Tag Archives: horror

Santa Claus Conquers The Homophobes

Not long ago, I shared my review (and recommendation) of a great and blessed bit of splatterpunk profanity called Santa Steps Out, by a writer named Robert Devereaux. I got my hands on the Leisure paperback of that book back in 2000, and loved it so much I gave it as a Christmas gift to all my closest friends.

As last Christmas neared, I decided to point other folks toward the book by putting my old Amazon review on the blog. While visiting the book’s page on Amazon, I made two discoveries, one bad, one good.

The bad was that the book is no longer in print. [UPDATE: As of Dec 2020, the book is available from Amazon as a Kindle download] At the time, I think there were some reasonably priced used copies listed, but I just checked and saw that the only available copies on Amazon are all priced to screw the buyer enrich the seller. Searching Alibris, I found pretty much the same, but doing a search on Google Shopping, I managed to find some reasonably priced copies for under $15, including a “worn” copy at Powells for $2.50. So if you want to read this book, with a bit of detective work you can find a copy without buying a pool table for some schmo. Hopefully Devereaux will find a new publisher for it, or at the very least take advantage of the many print-on-demand possibilities available to make the book more easily available.

The good discovery was that Devereaux has published a sequel, Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes. I immediately ordered it, just finished reading it, and can recommend it almost as highly as the first book.

In this tale, Santa and his holy brood become disgusted at the hatred and violence being perpetrated, in the name of the sacred, upon those born with homosexual proclivities, and they decide to take action. To go into any real detail would rob you of the book’s many, many pleasures, but rest assured it’s a rousing story, masterfully told, full of wit and wisdom, and consistently moving.

This book isn’t nearly as profane and transgressive as the first (and may therefore be an easier read for those with tender sensibilities), but it is full of notions that challenge the status quo in forthright and rich ways. Poppy Z. Brite said about the first book “The only two rules in Santa Steps Out are that everything is sacred and nothing is sacred,” and that is absolutely true about both books. They boldly rip apart the things civilized folk consider proper and sacred, but at the same time wholeheartedly embrace that which is truly sacred, both in the religious sense and the humanistic.

Devereaux is a wonderful writer, and constantly amazes with his inventiveness. His treatment of what you might call the mechanics of wonder, the way magic actually works in his literary world, is earthy in its matter-of-factness and lovely in its effects. His characters are full-bodied and layered, his depiction of the sacred both accessible and transcendent, and his allowance for redemption for any and all entities, no matter how saddled by personal weakness they may be, is more truly spiritual than any boxset of Touched By An Angel could ever be.

Santa Steps Out and Santa Claus Conquers the Homophobes are masterworks of fantasy and sacred fictions. Devereaux has crafted a literary universe unlike anything else on the shelves, and it’s a universe I’ll revisit any chance I get.

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Buffy Vs. Twilight

Alan Gratz (a really good writer, whose books you should read) has a blog post envisioning what a crossover betwixt Twilight and Buffy the Vampire Slayer might be like:

Following up on the tip from Oz’s werewolf contacts, Buffy climbs in the window of recent Sunnydale High transfer student BELLA SWAN to discover EDWARD CULLEN, a vampire, watching the girl as she sleeps. Edward, apparent-age 17, is impossibly beautiful, with angular features and marble-like skin that sparkles.

BUFFY: Whoa. Turn it down there, Tinkerbell.

EDWARD: Shhh! You’ll wake my darling Isabella!

BUFFY: Right. Sorry. It’s just you really ought to take the batteries out. Somebody might mistake you for a Christmas tree.

EDWARD: I’m sorry. It’s my vampire skin. It sparkles in the sun or the bright light of the moon.

BUFFY: Uh-huh.

It’s great fun, and can be read at http://gratzindustries.blogspot.com/2008/12/edward-vs-buffy.html

Read About The “Dead Folks”

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This story was my first professional sale, and it has a weird history.

It was accepted twice, but never published until now. First Ed Hall, then the editor of a visionary magazine-on-tape called Verb, wanted it to be in Verb’s first issue. We even did some studio time, recording me reading the story, which was thirsty work.

Then I got word that my favorite magazine, Pulphouse, wanted the story. To put things in context, Pulphouse was very well known in genre circles, and very respected. It’s the only magazine I’ve ever read that I liked nearly every story they published. Not only that, but they wanted to put my story in a special Harlan Ellison issue, and the idea of sharing pages with Harlan was intoxicating.

So, with Ed’s cheerful understanding, I pulled the story from Verb. They went on to have Ha Jin, Robert Olen Butler, and James Dickey in their first issue. They got coverage on All Things Considered on NPR.

Meanwhile, Pulphouse folded just before the issue that was supposed to feature my story.

The most public exposure the story ever got was thanks to children’s author and master storyteller Carmen Deedy, who loved it enough to read it out loud at a gathering or two. Oh, and Anne Rivers Siddons read and adored it, and gave me lots of encouragement.

I always planned to look for a new home for the tale, but never got around to it. Now, for the recession-appropriate price of 99¢, you can download it to your magical computing box and read it to your heart’s content.

I’ve polished it very slightly,  mainly updating some cultural references, but it remains very much a product of the early eighties and a much younger writer. There’s some stuff in it about racists that seems kind of cartoonish these days (and I address that a bit in a new author’s note before the story). But mainly, it’s an odd bit of Southern magic realism owing more than a bit to Mark Twain and Stephen King.

Come on in, sit a while, and visit with the dead folks.

[UPDATE: As of March 30, 2011, “Dead Folks” is available at Amazon in Kindle format for 99¢ , and will soon be available at Barnes & Noble and other online vendors in other ebook formats.]

A Few Great Books

In my previous post, “Brains on Fire: On Kids and Reading,” I recommended an article by James Patterson on that very topic. At the end of that article, Patterson included a list of his favorite books for kids, and it inspired me to make my own list of recommendations. Continue reading →

Cry Little Sister Revisited

Okay, after having sat through Lost Boys 2, I felt compelled to revisit the original to see if it still lives up to my memory of it. It does.

It’s one of those Joel Schumacher movies that’s actually not only worth viewing, but really truly works. It’s visually sweet, dynamically told, and full of witty touches (like Grandpa’s taxidermy). The cast is uniformly fun, especially Kiefer Sutherland (though Jason Patric’s performance is sort of a non-burning brood for most of the pic).

It’s nice to revisit something you enjoyed in your youth and find it still maintains all its charms. We made our way through the Back to the Future trilogy recently, and it, too, has lost nothing over the years.

Know Her Before She’s Famous

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Meet Kimberly Derting, of the Great Northwest.

I’ve privately congratulated Kim, and figured I’d also do so publicly, because she recently got some really awesome news: HarperCollins gave her a buttload of currency to let them publish her first two books (in a deal made by agent supreme Laura Rennert, who also sold my book, Doc Wilde and The Frogs of Doom).

The first book, The Body Finder, is due next year, with the as-yet-untitled second book to follow in 2010. The Body Finder tells the tale of a young girl with an intriguing psychic ability who tries to use it to track a serial killer. Make a note of that title, and Kim’s name, and make sure to grab the book when it comes out so you’ll be the proud owner of a Kimberly Derting first edition, which I’m thinking will escalate quite a bit in value.

For more info, visit http://kimberlyderting.com, Kim’s incredible website that makes me cry because it’s so much nicer than mine.

Cry Little Sister

Took a risk the other night and watched Lost Boys 2: The Tribe, the sequel to (you guessed it) Lost Boys.

I expected it to be utter crap, like most direct-to-DVD sequels, and it wasn’t, actually. It was fairly good, with an entertaining enough story and a game cast (including Angus Sutherland, younger half-brother of Kiefer, who of course starred in the original). As a B-flick, it worked nicely, except when Corey Feldman, reprising his role as Edgar Frog, was onscreen. Feldman was fun as a goofy teenage vampire hunter, but as a grown-up Corey trying to growl like Clint Eastwood, he’s terrible. Apparently, a Lost Boys 3 is in the works which will focus on Edgar Frog’s epic battles. Something to look forward to, I guess, unless you’re anybody but Corey Feldman.

[I originally referred to Corey as Corey Haim, but apparently I had my Coreys crossed, as Edgar is played by the Feldman Corey. I take some pride in the fact that I wasn’t familiar enough with the two of them to have their names straight.]

Among the highlights (or, well, the main highlights) were two mouth-wateringly hot vampire chicks (one of whom was the protagonist’s sister) and Aiden’s cover of the Gerard McMann song “Cry Little Sister,” offered below:

Santa Claus Is Coming…

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There’s a very special Christmas story I would like to share with you, but it’s a story some of you should probably stay very far away from. It’s called Santa Steps Out, and was written by a gifted fellow named Robert Devereaux. Here’s the Amazon.com review:

In the opening lines of Santa Steps Out: A Fairy Tale for Grown-ups, we learn that God the Father had to “cut His vacation short” and is in a “towering rage” about it. It appears that while the archangel Michael was running things, the world got pretty screwed up. “Michael…you know that Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are never to cross paths. It’s one of our Father’s most solemn injunctions.” Ah, that Tooth Fairy. She’s also got her hooks into the Easter Bunny.

Robert Devereaux is a master of vivid scene setting, especially gory scenes and sex scenes. There is a lot of sex in this book–mostly happy, lubricious sex that is sometimes downright amazing. Prepare for a strange and stimulating ride when you hop in the sleigh with Santa and witness all his adventures. Prepare to see childhood figures–figures known principally for delivering gifts in the night–in a whole new light. Devereaux is exuberantly polytheistic and well-grounded in Greek mythology, so along with the horror and humping, you’ll be entertained by some notions about where all these immortals may have come from in the first place.

I’ll leave it up to you whether you can take, and even enjoy, what this story has to offer. Me? Well, this is my own short review of the book from way back in 2000, when I gave it as a Christmas gift to a bunch of people:

I Want To See This In Claymation

This book IS over the top, and will easily offend those who offend easily. That’s fine. But the pleasures of this book don’t stop at its provocative nature. It’s also a genuinely creative, nigh brilliant, meditation on human sexual/romantic relationships, through a lens of cunning myth and trounced commercial archetypes. At the heart of the book, even at its most horrifying, is a nearly spiritual regard for the place of the carnal in our lives, and the spiritual enrichment that comes from the joys of the flesh…however you might find those joys.I highly recommend this. It’ll crack you up, it’ll keep your attention, and it might even stir your mind.

The book is unfortunately out of print, but easy enough to find used online. It deserves to become a holiday tradition. UPDATE: as of  Dec 2010, the book is available in Kindle format from Amazon at this link.

5 New Classic Horror Flicks You Might Have Missed

Okay, my last post listed 5 classic horror movies for those interested in such things.

This time, I’m gonna briefly list some more contemporary works that many people haven’t seen, and everybody who loves a good scare needs to. Continue reading →

5 Classic Horror Flicks to Goose Your Bumps

Hey, everybody! There’s a new “Saw” movie out!

You like movies that exist just so you can watch people be tortured, right?

Eh. Screw that crap. I like real horror movies, real monster movies, real thrillers. I have no problem with grue, but it has to be in context, and there has to be a goddamned story. Preferably a good story.

So, for those who might like to watch something scary and good, I figured I’d throw you a few bones. Collect ’em all and you can build a skeleton. Continue reading →