My favorite Halloween novel…

The first horror novel I read – given to me by my sainted grandmother – was DRACULA, by Bram Stoker himself. Had a GREAT cover shot of Christopher Lee looking tall, dark and gruesome as usual.

HOWEVER, the book that turned the crank for me was indeed SALEM’S LOT.

(just had to stand on my tiptoes and reach up with a back scratcher to claw my old paperback copy down from the top office shelf where I keep my Stephen King novels – and now I’m going to have to read it again)

I came to Salem’s Lot by way of a very weird detour. I read a Marvel comic book – (think it might have been Marvel Two In One Annual – and it was – I just spent fifteen minutes on Google hunting up the reference) – that showed Benjamin Grimm – The Thing – reading a copy of Salem’s Lot.

Cool, I thought.

If the Thing can read Salem’s Lot I better too.

All right, so I was pretty young at the time.

Anyway – to make a LOOOOONG story short – it was while I was reading Salem’s Lot that I first decided that I wanted to write a horror novel. So in a very real way that one book changed my life.

And I was thinking of Salem’s Lot when I wrote Tatterdemon – which is still on sale for a measly 99 cents. I’m bumping the price back up at the end of October – so if you want it on your Kindle – go and grab it now!

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon

Advertisements