How time flies. It seems just a short time ago that I penned my first column for Fear Zone. But the reality is that it was almost exactly a year ago, in October of 2007. Over thirty columns later, it is still a great deal of fun and a most pleasant privilege to write each Macabre Musings column for you. I'm not merely a contributor, I'm also an avid and regular Fear Zone reader/visitor as well. Under the visionary leadership of Greg Lamberson, the last year has seen Fear Zone rapidly evolve and mature without ever losing its keen "edge." Greg has continued to innovate, and so FZ keeps adding new faces to our roster with strong new voices, points of view, and a wide range of valuable experience in the fields of horror. Greg is always trying out new columns as well, trying to stay abreast of all the latest developments in all multimedia aspects of our favorite genre. So, to all my fellow FZ readers, and to our Fearless Leader, Greg - Happy Anniversary!

A big welcome, as well, to all those who are joining us via other prominent Horror Genre websites in the second annual Horror Web-Ring celebration of Halloween and the Horror Genre. Pull up the nearest chair, or coffin, and sit a spell. We always enjoy having company - except this year, let's try and keep the fights down over whether they should be served rare or well-done.

Paul Miller with his small specialty press, Earthling Publications, has an established history of releasing some exceedingly fine limited and lettered edition books to the horror genre marketplace. Earthling is arguably best known for its very special "Earthling Halloween Series" of books. Over the past four years Earthling Publications has released one new book each Halloween that has been specially selected by Paul Miller to celebrate his favorite holiday, as a work of classic "flat-out horror" (as opposed to psychological suspense or dark fantasy or other related sub-genre specialties), and is marked upon its dustjacket spine with a particular Pumpkin Logo along with the series number of the book. The books released in this Earthling Halloween Series so far have been the recipients of numerous awards, and have been further subsequently selected for mass-market softcover release by various USA and UK publishers.

So far, this prestigious series has consisted of Glen Hirshberg's Mr. Dark's Carnival - limited to a very rare edition of only fifteen handmade hardcovers, and thus considered as Book Zero (0) in the series. This was followed the next year, 2005, by James A Moore's excellent Blood Red (Book 1), then, in 2006 by Conrad William's brilliant The Unblemished (Book 2), and finally last year's exceptional The Haunted Forest Tour by James A. Moore and Jeff Strand. These books are all very well written, extremely frightening and deeply disturbing novels that have brought a great deal of well-deserved acclaim and attention to Earthling Publications. With such a history of extraordinary releases, it is no wonder that anticipation was very high over 2008's selection. Earthling recently formally announced that Peter Atkin's Moontown had been selected as this year's Halloween Series title (Book 4), and would be released around Halloween as both a Five Hundred (500) edition Limited Hardcover for Forty Dollars ($40.00) and also as a Deluxe Lettered edition of only Fifteen (15) hand bound, slipcased hardcovers at a cost of Two Hundred Seventy Five Dollars (275.00). The books are currently available for preorder directly from the Publisher, and also through various Genres book dealers such as The Horror-Mall and Camelot Books.

The multitalented Peter Atkins has published two prior novels, Morningstar (1992) and Big Thunder (1997) as well as one collection of his short fiction, Wishmaster and Other Stories (1999). He had a long friendship and association with Clive Barker, beginning back in 1974, and has acted in Barker's U.K.-based theater troupe that eventually became known as The Dog Company, as well as in various films for Barker. He has also appeared in numerous films, television shows, and on stage as an actor, and has also been a musician for a long time, being one of the founding members, along with authors Glen Hirshberg and Dennis Etchison, of the annual music tour and reading revue known as The Rolling Darkness Review. However, Atkins might be best known by his work as a screenwriter, having authored the screenplays for three of the HELLRAISER Series of films, including HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER II and HELLRAISER III: HELL ON EARTH. Atkins also created his own film "franchise" character/monster, and authored the screenplay for the first of the WISHMASTER films, as well as having written/co-written numerous other produced screenplays.

Between the pedigree of all of Earthling's prior selections for its Halloween Series and author Atkin's record as a contributor to the Horror genre, there was invariably a certain ... expectation as to the quality of Moontown . Briefly, the novel is about protagonist Shelley Campbell, a young cute post-graduate psychology student who is selected by her eminent professor, Doctor Alex Drayton, to assist him with a group-study program he is running, working with people having severe problems with phobias (an extreme/intense or irrational fear or dislike of something). It has turned out that Shelley is a real-life psychically gifted empathy who is able to actually enter the dreams of others (like those very troubled dreams of the phobic patients in her and Dr. Drayton's "Group"). Shelley not only displays the ability to enter into their dreams, but to help these troubled people to uncover the subconscious secret/repressed childhood fears that originally caused them to become phobic, and to help them to overcome these fears and begin to heal. However, in digging around in the minds of others trying to bring hidden fears to the surface, it seems as if Shelley has inadvertently dug a little too deep and has accidentally awakened a horrible entity - a monster or perhaps even an ancient god, who lives and thrives upon the terror we feel like some sort of powerful psychic vampire.

First, the good news. Atkins is a talented writer, and trust a gifted and experienced screenwriter to be able to visualize well, and bring the action and terrors to life in a big, scary way. The various characters in the book, and especially the members of the study group all have different and imaginative phobias. There is therefore a nice amount of creative fright to be found throughout the novel. Earthling honors its promise concerning the Halloween Series books. Moontown presents the reader with far more than a mere psychological thriller with a frightening, but ultimately, only mere mortal serial-killer type as the main villain. The book contains some truly frightening moments and is suitably "scare-worthy."

The criticism that I have concerning Moontown is that the book is, in a certain sense, almost too tame, too sedate. Some films make better books, and rarely, the converse is true; sometimes a book would make a better film. The characters found in Moontown, even through the novel's protagonist herself, while having been sufficiently shaped for purposes of a fast-moving film, just don't feel fully fleshed out to the extent they should be for/in a truly great novel. Unlike a screenplay, a novel permits the use of extra pages to explore people and their motivations; what makes them tick and what makes them unique. Similarly, despite all the advances in special effects and CGI, screenplays have inherent limitations upon them based upon budgetary, special effects, and even arguably "moral standards" limitations inherent within virtually all films. There are no such limitations with "mere" words, and thus in a novel supernatural evil may be explored far more fully in all its both philosophical and more physical aspects and ramifications than is feasible within a screenplay. Yet, considering the subject matter of the novel, I felt that many of the scenes where the evils manifests are a bit too tame - a bit more "over-the-top" is sometimes the right way in which to proceed in an unmitigated tale of horror. It is as if Atkins set out to write Moontown as a screenplay rather than as a novel, and felt compelled to limit himself accordingly.

It should be noted that my criticisms are ones of degree, only. Moontown is a good book, and anyone who has enjoyed any of the previous Earthling Halloween Series novels, as well as any readers looking for a fast-moving enjoyable classic-styled monster tale, will enjoy reading it. I'm only slightly disappointed that the book comes so close to being a truly standout novel, and, at least for me, just misses, for the reasons I just enumerated, but then I can be awfully hard to please. In conclusion, while I personally believe that some judicious editing might have made the novel even more powerful and impactful than it is, I have no hesitation or compunction in recommending Moontown as an enjoyable read for those who like the sound of the novel, based upon its general description, and award it a solid three and a half out of five pumpkins on my "Happy Halloween Horror-Novel" scale.