And yes, it was a great time! Can’t wait to do it again next year!
Thanks to everyone for coming out and partying!
S.D. and Mark McLaughlin
S.D. and Rich Ristow
S.D. and Roy C. Booth
Jerrod Balzer and Mark McLaughlin
Mark McLaughlin
R. Scott McCoy and Rich Ristow
R. Scott McCoy Bearing Gifts
Rob Callahan and Montilee Stormer
Mark McLaughlin, Jerrod Balzer, and I Drool Over a Typo
The best place I ever worked. Need you really ask? I’ve blogged about it until my fingers have bled, and I’m still going on about it.
Fucking Burger King. I worked there 3 years and by the time I left I had 3 ex-girlfriends – yeah, try working in that setting.
I'm still trying to figure out what to buy at the grocery store...Shower gel?
Ah, the things I learned at a fast food establishment.
I picked up a cigarette habit from my general manager and her 50-year-old daughter who had the hots for me.
That's so hot. Hey, baby, if I give you a shotgun will you suck me off?
I spied on one of the managers getting fucked by one of her employees in her office after hours.
The king of clown fucking. Oh yeah.
One of my girlfriends at that time – she worked the drive-thru and was a killer piece of ass – cheated on me with my friend who I also worked side by side with at the burger station. Needless to say he got the silent treatment for like a fucking season.
The chick on the right is the one that had the hots for me at Burger King.
What more could I ask for earning $4.50/hour? Now that’s cheap fucking entertainment. So when you buy that Whopper today, just know that S.D. Hintz saw one of his managers get a Whopper, too.
Strap yourself in for the Rot double feature! Enjoy the most recent review by Lincoln Crisler and the brand new book trailer!
Published by lincoln on July 7th, 2009 in Book Reviews.
Rot tells an entirely different sort of zombie tale. There’s no zombie apocalypse, and the streets aren’t awash with the flesh and blood of humanity. Instead, the type of society Lee describes kind of makes you wish it would be consumed: people raise their dead loved ones because they can’t stand the thought of them being dead, and then foist them off on what’s basically a nursing home for the undead. Dean, hired by the company that runs the nursing home to re-kill zombies when they inevitably lapse into savagery, falls in love with one of the residents, a zombie lass named Amy. Another zombie, a dead gay man named Patrick resurrected by his parents in order to save his soul from Hell, also has a special place in his heart for Amy. When she goes missing, Dean and Patrick team up to find her, and in the process uncover a hideous plot that further condemns the already damned and unwanted living dead.
I was really enthusiastic about Michele’s approach when I first heard about the book; I’m a big fan of Brian Keene, so I already have my zombie apocalypse fix covered. Instead, she uses the classic monster to tell a different type of story. My biggest gripe about Rot is that it’s too short; I definitely think Michele could have delved deeper into the various pits of depravity created when mankind raises it’s dead to live among them again. She only scratches the surface slightly with an offhand mention of a woman brought back to life to provide milk for the baby she died birthing and the merest hint of the horrors of a zombie escort service. I definitely think she should shoot for a novel-length adaptation of Rot; the small taste she gives us with the novella is executed so well, it’s hard to be satisfied with fifty pages knowing the untapped potential that’s out there. I also wish there had been more of the relationship between Amy and Dean; yeah, falling in love with a zombie is kinda disgusting, but the way Michele describes her it doesn’t sound outside the realm of possibility.
Bottom line: pick up a copy of Rot and then hound Michele en masse to finish what she started. And tell her Lincoln sent you. 8.5/10
So I’ve picked up “Attack of the Two-Headed Poetry Monster” by Bram Stoker Award Finalist Michael McCarty and Bram Stoker Award-winning author Mark McLaughlin. This is a collection of over 80 dark and twisted poems that I would call a perfect combination of Tim Burton and Shel Silverstein, with dashes of Steven King and Lovecraft thrown in.
This is a 90-plus page softcover with an introduction by Rain Graves and afterword by Sandy DeLuca. There are themes such as “The Spiderweb Tree”, that puts new spins on classic fairy tales that revolve around a tree filled with webs. There is also an entire section of what you may call the lighter side of Lovecraft. There are themes such as vampire sex, crop circles, and the pros and cons of pet exorcism that are better read than described. I especially liked the “Slimy Creatures from Outer Space” chapter that pokes fun at all things alien. All of this poetry ranges from humorous to twisted to downright macabre, and each one tells a tale. Here’s an example.
PSYCHO WOMAN IN MY SHOWER
by Michael McCarty
There’s a psycho woman in my shower.
No, I’m not talking about
Janet Leigh.
It’s my neighbor.
She came over to borrow some sugar -
the next thing I knew,
she stripped
and started taking a shower.
That was last week.
She’s been showering
for so long,
her skin is
way beyond prunes
I don’t mind being neighborly,
But now she’s starting to scare me.
These poems are so beautifully twisted that you’ll want to read them several times. Attack of the Two-Headed Poetry Monster goes down warm and smooth, like a Hot Toddy when you’re under the weather. If you are a fan of dark poetry, then this is probably a book for you. If you’re undecided and don’t want to rush out and buy it, you should ask your local libraries to start carrying it as soon as possible. Michael McCarty and Mark McLaughlin are the horror writers to watch. I’m looking forward to checking out more of their work in the future.
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Death comes for us all, and our fear of dying is so powerful that we often are unable to let go of loved ones who pass on. In a world where the dead can be brought back to life, some people are willing to pay to keep their loved one “alive,” if only for a short time as a zombie.
This is the basic premise behind Rot, a smart and fast paced novella written by Michele Lee and published by Skullvines Press. The story is narrated by Dean, who works as a literal trouble-shooter for Silver Springs. A cross between a nursing home for the undead and a low-security prison, Silver Springs is where families send their undead relatives so they will not be upset by the decomposing appearance of their loved ones. So the zombies at the facility spend their days rotting into mush.
But sometimes, some of the zombies disappear for other reasons.
I cannot elaborate without spoiling something, and this book has plenty of surprises as the plot develops. More noteworthy are the trio of main characters, Dean, Amy, and Patrick. It’s hard to remember that Patrick is a zombie even with the narrator’s gory descriptions of his decaying process. Rot may be destroying his mind, but he clings to his humanity with a quiet pride that makes him more than just a shambling body.
Rot leaves readers questioning the value of human life, both before and after death. The zombies portrayed have a humanity that many of the living employees of Silver Springs do not display. The employees see nothing human in their charges, and so they feel justified in committing terrible crimes simply because “they aren’t like us.”
This kind of dehumanizing behavior is common to lesser degrees in a lot of people in real life, people who feel justified in mistreating or outright abusing others for being different. It can happen for so many reasons, and so this realistic and near common behavior is what makes Rot so unsettling. The monster on display is not the zombies. It’s the average Joe who looks the other way while his coworkers abuse the elderly in a derelict nursing home. It’s the sports celebrity who runs dog fights behind his mansion. The monsters are the humans, and they are so very believable in this role.
I found only two points in the first half of the book where the passage of time felt confusingly disjointed for me. But this is a minor complaint, and I was enthralled by Michele’s writing, compelled to read the entire book in one sitting. I give this novella 5 stars, and I recommend it to both zombie fans, and to fans of great literary horror.
Rot will be available in August, 2009. For more details and a preview of the story, check out Michele’s special Rot section on her web site.
Review by Zoe E. Whitten
