"Dear Friends,
Just a quick update to let you know that your order will be shipped in the first mailings on Friday, October 21, and that if you're in the US, you'll be getting the premiere issue of Monsterpalooza Magazine in plenty of time for Halloween! (It seems we Americans take our Halloween very seriously, and we're going to get your order moving out the door ASAP! But I think Monsterpalooza will "play" just fine, whether you read it this month--or years from now. But that's just me.)
While we're somewhere between the Twilight Zone's of the printer and the bindery and the post office, I wanted to share a snap I made some time ago at our printers, while our art director, Theresa, and I checked the proofs. We'll have some "sneak peek" images of the interior of the magazine in my next note to you, but I wanted to share and image or two of the proofs--
I've also been thinking a lot about Edgar Allan Poe this month...
And not just because Halloween is fast approaching. As some of you know, I made a film about Poe a few years ago, and I've been working since 2009 with Jeff Jerome, the Curator of the Poe House and Museum in Baltimore, to save that wonderful, tiny, historic building from closure. The Poe House has become something of a "cause" for me.
You see, the City of Baltimore pulled the $85K it costs to keep the Poe House open every year back in 2010. Since then, the funds that are keeping the Poe House open to the public until the summer of 2012 have been generated by the events I've produced in Baltimore with Jerome since the big 2009 Bicentennial funeral we staged, that received world-wide attention. I've produced perhaps a dozen events since that time, including the East Coast premiere of Jeffrey Combs' one-man show Nevermore, written by Dennis Paoli and directed by Stuart Gordon. Jeff continues to do the show in LA at the Steve Allen Theater every third Wednesday of the month, as his schedule allows. if you're in LA and can catch it, do it! Check the schedule first at the Steve Allen Theater!
On October 7th of this year, I moderated an event with director James McTeigue and actor Luke Evans, director and co-star of the upcoming film The Raven, starring John Cusack, at Westminster Hall in Baltimore, where Poe is buried. The date was significant as it marked the 162nd anniversary of the author's death.
All of these events have been important to me as they have all drawn world-wide attention to the plight of the Poe House and Museum. Poe died under mysterious circumstances on October 7, 1849, and when he died, he was struggling to raise the sufficient funds to publish a dream project, a magazine he was going to call The Stylus...suffice to say that the struggle to publish 162 years later is, well, still a struggle. And so is keeping an important, historic location open to the public.
And so, I want to let you know that a number of events are happening around the country this month, celebrating Poe, and generously giving all or a portion of the proceeds to support the Poe House and Museum in Baltimore. You can check out our Poe website www.poeforevermore.com, to see if something is happening in your area, or, if you're so inclined, make a small donation, sign the petition, and tell your friends. I really do appreciate anything you can do, even if its to spead the word of the website, and let people who love Poe and literature know what's happening!"
