ANNOUNCING “THIS IS SPLATTERPUNK”!!!
THE WEBSITE FOR THE FILM, AND THE NEW BOOK THAT SUPPORTS IT, ARE HERE AT LAST!
AUTHOR-TURNED-EXCITED-OLDSTER’S NOTES: So for those of you who didn’t know, I turned SIXTY-EIGHT YEARS OLD on Tuesday, May 20th. Which was amazing in several respects. First, because nobody expected me to live this long. (Myself included!) As my mom used to say, “Will wonders never cease!”
But more than that, it was because this May 20th was amaaaazing. I honestly can’t remember the last time I had a birthday that felt so good. So juuuuust right. Like key pieces of my long, weird life were suddenly, audibly clicking into place. Not just symbolically, but as a matter of practical fact.
For example: over the last couple of months, I’ve been teasing some “exciting developments” that were always “just a few weeks away”. I did it so often I was starting to sound like my least-favorite President. And THAT’s not good!
But today, I can make the big announcement I’ve been building up to. And HERE IT IS NOW!
Almost forty years ago, my old friend Craig Spector and I wrote a book called The Light at the End. It featured a punk named Rudy Pasko who got bit by an ancient vampire one night on the New York City subway, and then spent the next seven days unleashing a gore-packed reign of terror on lower Manhattan.
It was fresh. It was intense. It was extremely high-energy. It was sexy, sad, scary, and violent as fuck. And after being rejected by almost every publisher in town, it got picked up by editor Lou Aronica at Bantam Books, who backed it big time.
As a result, it went on to sell a million copies, hitting the New York Times bestseller list, and transforming these lowly street messengers into literary rock stars.
At the same time, Clive Barker’s Books of Blood were blowing minds over in England. Joe R. Lansdale was kicking some serious shit down in Texas. And out in Los Angeles, David J. Schow was making seismic waves with his own prodigious barrage of brilliant short stories.
It wasn’t a movement in any conventional sense – we were all completely unaware of each other – but the combined force of our simultaneous rise led people to call it one. And when asked what to call this turning point in modern horror, Schow quipped, “I guess they’ll probably call us splatterpunks.”
And with that, the legend was born.
Now forty years later, Schow’s hilarious term is once again in fashion. But in common parlance, it’s come to mean “horror that is excessively violent and gory.” Which is about as reductionist as you can get, especially considering what Craig, Clive, Joe, and Dave and I were actually bringing to the table. Leaning on the “splat” while forgetting the “punk”, which was its subversive, rebellious, countercultural hard-rocking kick-assitude.
So to help clarify things – and because there is nothing I’d rather do – I’m making a movie called This is Splatterpunk. And as a companion piece – and a way to raise initial funds – I’ve just launched a preorder on for my new book by the same name. Both graced with gorgeously fucked-up, incendiary art by the amazing Matthew Revert.
For more info, check out the website here:
https://www.thisissplatterpunk.com/
Or if you want a quick explanation, watch this little video here!
Trust me, I’ll be filling in a whoooole lotta details over the weeks and months to come. But you heard it here first! THIS IS SPLATTERPUNK, BABY!!!
Yer pal in the trenches,
Skipp
This sounds badass. Will we get a TOC for the book? And are any of the stories original to the collection?