Lansdale, Joe R. Blood in the Gears. Short, Scary Tales Publications, 2019. First edition hardback, #101 of 550 signed, numbered copies, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket. Second in a four volume collection of all Lansdale’s short fiction, this one leaning toward dark suspense stories such as “Drive-In Date,” “The Steel Valentine,” “Incident On And off A Mountain Road,” etc. Bought from the publisher at a dealer discount. I still have copies available through Lame Excuse Books.
Trying to close out these purchases from last year:
(Lovecraft, H.P.) Joshi, S.T. (Don Webb, William F. Nolan, W. H. Pugmire, etc.) Black Wings VI. PS Publishing, 2017. First edition hardback, #138 of 300 numbered copies signed by all the contributors (including the recently deceased Pugmire), a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket and Fine slipcase, new and unread. New tales of Lovecraftian horror. Bought from the publisher at a steep discount.
Smith, Clark Ashton. The Star-Treader And Other Poems. A.M. Robinson, 1912. First edition hardback, a Near Fine- copy with crack to front hinge just starting at bottom, slight bumping at head and heel and page blocks dusty, in a Very Good dust jacket with faint soiling to front and rear, a 1/2″ x 1/8″ chip at rear heel join, shallow chipping at head. Inscribed twice by Smith (the first apparently with a fountain pen, the second with a ballpoint): “Clark Ashton Smith/Auburn, Cal/Nov. 27th, 1912” then “For Harry Rosenberry/with sincere compliments/of Clark Ashton Smith/Apr. 14th, 1961,” which was exactly four months before his death. Replaces an unsigned copy (now available through Lame Excuse Books). Not in Currey. Not in Bleiler’s Guide to Supernatural Horror. Bleiler Checklist (1978), page 181. Sidney-Fryer, Emperor of Dreams, page 128. Won off eBay for $333.
Three signed Joe Hill firsts, all bought from different sources:
Hill, Joe. Full Throttle. HarperCollins, 2019. First edition hardback, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket, limited edition issue with page signed by Hill bound in. Short story collection. Bought at Half Price Books (who sell new books now as well), with two store stickers (including publisher’s gold “Signed First Edition” sticker) for 20% off cover price. Irritatingly, both this limited edition and the trade edition below have the same ISBN.
Hill, Joe. Full Throttle. HarperCollins, 2019. First edition hardback, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket, trade edition, signed by Hill. Note that the dust wrapper on both this and the limited above have a new type of material with a distinct texture (almost like a paper version of suede). Bought from a noted mystery bookseller for 20% off.
Hill, Joe and Gabriel Rodriguez. Locke & Key 4: Keys to the Kingdom. Subterranean/IDW, 2019. First limited edition hardback, #159 of 250 signed/numbered copies, a Fine copy in a Fine slipcase, new and unread. The latest collected signed/limited volume of the acclaimed dark fantasy/horror graphic novel series. The IDW edition came out many years back, but as with the other Subterranean volumes, this includes additional material, including the full comic scripts. Bought from the publisher with a dealer discount.
Note that I have copies of all three of these available through Lame Excuse Books.
Hughes, Matthew. Epiphanies. PS Publishing, 2016. First edition hardback, #37 of 100 signed, numbered copies, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket, new and unread. Bought for £4 plus shipping.
Hughes, Matthew. A Wizard’s Henchman: First Book of the Kaslo Chronicles. PS Publishing, 2016. First edition hardback, PC of 100 signed, numbered copies, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket, new and unread. Bought for £5 plus shipping.
Laidlaw, Mark. White Spawn. PS Publishing, 2015. First edition hardback, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket, new and unread. Bought for £5 plus shipping.
Park, Paul. Other Stories. PS Publishing, 2015. First edition hardback, #63 of 100 signed, numbered copies, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket, new and unread. Bought for £5 plus shipping.
Bradbury, Ray. Fever Dream. St. Martin’s, 1987. First edition hardback, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket, signed and dated by Bradbury (6/12/88). Children’s book version of the Bradbury story. Part of the “Night Light” series of books, which have glow-in-the-dark elements. Like the glow-in-the-dark signed/limited edition of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline (which I also have), the glow is super-duper faint. Bought for $20.
Bradbury, Ray. Marionettes, Inc. Subterranean Press, 2009. First edition hardback, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket, inscribed to “Sunny” and signed by Bradbury. As his eyesight worsened near the end of his life, Ray’s signature became larger and more sprawling, as you can see below. Bought for $34.99 off eBay. Replaces an unsigned copy.
Bradbury, Ray. Ray Bradbury on Stage: A Chrestomathy of His Plays. Primus/Donald I Fine, no date listed (but 1981). First edition trade paperback original, a Near Fine+ copy with slight bumping at head, a slight, small crease near front bottom corner, a bit of dust soiling at heel, and a touch of edgewear at points. Signed by Bradbury. Combines the contents of three other play collections, The Anthem Sprinters and Other Antics, The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit And Other Plays (which I also have in signed first edition), and Pillar of Fire and Other Plays. Bought for $20 off eBay.
Before the Kolchak: The Night Stalker TV show came the original TV movie The Night Stalker, which first introduced dogged yet deeply-irritating reporter Carl Kolchak, brilliantly and unforgettably played by Darrin McGavin. Our grizzled, disheveled hero starts listening to his own notes on a tape recorder, about a very strange murder case. We see a Vegas girl get killed by an incredibly powerful man, then cut to an autopsy performed by a pre-M*A*S*H Larry Linville (who would go on to play a Police Captain of The Week Who’s Annoyed With Kolchak’s Shenanigans in the TV series), who discovers that a body has been completely drained of blood. So three minutes in, any viewer is going to figure a vampire is stalking Las Vegas. (And it was obviously filmed in Vegas; everyone looks believably hot and sweaty.) It takes the Vegas police a whole lot longer to figure things out.
Enter our intrepid seersucker-clad hero.
Kolchak is pretty much fully formed the moment he walks into the news office, a smart, cynical, sarcastic reporter with authority issues. You quickly see how he would get on just about anyone’s nerves. (Later he recites all the cities he’s been fired from newspapers in. “Wasn’t it twice in Boston?” his much too young and pretty girlfriend (played by the recently deceased Carol Lynley) asks, to which he holds up three fingers.) He doesn’t think much of being assigned the first murder, but when a second one shows up, also drained of blood, with no tracks leading to her final sandy resting place, he realizes something is up, and tenaciously goes digging into the story, despite staunch opposition from both the police chief (Claude Aikens) and his own editor Tony Vincenzo (Simon Oakland, in a role he’d reprise in The Night Strangler sequel and the TV show).
The plot moves along at a quick pace, police procedural fashion, as it quickly becomes apparent to Kolchak that an actual vampire is killing young women in Las Vegas. The “vampire police procedural” has been done plenty of times since, but this was pretty much the first media instance (though Leslie H. Whitten’s novel The Progeny of the Adder preceded by seven years), and even today, despite the obvious budgetary constraints of a TV movie, it has a compelling intensity to it that later examples have never duplicated.
But McGavin’s Kolchak is what holds the entire thing together. He was a great, underrated actor, and in the scene where the police finally break down and promise to follow his lead and give him the exclusive, he’s so wonderfully, unbearably smug that you know exactly why he keeps getting fired. The movie has a panoply of solid TV character actors, tight direction, and plenty of tension when (inevitably) Kolchak tracks the vampire back to his lair…
There are a few extras on the Blu-Ray, including with producer Dan Curtis and director John Llewellyn Moxey, who said it was much easier to get a TV movie made in the early 70s. You had an idea (comedy, drama, horror, whatever), and if someone at the network liked it, you got a greenlight to do it. He said that now there are too many people involved in the process to get anything approved anymore. Wikipedia says that it was made for $450,000 and earned “a 33.2 rating and 48 share,” which is absolutely unheard of for a TV movie in today’s media landscape.
Coming just one year after “Steamboat Willie,” “The Haunted House” was already the fourteenth Mickey Mouse animated short, as Walt Disney wasted no time getting his studio up to speed after splitting with Winkler Pictures.
Hope you like dancing skeletons and xylophone music…
