I'm hosting a writing retreat and cerebral spa in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains just before the Halloween season. Talk novel writing and the craft as well as business, eat good food, and get in the sauna. $295 for three days includes food, lodging, workshop and critique. www.hauntedcomputer.com/writingretreat.htm

I've always enjoyed the early Stephen King novels and for some reason I'd never gotten around to "'salem's Lot." I picked up a copy in a local thrift shop, a first edition paperback with a chipped cover and an inscription from Austin, Tex. Makes me wonder how a book can travel across three decades and 1,500 miles to my fingers. It had sat there on the rack by the thrift-shop counter for a couple of months, and I didn't buy it because I have so many other books I don't have time to read. Now… Continue

June 5

I managed to pose with the lucky face of Hannibal at Mardi Gras World in New Orleans, though I am not sure which of us look most deranged. For the record, I'm not all that fond of liver.



The city experience was bizarre--from the Disneyland quality of the French Quarter to the psychotic bums on the ferry landings, it definitely was rich and ripe and crowded. I don't know how Bourbon Street looked before the hurricanes, but I felt like taking a hot shower after walking… Continue

This is something I've been wondering, and it directly affects my career, but I already know the answer: How do you write horror that isn't horror? I

hear over and over that "Horror doesn't sell," yet clearly major

publishers are regularly printing books that are horror in most every

sense but the label on the spine. Truth is, there is no loyal horror

readership out there, at least not one that matters enough to…

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Girl is really into the Bermuda Triangle right now. She wants to take a boat to the edge of it and flay a paper plane into it. Her big thing now is

"teaching" in her classroom, and of course I am the inept pupil. Her

earnestness is so cool, and she's obviously modeling her second grade

teacher. And I get to trick her into improving my math skills.

Got…

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It looks like the airfield scenes for "Against The Wind" are pretty much finished. I got to fly in an old biplane yesterday. I was dragged bloody

and groaning from the plane for an extended scene, a wounded unsung

hero. My Method Acting was through recalling the wee… Continue

The big news in Boone is Appalachian State University's historic 34-32 football victory over Michigan. I'm an ASU graduate and though I grumble about increased traffic, it was a wild time. The students tore down the home goalposts, even though it was an away game. Our newspaper is printing extra copies

of the sports edition because we figure it will be a collector's item.

My…

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Just seeing if this here vehicle is up to snuff for plowing the back 40...