Flames Rising is pleased to present Black Angels, a story by Michael Jasper, which is part of the Gunning for the Buddha anthology. Gunning for the Buddha is available now at DriveThruHorror.com.

Author Michael Jasper has this to say about Black Angels:

“Black Angels” started with a picture and a memory, of a statue in an Iowa City graveyard. The rest came to me as I was daydreaming on my commute home from work one day. The statue from the story really does exist, in an Iowa City cemetery. Every freshman learns about it while attending the University of Iowa. The Black Angel is spooky. Especially at night…

Anton Strout brings us more madcap mayhem in book two of the Jane chronicles (otherwise known as the Simon Canderous series, but his girlfriend, the ex-evil cultist Jane, totally steals the show). Now a member of the Department of Extraordinary Affairs after leaving her cultist ways behind, Jane is working in the Black Stacks (the scariest library in urban fantasy) and discovering that she has a talent for technomancy. In fact, she’s so good with magic and machines, she rescues her boyfriend Simon from an attempt on his life in his Oubliette test over his cell phone. Her new gig working for the ambiguously moralled Thaddeus Wesker, Director of Greater and Lesser Arcana at the DEA is going swimmingly — except for the tension it creates between her and Simon, who doesn’t like her boss.

I’ve come to realize, somewhat unwittingly in more recent years, that Maberry scares me for reasons that go beyond the mere horrific. When I made my first serious foray into researching the occult, I didn’t realize until after the fact that my first fact finder’s guide just happened to have been written by the one who wrote this pithy little gem. But then, there’s always something about a writer whose writing not only gives you something you already know, but can serve to inspire other avenues of horror you were certain should have occurred to others by now – only didn’t.

Patient Zero is the first in a series of Joe Ledger novels (not to be confused with the Marvel character), revolving around a former Baltimore detective who is pulled into the shady world of the equally shady Church.

Apex Book Company, a small press publisher specializing in the science fiction, horror and fantasy genres, announced today that Dark Faith, a horror anthology edited by Maurice Broaddus and Jerry Gordon, is their best-selling title of 2010.

To celebrate the success of Dark Faith, Apex Book Company is offering the e-book on sale at DriveThruHorror.com for $1.99, which is over fifty percent off the cover price.

Another year’s in the books, one spent on the permanent and exhausting search through the horror movie scrap heap looking for the elusive hidden treasures. Unfortunately, this past year was a weak one. There wasn’t a whole lot to get excited about. Despite all the bad flicks, a few managed to rise above the fray, giving me hope for 2011.

As is usually the case, there were several remakes to take with a grain of salt. Some of them furthered the atrophying of the horror genre as it relates to studio backed filmmaking, others were much more horrible than horrifying, and all of them were unnecessary.

This and that and everything …

I hate the New Year.

Ok, I get it, you’re probably thinking “get on with it old man, you hate a lot of things,” but if you’ll indulge me here for a brief moment, then you’ll see that I have something to really say about the New Year.

I really (emphasis is clearly my own) hate the New Year because it forces me to think about the fact that another twelve months of my life has flown by, in what seems to be an ever increasing and perilous amount of speed. It forces me to acknowledge that I am one more year closer to death, one more year removed from the awesomeness/horribleness (not really a word, I’ve slammed two industrial sized Red Bull’s, three pots of coffee and possibly enough over the counter truck stop speed to kill a small battalion of polar bears, so go easy on me) that was my twenties and the foulness that is the onset of my thirties.

GABRIELLE FAUST has pursued an eclectic career as an illustrator, technohorror writer, and leading industry entertainment critic. She is also currently the Chair of the Texas Chapter for Horror Writers of America.

In 2005 her poetry collection, Before Icarus, After Achilles, was published. Faust then partnered with Immanion Press in August of 2007 for her cross-genre technohorror trilogy Eternal Vigilance, a post-apocalyptic vampire saga of epic proportions. The first novel of this series, From Deep Within the Earth, was released in April, 2008. The second installment, The Death of Illusions was released in March of 2009 and the third, Bound in Blood was released in September of 2010.

Flames Rising is pleased to present an interview with Gabrielle Faust conducted by author Kenneth Mark Hoover.

Our author design essay continues with Patrick D’Orazio telling us about his new novel Comes The Dark, which is published by Library of the Living Dead Press.

Six weeks have passed since the virus ravaged the world’s population and in that time most of humanity has passed into shadow, turning into corrupt, rotting flesh eaters that known only pain and hunger as they attempt to destroy the remaining members of the human race.

Comes The Dark, which is my first published novel, is my humble entry into the zombie genre. I wasn’t necessarily interested in recreating or morphing the zombie into something new or different with my book, but wanted to focus on the dynamics between human beings thrust into a horrible situation, being forced to do things they would otherwise be unwilling to do and deciding if surviving is even the right choice when all they have ever known and loved has been annihilated.

The Cold Ones is a novella by award winning author Elizabeth Donald. In Cold Ones, we meet Sarah Harvey, small-town bookstore owner with a secret: she’s not really a bookstore owner. It’s her cover; she’s part of a secret organization doing who knows what in this small coastal town. At least one other shop owner is another member of her team; their jobs are to keep an eye on the town and cover the rest of the team. The story begins with a scream as someone is attacked in the street by what turns out to be a quick, ferocious, zombie-like man, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, it represents only the beginnings of the trouble ahead…

The Cold Ones is a well-crafted tale; I was instantly sucked in and stayed up too late reading it. Ms. Donald does a very good job making her characters believable while avoiding most cliches found in supernatural fiction these days. This team of covert operatives is skilled and fairly bad-assed, but they are also fallible – they screw up occasionally and sometimes make poor choices.

Kevin Lucia is the author of Hiram Grange and the Chosen One, book four of the popular series. He is also an editor and reviewer for Shroud Publishing. In this guest post he talks about what sparked his interest in the horror genre.

I remember when I first became interested in horror. The summer of 1996, I spent lots of time with my friends bumming around Otsego Lake, NY. My best friend’s grandmother owned a cabin there, so we spent all our weekends riding the boat, eating and napping on the dock.

One weekend we got bored. Which country boys tend to do. This usually means trouble. We were lying around on the dock when my friend Joel remarked, “We should take Kevin to the Devil House.”

Having read some of Bentley Little’s work before (MY FATHER’S SON), I was really interested in picking up THE DISAPPEARANCE to see what twists and turns were in store for me.

The story takes place in our modern-day world, and infuses our worst fears into what should be a very fun weekend. A group of college students from UCLA travel to the world-renowned Burning Man festival, and experience a bizarre turn of events: they wake up from a drug-induced state to find that Gary’s girlfriend Joan has disappeared. Worse, when they contact the police, they don’t believe that she has ever existed because her digital identity has been wiped cleaned.

FlamesRising.com is pleased to present you with a preview of modern horror zombie novel PARIAH, by author and artist Bob Fingerman. Bob wrote an essay for us entitled “Confessions of a Boy Fraidy Cat where he talked about his personal experiences with the horror genre as a kid. Today, Bob offers us original artwork and a preview of his zombie novel PARIAH, which was released from Tor Books.

Can’t wait for Halloween? Love scary movies as much as I do? Here’s a way to watch horror movies for free!

Get a head start on celebrating all things spooky by checking out the broad selection of free horror movies for Halloween at Crackle.com. Every year this legal, free movie site hand-picks a special Halloween collection of horror flicks for you to enjoy.

In addition to their broad selection of free horror films, this year Crackle.com’s Halloween movie collection includes over twenty-five movies.

Last week, I talked about why 13 GHOSTS is a classic horror film. For this week’s article, I decided to talk about a different kind of monster — THE BLOB.

“Released in 1988, The Blob remake is the kind of horror movie that makes you groan, laugh and scream. Creepy violins and cheerful images of a small town set the mood. The first people you meet? Teenagers!”

FlamesRising.com is pleased to present you with an essay written by Bob Fingerman, an author and artist with roots in the comic book industry. Fingerman has worked on a number of horror-themed works, including BOTTOMFEEDER, ZOMBIEWORLD: WINTER’S DREGS and the zombie graphic novel entitled RECESS PIECES. Just recently, his new zombie novel PARIAH was released from Tor Books.

In this essay, Fingerman offers us an insightful look into his personal experiences with the horror genre as a kid. Be sure to stay tuned for an exclusive preview of PARIAH and our review of his second novel.

While the full moon rarely has a dramatic an effect on most people, there are some who will admit that they can feel the pull of the moon, at least in subtle ways — and crime statistics bear this out year after year. For those rare few for whom the moon activates a profound curse, the world becomes a different place entirely – a world filled with soft, slow creatures to be hunted, attacked and devoured. Give thanks that those with such a curse are still a rarity…

In Curse of the Full Moon, James Lowder has collected 19 tales from an impressive collection of horror luminaries: George R.R. Martin, Ursula LeGuin, Ramsey Campbell, Charles DeLint, Michael Moorcock and Neil Gaiman are just a few of the names any fan of contemporary fiction will recognize, but the list doesn’t end there. Joe R. Lansdale, Nancy A. Collins, Peter S. Beagle, Gene Wolfe and Harlan Ellison also contribute tales to this collection.

Last week Eric posted his recent Interview with Joe R. Lansdale here at Flames Rising. One of the titles discussed in that interview was The Complete Drive-In published by Underland Press.

Flames Rising is pleased to present the introduction to this new collection. The Complete Drive-In is available now at Amazon.com.

Advertising will sometimes try to sell a movie as the funniest of the year . . . during the third week in January. I think that’s a fairly short-sighted marketing approach, but maybe people don’t remember that eleven more months will doubtlessly have contenders to the self-proclaimed title. Why even bring it up? Because I want to explain my take on this RPG. I’m not going to call this the coolest RPG I read in 2010 . . . yet.

I was recently given the opportunity to take a crack at legendary “Mojo” author Joe R Lansdale’s latest books, a new collected short stories anthology and a newly collected version of all three “At the Drive in” series-featuring never before seen art from the un-produced film of the same title and on top of that, I got a wonderful Email from Matt asking if I would like a chance to interview Mr. Lansdale for Flames Rising, well of course I jumped at the chance so here, without further ado and good sense, is the interview.

In Random, Illinois, not much has changed in the last century. Things there move more slowly than they do in the city. At times, history seems to be moving in reverse. That’s how it seems; some folks would say that’s how it is.

For Jason, Frank, Ronnie and Lizzy, there are bits and pieces of the past that won’t go away. Not in the daylight world, and not in their dreams. They shared a secret, a bond of silence and guilt. They shared the memory of an old woman’s dry, crackling voice, the heat and sizzling terror of flames beyond their control, and the mesmerizing image of a handful of bones.

Roll Them Bones is now available in audio format at DriveThruFantasy.com.