The once-a-decade Sight & Sound critics’ poll of the greatest films ever made is old news by now, the headline having been that longtime Number One Greatest Film Citizen Kane has been displaced after many decades by Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (if you haven’t seen the poll: http://www.bfi.org.uk/news/50-greatest-films-all-time).

( Read more... )

A new interview with me, conducted by indie publisher and writer JW Schnarr, has just gone up, and you can find it right here: http://jwschnarr.blogspot.com/2012/08/an-interview-with-bram-stoker-winner.html

Enjoy!

I’m pleased to announce that my forthcoming collection of flash fiction, Herding Ravens: Bon-Bons and Cold Cuts, is now available for pre-order from the estimable horror and dark fantasy publisher Bad Moon Books. The book, featuring evocative interior art by Daryl Earnest and a spectacular cover by John Pierro, features over two dozen of my “bon- ( Read more... )

Perhaps no Hollywood legend is stranger than the fate of the three stars of that doom-haunted teenage classic, 1955’s Rebel Without a Cause.

You remember the film, of course. James Dean, in his image-defining role, plays alienated adolescent Jim Stark, whose family has just moved to a new town because of some “trouble” the boy had gotten into ( Read more... )

Work on what should be my next book, a collection of flash fiction from Bad Moon titled Herding Ravens: Bon-Bons and Cold Cuts, proceeds apace. The terrific Daryl Earnest is more than halfway done with the drawings now, and the volume should be released this summer. Here’s a story from the book, complete with Daryl’s art.

Political Poem

copyright © ( Read more... )

I’m happy to be able to announce that, after several delays, the signed and numbered hardcover edition of my new novel, Lullaby for the Rain Girl, is now available from Dark Regions Press. Complete information is here: http://www.darkregions.com/lullaby-for-the-rain-girl-by-christopher-conlon/

So what’s it about? Lullaby for the Rain Girl focuses on ( Read more... )

Last week I was urging a friend to see the stupendously wonderful, Golden Globe-winning, Oscar-nominated film The Artist, which, if you’ve been paying any attention at all to recent films, you know is a black-and-white silent movie-a French-made tribute of sorts to early Hollywood, a comedy-drama about a silent-era star, George Valentin, who faces ( Read more... )

Here's the first Daryl Earnest illustration we're officially releasing for my upcoming collection of flash fiction, Herding Ravens, coming this summer from Bad Moon Books. Ain't it something?

Click on the art itself to see it enlarged. I'll re-post the story it illustrates, "The Town Elders," below.

Artwork copyright Daryl Earnest. Visit Daryl's ( Read more... )

Not long ago, in a moment of minor personal crisis, I found myself hungering after the literary equivalent of comfort food.

Something familiar, but not too familiar-not familiar to the point of boredom. Yet something that would give me a predictably pleasant lift.

Wandering our basement library (which contains some 3000 of those bulky pre-Kindle ( Read more... )

Is it possible that I’m getting old?

Well, for another seven months or so I’ll remain on the right side of 50, but still, thinking about writing a blog on my favorite books of 2011 has made me suspect a creeping curmudgeonliness lurking within the black and bitter recesses of my heart.

Truth is, I didn’t like very much of what I read in 2011. ( Read more... )