His association with New Line Cinema includes such horror icons as Freddy Krueger (A Nightmare on Elm Street: Freddy’s Nightmares and an episode of the TV series Freddy’s Nightmares), Leatherface (Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III and the story for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning), and the eponymous Critters (Critters 3 and Critters 4). His most recent film credit is The Hills Run Red starring William Sadler.
In 1994 he co-wrote the screenplay for the modern classic The Crow and has since worked with such directors as Alex Proyas, James Cameron, E. Elias Merhige, Rupert Wainwright, Mick Garris and William Malone. He wrote more than forty instalments of his popular “Raving & Drooling” column for Fangoria magazine, later collected in the book Wild Hairs.
For the premiere season of Showtime Networks’ Masters of Horror, Schow adapted his own short story “Pick Me Up” for director Larry Cohen, and for Season 2 he wrote “We All Scream for Ice Cream” (based on a story by John Farris) for director Tom Holland.
Among his more recent books are the novels Gun Work and Internecine, and the short story collections Zombie Jam and Havoc Swims Jaded. He has appeared on many documentaries and DVD supplements, contributing material to Creature from the Black Lagoon, Incubus, Reservoir Dogs, From Hell, The Shawshank Redemption, The Dirty Dozen, and the two-disc reissue of Dark City, amongst others.
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ROBERT SHEARMAN is an award-winning writer for stage, television and radio. He was resident playwright at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter, and regular writer for Alan Ayckbourn at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough. Easy Laughter won the Sunday Times Playwriting Award, Fool to Yourself the Sophie Winter Memorial Trust Award, and Binary Dreamers the Guinness Award for Ingenuity in association with the Royal National Theatre. Many of his plays are collected in Caustic Comedies, published by Big Finish Productions.
For BBC Radio he is a regular contributor to the afternoon play slot, produced by Martin Jarvis, and his series The Chain Gang has won two Sony awards. However, he’s probably best known for his work on TV’s Doctor Who, bringing the Daleks back to the screen in the BAFTA-winning first series of the revival in an episode nominated for a Hugo Award.
His first collection of short stories, Tiny Deaths, was published by Comma Press in 2007. It won the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection, and was also short-listed for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and nominated for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize. His second collection, Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical, published by Big Finish Productions, won the British Fantasy Award and the Edge Hill Readers Prize, and was joint winner of the Shirley Jackson Award. A third collection, Everyone’s Just So So Special, won the British Fantasy Award. In 2012, the best of his horror fiction - half taken from these previous collections, half new work - was published by ChiZine as Remember Why You Fear Me.
“I had a doll when I was a kid,” reveals Shearman. “It was a boy’s doll - an American GI soldier, very macho - but let’s face it, it was a doll nonetheless. Maybe it was something I’d picked up in a jumble sale; that would explain, perhaps, why it had no clothes. I certainly don’t recall it ever having clothes - my Action Man was always completely naked, save for some silver medallion that was glued to his chest and that I could never prise off, not even with a knife.
“I used to play such games with my Action Man. Some days I’d send him into space by throwing him high out of the upstairs window. He’d become the first man to breathe underwater for half-an-hour - I pressed him down hard against the bottom of the bathtub and how he squirmed! I’d try to burn off his furry stubble with a light bulb; from the banister-rail I’d hang him high with a wire noose, and then I’d pull on his legs and imagine his neck snapping.
“A little while ago, on a visit to my parents, I was asked if I could get rid of all my old junk that had been boxed up in the attic. I’d completely forgotten about my Action Man - but there he was, lying face-up amongst loose blocks of Lego, and he was smiling, and he seemed happy to see me. I was happy too, and I reflected on what a shame it is that we can so easily forget our childhoods, how we discard what we once loved and what helped shape us into who we are. I threw Action Man on to the bonfire with all the other rubbish. I think I heard him scream.
“I hope you enjoy ‘That Tiny Flutter of the Heart I Used to Call Love’.”
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ROBERT SILVERBERG is a multiple winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards and he was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2004.
He began submitting stories to science fiction magazines in his early teens, and his first published novel, a children’s book entitled Revolt on Alpha C, appeared in 1955. He won his first Hugo Award the following year.
Always a prolific writer - for the first four years of his career he reputedly wrote a million words a year - his numerous books include such novels as To Open the Sky, To Live Again, Dying Inside, Nightwings and Lord Valentine’s Castle. The latter became the basis for his popular “Majipoor” series, set on the eponymous alien planet.
Although he is basically now “retired”, the author’s most recent publications include When the Blue Shift Comes, a two-novella book in which the first novella is by Silverberg and the companion piece was written by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, and Tales of Majipoor, a new collection of the stories he has written about that world over the past ten or fifteen years.
As he explains: ‘“The Undertaker’s Sideline’ was written at a time (1958) when science fiction magazines seemed to be going out of fashion and monster movies were the rage in Hollywood. A good many magazines of horror fiction with ‘Monsters’ in their titles were started then, among them Monster Parade and Monsters and Things, both of them edited by Larry T. Shaw, for whose science fiction magazines I had been a prolific contributor.
“When those magazines folded, Larry asked me to write some horror stories for the new magazines, and I turned in about a dozen of them over the next year, working under a host of pseudonyms.”
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DAVID A. SUTTON is the recipient of the World Fantasy Award, the International Horror Guild Award and twelve British Fantasy Awards for editing magazines and anthologies. He was co-editor of Fantasy Tales, Dark Voices: The Pan Book of Horror Stories and Dark Terrors: The Gollancz Book of Horror.
He has edited Phantoms of Venice (reprinted by Screaming Dreams in 2008) and Houses on the Borderland for the British Fantasy Society, while his short stories have recently appeared in When Graveyards Yawn, The Black Book of Horror #1, #2 and #4, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Volume 19, Subtle Edens: The Elastic Book of Slipstream, Estronomicon and The Ghosts & Scholars Book of Shadows.
The author’s debut short story collection is Clinically Dead & Other Tales of the Supernatural (Screaming Dreams), and he is the owner of the small press Shadow Publishing, which has produced a number of anthologies and collections.
“In writing ‘Night Soil Man’ I wanted to briefly evoke the atmosphere of the Black Country and life for the working man in Victorian times,” Sutton reveals. “Wrapping that around a horror tale, it was a delight to write. A number of my ancestors were chimney sweeps and I wanted to incorporate that as well, and also a nod to the antics of Mr Gamfield in Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist.”
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STEVE RASNIC TEM’s recent projects include Onion Songs, a collection of off-beat stories from Chomu Press; Celestial Inventories, a collection of contemporary, slipstream dark fantasy from ChiZine, and Twember, his first collection of all science fiction stories from NewCon Press. Also forthcoming is a new novella, In the Lovecraft Museum, from PS Publishing.
“Sometimes stories come from the oddest places,” admits Tern. “Now and then we all do crazy things at home we probably would never do in public. Upon occasion I’ve been known to imagine voices coming from various household items. Usually it’s the TV saying, ‘You should turn me on’, or the trash bin saying, ‘You should take me out’.
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“When our kids were at home, I’d share these domestic announcements with them and ask them to do something about them. Sometimes the dishwasher or the clothes washer would make some sort of music and I would dance to it (a cross between the watusi and the twist). Surely I’m not the only one who does this? My children would usually leave the room.
“So one afternoon, while conducting a dialogue with our new electric juicer, ‘The Secret Laws of the Universe’ came to mind. If you’d like to see other examples of my version of noir fiction, check out my collection Ugly Behavior.”
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CONRAD WILLIAMS is the author of seven novels, four novellas and over 100 short stories, some of which are collected in Use Once Then Destroy and Born with Teeth. In addition to his International Horror Guild Award for his novel The Unblemished, he is a three-times recipient of the British Fantasy Award, including Best Novel for One. His debut anthology, Gutshot, was shortlisted for both the British Fantasy and World Fantasy Awards.
He is currently working on a novel that will act as the prequel to a major video game from Sony, as well as a novel of supernatural horror.
‘“Manners’ is a story that had its origins in an old ideas folder of mine that is filled with scraps of paper, photographs and articles from newspapers and magazines. One such article was about a man who lived off road-kill. He hosts dinner parties for his friends and they never know what he’s going to serve up. One of his big successes was a ‘two-owl risotto’.
“There’s also a line in a song - ‘Something in the Way’ by Nirvana - that pushed me in the direction of creating a character who zoomorphizes the few people with whom he has been acquainted.
“As many as one-in-ten of us exhibits psychopathic tendencies (if Jon Ronson’s excellent book, The Psychopath Test, is to be believed). I wanted to get away from the slew of Hannibal Lecter Uber-psychos and write about a quieter maniac, a character who poses no immediate danger to society, but is no less creepy for that.”
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RIO YOUERS’ debut novel, End Times, was released by PS Publishing in 2010, followed by his first short story collection, Dark Dreams, Pale Horses.
He is also the author of Mama Fish (Shroud Publishing) and Old Man Scratch (PS Publishing) - the latter earning him a British Fantasy Award nomination. His novelette, “This is the Summer of Love”, was the title story of PS’s first new-look PostScripts anthology, a publication in which the author has appeared three times. His latest novel, Westlake Soul, is out from ChiZine Publications, while available soon from Cemetery Dance are a new novella, The Angels, and the collection All That I See.
“I recently reconnected with a friend from school,” recalls Youers, “who I hadn’t seen in years. We spent some time catching up, but mostly we talked about old times. I left his house feeling wistful, childlike ... yet old at the same time.
“It also occurred to me that I had just spent the weekend with someone I didn’t really know. Yes, we were friends at school, but a lot of years had passed, so much had happened ... and people can change.
“I found this more than a little frightening - that I had given my trust without so much as a second thought. It had all turned out okay, of course. But what if it hadn’t? What if my old friend had a secret - a darkness - that he’d been keeping inside for years? Needless to say, my mind whirred with the possibilities, and ‘Wide-Shining Light’ came to life.”
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Psychomania: Killer Stories Page 64
