The coronavirus pandemic certainly did a job on the publishing industry this year, forcing massive changes in scheduling as work-from-home changes emptied out offices and books meant to come out in the spring and summer had to be moved to the fall or even next year.
We experienced a bit of that at ’Warp Central, too, with the scheduling of new titles. It was just after the February release of my nonfiction comics history, From the Stars…a Vampiress: An Unauthorized Guide to Vampirella’s Classic Horror Adventures, that the industry got knocked off-balance by the virus, which resulted in such things as reviewers abandoning copies they’d received as they scrambled to exit their offices for who knows how long (so there went any chance of reviews from sites like Sci-Fi Bulletin, and magazines like Horrorhound and—most prestigious of all—Starburst). With reviewers unavailable and no conventions to attend to help spread the word about SWC, maybe it would just be better to bump things over to 2021 like the big kids have done and see if that year sucks any less (at this stage, it wouldn’t take much to achieve).
With Halloween close at hand, we start in October with a new entry in our SWC Horror Bites line of classic stories: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by Washington Irving. First published in 1820, in the Irving short story collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., the tale of schoolteacher Ichabod Crane, socialite Katrina Van Tassel, town bully Brom Bones, and the ghostly Hessian soldier who constantly rides in search of a replacement noggin is known around the world and is considered one of the quintessential stories to get you in the right mood for Halloween. It’s inspired countless movies, TV shows, cartoons, comic books, and novels—and this year it celebrates its 200th anniversary! So we’ll be doing a week of Sleepy Hollow–related posts starting next week as a sort of countdown to its release on October 13 (not a Friday, but still spooky enough), in which I’ll review some of that pop-culture stuff.
Also in October, we’ll be doing Vampirella Week, delayed from earlier this year (stupid virus!) and rescheduled for October 26. As in-depth as From the Stars…a Vampiress is, there were things—like artwork and behind-the-scenes factoids—that I didn’t have room for in the book, so swing on by to check it all out as we count down to Halloween with the queen of comics’ bad girls!
Then for December, our first-ever yuletide offering is another SWC Horror Bite: The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall, by John Kendrick Bangs. Originally published in 1891, it’s the tale of the Oglethorpe family, which for generations has been haunted by a lady ghost who shows up every year at Christmastime to scare them—well, more like annoy them—and drench their expensive furniture in water. But the latest Oglethorpse, the current owner of Harrowby Hall, has a plan in mind that should make future Christmases ghost-free…
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow goes on sale October 13. The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall goes on sale December 8. Stay tuned for further information!
