Lost Horror Films Article in Rue Morgue Magazine (and a Book Pitch)

To bastardize Poltergeist: I’m baaack. Where have I been? Working on a magazine piece that I’m particularly proud of, a five-page feature that Rue Morgue laid out just beautifully. I'm thrilled with how it turned out, so if you’re near a newsstand this month, take a look at “The Ghosts of Horror Past: 25 Films Lost to the Sands of Time” in issue #124. 

Rue Morgue magazine, with a feature article by your Book Dirt hostess.

But wait, you say. If the issue is already out, couldn’t you have returned to blogging sooner? I could have, but while deep in the middle of researching missing films I remarked that I had enough information on each title that I could practically write an article on each one. I honed each one down to a neat paragraph, but the idea weighed heavily on me: could this be a book?

I think it could. So, while I’m still high on the subject matter, I’m putting together a pitch package for a book on lost films. Pitching non-fiction, while it doesn’t require writing the book ahead of time, does require writing enough to show your chops. I’m close to finishing the introduction and sample entries, and aim to start seriously pitching in a few weeks.

In the meantime, if anyone has tips on maintaining a blog while meeting magazine deadlines (and pitching a book), I’m all ears.

5 Strangely Specific Self-Published Book Titles

The Guardian recently announced the recipient and finalists in the 2012 Diagram prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year. While the winner, Cooking with Poo, clearly won for its ability to provoke juvenile laughter, most of the other top contenders were humorous in a different way, namely, being specific to a level that seems almost absurd.

While I’m sure both Mr Andoh's Pennine Diary: Memoirs of a Japanese Chicken Sexer in 1935 Hebden Bridge and Estonian Sock Patterns All Around the World have audiences in the high dozens, the niche-ness of them is worthy of a couple of giggles and a headscratch.

When it comes to niche specificity, though, the Diagram prize has nothing on the self-publishing houses. In fact, if there’s one thing vanity presses are good for, it’s printing books that don’t have a large enough audience for traditional publishing.

Culled from the great bowels of online publishing catalogs, here’s a selection of ultra-specific titles aimed at the few rather than the many.


Action Karate Quilts  by Kathleen Azeez

A use for your family's old gi scraps, at long last.

Just like your grandma used to sew herself, before she became the sensei of the adult daycare dojo. Instructions are included for using generic head designs or transferring your own photographs of heads for custom versions, so commemorative Ralph Macchio quilt, here I come.



Nail Pullers (With Patent Reference) by Raymond P. Fredrich

For pulling nails, and not your leg.

Collectors are a special breed, so it’s not really surprising that someone collects nail pullers. More surprising might be Fredrich’s mania for the subject, noting that handcrafted nails are such a big deal, “You might even burn your house down and pick up nails in the ashes.” (Keep an eye out for Fredrich’s second book, Pyromania (With Legal Reference).


Federal Prison & Federal Prison Camp: A Beginner’s Guidebook for First Time Inmates by Steve Vincent

Includes pull-out maps and cafeteria ratings!

You buy a travel guide before you go to Martha’s Vineyard, so it stands to reason you would buy this one before you embark on an embezzlement scheme. Beginners, schmeginners, though: Is the advanced level guidebook out yet?

Shoe Exotica & Poems, Volume I by Patrick Sart

Shelve next to your foot-binding Haiku collection.

If you’re a shoe fetishist who likes stream-of-consciousness poetry, you’ve just hit the jackpot with this collection that features original drawings of bizarre shoes with even stranger poetry. (Although, if you are, I’m probably not telling you anything you don’t know. You probably have Sart on speed dial.)


How to Start Your Own African/African-American/Caribbean Products Store Online by The African-American Business Network

This could only be more specific if it were called How to Start Your Own African/African-American/Caribbean Products Store Online, Louise.

At last, a book that recognizes that the methods for marketing clay tagines and pigeon peas are vastly different from those used to sell bamboo steamers or Marmite. It’s just too bad that the three concepts were combined into one book, rather than exploring the inherent intricacies in three volumes.

Have you seen any weird self-published titles that are bizarre in their specificity? Do tell. 

Quotable: Ensalivated Books, Multiple Exclamation Marks and More

We can’t have our noses stuck in a book all the time. Sometimes we like to stick our noses in the internet, too.  Here are some recent book-related blurbs I found while poking around the web’s best book blogs and sites that enlightened, entertained, or possibly even both. While you’re busy sticking your own nose in things, pay a visit to the articles from which these excerpts hail. Every one is recommended.

Sara Levine buys punctuation marks in bulk.

“A book is not company. We engage with it, argue with it, carry it around in our pockets and minds, are haunted by memories of it for years. But it doesn't argue back, doesn't engage, never inquires how our day has been, gives only what it wishes. Books are selfish. Everything, every word, is on their terms. That's what I like about them.” 


From Rick Gekoski at The Guardian: ‘Some of My Best Friends Are Books’  


“And thus was born The Legendary Licked Book of Epic Confusion, the only book in the world signed and licked by fifteen fantastic science fiction and fantasy authors (and my wife).”


From sci-fi author John Scalzi’s blog. Go ahead and click. You know you’re curious about the context. It’s a doozy.


“I’m partial, I confess, to a book with exclamation points in its title. It’s the excitement, the urgency, the exuberance they bring to a page. Imagine if other people had used them: “War and Peace!!!” “The Breast!!!” You’d expect a completely different book.”


From Rebecca Barry’s New York Times review of Sara Levine’s Treasure Island!!! (Personally, I come down on the side of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who felt that exclamation points are like laughing at your own joke.)


“Dear Rod Rees, please go look up  “deus ex machina” and then never write again.” 


Nico Vreeland’s review of Rod Rees’ The Demi-Monde: Winter is forked of tongue, but well supported and thorough. See if you agree with the assessment.


“i tripped over a large air pocket on my bedroom floor and bashed my skull into the corner of my bookcase, which had three shelves and was faux wood veneer. after i applied cold compresses and stanched most of the bleeding, i drove to school, but they must have moved the school building across town. i chuckled to myself, darn school moving people!”


This spoof of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight serves as a review for a user known simply as “Brian” on the GoodReads site. Though it’s from 2009, the whole thing is hilariously spot-on. 


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Paintings of bookshelves: Almost as lovely as the real thing

Recently I watched an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents called “Premonition.” There were plenty of reasons for my attention to be held --not the least of which was a pretty young Chloris Leachman in an early role-- but what stole my focus in one  scene was something not meant to steal it away: a painting of a bookshelf.

It was a simple painting, especially as seen on black and white film, but as a person who feels at sea unless surrounded by books, I was fascinated. On the show’s set it was placed above a wealthy man’s bed --a spot that would normally be bookless. 

Attempt number 43 at grabbing a screenshot from an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The fact that I remember the painting in the background better than whatever is going on in this scene tells you something about me.

I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to capture a decent screenshot of the bookshelf painting. (That's John Forsythe persistently blocking my view. You know him better as Blake Carrington from Dynasty and also the voice of Charlie on Charlie's Angels. I know him better as the guy who kept blocking my screenshots.)


While real books would always be better, of course, it occurred to me that paintings of books would be a nice way to have the feel of them in places where it’s not practical, or even to magnify the feel of books in a room.

From incredibly realistic  trompe l’oeil paintings to still lifes and whimsical watercolors, here are some of the most stunning examples of bookshelf paintings from around the web.

Books for Maria by Dmitri Samarov

Vintage cookbooks painting by Holly Farrell.

Vintage children's books painting by Holy Farrell.

Partition by Stanford Kay.

Literary Landscape by Stanford Kay.

Not shelved, but should be a familiar site to anyone with more books than space. Above three images from Ephraim Rubenstein's Book Piles series.

Somewhat bare shelves asking to be filled. Painting by Chelsea James.

Blue Ocean. Exceptionally realistic bookshelf painting by Victoria Reichelt.

Almost Famous by Victoria Reichelt.

As the Stars Shine Down by Christopher Stott.

Antique Books by Christopher Stott.

I love how the above two paintings look decayed but still seem bright. From EarthArt's Etsy shop.

So cute, my teeth hurt. Wouldn't this be sweet in a kid's room? From LNZ Art.

 Which bookshelf painting is your favorite? And where would you hang it?


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Who Wrote Dante’s Inferno? Booksellers Really Wish You Knew.

Dante wants to know: Who wrote my Inferno?

Anyone who works in a bookstore or library is used to the mangled titles. In between giving directions to the bathroom (the number one bookstore request of all time), we keep a poker face while fielding inquiries about The Count of Monte Crisco and How to Kill a Mockingbird. It’s easy not to crack, mostly because of how often the same twisted titles get repeated.

What never ceases to boggle the mind, though, is the number one non-bathroom question customers ask over and over again.

Who wrote Dante’s Inferno?

No joke, it’s something bookstore customers really want to know, and with alarming frequency. It’s tricky to keep from sounding curt when answering  “Dante,” but it’s the correct and only response, despite the temptation to wickedly answer “Nostradamus” or even “Jackie Collins.”

I’m not sure why it’s poor Dante alone who falls prey to this phenomenon (though The Diary of Anne Frank gets occasional questions about its authorship, presumably by people who think it’s a work of fiction.)

No one ever walks in the door and asks, say, “Who wrote Shakespeare’s Hamlet?” or “Do you happen to know the author of Judy Blume’s Superfudge?” No, it’s Dante and The Inferno alone that befuddle students and mature adults alike.

Friends from other bookstores confirm that they hear it too, and so do librarians. And, to add to my astonishment, not only do people take to the Internet to ask who wrote Dante’s most famous work, but the Internet sometimes gets it shockingly wrong.  (Screenshot below.)

So, just to be clear to anyone who pulls this article up in a search because they --like thousands of other bookstore customers across the country-- need to know who wrote Dante’s Inferno-- the answer you’re looking for is Dante.

But of course you knew that.

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Book shop employees and other folks: What are some of the most bizarre questions you've heard? And who wrote Dante's Inferno?

All Roads Lead to Book Dirt: Baby Beatnik Edition

Book Dirt: for all your baby beatnik needs, apparently.

One of the unexpectedly hilarious perks of blogging comes from checking blog statistics. There among the page view numbers and traffic maps, I can also see which search terms led people my way.

In the case of Book Dirt, plenty of the folks who happened across my articles found them while entering the search terms “old books,” which means I must be doing something right.

Sometimes, though, the search terms that led readers to Book Dirt are downright confounding, leading me to scratch my head and wonder, “What on Earth were they looking for?”, “Why did they click Book Dirt in the search results?”  --or even, “Should I notify the F.B.I.?”

Here are some recent bizarre searches from folks who landed on this page, whether they meant to or not.

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Search term: baby beatnik

What they were looking for: An overtly niche-specific doll? A hipster cartoon in the Muppet Babies vein? Parenting advice on raising bongo-playing progeny?

What they found: My post on beatnik spoofs, which, though it contains everything from Herman Munster spouting impromptu beat poetry to a hippie-fied Steve Buscemi, the post is 100% baby free.
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Search term: novel where man lives life from fortune cookie fortunes

What they were looking for: Probably Matt Kelsey who spent a year opening fortune cookies and letting the results guide his daily routine. While Matt’s (now defunct) blog isn’t exactly a novel, with so many bloggers getting book deals these days, it’s an easy mistake.

What they found: Book Dirt’s story on professional fortune cookie writers.
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Search term: morgue metal table

What they were looking for: I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that the searcher wanted a table for a morgue? Either that, or they have a whimsicle interior decorator. Turns out, one can buy morgue tables online, even morgue tables for two.

What they found: Write a Mystery Novel, WIn a Morgue, which still doesn’t have a winner yet, so keep voting.
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Search term: pepe the king prawn cakes

What they were looking for: Given the number of Muppet confections photographed in blogs, a Pepe fan must have wanted an example of his favorite prawn star rendered in fondant. (I could only find one. It’s a group shot, and not the most flattering image of Pepe.)

What they found: The 10 Best Books Written by Muppets, which does include Pepe’s literary masterpiece, but is sadly devoid of recipes, unless you count Oscar’s Chunky Fish Ice Cream.
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Search term: stuff related to Chinua Achebe

What they were looking for: Stuff related to Chinua Achebe, though this person needs a crash course on better search terms. Information about...? Facts on...?

What they found: Stuff related to Chinua Achebe, most notably his legal brouhaha with 50 Cent. Perhaps “stuff” isn’t the worst search term after all.
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Stay tuned for more odd search terms, or even better: Subscribe to Book Dirt via RSS or email (see feeds to the right), and thumbs-up that Facebook icon while you’re at it for bonus bizarre Book Dirt bookishness.

Bloggers: Do you check your search term stats? What are some weird ones that led people to your blog?

George W. Bush Spotted on a Pulp Fiction Cover

Nicolas Cage isn’t the only one to pop up unexpectedly on book covers (both a Serbian textbook and a children’s history book).

During a recent browse through the huge cover archives at the blog Those Sexy Vintage Sleaze Books, I spotted a disturbingly familiar face on the cover of Charles Willeford’s Honey Gal: George W. Bush.

Honey Gal and Dubya. The sheep's in the meadow and the cow's in the corn, no doubt.

I don’t normally recoil when I see W’s visage, but when he (or his doppelganger) is sprawled under a haystack grasping confusedly at a busty barefoot vixen, I get caught off guard.

There’s no record of young Bush doing any modeling for pulp mystery paperback cover artists in his pre-prez days, but I can definitely hear him uttering the expression “honey gal.”

"Mr. Willeford, I'm ready for my close-up." (Photo via mywesttexas.com)

For those who don’t know Charles Willeford’s work, don’t be too put off by the sensational packaging. He’s actually quite readable (though I haven’t read Honey Gal.)

Both The Pick-Up and The Woman Chaser are fine examples of pulp mystery. The latter was made into an odd (though worth watching) little film of the same name with the also-odd-but-worth-watching Patrick Warburton, whom you might remember as TV’s real-life version of The Tick.

Spotted any famous doubles on book jackets? Let me know. Book Dirt is poised to become the repository for celebrity book cover sightings.

8 Famous People You Never Knew Wrote Mysteries

From strippers to TV stars to U.S. presidents, a collection of unlikely mystery authors that just might surprise you.

Mystery novels sometimes take place in star-studded settings: the murder happens in a Hollywood movie studio or backstage in a Shakespearean theatre. Sometimes the victims themselves are rising starlets, news anchormen or notable politicians. But, in several cases, the famous folks have actually written mysteries themselves, trading the limelight for a backbreaking desk chair (or, at least in quite a few cases, their ghostwriters did).

Abraham Lincoln, not long after his lawyer days.

Abraham Lincoln: "The Trailor Murder Mystery"

Much is made of the fact that Franklin Roosevelt once suggested a mystery novel plot (The President's Mystery, which later became a movie), but less well known is the fact that Abraham Lincoln actually penned a mystery short story himself.

Technically a true crime piece, Lincoln's story is a retelling of a murder case which involved the Trailor brothers, whom he defended at trial in 1841. The piece was originally titled "A Remarkable Case of Arrest for Murder," but is known under its present title since Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine reprinted it in 1952.

Lincoln was a fan of Edgar Allan Poe, and that could well have been his motivation for writing out the Trailor brothers' case, which has a real-life twist ending worthy of a master. The story ran on the front page of The Quincy Whig on April 15, 1846, five years after the trial. (Full text here.)

Lee or Rice: Who did the writing?

Gypsy Rose Lee: The G-String Murders

The first striptease artist to become a household name, Gypsy Rose Lee turned her reknowned burlesque gig into an acting career, then added another slash in 1941 when she became a stripper/actress/writer. The G-String Murders is a wise-cracking (what's now know known as snarky) murder story set in the burlesque milieu, where characters have names like Lolita LaVerne and Biff Brannigan, and strippers are found strangled to death by their own skimpy G-Strings.

Lee casts herself as the novel's detective (a trope used to great effect today by mystery writer Kinky Friedman), though some claim the book was actually penned by Craig Rice. Biographers say that written evidence proves Lee wrote at least a large amount of the book, if not all, with Rice only offering advice. The Feminist Press reprinted the book in 2005.

Maybe in Margaritaville?

Jimmy Buffett: Where Is Joe Merchant?

In between the cheeseburgers and the lost salt shaker searches, the son of a son of a sailor has done more than just pen songs. In fact, Jimmy Buffett has written seven books, including children's stories autobiographical meanderings and a couple of novels.

Where is Joe Merchant? is a mystery novel with a missing rock star, who may or may not be dead, at its center. It's also crammed full of Buffett-style good-natured goofiness, including a one-armed soldier of fortune, a psychic named Desdemona and a villain with eyeballs tattooed on his eyelids.

A spy in the House.

Hugh Laurie: The Gun Seller

Several years before American households knew him as House (though British TV fans already knew him as Bertie Wooster and Blackadder's King George), Hugh Laurie wrote a corker of a mystery novel. The Gun Seller is further proof (along with playing the piano) that Laurie can do just about anything and do it quite well.

Laurie cites Kyril Bonfilglioli as one of his favorite writers, and the influence shows. The Gun Seller is a witty send-up of the spy genre, with sort of a Wodehouse-meets-James-Bond vibe. Though the book first appeared in 1998, a planned sequel, The Paper Soldier, has yet to appear. Release dates of 2007 and 2009 have come and gone, with Laurie himself admitting that the book is "very, very late." Astute fans believe that The Paper Soldier won't be written until House runs its course.

Total Zone = Totally ghostwritten?

Martina Navratilova: Jordan Myles series

Billie Jean King once said of tennis star Martina Navratolova, "She's the greatest singles, doubles and mixed doubles player who's ever lived." Does that kind of talent translate to mystery writing --or even co-writing, as the case may be? Not necessarily. Navratilova's three books, The Total Zone, Breaking Point, and Killer Instinct, have mixed reviews, but the athlete may have had little to do with the actual writing of them.

The three-book series is co-written by Liz Nickles (also author of some lackluster women's fiction). The main character, Jordan Myles, is a tennis champ-turned-sports therapist who becomes embroiled in murder cases, always in a tennis milieu. Some critics have speculated that Navratilova's contribution may be in name only, especially as some glaring tennis-related errors have slipped through. One reader has questioned whether Navratilova even read the final draft of The Total Zone at all.

Smaller than a breadbox.

Steve Allen: The Talk Show Murders (and more)

When Steve Allen died in 2000, a lot of people were surprised to find that the multi-talented actor, composer, and possible inventor of the expression "Is it bigger than a breadbox?" had more than forty books to his credit. In addition to poetry, short stories, grumblings about the ignorance of the masses, and other books, Allen wrote a whopping ten mysteries.

Allen couldn't have picked a more charismatic main character: himself. Like Gypsy Rose Lee, Allen solves fictitious mysteries --along with wife Jayne Meadows-- while otherwise doing things the real-life Steve Allen would do. Murder in Vegas, for example, finds Allen and Meadows doing some sleuthing in between Allen's nightclub shows.

Not brought to you by Smucker's.

Willard Scott: Murder Under Blue Skies (and sequel)

The Today Show's former weatherman, one of the original Ronald McDonalds, and voice of Smuckers Willard Scott is also the co-author of a pair of meteorological mysteries. It's uncertain how much actual writing Scott may have done, but considering that his co-author is writer  Bill Crider, he of the five pages-worth of titles on Amazon (and blogging phenomenon), it's a good bet that Scott's contributions were largely related to checking the weather.

Just as he replaced Scott on The Today Show, Al Roker has also picked up the mantle of weatherman-who-also-writes-mysteries. Roker is on his third of the Billy Blessing books, featuring a chef who does talk show cooking segments. Roker's partner in crime is New Orleans mystery writer Dick Lochte.

Is there anything Asimov didn't write?

Isaac Asimov: Murder at the ABA, Black Widowers mysteries, many more

Nothing produced by Asimov should be shocking, really. We're talking about the man the OED credits with inventing the term robotics, after all. Even though he wrote some of the best-known science fiction works in the genre plus a whole slew of non-fiction works on topics from Shakespeare to quasars, (and is even a doll), Asimov still seems to surprise people with his mystery novels.

Asimov wrote a staggering 120 mystery stories, some of which had a sci-fi bent, but more than half featuring the Black Widowers club. The Black Widowers mysteries are masterpieces of puzzle-type mysteries, involving real deduction, brain teasers, and often word play. He also wrote full-length mystery novels, including Murder at the ABA, which includes Asimov himself as a character, and a detective based on none other than Harlan Ellison.

Famous names appear on book jackets outside the mystery genre, too. What are some that you've encountered?