With apologies to CCR for the title, I am pleased to announce that Werewolves: Dead Moon Rising, the horror anthology from Moonstone Books that contains my first published prose short story, is hitting comic store shelves today!

Now, sure, the fact that I've got something new out is exciting enough on it's own, but I've got a whole lot of great folks keeping me company in the pages of this terror-filled tome.  Like writers Elaine Bergstrom, Tom DeFalcon, Clay & Susan Griffith, William R. Halliar, C.J. Henderson, David Michelinie, Christopher Mills, Mike Reynolds, Beau Smith, Stephen D. Smith, Dave Ulanski and Fred Van Lente!  Not to mention an awesome cover by Dave Dorman and cool interior illustrations by Ken Wolak.

Just the thing to stuff the stocking of any werewolf and/or horror fan of your acquaintance for the holidays!

If the book isn't on the shelves at the local comic shop, they should be able to order it for you.  Also, it's already available from Amazon.com and should be finding its way to better bookstores near you.  In a pinch, you can even order it from Moonstone Books directly!

Hope you'll check it out.  If you do, please let me know what you think here at the P(ull)-List!

Halloween is my favorite holiday of the year.  Why?  Because (for those of us not celebrating it as a religious holiday), it's all about FUN.  Well, and horror.  But FUN horror.  Plus, as you might imagine, as a guy who grew up reading tales of supertypes running around in costumes (and growing up to write them), I always like to have an excuse for putting on a costume myself.  So far, however, I have resisted the urge to go out and fight crime.  Maybe after I start working out again.

Anyway, what sparked my Halloween musings?  Well, in response to another post misscoollinda asked me what my favorite horror movie was.  That seemed to me too good a topic to bury in a reply thread!

But before we get to my favorite horror movie, I have a confession to make: I am a relatively late convert to horror fandom.  I have friends who have been devotees of horror books, comics and movies for as long as they can remember.  Myself?  Not so much. 

Why?  Possibly because, as a kid, horror movies actually scared the crap out of me.  Chalk it up to an overactive imagination and being brought up to believe in things spiritual that require no scientific evidence to prove their existence.  Oh, I knew in my head that vampires and werewolves and such didn't actually exist.  People I trusted made sure I understood it.  But far back in the shadowy reaches of my imagination, there remained a whispered "What if?"  And, of course, it's those very shadowy reaches of imagination that bubble to the surface just as a youngster is drifting off to sleep.

Still, I eventually got over it.  I even got to the point where I could fall asleep without a sheet pulled up over my neck (sovereign protection against tempting vampires, don't you know)!

However, the pattern was set and I wasn't much for horror movies for a long time after. 

I think I was gradually brought back into the fold by way of a comic called Werewolf By Night.  It told the story of one Jack Russell, a guy who was afflicted by a family curse on his eighteenth birthday, doomed to sprout fur, fangs and a bad attitude anytime the full moon rose.  Deep down, though, he was a good guy (like Larry Talbot before him).  And even though Werewolf By Night had horrific elements, there was a bit of a heroic vibe going as well.  The Werewolf often ended up fighting against other, truly evil, monsters or sorcerers of even would-be monster hunters.  People and things who weren't monstrous because of a curse, but because of their own twisted souls.

It's probably no surprise then that some of my favorite horror movies are werewolf movies.

The Wolf-Man.  An American Werewolf in London.  Ginger Snaps.

I debated whether to put The Howling on the list.  I like it, but I'm not sure it goes into the "Favorites" category.

There are also flicks that I really like, but I'm not sure they really qualify as horror.  They're cross-genre movies, mixing horror and humor or horror and humor and action.  Stuff like the exceptional Cast A Deadly Spell (featuring Howard Philip "Phil" Lovecraft as a hard-boiled detective trying to prevent a return of the Great Old Ones of the Cthulhu mythos in a world where magic came back after WW2) or Tremors (about two handymen in a dessert town who end up fighting huge, carnivorous worms that lurk beneath the ground).  I mean, sure, An American Werewolf in London has its funny moments too, but the focus is on the horror and the tragic lead character.

(I should also point out that Fred Ward stars in both Tremors and Cast a Deadly Spell.  He's terrific in both and a truly underrated actor.)

But to get to my favorite horror film, we have to move away from the hellish werewolf and into the realm of Heaven.

Because The Prophecy, starring Christopher Walken as the archangel Gabriel, is my all-time favorite horror flick. 

Now I suppose there are those who would argue about whether it was "straight" horror or not.  Even if it isn't, there's something very chilling to me about the uncaring angels waging war in Heaven over whether we 'monkeys' deserve to be the apple of God's eye and that war coming, at last, to Earth.  Walken's casual cruelty and burning hatred for humanity as Gabriel, coupled with a few brief appearances by Viggo Mortensen as the Devil are enough to lock this firmly into "horror" territory in my book. 

If you haven't seen The Prophecy (or any of the movies I've listed here), I'd highly recommend checking them out during this Halloween season.  That's a whole lot of good, creepy stuff with great scripts and solid-to-exceptional acting.

In fact, I think I may have to watch 'em all again myself.