New Poe Statue in Boston with Tell-Tale Heart Motif

Any attention brought to Poe is much needed in this country, over two hundred years after the birth of one of its greatest and most mysterious authors. That's why I was glad to hear about a new Poe statue.

The Edgar Allan Poe Foundation of Boston has commissioned a statue of Poe that is shown in their photo above. It features poe in his trademark cravat, carrying his valise that oddly has a heart spilling out the back of it in remembrance of "his most famous short story" The Tell-Tale Heart. In my view The Fall of the House of Usher is Poe's finest horror short story (and scariest short story), but hey. In the foreground of the statue is, of course, a raven modeled after his famous poem that is still read today in schools throughout the world.

Read more about it in the Boston Magazine.

Who was the First Englishman to Write a Vampire Story?

The first Englishman to write a vampire story was John Polidori. He was a physician and traveled with Lord Byron as his personal doctor. He was with Lord Byron, Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley when they made their famous dare about who could write a supernatural story. Mary, of course, would go on to write Frankenstein and Percy had nightmares about his tale, as recounted in BlooDeath: The Best Vampire Short Stories 1800-1849. Lord Byron started a fragment that he never finished. Polidori wrote "The Vampyre" in 1819 and in it he included Lord Byron as the evil vampire Lord Ruthven after a bad falling out with Lord Byron. Oh, the horror.

Get 15% off my books through Sunday January 2nd at Barnes and Noble online

A Superbowl Sunday for horror books! Get 15% off my books through Sunday January 2nd at Barnes and Noble online. (Andrew Barger books at BN.com) Just use coupon code: 5B63U2CQNTQ61

Who Was the First American to Write a Vampire Short Story?

There has been much discussion about John Polidori, the young Italian doctor that travelled with Lord Byron and who wrote the first vampire short story in the English language. Polidori titled it "The Vampyre" and the story was published in 1819.

But who was the first American to write a vampire short story? That honor belongs to Robert Charles Sands, a lawyer and poet. His excellent horror story was titled "The Black Vampyre: A Legend of Saint Domingo" and it was published only a few months after Polidori's vampire story in 1819. "The Black Vampyre" is difficult to find. I spent time at UC San Diego spooling through microfiche and then copying the individual pages, which then had to be scanned into a computer. I included it in the award-winning BlooDeath: The Best Vampire Stories 1800-1849, along with a lengthy introduction about Sands and the interesting bond that joins these earliest vampire stories in the English language.

What Female Wrote the First Werewolf Short Story in the English Language?

Who was the first female to write a werewolf short story in the English language? In researching my anthology Shifters: The Best Werewolf Short Stories 1800-1849 I uncovered a tale by Catherine Crowe (1790-1872). She called it "A Story of a Weir-Wolf" and published it in 1846. Despite the rather boring title, its a fine lycan tale. At first she appears to be the first woman to write a werewolf story in the English language, but them I remembered that "Hugues the Wer-Wolf: A Kentish Legend of the Middle Ages" was attributed to Sutherland Menzies (1806-1883). That tale was published eight years before Crowe's story. There are some who believe Menzies was a pen-name for Mrs. Elizabeth Stone. If so, she was the first woman to pen a lycan story.

Came Back Haunted in Horror Flash Fiction by NIN

"Came Back Haunted," the new single by NIN, gets my vote as one of the best song titles to come around in a very long time. Much more than just a song title, though, it's horror flash fiction. Those three little words conjure three hundred scary ghost stories in this spectral month of October. "Need more coffins," is one I thought of...

Azra'eil & Fudgie Free Short Story on Kindle This Weekend Only

Azra'eil & Fudgie, one of my favorite short stories, is free on Kindle this weekend only: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006K1G21O/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B006K1G21O&linkCode=as2&tag=bottletreeboo-20

In Azra'eil & Fudgie a group of marines stationed in Afghanistan meet a cute little girl who is not all that she seems. This only adds to the tension for Private Fudgerié ("Fudgie") who is on his first mission to diffuse IED roadside bombs that the team calls "skulls". The question is, can Fudgie overcome the demons of his past and those of the present to triumph in the ever shifting sandscape of Afghanistan?

Review of "Gormenghast" Book II of the Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake

Mervyn Peake

(1911-1968)

Gormenghast is the second book in the fantastic Gormenghast trilogy. In it, Mervyn Peake has managed to make the sprawling, never ending castle of gray and stone, one of the main characters. Death is everywhere, lurking in dark corners and worn stairs and crumbling archways. Furtive and building horror sans blood and guts. As with the first book in the trilogy, Peake doesn't let up and cements his trilogy as one of the great Gothic texts of the twentieth century.

Robert Smith and his band The Cure were heavily influenced by Gormenghast. "A Forest" and "The Drowning Man" draw on Gormenghast and the ghastly doings that happen within it ever moldering walls. A must listen and a must read!