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Goth Chick News – Shadowland Part Deux: Thirteen Questions for Actor Jason Contini

Goth Chick News – Shadowland Part Deux: Thirteen Questions for Actor Jason Contini

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legacies-endIn case you hadn’t noticed, and I’m pretty sure you did, the Black Gate webmaster got a little worked up by my last post. Though I was telling you about my latest indy-horror obsession, Shadowland, one might have gathered from the choices of accompanying pictures, that I was instead bringing you a story about lead actress Caitlin McIntosh and her former life as a beauty queen. Somewhere, wedged between those images was my interview with Wyatt Weed, Shadowland’s writer and director; but good luck finding it.

This is what happens when there are too many boys on the staff and they are left unattended for too long.

So this week I’m personally bringing you the second installment of my Shadowland coverage; an interview with lead actor Jason Contini and co-creator of the new comic series Legacies End.

I can assure you there will be no further shenanigans involving staff members who forget their professionalism and get carried away by lust.

Now where was I…?

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A Review of The House of Dead Maids

A Review of The House of Dead Maids

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house-dead-maidsLast week I was contacted by Barbara Fisch at Blue Slip Media, who’s been recommending and sending review copies to me for nearly fifteen years. Barbara had flagged The House of Dead Maids by Clare B. Dunkle (author of the Hollow Kingdom trilogy), just released in hardcover from Holt, as of possible interest to Black Gate readers. And from her description, it sounded like she could be right:

The House of Dead Maids is billed as a prelude to Wuthering Heights, as it features a character who will come to be known as Healthcliff. The novel is a scary blending of Yorkshire lore and Bronte family history. The child (Heathcliff) is already a savage little creature when Tabby Aykroyd arrives at Seldom House as his nursemaid. The ghost of the last maid will not leave Tabby in peace, and her spirit is only one of many. As she struggles against the evil forces that surround the house, Tabby tries to befriend her uncouth young charge, but her kindness can’t alter his fate.

The real task, as always, was matching the ideal reviewer with the book… a bit more of a challenge for a 151-page book with an eleven year-old narrator, I grant you.

As luck would have it, I happened to have an eleven-year old reader in the house, who innocently picked up the book the day it arrived.  I know when the stars have aligned, and sat down with a notepad and pen to interview her minutes after she finished reading The House of Dead Maids.

We’ll call this young reader “Tabitha,” because of what happened when her mother found out I was going to use her picture and real name on the Internet.

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Mortals, meet Demon Lovers: A review of Goblin Fruit Magazine, Part II

Mortals, meet Demon Lovers: A review of Goblin Fruit Magazine, Part II

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goblin-fruit-autumn2Okay, this is the Age of the Internet, so you’ve probably had this experience.

Say you’ve met a couple of like-minded ladies at a few writing conventions (as described in Part I). Say these conventions were World Fantasy 2007 and WisCon 2008 respectively. Say you’ve set about exchanging a million emails with these ladies, the occasional phone call, friending them on LiveJournal and Facebook, and rediscovering, happily, the merits of snail mail. These ladies just happen to be the two editors of Goblin Fruit Magazine.

Fantastic! You send them your really long rhyme-y poems nobody else wants, and sometimes they even take them, and even when they don’t, they seem to like you anyway. Life is totally Utopian.

You all read fantasy, right? What happens after Utopia?

DOOM!

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Thirteen Questions for Wyatt Weed – Writer and Director of Shadowland

Thirteen Questions for Wyatt Weed – Writer and Director of Shadowland

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poster3A few weeks back at the Chicago Comic Con, I had the pleasure of meeting the cast of Shadowland, a new indie horror movie written and directed by Wyatt Weed.

Forget the stars were beyond hot and that lead actress Caitlin McIntosh was a beauty queen. Forget my photographer Mr. Disney nearly put a perma-fog on his zoom lens trying to shoot through a crowd that was about six people deep; because in spite of the fact that all normal indicators point toward me having a thorough dislike for this whole crew, I couldn’t help it. I love indie film makers and the passion they have for making something different and “outside the system.”

And since being anti-establishment is part of the whole angst-y persona I’m trying hard to cultivate, I couldn’t wait to interview this lot and find out what drives such an all-consuming level of creativity.

So, since Wyatt soon realized I’d just keep stalking him until he relented (see past Goth Chick entries for proof), here it is.

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Mortals, Meet Goblins: A Review of Goblin Fruit Magazine (Part I)

Mortals, Meet Goblins: A Review of Goblin Fruit Magazine (Part I)

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gobspr08cropIt was a cool November night in 2007. It was, in fact, All Souls Night.

Two friends and I had driven all day from Chicago, Illinois to Saratoga Springs, New York for the World Fantasy Convention. The Open Mic Poetry Reading I wanted to attend started at 10 PM, so there was barely enough time to dump our things in our room and slide into Broadway 1, all bedraggled and a bit unnerved.

The room was crowded, the poets plenteous and eager. I’d planned to recite “Sedna,” which is one doozy of a story-poem, but as the moderator was looking slightly harassed at her list of readers, I assured her I’d go at the end, and only if there was time. The mood I was in, I’d probably have been happy just to tuck tail and run.

Then the poetry began.

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Goth Chick News: Best In Show; The Chicago Comic Con

Goth Chick News: Best In Show; The Chicago Comic Con

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wizardworldHave you ever woken up in an extremely good mood, found you were left enough hot water for a skin-peeling shower, stepped on the scale and found it down two pounds in spite of the bacchanalia of the night before? Have you ever leapt out of bed feeling euphoric and thought, “I really love my life?”

For me, the sun rose over the Chicago skyline last Saturday and found me gleefully clutching my press pass to the Chicago Comic Con.

It was about to be one of those days.

Last weekend, Wizard World made the Chicago stop on its nationwide tour, bring pop culture, comic books, toys and general weirdness to the Windy City. I brought my good friend and photographer Mr. Disney along, not only to help capture every precious moment on film, but to assist in with the non-stop stream of snarky commentary that was unavoidable at an event such as this.

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Goth Chick News: “Waking the Witch:” An Interview with Kelley Armstrong

Goth Chick News: “Waking the Witch:” An Interview with Kelley Armstrong

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image004Fresh off my movie frenzy of the last few blog entries, I felt it was time to unplug for a least a week and pick up what looked like the most interesting of the new book releases to find their way first to the Black Gate front office, and then to the underground bunker of Goth Chick News.

With the summer interns finally packing off to their respective institutes of higher learning, I am back to actually getting my mail — as opposed to having it pillaged by a pack of over-hormoned neophytes who snag anything with a girl on the cover. Thus I felt fortunate that this particular new release made it to my mail slot.

On July 27th, prolific author Kelley Armstrong released the 11th book in her Women of the Otherworld series, Waking the Witch. Narrated by twenty-one year old witch Savannah Levine, who readers will recognize from her appearances in prior stories, Savannah is eager to prove herself not only as a sleuth, but as a storyteller in her own right.

And though it is first and foremost a mystery, Waking the Witch is chock full of enough supernatural beings to satisfy the most devout occult enthusiast, though I am almost relieved to say; no vampires to be found. And really, haven’t we all had enough at this point?

Readers like me who haven’t read the prior books, will be intrigued enough by the many hints of multiple back stories to head out in pursuit of the first ten in the series; while devotees will be thrilled with the continuing saga that was born in 2001 with Kelley Armstrong’s first book in the series, Bitten.

I was honored to have recently discussed the books as well as the creativity behind them with Ms Armstrong herself.

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Exploring Fantasy in Metal, Part III: Dangerous Side Effects

Exploring Fantasy in Metal, Part III: Dangerous Side Effects

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Or, How Metal Messed With Mike Allen’s Already Dark and Twisty Mind

Blue Oyster Cult's Cultösaurus Erectus, with lyrics by Michael Moorcock
Blue Oyster Cult's Cultösaurus Erectus, with lyrics by Michael Moorcock

For the last seven months, I have been (with great reluctance and an even greater determination to finish the thing or be consigned to a heretofore undiscovered circle of Dante’s Inferno) exploring some of the fantastical aspects of Heavy Metal.

Part One and Part Two of that adventure can be found here on the Black Gate blog.

I had lots of help. Because I knew next to nothing of this musical genre, I turned to those who did.

I had noticed, you see, some time ago, that some of my smartest guy-friends, all who liked reading the same books I do (and who led me by my snooty nose to such works as Beowulf and George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire, which I’d avoided due to their being “boy books”), were all, well, Metalheads.

It got me curious. So I started asking questions. Among those men I interrogated was Mike Allen.

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Goth Chick News: Do the Dead Really Matter In the Movies? Thirteen Questions for Midnight Syndicate’s Edward Douglas

Goth Chick News: Do the Dead Really Matter In the Movies? Thirteen Questions for Midnight Syndicate’s Edward Douglas

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dead-matter1All right movie fans, its here! We’ve been telling you about it for months and today is finally the day when Midnight Syndicate’s new horror flick The Dead Matter goes on sale nationwide at Hot Topics stores and on Amazon.com.

As I may have mentioned once or twice at most, Ed Douglas and the gang gave me a sneak peek at their creation last week and as a fan of the drive-in-horror-movie genre, I can tell you The Dead Matter is quite an amazingly fun ride. If that’s not enough, the DVD comes packaged with two new Midnight Syndicate music creations; the original motion picture soundtrack and the Halloween Music Collection.

For me, it’s like Christmas Halloween in July…

And for those of you who may be entertaining the idea that I’m just a hopeless sycophant with an ongoing crush on a bunch of bad-boy musicians, PIFFLE I say to you! They’re not at all bad boys; they’re actually nice and highly articulate, and have a lot of really entertaining things to tell us about.

See for yourself in the interview below.

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Goth Chick News: Close Encounters – The Week We Made Contact

Goth Chick News: Close Encounters – The Week We Made Contact

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ce3k1Back in May I told you all about cyber-stalking little Barry Guiler, that adorable little tot from the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind (now apparently referred to as CE3K by you unbelievably cool kids).

I also let you know that though at the time I had turned up a fat lot of nothing in my attempt to contact Barry, who is Cary Guffey in real life, something told me I was eventually going to meet with success. I mean, what little I had read about Cary seemed to point to him being a nice normal guy, which by default meant he was likely the opposite of that other child actor I tried to interview who by all on-line accounts is a bit of a tool.

So for three weeks I busied myself rearranging my voodoo dolls and abusing my new crop of interns, all the while hoping for pay dirt in the form of an email from Cary. So I would be spared from looking like a hopeless poser who spends a lot of time writing about great interviews, without ever closing escrow.

Well, today I am here to tell you that though I may indeed be a grade-A cyber stalker, I am definitely NOT a poser.

Cary Guffey did get in touch and he is indeed a nice guy; actually a really nice guy with a great sense of humor. And since none of you believed I’d end up interviewing him and therefore didn’t send in any insightful and provocative questions, I was forced to make up my own.

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