I finally broke down and bought a Kindle this year and no the world didn’t end. In fact I am very happy I did. I will first and foremost always love the feel of a real book; the fragrance, the crisp clean pages being turned and the weight of it gently held in my hands.

The Kindle has allowed me to read the back catalogs of many authors I love that I wouldn’t have otherwise been able afford to do. Plus, a lot of publishers and authors are sending me Kindle books for review, which is a lot better than PDF’s. As I had to print the PDF books out. So all in all, I believe the two mediums can co-exist in my life.

Now, I would like to thank all the publishers and authors that sent and continue to send me review copies. It is greatly appreciated as I seem to have a never ending supply of books to read.

I would also like to thank my readers who continue to follow my reviews, as well as follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

Without all of you this would not be worth it. I do what I can to give back to the genre that has kept me entertained for many a year, kept me sane, got me through some very tough times and continues to be my entertainment medium of choice. BOOKS RULE!!!!

I do have to say that 2011 was a banner year for horror fiction in my opinion. I read some simply amazing books this year. What follows is a list of every book I read during 2011. I read 64 books of varying lengths along with various magazines, newspapers, on-line articles etc. As you can tell reading is a big part of my life and who I am.

I probably started another 20-30 books or so,  but for some reason or another I didn’t like them. There are various reasons for this; I just didn’t like the story, poor spelling, grammar and punctuation, not my type of book etc. I will not read a book I don’t like just for the sake of doing a review on it. I have a huge TBR pile and don’t want to waste time on something I am not enjoying. I am not saying that they were all bad books I just didn’t like them and as we all know we can’t like everything.

I will also be publishing my Top Books of 2011 List in the next week or so, once I finalize my selections.

Garden’s Of Night – Greg F. Gifune
Lord Of The Mountain – William Ollie
Valley Of The Scarecrow – Gord Rollo
A Matrix Of Angels – Christopher Conlon
Regret – Gabrielle Faust
What The Night Knows – Dean Koontz
As I Embrace My Jagged Edges – Lee Thompson
The Bone Tree – Christopher Fulbright
Alice On The Shelf – Bill Gauthier
The Disappeared – David B. Silva
Willy – Robert Dunbar
The Pumpkin Man – John Everson
Fifteen Minutes – William Ollie
Dreams The Ragman – Greg F. Gifune
Vampire Hunters 2 – Scott M. Baker
It Drinks Blood – J.F. Gonzalez
The Gaki & Other Hungry Spirits- Stephen Mark Rainey
Bloodrush – Bryan Smith
Frankenstein- Dead City - Dean Koontz
Arena Of The Wolf – Jim Gavin
Midnights Angels – Tony Richards
Hunting The Moon Tribe – Darvid Arganoff
Heart Of Glass – David Winnick
Ursa Major – John R. Little
A View From The Lake – Greg F. Gifune
The Blackest Heart – Vince Churchill
The Five – Robert McCammon
Predatory Instinct – Michel McBride
Descent – Sandy Deluca
The Red Empire – Joe McKinney
The Kult by Shaun Jeffrey
Halloween Spirits – Edited by Lisa Morton (Anthology)
Little Boy Lost – TM Wright
Voyeurs of Death – Shaun Jeffrey
Kingdom Of Shadows – Greg F. Gifune
Martyrs & Monsters – Robert Dunbar
Valley Of The Dragons – K.H. Koehler
Iron Butterflies Rust – Lee Thompson
Beautiful Hell – Jeffrey Thomas
Planet Of The Dinosaurs – K.H. Koehler
Sea Of Serpents – K.H. Koheler
Into Hell – William Ollie
Midnight Solitaire – Greg F. Gifune
Dead Of Winter – Brian Moreland
Take The Long Way Home – Brian Keene
The Creeping Kelp – William Meikle
Kayla & The Devil – Brian Smith
Blood Harvest – James A. Moore
Fangboy – Jeff Strand
The Night Eternal – Hogan  – Del Toro
Subject Seven – James A. Moore
Verland; The Transformation – B.E. Scully
Catching Hell – Greg F. Gifune
Vampire Hunters 3 – Scott M. Baker
11/22/63 – Stephen King
Borealis – Ronald Malfi
Waiting Out Winter – Kelli Owen
Heretics – Greg F. Gifune
When The Leaves Fall – Paul Melniczek
Apartment 7 – Greg F. Gifune
Darkness Falls – Allan Leverone
In Poes Shadow – Anthology
Blindspot – Michael McBride
Where Darkness Dwells – Glen Krisch

Sawicki’s name comes with credibility, as he has taught visual effects for over 20 years, and has contributed special effects work to several MTV videos, the television series, Star Trek, and films such as Tropic Thunder, Premonition, 40 Year Old Virgin, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

It should be noted that despite Sawicki’s evident prowess and understanding of the tools and techniques, the book is distinctly geared towards novice and intermediate stop motion animators, model makers, animated filmmakers, and students. Luckily, his guidelines and explanations for using the program are so easy to follow that users should quickly establish the basis of understanding necessary to move on to more advanced work, should they be so inclined.

For those not familiar, Stop Motion Pro is a stop-motion software program designed by Ross Garner and Paul Howell to run on the Windows operating systems XP, Vista, or Windows 7. The software requires the possession of a video camera, webcam, or digital still camera, which is hooked up to the computer in order to sequence and animate the captured images. The software is currently selling version 7, and has been in use by professional animators for just over ten years. Most recently, the program was used to animate the short film, Wallace & Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death.

The program is one of the perennial tools for present-day animators, and conveniently expedites the process of editing together the necessary components of animation. Before the digital age, sequences were all filmed in-camera with no ability to see the image and adjust while on-set. With this new type of software, the camera is linked to the computer to produce a “live feed,” of the images it is capturing, thereby allowing the filmmakers to instantly react and adjust to what they see. Features such as “onion skinning,” whereby the previously captured image is overlayed with the current one, allow them to replicate the illusion of motion as precisely as possible.

The most welcome aspect of the book is Sawicki’s utilization of large, glossy pictures to accompany each of his text-based explanations. Nothing is more frustrating than endlessly scrolling through an unfamiliar computer program with a so-called “help” manual that merely describes something other than what you’re seeing. This book solves that problem with easily distinguishable photos of both the types of models and films it references and actual screenshots of what the reader should be seeing on their screen.

Sawicki also makes the wise decision to emphasize history and technique over the software itself. He addresses the necessary technical components in an introduction, and leaves it at that. That’s not to say that this text is over-reliant on theoretical discussion. But Sawicki clearly believes that the software in question is merely a vehicle for creative output and expression. He adopts the role of guide, giving the reader sufficient background and context to understand the purpose of the program, and leaving the content up to them.

The structure of the book indicates Sawicki’s history as a professor, as the chapters are clearly broken up into different animation subjects — from time, to people, to objects, to voices, to puppets, to clay. The book acknowledges a progression in theory and technique between the separate subjects, and it’s easy to imagine each chapter representing a week or so in a college course. They are sequenced so in the book that if one were simply interested in clay animation, they could leap straight to that chapter, but by reading the entire preceding portion, they will have accumulated a greater basis for understanding the techniques therein.

With the extensive leaps in technology over the last decade, the process of stop-motion filmmaking is constantly undergoing revision. In that respect, this book should serve as a wonderful resource for newcomers seeking to understand the process of stop-motion animation, or even experienced animators not up-to-date with the latest software. It’s difficult to imagine a more simple yet comprehensive guide.

Animating with Stop Motion Pro is published by Elsevier, Inc. All rights reserved. It is available at bookstores now in paperback form.

COMING SOON:
Child of Rage — back in stock
H.P. Lovecraft Masters of the Weird Tale — this will be ready first week of March
Don Brautigam  — copies available now
Videodrome — small delay here, hopefully coming soon

That’s about it for this time. Thank you everyone!

The small press publisher has quietly made a name for itself with their reprintings of classic horror, crime, and science fiction works in addition to art books.  Contributors to the untitled King book include Michael Whelan, Bernie Wrightson, J.K. Potter, Don Brautigam, Stephen Gervais, Ned Dameron and Don Maitz.

Jerad Walters told Fangoria, “We’re hoping that [King] will agree to an introduction.”

Stine’s 50 titles in his series set sales records for Scholastic back in the 1980s and spawned television and direct-to-video incarnations.  After writing other books and series, Stine returned to his best-known franchise with Goosebumps in HorrorLand, a dozen book set.

No director or cast has been set.

Sara Castillo at FEARnet was able to catch up with some of cast and chatted about how each of them tapped into their respective inner vampires.  FM now recaps on the highlights of each interview.

Both LeFevre and Pattinson commented that in playing their roles as vampires, each of them first had to figure out their characters before they were infected, which adds a tragic appeal towards the characters.

Rachelle LeFevre who plays Victoria in the film is an evil nomatic vampire who is the mate of James, another vampire that becomes obsessed with Bella.  Her mission is to hunt down Bella and her vampire love interest Edward to make their lives a living hell.

Robert Pattinson plays Edward Cullen, the star vampire in the films who doesn’t understand his existence, and according to Pattinson is constantly thinking, “I want to die, or be a human because being a vampire is so utterly pointless.”  He becomes consumed by his love for Bella, a human being, whom his first instincts would be to eat and kill—not love.  Pattinson’s method involves believing that “he was just this normal guy who just got bitten.”

Edi Gathegi plays Laurent, the one good vampire stuck in a coven of evil blood-sucking vampires.  His technique is “Everything is delicious to [him]” and since he is a party guy at heart, “[his] vampire just wants to know where the action is.”

Castillo was also able to chat with creator Stephenie Meyer and director Catherine Hardwick.  Meyers and Hardwick could not be happier with the frenzy of fans of all ages in anticipation for their upcoming release.  They say it has “confirmed [their] assumption that everything is cooler when vampires are telling story.”

“I started Underland with a vision of bringing the world’s best odd, scary, and unsettling fiction to life and to light,” Blake said in a release. “I wanted to make a publishing company that had as much presence online as it did in print. Both of those things have happened. Underland is now distributed by PGW, one of the industry’s heavy-hitters, which means our books will be available everywhere books are sold. The website has been getting a substantial amount of online attention for our wovel, or web novel, where readers vote on the plot choices in real time. People are taking notice.

“We have four print books scheduled for our first year-by alt-lit master Brian Evenson, by world-renowned fantasist Jeff VanderMeer, by rising star Will Elliott, and by the husband-and-wife team Escober. Our first books will be available in January.”

One of the innovations is to offer a chapter a week online at their website.  They nicknamed this a wovel beginning with Kealan Patrick Burke’s The Living.

The novel has previously been a feature film, released in 1987 and starred Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer.  It did very well despite criticism of Nicholson being even more over the top than usual.

Since then, there have been other attempts to turn the novel and film into a series starting with Warner Bros. Television in 1992 when writers Carlton Cuse (Lost) and Jeffrey Boam (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) produced a pilot that starred Catherine Mary Stewart, Julia Campbell, Ally Walker and Michael Siberri.

Fox and Warner Bros. TV tried again in 2002 although that project was dubbed just Eastwick. This attempt was from writers Jon Cowan (Bionic Woman) and Robert Rovner (Crossing Jordan) and rather than be about the women — Lori Loughlin, Marcia Cross, and Kelly Rutherford — it was to be about their sons.

More successful was the musical version, which premiered in England from producer Cameron Mackintosh, and was performed most recently last year in the states.

The Amulet of Samarkand (The Bartimaeus Trilogy) – Jonathan Stroud, Nathaniel, a 12 year old magician conjures a 14th level dijini (much like a genie), Bartimaeus. This unlikely duo come into possession of the priceless amulet of Samarkand and chaos ensues. Nathaniel and Bartimaeus have taken more than the spirit world by storm; their first movie is set for 2009.

Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis, have sold 100 million copies and been in continuous print since 1955. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien belonged to a writer’s peer group, the Inklings, and it is believed that Tolkien offered input on the chronicles. The third film in the series starts shooting next year.

Harry Potter – The success of the Harry Potter series is unparalleled. Moreover, the rags to riches story of J.K. Rowling writing Harry Potter with her newborn in a coffee shop because it was the best way to get her daughter to sleep. Her estimated fortune is 1 billion dollars. The sixth film will be out, of course, in November.

His Dark Materials Trilogy – (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass)—Philip Pullman’s trilogy, The trilogy features two children Lyra and Will as they wander through myriad universes that are replete with witches and armored polar bears. His Dark Materials Trilogy is thought to be a re-telling of Milton’s epic Paradise Lost. The film adaptation proved creatively and financially disappointing and no further chapters are planned by New Line Cinema.

The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien, Peter Jackson and his Oscar winning films earned in excess of 6 billion dollars. Unfortunately, the heirs of the J.R.R. Tolkien are not enthusiastic about the films’ revenue. They have filed suit with United Artists regarding a 1969 contract signed by Tolkien giving rights to Hollywood Producer, Saul Zaentz. Regardless, the trilogyu’s prequel, The Hobbit, will spawn two films from Guillermo del Toro in the coming yers.