Jack's short story collection, Closing Time and
Other Stories, published
by Gauntlet Press recently won Reader's Choice for Best Dark Genre Collection,
in Dark Scribe Magazine's
1st Annual Black Quill Awards.
Jack also has a piece in Black Quill Winner On Writing Horror (ed. by Mort Castle), and wrote the introduction to Black Quill Winner Midlisters, by Kealan Patrick Burke.
Now Available from Bloodletting Press
dThe
Girl Next Door is now available on DVD from Anchor
Bay Entertainment. The DVD is NTSC Region 1, Anamorphic Widescreen,
and features DD 5.1. Audio. Bonus features include the theatrical trailer,
Audio Commentary with Director Gregory M. Wilson, Producer Andrew van den
Houten and Cinematographer/Producer William M. Miller, Audio Commentary
with Novelist Jack Ketchum and Screenwriters Daniel Farrands and Philip
Nutman, Interviews With Cast & Crew, Screenplay (DVD-ROM), The Making
Of The Girl Next Door.
dThe
Lost will be released on DVD by Anchor
Bay Entertainment on March 18, 2008. The DVD is NTSC Region 1, Anamorphic
Widescreen, and features Dolby 5.1 Surround and Dolby 2.0 Surround Audio.
Bonus features include the theatrical trailer, Audio Commentary with
Novelists Jack Ketchum and Monica O' Rourke, Audition footage, Outtakes,
and a Storyboard Sequence. 
Gauntlet Press has published the first U.S. hardcover edition of Only Child, aka Stranglehold.
About the Novel:
Arthur Danse doesn't live
by the normal rules. He knows he has been put on earth for a purpose
-to show people that the world is a dark and terrible place. To say
no to Arthur Danse is to receive a lesson in fear and pain. No matter
who you are.
Wife...lover...stranger...or eight-year-old son...Lydia McCloud is one of life's givers. A nurse whose own hard upbringing gives her a special sympathy for those in need. Lydia doesn't discover the real Arthur until it's far too late. Until she's married to him and their son Robert has become the centre of her world. And she's forced into the battle of her life for the sake of her only child...
This edition includes an exclusive Afterword by Jack about the woman who inspired Lydia, and an update on where she is now.
.Available in three editions:
Joyride (aka Road Kill) is now available as a limited edition hardcover from Cemetery Dance. This is the first U.S. hardcover edition of this book and features a special afterword entitled "On Writing Joyride" by Jack Ketchum.
About the Novel:
Howard deserved to die. For years, he abused his wife physically, verbally,
and psychologically. Even after the separation, he kept coming back
for more.
Carol and her lover, Lee, knew there was only one way to stop Howard for good. They planned every detail. And they thought they had committed the perfect crime.
But a stranger named Wayne witnessed what they did, and he was thrilled by what he saw. Now Wayne wants to be their friend. He wants to share the thrill of murder with them. He wants to take Carol and Lee on a road trip straight to hell so his new friends can enjoy his all-out killing spree that can only end one way...
Praise for Joyride by Jack Ketchum:
"Begins with a planned murder and explodes into a terrifying
and believable killing spree... but be warned: Ketchum never stops,
never flinches, never turns aside. He is, quite simply, one of the
best in the business, on par with Clive Barker, James Ellroy, and Thomas
Harris. Hey, want some good advice? Don't open this book unless you
intend to finish it the same night. You may be shocked, even revolted,
by Jack Ketchum's hellish vision of the world, but you won't be able
to dismiss it or forget it."
—Stephen King
"Fans of Jack Ketchum's brand of staggeringly gory violence will
appreciate the reissue of Joyride, the disjointed story of
a would-be killer who goes over the edge after nearly choking his girlfriend
to death and then witnessing an unrelated brutal murder. Sex, guns
and deranged psychopathic conversation: who could ask for anything
more?"
—Publishers Weekly
"Tautly-written, thoroughly excellent psycho-horror."
—Manchester Evening News
"...harrowing...relentless...terrifying. ROAD KILL (aka JOYRIDE) is just
more proof that Ketchum is among the finest and most unique writers of suspense
today."
—Edward Lee
"Ketchum's poetically brutal prose, as always, is boiled down
to pure, intoxicating essence, without a hint of waste or dross left
over. He's a storyteller and soulsearcher with a narrative as lean
as Hemingway...."
—t. Winter-Damon
.Available in two states:
Limited
Edition of 1,000 signed copies
Traycased
Lettered Edition of 52 signed and lettered copies bound in leather
with a satin ribbon page marker.
Triage is a collection of novellas by Jack Ketchum, Richard Laymon, and Edward Lee.
The three authors took a common premise ("a stranger walks into a place of business...and starts shooting"), and each went their separate directions. Jack's story features the return of "Stroup", the much loved/maligned character from a number of the stories in Broken on the Wheel of Sex. Originally published as a limited edition hardcover by Cemetery Dance in 2001, Triage makes its mass-market paperback debut in this new edition from Leisure Press.
dDark
Realms Audio presents a dramatic reading of Jack's book Hide
and Seek. 
dDark
Voices is a new series from Borderlands
Press, featuring short stories by a variety
of authors. In addition to writing, the authors also read their works,
on a cd included with each volume.
Hide and Seek is a book about games. Reckless, dangerous games. Games you might even want to play yourself if you're with the right people. But shouldn't. Not ever...
Dead River's a sleepy little town on the coast of Maine without much going for it. The Great Depression hit hard and never let go. Even now, sixty-odd years later, there's not much to do, not much going on. So that when a trio of friends, rich college kids, arrive there on a forced march with their parents for summer vacation they have to make their own amusements. And they do, in spades.
Dan's a local and didn't get a chance to go to college. There was never the money. He works in a lumberyard hauling two-by-fours and furring around all day with a forklift. He's even more bored than he knows.
When the college kids arrive, that changes.
The most daring of the three is a beautiful, troubled girl name Casey. She's not opposed to stealing caviar or cars or running around naked in graveyards. For Casey the thrill's the thing and the riskier the better.
Dan falls for her, hard. And gradually becomes the fourth member of the group--the poor relation.
But the games need escalation. It's a need that finds them at last in an old abandoned house at night, a house reputed to be haunted, where phantom lights burn in broken windows. Where something lurks waiting in the dark...
" In the early 1980s, Ketchum (the pseudonym of Dallas Mayr) published in paperback as gruesome and taut a horror novel as anyone had seen: Off Season. Perhaps because of the outrage the book engendered, Ketchum's second novel, Hide and Seek, received little support from its publisher when it appeared in mass market in 1984. That's a shame, not only because Mayr's career nose-dived commercially after that (though he's still writing and publishing), but because Hide and Seek is a good novel, strong and true, scary yet uplifting in the classic horror manner. Set during summer in the Maine coastal town of Dead River, the book divides into two parts. In the first, the narrator, local young man Dan, meets visiting college kids Casey, Kim and Steven; engages in some drinking and daring with them; falls for beautiful, wild Casey (they have sex in a graveyard) and learns what impels her to take risks: years ago, she was sexually abused by her fatherAabuse that led to the death of her younger brother. The book's second part provides the payoff to that meandering but tantalizing setup. In it, the quartet agrees to play hide-and-seek in a local haunted house. The game soon turns frightening, then deadly, as the four encounter the house's horrid inhabitants, not all human - a challenge that prompts Dan and others to grow up quickly. As in Off Season, the action is ultraviolent and shocking, but the point here, as there, isn't the grue but the spirit of those who must deal with it. Here, too, Ketchum writes with economy and power, in sentences that tighten like noose wire. Anyone who enjoys fine, hard horror will appreciate this novel."
-- Publishers Weekly
L'Ombre
de Bragelonne has just published the first French translation of
one of Jack's books, Une Fille Comme Les Autres aka The
Girl Next Door.
Featuring haunting new cover art, and French translations of both the novel, and Stephen King's introduction, Une Fille Comme Les Autres is available from Amazon.fr for a very reasonable price.
Why not add a French edition of a classic to your collection? The webmaster can personally verify that it looks great next to the German and Japanese editions on the bookshelf.
In addition, a rather handsome Spanish translation has also joined the ranks of the many editions of The Girl Next Door.
This is Jack's first Spanish translation, and it comes as a trade paperback, courtesy of La Factoria de Ideas.
To order a copy (and again, the webmaster confirms that it looks great alongside the other translated editions), visit the publisher's page directly, here.
Closing
Time and Other Stories is Jack Ketchum's new collection
of 19 stories that have never been published together before.
The book contains Closing Time (Ketchum's Bram Stoker
Award winning novella), hard-to-find recent stories and one original,
previously unpublished story, Hotline To further
enhance the collection, Ketchum has written an afterword for each story.
This will be a 500-copy signed numbered edition plus a 52-copy
signed lettered edition. Cover art is by Harry O. Morris, who
worked together with the author to create it.
Closing Time and Other Stories will be published by Gauntlet Press as:
500-copy
numbered edition for $40 (cover price is $50)
500-copy numbered plus bonded leather slipcase for $60
52-copy lettered traycased edition for $150
The lettered edition will contain four poems that will not appear in the numbered
edition
In addition,
Gauntlet Press is offering an exclusive chapbook collecting the various
tributes Jack has written about the late Richard Laymon for people who
order Closing Time directly from them.
From the Publisher's Weekly review of Closing Time:
"Though Stoker-winner Ketchum is best known for his novels of hardcore horror (Off Season, etc.), the 19 stories in this collection reveal his skill at crafting short and subtle mood pieces about everyday folk who find themselves wrestling with overpowering emotions that occasionally open them to macabre experience. Do You Love Your Wife? tells of a man who sees his crumbling relationship with his lover mirrored in a cryptic violent nightmare. Returns is narrated by the ghost of a man who finds that his frustrating inability to spur his grieving lover to care for their pet cat crystallizes the emotional shortfall that distinguished their relationship. Though most of the stories conclude with surprising O. Henry twists, several simply follow the intersecting paths of multiple characters as their experiences conclude dramatically in inescapable tragedy, notably Station Two and the title story, which sets a haunting tale of personal loss involving two star-crossed lovers and a predatory robber against a backdrop of the incomprehensible devastation of the events of 9/11. These well-told tales are proof that quiet horrors wrought by a skilled writer can make powerful reading."d
Heyne
Hardcore has released another German translation, this time of Jack's
debut novel, Off Season.
This is a beautiful trade paperback edition, with cover art reminiscent of the originally planned cover for the 1980 paperback.
Friedrich Mader once again provides the German translation, which, in the webmaster's opinion is pretty top-notch (I knew all those years of German in high school and college would pay off!)
Beutezeit is the same size and format as Heyne Hardcore's Evil (The Girl Next Door), and looks great on the bookshelf right next to it. Like Evil, Beutezeit can be ordered via Amazon.de.
In addition, Cemetery
Dance has recently published a new novella, Weed
Species, which Jack describes
as "the most vicious thing [he's] ever done."
The webmaster is inclined to agree.
WEED SPECIES: In ecology. An invasive species, also called an invasive exotic, is an organism that is intentionally or accidentally introduced to an area where it is not native, and where it successfully invades and disturbs natural ecosystems, displacing native species. The term is most often applied to, but not limited to, plants. See also kudzu, water hyacinth, zebra mussel, Burmese python, eco-tourism, sociopath.
This is a Cemetery Dance exclusive title—there are currently no other editions of this book planned for anywhere in the world!
dDreampress
in France has compiled a book about Stephen King, Le
Livre des Livres de Stephen King.
Jack's article about From a Buick 8 has been translated into French, and appears alongside translated pieces by F. Paul Wilson, Thomas F. Monteleone, P.D. Cacek, Shade Rupe, Stanley Wiater, and more.
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Jack's work is currently featured in a number of anthologies. Tenebres is a French anthology, published by DreamPress. It features French translations of Jack's stories Monster and Henry Miller and the Push. Midnight Premiere is a new anthology from Cemetery Dance, featuring the story Elusive, a personal favorite of the webmaster's. He is Legend is an anthology of original, never-before published stories by today's best writers -- stories set in Richard Matheson's own fictional universes, and published with Mr. Matheson's complete cooperation! Jack has a piece titled On: I am Legend.
Jack Haringa Must Die! is now available from Merricat Publications. Proceeds from the book will benefit the Shirley Jackson Awards. Jack M. Haringa is a member of the Board of Advisors to the Shirley Jackson Awards. He is an author and teacher, as well as co-editor, with S.T. Joshi, of the critical journal Dead Reckonings. The contributing authors to Jack Haringa Must Die! are his friends and respected colleagues. Haringa dies by Ketchum's hand in the piece Death to Haringa!
Al
Otro Lado Del Rio is the recent Spanish translation of The
Crossings. This beautiful
edition has been published by El Anden, in Barcelona, Spain. It has
been translated by Guillermao Daniel Galli.
L'Ombre
de Bragelonne, publisher of Une Fille Comme Les Autres (the
French Translation of The Girl Next Door) continues
with an impressive edition of Off Season, translated
by Benoit Domis as Morte Saison.
This is a beautiful trade paperback edition, and well-worth tracking down.
Jack now has a MySpace
page and has posted a serialized
version of Station Two
Now available from Leisure Press
Overlook Connection
Press is publishing the definitive version of Jack's
Broken on the Wheel of Sex: The Jerzy Livingston
Years. This edition features the complete contents of
the earlier editions, plus the final Stroup story from Triage, and
other goodies.
Available as a signed limited, or as a sterling edition.
Black Static #5 contains a featurette and interview with Jack.
The Dread Media Podcast features an interview with Jack regarding Old Flames.
During his recent visit to Malta, Jack was interviewed by the local press.
Episode 33 of the Dread Media podcast features a review of Weed Species
Fangoria reviews the film version of Red.
Shawn Rutledge interviews Jack for Skullring
Josh Jabcuga has a new interview with Jack at Chuck Palahniuk's website, discussing the film version of Red, and more.
NossaMorte has an interview with Jack in their latest issue.
Count Gore de Vol has a new interview with Jack from Horrorfind 2007
Jack recently did an appearance for the Science Fiction Society of Northern New Jersey...A write up of the evening, plus photos can be found at their website.
Suzanne Donahue interviews Jack for Associated Content.
Issue #3 of Doomed features Jack's reminiscences of Robert Bloch.
Reviews of Weed Species and Off Season are now up at thehorrorfan.blogspot.com
Issue #8 of City Slab magazine features a new, in-depth interview with Jack!
George C. Cotronis has a new interview up at Carnival Macabre, discussing Jack's influences.
Josh Jabcuga serves up part 1 of an interview with Jack at Squib Central, discussing censorship, Stephen King, and successful authors.
Now available from Leisure Press
