David R. Keyes's Blog: Second Edition Now Out

Hello Everyone, I am excited to announce not only the launch of a new line of esoteric books for the darker spirits in us all .... BUT ALSO ... my new collection of short stories will be available Halloween night, 2020. Plague or not. Watch this space for more details.

Yikes, click here to hear me read Chapter 8 of my novella The House of Sleep - https://youtu.be/J7d5Yo2zJ2w

I so hope you enjoy it.

Hello,

I wrote a screenplay about 10 years ago in a fever dream. I was convinced I was losing my mind and I wanted to get down, less pure dictation and more pure sensory memory of the time in my early 20s in the city, late at night.

I had written it imagining Nadia Litz as the post and Nicholas Campbell as The Prince of Darkness (I know, he'd be perfect) My editor edited out the dance sequence. Vampires, lesbians, poets, punk rock and cameos from Patti Smith and Sufjan Stevens. How could it go wrong?

Nothing really came of it, I would love to make it into a film one day, or parts of it, but here it is in its original form. It is certainly not in proper screenplay format, more a very long prose poem.

https://www.wattpad.com/255566929-the...

http://wattpad.com/DavidKeyes

Hello, there's been such a demand for more of I Do So Worry For All Those Lost At Sea , I thought I would add a missing chapter, Down To Mr. Flowers, in the e-book section. Or click here.

Thank you all for your wonderful and kind comments.

D.

I have five hand bound copies of the first chapter of my new novel, The Blood Red Heiress, A Cecil Herbert Woolley Mystery. They are lovely hardcover editions hand bound by myself and are being given away FREE to the first five people who write me and tell me if they believe in ghosts.

Here is an audiobook version of Chapter 8 of the House of Sleep read by me. I so hope you enjoy it.

http://houseofpomegranates.com/wp-con...

D.

June 1816
Shelley I’m here, but I cannot find you
The fog, the fog, the fog
The rain, the sea, the clouds
I cannot live without you...


"June 16th 1816: Byron’s challenge
On this day in 1816 the famous British poet Lord Byron proposed a literary challenge to his four guests at his manor near Lake Geneva, Villa Diodati. His guests were fellow poets and authors: Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, John Polidori and Claire Clairmont (Mary Shelley’s stepsister who had a child with Byron). Bryon read ‘Fantasmagoriana’, an anthology of horror fiction, to his guests and this inspired him to challenge that each write a ghost story. This challenge was the inspiration for Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’, Polidori’s ‘The Vampyre’ and Byron’s ‘Darkness’."

In my research I stumbled upon this, a recording of the Halloween séance in 1936 for Harry Houdini on the roof of the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood. This was the tenth anniversary of his death and as agreed, the last attempt by his widow to contact him. 
According to an elaborate plan, that whichever of them died first would try for ten years to get in touch with the other, on the other side. Houdini was known as an antagonist to the spiritualists, but so wanted to believe that it was possible for the living and the dead to communicate, but he demanded proof.
Some 300 invited guests formed the outer circle, with 13 scientists, specialists in the occult, reporters, magicians, and spiritual leaders joining Mrs. Houdini in an inner circle.
This recording is narrated by George L. Boston. And yes, that is the voice of Mrs. Houdini. It’s kind of awesome.

http://ia600408.us.archive.org/13/ite...

In 2006 I compiled a bibliography for a CD I had just released. I would change a lot, and add a lot, but its interesting to walk through my book shelves and raise an eyebrow now and then...

Bibliography

The Story of Civilization Vol. I - Xi, Will & Ariel Durant
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
Collected Short Stories, Somerset Maugham
Eminent Victorians, Lytton Strachey
Time and the Hour, Howard Spring
How To Be A Villian, Neil Zawacki
Lost Souls, Poppy Z. Brite
Satan In The Suburbs, Bertrand Russell
The Sixteen Pleasures, Robert Hellenga
Last Exit To Brooklyn, Hubert Selby, Jr.
The Wives of Bath, Susan Swan
Green Eggs and Ham, Dr. Suess
Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger
Suspended Aninmation: Six Essays on the Preservation of Body Parts, F. Gonzalez-Crussi
Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier
The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, A. Conan Doyle
In The Electric Mist With Confederate Dead, James Lee Burke
The Undertaking, Thomas Lynch
Mr. Love and Mr. Justice, Colin Macinnes
Griffin and Sabine, Nick Bantock
Cookery and Household Management, Mrs. Beeton
My Name Escapes Me, Alec Guiness
The Picture of Dorian Grey, Oscar Wilde
Carmilla, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
Revenge, Jim Harrison
Young Men, Russell Smith
You Shall Know Our Velocity, Dave Eggers
Wonder When You'll Miss Me, Amanda Davis
The Savoy Cocktail Book
Still She Haunts Me, Katie Roiphee
Art & Lies, Jeanette Winterson
Seven Against Reeves, Richard Aldington
I'll Let You Go, Bruce Wagner
The James Files, Allan Slaight
Burton on Burton, Tim Burton
Buroque Buroque, Stephen Calloway
Vellevision, Maurice Vellekoop
The World of Charles Addams, Charles Addams
The Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman
Minus Time, Catherine Bush
Aquainted With The Night, Christopher Dewdney
Mariana, Monica Dickens
Handwriting, Michael Ondaatje
Not Wanted On The Voyage, Timothy Findlay
The Shock of the New, Robert Hughes
Big, Little, John Crowley
Airborn, Kenneth Oppel
The Giant's House, Elizabeth McCracken
Story of the Eye, Georges Bataille
Vintage, Hugh Johnson
A Year With Swollen Appendices, Brian ENO
Lulu In Hollywood, Louise Brooks
Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
A Night Inside, Nancy Baker
Alice's Adventure In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
The House With A Clock Inside, John Bellairs
The Little Vampire, Angela Sommer-Bodenburg
An Orderly Man, Dirk Bogarde
Herself, Elsa Lanchester
And The Ass Saw The Angel, Nick Cave
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon
I, Claudius, Robert Graves
Natural History, Plinny, The Elder
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, Jules Verne
The Stories of John Cheever, John Cheever
Love In The Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
American Way of Death, Jessica Mitford
Our Father Who Art In A Tree, Judy Pascoe
Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman
The Cement Garden, Ian McEwan
Money, Martin Amis
The Red Tree, Shaun Tan
The Ink Drinker, Eric Sanvoisin
La-Bas, Huysmans
The Unstrung Harp, Edward Gorey
Miss Pamela's Mercy, Lynn Crosbie
Interview With The Vampire, Anne Rice
The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories, Alan Ryan, Ed.
Bliss, Katherine Mansfield
The Heroic Deeds of Gargantua and Pantagruel, Francois Rabelais