The great anthology BOUND FOR EVIL: CURIOUS TALES OF BOOKS GONE BAD has been nominated for a prestigious Shirley Jackson Award.  All of the stories in this anthology are about books that fall on the dark side of the bookshelf.  My short story “The Collective of Blaque Reach” was published as a bonus chap book that some received when they bought BOUND FOR EVIL.  The book is a huge hardcover book that includes stories by M.R. James, H.P.

William Fryer Harvey was born in 1885, in Yorkshire, England to a well-to-do Quaker family.  He was educated at Balliol College Oxford and eventually obtained a medical degree.  After traveling abroad to recover from ill health, he published his first book of short stories entitled Midnight House (1910).  He served as a surgeon-lieutenant in World War I.  There he was awarded The Albert Medal for Gallantry for saving the life of an officer from a boiler room.

I've just posted a few new videos to ReelRelics.com that might interest some of you here.  The Dark Eyes Of London starring Bela Lugosi might be difficult to classify as strictly horror, but it does have Bela in another strange and weird role.  Also available is The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari.

I had to do a bit of upgrading behind the scenes last night, which is why the site was unavailable for far too long.  But here we are, all sparkling and new, not that you can see any of it!  If you stumble across anything that doesn't work let me know.

Just a few words about Vintage Horror Radio while I've got you.... The coffin hasn't been nailed shut, but as you may have noticed VHR has been silent for quite some time.  I do hope to bring you another show soon, but to be honest, it has been difficult finding suitable old time radio shows.  There are still a few out there though, so I'll try to get another show up soon.

Who is your favorite writer alive or dead?  Some would have trouble answering this question, but for me it’s easy.  Ramsey Campbell would be my response.  Born in 1946 in Liverpool, England, he now resides in Merseyside.  He is one of the most accomplished and recognized writers of weird horror fiction alive.  Campbell published his first story in 1962 at age 17.  He has since published hundreds more stories, over twenty novels and has won more than a dozen awards.  He has edited numerous anthologies and writes movie reviews for the BBC.  Now I realize this is a vintage horror site and Campbell is a current writer, but I’m making an exception here.  In this article I am going to focus on the novels of his that I have read to date.  I intend to write a future article about his short stories.  Incidentally, his anthology Alone with the Horrors is the only collection I have ever read cover to cover.  If you come across a copy of this book, do yourself a favor and pick it up.  I guarantee you won’t regret it.

As Matt mentioned in the article below, Blackwood's story The Doll was adapted for Night Gallery in its first season.  The sixth episode features this adaptation as the last of three stories.  The video player is cued up for that story.

Algernon Blackwood was born in 1869 in Kent, England to a prosperous family.  He became interested in the occult at a young age, which would later become evident in his writing.  He rebelled against his family in his early twenties and moved to Canada and America to pursue various jobs.  Some of these jobs included being a dairy farmer, a hotel proprietor, an actor, and a reporter for The New York Sun, where he investigated numerous haunted houses.  He eventually returned to England where he wrote several collections of ghost stories and radio programs.  In 1947, he started telling ghost stories on BBC TV and was dubbed ‘The Ghost Man’.  He received a knighthood in 1949.  Blackwood’s classic tale “The Doll” (1946) was given the small screen treatment in an episode of the wonderful television anthology series ‘Rod Serling’s Night Gallery’.  This story of a cursed doll sent to a British Colonel in retribution for dark deeds he committed in India is one of the highlights of the series. Blackwood died in December of 1951.