Death Troopers on MTV!

Well, sort of.

As a Halloween treat, MTV.com ran a free chapter of Death Troopers here. It's one of my favorites: "Lung Windows."

Headed to Michigan

I'm working the midnight shift tonight and when I get home I'm climbing in the back of the big blue van and heading to Michigan for a couple of book signings over the long weekend. I'm particularly excited to get back there because my mom still lives there and I'll have a chance to say hi to some old friends. On Sunday I'm driving north to Petoskey to do an event at Horizon Books. Northern Michigan is particularly awesome this time of year. If you've never driven north in fall, all I can say is there's something instinctively gratifying about defying the natural, southern-fleeing order of things.

Also, I'm bringing my comic collection back to Pennsylvania -- two big oblong acid-free boxes of bagged comics that have lived at my mom's house for the past twenty-five years. Being forty years old and a homeowner, I've finally decided to move them out. Maybe I'll even complete my run of John Byrne X-Men by re-acquiring up issues 121-122.


I actually owned both of these once before (I even had Terry Austin autograph them for me at a Detroit convention) but sold them to buy Christmas presents back in 1986. Sigh.

Anyhow, on Monday, I'm doing an event at the Portage District Library, where, after my freshman year of college, I once pretended to shelve books while actually hiding the back and reading everything I could get my hands on. I had a big crush on another girl who worked there and spent the summer writing unfathomably wretched prose.

Has my writing gotten any better since then? Drop by one of these events and judge for yourself. I'll be the one staggering around in a cloud of delirious nostalgia.

Your Halloween Treat

If you haven't already done so, you absolutely must read Norman Partridge's masterful Dark Harvest for Halloween. Don't think about it, don't wonder why, just click the dang link and hook yourself up with a copy. Trust me.

Why? Because it's what you want. People ask me how you write horror: this is the Strunk and White of how it's done -- fast, compulsive, scary and utterly brilliant storytelling, just in time for the season. Ostensibly the tale of a 1963 town whose young male citizens go gunning after a mythic figure called the October Boy -- aka Sawtooth Jack -- Dark Harvest is nothing less than a balls-out high-octane reinvention of the American horror novel on a candy-corn methamphetamine cocktail of pure narrative genius.

Call it Ray Bradbury on steroids, call it Big Daddy Roth-style hot rod Halloween horror...your tongue will go numb searching for comparisons, 'cuz, friends -- there ain't any for what Partridge does in this fast pumpkin-carving switchblade of a book. I gave my last copy away to a friend out in LA, and a week later, he was trying to explain how much he liked it. I just smiled, because I know how it is. You reach a point in life where you think you've seen it all, where that initial childlike top-of-the-rollercoaster feeling of awe and amazement doesn't work anymore. Except here it does. Because here, along with everything else, Partridge does the incredible, anticipating reader expectation and managing to beat you to the punch every step of the way.

As a writer, I wish I had just an ounce or two of whatever Norm was putting in his coffee when he wrote Dark Harvest. As a reader, I'm just damn glad he did.

Trooper Trailer Winner!

I loved this contest.

When Erich at Del Rey first told me they were going to have a contest for people to create their own Death Trooper trailers, my initial fear was that nobody would do it.

I shouldn't have worried.

The results were all over the map. Some were scary. Some were funny. Some were flat-out amazing. The only thing they had in common was that they were all ridiculously entertaining. Throughout the book tour, people were always asking about the trailers and telling me how much they enjoyed them.

And now we have a winner.

Congratulations to all who entered -- I'd love to give all of you a full film crew and an unlimited budget to make all your Death Troopers into full fledged feature films.

And if you haven't checked out the trailers themselves, what are you waitin' for?

Pumpkin Troopers!

October is my favorite month -- that's kind of a given, if you're a horror writer. But this October has been particularly fun. Exhibit A is this unspeakably awesome Death Trooper pumpkin here -- thanks to GameCouch!

Meanwhile Death Troopers got a nice shout-out in the LA Times over the weekend. You can check it out here!

On that same topic, if you or anybody you know is planning on dressing up as a Death Trooper this Halloween, send me pictures and I'll be sure and post them here. Heck, we might even have ourselves a little old unauthorized contest...

Unholy, huh?

According to Amazon, my Supernatural novel, The Unholy Cause, is coming out in April. I had no idea. But, there you go...

Lucky 13

I just found out that Death Troopers is #13 on the New York Times Bestseller List.

This makes me very happy.

Things to Do in Hershey When You're Home

I got back home last night. The tour was amazing, but I'm glad to be back. Eleven days is a long time to be away from the family. So what do you do when you get back from a week and a half on the road?

Carve pumpkins with the kids. Do waterballoons. Wrestle. Go out for sushi and pizza. Hug a lot. Do a lot of laundry.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures I put up along the way. I did a lot of interviews, too, including this one in Chicago with Jimmy Mac and Jay Shepard at the Forcecast. Jimmy did a great job putting me at ease and asking questions, and I tried to answer them the best I could...although I think I sound a little frazzled.

There are a lot of others, and they were all great. I'm thankful for every opportunity I got to chat, and to every single person who drove out and bought the book, or came out to talk to me about Star Wars and writing..."thank you" doesn't quite cut it, but it will have to do.

Meanwhile, I hope you'll join me in Bryn Mawr, PA, on Saturday for the next signing. You'll find the details to the right.

Super Amazing Carmel, IN, B&N event

And it was. No exaggeration, folks. I told you that you had to be there to check it out. These guys know how to throw a Star Wars party -- per the Bloodfin Garrison's "untouchable by death" Anthony Lillig, maestro of ceremonies, they seem to have invented the way it should be done. Witness, in no particular order, the following excellent photos, all snapped by Jay "WhoJedi" Newnum.
















Tomorrow morning, I'm flying home. I couldn't ask for a better send-off event. Thank you, one and all.

Gunned Down at Powell's!

The good folks over at the Cloud City Garrison of the 501st posted a truly amazing array of photos from Saturday's reading at the Powell's in Portland.

Oh yeah, I wasn't having any fun at all.

In Chicago, Bringing a Blaster to a Book Signing

Tonight's book signing at Borders in Chicago/Oak Brook went great. I had podcast interviews before and after with Star Wars Action News and TheForce.net Forcecast. The 501st was there and had no compunction about loaning me a blaster. I got some of the best questions ever, both from the crowd and from my interviewers, Arnie Carvahlo and Jim McInerney respectively.

I'm supposed to fly out of Chicago tomorrow morning but now it looks like I'll be Mancow in the morning and might have to leave a bit later. I'll be sure to relate the entire experience here once it all goes down.

Folsom Prison Barge Blues

Last night's Borders signing in Folsom was great. At first when I walked through the door I didn't see anyone at the table, and no stormtroopers, so I thought maybe the 501st couldn't make it. I found Marc, the community relations organizer, and told him that I was here for the signing. He said, "There's a lot of people here for the signing. Mr. Schreiber should be here anytime." I told him that I was Mr. Schreiber, and he whisked me back to the back room where Darth Vader was waiting along with half a dozen stormtroopers. When they escorted me back to the table, it was suddenly packed with people waiting to get books and posters signed.

Another great turnout; another great event. I'm currently ensconced in the high roller's suite of the Alexis Hotel in Seattle, getting ready to head out tonight's reading at University Books. If you're in the area, I hope to see you there!

Special thanks to Alex Telander, who took this picture. Thanks, Alex!

Huntington Beach zombies!

Last night's signing at Huntington Beach, CA, went great. The 501st was there and things went spectacularly. At the beginning I was presented with a plaque making me an honorary member of the 501st.

Onward to Sacramento...

Troopers and Windows and Zombies, oh no...

Today Death Troopers and No Doors, No Windows are available at bookstores and online. In honor of this, StarWars.com is having Zombie week -- and they're putting up some great new scary Star Wars art like the above piece by Katie Cook. Check it out, if you dare.

Of course for the full multi-sensory experience you should come visit me on tour these next couple weeks. Check out the schedule on the right and let me frighten you in person.

Gotta read Serena

A friend of mine who reads a lot recommended Ron Rash's Serena. If the novel is one-tenth as good as its first paragraph, I'm sold.

When Pemberton returned to the North Carolina mountains after three months in Boston settling his father’s estate, among those waiting on the train platform was a young woman pregnant with Pemberton’s child. She was accompanied by her father, who carried beneath his shabby frock a bowie knife sharpened with great attentiveness earlier that morning so that it would plunge as deep as possible into Pemberton’s heart.

Edgar Allan Poe's Death Troopers

It's a little known fact that Death Troopers is actually based on a classic poem by none other than Edgar Allan Poe.

Although most of the poem has been lost in the ravages of time, I was able to track down this small portion in an old issue of Weird Tales Magazine.


Death Troopers

by Edgar Allan Poe

Once upon a Star Destroyer, while I trained to be a warrior
Over many a training drill of dark Imperial lore
While I nodded, nearly dreaming, suddenly there came a screaming,
as if something large careening, careening off my galley door.
“Tis some droid,” I muttered, “colliding with my galley door.”
Only this and nothing more.

Presently my heart beat faster and I powered up my blaster.
“Droid,” I called out, “I care not whether you are R2 or R5-D4.”
You certainly will not be missed, and you have angered Vader’s Fist
With your incessant pounding, pounding at my galley door.
Now you’ll taste my blaster,” and here I opened up the door.
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness hoary, like something out of Ralph McQuarrie
Wondering if indeed these were the droids that I was looking for,
Presently I heard a shrieking, like some hungry beast’s jaw creaking,
and a croaking gasp that uttered out-- “LV-574.”
This startled me, my ID number being LV-574.
Only this and nothing more.

Then I saw them in their masses, rising up like toxic gasses,
surging over me in their teeming lifeless hundreds through the door
Lunging, filling every corner, biting holes in my armor,
till I was chafing badly in places never chafed before
“Fiends!” I screamed, “shall I not survive to witness Episode IV?”
Quothe the zombies:
“Nevermore.”


My copy of the poem ends abruptly here, as if bitten off. Interestingly, that same issue contained a piece called "Memos from the Purge," by a young author named Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Anyone heard of this guy?