The Cemetery Dance Allegations So Far... Customer Edition! (Top Five Friday)

Hello everybody. E here. Welcome to a different kind of Top 5 Friday. I wanted to go ahead and get this video out there because I woke up this morning to a rumor mill. Uh and I I find it really funny. Um so I'm going to post this video just to try and cut the rumor mill short. Um I woke up to two emails from uh like two different people saying asking me if there was any truth to the rumor that Richard Chizmar of Cemetery Dance had sent me a cease and desist order. Um thus putting a cap on me sharing any more information about Cemetery Dance and the allegations against them. So that has not happened. I don't know where that came from. I was working with someone um on this story. Um I'll leave them nameless uh so that uh so that there's no hate thrown their way. Um but uh uh I just decided to go ahead and throw this up today because um after one problem after another there was my internet going out. Uh there was uh let's see or my kid getting called into work. All different kinds of stuff happening. I kept having to postpone and postpone. Well, I'm done postponing. Um you guys don't know any of this. I was talking in secret to another individual. That individual has not returned my text messages in uh over 2 days now. So I'm just going to go ahead with the story. So today we're talking about the top five Cemetery Dance allegations. I'm going to call this one the the the customer version or the customer edition because there are plenty of authors who have come out against them as well. So the first one, I guess number five. Uh these are in no discernible order whatsoever. I'm just sharing allegations and I'm saying allegations up front because it does seem like Chizmar is a bit desperate and if he did want to contact me or send me a cease and desist, then I I I could get in trouble for saying that this is the facts. These are the facts as we know them. No, they are allegations. Are some of them 100% true? If you have proof, you have proof. I have some proof, but they're still allegations. So, the first one is uh years, sometimes uh more than a decade between uh pre-orders being paid for and them shipping. I think the most egregious one so far is Shockline 6. Um I think I keep getting this wrong. Um but this is actually going to tie into something else in the author version, which is the way uh Cemetery Dance works, keeping authors in limbo um with the something called pay on publication. But we'll talk about that in the author in the author one. Um in my own experience, uh once again, these are allegations unless I say differently. This is not an allegation. This is the facts. Uh I pre-ordered The Stand and Pet Sematary back in 2018. It is now halfway through 2026, so 8 years later, and I have only uh I've only received The Stand, and that was last year. Um so, it took I'm I'm not I'm not going to do the math, but it took that long for me to get The Stand, and I am still unfortunately waiting on Pet Sematary, a book that I have already considered that I might never see. Um now, there are plenty of people who will tell you, "Hey, Cemetery Dance's books show up eventually." That there's a problem going on right now that um that I would say that this time that might be incorrect. I'm alleging that something might be happening, um and it I could be completely wrong. This is supposition. This is all allegations. Um, most of them are from other people that I have no connection with whatsoever. Um, which brings me to the second thing, which is weird payment options and different email addresses. So, anyone who who has bought anything off of Cemetery Dance before all this stuff started, knew that you would go to their website, you get an email from their mailing list. You would go to their website, buy the book. That was it. Cut and dry. Recently, um, Richard Chizmar has started spamming people with emails. I'm talking numerous emails. Um, sometimes more than one a day about secret bids, um, about, uh, books that have supposedly been sold out for years, some over a decade, some more than that. Saying, "Hey, look, I got something special. Email me for details." Now, that's not necessarily a problem. Um, these types of companies do this all the time, mailing list, secretive stuff, uh, pre-order before it goes live, that kind of thing. But, here's the weird part. At the end of the emails that he's been sending out, it says you can pay using his Venmo, his own personal Richard Chizmar's Venmo. Or, you can send payment to cdancepub@aol.com. Um, a little further investigation from myself, uh, I'm not saying Chizmar is doing this, but, uh, several scammers use AOL because of the lack of security features over on that platform. And yes, just like the rest of you listening to this right now, I had no idea AOL was still a thing, either. Um, I it's I guess it's even worse than Yahoo right now as far as security. That's that's what I could find. It It could be completely false. Once again, these are just allegations. Um so yeah, you got the weird emails, but here here's the thing when when you pre-order or do anything for his giveaways or um or the ordering that you're doing, the problem is you have to send him a screenshot or proof that you actually bought it. And that seems odd to me. So, um I am going to take a guess. This is not fact. This is an allegation. I'm going to take a guess um and say either A, he is locked out of his own company for maybe bankruptcy situation or something like that, some kind of legal matter, and he's trying to hide the money that he's making off these other things from that process. Um either that or the credit card companies and PayPal and all that have shut him down. The reason why I say this is because we saw a lot of the same things from Nocturnal Readers Box. Um when they shut down, same with uh Dark Fuse and charge back uh sorry, same with Nocturnal Readers Box and charge backs and the Shane Stanley Dark Fuse uh bankruptcy situation. All of that stuff is very All of these companies when they die, they pretty much die the same way, especially when they're owned by one dude. Um at the end of the day, that dude is in charge of everything. They all go the way of the dodo in the same exact manner. Um the very last thing that happens is you get spammed into oblivion with a bunch of special offers as they try to clear the table. Now, I'm not saying that's what's going on with Cemetery Dance. This is what happened with Nocturnal Readers Box. Um they started selling a bunch of stuff that didn't exist. Um a lot of pre-orders for things that they shouldn't have had access to. And this all looks vaguely familiar. Once again, that may not may not be what's going on, but that is a possibility for why you can't use the Cemetery Dance website to order the special features and the special things that Chizmar is selling. Um maybe. Who knows? It's all allegations. Uh next one uh I guess we would be at number three here. Uh quality issues and weird print delays. Um right now uh Cemetery Dance or Chizmar himself, I'm not sure which because the website is saying one thing and then he is saying another. Um he's offering stuff that's not on the website, so on and so forth. Once again, all of that stuff that he is offering, you have to do seedancepub@aol.com um and or Venmo him um or or or or send him proof of purchase, a screenshot, or whatever because for some reason he doesn't have access to the proof that you bought from his own company. It's awfully weird to me and I can't figure out why that would be. Now, the quality issues uh anybody who has gotten the double day years will know that there was a significant drop in quality after The Shining. Carrie was fantastic. Um uh Salem's Lot was amazing. The Shining is the pinnacle of I what I think a Cemetery Dance book could be. I was very happy with it. I was super stoked for it. So, I went ahead and got Night Shift. This was over a decade ago at this point. Um I was very very happy. And then I got an email saying, "Hey, look, you can get both The Stand and Pet Sematary finishing the collection for so much money. Here's the deal. Get it now and then wait 10 years for your books." Um it didn't say that and that's one of the reasons why people are upset because there there is no hey it's like hey, that it might be this year, it might be next year. It might But when you ask for uh uh not What What about the delays and whatnot? They bring up printing issues, which I almost want to believe because as soon as Night Shift dropped, we saw a significant drop in in quality. And then The Stand came out and that quality was even worse. Um we were also promised initially um at least in what I can remember from the message boards um that we were promised uh you're going to have to double-check me on this, but everyone I talked to remembers the same thing. This is the one thing I have absolutely no proof of. We were supposed to get the original Doubleday version of the book. That was the draw for collectors. You were going to get the original Doubleday version of the book. Um we did not get that version. We got the uh complete and uncut version, which came out a decade later. Um anyway, so that's the third one. That's quality issues. Um here's one that I really want to talk about, and I guess this is my number two. It should probably be uh number one, but I'm I'm going to put it at number two. Um and that is uh co- taking advantage of collectors. Um that my allegation here and from what I've read online, most of this stuff I'm getting from online. I haven't dealt with it. I'm not a huge collector anymore. I never was a huge collector to begin with. I collected Stephen King and Joe Hill books. I think I have like a uh Thomas Harris one and a Scott Smith version of The Ruins. Um but for the most part, I I I just buy books that I'm interested in. I don't need a complete collection. Um but what I'm hearing from other collectors is that Chizmar is taking advantage of people who want a complete collection. Um he will delay and he will delay and he will delay and he will continue to sell more stuff. Um and that will This will also go into number one, which I think is really, really bad. But anyways, we'll get to that in a second because it's about collectors also. But milking collectors because like authors, authors want a cemetery dance writing credit. That was that was coveted especially up until recently when they stopped paying their authors. They will get into that next week when I go over all the author allegations. Um but it got really bad recently with all this new stuff popping up that to promote Richard Chizmar books and his son W.H. Chizmar's books. So what would happen is to lure collectors in that he would he's offering books that should not exist. We're going to get that to part That's number one. It's like a two-part tied for number one. Who knows? Whatever. We just going to roll with it. But he will email and say, "Hey, if you pre-order my book if you pre-order what Killing the Boogeyman or if you pre-order W.H. Chizmar, that's his son, um nepotism, I mean right off the bat. But I mean who who's not going to try and help their kid out, right? It's still nepotism. But who's not going to to try and help their child um in in in the world of public publishing where it is so hard to get published where you have to milk a legacy author for every single penny every single penny and just keep churning out this chatbook that library card all this other stuff and milking that name. Who wouldn't do that for their own child? But I digress because it's not only W.H. Chizmar's book them that's coming out that you should pre-order in with the hopes, prayers, and wishes that you might get a Stephen King collectible. It is also Richard Chizmar's book that you can pre-order and hopefully maybe kind of sort of in the realm of possibilities maybe .001% you could get a Stephen King collectible. Yeah. Um and then we have number one, which is I I think I think the worst part about this and it goes into part two. >> [gasps] >> All these limited editions that CD has printed that are rare and limited because of the number that was printed. They keep showing up in giveaways. So, one of two things is happening with this. Either more were printed and the the sold out lie is is just that, a lie. Um either more than said were printed and he just has dozens of these things laying around his office. Um or he has items that shouldn't I would I would never give away I would never give away. And that that should but that's just me. So, once again, allegations. I can't speak for anyone but myself, but if I had a an ARC of Stephen King's It, an advanced review copy, one of the most prized collectibles in the Stephen King collector community, I'd be holding on to that and not giving it away. I also but if I did have to get give do something with it, I would definitely sell it. You're trying to tell me that this was a give Anyways, I don't know. I don't know he can come on here. The comment section is open if you would like to give any explanation for any of the stuff that I'm talking about, that's fine. Um but more than likely what's going to happen here is that I'm going to get blocked. Actually, I can't get blocked cuz I'm not on any social media. Um but he'll likely just ignore this because he knows you're a fool. He knows you want a complete collection and he knows that you will keep getting milked like the good cow that you are because damn it basically just a license to print money. That's what you are to Richard Chizmar, a license to print money. You know what? Here at the end, you know what's a funny allegation that I heard? Um that he had a two-book deal with his publisher. Um and that was for the two first two Boogeyman books. And uh a little birdie told me that in order to get another contract with him, he had to become a best-seller. And that's right around the time that we started getting all these spam emails. Well, he did it cuz Killing the Boogeyman's coming. Yeah. Anyways, what are some of your favorite Cemetery Dance or Richard Chizmar specifically, what are some of your favorite Richard Chizmar allegations? We will be getting to the author side of things next Friday, but until then, I have been you, you've been me. This has been a Top 5 Friday. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye.