Winter Wake by Rick Hautala is the first offering of Necon Classic Horror for a reason. An avowed techie, I was shocked to find that many of the great horror novels of the '70s and '80s were not available on any of the new e-readers. Necon Classic Horror was born to rectify that situation. The first of the Golden Age writers I contacted was Rick Hautala.

Rick arrived on the horror scene in 1980 with the first of five novels published by Zebra books. He really hit his stride with Winter Wake in 1989. An unrelenting tale of ghostly revenge set on a fog-shrouded island off the coast of Maine, it was his first book for the Warner imprint. The ending alone is worth the price of admission. Winter Wake was a harbinger of things to come as Rick's technique matured. It remains one of the author's favorites of his early novels. And mine.

- Bob Booth
Publisher, Necon E-Books

 

Noted collector Paul Dobish and I were discussing what makes a classic. We decided that the thing most often lacking in genre books is clean prose. It is not lacking in Les Daniels' The Black Castle. It is a trout stream of a book, in the Hemingway sense. You can clearly see every pebble of detail as the fast-moving story rushes by. Daniels knows what to leave out as well as what to put in. Half the length of other historical vampire novels (I'm thinking Anne Rice) but with twice the impact and a lot more Hammer-style gore, The Black Castle is truly classic in the best sense of that word. You don't have to believe me. Check out these references (which are just a few of the many accolades this novel has received): Stephen King's list of "100 Important Books" published in Danse Macabre (page 389); Doug Winter's list of "The Best Horror Fiction 1951-1985" in Faces of Fear (page 269); or Stan Wiater's list of "Modern Horror Fiction: 113 Best Books" in Dark Thoughts on Writing (page 200). Oh yeah, it was also nominated for a World Fantasy Award

- Bob Booth
Publisher, Necon E-Books