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My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A love letter to slasher movies in novel form, MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW follows Jade, a small-town Idaho teenager as obsessed with slasher movies as author Stephen Graham Jones surely is. She’s got an encyclopedic knowledge of the slasher subgenre (she’s seen movies even I, a longtime horror movie aficionado, am not familiar with!), so when she starts to notice signs that a “slasher cycle” is about to begin in her hometown, she’d more excited than scared. She hates it here and would happily see everyone dead. That attitude changes when things become a little too real and blood starts to flow. With the help of her slasher obsession, she sets out to determine who the killer is, and to her credit she gets much of it right — but there’s a twist. (Of course there is. It wouldn’t be a slasher movie without a twist!)

Jones’s effortless ability to create lasting, indelible characters is the motor that makes MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW run. Jade is not someone you’ll soon forget, and to Jones’s credit, the same can be said about many of the side characters as well, from Letha Mondragon, the perfect new girl at school, to Sheriff Hardy, who keeps trying to do the right thing even when his own personal tragedies try to sink him. My only complaint about the novel is that we are so deep in Jade’s head throughout that there were times when I was itching for something to happen outside of her. There are long stretches where we’re only in her thoughts, and as fascinating a character as she is, the novel only felt unputdownable to me when Jade was doing, not just thinking.

One thing Jones gets right in all his fiction, and that so many other horror authors don’t, is that he knows how to nail an ending. The final image in MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW is so breathtakingly beautiful I had to read it several times over because I didn’t want to let go of it. A beautifully written novel about ugly deeds, MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW is challenging, especially for readers hoping for something more action-driven than contemplative, but it’s well worthy of the praise it’s received.

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This weekend, I will be returning to the Scares That Care Charity Weekend in Williamsburg, VA for the first time since I was a Writer Guest of Honor back in 2019! I’m just going as a regular vendor this time and will have copies of The Hungry Earth, 100 Fathoms Below, Chasing the Dragon, In the Shadow of the Axe, and Still Life: Nine Stories on hand. I’m sharing a table with talented author and good friend John C. Foster.

I will also be doing a reading with fellow author John Urbancik on Saturday, July 30th at 12:45 PM in Room A/B. Come on by!

You can see the entire roster of readings and other program events here.

Hope to see you there!

I will be at Necon 40 this weekend, my first in-person convention since February, 2020! Here is where you can find me:

Friday, July 22nd, 8 PM: Meet the Authors Party

I will be there with copies of THE HUNGRY EARTH and 100 FATHOMS BELOW to sell. I might also bring a small number of copies of CHASING THE DRAGON and IN THE SHADOW OF THE AXE.

Saturday, July 23rd. 9 AM: Crossing Literary Streams, or the Blending of Genres

Dianna Catt, Gerald Coleman, Sephera Giron, Carol Gyzander, Chris Irvin, Nicholas Kaufmann, Errick Nunnally (Moderator)

More and more authors, and their work, are simply defying simple genre classification. A group of authors whose books could belong on any number of shelves in Barnes & Noble discussing embracing and appealing to multiple niche audiences at the same time.

Saturday, July 23rd, 9:30 PM: Camp Necon Honors Jack Haringa

Hosted by Mike Myers and featuring a panel of dignitaries. An intimate interview and discussion honoring Jack’s wide-ranging contributions to the horror community.

Sunday, July 24th, 11 AM: Necon Town Meeting

Come tell us how much you loved and/or hated the program this year! What could we improve upon? What would you like to see next year? How did you like the new venue, etc.?

Hope to see you there!

The EC Archives: Tales from the Crypt Volume 2 by Al Feldstein
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another fun collection of six issues from the classic EC comics run! After the first few issues in Volume 1, the format has solidified into the Crypt-Keeper, the Old Witch from HAUNT OF FEAR, and the Vault-Keeper from VAULT OF HORROR all getting to introduce a tale in each issue, with the Crypt-Keeper getting to go twice because it’s his series.

The stories are as cheesy and charming as ever. I was pleasantly surprised to come across a few I remember being adapted for Amicus anthology films. In this volume, you’ll find “Reflection of Death,” about a man who doesn’t realize he’s come back from the dead until everyone screams when they see him, which was in 1972’s TALES FROM THE CRYPT movie. There’s also “Bargain in Death,” about gravediggers encountering a man who faked his death for the insurance money and mistaking him for a ghoul, and “Drawn and Quartered,” about a down-on-his-luck painter doomed by a spilled can of paint thinner, both of which were in 1973’s THE VAULT OF HORROR movie (the latter starring DOCTOR WHO’s Tom Baker). There’s also a story called “The Living Death,” about a hypnotized man who can’t die until he’s released from hypnosis, which is clearly a riff on Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.”

These comics are a lot of fun, and I can see why they were so popular back in the day. Once again, I’m grateful to Dark Horse for releasing these trade collections in full color and at a reasonable price.

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