The witching hour has passed, and with it your chance of being one of the first kids on your block to own an advanced reading copy of Colleen Gleason’s forthcoming book, The Bleeding Dusk. My hope is that we had some small part in creating a successful opening week for Rises the Night.
If you were not one of the people who rushed out to pick this up last week, you are not off the hook! Get out there and purchase a copy this week…let’s make week two even better!
Okay, commercial over. The most likely reason you have tuned in on this fine Monday is to find out just who won the advanced reading copy of The Bleeding Dusk. And I want to tell you, I really do. But first, let us enjoy the various contest entries, shall we?
(If you sent me a picture and it is not here I sincerely apologize. I checked my email multiple times and these are the ones that I received.)
Chris opted for the pensive, “I’m not really a vampire, you can trust me. Really!” look. Don’t let the innocent face fool you.
Cory W. (you can visit her here as well) was the first brave soul to actually have her picture taken in the bookstore. Kudos to you. The guy behind her? Definitely suspicious. Unfortunately none of those Ghirardelli chocolates accompanied her entry, or this would not have been a contest. Yes, I have my price.
Stephanie, self-avowed “I hate having my picture taken”-girl, also courageously had her picture taken in the bookstore. Funky glasses, Stephanie. Very cool.
I would love to know what the bookstore staff thought of the whole picture-taking business.
Jennifer R. provided photographic evidence that she is indeed one of the undead, offering only a photo of a disembodied hand holding a copy of Rises the Night next to her online review of said book. I have it on good authority that this is the last thing the victim…er, person photographed, read before they became a midnight snack.
Dolce Bellezza chose to go mysterious, teasing the viewer with just a hint of herself. Her hair was perfectly straight before she started reading Rises the Night, I swear.
Miss Y scored points by pre-ordering, thus adding substance to her claim of being “a big fan”.
Amy‘s husband set the stage for a whale of a Father’s Day gift by going out for her and purchasing Rises the Night. Though she claims that she was unable to make it to the store, I am convinced that she found the idea of her hubby at the counter with a romance book featuring an open-shirted stud cover quite amusing.
The following images made me wish that I had run a second contest, one that rewarded creativity.
An opportunistic vampire goes for the two-fer-one special whilst David J. discovers the first naughty scene in Rises the Night.
A Disclaimer: The images you are about to see are physically and psychologically disturbing. Remove all small animals from the home for their safety. Blindfold your children. View only in a well-lit room with nearby toilet facilities and/or an industrial strength airline vomit bag. If you are worried about your teenage daughter dating, this could put her off the idea entirely. You have been warned. Viewer discretion is advised.
Jeff S. sent me these images yesterday. I am not sure if I laughed until I was sick to my stomach or if that was just a by-product of more exposure to my dear friend than I was prepared for.
I cannot decide if I am disappointed that he didn’t go the extra mile in matching the cover image by waxing his chest or not. The red-eyes in the second picture are a nice touch.
*shivers*
If I can clear my head for a moment after that, whew! Through a not-so-complicated process involving assigning each contestant a number and using dice to determine an outcome, the winner is:
Congrats Jennifer! Email your address to author@colleengleason.com and sometime in August you will receive your advanced reading copy of The Bleeding Dusk!
And stay tuned to Colleen’s website as more contests are sure to spring up.
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Reading Rises the Night put me in a scary frame of mind last week. The desire to be creeped out only increased after a lengthy comic book store conversation with this really nice couple about horror games that I have not played: Silent Hill, Resident Evil, etc.
Saturday morning I wandered over to the local GameStop and perused the used game bins. Since it was ‘buy two, get one free’ I came home with Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill 3, and (based on how much they said the game Fatal Frame creeped them out) Fatal Frame III.
Needless to say, the majority of the weekend found me with PS2 controller in hand, getting chills as I played SH2 and FF3. Most of the weekend was spent playing Fatal Frame III…that is one eerie game. It even gave me the creeps during the daytime.
I even got my wife to sit down and watch the movie Silent Hill on Saturday. Thanks honey!
Yes, it was a bit of October in June. Lest you think we spent the whole weekend being frightened, we did intersperse the scariness with viewings of episodes of All Creatures Great and Small.
The second half of this post was brought to you in the interest of cleansing your mind from those last two contest images. Not even this is as creepy as those are!
Happy Monday everyone! And thanks to everyone who participated. The pictures were so fun that I wish I had a prize for each of you.
A disturbing way to start the week…
Congratulations Jennifer R.!
I love the pictures! Jeff’s had me in stitches.
did you spend all week putting this post together?! gads! lol
Congratulations to Jennifer! Nice win!!
(I want a pink poppet! grrrr) lol
Nope, Deslily, just cranked it out quick this morning. My little pink poppet came in on Friday…I was very excited.
Like father, like son…here is a picture of Jeff’s son at our house in October of 2005:
I am still giggling about Jeff’s pics! Can’t wait to meet Keri in Dallas so we can chat about it. LOL.
Thanks so much to Carl for hosting and managing this contest! Loved the pictures–they’re all great!! I love seeing what people look like!
Chris has the cutest dimple, he MUST be a vampire!
Stephanie does indeed have cool glasses!
And yes, Jeff S. should’ve waxed to complete the picture 😉
My fav picture was the Scottish vampire LOL
MUST HAVE ONE OF THOSE POPPETS!!!
Congrats Jennifer!
Those are some awesome pictures that you got. Especially the ones from Jeff. Although I would be disturbed if he had waxed his chest! Of course, he probably would be too!
OMG, those pictures are so great!
HAHA! What a great post! Love it…Congrats to Jennifer!
I love the Silent Hill movie. I just bought it about a month ago and saw it for the first time. Very creepy and very well done. I hated the first game though. The controls were too weird for me. I’ve heard the other ones were much better though. I’ve never heard of Fatal Frame. I’ll have to check it out.
Well….I didn’t expect to actually SEE me when I logged on!! I love my black glasses, but I think I’m going to look for thicker frames the next time. I very rarely ever wear my contacts anymore!
Congrats jennifer! You’ll have to let us know how good it really is!
Silent Hill the game really was spooky!! I don’t get creeped out too easily, but that sure did it for me!! Even the movie was creepy.
Great Post Carl!
OH MY GOD. Priceless. Absolutely priceless. Jeff no longer has to worry about his children being embarrassed about him reading comics when they grow up.
Yeah, man. He’s THAT Dad.
Okay, I would have taken my picture with my shirt open, too, if I knew you wanted creative. 🙂
Congrats to Jennifer R!!!!!!!!
I’m glad to see everyone seems not be too scarred by seeing my photos . Believe me there was defiently some moments before I hit the send button that I thought maybe I was being just too weird, but in the interest of cracking up my good friend and Colleen I sent the photos anyhow. 🙂 Including the picture of Zach was hilarious,Carl.
In all seriousness I wish Colleen the best of success with Rises the Night and Keri is looking forward to meeting you in Dallas, too. Carl thanks for running the contest. It’s fun seeing what everyone looks like and cool new poppet, too.
OMG! Carl! I loooove Fatal Frame! Of course, you’ve visited me so you probably know that… 🙂
If you like III I recommend you give II a try as well…I found the sisterhood aspect poignant and satisfying.
Also, did you know that the movie the director (is it Christophe Gans?) really wanted to make is Silent Hill 2? Based on Silent Hill 2, I mean. Silent Hill 2 has a compelling, tragic story that I think does a better job than any other game I have ever played of showing us what love is like during the times when it’s NOT all happily-ever-after.
(I confess, SH2 made me cry. It was too close to the time my father died, I think, when I played it first. But it’s really, really good. Disturbing! But good.)
Anyway. Hooray, Carl is playing games I really like! Rockin’. 🙂
OMG, Jeff’s pictures are just too funny. What a way to start a morning!
Congratulations Jennifer! LOL! Those photos are fun. 😀 And I really need to watch Silent Hill!
have you played any of silent hill 2, yet? my wife loves horrors and so i bought it for her, but now she’s too afraid to play it! she gets too scared! she’ll only play it if i’m in the room with her…
fatal frame looks very cool! whats it like
also, just wanted to let you know that i have now started putting together a blog – inspired by you and the cool people that you have links to on this page! i’m very excited! so excited i didn’t sleep properly last night! i kept thinking about and envisaging layouts and colours that would go well and textures and borders and pictures and headers and…!!!!
i don’t know why its taken me so long to getting round to doing this! i used to have a livejournal but for some reason it never worked for me and i thought that a blog would be just the same! but seeing your site showed me it can be different. i think the key differences are that livejournal is bit too much like a diary for my liking and then (paradoxically) it also seems to be about groups, communities. that didn’t quite appeal to me.
i like the way you run this site. the reviews and friday favourites and stuff… well, its not too dissimilar to livejournal, but it feels more like your page – not just another page within a community, if you know what i mean.
Thanks JP. I’m looking forward to your site, it sounds like you have some great ideas. Let me know when its up and running so I can add you to the links and check it out.
I’ve played a little bit of SH2, but once I started Fatal Frame III I was sucked in and haven’t been able to stop. I don’t really know what to compare it to. It is a third person perspective game though you can switch to first person. The controls seem fairly easy to get a handle on, and that is a big compliment to the game because I mostly play PC games and so it is sometimes hard to get the movements down right on a console game.
The premise is that your character keeps getting sucked into this haunted dream mansion whenever she sleeps…a place where it seems like one may be able to meet up with the dead. The more time she spends there the more that world starts bleeding over into her awake world. In addition there are a couple of other characters that you play during different parts of the game.
The ‘fatal frame’ part comes from the fact that you are a photographer and you take pictures of the ghosts that you come across. You soon find an old camera that has some special powers, allowing you to fight off the many malevolent spirits you come across. It sounds a bit silly but it works so well into the story that it makes perfect sense when you are playing.
There is lots of folklore in the game (don’t know if it is real or not as I’m not up on Asian folklore) and lots of sinister things going on that you discover.
It is VERY creepy, and graphically is quite well done. I definitely recommend it and will want to check out the earlier ones in this series.
Congratulations, Jennifer. That must have been a hard choice, Carl, there were so many cool pictures. How did you pass up Jeff’s?
I didn’t choose, the roll of the dice did that for me. It was all a game of chance. 😉
Congrats to Jennifer! Great pictures everyone. I love the vampire attacking the poor pregnant lady while her friend is too enthralled with the book to assist her. he, he. Jeff, all I can say is “Kelly Clarkson!”
I had forgotten Zach’s picture! Such a scary one just like his dad.
Colleen will be pleased to hear that nosey person that I am, I went on-line at my local public library and placed a “hold” on the multiple copies of Rises the Night (even though I have read my own copy) just to see what number I would be in the queue. Number 7!!! Which means people are out there requesting it from the ole library too!
Wow, Mary! Way cool!
Thanks for the update.
And Jeff, you have to know that I’ve been sending your pics throughout all of cyberspace. Don’t be too surprised if you start getting phone calls from NY publishers to be a cover model. 🙂
Good lord! I would hate to see the title and contents of those books! 😉
fatal frame sounds very, very cool! i really love it how those games get the elements of suspense, mystery, horror, creepiness (and often sadness) spot on. more so than most films that share the genre.
i love the idea that the character gets sucked into this world when she sleeps and how it starts to take over more and more. have you heard of clock tower? thats almost meant to be good…
the blog’s almost there… but oh, the choices!!! its too much! dear me, what have i let myself in for?! i’m having fun though, my wife’s taught me a little of that html stuff so i’m teaching myself how to lengthen borders and change colours.
what i find really hard, though, is deciding upon one theme. its hard to find one that suits you and is you, if you know what i mean. but i don’t have the patience to deliberate about this, so i’m just going to get one going. the look of the blog will be like a working title of a film.
I agree with your plan, just dive in. My blog certainly started on a whim and I did then the same thing I do now…I just did what I wanted and tried to make it about me and my interests while not making it a total vanity site. It certainly took a loooong time to build up a good sized core audience, and effort mostly rewarded because of building relationships on other people’s sites.
I have heard of Clock Tower. May have to try that as well. I haven’t been much of a console gamer since I was a kid, so I am enjoying this excuse to sit at the tv playing rather than the computer screen.
I just started “The Rest Falls Away,” (it just arrived in the mail today) and it’s really good! As much as I like a free book, I don’t think I’ll have any reservations about buying the next two.
I finally got to see Little Pink when I took a vanload of stuff over to the new house on Sunday (I had her delivered there to be sure she wouldn’t get lost). SO. GORGEOUS.!!!
Fatal Frame looks interesting. I’m a big fan of the Silent Hill games.
I will be posting my thoughts on Rises the Night after I’m done with all the moving rubbish.