Epic Rites is a small press dedicated to bringing the best from those who write with blood. It was established in 2008 by Wolfgang Carstens in Alberta, Canada. Each chapbook is printed on high grade paper and represents quality from “its skin down to its guts”
If you’d like to know more visit here: http://epicrites.typepad.com/epicritespress/epic-rites-press-bookstore.html -
For Epic Rites David edits the chapbook series and the ezines written “with a razor and the thin edge of staring” – his latest chapbook HELLBOUND is a tribute to the Hellraiser films and the surrounding mythology. There are at least forty painfully wrought poems in the collection and let me tell you: he has such sights to show you….
1. There are 40 poems in your chapbook which draw on the Hellraiser mythos, what attracted you to the the dark dreamscape of The Cenobites?
1. Originally actually the first three films, and the original Cenobite line-up. I was just attracted to things Pinhead said and to the fact that within the mythology of the films there is basically no "good" power, just Leviathan and his hatred of disorder. Implicitly, he is equivalent to the god of order of the Judaeo-Xian mythos, of the religions of the book. The good figure is actually Pinhead, who stops the Cenobites hurting Tiffany first, since she is innocent and the box is not opened by fingers alone. I originally wrote one and Wolfgang liked it and wanted more.
2. Like The Cenobites your words twist us out of (or into) a certain kind of truth - it felt like not only a dissection/exploration/analysis of the Hellraiser universe but also of humanity - would that be a fair assessment of Hellbound?
2. I think that we are actually a sort of chimp. Chimps aren't very nice. People are motivated by aggression and cruelty much more than they will admit. And also, like Leviathan, we are motivated by a vain desire for order misunderstood as permanence and immutability. Though the untidy disordered desires that the Cenobites punish are what gives life, order and permanence would just give eternal dead entropy.
3. You are a co-editor over at Epic Rites, tell me a bit about how you came to be involved there and what we can expect from them next?
3. I suppose I just submitted to a journal and it developed from there. We are committed to producing underground small press work of the highest physical and poetic quality. Nice card and paper, first rate design by drunken degenerate Pablo Vision, exquisite editing by me, first rate coordiantion and promotion by Wolf Carstens. After hellbound comes Jack Henry's crunked in that series, as well as chapbooks by Puma Perl, Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal, James Darman, Amanda Boschetto, Jason "Juice" Hardung, Suzy Devere. So confident are we that everything will be good that we have a subscription offer - The Lucky Bastards Club. http://epicrites.typepad.com/epicritespress/epic-rites-press-bookstore.html. Just now there is afeature book out by NY poet Rob Plath, then a collection of stories by Karl Koweski, blood and greasepaint, later a feature by me called laughing at funerals.
4. Your chapbook is inspired by Hellraiser -- are you as much influenced by film than literature?
4. Absolutely, film and popular music. I have a chapbook La morte vivante influenced by the film by Jean Renoir of the same name. Great film too. Especially if you, like everybody else, like lesbian vampires. http://www.shadowarcherpress.com/davidmclean.htm - I think there are copies left, signed too, they mailed me sheets, my X in chicken blood. Or was it biro?
5. Paul Kane once described The Cenobites as having a "Grotesque Glamour" and there is a certain allure to their mutilation - would you agree?
5.Sister Nikoletta (aka Cunthroat) is the obvious one there for me. has her own tribute poem in the chapbook But they are all beautiful, and Pinhead was once voted Japan's number two sex symbol, after Madonna, tellingly enough, though Liza Minelli would have been even creepier.
6. You a tutor in philosophy - what writers/academics/filmmakers fuel your desire to put pen to paper?
6. No, I'm not a tutor. never have been, I just have an MA in the subject. Basically Heidegger and Derrida and Nietzsche play some röle, but, like I say, largely horror films and music. Partly Derrida's idea of poetry as a form of nostalgia for presence that never existed, a way to become in itself-for itself in Sartrean terms. Though Derrida didn't understand Sartre. Among poets, Anne Sexton, Larkin, Auden, a few others. I admire a few modern poets, like Rob Plath and Jack Henry, but we write totally differently, even if on similar subjects very often.
7. If you where planning another chapbook inspired by either a horror novel/play/script what would it be and why?
7. Well, no exact plans, but I have written a little recently about young Mr Voorhees. (Freddie gets on my nerves, too camp, and boring jokes)
Visit my blog at http://mourningabortion.blogspot.com/ and buy a book while you're at it
http://www.epicrites.org/65501/166212.html.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
HE HAS SUCH SIGHTS TO SHOW YOU – An interview w/ poet David Mclean, who talks about his new chapbook HELLBOUND -
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
THE DISTURBED: an interview with Conor McMahon
Interview w/ Conor McMahon – writer and director of THE DISTURBED
Alan Kelly
The making of Irish filmmaker Conor McMahon’s latest film The Disturbed was a little different to how a film would normally be made. He wanted to make a film and experiment with improvisation. McMahon had been attending acting classes during the year with Vinny Murphy and saw it as an interesting way to make a film without having to spend months sweating over a script. So the outline of the story was written quite quickly, taking only three weeks and only 25 pages long, and this is what McMahon and his small crew used to shoot the film. There was never a script as such and he never gave the outline of it in it’s entirety to the actors, so they were never really sure how the story was going to turn out. He just gave them enough to get them through each scene. They managed to shoot the film over five days and had only two other members on the crew. Gerry Mahony recorded the sound with Paul Ward producing and doing pretty much anything else which needed to be done. There was never a script as such so McMahon only issued an outline of the story to the actors, just enough to get them through each scene. He also shot and edited the film afterwards.
The plot goes a little like this: Clyde and Jed are all set for a fun weekend of torture and filmmaking in the countryside. It’s something they do every month. Their latest victim is Sarah, a young girl kidnapped on a drunken night out. As her two captors talk over a cup of tea, she slowly realises the horror of what lies ahead. McMahon also wrote and directed Dead Meat, The Blaxorcist and a slasher film is currently in development called The Clown.
1. The Disturbed starts off w/ two snuff-movie enthusiasts abducting a girl and planning on filming her murder, for a while there there where lot of 'stylized snuff' doing the rounds in theatres. The Disturbed looks gory but it also has a supernatural twist. So it isn't your 'traditional' slasher film, what way would you describe it?
I wouldn't call this a slasher film as all. It's kind of a hard one to pin down, the closest I've come to describing it is Hostel meets the Blair Witch Project. But it also has alot of dark comedy in it too.
2. You're a horror film aficionada- your earlier work Dead Meat had Peter Jackson connotations and The Blaxorcist obviously had a nod or two to William Peter Blatty's Exorcist. What did you draw on for The Disturbed?
The style of the Disturbed is very different from anything I've done before. The style was sort of born out of a) the story, one of the characters uses a video camera to film the torture scenes, and b) because I was doing alot of improvisation with the actors it was easier to film it in more of a documentary style. I sort of approached it as a Dogma 95 horror film. In terms of films the influenced it, in essence this is a ghost story film but I didn't want to do the typical family arrive at the house with a little girl and weird stuff starts happening. I thought it might be more interesting if 2 guys arrive for the weekend, and as they unpack their gear we reveal there's a girl in the boot.
3. Where there many budget constraints making the film?
I came up with this idea so that I could specifically make the film for almost no money. So in that way, money was never really an issue. We just used what we had and made it work. There were one or two scenes that would have needed more money to make them work, so we just came up with a different way of doing it.
4. Was horror filmmaking always an area that you wanted to work in?
Yes, ever since I was a kid I've enjoyed making horror films. They're great fun to make. When I was a teenager we use to make a new horror film every few months. It's a little harder to do that now because developing a project takes so long. Making this film was a little like going back and making a film the way I use to. We had a very small crew, just two other people.
5. With Schrooms, Red Mist, Insatiable and The Disturbed. Horror seems to be getting either more backing from The Irish Film Board or have Irish talent involved somewhere. How much difficulty have you come up against, working in the film industry?
Well this film was funded by myself and because I didn't have a proper script going into the project I imagine it would have been hard to convince people to back it. I actually didn't even know if this film would even be feature length because the outline was so short. And because it was improvisation there was alot of the film that was discovered while we were shooting it, which I imagine would give most producers a nervous breakdown.
I think the film board have definitely been supporting horror and there are alot more of them being made now than 10 years ago. I think there is still a slight snobbery in Ireland towards the horror genre so it's always going to be tough until some Irish horror film really breaks though.
6. Is The Clown in development?
Still in development.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Sarah Langan interviewed
I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with one of the rising stars in horror publishing Sarah Langan. We talk about the intellectual snobbery encountered by horror writers, how thrilled she is to have her latest novel snapped by The Weinstein Company and how horror is occasionally overlooked as a serious art form. She also told me how important a peer group was to her work and not to wait around for inspiration. To just do it….
1. Over at Pretty Scary you said you received rejection slip after rejection slip but never saw this as a negative but a positive -- at least editors where reading your work. Was it ever disheartening though?
The rejections honestly weren’t disheartening; it meant I was playing the game. My income in order to have the time to write was pretty depressing, and watching the people around me excel at careers while I stagnated was hard, but then again, at least I had a dream. A lot of people aren’t that lucky.
2. Your novels The Missing and The Keeper have themes that resonate long after you've closed the book i.e. crumbling economy, the horror from within, the 'threat' of familial love and you return to places like Corpus Christie -- towns which are 'shut off' from the rest of civilisation. There is almost a feeling your characters being trapped by their own awful circumstances. I am aware of the Stephen King influence, but I think your writing speaks for itself. There are horrors in living a parochial life, by which I mean living in a place where everyone is on top of each other.
Horror can’t exist in a vacuum. It’s defined by peoples’ impressions of right and wrong—what society agrees is and is not acceptable. Death isprobably the greatest American social taboos. We’d rather diet and exercise our way young than admit it’s out of our hands—the clock is ticking no matter what we do.
I use the family as a microcosm of social horror, where republicans meet democrats meet alcoholics meet effeminate sons and sexually repressed daughters. The interactions between these characters allow me to examine the world in focus. When I’m doing my job right, I’m redefining horror, and pointing out the ways in which the socially acceptable might actually be horrible (excessive use of fossil fuels, war, etc.), whereas things society deems transgressive (death, gays, atheists, people who dress really badly) may actually be benign, or even good.
3. There is far too much comparison between 'Sarah Langan as a female writer' to authors like King and Barker. Does it bother you that a gender bias exists in the horror publishing world?
I don’t mind, for the most part. Sexism exists more in horror than mainstream publishing, which is run by women. So, when men (and just as often, women) at conventions comment on my looks or tell me I ought to dress more provocatively (or call me the dreaded “sweetheart”), they’re revealing their own ignorance.
4. Your new novel Audrey's Door has just been snapped by Dimension - or is that just gossip. Did you ever believe you would make a successful living from writing horror, although I hasten to add, I consider what you write as dark literature or slipstream in a similar vein to writers like Joyce Carol Oates, Caitlin r Kiernan and Poppy Z brite.
AUDREY’S DOOR was indeed acquired for film adaptation by The Weinstein Company, and I couldn’t be more pleased. Brent Hanley, screenwriter for “Frailty” is also working on an adaptation of “THE MISSING,” and THE KEEPER has some interest as well. I’m very happy about the whole thing. I didn’t expect it, but I’m thrilled to have it!
5. While you where studying you secretly wanted to write horror -- did you worry about the reactions you would get from your peers and lecturers, was it something of a guilty secret?
Yeah, it was. At college and grad school genre was forbidden, and because of that, I felt ashamed of my own instincts. But after a while, I learned that it’s all fiction, and if it’s good, it’s good. If it’s not, it’s not. The rest is all labels.
5. Because this is FH blog I want to ask -- how many hours a day do you spend working? Are you writing full-time now? How do you approach writing and what inspires you to write?
I’ve been writing full time for a few years now. On average, six to eight hours a day. I treat it like a job, and sit down at my desk every day. Some days I feel like I got in some good work, others, not so much. But I think the most important thing is never to wait for inspiration. Just do it.
6. Fantastic Horror has a contributors workshop where writers discuss and give critical feedback on each others work. Your a member of a writers group, is that something you find helps with creating plot, narrative and character?
My crit group keeps me motivated and honest. We’re all in the business to publish fiction, and in order to do that, you can’t get trapped in your own head for too long, or worry over a paragraph for a week. You just have to write the thing, and let the cards fall where they may. Trust yourself.
7. You've said in interviews that you often struggle with being labelled a horror writer -- that a division exists between horror and 'serious' literature?
A division exists, certainly. But I think time sorts out the good stuff from the crap, regardless of packaging. Philip K. Dick is a genius, and people finally know it. So is Bradbury. King is the master of character. Straub will break your heart every time. Oates is so good they’ve stopped calling her horror. Twenty and thirty years after initial publication, nobody disputes the greats. So, if I’m worth my salt, I’ll last, too. And if I don’t, then I don’t deserve to.
8. What are you writing now?
I’m working on my fourth novel, EMPTY HOUSES, as well as a YA trilogy called KIDS. They’re both a lot of fun. EH is about several families on a
9. You studied for a very long time while writing? Was it a case of having something to fall back on if the writing didn't work out?
I studied Environmental Toxicology at NYU, and am still a half a thesis short of a Master’s Degree. I did it because I love science. I don’t’ subscribe to the notion that you have to make your life small in order to be a writer. I think the more open to the world you are, the more you have to write about.
10. Who are your influences/inspirations?
Russell Banks, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, Kelly Link, Somerset Maugham, Lorrie Moore, Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Straub, Eudora Welty, Stephen King, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, John Patrick Shanley, Martin Scorsese, Roman Polanski
--I’d love to write like them all, and I love the work they produce.
Monday, June 22, 2009
More horror from Edmund Spencer
I posted a little from The Faerie Queene a while back, but have just lately returned to my reading of it. And since the first two cantos are packed with supernatural and horrific occurrences, I may as well quote another of them.
And thinking of those branches green to frameA garland for her dainty forehead fit,He plucked a bough; out of whose rift there cameSmall drops of gory blood that trickled down the same.Therewith a piteous yelling voice was heard,Crying, "O! spare with guilty hands to tearMy tender sides in this rough rind embarred...."
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Welcome
I am new to the Fantastic Horror blog and things are manic with deadlines and the like right now. However I will be bringing you interviews, reviews, literary dilettentism and the like. So don't stray to far and I look forward to all you girls and ghouls reading me weekly.
Bye for now (and unpleasant dreams...)
Alan
