Once My Looks Go, I've Got Nothing

        I have to say, it's a pretty great time to be a Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark fan. After an ill-advised decision by the publisher years ago to replace the books' iconically eerie Stephen Gammell illustrations with tamer, less disturbing artwork by Brett Helquist, the original versions have been reissued to bookstores everywhere. Hollywood wants a piece of that sweet Scary Stories pie (don't ask what's in it), and there's a major motion picture produced by Guillermo Del Toro on the way which, judging by the teasers, looks amazing . There's even a documentary coming out chronicling the creation of the series and examining its lasting cultural impact. 38 years after Alvin Schwartz's first volume began shocking the senses of countless readers, the series' legacy is still going strong.      Perhaps most unexpectedly, there was a recent announcement that a new volume of the series is coming soon! Well, sort of. New Scary Stories to Tell in t

In 1981, Alvin Schwartz unleashed his horror classic Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark upon the world, and it and its two sequels would scar psyches for generations to come. 1984 saw the release of In a Dark, Dark Room , a similar book that Schwartz had tailored to somewhat younger readers. Unlike the Scary Stories books, though, this one never got a sequel...or did it? Ghosts! , published in 1991, is an oft-overlooked installment in Alvin Schwartz's oeuvre that serves in many ways as a spiritual successor to In a Dark, Dark Room . In belongs to the somewhat redundantly named "I Can Read" book series, like Dark Room , so it is targeted at a similarly young audience, and of course it shares the supernatural theme of the aforementioned works. But how does this one stack up against the veritable murderer's row of Schwartz's earlier classics? Let's find out. The first thing that jumps out at you is the artwork. Victoria Chess has a strikingly different st

         I spent about a decade or so of my formative years living in a mobile home park that was, at the time, known as Mobileparks West. Not to be confused with a trailer park (despite my parents frequently referring to it as such), Mobileparks West was a community of manufactured homes in which arson was strangely rampant. We eventually had to abandon our home there when we found that the interior of the walls was largely comprised of toxic mold.      Rather than dwell on some of the sordid elements of the park, such as time I happened upon an active crime scene containing an unfortunate gentleman who was fatally shot in the head on his front porch, let me ruminate on some positive memories from those halcyon, methy days. Specifically, a formative experience that occurred in 1991 at a magical place known as First Mart. First Mart, for those who are unaware (all of you) was a little convenience store at the mouth of the mobile home park, nestled in a tiny strip mall with a hand

          After three Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Power Rankings articles ( here , here and here ), as well as another post delving into some of his more obscure horror artwork, you can probably tell that the artist Stephen Gammell has a special, terrifying place in my heart. It therefore always brings me great joy when I find Gammell's artwork lurking in the most unexpected of places. Like, say, this book of Thanksgiving poetry. Koala not included.      When I ordered Thanksgiving Poems from Amazon, I had no idea what to expect. Which is funny, given that the title is pretty self-explanatory. This thing is, though...the poems aren't really what I'm here for. they're nice and all, but I'm far more interested in what Gammell is bringing to the Thanksgiving table. Would the book be chock full of grotesque imagery, like reanimated turkey corpses hunting for human giblets, or perhaps gravy bowls oozing bloody tendrils? Unsurprisingly, no. Actually, w

Even though my ostensible first novel only came out a few years ago, I've been writing ever since my chubby little fingers were capable of scrawling squiggly approximations of letters. I distinctly remember some of my school journal entries being succinct fictional works, many of which involved Godzilla or a sentient puddle of acid with grizzly bear arms named Gory Glob. Eventually, I took the next step and started creating full-length works. That's right, Henry Garrison wasn't actually my first book...not by a long shot. Don't believe me? Well check this out! That, my friends, is the cover of my first book, Nightmares and Other Tales . If you aren't familiar with the 1993 best seller charts, you'll just have to take my word for it when I say that this baby was lighting them up . And with a cover like this, how could it not? I mean, you've got a tombstone with a spider and slime AND a spooky monster claw poking out from behind it. You've got a

The generally accepted rule of trilogies is that the third installment is almost inevitably the weakest. This makes sense: the first installment is bursting with new creativity, the second is able to refine things and boost them to new heights, and by the time part three rolls around, some degree of repetition sets in, and the excitements tends to wear off. Still, there are some advantages to being the third in a series: the groundwork has been laid, there is a certain comfort in the series' familiarity, and there is still plenty of room for improvement and exploration. And so, in this vein, we have Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones . It's definitely the weakest of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series (for reference, see my POWER RANKINGS of the first and second books in the series), but it's still wholly enjoyable. There are some uninspiring elements, to be sure, but the good parts more than make up for it. It's Return of the Jedi . And there&