At six-years old, I enlisted my father’s help in constructing a model skull. Two years later, I talked my mother into buying a life-sized skeleton poster at a novelty shop. I tacked it up during the day. After the sun set, moonlight scattered through my blinds made its bleached bones shimmer and dance.
I was an only child growing up in a remote Vermont cabin. My imagination spun tales of horror, stories that grew in intensity after my babysitter read selections from her dog-eared copy of John Saul’s Suffer the Children. I don’t blame her for my love of the dark either, I was already ten after all and by then a hardcore aficionado of all things that go bump in the night.
By sixth grade I was reading my own scary books, from classics like Dracula and The Fall of the House of Usher to ‘Salem’s Lot and The Shining. By middle school, I was watching horror on screen delighting in the scares delivered by Kubrick’s The Shining and Carpenter’s Halloween.
Today I still love King, his progeny Joe Hill and YA writers like Amy Lukavics and Danielle Vega.
I’ve been getting paid to write for most of my adult life. I’ve written for online publications; I’ve ghostwritten novels and business guides. I’ve even authored over 150 nonfiction books for younger readers. Still, my fiction passion is horror and thrillers with horror elements. That’s why I’m excited to announce the Spring Publication date for The Academy series, a trilogy about happens when a young girl goes missing and her dormmate begins looking into why so many teens have disappeared or been murdered near their elite but isolated Vermont music school. There are also ghosts.
In this biography, author John Bankston has managed to make the rather sexy career of actress Alyssa Milano sound squeaky-clean. Even while referencing interviews in Maxim and Stuff magazines, Bankston has done quite a bit to clean up Milano's image. While useful for it's intended purpose, which I assume is Elementary age kids doing a book report, this is not an in-depth study. I doubt anyone expects it to be. Interestingly, though other books in this series include a complete filmography, Milano's is "selected." Also, I was not aware that Milano was running a big campaign to stop celebrity internet porn and I question that information being included in a book geared towards children. As always, an extra 1/2 star to any book that references Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which this does twice.