The classics – Nosferatu

Hollywood has always thrived on rumour and scandal and there were many rumours built around the car accident on March 11^th 1931, that claimed the life of German expressionist director, F W Murnau. The newspapers of the day ran stories, detailing the origiastic goings on in the car before the crash, but in truth all that had happened is that Marnau had allowed his young Filipino  valet, and homosexual lover, to drive the powerful motorcar. The valet drove too fast and had to swerve to avoid a truck – a swerve which sent the car off the road. It wasn’t that bad an accident and most of the occupants of the car were unhurt but Marnau suffered a fractured skull and died later in hospital.

To fans of the fantastic Marnau is best known as the director of the silent classic, Nosferatu and were it not for this one film he would probably be forgotten,  but the director made several other films in the horror genre. However these are missing, most famous is The Phantom (1922) and this only exists in part with a few fragments of the movie being unearthed recently by film historians. And most of what is known about these films come from contemporary accounts. We do however have Nosferatu- an unofficial adaptation of Bram Stokers Dracula that actually managed to be closer to the source novel than Todd Browing’s official 1931 version. So close was it in fact that the director was sued by the Stoker estate over copyright theft.

The fact remains though that Nosferatu is essential viewing for any fan of fantastic cinema – most horror fans know of the movie but how many of the blood and guts generation have actually seen it? The film resonates even today and was one of the movies that defined  the dreamlike quality of good horror cinema.

The movie is now in the public domain though I would recommend the restored DVD version. .

Weird Tales

http://weirdtalesmagazine.com/

The first issue of  Weird Tales  to be published by new bosses , Nth Dimension media,is out there,. It’s edited by Ann VanderMeer, has art direction by Stephen H. Segal, and is quite beautiful. Here’s the cover. I urge anyone interested in this truly iconic magazine to visit the website HERE . And keep an eye out for a story from yours truly in a future issue

THE DEAD ARE NOW WALKING

AVAILABLE NOW

My novella, The Dead Walked: Outbreak is NOW available for purchase from Amazon  as a KDP exclusive before becoming available on all other eFormats early next year. The Amazon deal means that the eBook is also available to prime customers for loan from Amazon’s lending library.

The novella is my debut in the horror genre, following on from a string of bestselling westerns written under the name, Jack Martin and published by Robert Hale’s Black Horse Westerns line.

For my work in the horror genre I adopted the name Vincent Stark as a nod to that flamboyant horror star, Vincent Price and the surname came from the fact that I’d been reading a lot of Richard Stark. The Dead Walked though is not the first sale for the Vincent Stark name – an upcoming issue of the iconic, Weird Tales will feature the short story, Back then our Monsters were Real which was also comes from Vincent’s pen.

 

The Dead Walked: Outbreak

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 168 KB
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: Gary Dobbs; 1 edition (18 Dec 2011)
• Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
• Language English
• ASIN: B006O0T89Y

US READERS FIND IT HERE
UK READERS FIND IT HERE

Some said it was viral.
Others claimed it was an act of God.
Either way the result was the same and the dead walked.

September was her favourite time of the year, and late September, when the autumn was just preparing to hand over to winter, when there was still a residue of the late summer warmth in the air, as well as the crisp promise of the iciness to come, had always been, as far as Missy was concerned, the finest chunk of that particular month.
Not for her was the spectacle of high summer, nor the morose beauty of mid winter. Of course they both had their fineries but these paled next to the season when the leaves glittered with reflected sunlight. It was the autumn, with September being the highlight of that season, which she loved – a time when nature put on its finest display as the lush summer growth was magically transformed.
The sky itself seemed to glow at this time of year.
September was a time of promise.
A time of rebirth.
Not this September, though.
This September, Missy would remember as, the time the dead walked.

The second eBook, Dead Days will be published March 2012 and I’m pleased to be able to give you a look at the cover art for the second volume. The man responsible for the cover is once again Tony Masero, and he’s managed to fully capture the mayhem and er, boobs of the zombie apocalypse.

And so take a look at the stunning artwork for the forthcoming second volume and go out and buy THE DEAD WALKED BY VINCENT STARK

 

March 2012

Good to be Weird

I’ve not been this excited by a sale in some time – I had an email this afternoon from Marvin Kaye, editor of iconic magazine, Weird Tales and he’s bought a short story of mine, Back then our monsters were real, which I’ve written under my Vincent Stark byline.

How cool is that!

Weird Tales is an iconic magazine which has published everyone from H P Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard to Robert Bloch. Even Tennessee Williams made his first sale to the magazine. Later this year I launch my Vincent Stark name with the first in a horror trilogy, The Dead Walked and what better AD for the new guy than – VINCENT STARK AS PUBLISHED IN WEIRD TALES???

I’m not sure when my story will appear but the editor has given me permission to announce the sale prior to singing the contract. I’ve literally been jumping up and down since hearing that the story has been accepted.

The WIKI tells us – Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine first published in March 1923. It ceased its original run in September 1954, after 279 issues, but has since been revived. The magazine was set up in Chicago by J. C. Henneberger, an ex-journalist with a taste for the macabre. Edwin Baird was the first editor of the monthly, assisted by Farnsworth Wright The “sub-genre” pioneered by Weird Tales writers has come to be called weird fiction.

Keep reading for news of both my Weird Tales debut and the first in The Dead Walked trilogy.

Things get Weird – Classic pulp mag under new ownership

Vintage issue of Lesbian Times - er, Weird Tales

The famous US horror magazine Weird Tales, founded in 1923 and one of the most sought-after pulps of the Golden Age, has a new owner. He’s Marvin Kaye who has bought the title from John Betancourt of Wildside Press.

Kaye is the author of 16 novels and six nonfiction books, in addition to plays and play adaptations. He has edited at least 30 anthologies, and won the World Fantasy Award for best anthology in 2006 for The Fair Folk. For Wildside, he has edited the Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine.

He is also an actor and in 1975 co-founded The Open Book, a reader’s theatre in New York City, where he lives. The Open Book performed the 13th annual production of The Last Christmas Of Ebenezer Scrooge last December. Kaye adapted his own book for the play

SFScope (http://sfscope.com) says: “Weird Tales launched in March 1923, and launched the careers of writers including H.P. Lovecraft, C.M. Eddy, Jr., Clark Ashton Smith, and Seabury Quinn. It lasted 279 issues, ceasing publication in September 1954. Sam Moskowitz and Leo Margulies revived the magazine briefly in the 1970s, and then Lin Carter took the name for a series of paperback anthologies in the 1980s. In 1988, George H. Scithers, John Betancourt, and Darrell Schweitzer revived the magazine with issue #290. Warren Lapine’s DNA Publications bought the magazine in 2000, and then sold it to Betancourt’s Wildside in 2005.”

One of the authors who will be writing for Marvin Kaye’s Weird Tales is Archive friend and supporter Keith Chapman (aka Chap O’Keefe). He tells us, “I heard back today from Mr Kaye. He writes, ‘I just read Dark Art in Vyones and think it is an excellent story. I definitely want to use it for Weird Tales, though I’m not sure yet which issue it would appear in. Do send us new material when possible.”

Keith is up to his eyes in preparing the next online Black Horse Extra and waiting for details from Robert Hale Ltd of the ten Black Horse Western ebooks they’ve said they’ll be releasing in December. But he has every intention of accepting Marvin Kaye’s invitation.

Archive readers who have enjoyed the horror/fantasy stories from Keith we’ve run in our Sunday Comics section of our sister blog, The Tainted Archive  know that more of the like in text form has to be good news!