Works in Progress

While 95% of the time I rely on memory for my column over at Cinema Knife Fight, this time I simply had to revisit a little gem I couldn't fully recall. 1980's ALIEN CONTAMINATION (on DVD as simply CONTAMINATION) is a gory, goofy rip-off of both ALIEN and INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. But the crowd I saw it with back in 1982 was so loud and obnoxious I still, all these years later, had no idea what the "story" was all about aside from a few online reviews. But I needed to see for myself. Now I know and the film is even goofier than ever. Hence my 70th column of SUBURBAN GRINDHOUSE MEMORIES, coming soon...

My next bizarro novella, CHANNEL 79, runs about 17,000 words and I'm currently in the middle of the first round of edits. This is a riff on the self-help movement, hipsters, and what's inside us manifesting itself in a most unusual way.
I'm finally trying my hand at crime/noir fiction with a novella titled TWO IN THE BACK OF THE HEAD, written under the name Niccolo Fulciano. This project is for a small specialty press and tells the tale of a pizza delivery boy who is forced to become a hitman. It's off to a cool start.
I'm about 10K into my second horror novel, tentatively titled THE DEVELOPMENT. It's about a small community in NJ where teenagers are being affected by something that has taken up residence in the adjoining woods. Don't worry ... it's not an alien.
I wrote my first YA comedy/horror novel SUBURBAN EXORCIST several years ago, but have recently been going through it after letting it sit for (perhaps) too long. I just may begin submitting it soon...
Also waiting for news on several short stories submitted to various places, including one to an anthology tribute to the late punk singer GG Allin. If you told me 30 years ago there would be a tribute anthology to GG Allin I would've laughed. Joke's on me!


Finally, what will probably be the final release from NOVELLO PUBLISHERS (a small press I started in 2005) will be seeing the light of day. I'm currently editing this 10-story, 10-author short story tribute to exploitation film legend Herschell Gordon Lewis, which I had intended for release this past fall of 2014. But due to financial difficulties, it has been pushed up and I'm hoping for an early summer, 2015 date to be announced soon.