Slashers and Splatterpunks

by David Byron

4) Good writing has next to NOTHING to do with good business; good commerce has next to NOTHING to do with good art.

  5) Learn to gene-splice the two until it works for you.

  6) Learn to spell. Learn to punctuate. Learn good grammar. Not knowing makes you look dumb.

  7) Abuse of language is 9/10ths of Style.

  8) Getting there is one thing. Staying is another.

  9) Writer's block is a luxury you can't afford. Easier to re-write than to write. So write.

  10) No one has a more vested interest in you career than you. So do it already.

  ?2009 Craig Spector. All rights reserved. LOL....

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  Any last words before you leave us?

  CS: I blame society. LOL.

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  Richard Christian Matheson

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  He has written and co-written feature film and television projects for Richard Donner, Ivan Reitman, Joel Silver, Steven Spielberg, Bryan Singer and many others. To date, Matheson has written and sold twelve original, spec feature scripts; considered a record. He has written pilots for comedy and dramatic series for SHOWTIME, FOX, NBC, ABC, TNT, HBO, FOX, SPIKE and CBS and served as head writer and Executive Producer for thirty network comedy and dramatic series. Matheson has had seven feature films produced, including the critically hailed, paranoid satire ”THREE O'CLOCK HIGH” which the New York Times called “brilliantly subversive". Matheson wrote the screenplay for the critically lauded “SOLE SURVIVOR”, a FOX four-hour mini-series based on Dean Koontz's best selling novel. He also co-wrote and executive produced the original SHOWTIME film, “PARADISE”, starring Barbara Hershey, David Strathairn and Elaine Stitch, “DELUSION” an original suspense film for VH1, “DEMONS” an original, suspense film for SHOWTIME and the adaptation of Roger Zelazny's Nebula Award-Winning Science Fiction/Fantasy series, “THE CHRONICLES OF AMBER”, as a fourhour mini-series for the SCIFI Channel.

  Matheson recently co-created “CHEMISTRY”, an edgy/erotic half-hour comedy series for OSTAR Productions and wrote three scripts for SHOWTIME"S “MASTERS OF HORROR”. For TNT"s “NIGHTMARES AND DREAMSCAPES” eight-hour mini-series , he wrote the critically-hailed adaptation of Stephen King"s short story “Battleground”, starring William Hurt and directed by Brian Henson. THE NEW YORK TIMES called the episode “...a minor masterpiece.” He has recently created/written “MAJESTIC”, a one-hour para-normal series for TNT ,based on the work of Whitley Strieber. Most currently, he is writing and executive producing “DRAGONS” a six-hour mini-series with director Bryan Singer and “SHOCKERS.TV” which he created and directed. Matheson is considered a cutting-edge voice in surreal, psycho-logical horror fiction and master of the short story. His critically lauded fiction has been published in major, award-winning anthologies, including multiple times in YEARS BEST HORROR, YEARS BEST FANTASY as well as PENTHOUSE and OMNI magazines.

  Stephen King compares him to Ray Bradbury and terms his work, "Remarkable. The writing is finely tuned and has that rarest combination of style and narrative substance." Ray Bradbury calls Matheson's work "first class and stunning ", and Clive Barker terms it "…devastating." ROLLING STONE calls Matheson "...one of a handful of resourceful, fearminded authors helping to create a new sensibility in horror fiction that is as

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  frightening and merciless as the modern world itself." PUBLISHER"S WEEKLY calls his stories “...miniature masterpieces.”

  Thirty of Matheson"s stories are collected in “SCARS And Other Distinguishing Marks”, as introduced by Stephen King. A second, hardcover collection of 60 stories, “DYSTOPIA” has received powerful reviews and been translated into several languages. His critically lauded debut novel, “CREATED BY”, was Bantam"s hard-cover lead, a Bram Stoker Award nominee for best first novel and Book-Of-The-Month Club lead selection. It has been translated into several languages.

  Matheson is considered an expert on the occult and worked with the UCLA Parapsychology Labs, investigating haunted houses, and paranormal phenomenon. He was involved in the publicized case upon which the film “The Entity” was based.

  He has written for stand-up comedians, taught college creative writing and screenwriting classes. Matheson has also been a professional drummer for over thirty years, studied privately with the legendary CREAM drummer Ginger Baker and worked as a studio musician. He has played with Stephen King, Amy Tan and Dave Barry in the writers' band "THE ROCK BOTTOM REMAINDERS" and with famed band “THE SMITHEREENS”. He also plays drums with “SMASH-CUT” ,a blues/rock/jazz band which includes Preston Sturges Jr. and recently recorded their debut album which will be released in „09.

  ***

  NVF MAGAZINE INTERVIEW Richard Christian Matheson

  Greetings and salutations, Richard. How are you doing this fine June morning? Misleadingly tranquil. First of all, let me say what an honor it is to have you here with us. I have been following your career since I read your story “Red” in the Splatterpunks Volume 1 years ago. Tell me, what was your particular inspiration for that piece. It seemed so terribly….real.

  I listen to people; eavesdrop. Hear things. Traumas, heartache. Bad things happen.

  Speaking of your short fiction, I see you have two collections. Are you mainly

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  into writing shorts, or do you write novels?

  My first novel, CREATED BY, was published by

  Doubleday. I‘m completing a new one; a thriller. My third story

  collection will be published next year. 75 short stories, 25 essays.

  Maybe some automotive tips.

  Now, this next question is one you have most likely been asked a thousand times, but I couldn"t resist; being the son of Richard Matheson, did you ever get a chance to meet Rod Serling when you were growing up. I now they used to collaborate on projects.

  Never met him. Your father"s novel, I AM LEGEND, to me, was like a perfect template for writing the perfect sci-fi/horror novel. Was it an influence on your writing? Everything he wrote influenced me. He‘s brilliant. I AM LEGEND is a marvel of economy and dread.

  What was your first real “horrifying” experience? I"ve talked to a lot of writers who have said they have incorporated childhood experiences, fears and traumas into their fiction.

  I was electrocuted, severely burned, suffered head injuries and nearly drown multiple times in childhood. All accidents. So they tell me. Many of my stories center on flesh assailed. Draw your own conclusions.

  Off of the subject of the “creepy” for a moment, what"s this about having written episodes for Three"s Company and BJ and the Bear? Quite a departure from your usual fare, isn"t it?

  A full-grown man traveling around in a truck with a monkey is fairly creepy. In my 20‘s, as I was learning my craft, I produced and was head writer for thirty hour and half-hour network television series. I wrote 500 episodes of sitcoms, action series, detective shows, you name it. I once had lunch with the monkey who played Bear, at the Universal commissary. He was brought by his manager and wore loafers, a blazer and bowtie. He smiled at starlets at nearby tables and had spaghetti. Tough dish for a monkey. You don‘t want to watch that.

  Exactly how would you classify your writing style?

  It varies.

  Tell me a little bit about the band you play in with Craig Spector and Preston

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  Sturges Jr. How would you classify your musical style? Mixed bag. Blues, rock, jazz. Hypnotic arrangements. The guys went to the Berklee School of Music, I studied one-on-one with Ginger Baker of CREAM. We use every trick we ever learned and play well together. Preston writes great songs and last year we cut thirty songs in five days at a recording studio. We‘re fast studies. Our album preview is coming out this week.

  Now I will bore you with some of my obligatory Q & A: what would you say is your favorite horror film or book? I like Polanski; the malefic ice. J.G. Ballard, M
artin Amis, Truman Capote, John Cheever; all write true horror. Gore is for punks.

  What is on the horizon for RC right now?

  Curve of the earth. Smoke signals. We‘ll see.

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  Roberta Lannes

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  Roberta Lannes sold her first story, “Lorraine,” to Stone River Review in 1966. Her high school creative writing teacher, Marjorie Bruce, encouraged Roberta to write towards publishing as well as to find her personal voice. Ms. Bruce mailed Roberta"s story to fiction magazines, along with other stories by her classmates, and that brought about the sale of the story. Roberta believes that without Ms. Bruce"s encouragement and belief in her ability, she might never have gone on to publish. The power of a good teacher is equal to that of a good parent, so it inspired Roberta not only to write, but to go on to teach as well.

  From 1983 to 1990, Roberta attended extension writing courses at UCLA, where she received experience and gained insight into her strengths as a writer. An assignment in her class on Horror Writing with teacher Dennis Etchison (a master short story writer in the genre), Roberta caught the attention Etchison who bought the story “Goodbye, Dark Love” for his award winning anthology Cutting Edge. With his encouragement and backing, she was able to meet and establish relationships with authors, publishers and editors in the field, two of whom remain her friends and most supportive editors, American Ellen Datlow, and Brit Stephen Jones.

  With Cutting Edge published in eleven languages, Roberta"s work began to build a fan base in Italy, France, Japan, The Netherlands (where filmmaker Ian Kerkhof created Ten Monologues from the Lives of the Serial Killers using her work), and especially the United Kingdom. Her strong sci fi, dark fantasy, and horror fiction is disturbing, yet it is considered to be powerful and effective storytelling by reviewers and fans alike.

  She was approached by Silver Salamander Press in 1995 to publish a collection of her short stories. John Pelan, a fan and publisher/writer, edited the collection which can be found in specialty bookstores, and even though it is now out of print, it can also still be found on Amazon.com and other internet vendors.

  Her stories approach the darkest of thoughts, passions and behaviors with vivid descriptions and convincing detail from a remarkable imagination. People who meet her after reading her work are surprised to find a personable, happy and normal person; nothing like expected judged from her deliciously dark writing. She asks her readers to relinquish their safe worlds and immerse themselves in the worlds of disturbed thinkers and brutal monsters. Extensive research into some of the darkest macabre and deviant minds has given Roberta fodder for the most chilling of tales.

  When asked how such a „nice person" could write such dark and disturbing fiction, Roberta has said, “I"m fascinated by things that are not in my reality and I believe others are fascinated, too. I don"t want to live in the dark realms,

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  in futuristic sci fi worlds, but I enjoy visiting from the safety of my armchair, and I hope many readers do, as well. I write from my research, meetings with some of the most discomforting, creepy people, and those who treat them. In understanding these people, their needs and perceptions, and how they got there, I can be their voices in the same way an actor might portray them. It doesn"t change that I"m a good person. In fact, it fuels my desire to people my life with sane, sweet, and loving friends. At the end of the day, I want to come home to my wonderful husband and have good times with my friends. I guess that makes me an enigma.”

  Though she continues to publish in the sci fi, dark fantasy and horror genres, she writes mystery, poetry and articles as well.

  ***

  NVF Magazine Interview With

  Roberta Lannes

  Nice to have you with us, Roberta. How are you today?

  Doing well, thank you. All is good with the world and within my home.

  It is true you were a standup comic? And the member of an improvisational comedy troupe? Yeah, way back in the old days when The Comedy Store was first open on Sunset Strip, some of my funny friends started with amateur night, and I just tagged along. Now, I was funny with them, but didn‘t consider myself comedienne material. Still, they talked me into going up on stage one night, and of course I bombed. It was quite humiliating, but a New York comic who was a regular Comedy Store lineup tried hitting on me that night, and said I should try again. He helped me ‗‘refine‘‘ an actual set, and the next time, I was really good! I had started teaching then, so I couldn‘t get there every amateur night, but I persevered for about 8 months. I got to know some of the headliners, like Freddie Prinze, who was my favorite. When Kathy White had to drop out, I stepped in for awhile. I loved it. Best thing to keep your mind sharp {man, do I need it now in my old age!}. But it was an uphill struggle, and teaching and performing both were burning me out. I quit doing standup, went on to write for some of the comedians.

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  Writing funny stuff is ten times harder than writing horror. I lasted about a year, then went on to try some science fiction. My goal was to get into The Twilight Zone magazine. I never did.

  I understand you were writing stories at the age of six. I was eight, myself! I hear you wrote a story about a cat with 40 toes that ate up little kids. How did your mom react to that one?!

  I clearly remember my mom finding my stories annoying, embarrassing, and confusing from my first one. She wanted to be proud of me, show off my creativity, but was terrified about what other folks would think. She told me when I was in my teens that what I wrote was ‗‘sick‘‘ which actually egged me on to push the envelope. Everything I published, she asked for a copy of the anthology or collection. She bragged about her author daughter and embarrassed the hell out of me at a couple of signings, so I assumed she read what I wrote. After she died, when we were packing up her life in boxes, I found a crate of my books, dusty and taped shut, still wrapped as the gifts I had given her. She‘d never read a word.

  Aw...that"s too bad . What was it exactly that made you want to write scary stories? It is something different for all writers, I guess. For me, it was watching old Hammer films and reading old comics like Tales from the Crypt.

  Oh yes, by the age of ten, seeing scary movies and reading Famous Monsters Magazine made a huge impression on me. I learned quickly what really scared the crap out of me! But before that, I had discovered the old cartoons of Charles Addams and my beloved Graham Wilson. My mom plunked my six year old butt down in the book section of the local department store while she shopped – this was in the days you didn‘t have to worry about leaving your child unattended for fear of kidnapping or trigger an amber alert – I gravitated toward the picture books where I found the dark masters of cartoon. I was captivated! Something in the off-kilter and sardonic mind of Charles Addams touched me, and out came that cat story!

  The first short story of yours I read was „"Goodbye, Dark Love,"" in Splatterpunks 1#. I have been hooked on your stories ever since. May I be nosy, and ask what the basis was for that piece? It left me mortified, which is hard to do. But, I liked being mortified!

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  Wow; I love hearing you have been hooked! I am thrilled!

  I have told the story behind ―Goodbye"‘ before, and it isn‘t as personal as readers assume. Sorry to disappoint! I had a student who was thirteen at the time, who had been abused by a man, who was her neighbor, I believe, and she confided this to me. When I learned it was still ongoing, and what he‘d done to her, I realized I had to report it. The ensuing arrest, court trial and finally acquittal, so disturbed me {and hurt this young girl} I wrote the story in an angry fugue. Of course, I took a lot of creative license with the story, but the heart of it was real. I was taking a horror-writing course through UCLA with Dennis Etchison and turned ―Goodbye,‘‘ in as an assignment, expecting him to find it simply too relentless and grim, but he loved it, bought it, and premiered it in The Cutting Edge
back in 1986.

  Did you enjoy being among the other authors in Splatterpunks? I know I would! That"s a great collection of stories, and featuring one by the late great Rex Miller, “Reunion Moon,"" which gave a whole new meaning to the term “bathroom humor.""

  Hell, yes! I even knew some of them, and admired them. They inspired me! I was lucky enough that Paul Sammon liked some of my work, and fit me into both of his Splatterpunks series. Strange to think I will always be lumped in with the Splatterpunks! But, many of us have gone on to conventional horror. I think if asked to write a Splatterpunk story now, I wouldn‘t know if that raw anger is still inside of me to draw from. Wait; give me a minute to think about the last seven years of our administration in the Whitehouse…..Darfur, Sudan, and the ―rebuilding of New Orleans,‘‘ after Katrina…and yeah! I could churn something out!

  Do you enjoy reading horror fiction as well as writing it? I mean, sometimes, I will sit down, read a book by Danielle Steele, freak everybody out! Your are freaking ME out! Danielle Steele? Whew….. Truth? I don‘t read horror. I read the work of some of my friends on occasion, like Lisa Morton, Ramsey Campbell, for instance, and sometimes read stories in an anthology I am in, but I normally don‘t enjoy absorbing more of what scares, disgusts, or grosses out. I love reading the psychological, suspenseful, the deft plotting of good fiction that may just happen to have horrific elements. You

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  don‘t find that in the shelves of the local bookstore any more, though. What I read are daily mysteries, Ruth Rendell, Denise Mina, Sarah Rayne. But I am no elitist. I have my weaknesses for British chick-lit author Jane Green and Cornelia Read who write hysterically funny unclassifiable novels that are sold as mysteries. And, give me some historical fiction any day.