Posts Tagged ‘Splatterpunk’
It’s a charity anthology and, while I did get an author’s electronic copy, I prefer to read print. So supposedly being a “Bloodsaint” myself, it made sense to order a paperback of the BLOODSAINTS ANTHOLOGY (see March 1, below, et al.) to have for my own. And now as of this afternoon it is already here!
My story in this is “Mr. Happy Head,” originally published in WICKED MYSTIC, Spring 1996, about a person who thought he might want to become a dentist’s hygienist when he was a child, but ended up settling for being a serial killer. But that was just when he was alive. And — funny story! — the issue of WICKED MYSTIC it was in had a subscription copy sent back by the Texas Prison System on the grounds that it contained material unsuitable for reading by a person on death row. My story? Well, we don’t really know but I have my suspicions.
BLOODSAINTS, however, is more benign with profits earmarked for UNICEF COVID-19 relief, albeit with contents leaning toward the extreme horror, splatterpunk, bizarro, dark psychological horror spectrum. Having just dipped in, I would say the first two stories do offer a promising beginning. If you should like such things yourself, it can be ordered on Amazon right now by pressing here.
And, with the donations, it might have a part in ameliorating a real-life horror.
No, that’s not the name of a new rock group. It is, in fact, the BLOODSAINTS ANTHOLOGY with my story in it called “Mr. Happy Head” (see October 23, 12, et al.). And it’s a charity anthology to boot, with profits to go to help out with COVID-19.
The general theme(s): Extreme Horror, Splatterpunk, Grindhouse, bizarro, or extreme dark psychological thriller. O-o-o-o-kay! You can see the attraction, why it’s one I was quick to submit to myself. And, reprints being allowed, the tale I chose was one originally published in WICKED MYSTIC for Spring 1996, as well as reprinted in UK publisher Flame Tree’s omnibus MURDER MAYHEM SHORT STORIES twenty years later, in 2016. It holds up well, yes?
To let present publisher Terror Tract explain: In this no-holds barred collection of grizzly tales, the BLOODSAINTS ANTHOLOGY takes you places that you’re glad only exist on paper. These authors, called the Bloodsaints, have donated their dark stories for the greater good. With the world attacked by a pandemic, these dark scribes have assembled to pool their proceeds to be donated to UNICEF for COVID 19 relief. To see for yourself or, better, order a copy one need but press here. But — word to the wise — don’t look to Mr. Happyhead, of the story of his name, to be counted among us saints himself.
No, he’s rather nasty.
The road to publication continues, today with an email from BLOODSAINTS Editor Dale Eldon:
Hello fellow Bloodsaints!!!! Dale Eldon here, and I got some awesome news. Some of you already know for those of you who follow me on Facebook, but I wanted to bring everyone up to speed.
We now have a new cover which I like a lot better. Bloodsaints is now a non-profit imprint of Terror Tract Publishing. I still have creative control over Bloodsaints, but the amazing Becky Narron agreed to team up with me. She also designed the new cover. We will have some late comers to the anthology who are established authors from Terror Tract. Which is awesome, because that means we are expanding the sainthood.
The anthology will be released soon, but due to the new arrivals, it will be delayed some.
BLOODSAINTS (the book as opposed to the imprint, cf. October 12, July 2), as we may recall, is a charity anthology with earnings to go to UNICEF COVID-19 relief, and contents to feature dark psychological horror, splatterpunk, extreme, bizarro . . . you get the idea. My spook in the stable is one reprinted from WICKED MYSTIC, Spring 1996, as well as more recently in the UK’s Flame Tree Publishing’s 2016 MURDER MAYHEM SHORT STORIES, “Mr. Happy Head,” the tale of a man who pursues his joys in non-standard places. And, oh yes, is also dead.
Publication, finally, should be fairly soon as the email suggests, with details to come here when they are known.
Sometimes we need just a little reminder. Thus today’s email contained this notice: Hello, Bloodsaints! I am sorry for the lack of news, I have posted some on Facebook, but not everyone follows me there. The anthology will be finishing up soon. I am editing the stories and finishing up a couple of mine. I had a few people back out on me, a writer and a friend who agreed to help in editing. Not to mention I have been dealing with a pandemic as I work in direct care for those with disabilities. Shit has been crazy to say the least on many fronts, but the anthology is still on track to finishing up.
And so it continues, I want to thank all of you for your contributions and your patience! When I do this again, I will see about finding a team to split up the work so that way the process can move quicker. I know none of us was ready for 2020 to be so crazy, but it is what it is, and us writers must carry on!
The book in question is to be called BLOODSAINTS ANTHOLOGY (see July 2) and with, yes, a reprint from me originally published in WICKED MYSTIC for Spring 1996. It’s also to be a charity anthology with profits to go to COVID-19 relief with UNICEF, a worthy cause or so it seems to me, with stories to contain elements of either: Extreme Horror, Splatterpunk, Grindhouse, bizarro, or extreme dark psychological thriller. Or in other words, who could resist?
So my puck in the pack is a 2700-word opus called “Mr. Happy Head,” about a man who seems to find true happiness in others’ pain (when he was little he’d aspired to become a dentist’s hygienist, but ended up having to settle for being a serial killer) and, oh yes, he’s dead. Of which more will appear here as it becomes known.
It looked to me like a worthy cause, a charity anthology for “COVID 19 relief with UNICEF.” Who are the Bloodsaints? the call had begun. They are the authors and editors and anyone else who are involved with making any charity relief collaboration happen, and this would be, as it were, the first “volume.” 2,000-8,000 words max . . . must have elements of either: Extreme Horror, Splatterpunk, Grindhouse, bizarro or extreme dark 
psychological thriller. So what’s not to love? And [r]eprints are cool if they are top notch. So . . . I happened to have, I thought, just the right story, originally published in WICKED MYSTIC for Spring 1996, a 2700-word piece about a man not that long ago deceased titled “Mr. Happy Head.”
Also the deadline was July 1 (I sometimes come across these things a bit late) so, it being June 28 already, off it went. A short trip, it turns out, as today, July 2, the reply came back from Dale Szewczyk: I have ready your submission, congratulations, you have been accepted into the BLOODSAINTS ANTHOLOGY! You’re a Bloodsaint now!
A few loose ends as the year winds down. Proof sheets went back Friday to Editor Kara Landhuis for MEET CUTE (see December 11, November 26, 23), the illustrated anthology of eccentric meetings scheduled for early 20
17. My part in this, “Butterfly,” is a rather gentle tale as stories by me go and will be, I understand, illustrated by Marge Simon.
Then later in the evening Grey Matter Press weighed in with an announcement that their nouveau splatterpunk anthology SPLATTERLANDS: REAWAKENING THE SPLATTERPUNK REVOLUTION (cf. October 22 2015, et al.) can now be obtained free by both new and old e-readers with Kindle Unlimited. My tale in this one is the far less gentle “The Artist,” for more on which, and the book in general, one may press here.
“Ever have kinky thoughts about Spock and Kirk? Princess Leia? Ever wonder just what you could do with the light saber?” Yes, THE FIRST ANNUAL GEEKY KINK ANTHOLOGY (cf. November 7 and 
4) is now available in a (ahem) hard copy edition, complete with my own Yuletide-themed “A Christmas Carnage” detailing the adventures of a typical (which is to say, nerdish and virginal) Lovcraftien hero and his long-deceased umpty-umpth great aunt Carol. And chainsaws.
Buy it, read it, consider reviewing it if you dare — the fun begins right here.
So . . . as promised, the email came at exactly 11:02 Friday night. The FIRST ANNUAL GEEKY KINK ANTHOLOGY! And what might such an anthology contain? To quote from the blurb: “Inside these pages, you’ll find everything a geeky kinky reader could want — from alien anal probing to comic book super heroes and super 
villains, and even such slightly obscure nerdishness as a new take on Jean Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear and all sorts of Elvin sex.
“And of course, there are ample references to Doctor Who, Star Trek, Harry Potter and Devo. . . .” Not to mention my own story, “A Christmas Carnage,” jolly and gross, for more on which see just below, November 4.
Or to enter into, as it were, the horse’s mouth, one can press here for the publisher’s site with the rest of the blurb plus ordering info, while Amazon fans need but press here for the Kindle edition (though Editor Lori Perkins warns that the print edition there may take a few days longer).
In connection with Riverdale Avenue Books, we’re looking for new and/or previously published stories featuring geeky kinkiness. Or kinky geekiness. How does your inner geek get their rocks off? Have you turned that amazing scene where you were Twilight Sparkle giving it to another bound pony right in the Pinkie Pie? Got a hot hunt short story about Boba and Han? Maybe a story set AT the GKE? Send it in!
Such was the call for the FIRST ANNUAL GEEKY KINK ANTHOLOGY and, believe it or not, I happened to have something that just might fill the bill. Originally published in IN THE BLOODSTREAM from Mocha Memoirs Press in 2013 (see October 28, September 23 of that year), “A Christmas Carnage” is a Dickensian (based, that is a little, on A CHRISTMAS CAROL), Lovecraftian (sort of), splatterpunky eroticish tale of a young Miskatonic U. grad who has a chainsaw in his closet (a nervous sort, he keeps it for personal protection), and a more than family interest in his long-defunct umpity-umpth-great aunt Carol 
who had once been an artist’s model in Paris. So when she makes an appearance as, he would like to think, his Christmas Present . . . well, there is a price, of course, as well as a hint that those in the World of Spirits don’t appreciate puns.
Today the word came: “Congratulations! You are in the First Annual Geeky Kink Anthology WHICH WILL BE PUBLISHED THIS FRIDAY, so we need you to sign and return this contract asap. Please let us know if you will be attending GKE this coming weekend, so you can read your work?” Proof sheets are to be expected in 12 to 24 hours. The GKE, or Geeky Kink Event, which alas I had to apologize I would not be getting to, is (to quote their site), “a three-day kink event in New Jersey featuring a full dungeon, classes and workshops, vendors, and plenty of social activities.” There’s no word, however, as to whether NJ Governor Chris Christie is expected to be a guest.
But I did sign and send back the contract this p.m.
Then for a brief news flash, the previous evening CHILLING GHOST SHORT STORIES (cf. August 21, et al.) arrived.in my groaning overstuffed mailbox. From Flame Tree Publishing, this is a chunky, nicely made nearly 500-page book containing ghost tales both old and new. Mine, a reprint from GOTHIC GHOSTS (Tor Books, 1997), is titled “Victorians” and can be found between Charles Dickens’s (ahem!) “The Signal-Man” and “The New Catacomb” by Arthur Conan Doyle.
“Edited by Joanne Merriam,” the blurb begins, “THE MUSEUM OF ALL THINGS AWESOME AND THAT GO BOOM is an anthology of science fiction featuring blunt force trauma, explosions, adventure, derring-do, tigers, Martians, zombies, fanged monsters, dinosaurs (alien and domestic), ray guns, rocket ships, and anthropomorphized marshmallows.” Or see below, this year, May 5 and February 16. So late yesterday the announcement came, that the table of contents has been set, including my story at number 6 in the lineup, “Bubba Claus Conquers the Martians,” a homage to perennial 10 All-Time Worst Movies listee SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS (as set in the “Bubbas of the Apocalypse” universe) originally published by Yard Dog Press in HOUSTON, WE’VE GOT BUBBAS in 2007. And one more thing, a tentative publication time has been set for spring 2016.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Khadija Anderson, “Observational Couplets upon returning to Los Angeles from Outer Space”
Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, “Photograph of a Secret”
Kristin Bock, “I Wish I Could Write a Poem about Pole-Vaulting Robots”
Alicia Cole, “Asteroid Orphan”
Jim Comer, “Soldier’s Coat”
James Dorr, “Bubba Claus Conquers the Martians”
Aidan Doyle, “Mr. Nine and the Gentleman Ghost”
Tom Doyle, “Crossing Borders”
Estíbaliz Espinosa, “Dissidence” (translated by Neil Anderson)
Kendra Fortmeyer, “Squaline”
Miriam Bird Greenberg, “Brazilian Telephone”
Benjamin Grossberg, “The Space Traveler and Runaway Stars”
Julie Bloss Kelsey, two scifaiku
Nick Kocz, “The Last American Tiger”
David Kopaska-Merkel, “Captain Marshmallow”
Ken Liu, “Nova Verba, Mundus Novus”
Kelly Luce, “Ideal Head of a Woman”
Tim Major, “Read/Write Head”
Katie Manning, “Baba Yaga’s Answer”
Laurent McAllister, “Kapuzine and the Wolf: A Hortatory Tale”
Martha McCollough, “valley of the talking dolls” and “adventures of cartoon bee”
Marc McKee, “A Moment in Fill-In-The-Blank City”
Sequoia Nagamatsu, “Headwater LLC”
Jerry Oltion, “A Star Is Born”
Richard King Perkins II, “The Sleeper’s Requiem”
Ursula Pflug, “Airport Shoes”
Leonard Richardson, “Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs”
Erica L. Satifka, “Thirty-Six Questions Propounded by the Human-Powered Plasma Bomb in the Moments Before Her Imminent Detonation”
G. A. Semones, “Never Forget Some Things”
Matthew Sanborn Smith, “The Empire State Building Strikes Back!”
Christina Sng, “Medusa in LA”
J. J. Steinfeld, “The Loudest Sound Imaginable”
Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, “The Wanderers”
Lucy Sussex, “A Sentimental, Sordid Education”
Sonya Taaffe, “And Black Unfathomable Lakes”
Mary Turzillo, “Pride”
Deborah Walker, “Sea Monkey Mermaid”
Nick Wood, “The Girl Who Called the World”
K. Ceres Wright, “The Haunting of M117”
Ali Znaidi, “A Dolphin Scene” and “Australian Horoscope”
Then also an oddity of sorts for today, behold “The Paris Horror Show” by Messy Nessy at MESSYNESSYCHIC.COM, courtesy of Joan Hawkins, Jenn Newman, and Julie Ahasay via Facebook. The wonders! The art! The gore! For which, to see for yourself, press here (and, if desired, see as well on these pages December 9 2014; also for my poem “Animal Eyes,” based on Paris’s Grand Guignol, May 26 this year with ancillary material May 31, 28, and 23).
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