Just saw Sam Raimi's new movie Drag Me to Hell--not bad. In fact pretty damn good, with a number of classic Raimi frights and gross-outs. Not in the same league as Evil Dead, but at least a return to the same general territory. The only real letdown is the climactic seance scene, which has a great buildup but no real payoff. But overall it's a very fun movie, with terrific performances all around.

Oh, I just had a bit of good news: It looks like a story of mine will be included in the zombie anthology The Living Dead 2, edited by John Joseph Adams. I feel honored, because the first book had such a big impact and so many great writers.

Speaking of writers, I'll be attending the NY ThrillerFest in July, and taking part in a panel discussion on the topic of writing. So if anyone wants to ask me anything, that's where I'll be. Then later in July I'll be in San Diego for Comic-Con, where I'll be taking part in another panel discussion with a group of horror novelists. You may think this all I do: fly around the country taking part in panel discussions. But no--I do many other wonderful things, such as saving avocado pits in case I ever want to grow my own avocado tree. Then I eventually throw them out. But it's a beautiful thought.

This is unbelievable. I keep getting spam emails that are using my own web address as their URL, and it's really starting to piss me off. How is this even possible? Other people are probably getting these bogus emails and opening them up, thinking they're coming from me, and getting a bunch of porn or god knows what. I only wish I could get my hands on the douchebags who send this stuff.

Just saw George Romero's Day of the Dead for the first time in a few years. Not Romero's best (or worst) movie, but it has some great performances. A few years ago I was lucky enough to go to a horror convention that hosted almost everybody from this film, including George Romero himself. Fun bunch, and they obviously still love talking to fans about that movie. I was able to give George a signed copy of my book in appreciation for all the zombie pleasure he's given me over the years, and also gave one to Lori Cardille (star of Day of the Dead) in exchange for her book I'm Gonna Tell. I have to say she's still pretty hot.

I remember the first time I saw Day of the Dead. It didn't come to Providence, so my girlfriend and I made a special trip to New York City just to see it. This was a big deal because neither of us made much money--I was a garage cashier, and she worked at a daycare center--but I was a huge fan of Romero's two previous zombie films, especially Dawn of the Dead, and I had to see this one. Day was playing at a big theater on Times Square, with incredible sound and freezing air-conditioning. The movie had just opened a week or two earlier, but the matinee we attended was almost empty. I felt bad for George, but at least we had great seats. Then: Wham!--that wonderful opening scene with the helicopter landing in a zombie-infested city. Thank God, George had done it again.

It was a very good weekend.

I just bought the first issue of Bob Fingerman's new comic, From the Ashes, and of course it's as hilarious, truthful, and warped as all his work. Stylewise, he's like a demented Mort Drucker, gleefully documenting the decline of Western Civilization.

From the Ashes is not only mordantly funny, it's also weirdly poignant, which makes sense since it's about Bob and his wife Michele surviving the end of the world. But nuclear apocalypse is a mixed bag--despite a few cannibalistic freaks, it's not all bad. Hey, no more ringing BlackBerries, balky PCs, or annoying co-workers. In fact no job at all, ever again! And they have each other, which is my favorite thing about the story: how Bob is so crazy about Michele that he's actually grateful for the apocalypse, just so they can finally spend more time together. Billions may be dead, but their sweetly snarky romance (think Robert and Aline Crumb) goes on. If there has to be an armageddon, these are the people you want to spend it with.

Having been an avid follower of Fingerman's work ever since I first discovered it in Heavy Metal magazine back in the '80s, it came as something of a shock when I read in an interview that he enjoyed my novel Xombies. That was huge for me. Bob Fingerman liked my book--whoa.

I've just been re-reading Elmer Gantry, by Sinclair Lewis, and am amazed all over again by what an unbelievably gutsy book it is...and more relevant than ever. It should be required reading for every American.

Speaking of which, I hope that the re-release of my book Xombies (as Xombies: Apocalypse Blues) will finally give it a chance to be properly evaluated. Despite the title and lurid cover, it never was intended to be a "zombie novel" (there was no such genre when I wrote it in 2001), but rather a social satire that used "Xombies" the same way Kurt Vonnegut used Ice Nine in Cat's Cradle--as a device to address gender issues, corporate manipulation, assumptions of good and evil, and the human tendency toward self-deception. These were all very much on my mind after 9/11, when it seemed to me that most of America had turned into a horde of mindless zombies. And, like the unfortunate refugees crammed aboard the USS No-Name, we were all in the same boat.

Not many readers appreciated these ideas at the time, but I hope that by now most of my cultural critiques have entered the mainstream. At least no one can accuse me of jumping on the bandwagon.

Sometimes I miss hitchhiking. When I was younger I spent a couple of years hitchhiking all over the U.S. and Mexico, and it was the most incredible time. Of course, I could have been murdered by a serial-killer, but at that point in my life I didn't much care. I had just dropped out of school and was living in a crappy apartment in Santa Fe, working as a janitor to support my writing habit. But after a friend of mine died senselessly I lost all sense of purpose. So I bought a used canvas dufflebag, stuffed it with a blanket and a change of clothes, gave the rest of my belongings away (including my portable typewriter), and hit the road. I figured I had nothing to lose--the only other alternative was suicide.

I just spent Memorial Day weekend raking the leaves that are falling from the large maple tree in my backyard. It's a green blizzard out there! You may wonder, as anyone would, why the leaves are falling in Spring instead of Fall (actually, they also fall in Fall, so I get to rake twice a year). Is the tree sick, or dying? I wondered the same thing myself when it first started happening a few years ago. I searched the leaves for any sign of disease, but there was nothing--the leaf-stems were just neatly cut. Spotting a few aphids, I had the tree sprayed...but the leaves still fell. Finally I went on the Internet and found the cause: a wily creature called a petiole borer. This is a species of wasp that plants its eggs in the leaf-stems (or "petioles") of maple trees, so that the larvae chew through the stem. The leaves drop first, then later the grubs, which burrow under the soil and emerge the following Spring as tiny wasps. The Circle of Life! Apparently this seasonal infestation is not all that harmful to the tree, which grows back most of its leaves over the summer. Lucky me, because there seems to be little in the way of pest control--like Steven Segal, petiole borers are hard to kill.

And while I'm boring you with my petty gripes, why is it I don't have any friends who like to fish? I like to fish. As a kid growing up in California I spent my summers fishing almost every day, digging my own bait or buying live anchovies on the Belmont Pier, but somehow I never made any friends who were equally into fishing--I couldn't even get my own son into it! It's a cruel sport, they say, and I have to admit it is an awful thing to do to a living creature (yet no more horrible than the fate of all our meat). So I rarely fish anymore, or if I do I fish alone.