Once My Looks Go, I've Got Nothing

              It started in the early 90s, I think. While flipping through the monthly edition of the Oriental Trading Company catalog, I had spotted something I just needed to possess. You see, one of the great virtues of the Oriental Trading Company, besides sounding like an organization that would possess a fleet of merchant ships to be plundered by Jack Sparrow and his ilk, was their yearly cornucopia of Halloween merchandise. Every year in the late summer, OTC's usual inventory of cheap party favors and candy sold by the gross was joined by a plethora of goodies featuring ghosts and goblins, often in the form of cheap party favors and candy. On this particular year, though, one of their seasonal offerings stood skull and shoulder bones over the rest: a haunted village. Consisting of resin statuettes of various structures and characters, the components shared a unique and interesting tall, thin visual style, from the haunted house with a many-windowed pumpkin for a top floo

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&

You may have noticed the fact that I relentlessly plug my novel, Henry Garrison: St. Dante's Savior , on this blog. Obviously, I would love it if everyone that read my posts also read my book. At the same time, though, I understand that just because a guy can write a million-word screed about a children's horror book doesn't mean his novel will be any good. Therefore, I'd like to use this post as an opportunity to introduce my readers to my novel in a more concrete way. Since the proof is in the proverbial pudding, I've decided to share a spoonful of said pudding with you in the form of the first chapter, presented here in its entirety. For a bit of background, the novel is about a bored teenage boy living in the 'burbs who finds a pair of gloves that give him extraordinary powers. It's not as dumb as it sounds, I promise. While you're reading this chapter, it may occur to you that it doesn't much sound like the first chapter of a superh