty cage behind me today. The world isn’t right without Stormy’s quiet energy. We’re all going to miss her dearly. And I’ll miss that pull on my earlobe and that fluffy head under my nose demanding love.

We buried her tonight next to Lem and our other birds Boomer and Pepper. I like to imagine her old friends have welcomed her home.

Rest In Peace, Stormy
aka “Stormy Sue”
June 8, 2014 – June 17, 2024

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