Jeff Burk's Blog, page 4
October 10, 2018
31 Days of My Favorite Horror Books – Day 10 – THE WAR OF THE WORLDS by H.G. Wells
For the month of October, I will be writing brief essays about my 31 favorite horror books.
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My all-time favorite novel from my all-time favorite author. While THE WAR OF THE WORLDS is commonly grouped in with classics of science-fiction, I think that there’s enough terror, destruction, and desperation to also place it as a classic of horror.
Everyone knows the basic plot of the story—Martians are invading Earth and wiping out the human race with giant walking metal machines (referred to as the “tripods” as they walk on three metal legs). However, I find when talking with people that most are more familiar with the various film adaptations and the infamous radio drama than they are with the original novel.
In the novel, Wells paints a bleak and savage extermination of mankind. People are burned alive, drown, and crushed with little to no hope of being able to fight back against the invaders. My personal favorite scene in the book (that rarely is in the adaptations and when it is, it’s dramatically toned down) deals with two steamships attempting to evacuate refugees that are attacked by tripods. It culminates with a steamship going on a suicide mission against the tripods to buy time for people to escape. It’s one of the only glimpses of hope in the story and yet, even then, it involves many people dying just to buy time for others to run.
I’ve come across criticisms of ending. Some find the whole Martians dying by germs conclusion to be anti-climatic compared the rest of the story. I think it fits perfectly. The attack from the Martians has nothing to do with humanity and the end of the war has nothing to do with humanity. In many ways, this is playing with Lovecraftian ideas of cosmic horror decades before Lovecraft. Humans just don’t matter and we’re little more than a nuisance in the grand scheme of the universe.
Looking for more Halloween reading? Check out the newest titles from Deadite Press:
NO GIG IS TOO SMALL by Andre Duza
October 9, 2018
31 Days of My Favorite Horror Books – Day 9 – BRAIN CHEESE BUFFET by Edward Lee
For the month of October, I will be writing brief essays about my 31 favorite horror books.
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This is a very special book to me. It was the very first Deadite project that I oversaw. Deadite existed at Eraserhead Press before me but it hadn’t been used for any projects for years. Shortly after joining the Eraserhead team, I pitched the idea of a collection of Edward Lee’s rare and then super hard and expensive to find short stories to both them and Lee. Everyone said yes.
When I talked to Lee about the project, I came with a list of stories in mind. He agreed to the stories I wanted to reprint and also sent over a bunch more (those became BULLET THROUGH YOUR FACE). So what you read in this collection is what I considered at the time to be the best and most extreme Edward Lee short stories. I only say “at the time” because he’s written more and I’ve read more. There are some pretty great ones in his other collections.
Lee is one of the greatest gross-out writers to have ever lived and this collection proves why. When we were working on the book at the Eraserhead Press office, Rose O’Keefe was proof-reading a story. When you read with proofing in mind you see the words but the full story doesn’t really register to you. You’re more focused on and seeing grammar and spelling. There was one story in which she was half-way through when it fully registered in her mind what was happening and she started gagging. It was “the Dritiphilist.”
This book is my handpicked favorite stories by one of my all-time favorite authors, my first book with Deadite Press, and one of the books that put Deadite at the forefront of extreme and hardcore horror.
Fun fact – “Grub Girl in the Prison of Dead Women” was made into a porn that was financed by Danzig. So far it’s the only Deadite story that has been made into a porn. I sincerely hope it’s not the last.
Looking for more Halloween reading? Check out the newest titles from Deadite Press:
NO GIG IS TOO SMALL by Andre Duza
October 8, 2018
31 Days of My Favorite Horror Books – Day 8 – WORLD WAR Z by Max Brooks
For the month of October, I will be writing brief essays about my 31 favorite horror books.
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“The oral history of the Zombie War.”
The subtitle really sums it up. The book is written like a nonfiction historical record of someone interviewing people all over the world about WWZ (a war of all of humanity battling zombies) from the beginning of the outbreak to humanity restoring civilization after the war.
This is an extremely famous horror novel and there’s not much I can say about it that many other’s haven’t send. It’s amazing, brilliant, and one of the must-read zombie books to have ever been published.
What I can add was that last year I reread the book and was paying close attention to what happened in the Pacific Northwest. Specifically, Portland because that’s where I live. When the US is overrun with zombies, the West Coast never completely falls. It’s even mentioned that the first shipping trade route in the reformed US after WWZ is from Seattle to Portland. We make it out OK!
Looking for more Halloween reading? Check out the newest titles from Deadite Press:
NO GIG IS TOO SMALL by Andre Duza
October 7, 2018
31 Days of My Favorite Horror Books – Day 7 – THE DRIVE-IN by Joe Lansdale
For the month of October, I will be writing brief essays about my 31 favorite horror books.
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There is nothing out there quite like THE DRIVE-IN. It’s arguably one of the most insane horror novels to have ever been written. A giant multi-screen drive-in theater in Texas (it can hold four thousand cars!) is doing an all-night horror movie marathon when is almost hit by a “meteor.” Immediately afterward, all the people in attendance find themselves trapped an unable to leave the drive-in theater. They now find themselves having to live for weeks, or even months, with nothing but theater concessions to eat while under the rule of the dreaded Popcorn King.
The book may sound silly but the entire story is played with direly straight. While absurd, this is pure horror. The setting and events of the story are among the most original horror set-pieces I’ve ever read. There’s a desperation to the characters that just oozes off the page. While it’s not the most well-known horror novel, whenever I am talking to current horror writers, this is a book that always seems to come up.
This novel is also extremely important to two particular genre movements. It can be credited as one of the first splatterpunk novels and it’s was many (including myself) trace as one of the first bizarro novels. It’s a small book but its impact on genre fiction can never be overstated.
Side note – I really, REALLY want to see a movie of this someday.
Another side note – the sequels are really fun and worth checking out as well.
Looking for more Halloween reading? Check out the newest titles from Deadite Press:
NO GIG IS TOO SMALL by Andre Duza
October 6, 2018
31 Days of My Favorite Horror Books – Day 6 – SURVIVOR by J.F. Gonzalez
For the month of October, I will be writing brief essays about my 31 favorite horror books.
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I will never forget my first time reading SURVIVOR. I was living in Pittsburgh after college and was the mail-cart guy at a giant federal bank. One of the nice parts of the job was that I could read while I pushed around the mail and there was a library two blocks away. I was constantly checking out books and normally reading a novel a day while on the job.
I was pushing around the cart and reading this horror story about a woman who is kidnapped to be in a snuff film when THAT scene happened. Anyone who has read the book knows what I’m talking about. She makes a deal to survive (hence the title) that is horrific and asks an amazing question to the read—what would you do to survive? It’s one of the greatest moral questions in all of horror fiction. My jaw literally dropped when I realized what was about to happen.
When I first started working on Deadite Press I created a list of books I wanted to get the rights to and SURVIVOR was at the top of my list. I couldn’t believe that it actually happened and Deadite got to release the author’s preferred edition of one of the greatest modern horror novels and one of the foundations of what is now called hardcore or extreme horror.
I talked with Gonzalez many times over the years but I never got to meet him face-to-face. Through Deadite, we worked on eight projects together (getting the CLICKERS series back out onto the market was another huge personal victory for me) and we had many more planned until his untimely passing due to complications with cancer.
Gonzalez left an undeniable mark on an entire generation of horror fans and creators. I’m one of them.
Looking for more Halloween reading? Check out the newest titles from Deadite Press:
NO GIG IS TOO SMALL by Andre Duza
October 5, 2018
31 Days of My Favorite Horror Books – Day 5 – HELL HOUSE by Richard Matheson
For the month of October, I will be writing brief essays about my 31 favorite horror books.
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Richard Matheson is one of the single greatest genre writers to have ever lived. He wrote I AM LEGEND, THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, many episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, and, one of my favorite haunted house stories (told you that haunted houses would be reoccurring on this list), HELL HOUSE.
A team of psychic investigators going into a haunted house is extremely common in the horror genre still to this day but HELL HOUSE is the best version of that story. What separates this from other spooky house stories is that the ghosts are fucking mean and perverted. The spirits inhabiting Hell House come about from a failed attempt to reenact the events of the Marquis de Sade’s 120 DAYS OF SODOM. This gives the haunting a weird psycho-sexual overtone that you don’t see too often.
This novel is a masterpiece of the horror genre. If you haven’t read this, unfuck that. Also, just read everything Richard Matheson has written. He was one of the true masters.
Looking for more Halloween reading? Check out the newest titles from Deadite Press:
NO GIG IS TOO SMALL by Andre Duza
October 4, 2018
31 Days of My Favorite Horror Books – Day 4 – BOOK OF THE DEAD edited by John Skipp and Craig Spector
For the month of October, I will be writing brief essays about my 31 favorite horror books.
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First published in 1989, BOOK OF THE DEAD is one of the definitive collections documenting the then-new splatterpunk movement. Edited by the notorious horror duo, Skipp & Spector, the collection features sixteen stories that all take place in the world of George Romero’s LIVING DEAD films.
The table of contents for this could not be more packed – Richard Laymon, Ramsey Campbell, Stephen King, Joe Lansdale, David J. Schow, and Robert R. McCammon all contribute gory zombie tales.
I first read this book when I was in high school and it holds a special place to me as it was the first time that I realized what an editor does and I was actually of fan of Skipp & Spector’s before I had read any of their fiction (which is also fantastic).
My favorite stories – “A Sad Last Love at the Diner of the Damned” by Edward Bryant, “On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks” by Joe Lansdale, and “Jerry’s Kids Meet Wormboy” by David J. Schow.
This book is sadly out of print but used copies can be found for responsible prices here. I highly recommend grabbing a copy if you’ve never come across this collection before.
I can also highly recommend a collection Skipp edited later called ZOMBIES: ENCOUNTERS WITH THE LIVING DEAD. It features many of the stories from BOOK OF THE DEAD and its sequels (there’s two!) along with other works of zombie fiction by some of the top names in the field. You can grab that here.
Looking for more Halloween reading? Check out the newest titles from Deadite Press:
NO GIG IS TOO SMALL by Andre Duza
October 3, 2018
31 Days of My Favorite Horror Books – Day 3 – GENITAL GRINDER by Ryan Harding
For the month of October, I will be writing brief essays about my 31 favorite horror books.
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I was first exposed to the writing of Ryan Harding with the collection EXCITABLE BOYS and the split chapbook with Edward Lee, PARNERS IN CHYME. His stories were extremely gross, violent, and sadistic – I fucking loved them! But those were the only stories of his that I was able to find for many years.
Flash forward to Brian Keene coming to Portland to meet with Rose O’Keefe, Carlton Mellick III, and myself about his signing to Deadite Press. After we were done with business, we were hanging out and drinking and Keene asked me if there were any authors that I wanted to work with. I brought up Ryan Harding and how I didn’t know how to contact him. Keene promptly put us in contact and from that came this collection.
GENITAL GRINDER collects almost every story that Harding had written up the publication. As the title implies, these stories are fucking sick, perverted, and filled with misanthropic glee. Whereas Lee normally has a sense of comedy to his work, Harding approaches hardcore horror from a much nastier angle.
This book is the definition of “not for everyone.” But if you’re a sick fuck (like me), this is one of the greatest collections of depravity out there.
Looking for more Halloween reading? Check out the newest titles from Deadite Press:
NO GIG IS TOO SMALL by Andre Duza
October 2, 2018
31 Days of My Favorite Horror Books – Day 2 – THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR by Anne Rivers Siddons
For the month of October, I will be writing brief essays about my 31 favorite horror books.
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This seems to be one of the more underrated haunted house novels out there (I’m a big haunted house fan and you’ll be seeing a few of them this month). I think that this commonly gets overlooked by horror fans due to the fact that the author, Siddons, mostly writes in other genres and is not commonly associated with the genre (despite this book getting praised in Stephen King’s DANSE MACABRE).
It follows a couple who live next door to a newly built house in which every one who lives there suffers terrible fates. The couple then begins to suspect that the house is haunted. But how could it be when it’s newly built and nothing that “makes” house haunted has ever happened on the property?
THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR is an ingenious take on the classic haunted house tropes as we watch all the events take place from the perspectives of the neighbors. But make no mistake, that doesn’t result in detachment. This is one seriously creepy book and the twists and explanations to what is going on have stuck in my mind ever since first reading it about fifteen years ago.
Looking for more Halloween reading? Check out the newest titles from Deadite Press:
NO GIG IS TOO SMALL by Andre Duza
October 1, 2018
31 Days of My Favorite Horror Books – Day 1 – THE BEST OF H.P. LOVECRAFT
For the month of October, I will be writing brief essays about my 31 favorite horror books.
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In my opinion, Lovecraft is the single most important writer in the history of the horror genre. Every branch of the modern horror can be traced back to him. While some may point to Poe or Stoker (and don’t get me wrong, they were extremely influential), Lovecraft was the writer that really cemented what horror looked like. Cults, monsters, aliens, black magic—a Lovecraft story looks a lot more similar to a modern horror novel than anything from Poe’s bibliography.
This particular collection is my favorite compilation of Lovecraft’s work. I’m not a big fan of his Dream Cycle stories (too fantasy for my taste) and a lot of his early stories are mostly interesting for historical value. This collection is almost only his pure horror tales from the end of his writing career—what is commonly called the Cthulhu Mythos.
I first read this collection when I was around 14 years old. It made a major impact on me and I soon had read all his work. I still love to revisit Lovecraft’s stories and every year I attend the H.P. Lovecraft Film Fest here in Portland, OR (we also have a Lovecraft-themed bar here!).
Plus, check out this badass full cover by Michael Whelan (click on it for a good full-screen look). I got to see the original painting one year at the World Fantasy Convention.
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My favorite stories: The Call of Cthulhu, The Dunwich Horror, and The Colour Out of Space.
Looking for more Halloween reading? Check out the newest titles from Deadite Press:
NO GIG IS TOO SMALL by Andre Duza
