P.J. Thorndyke's Blog

A weird thing happened to me this month. A YouTube video I posted a couple of years ago suddenly started gaining a lot of traffic. Like, A LOT. Normally, if a video of mine does well, then it gets around 1000 views. This video is currently sitting at 29k views. That’s insane numbers for me. Too bad it isn’t for one of my books, just a quick short I did on a book I was reading at the time. 

The book in question is a fairly obscure horror classic called The King in Yellow written in 1895 by Robert W. Chambers. It’s more of a collection of short stories all revolving around a forbidden play that induces madness in those who read it. Now, as well as being seen over 29 thousand times, my silly little video has garnered over 400 comments, most saying simply; “don’t turn left at the crossroads” or some variation of that. At first, I thought it was a quote from the book, but I don’t remember any such thing. Then I googled the phrase. 

I guess you can file this under ‘me getting old’ and ‘just ask the kids’. Apparently, there is a creepy Minecraft video which is gaining popularity right now. As far as I can tell, it originated on a YouTube channel called AveryTheMayo where Avery claimed to have found a laptop in a storage locker and started playing Minecraft on it. Then, things got creepy. He found a mine in his world that he didn’t create, containing a chest. In the chest was a book that he did not write and the first line of the book is; “Whatever you do, at the crossroads, don’t turn left.” Through a clever code revealed in the video, viewers were able to decipher a Google drive link which led them to a folder containing a couple of videos. The videos show somebody exploring a Minecraft ‘world that doesn’t exist’. 

As the explorer moves through this massive subterranean world, they start noticing creepy stuff like whispering voices, footsteps following them and torches going out behind them. They are obviously being pursued by something and eventually stumble on an abandoned city which contains signs that the entity inhabiting this world is none other than the titular King in Yellow from Robert W. Chambers’s book. 

There’s a lengthy video going into more detail on this here. I guess youngsters are searching YouTube for videos on ‘The King in Yellow’ and coming across my short which accounts for the massive amount of traffic I’m getting. I also like the idea that a Minecraft video is turning kids on to Robert W. Chambers 

I love this sort of thing. Along with creepypastas, its the sort of online urban legend that inspired my book Dial-Up and Die. I did a ton of research into creepy online mysteries for that one and remember well the early days of the internet when the technology itself seemed dangerous and suseptible to supernatural ‘viruses’. Remember all those creepypastas about haunted video games? This is kind of like that. 

Until next time… stay safe online 

My newest novel ‘Five Kisses from a Blasphemous Nun’ straddles the horror and crime genres. That’s why it’s included in this group promo featuring tons of other gritty crime books! Take a look here!

Today is the day my newest horror novel ‘Five Kisses from a Blasphemous Nun’ goes wide! It’s already been available from Godless.com for a week, but now you can get it in print and for Kindle from just about everywhere else! Grab it from Amazon here, or simply look for it from your usual go-to places for books. I hope you enjoy this 1970s-set murder mystery in the giallo style as much as I enjoyed writing it!

I’m into writing the third act of my next horror novel now, and I feel like it’s a good time to let you know the title and give you a glimpse of the cover! 

If you’ve been reading my previous posts, then you’ll know that it’s going to be a murder mystery (and a little bit of a slasher) in the vein of the Italian ‘giallo’ movies of the 1970s which were stylish, sexy and bloody thrillers. They often had complex and baroque titles with references to numbers and animals in them. I decided to call my homage to giallo Five Kisses from a Blasphemous Nun.

Its plot revolves around the production of a fotoromanzo (an Italian photo comic) based on the life of a fictional 15th century Florentine nun who was executed for devil worship. When members of the cast and crew start being murdered in gruesome ways, it seems that the production is cursed or at least, the target of a deranged serial killer. Here’s the cover!

Giallo means ‘yellow’ in Italian and is a reference to the mystery novels Italian publishers put out in the first half of the 20th century which almost always had yellow covers. The literary term carried over into cinema and was applied to Italian thriller/horror movies of the 1960s and ’70s. I’ve deliberately modeled my cover on those giallo paperback covers and I’m hardly the first, so I feel like I’m in good company! Take a look at these other modern novels that have covers in the giallo style! 

If you’re looking for some spooky, supernatural reads to tide you over this summer, then take a look at this group promo featuring some great authors of horror fiction!

My current work in progress is a giallo-inspired mystery thriller set in 1970s Italy in which the cast and crew of a fotoromanzo are stalked and slain by a mysterious killer. What is a fotoromanzo? Well, imagine a comic book where the panels are photographs rather than illustrations. That’s the basic idea, though the medium has been far more popular in mainland Europe and Latin America than in the UK and the US.

Anglicized as ‘photo novel’ or ‘photo comic’, the Italian fotoromanzi (plural) are often called ‘fumetti’ which simply refers to all comic books, (fumetto being the little ‘puff of smoke’ containing dialogue). The medium’s heyday was from the 1950s to the early 1980s, and faded somewhat after most Italians got television. In the mid-20th century, the fotoromanzo was a staple of Italian entertainment, delivering stories in a variety of genres such as superhero, spy, soap romance and even erotica. 

Yes, due to the photographic nature of fotoromanzi, the medium tended to veer into pretty adult territory with many magazines focusing on sex. Even the juvenile-looking Killing – a skeleton suit-wearing master criminal – had its sadistic protagonist torture and murder scantily-clad women (often having his way with them first) in every issue in the latter half of the 1960s. 

Killing is one of the more famous fotoromanzi, running from 1966 to 1969 and featured a diabolical master criminal and his array of James Bond-style gadgets. Kolossal and Erotik demonstrate other genres in the medium such as romance and erotica. 

The fotoromanzo medium is inextricably linked with the medium of cinema and several of its stars went on to work in movies like Sophia Loren, Paola Pitti and Franco Gasparri. In turn, many fotoromanzi were adaptations of popular movies or TV series, being a cost effective way to bring the story to new audiences while promoting the movie at the same time. The medium even had some success in the US with adaptations of sci-fi movies and series like Alien and Star Trek.

A page from Sadistik Vol. 1, an English translation of the original Killing fotoromanzo by Mort Todd and Stephen R. Bissette, available here. 

I love the idea of fotoromanzi and, as soon as i discovered the medium, I knew that I wanted to utilize it as a setting for my horror novel. You can imagine the environment surrounding the production of this somewhat low-brow form of entertainment. I imagine a set that was fast-paced, volatile and a tad sleazy. The perfect backdrop to a giallo-esque tale of murder and mystery! 

More on this next month, but until then, take care! 

My next horror novel is still very early in the process, with only a couple of thousand words penned so far, but I’m excited about it and can let you know a few things. I’ve been into Gialli movies for a few years now, and have long wanted to write a novel inspired by them. For the uninitiated, a ‘giallo’ movie is an Italian mystery/suspense/thriller with a dash of horror that was hugely popular in the 1960s and 1970s.

Giallo means ‘yellow’ and has been retroactively used as a label for a certain kind of movie that was popular in Italy from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s. Giallo refers to the yellow covers of mystery paperbacks that were published by the Italian publishing company Arnoldo Mondadori Editore in the early part of the 20th century. Giallo paperbacks were often Italian translations of English language mystery novels by the likes of Agatha Christie, Edgar Wallace and Raymond Chandler. The success of Mondadori’s giallo paperbacks saw other publishing houses follow suit with their own versions (also with yellow covers). Giallo thus became a synonym for a mystery novel.  

The ‘I Gialli Mondadori’ series by Italian publisher Arnoldo Mondadori Editore started in 1929 and largely featured translations of English-language mystery novels by the likes of Agatha Christie. 

But the giallo paperbacks of the early 20th century are a far cry from the more lurid content of its cinematic counterpart in the latter half of the century which had a greater emphasis on horror and sex. While crime and mystery films were nothing new in Italian cinema (1943’s Ossessione based on James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice – a novel which actually appeared in Mondadori’s giallo series – being a notable example), the stylish brand of films that came to be known as ‘giallo’ did not emerge until the 1960s. Director Mario Bava, who had pioneered Italian horror with his directorial debut La maschera del demonio (Black Sunday) in 1960, led the way with his 1963 movie La ragazza che sapeva troppo (The Girl Who Knew Too Much). 

Widely regarded as the first giallo, The Girl Who Knew Too Much is a Hitchcock-influenced tale of an American woman in Rome who witnesses a murder and, dismissed by the authorities, attempts to solve the murder on her own. Despite being shot in black and white (thus lacking the genre’s stylized use of color) the film’s plot established a common trope for gialli to come. Bava’s 1964 followup, 6 donne per l’assassino (Blood and Black Lace) defined the genre further. Gorgeously shot in lurid Eastmancolor, it involves a series of murders in a Roman fashion house connected to an incriminating diary. Blood and Black Lace brought together all the elements that would become staples of the genre such as the eroticism, violence, use of color and the masked killer with the black gloves. 

Mario Bava’s use of style, color, eroticism and violence in Blood and Black Lace (1964) paved the way for the giallo genre. 

Despite its later cult status, Blood and Black Lace was not a huge hit on release. The honor of popularizing giallo fell to Dario Argento’s 1970 directorial debut L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage). Following the template of The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Argento’s classic sees an American in Italy witness a murder and then struggle to solve the mystery while avoiding the killer’s attempts to silence him. A massive box office success, Bird with the Crystal Plumage spawned many imitators and the 1970s saw a slew of gialli that tried to ape its success. 

Dario Argento’s 1970 directorial debut – Bird with the Crystal Plumage – popularized the giallo movie and spawned countless imitators. 

The names of Bava and Argento would dominate the giallo genre for the rest of the decade, and the two would make some of the most highly regarded entries including Bava’s Ecologia del delitto – A Bay of Blood (1971) and Argento’s Profondo rosso – Deep Red (1975), the latter of which is often cited as the pinnacle of the genre. 

While it may be tempting to lump gialli in with another popular Italian genre of the ’60s and ’70s – the poliziotteschi movie – there are marked differences. Poliziotteschi films, influenced by tough American cop movies like Bullitt (1968) and Dirty Harry (1971), were more action-orientated and usually dealt with mafiosi and bank robbers rather than the crimes of passion and madness so often seen in gialli. 

The gloved hands of a killer; one of the most identifiable images of the giallo genre.Gialli often feature outsiders as protagonists, with many inadvertently witnessing a murder as in Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Deep Red, or are investigating a murder as in Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972) and Black Belly of the Tarantula (1971). In other examples, such as Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971) and The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail (1971), the investigators end up being accused of murder themselves. Several gialli were a strong influence on the slasher genre, especially A Bay of Blood, and Torso (1973) which deal with groups of companions in isolated locations, being picked off by a mysterious killer. The giallo genre remains a tricky thing to pin down. Rather than being defined by rules relating to plot structure, it is best identified by style and tone. The following checklist brings together the main ingredients of a giallo though, not all gialli include every item on the list. 

1. A stylish, contemporary setting. Gialli often take place in chic, retro settings such as the fashion house in Blood and Black Lace and the pop art villa in Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970). Playboy photographers and journalists often feature as protagonists against a backdrop of space age airports, swank penthouses and psychedelic nightclubs with lots of shag, lava lamps and mod design. 
2. Sex. As much as violence, gialli are known for their sexual content. This isn’t just the voyeuristic quality of the genre which often showcases the woman’s body in states of undress. Psychosexual motives often play a part in the murders, with madness, perversion and childhood trauma being the driving force behind the killings.
3. Murder from the killer’s point of view. Remember those shots from Michael Myers’s POV in Halloween (1978) and most slasher movies since? That’s straight from giallo. 
4. Black gloves. If we don’t see the killer’s actions from their POV, then we almost always see the killer wearing a slick, black raincoat, a brimmed hat (to conceal their face) and shiny, black gloves. 
5. A whodunit plot with a focus on suspense rather than horror. Generally speaking, a giallo should contain no supernatural elements. While they are often gory, violent and seemingly akin to slashers, gialli remain focused on the element of mystery. 
6. Obscure and baroque titles often containing numbers or references to animals. Why? No idea, but reflect on these; Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Four Flies on Grey Velvet, The Bloodstained Butterfly, The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire, The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail, The Red Queen Kills Seven Times and Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye. 
7. A bottle of J&B Rare. OK, this one is far from essential or unique to the genre, but this popular brand of scotch from yesteryear with its distinctive green bottle and red and yellow label, appears with remarkable frequency in giallo movies. The reason isn’t quite clear but it always symbolizes the stylish and the masculine. A ’70s macho drink if ever there was one!Lucio Fulci’s 1972 classic ‘Don’t Torture a Duckling’ shows Barbara Bouchet as Patrizia in her chic apartment (along with a bottle of J&B).

As the 1980s approached, Italian cinema began to change. The popularity of Dawn of the Dead (in particular Dario Argento’s Italian cut of the move entitled Zombi) resulted in a deluge of cheap knockoffs and unofficial sequels. In addition to this, the success of American slasher movies like Halloween (1978), itself heavily influenced by the giallo genre, resulted in a bigger focus on horror movies in Italy. Suspense was ditched in favor of gore and special effects and the popularity of the taut and intricately plotted giallo began to wane. Even Argento and Bava turned to more supernatural subject matter with Argento’s Suspiria and Bava’s Shock (both 1977) often mistakenly referred to as gialli when, in reality, they land somewhere between giallo and the Italian horror boom of the 1980s.

My newest horror novel – Mound Dwellers – is part of the following book promo for June which features tons of other supernatural frights! Take a look and grab some creepy reads!

I’ve been mulling over the idea of selling direct for a while now but have finally taken the plunge and set up a Payhip store where you can get most of my books (the ones that aren’t in Kindle Unlimited) at the click of a button! This only concerns eBooks, but I am considering selling print books direct in the near future. 

Selling direct means I cut out the middle men (like Amazon) which gives me a much bigger royalty percentage so, obviously, I’d really appreciate my readers buying my books from my own store! In celebration of opening my store, I’ve decided to knock a dollar off all prices for the rest of May. That means you can get any of my Celluloid Terrors books, Mound Dwellers and even my non-fiction book Satan in the Celluloid for a dollar off! Please check out my store and take a look around. There’s also a section called ‘Free Stuff’ where you can pick up all the novellas I’ve put out as reader magnets (if you haven’t already got them).

Here’s the store link; https://payhip.com/PJThorndyke

The eBooks themselves will be delivered by Bookfunnel which also offers tech support to anybody experiencing trouble downloading them. 

‘Mound Dwellers’ is out now and part of this great group promo featuring a few other zombie titles! Check it out here!