Sunday, April 16, 2006

A Guest at the Haunted Dolls' House

The First Pan Book of Horror Stories



For some days I've been completing a new page in my main site including synopses of stories from The First Pan Book of Horror Stories, a fantastic treasure house of horror. The page just needs linking from the titles page now.

Another page needed correction. When I first put the review of Stephen King's short story The Revelations of 'Becka Paulson in my other site, I wrote that this story was taken from The Tommyknockers, but in fact I was wrong. Recently I found a private message in the guestbook. The message explains that:

'"Becka P." precedes The Tommyknockers and ran on its own in Rolling Stone in the '80s, where the editor encountered it. It's long ago and I'm not an SK scholar --- Stephen King reworked it into the novel later.'

Shudder does give a 1986 previous printing date for the story (no mention of Rolling Stone in my copy); The Tommyknockers came out in 1988. I should have noticed that. My apologies for the error, and thank you for the information!

The story tells how 'Becka Paulson starts getting messages from Jesus, in the shape of the 3D plastic picture of Jesus, on top of her TV set. One difference from the story's later appearance in the novel is the way 'Becka's revelations are initiated; there are no Tommyknockers here, just an accidental bullet in the head. Quietly hysterical stuff.

Meanwhile, the apparently tireless Dem' has been posting links to the Dolls House wherever he's used my review stuff in Gruesome Cargoes. Bless!

Lastly, I added a link to Dark Echo. Incredibly, this brilliant site was one of the first places to link to A Haunted Dolls House. I really had no idea who I was asking a link of. The shame! When they did it, I had a bloody animated bat gif flying on the first page! Happy Days!


Bite me!



I'll regret doing this tomorrow, I'll be hiding my head in a bag! :D

7 comments:

Cristina Rodguez said...

Wow! Great template! See? I'm of good use sometimes...

Word verification: jesupnsk.

Mmm...

Cristina Rodguez said...

Oh, and by the way, you are linking to one of my entries instead of my blog main page. All the stuff after .com should be gone off the link. Thank U.

Rog' Pile said...

Yes, Mags, I don't know what I'd do without you. Mary really is amazing.

You probably figured out that the template I chose is by a very talented chap named Caz. And it's exactly what I wanted for this site.

Ooops! and I changed that link so it goes straight to your main page. But I hope you don't mind if I put up a link to the post on your present main page, meaning your Easter holidays are over post. This is my absolute favourite of yours that I've read so far. I could almost hear that sexy Scarlet O'Hara drawl in your voice, while you typed and thought aloud. Delicious!

And, ah declare, ah wish ah'd thought of all this last night when ah commented on it!

On second thoughts, I'm not so good at accents! :D

Cristina Rodguez said...

Oh, but that post was just done in the spur of the moment, just grabbed a couple photos here and there... it makes no justice to Scarlett and Rhett...

Rog' Pile said...

I still think it's a great post, Mary. Maybe it works so well because it is so spontaneous. The layout is great, and I just wanted to read every word. I think Scarlett and Rett would have loved it! :D

Anonymous said...

Another thumbs up for the new template - it really looks the part. Well done there, man Caz. Who's the beautiful/ terrifying young lady in the main photo?

Horror celeb. And she's published a Stephen King story. Narrows it down a bit. :)

Enjoyed your Pan horror reviews, Roger. I love the early ones but from midway through the series there seem to have been as many duff ones as there were good - just my opinion, of course. It's great to hear what other people make of individual stories - especially when their estimations don't coincide with my own. For eample: How comes "Behind the Yellow Door" is "depressing" and the Seebs' mighty [i]House Of Horror[/i]in the same book isn't?

Rog' Pile said...

Where to start? I agree Caz has done a terrific job. The template not only looks better, it's behaving differently, too! I have no idea who the young lady is. Caz writes that he's picked up various bits of art on the web, that some of it can be identified, but so long as we don't infringe copyright or tamper with it, we can use it or change it.

Of course I could not give away the name of the horror celeb - yet - but I was surprised. The fantastic collection she put together is one of my favourites, as I've already indicated. Magnetic Mary told me it looked like a great read when she read my page about it a while back. It is.

Generally, I agree about the Pans. The series did decline as it went on. But it seems the way of most things.

Behind the Yellow Door just depressed me at the time. I can't say why the Seabury Quinn story didn't have that effect. Maybe Flavia Richardson's story was nearer the end of the book, and the cumulative effect of all that visceral stuff was getting to me by then! Or possibly her characterisation was more convincing than Quinns, so causing stronger identification with the victim? I'll have to re-read it to decide.

Thanks for pointing out that it was Tod Robbins who wrote Spurs and not Charles Birkin. Gosh! How embarrassing! The error is still on this Hugh Lamb page. But I downloaded it last night and am working on it with a sharp knife, hammer and indelible ink. I'm also working on the topsite, titles page, authors page, this blog, and...*sob* I need a holiday from this Easter holiday.

See ya on the sites! :)