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If you’re not following Barker on Twitter (and trust me, you should be), then you missed out on Barker’s under-the-radar announcement of his new collection of short fiction, Black is the Devil’s Rainbow. Luckily for us, Uncle Creepy over at Dread Central (who’s had some hilarious exchanges with Barker over the past few months) spotted this one.

“Research day for polishes on a novella for the collection of short fiction to be delivered soon:’ Black is The Devil’s Rainbow.’“

It’s been quite some time since we’ve had a new collection of Barker short fiction, so naturally this is pretty exciting.

Creepy dug deeper and found out what the collection was about courtesy of Revelations, the official Barker website.

Black Is The Devil’s Rainbow: Tales Of A Journeyman

…These stories were originally intended to accompany the ‘Pinhead vs. Harry’ novella which grew into the full-size novel now known as The Scarlet Gospels. Originally planned a decade ago as providing a home for all the previously uncollected short stories together with a whole bunch of new pieces of short fiction, this has recently taken on a more important role in collecting Clive’s Meditations, poems and selected shorter pieces. ‘The Scarlet Gospels’ was a title originally planned for a standalone collection of erotic poetry and prose, then (like other titles before it, including Everville and Saint Sinner) had the title recycled and was planned as the title-piece novella within the collection before it outgrew its place here.

Clive suspects a possible Halloween 2010 publication is now on the cards for Black Is The Devil’s Rainbow…

STYD posted some great news yesterday, and while it’s not really horror news, it does involve a horror author–and there’s nothing going on this morning anyway.

Joe R. Lansdale, the author who’s given us stories like Bubba Ho-Tep and The Nightrunners is finally bringing his recurring characters Hap and Leonard to the big screen. The author will team up with Razor films to adapt Savage Season, the first of eight books featuring the fictional odd couple. Here’s the brief plot blurb from the novel:

Hap Collins and Leonard Pine are two best friends, who are polar opposites living in small town Texas. When Hap’s ex shows up from nowhere promising a huge score, Hap lets Leonard in on the scam leading to an adventure that unravels in unexpected ways.

No news on who might star as Hap or Leonard, or who might direct this thing, but let’s all cross our fingers and hope that it gets the treatment it deserves and not given the low-budget film brush-off.

One of the saddest horror moments of 2009 was the passing of Forest Ackerman. Uncle Forry was a horror icon and his gift to the genre as a whole was Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine–a periodical that was essentially the bible of horror for a very long time.

Ackerman may no longer be with us, but the folks at IDW publishing are making sure his legacy lives on as they’ve announced plans to resurrect FMoF in 2010. Since I love the classics and firmly believe that you can never have too many magazines covering horror, this is great news.

Editor Michael Heisler had this to say about the project (thanks to Dread Central for sharing).

“FM was far and away my favorite magazine when I was a kid, and there has been nothing quite like it since. Our goal is to update that magic for a modern audience, with coverage of current horror in all its forms, while continuing to pay tribute to the classic films that started it all. Personally, I’m thrilled to be taking this step down the road that Forry Ackerman and ‘Chilly Billy’ Cardille put me on so many years ago.“

The new Famous Monsters will run on a quarterly publishing schedule starting next summer. Check out magazine’s new website here.

I saw this over at Dread Central this morning and thought it was so cool that I should share it–plus it’s kind of a quiet news morning so far.

A copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s ultra-rare first poetry collection, entitled Tamerlane and Other Poems, recently sold at auction for an amazing $662,500. This makes it the highest earning piece of American literature ever sold at auction according to NPR.

It’s believed that there were only 50 copies of the book, which Poe reportedly wrote at 14, ever published and that as few as 12 remain today. A previous auction for the same title netted $225,000 roughly two decades ago.

Curious as to who became over half a million bucks richer? It’s William Self, a former senior television executive. He described it as “kind of a beat-up copy.” Now 88, he said he was selling his rare book collection because he did not want to burden his children with looking after it.

He could have passed it along to me…I’d have taken care of it.

Swing by the NPR link above to check out the full auction listing.

Stephen King is still out promoting his newest novel, Under the Dome, and I have to say that this tour has been pretty awesome so far. I haven’t seen King at any of his stops, or even read the book in question, but as the author keeps doing these promotional appearances, he keeps divulging exciting new tidbits of information on other projects. Earlier, he revealed a new Dark Tower novel, details on an Under the Dome miniseries, and gave us an update on his big screen version of Cell.

Each of those were big news, but they pale in comparison to his latest revelation: King has been mulling over writing a sequel to The Shining.

The Torontoist website offers up the following:

“Then King dropped a fan bombshell on the crowd by casually describing a novel idea he began working on last summer. Seems King was wondering whatever happened to Danny Torrance of The Shining, who when readers last saw him was recovering from his ordeal at the Overlook Hotel at a resort in Maine with fellow survivors Wendy Torrance and chef Dick Halloran (who dies in the Kubrick film version). King remarked that though he ended his 1977 novel on a positive note, the Overlook was bound to have left young Danny with a lifetime’s worth of emotional scars. What Danny made of those traumatic experiences, and with the psychic powers that saved him from his father at the Overlook, is a question that King believes might make a damn fine sequel.

The title for King’s proposed sequel? Doctor Sleep.“

A sequel to The Shining would be pretty interesting, although I’m curious as to what the conflict would be in this new book. King burnt The Overlook hotel to the ground at the end of his novel, as I recall, so it seems like a sequel would have to go in an entirely different direction.

Variety brings us news today about that mini-series adaptation of Stephen King’s newest novel, Under the Dome, that I mentioned last week. Steven Spielberg’s Dreamworks TV has optioned the novel and hopes to release it on cable.

Spielberg won’t be directing, but he will be Executive Producing alongside King and Stacey Snider. The company has started to meet with potential writers for the project.

I’ll bring you more on this one as details slowly come into focus. In the meantime, if you’re like me you haven’t even cracked open this novel yet. Here’s what it’s about.

Under the Dome revolves around the drama that unfolds after an invisible force field suddenly descends on a small vacation town in Maine. As the locals fight for their survival, the town descends into warring factions led by enigmatic characters.

This isn’t the first time Spielberg and King have attempted to collaborate on a project. Spielberg has had an option on King’s The Talisman for over twenty years, but has never managed to bring the book to the silver or small screen. Let’s hope things go more smoothly with this adaptation.

Lots of news concerning Anthony DiBlasi’s adaptation of Clive Barker’s short story Dread this week. Yesterday saw the arrival of the official Facebook page (with a new gallery of photos), today brings the Korean trailer.

Not much else to add here. The trailer is Korean, but the dialogue is all in English, so you don’t have to worry if your Korean’s a little rusty. Here’s the synopsis:

Dread is a psychological thriller centering on three college students who study other people’s fears. As the study progresses, one of the students begins to seek salvation from his obsession by exploiting the terrors of his fellow participants.

It’s a great story featured in Barker’s The Books of Blood. Hopefully the film adaptation lives up to the story that inspired it. Dread will debut in the States on January 29th as part of the After Dark: Horrorfest lineup.

This  the first year that After Dark: Horrorfest has managed to actually present films that interest me. This year’s line-up has several titles that I’m genuinely interested in seeing, including Anthony DiBlasi’s adaptation of Clive Barker’s Dread. With Horrorfest just a few months away, the Dread crew has started to dole out the goodies. You can find several new photos from the production over at the film’s official Facebook page this morning.

Dread follows three college students making a documentary on fear who become the subjects of an experiment in terror. Dread will be in theaters from January 29th through February 5th–then make it’s DVD debut sometime later next year.

Swing by the official Dread Facebook page to become a fan, check out the new photos, and keep up to date with the latest news on the film.

It’s been a busy week for Stephen King news. His latest tome, Under the Dome, is now out (it’s massive–I probably won’t get around to reading it until next month), but there’s more good news for fans of horror’s most recognizable name. Read on for the details.

First up, King has revealed that Under the Dome is getting adapted for television. The book will be turned into a miniseries for HBO (which is a great choice, because it means nothing will have to be cut to appease the FCC). No word on when this will go into production or who’s involved, but I’ll keep you posted.

King also says that he’s finished the screenplay for the big-screen adaptation of his novel Cell. This was the project Eli Roth was attached to write and direct at one point, but then left.

And finally, perhaps the biggest news of all was this tidbit posted on King Super-Site Lilja’s Library:

“Stephen has given me permission to pass along that he has an idea for a new Dark Tower book, the working title of which will be THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE. He has not yet started this book and anticipates that it will be a minimum of eight months before he is able to begin writing it.”

“It will center around supporting characters and revolve around some important events between Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla.”

Check out the clip below to hear more from the man himself.

Fans looking forward to JJ Abrams’ cinematic adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower got some disappointing news last night. Abrams and partner Damon Lindelof announced back in May that they were seriously working on bringing the massive tale to a theater near you. Now, Lindelof tells USA Today that he’s backing away from the project.

“You’ll be hard-pressed to find a huger fan of The Dark Tower than me, but that’s probably the reason that I shouldn’t be the one to adapt it. After working six years on Lost, the last thing I want to do is spend the next seven years adapting one of my favorite books of all time. I’m such a massive Stephen King fan that I’m terrified of screwing it up.“

Linedlof then adds “I’d do anything to see those movies written by someone else. My guess is they will get made because they’re so incredible. But not by me.“

Disappointing news for sure. The things cited as reasons not to do it are the very same reasons why these guys should be doing it. I’d rather have someone who loves the source material to death handling the adaptation than some dickhead gun-for-hire Hollywood director looking to make a name for himself.