Gleefully Macabre Tales
Page 30
I’d written the first section of the novel, which ended at the part where the Gypsy gave our heroine a free sample of the potion, so I got rid of everything after that, added a serial killer who keeps his penis in a mason jar, and took the story in a completely different direction from the original concept.
I sent it to Michele when I was done. Her response: "You are so weird."
The Three Little Pigs
When I was little, my friend had a "Three Little Pigs" record, and I was horrified that the wolf actually ate the first two pigs. (I was only familiar with the story in its animated Disney incarnation, I guess.) The first side of the record actually faded out on the sounds of the wolf greedily devouring his prey. It was disturbing as hell.
When the editor of Wicked Karnival magazine asked me to write a story based on a fairy tale, I bashed my head against the wall for a few hours until my traumatic childhood memory resurfaced and I decided to write a gore-drenched version of the pig saga.
Everything Has a Purpose
My algebra teacher in junior high was pure evil, and she was never able to offer an explanation for why we’d use this crap beyond "It teaches you basic problem solving skills." So does being thrown into a tank of piranha.
Them Old West Mutations
This has the longest "story begun" to "story completed" gap of anything in the collection. I wrote about half of it in 1995, when a publisher was seeking cross-genre western stories for a series of chapbooks, and wrote the other half ten years later.
With almost all of my "humorous horror" short stories I try to include some element of legitimate horror, something to make the reader wince or cringe or at least say "Dude, that is messed up!" I kind of like that this particular story is simply harmless goofy fun, even though everybody dies at the end.
Wasting Grandpa
I believe this was the first story I ever wrote with a complete prick as the narrator. Since then, writing from the point of view of scumbags and insane people has become a favorite technique. I probably do it too much. Sorry about that.
A Bite For A Bite
This was another story written for the Small Bites anthology, for the "Zombie" section. Small Bites had a very strict 500-word maximum for all stories, no exceptions. The first draft of "A Bite For A Bite" came in around 750 words, and I remember that it was absolute torture trying to get this thing down to 500. I went through the story over and over, cutting as little as a single word in some passes, cursing the editors for their unfairly stringent rules that were destroying my creative vision.
Now, a couple of years later, the story can be as long as I want, and I can’t think of anything I want to put back. Weird.
Glimpses
One of the few "serious" pieces in this book, and by that I mean "doesn’t combine the humor and horror." Like my "serious" novel Pressure, there’s a lot of humor in "Glimpses," but the dark elements are played straight. Even though I tend to write about really horrible things, I don’t usually end on a complete downer, so this one’s kind of a nice change of pace.
Common Sense
There is so much to be said about this 36-word epic. Themes to discuss, stylistic techniques to analyze, shocking plot twists to mull over…the sheer richness of this tale continues to amaze me every time I read it. If you don’t think this story drips with atmosphere, then you’re simply ignorant in the ways of dripping. This is my finest literary hour.
Quite a Mess
Okay, this one’s more of a joke than a story, but I think it’s kinda funny. It shares thematic material with my unpublished-and-not-included-in-this-collection poem "Food Fight of the Living Dead."
Bad Coffee
This appeared on an actual coffee mug designed by Insidious Publications. It was done in an extremely low production run of only 25 mugs, and since the "Do Not Put In Dishwasher" warning was a crucial piece of advice, I figure it’s one of the rarest collectibles in my career thus far.
Werewolf Porno
Though it’s not that smutty, this is certainly my most sexually graphic story. When this appeared alongside "Sex Potion #147" in Funny Stories of Scary Sex, my mom elected not to purchase a copy. For that I am grateful.
I actually read this story in front of a live audience once and about three paragraphs in I really wished that I’d picked another story. That was a long twenty minutes.
An Admittedly Pointless But Mercifully Brief Story With Aliens In It
I won a $50 computer game (Stupid Invaders) by entering it in a contest, so it wasn’t all that pointless, now was it? Ha!
Munchies
I’ve written dozens of comedy skits, but I only allowed myself to include one in this book. I think a skit about cannibalism was a fine choice. This actually appeared in a humor column I used to write about computer games for the Just Adventure website, around the time that I accepted that I had nothing funny left to say about computer adventure games and didn’t even try to stay on topic.
Roasting Weenies by Hellfire
Okay, okay, I’ll admit it. This story (written over a decade ago) almost didn’t make the cut for this book. I’m not going to pretend that it’s a tightly-plotted masterpiece, but…c’mon, it’s a splattery version of Home Alone, except with the Devil and stuff!
There were tough decisions to be made with Gleefully Macabre Tales, and I voted in favor of the story with the little kid using the severed lower half of his body to distract the hungry Doberman. If that’s so wrong, then baby, I don’t wanna be right!
I Hold the Stick
I forget which theme park I was at when I was inspired to write this story. We were waiting in a long, long, loooooong line in hot, miserable weather, and right before the entrance to the actual ride was the attendant with the stick to make sure you met the minimum height requirements. And I thought "Why would they put him at the end of the wait? He should be stopping too-short kids before they even get in line. What a miserable job this guy must have."
But then I thought, hey, if you hated little kids and had an inflated sense of power, it would be a dream job!
Scarecrow’s Discovery
Originally this story ended with the kids cutting up poor Ray with an electric carving knife. After Horrors! 365 Scary Stories came out, a co-worker insisted that there was no such thing as a cordless electric carving knife. I scoffed at that idea. Of course there was such thing as a cordless electric carving knife! What if you needed to carve turkey at your dinner table and there was no electrical outlet handy? But I researched the issue and could find no evidence that there’s such thing as a cordless electric carving knife. So, with much sorrow, I changed it to a drill so that whiny people like my co-worker don’t complain in the future.
Howard, The Tenth Reindeer /
Howard Rises Again
About twelve years ago, I wrote "Howard, the Tenth Reindeer" and sent it out as a Christmas card to my writer friends. Response was overwhelmingly enthusiastic, so the next year I followed it up with "The Little Girl Who Wished Away Christmas," which was about 4% as popular. I sent out "Howard Rises Again" the year after that, and the cards were sucked into a black hole of polite silence. That ended the Christmas card idea.
I’d be unlikely to write something like "Howard" these days (much the same way that I don’t expect to write another novel along the lines of How to Rescue a Dead Princess) but I do enjoy the shamelessly silly, just-for-laughs tone.
BrainBugs
When our cat goes insane for no discernable reason, my wife and I like to say that the bugs in her brain are acting up again. So this story was inspired by my cat.
Cap’n Hank’s Five Alarm Nuclear Lava Wings
Buffalo wings are my favorite food, but I tend to be a "medium" kind of guy. I’m a wuss, I know.
This story is previously unpublished, but was set to be part of a magazine that went bye-bye. Tom Moran did a very cool but absolutely disgusting illustration of a guy having his lips sizzled off by a blowtorch to accompany the tale. Heh heh.
A Call For Mr. Potty-Mouth
Mr. Potty Mouth is real. Watch yourself.
The Bad Man in the Blue House
Sometimes you write a story and have no idea if it’s any good or not. This was completely different from anything I’d ever written, and I couldn’t figure out if it was hilariously bad or, y’know, kind of cool.
I decided to let my test readers decide.
Most of them voted in favor of eliminating this story from the collection. Which, to be completely honest, is the way I was leaning.
But…a couple of them said it was among their favorites.
So I kept it. You decide if I made the right choice.
Abbey’s Shriek
This one’s kind of icky, isn’t it? It appeared in the anthology Unravelings: Beyond the Mundane, which led to me getting reviewed by Romantic Times magazine: "More graphically violent and bloody stories, such as Jeff Strand’s ‘Abbey’s Shriek,’ are not for the faint of heart, or those who don’t enjoy their daily dose of gore."
Does Jack Ketchum get reviewed in Romantic Times magazine? I think not.
The Socket
Many authors have a particular "market killer" story, meaning one that destroys every market that accepts it. Twisted Magazine accepted it for its second issue, but died after the first. Winedark Sea also accepted it for its second issue, and perished as well. It was eventually published in Deathgrip: Exit Laughing, and that signaled the end of Hellbound Books.
So, basically, Dark Regions Press is screwed.
One of Them
Sometimes, an author must be stubborn. None of my rest readers liked this story. It was the only unanimous "Cut this one!" decision in the entire process.
Well, you know what? I like this damn story. I don’t care what anybody says! Screw you all! Don’t touch my baby!
This story is a complete reversal from my usual approach. I like to take macabre, unpleasant subject matter and add a sense of fun to it. "One of Them" takes something that should be entertaining and sucks the fun out of it.
If you don’t like the story, blame me. The test readers are on your side.
Secret Message
Nope, I’m not going to decode it here. I will say that as far as substitution ciphers go, this is about as simple as it gets.
However, if you don’t want to write in the book or transcribe the whole thing, drop me a friendly e-mail at JeffStrand@aol.com and I’ll send you a version suitable for printing out and scrawling on.
Mr. Sensitive
Nick Cato, publisher of The Horror Fiction Review, e-mailed me and suggested that someday we work together on a project, maybe something called Two Twisted Nuts. What he meant was "Two Wacky Guys," but I e-mailed him back and said "Two Twisted Nuts? What’s that, an anthology of scrotal terror?"
Weeks later, Nick told me that he loved the idea and had written a story for Two Twisted Nuts: A Chapbook of Testicular Terror. I was in no way obligated to contribute something, but he was definitely going forth with the project.
I feared the repercussions to Nick’s career if he went around e-mailing authors and asking them for stories about testicles, so I wrote "Mr. Sensitive."
I cringed when I re-read this one for the collection. I think that’s a good sign.
The Bad Candy House
One of my most mean-spirited tales, and my story of choice when I’m doing a live reading. Everybody laughs at the line near the end where we find out that the baby died. You people are sick.
Disposal
Biting Dog Press originally published this as a hardcover limited edition. That version also included ten mean-spirited forewords by Mike Arnzen, MaryJanice Davidson, Christopher Golden, Rick Hautala, Brian Keene, J.A. Konrath, Gregory Lamberson, Mark McLaughlin, Jim Moore, and James Newman, where they talked about how much they despised a) me, and/or b) the book. I had several other authors in mind in case my first ten picks turned me down…but none of them did. And those bastards were mean. It’s well worth seeking out the hardcover edition to watch them hurt my fragile feelings.
Biography
Jeff Strand is the author of enough books that if you tried to cut off one finger for each of them, you'd completely run out of fingers, and then you wouldn't have anything left to hold the knife when you started on your toes. (You would not, however, run out of toes—at least for now.) Some of those books include Pressure, Benjamin's Parasite, The Sinister Mr. Corpse, and Graverobbers Wanted (No Experience Necessary). He's been a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award twice, and won zero times. He lives in Tampa, Florida, and thinks that it would be best for all concerned if you visited his website at:
www.JeffStrand.com
Table of Contents
Introduction
Really, Really Ferocious
Socially Awkward Moments With An Aspiring Lunatic
High Stakes
Special Features
Sex Potion #147
The Three Little Pigs
Everything Has a Purpose
Them Old West Mutations
Wasting Grandpa
A Bite For a Bite
Glimpses
Common Sense
Gross-Out!
Bad Coffee
Werewolf Porno
An Admittedly Pointless But Mercifully Brief Story With Aliens In It
Munchies
Roasting Weenies By Hellfire
Quite a Mess
I Hold the Stick
Scarecrow’s Discovery
Howard, the Tenth Reindeer/Howard Rises Again
BrainBugs
Cap’n Hank’s Five Alarm Nuclear Lava Wings
A Call For Mr. Potty-Mouth
The Bad Man in the Blue House
Abbey’s Shriek
The Socket
One of Them
Secret Message
Mr. Sensitive
The Bad Candy House
Disposal
Story Notes
Biography