SoulFire77's blog

Filed by Fletcher Moody — Literary Correspondent In the spring of 1944, I was in Los Angeles on an assignment I have mercifully forgotten and found myself, as one does in that city, drinking alone in a restaurant I could not afford. The restaurant was Musso & Frank Grill on Hollywood Boulevard, which was and remains the place where screenwriters go to feel sorry for themselves in a dignified setting. I was at the bar. It was a Tuesday. The...

Filed by Fletcher Moody — Literary Correspondent I was sent to Eldon, Missouri, in November 1953, to cover a bonfire. The Parent-Teacher Council of Eldon had voted, by a margin I was told was comfortable, to collect and publicly burn a selection of comic books, paperback novels, and other materials deemed — the word used in the press release was "injurious" — to the moral development of children. This was not unusual. Dozens of towns across the...

Filed by Fletcher Moody — Literary Correspondent I have, over the course of my career, failed to obtain interviews with some of the finest writers of the twentieth century. Hemingway refused to acknowledge I existed. Christie pretended to be someone else. But William Faulkner is the only author who ever lost my mail. I first wrote to Faulkner in the spring of 1923 at the University of Mississippi post office in Oxford, where he served as...

Filed by Fletcher Moody — Literary Correspondent My editor sent me to Harrogate to find Agatha Christie. This was December 1926, and the woman had been missing for ten days. Her Morris Cowley had been found abandoned at Newlands Corner in Surrey — headlights on, fur coat on the seat, no driver. Over a thousand police officers were searching. Fifteen thousand volunteers were combing the countryside. The Home Secretary was demanding daily updates...

Filed by Fletcher Moody — Literary Correspondent ​ I want to be clear about something: I was not on the first plane. The first plane was a Cessna 180 that clipped a telegraph wire over Murchison Falls on January 23, 1954, and dropped Ernest Hemingway, his wife Mary, and their pilot Roy Marsh into crocodile country along the Nile. That was a private charter. A Christmas present from Hemingway to Mary. I was not invited, and given what happened, I...

Philip K. Dick wrote forty-four novels in cheap California apartments while behind on rent. He was classified as a pulp science fiction writer, and almost nobody took him seriously while he was alive. He also kept an eight-thousand-page private journal - his Exegesis - trying to work out whether his mystical experiences were divine or delusional. He never decided. On March 2, 1980, he wrote in that journal that he believed a higher intelligence...

Picture this: You're 80 years old. Most people are kicking back with grandchildren, maybe tending a garden or binge-watching shows. Not Ramsey Campbell. This Liverpool legend is still out here crafting nightmares that slither into your brain and permanently set up shop. Fresh off turning 80 on January 4th 2026, he's proving age is just a number when it comes to writing psychological horror. His most recent novel, An Echo of Children is a slow-...

Richard Laymon , an American master of horror, passed away on February 14th, 2001 from a sudden heart attack at just 54. Born in Chicago in 1947, Laymon married his beloved Ann in 1976 and raised a daughter, Kelly, while working as a teacher, librarian, and magazine editor. He wrote over 30 novels and 60 short stories, starting with The Cellar in 1980. He had a raw, fast-paced, often shocking style that found massive success in the UK and Europe...

I am pleased to report that two individuals were able to figure out which three novels created my Frankenplot ! I have donated $25 in your honor to ABCtales using the "Donate with JustGiving" button at the bottom of the page. I invite anyone who enjoys this website to contribute to ABCtales if they can. The two people will remain anonymous but I invite you to comment on your submission, if you wish. This was my Frankenplot (did you figure it out...

Mary Shelley began Frankenstein at eighteen - a novel about a man who couldn't let the dead stay dead. Her husband Percy drowned six years into their marriage, off the Italian coast. His friends burned the body on the beach, but his heart wouldn't take the flame. Physicians theorize it had calcified from tuberculosis. Turned to stone. There was a fight over it. Another poet claimed it, insisted his love outranked a widow's. Mary got it back. She...