The Marilyn Ross Dark Shadows novels had Barnabas carrying around bags of Maine earth with him, which he placed in his coffin. Of course, in the Ross Dark Shadows novels, any resemblance between his Barnabas and the show's Barnabas was entirely coincidental.

Hmm. So what's supposed to look different?



<ducking>

Last night was kind of a Dan Curtis night here. I popped in the DVD of The Night Stalker, and when it was over, flipped to the Fox Movie Channel. What should be coming on but Scream of the Wolf. It was the first time I'd seen the latter, and I was anything but impressed. Fairly slick production, but a dull plot and an ending two shades past anticlimactic. Oy.

Vlad -- No, I didn't disable anything. Just downloaded and installed it and let it rip.

This may be of interest to readers of scary things above and beyond Dark Shadows, and to those who've kept up with some of my horrific projects since Dreams of the Dark...

Just received an excited call from my wife -- "They're HERE!" -- the "they" in question being copies of the new signed & limited edition antho, Deathrealms from Delirium Books. The book includes 15 stories from Deathrealm magazine, which I edited from 1987 to 1997.

Contents include the following:

"Don't Clean the Aquarium" by Jeff Osier
"Cool Mist" by W. H. Pugmire
"On the Side of the Road" by Ken Wisman
"Smoothpicks" by Elizabeth Massie (co-author of Dreams of the Dark}
"The Bite of Conscience" by Hank Parnell
"A Pinch of Snuff" by William R. Trotter
"Blind and Blue" by Wayne Allen Sallee
"Numhed" by James Robert Smith
"Now You Know" by Donald R. Burleson
"Welcome to the Masque" by Jeff VanderMeer
"From My Reflection, Darkly" by David Niall Wilson
"Bloodbone" by D. F. Lewis
"Photos of a Leg" by Scott Thomas
"Foreign Bodies" by Jeffrey Thomas
"Embarrassment and Revenge" by Rick Kleffel
Cover art  by Mike Bohatch



More details at my Web site (below; click on the book cover on the main page).

--M
http://home.triad.rr.com/smrainey

I don't know many details about what transpired officially with S. E. Hinton. I know there was talk about her doing the third book, but it wasn't long after Dreams of the Dark came out that HarperCollins ended up selling their entertainment division. (This was not due in any way to shortcomings with the sales of Dreams; in fact, HC indicated great pleasure with its performance.) So that closing in effect killed Hinton's potential slot as the next author in the series.

There was talk of the line moving to Tor, but the word came down from the powers-that-be that, if there were to be any more DS books on the menu, they would be written only by the stars of the show. (Don't get me started on this kind of "celebrity book = success" mentality; selling a name rather than a writer is a personal bugaboo of mine.) However, their "research" indicated that none of the DS stars really had enough of a name draw to warrant continuing the line. Tor did agree to publish Lara's next Dark Shadows novel (as a trade paperback); and I know that the deal is still available to her, but I don't know if and when she'll turn in the book.

Anyway, I haven't read Hinton's novel (yet), but I definitely will. I think it's great that she was able to pull off a kind of work-around to see that her book got produced. I briefly entertained the idea of doing something along the same lines, but I abandoned it quickly simply because I have too many of my own "things" that I want to do. The only way I'd do a Dark Shadows project is as a Dark Shadows project. However, I will say that in my most recent novel (The Lebo Coven, now out in hardback from Five Star Books), I've included a few subtle -- I guess you'd call them "playful" -- links that would be evident only to fans. For example, the main character's family comes from Maine, and there's a reference to "Grandma and Grandpa Collins." That sort of thing -- just enough of a nod to be gratifying.

--M
http://home.triad.rr.com/smrainey

If I recall, there is one blooper that was left in the 91 show; not sure which episode, but Joanna Going plainly calls Joseph Gordon Levitt "Joe" rather than "David." Probably kept in for old times' sake.

I've had SP2 for a little over a week and no glitches thus far. My computer is fairly new and not running any very old programs. I'm still not using Internet Explorer/Outlook Express, since I have everything set up in Mozilla Firefox/Thunderbird, so I don't know if there are any appreciable differences in the browser. No problems with Norton AV, The Cleaner Antitrojan, Symantec Firewall, or anti-spyware programs.