Believe it or not, the leaf pile is GONE! Please note the area that it occupied. Yes, that’s a regular size rake and a snow shovel. Now imagine that there is a pile of leaves there which is between three and four feet high. It never shrank, because we kept adding to it. It was there long enough to smush out the grass.

Laundry day was a lot of fun. Everything smelled like smoke. Hopefully this year we can get some of those leaves mulched before the snow falls.

It was a fairly low key week. The real excitement is all coming up, but more on that later.

Listening To: I just finished Another by Paul Tremblay. This one will stay with you, once you are done reading it. As far as musical accompaniment, I am shuffling through the Rival Sons catalog.

Currently Reading: The ARC of Gwendolyn Kiste’s In These Gilded, Ghostly Hearts and the proof copy of Hollywood is Dead by Ron Ford.

Current Obsession: Accelerants. As in, what can I add to the burn barrel that will make this stupid pile of leaves disappear the fastest?

The past week has been all about finding out where to access the best sunbeams. It’s all part of a bigger plan in which they find a comfortable spot to nap, sleep a while, then wake up bigger than when they went to sleep.

With the warmer weather, we’ve been trying to spend more time outside, but the puppies don’t love the heat. Quinn especially, seems to overheat fairly quickly. I’m hoping that we can spend more time outside once I get the canopy up so they have some shade that they can retreat to.

After a month off, we are returning to the convention circuit in a big way this weekend (8 - 9 May). If you are in the area and a lover of Halloween, you owe it to yourself to head out to the Washtenaw Farm Council Grounds to visit Halfway to Halloween. In addition to numerous buildings of vendors selling spooky items, there are also live performances, a variety of food trucks, a costume contest (Saturday), a hearse show, and a haunted house created by some of the biggest professional haunted attractions in the area working together. The show will be Friday night 7pm - 11pm (18+ only) and Saturday 12pm - 7pm (all ages).

The next Midnight Creature Feature Picture Show event is a classic of absolute insanity: Gymkata (1985). Join us at the Historic Howell Theater for a rare Friday night showing on 22 May.

There is a little bad news, as far as appearances go. At this point, the Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers is waitlisted for Motor City Comic Con. However, DRP author Peggy Christie will be in attendance.

Due to health concerns, the remainder of this season’s Dead On Movie Reviews will be postponed until after the summer. We wish the great editor and producer a speedy recovery.

While not really publishing related, on a writing related note, I will be starting on online class about horror writing this evening. I’m hoping that it will force me to be a little more creative.

Having thoroughly enjoyed Thrall by Rebecca Mahoney (see my review on Goodreads), I decided to talk a little about vampire movies. The bloodsuckers have been making a comeback of sorts lately, what with the Oscar winning Sinners and other recent releases like Nosferatu, Abigail, Dracula: A Love Tale, and Abraham’s Boys. Rather than talk about some of these bigger names (most of which I have covered here or elsewhere), I want to mention a few vampire movies that you might not have seen, but should.

Near Dark (1987) Are you a fan of romantic, velvet caped Victorian royals and swooning women? Then this ain’t the film for you. Kathryn Bigelow (of Point Break, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty fame)’s vampire flick is a gritty, dirty, dust swept neo-Western featuring some violent vamps. The group, including Jenette Goldstein, Lance Henricksen, and Bill Paxton reuniting a year after appearing in Aliens together, travel the southwest in a blacked out RV, terrorizing the small towns they visit. Adrian Pasdar plays Caleb, a young man who is bitten and has to decide if he will embrace the evil and join the group. This one has a bar fight scene that is worth the price of admission all by itself.

Let The Right One In (2008) This one is probably better known, having won a slew of awards and inspired an American remake (Let Me In (2010). Based on the novel of the same name, this Swedish film explores loneliness and what real companionship means. Some bits of the novel have been cut to focus on the relationship between Eli and Oskar, making the film tighter.

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston as lifelong vampiric partners currently living half a globe apart. In turns tragic and comic, the romantic tie between the leads is beautiful to behold. Equally beautiful are the scenes filmed of the two driving through Detroit in dark.

A Girl Walks Home At Midnight (2014) This film is absolutely gorgeous and should be seen for the visuals if nothing else. Written and directed by Ana Lily Amirpour, shot in black and white with the dialogue in Persian, this is a captivating tale of a young man and the mysterious chandor wearing woman he meets in a desolate ghost city in Iran. This movie is mesmerizing.

This is where I would normally say that these films are not necessarily my favorites, but just ones which I feel are criminally overlooked. However, all of these films are among my favorites, so…just watch them.

Every day, 4.5 million readers turn to 1440 for their factual news fix. We sift through 100+ sources to bring you a complete summary of politics, global events, business, and culture — all in a brief 5-minute email. No spin. No slant. Just clarity.

Join for free today!