Today in Horror Birthdays

Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775 - 1818), who wrote the lurid Gothic novel The Monk, published in 1796. Here you see the 1975 Avon paperback

Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823), author of the first true Gothic romance The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). Date unknown for this Penguin paperback.

Dean R. Koontz (1945), the man behind bestsellers too numerous to count. I liked Watchers (1987) and Lightning (1988) back in high school. These are the first-edition Berkley paperbacks.

The ever-enigmatic Thomas Ligotti (1953), whose exquisitely weird short fiction was first collected in Song of a Dead Dreamer back in 1985 by Silver Scarab Press.

And Philip Nutman (1963-2013), journalist and author. His "Full Throttle" was a terrific entry in 1990's Splatterpunks. 

A Koontz by Any Other Name

A handful of suspense/thriller novels Dean R. Koontz wrote under various pseudonyms before he became a brand-name author. I've heard a few of 'em are pretty good even! You can see a few more here.

Even though I'm not a Koontz fan, they'd probably be worth adding to my paperback horror collection in the name of completion (I buy Laymon's old original paperbacks too). It's a curse!

Howling in the Bones of Her Face

Do I love me a creepy pencil-sketch! The stark simplicity of it is a terrific contrast to the usually colorful and garish cover art of the day. Artist unknown, however...

Dean Koontz Born Today, 1945

Dean R. Koontz wrote dozens of genre paperbacks throughout the 1970s and early 1980s before he became the eternal bestseller king he's been now for over 25 years. Me, I haven't read a book of his since the first Bush Administration, and even then I quickly tired of his formula after just three novels. In fact, one of his books, Midnight (1989), has what I consider one of the worst endings I've ever read in a book written by an adult man writing for adult readers: the protagonist, after defeating some sort of science-gone-wrong evil, barges into his estranged teenage son's bedroom and proceeds to smash all his heavy metal records (revised to CDs, in the paperback reprints in the ensuing years), then forces him into an embrace. All's well that ends well, amirite? Man, as a teenage Jersey metalhead, I was all like "Fuck. You." to Mr. Koontz. Still: he got some pretty decent vintage covers, even for his various pseudonyms - Demon Seed (Bantam 1973, art by Lou Feck) and The Flesh in the Furnace (1972) definitely the high points.