While trawling the iTunes store for new horror podcast fodder, I came across an audiobook named Dead Hunt, by Kenn Crawford. I’ve listened to the first few chapters on my way to and from work today, and am already really intrigued to hear the rest.

More info can be found on the book’s web site, http://deadhunt.kenncrawford.com/, where the print version of the book can also be purchased, and donations can be made to support the free audio version. Alternatively, search for “Dead Hunt” in the iTunes store. I’d certainly recommend investing the 15 minutes to listen to the prologue: http://deadhunt.kenncrawford.com/?p=99

This Monday April 26th the new Horror Anthology DARK will be hitting for purchase. Fourteen authors come together to bring you their vision of horror in Dark: A Horror Anthology. Many of the iconic creatures of horror’s history resurface in fresh and innovative ways-zombies, werewolves, and chupacabras abound. There are plenty of new things to fear as well, a broken world, a myth of the murky depths, and a knife that cuts twice. Whatever your favorite flavor may be there is an author in these pages that serves it up. Authors include: Matt R. Jones, Bryan Wolford, Casey Criswell, J.P. Moore, Keith Latch, Sal Cipriano, Desmond Reddick, Sean Keller, Dezi Sienty, Cassandra Thomas, Blake M. Petit, Corey Graham, Derek M. Koch, and Steve Wands.

It’s Monty Python meets Nazi exploitation in a surreal nightmare as can only be imagined by Bizarro author Cameron Pierce.

In a land where black snow falls in the shape of swastikas, there exists a nightmarish prison camp known as Auschwitz. It is run by a fascist, flatulent race of aliens called the Ass Goblins, who travel in apple-shaped spaceships to abduct children from the neighboring world of Kidland. Prisoners 999 and 1001 are conjoined twin brothers forced to endure the sadistic tortures of these ass-shaped monsters. To survive, they must eat kid skin and work all day constructing bicycles and sex dolls out of dead children.

While the Ass Goblins become drunk on cider made from fermented children, the twins plot their escape. But it won’t be easy. They must overcome toilet toads, cockrats, ass dolls, and the surgical experiments that are slowly mutating them into goblin-child hybrids.

Forget everything you know about Auschwitz…you’re about to be Shit Slaughtered.

Praise for The Ass Goblins of Auschwitz:

“Who needs Ass Goblins when you have Jon Voight?”
- Jeremy Robert Johnson, Pushcart-nominated author of Angel Dust Apocalypse

“Truly disgusting! A fascinating mix of William Burroughs, David Cronenberg, and Lenny Bruce if you were to take all three and drop them into a blender. Cameron Pierce is a writer with a truly warped imagination.”
– Keith J. Crocker, director of Blitzkrieg: Escape From Stalag 69 and The Bloody Ape

“A must read.”
- The Horror Fiction Review

Available at Amazon.com

About the Author: Cameron Pierce is the author of Shark Hunting in Paradise Garden (Eraserhead Press, 2008) and the creator of Meat Magick, a squid-smashing performance series. Visit him online at meatmagick.wordpress.com.

Over fifty years ago, with the release of The Curse of Frankenstein and Christopher Lee in Dracula, Hammer ushered in a whole new era of blood and barely restrained cleavage in glorious colour, mixing sex and horror with a style and panache that made the small British company world famous.

Bursting at the seams with rare and previously unpublished photographs from Hammer’s archive and private collections worldwide, and featuring many new interviews, Hammer Glamour is a lavish, full colour celebration of Hammer’s female stars, including Ingrid Pitt, Martine Beswick, Caroline Munro, Barbara Shelley, Joanna Lumley, Nastassja Kinski, and of course Raquel Welch (who can forget her fur bikini in One Million Years B. C.?)

We take a look at the work of writer Richard Matheson and review the 1999 Kevin Bacon vehicle, Stir of Echoes, based on a Matheson novel.

The Internet? Don’t get him started. “The Internet is a big distraction,” Mr. Bradbury barked from his perch in his house in Los Angeles, which is jammed with enormous stuffed animals, videos, DVDs, wooden toys, photographs and books, with things like the National Medal of Arts sort of tossed on a table.

“Yahoo called me eight weeks ago,” he said, voice rising. “They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? ‘To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.’

“It’s distracting,” he continued. “It’s meaningless; it’s not real. It’s in the air somewhere.”

A Yahoo spokeswoman said it was impossible to verify Mr. Bradbury’s account without more details.

Mr. Bradbury has long been known for his clear memory of some of life’s events, and that remains the case, he said. “I have total recall,” he said. “I remember being born. I remember being in the womb, I remember being inside. Coming out was great.”

I finally finished reading Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves today. I’d been hearing about this book for years. I picked it up a while ago but only cracked it open recently. It took me a long time to get through. I’ve never been able to sit down and tear through a book in one sitting, much less something like this that ties your eyeballs up in knots.

But, anyway… Wow, this book is incredible. I cannot recommend it highly enough. I’d read a couple chapters and then be – it sounds silly – but I’d be scared to walk down the hallways of my own house in the dark. The premise is unlike anything I’ve ever read, and it’s just so damned creepy.

From critic Ted Gioia,

For someone like me, who doesn’t skim or speed read fiction, the only thing scarier than reading House of Leaves is the idea of re-reading it. Yet I am tempted to do so, if only to consider some of the alternative angles to this text. You could read this book as a savage commentary on literary and artistic criticism. You could read it as a verbal equivalent of a labyrinth, or as some sort of a Borgesian nightmare brought to life. You might look at the genre-oriented aspects of the story, and classify it as a horror tale or a romance or a Philip-K-Dick-sian exploration of a universe gone crazy. There are many doors into House of Leaves, although I am still unsure about the exits. Put simply, in an age that has a fetish over deconstructing the text, this is one text that will keep you busy for a long, long time.

Connoisseurs of “serious fiction” have mostly given this book the cold shoulder, but I think they might just be afraid. Who can blame them? House of Leaves runs counter to almost everything praised or promoted in the current literary environment, where even the most daring writers seem happy to follow the rules, stick to the established norms of narrative fiction. Danielewski has brought a unicorn to the dog show, and all the other pet owners are scowling.

From the wiki page,

Danielewski expands on this point in an interview: “I had one woman come up to me in a bookstore and say, ‘You know, everyone told me it was a horror book, but when I finished it, I realized that it was a love story.’ And she’s absolutely right. In some ways, genre is a marketing tool.”

Mat was challenging us on notions of “genre” in a conversation the other day. You want to see a real genre-bender? Try House of Leaves. It’s in a league of its own.