The Legend of the Poinsettia

A bit of a Christmas story written by Brad Strickland and performed by the Atlanta Radio Theatre Company, Dec. 22 and 23, 2007:

Now, it came to pass in the days when the Wise Men were journeying, yea, even unto Bethlehem, that they came bearing gifts. Balthasar bore unto the babe a gift of gold; and Caspar bore unto the babe a gift of frankincense; and Melchior bore unto the babe a gift of myrrh…and Irving bore unto the babe a gift of a poinsettia.

Diaphanous Sprites of the Upper Air

You don’t see references to Snodrog from The Pedant and the Shuffly often but here’s one: a ghost made of bed sheets in a M.R. James story reminds someone of the Flimsies “flying out into the night to do his [Snodrog’s] bidding and smother people in their sleep.” 

Something About Amazing Stories

Blogger Madripoor_rose posted the titles of fiction pieces from the July 1986 edition of Amazing Stories - in which Brad Strickland’s short piece, "The Winds Of Oberon," was printed - and asks:

Sorcerers vs. Wizards?

Something caught our eye about the definition of a sorcerer verses a wizard, albeit in a D&D setting:

The Chessmen of Death

We’re not comic book experts but this bit caught our eye. One of the stories in the Wonder Woman comic from September/October 1952 (#55) was entitled "The Chessmen of Doom". It appears to have been rewritten as The Chessmen of Death! for issue #208 (Oct. 1973). The only bit of story we've ever found is that the Chequerians play chess with entire planets as pieces.

Fraternizing with Alpha Delta Phi

The third in an occasional series about where John Bellairs lived during his time in Chicago.

No, John Bellairs was not a member of any social or professional fraternal organization, from what we can tell.  Yet, one may ask why he once lived in a University of Chicago fraternity house.

Something About American Wizards

We have a LiveJournal user looking for "American Wizards of the fantasy type", originating from literature or wherever else.  The blogger has started off the list with some familiar names and we're in good company:

48 Years for an Autograph?

This is easily one of the strangest stories about John that we’ve heard: someone uses the checkout card from the back of a library book (presumably owned at one point by the University of Chicago) as a bookmark and finds John Bellairs checked the book out on November 10, 1959 – 48 years ago yesterday.

 
Adding to the mystique is that it was an Algernon Blackwood anthology, something we can easily see John enjoying (our favorite of his tales is Secret Worship - we do recommend it, just not after midnight...).

Researching Bellairs the Boy Scout

In a 1990 article with the Haverhill Eagle-Tribune, when asked about his childhood, John Bellairs noted he was somewhat of a loner until he made some "lifelong friends in the Boy Scouts."

We know John was a member of Marshall Boy Scout Troop 112 in 1951, and some of his Scouting experiences snuck into his books over the years. Take the story of Johnny Dixon, also a member of Troop 112: he goes off to Scout camp and also meets a lifelong friend in Byron Ferguson [The Mummy, the Will and the Crypt]. Camp Chocorua was probably influenced by his attendance at Camp T. Ben Johnston on Sherman Lake outside Augusta, Michigan, itself about 8 miles west of Battle Creek.

Something About the Man Who Collected Bellairs

In a somewhat strange role-reversal, trick-or-treaters dropped off candy at the Bellairsia HQ tonight.  Or maybe just threw it out in front of the building.  It was the brown-tipped candy corn no one seems to enjoy so I’m not sure.  It was most assuredly thrown away, well it should.

Review: House "Had Just The Right Amounts Of Both Creepiness And Comfort"

Book review: The House with a Clock in its Walls

Bellairsian Trick-and/or-Treating

This...someone thinking of The House with a Clock in its Walls as a Halloween costume...this got us wondering....

Has anyone ever dressed up a Bellairsian character for Halloween?  Lewis Barnavelt doesn’t exactly strike me as exciting attire (sorry, Lewis) so maybe you went dressed as something else.  How about the Robot with Killer Eyes, the Oil Lamp Demon, charmin’ Jarmyn Thanatos, or maybe even a Shuffly?

Or maybe you actually did dress up as an actual Italianate manor house and stuck a metronome in your mid-section.  Thoughts?

Dumpster Diving For Bellairs

I thought someone might find this of interest. Our library is starting to get rid of our audiobook on cassette collection. It seems our audiobooks on CD are rendering them obsolete. Our children's librarian was helping a 10-year-old child the other day find Harry Potter books on audio, and when she was informed all we had left on the shelves were cassette versions, the girl replied, "What's a cassette?"

Grimoire: Tracked by Terror

Brad Strickland’s latest novel, Grimoire: Tracked by Terror, is in bookstores now. Read the continuing adventures of the Free Folk and Jarvey Midion's quest to get out of that cursed book! Tracked by Terror follows Curse of the Midions, and will be followed by another tale to be released in 2008.

Time Capsule: 1997

It’s hard to believe it’s been ten years since we first heard the strange tale of Jarmyn Thanatos and his desire to live forever. Thanatos was the spellbinder as seen in The Bell, the Book, and the Spellbinder, Brad Strickland’s second “solo” book in the Johnny Dixon series, where Johnny’s friend Fergie finds the last book in the library and sets forth a strange chain of events revealing charmin’ Jarmyn's (as we've taken to calling him) sinister secret for getting younger as the decades pass.