Authors

"Grinding Out a Riot Act": Joshua Jabcuga interviews Stephen Romano

Take a drop of Joe R. Lansdale's blood. Then a slice from David J. Schow's scalp. Scrape some phlegm off Tarantino's tongue. Inject some of Robert Rodriguez's sperm. Pour in some Karo syrup. Mix it in a blender. Pour. These are just some of the ingredients of Stephen Romano's unique work.

Stephen Romano is a mutant. He's a military science experiment gone all bug-fuck bad. He's a dangerous DIY author/artist/hyphenate. Residing in Austin, Texas, Stephen Romano is best known as the screenwriter who, along with the infamous Don Coscarelli (Phantasm), brought to life Joe R. Lansdale's "Incident On and Off A Mountain Road" for the pilot episode of Showtime's Masters of Horror series. Stephen also released THE RIOT ACT, a collection of his balls-to-the-wall short stories, in which Joe R. Lansdale wrote, "This may be the best new short story collection I've read in years. Stephen Romano isn't fucking around."

If the buzz surrounding his new book, SHOCK FESTIVAL, is any indication, Stephen Romano's work will not only turn heads, it's going to make heads roll, because no, he isn't fucking around. FANGORIA called it "One of the greatest homages to B-cinema ever undertaken." FILM THREAT described it as "A stone groove and as badass a tome as you're likely to come across this year or next."

Here Stephen Romano talks with Joshua Jabcuga about SHOCK FESTIVAL, his love of movies, and working as a professional screenwriter.

Interview by Rob Hart

Amy Hempel is a tough interview.

I don't mean that to say she's rude or doesn't answer questions, it's just that this interview started more than two years ago.

The first time I approached her for this was Aug. 10, 2006, at a reading in the park at Union Square, where she joined other writers to read excerpts from Unleashed: Poems by Writers' Dogs.

By the end of the reading the skies opened. The kind of rain that changes the direction of rivers. She ducked under a tent and stayed to chat with friends and fans. When the crowd cleared, I made my pitch.

She was gracious in saying 'no.' She ran out of things to say after a flurry of interviews for her collected works, she said, and told me to contact her in a year.

Interview by Rob Hart

Close your eyes. Well, not yet. Read the next paragraph first.

Picture a hard-boiled bad-ass. That noir anti-hero with blood-flecked armor, imperfect but too cool to show it. Lighting a cigarette and staring off into the distance with that world-weary look of someone who knows all the angles but still can't figure out how the hell they got into this mess.

OK, now you can close your eyes, and once you get that image of that person in your head, open them back up.

Ready?

You pictured a guy, didn't you?

Interview by Will Tupper

POP QUIZ:

Writer Shawna Kenney is which of the following?

A.    The Johnny Depp of Journalism
B.    The Lois Lane of whips and chains
C.    The living embodiment of your “average” Chuck Palahniuk protagonist
D.    Author of the award-winning, tell (almost) all memoir,   I Was A Teenage Dominatrix, as well as the just-released look at popular celebrity character hustlers, Imposters

The answer obviously is:

E.    All of the above

East-coast punk with a pen turned west-coast punk with a tan (and then back again), Shawna’s story is the embodiment of Joseph Campbell’s prime directive. “Follow your bliss,” he said. And she most certainly has.

Interview by Joshua Jabcuga

"Learning to Trust the Tale and Question the Artist": An interview with Jack Ketchum by Joshua Jabcuga

Stephen King was once asked, "Who's the scariest guy in America?"
His response? "Probably Jack Ketchum." King added "no writer who has read him can help being influenced by him, and no general reader who runs across his work can easily forget him."

Interview by Garrett Faber

Snarl, Grunt, Welshy Ya Cunt

Irvine Welsh is the incendiary writing machine hailing from Dublin, Ireland. He's writen several amazingly miraculous books including Ecstasy, Glue, Porno, Filth, The Acid House, Bedroom Secrets Of Master Chefs, Marabou Stork Nightmares and his most well known work Trainspotting, which was subsequently made into a movie starring Ewan McGreggor.

Interview by Will Tupper

Ariel Gore is an adventurer, the Indiana Jones of literature. Full-time author and part-time teacher, she’s a novelist, a memoirist, a journalist, a zinester, as well as the writer of the brand new How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead: Your Words in Print and Your Name in Lights.

And how does one do it? Ariel asked Marc Acito, novelist and Palahniuk protégé, who got his big break because Chuck had read his newspaper column.

She asked poet and memoirist Michele Tea the secrets to spilling your guts on both page and stage, and got them.

Reclusive Dave Eggers offers fresh insights on both writing and publishing. DIY demigod Jim Munroe of www.nomediakings.org tells how (and why) you should take your word show on the road, and Pulitzer-prize winner Dave Barry talks with honesty about how hard it is to be funny.

Interview by Joshua Chaplinsky

I know many of you are already familiar with author Steve Erickson. In fact, it was on the forums here and at Cult sister-site, The Velvet, that I was first introduced to his work. I read The Sea Came in at Midnight and screamed for more like a hungry child. Erickson fills the void, writing the type of mind-bending, genre-less fiction that simultaneously challenges and excites. Less than a year and 10 books later, his is one of the first names mentioned when I'm asked about my favorite authors.

Interview by Rob Hart

Craig Clevenger and Will Christopher Baer have long since graced this section, adding to a valuable tool for writers - ramblings from the wordsmiths themselves, about what they do and why they do it.

Now, the third and final arm of The Velvet has gotten his chance to weigh in - Stephen Graham Jones.

The Texas resident is author of All The Beautiful Sinners, Bleed Into Me, The Bird is Gone, The Fast Red Road and the upcoming Demon Theory, as well as a slew of short stories.

His work, steeped in his own Native American heritage, is tense, funny and at times, viciously heartfelt. And, as luck would have it, he loves to talk writing.

Stephen was gracious enough to sit down with me (on AOL Instant Messenger) for a rock-star session that lasted over two hours.

This is the result.

Interview by Will Christopher Baer

The writers and artists of comic books may live in the dead zone between novels and film, borrowing narrative technique from the one and the visual vocabulary from the other-but it's the dead zone as defined by King, who gave Johnny Smith the power to see the past and future, and to step into alternate realities. The pages and panels of a comic book allow for infinite variations of composition and dramatic sequence, giving comic writers and artists the power to routinely rewrite storytelling physics, to not only stop time, but to treat time as a liquid and spin ripples in it. To make our eyes track from right to left and left to right at once, to read along verticals and diagonals-such dreamweaving stunts that filmmakers and novelists rarely attempt; and more rarely pull off.