Back on June 2, we posted about the September release of Writers Workshop of Horror 2, a new book edited by Michael Knost that includes a new interview with Robert McCammon, along with interviews and essays by many others.
Publisher Hydra Publications is now taking pre-orders and pre-sales the book.
Pre-order Writers Workshop of Horror 2
Hydra Publications will release Writers Workshop of Horror 2 on September 1. The anthology consists of almost three dozen essays and interviews by and with some of the biggest names in horror, including a new interview with Robert McCammon conducted by Brady Allen. From the Hydra Publications website:
Each piece focuses on an element of the craft from the perspective of professional writers of the macabre or dark fantasy. The book is edited by Bram Stoker Award-winner Michael Knost and will be published by Hydra Publications as a trade paperback and ebook. Cover art is by the amazing Greg Chapman.
Editor Michael Knost posted this on Facebook on June 2, 2021:
I spoke with the publisher today and we are going to see pre-orders for Writers Workshop of Horror 2 very shortly! I will keep you updated. Shipping date is set to start September 1st! We will have ebooks, paperback, and also signed (by me)/limited paperback (100 copies) that will be delivered a little earlier than anything else. Thanks to Hydra Publications, all contributors, and Greg Chapman for the amazing cover.
For a complete list of the writers and the interviewees, please visit the Hydra Publications website.
From 1989 to 1991, I published six issues of Lights Out! – The Robert R. McCammon Newsletter. Five of those issues have been available to download as PDF files from this site for years, but the last issue was a subscriber-only issue—copies weren’t sold by book dealers at the time, and it’s been difficult to find. Now, 29 years later, we’ve decided to make a PDF of that issue available as our holiday gift to you!
Issue six was published in October 1991 and is most notable because it contains a lengthy excerpt from The Address, a novel about a house in Hollywood that Robert McCammon abandoned in 1990. In a preface to the excerpt, he describes the book, what it would have been, and why he gave up on it. The issue also includes a lengthy interview with Robert McCammon that I conducted. That interview has long been found in the Interviews section of this site, but you might enjoy seeing it in context.
So download the file, kick back, and enjoy reading a Robert McCammon piece that most readers have never seen before!
Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year!
–Hunter
Bulgarian publisher CIELA Books recently released a translation of The Listener, and they asked for a photo of Robert McCammon holding the book. This photo was taken a couple of days ago.
Happy Halloween!
Here’s a fun little Robert McCammon piece that few people know about. Well, until now. Back in 2008, Robert McCammon’s then-16-year-old daughter, Skye, hosted a podcast with her friend Brent Irwin. Their Halloween 2008 podcast featured a poem called “The Ballad of Cletus Fredrick.” The poem was written by Robert specifically for Skye’s podcast.
Skye and Brent have re-recorded the poem, and it can be found on Spotify at the link below!
“The Ballad of Cletus Fredrick”
Robert McCammon’s college friend Carl Carter posted this story on his now-defunct blog back on October 21, 2013. It is presented here as he wrote it.
Raw Day 21: Chasing the ghost
Published October 21, 2013 |
It was 1 a.m., 1974, and three of us were huddled somewhere in Smith Hall on the University of Alabama campus, waiting for Dr. Smith.
He was long since dead, of course. It was his ghost we were there to see. The stories about him have multiplied and continued over the years about thumps in the night, books flying across empty rooms and various other manifestations. Rick McCammon, Bill Sikes and I were there to get proof. I was features editor of the Crimson-White. Bill was our photographer.
Rick, as a lot of people know, was my friend from high school, Rick McCammon, better known these days as the prolific horror novelist, Robert R. McCammon. But fame would come much later. On this night, he was just editor of the C-W. He’d always been fixated on the weird stuff. As mentioned earlier in this series, we had been ushers at the Plaza Theater in Birmingham’s Roebuck Shopping Center, with Catch-22 showing on our one screen. During the film, the ushers alternated between standing guard at the exits and sweeping popcorn off the carpet. Rick always managed to be in the theater for the gory scene where a guy gets shot up in an airplane and his guts go spilling out. Rick was always far too interested in that scene.
So it didn’t strike me as surprising that he’d drag us down to Smith Hall one night. It’s a big, old, spooky building that, among other things, houses the university’s Museum of Natural History. If I were a ghost, it’s where I’d go at any rate. The main purpose of the legend, I eventually figured out, is to give student journalists something to write about every October.
So there we were. Bill’s camera, loaded with Tri-X film, was on the tripod, aiming in no particular direction. (Just where DO you point a camera for a ghost who could show up anywhere? And for that matter, which of the scores of rooms do you set up in? We didn’t worry about such details. We felt sure Dr. Smith would accommodate us.)
We got there soon after dark and waited. And waited. And waited some more. About 1 a.m., I decided I’d had all the spooks I could stand for one night.”
“I’m done,” I said. “You guys can can tell me all about it and show me the pictures tomorrow.” And I went back to my apartment.
I heard about it all right. I was barely out the door when Dr. Smith appeared. To be more precise, a little blue light appeared, formed an arc and vanished. There were no pictures, of course, but Rick was beside himself. Over the years, I’ve seen several accounts from various interviews he did over the years.
Funny how the ghost didn’t show until I left, and how they didn’t get a picture.
Rick wrote a good story about it, and it served him well over the years. Any horror novelist worth his salt – and Robert R. McCammon is a very good one – needs a good ghost story to pull out now and then. And who am I to say it didn’t happen just the way he tells it?
When I asked Rick about it at the time, he replied, “It absolutely did happen that way! I have told that story over and over and always told it exactly the same way…because it did happen!”
Last year, the staff of Crimson-White posted an article about the former C-W editors, including Robert McCammon.
Here’s a photo of the “Splat Pack” that appeared in the October 1988 issue of Twilight Zone magazine.
You can read more about the “Splatterpunks” in this article by Craig Spector, which was originally posted on the Stealth Press website.
Author Brian Rowe wrote this great article for Medium:
4 Quotes by Robert R. McCammon to Make You a Better Writer
Here’s his tweet about it:
Every year, Borderlands Press hosts a Writers Boot Camp for authors. Robert McCammon is scheduled to be the Special Guest Instructor for the 2021 Writers Boot Camp. The other instructors are Ginjer Buchanan, Thomas F. Monteleone, F. Paul Wilson, and Douglas E. Winter.
For full details about what the Writers Boot Camp is, please visit the Borderlands Press website.
One of my favorite websites to frequent is Flashbak, which specializes in posting photos of all kinds of things from the past. Their slogan is “Everything Old Is New Again.” A recent post about Mexican pulp art looked like something Robert McCammon would enjoy, so I sent him the link. He wrote back and asked me to post the link. He said:
“I’ve always enjoyed Mexican horror films. In fact the first horror movie I ever saw (on TV) was a wickedly scary Mexican flick that I remember had something to do with a condemned criminal who found himself being reincarnated and going through the same hanging over and over again. Anyway, he had a beast-like makeup and to a little kid it was a real fright-fest. This art to me speaks to what has always been the bizarre and nightmarish (though oddly beautiful) nature of the Mexican horror film.”
Enjoy!
Attack of the B-Pictures: Bold, Brilliant and Bizarre Mexican Pulp Art
