Gleefully Macabre Tales & WHC Update

Gleefully Macabre Tales will be on its way to mailboxes across the world next week! So if you've been holding off on ordering the book until it was ready to ship, the time to order is......GONE!!! 'Cuz it's sold out.

However, there's always the chance that somebody will cancel their order ("Crap! I thought I'd ordered MONKEY LOVE by John Paul Allen!") so if you want to get on the waiting list, go here...

https://www.horror-mall.com/GLEEFULLY-MACABRE-TALES-by-Jeff-Strand-p-16740.html

...and click the "Notify Me" button.

Next weekend is the World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City. I'm a Special Guest this year (I know, I know...WTF?) and here's my schedule:

THURSDAY, MARCH 27:

5:00 - 5:50 PM. Opening Ceremonies. I'm not sure exactly what I'm supposed to do at the opening ceremonies, except listen to the confused murmurs after I'm introduced. But I'll be there.

6:00 - 7:50 PM. Signing at Sam Weller's Bookstore. I'll be there with twelve other authors, and this will be your first opportunity to purchase one of my books and have me write something clever in it, like "How the hell did I get to be a Special Guest at WHC?"

FRIDAY, MARCH 28:

10:00 - 10:50 AM: PANEL: "When The Screaming Stops: The Non-Writing Part of a Horror Writer's Job." With Gene O'Neill, Stephen Wilson, and Gary Braunbeck.

7:00 - 7:50 PM: PANEL: "The Fine Art of the Gross-Out." I'll be moderating this dignified panel, which includes Rain Graves, Cullen Bunn, Weston Ochse, Bill Breedlove, and Wrath James White.

8:00 - 9:50 PM: Mass Autograph Signing. Virtually every author in attendance will be available to sign books for you.

10:30 PM - Midnight. The Gross-Out Contest. This will be my fourth year as a participant, and I don't want to spoil the surprise, but there'll be a surprise.

SATURDAY, MARCH 29:

2:00 - 2:50 PM: PANEL: "Make 'Em Laugh: Comic Relief in Horror Fiction." With Hank Schwaeble, Dan Wells, and Hal Bodner.

4:30 - 5:00 PM: Reading. Possibly a short story called "The Apocalypse Ain't So Bad."

7:30 - 10:30 PM: Bram Stoker Awards Banquet & Ceremony. I'll be the Master of Ceremonies, and the whole event will be available as a live webcast for those of you who can't be there. I'll send the link information closer to the event, because if I send it now you'll probably lose it.

SUNDAY, MARCH 30:

4:00 - 4:50 PM: Closing Ceremonies.

I'm Sort Of A Movie Star!!!

This weekend my wife and I headed off to St. Petersburg to be in a movie. It was originally called Zombotomy, but that sort of implied flesh-eating undead, so now they're calling it Trep Nation (I believe the final title remains flexible). Our role was that of the "vagrants," and we arrived appropriately dressed. It was the very first night of a shoot that's set to go through May. Call time: 6:45 PM. Scheduled end time: 11:00 PM. While I don't wish to spoil any of the plot twists in this blog entry, here's some foreshadowing: We were not done by 11:00 PM.

When we arrived at Demens Landing, the shooting location, it was rainy, windy, and cold. Director Andrew Allan gave us a cheerful greeting and explained that they were still waiting for everybody to show up. We were welcome to hang out, or we could just come back in an hour or so. Not being method actors, we prepared for our role as vagrants by driving to Chipotle for a big-ass burrito.

Upon our return, crew members were starting a generator and setting up various cryptic filmmaking contraptions (one thing kind of looked like it was meant to be a rain keeper-outer, but probably wasn't). Producer Andy Lalino (whose film Filthy I've discussed more than once on this blog, because it's wonderfully entertaining and unspeakably foul) was performing the crucial film producer duty of calling people to find out where the hell they were. Meanwhile, some other crew members were trying desperately to set up the makeup station in the wind and rain. After unsuccessfully trying to keep a plastic tarp from hanging down into the very, very, very hot light, the whole makeup operation was moved to the women's restroom.

Andrew the Director told me how much he loved my reading of "The Bad Candy House" on Dread Central. If I'd known he enjoyed it that much, I would've asked for a bigger part in his movie. He explained that my role was to get interrogated and beat up in the park; however, they were also considering an alternate version of the scene where I get dragged out from a covered slide and then beat up. Abuse. Cool.

We hung out at the makeup station for a while. A long while. The other actors in our scene (Spy #1 = Clayton Clark, Spy #2 = Brian Watts) were in their snazzy black spy costumes, and Andy the Producer gave them a safety lesson in handling their stun batons. These were real stun batons, capable of delivering 800,000 volts each of vagrant-stopping power, and the safety lesson was very, very serious. Basically, you press a button and the baton pops out, at which point that baby is live. The safety must be on AT ALL TIMES. To retract the baton, you do not press it against the wet ground. It would've been kinda funny if one of them had said "So don't do this, right?" and zapped his partner in the leg, but neither of them did. In fact, after carefully handing the stunners back to Andy for safekeeping, Brian rattled off a list of fierce weapons he has fired in his life with no qualms, and explained that this was the only thing that ever made him nervous.

We continued to hang out at the makeup station, where the lead actor and actress were still being processed. Andrew the Director came over and asked me if I knew the plot of the movie, which I didn't, but he didn't get past the first act before he got called away to do director stuff. My wife and I wandered around for a while, watching crew members continue to set up stuff that we weren't really sure what it did.

Marcus Koch, director of the psycho killer clown movie 100 Tears, was in charge of special effects makeup, and I got to talk to him for a while. He showed me some pictures of the effects he'd just done for a different movie...or else he was showing me pictures of a real dismembered corpse. It was pretty darn realistic. I guess if he were a real killer he wouldn't be able to show off pictures willy-nilly without getting quickly busted by the cops, so they were probably F/X. If not, stun batons are available.

Sandy Lalino set up the awesome craft services table, following the rule that in a low-budget production, the best thing you can do is keep your crew well fed. Of course, I'd pigged out on that sizable burrito so I skipped the solid foods, but they had Mountain Dew, so I was happy.

Makeup continued. It was now past 11:00 PM, so things were obviously a wee bit behind schedule. In fact, I didn't get into the makeup chair until 1:30 AM. Makeup guru and roller derby chick Joanie Atkins dirtied me up quite nice, adding a week's worth of beard growth, screwing up my hair, adding grime-a-plenty to my face, clothes, and hands, and adding red lines under my eyes and on my nose. I looked like absolute crap...but in a good way!

Now in full makeup, it was time to wait some more. Brian the Spy actually had the script page with our scene available, and I saw that my role was to be yanked to my feet and asked which way the heroes went. I'd point and then be thrown to the ground. As a Bram Stoker Award-nominated author, I decided that a rewrite was in order, where I'd say "Unhand me, foul blackheart, lest I deliver a thrashing you won't soon forget!" Then I'd break him in half over my knee, pick up his stun gun, zap myself in the chest, and say "Oooh, yeah, that's the sweet stuff."

I watched the leads, Chris Jackson and Somali Rose, film a scene. They had to do it approximately 27,319 times from 11,382 angles. I was in full vagrant gear, meaning multiple layers of clothing, and I was freezing. The actors were not in multiple layers of clothing, particularly Somali. It basically went, shoot a scene, throw a coat on Somali to allow her to de-thaw while the crew sets up the next scene, and so on. At the end, I got to watch one of the takes in the playback monitor, and it looked fantastic. Live, the scene looks all fakey with the crew and the lights and the cameras, but watching it on the monitor...whoa, it's a real movie!!!

Then I watched Andy the Producer haul off a bag of garbage from the craft services table. I suggested that the producer shouldn't be doing that; he should be ordering other people to carry trash while reclining in a lounge chair and smoking a stogie. "That's not how things work at The Film Ranch," he said, cheerfully performing custodial duties.

Around 4:00 AM I started to question whether the vagrants would be needed. Anthony (whose last name isn't on the call sheet, so I'll just call him "Anthony") was set to play a Street Thug and had already been sent home, to return another night. (Clayton was drinking a Red Bull, and Anthony cheerfully told him what "Taurine" really is. I looked it up and found that he was right. I drink a lot of beverages with Taurine and would have preferred to remain blissfully ignorant.) Would the vagrants get their time in the spotlight?

Yes...but in a reduced role. Thanks to the approaching sunrise, our new job was to lay on the stairs while Clayton the Spy (Brian the Spy had also been sent home, to return on Sunday) walked past. It was actually kind of comfy. Then I was told that they couldn't see my face in the monitor, and I was given specific instructions on how to contort. This was quite a bit less comfy. But I lay there, clutching an oversized beer can to my chest, pretending to be unconscious while they filmed the dramatic staircase scene several times. It would've been really frickin' embarrassing to screw up a role where my job was to pretend to be asleep, and I'm proud to report that I did a fine job. Or I think I did. Ultimately, it's you, the audience, who will have to determine whether my portrayal of the unconscious vagrant was pure awesomeness or whether I ruined the entire movie.

At 6:15 AM, slightly later than scheduled, the vagrants--and the night's shooting--were complete.

For more information on The Film Ranch, get thee to www.thefilmranch.com.

For more information on my new book SUCKERS, which will be worth 7.4 times its cover price when Spielberg casts me as a vagrant in his next movie, head over to www.jeffstrand.com.

That's a wrap.

Convention Report

IMPORTANT NOTE: Though the following blog entry has nothing to do with my new book SUCKERS, which you can order right now at the following handy link, https://www.horror-mall.com/SUCKERS-by-J.A.-Konrath-and-Jeff-Strand-p-17711.html , you'll enjoy it more if you buy a copy. I don't know why. Just one of those weird mysteries of science. You like science, don't you?

Last weekend I went to Portland, Orgeon for the ninth annual EPICon, where I hosted the ninth annual EPPIE awards banquet for the ninth annual time. Before I got there, of course, my usual abysmal luck with flight delays kept me stuck on a plane for three hours in Dallas, where we had to wait for workers to get ice out of the engine...so that we could taxi to the runway to get in line to be de-iced. At one point, the captain said "Ladies and gentlemen, you aren't going to believe this, so I'm just going to come right out and say it..." and I was sure he was about to say "...we've been cleared for takeoff! Ha! Fooled you, suckers!" but, no, he informed us of another delay.

Fantasy author Gloria Oliver was on the same plane, and so we joined forces to figure out the MAX light rail system and get to the hotel. Which was actually very easy, particularly since the EPICon website had provided a series of photographs showing each step, meaning that you'd have to be quite the dullard to screw it up, but I figured that if I DID somehow manage to get lost under these conditions, I wanted to be able to say "It was Gloria's fault! Ridicule her!" In the end, the only problem was that the ticket machine ate my $2.05.

Jet-lagged and barely conscious, I made it to the hotel and still managed to babble my way through some conversations. At least I think I did--the people may have been imaginary.

Highlights...

--A group voyage to Powell's Books, the largest bookstore in the entire frickin' universe. I took pictures of various friends' books on the shelves, which was probably kind of geeky.

--At the end of the luncheon honoring the winners of the New Voices contest, the kids (middle school age) got to sit behind a table and do an impromptu signing of their winning works...and immediately had a longer autographing line than all of mine combined, the bratty little punks...

--Kat Thompson knitted me a little frog doll. It's not often that people present me with gifts of frogs in any form, much less homemade ones, and the frog now resides in a place of honor underneath my print of the cover to THE SINISTER MR. CORPSE.

--Best quote of the entire weekend: "I don't think I want a monkey on my saucebox." I may explain the context in a future blog post, or I may not.

Then, Saturday night, it was time for the EPPIES banquet. A couple of film students taped the entire thing, and once it's edited together EPIC will sell the DVDs at cost, so I'm not going to give away too much, but here are some tidbits...

For the opening joke, instead of my usual tuxedo, I walked into the banquet room in sweatpants, a t-shirt, sandals, and a ballcap on backwards. "My wife couldn't be here this year." After admitting that I was now feeling a little bit uncomfortable with my chosen attire, I asked if anybody would be willing to provide surrogate mother duties...at which point Ginny McBlain came up on stage with my tuxedo and helped me get changed. My directorial suggestion was "just pretend you're helping a bratty kid."

This was one of those high-risk gags that I usually avoid, because if it didn't work...well, you're stuck with five minutes of watching me put on formal wear, a real treat for the audience. It also provided an additional challenge in that not only was there the actual banquet portion beforehand, but AllRomanceEBooks had put together a mucho classy champagne reception, so I couldn't just walk around looking like a ruffian. In terms of total devotion to the joke, my best bet would've been to skip everything and hang out in my hotel room until the awards ceremony began, but then everybody else would get steak and salmon and I'd get Quizno's, so I compromised and wore clothes that looked like they could pass for somebody actually deluding himself into believing he was dressed up, then switched into bum gear and hid until I was introduced.

I hope the film students edit out the mistakes. I referred to EPPIES chair Carol MacLeod as "Karen MacLeod," despite the fact that at no time in my life have I ever thought her name was "Karen," and my written notes said "Carol." You'd almost think I hadn't sent her multiple e-mails offering unsolicited suggestions about the EPPIES process. It was a nice little embarrassing case of brain/mouth disconnect.

Another glitch was the cell phone gag. The joke was that while introducing the Best Romantic Suspense category, my cell phone would go off, and I'd take the call and have a completely pointless conversation, then say "You're breaking up...let me call you back," at which point EPIC President Brenna Lyons' phone would ring, and we'd have a completely pointless conversation, and then I'd ask her if her sister Lisa Brennan-Webb was ready to present the category, and she'd call Lisa (who was sitting right next to her) and ask her to come up on stage.

Brenna was supposed to call me as soon as I started talking, and in a very rare case of not covering for potential screw-ups, I hadn't written anything to fill the time in the instance that it might take FOREVER for my phone to ring after Brenna called. (Keep in mind that I had contingency plans for several possible glitches, including not being able to untie a phony helium balloon at the proper moment, but nothing for this one.) So we got the dreaded "awkward pause" until my phone rang. When Brenna called Lisa, Lisa's phone took so long to ring that we just cut the gag short. To be fair, the whole bit got some pretty big laughs, but we really should've tested it. I mean, c'mon, this was my ninth year!

Still, despite the glitches (and there are always glitches, gosh darn it all to heck!) there were gobs of laughs from the audience throughout the evening and my contribution to the banquet was a great success. (The DVDs may tell a different story, but for now I'll remain happily oblivious.) As always, I wished that more winners were present, and since I talk so damn much throughout the ceremony it's always kind of embarrassing when the winners simply offer up a classy "Thank you!" and depart the stage. We may have to institute a rising/falling cage in the future so that the winners are forced to soak up more of their glory.

COMING SOON: Tonight I'm going to play a cameo role in the film ZOMBOTOMY, where I will play the exciting part of "Vagrant #1" during a chase sequence, although I do not believe that Vagrant #1 is involved in the actual chasing portion of the scene. I think the leads will run past me, and I'll just stand there, looking like a vagrant. However, I'll be bringing along an 18-page monologue just in case the director says "My God! Vagrant #1 is the true hero of this story!"

P.S.: If that happens, you'll really wish you had a copy of SUCKERS...

Snazzy!!!

Here's how the classy, well-dressed man of today hosts an awards banquet. Photo by Debbie Fritter.

Sweet Irony

I'd previously shared my pricey adventure ($11 for parking???) driving to Orlando to see the thoroughly mediocre Diary of the Dead. This weekend the movie opened at the theatre a mile from my house. Oh well.

Meanwhile, Norman L. Rubenstein has written a Gleefully Macabre Tales review for FearZone, where he says things like...

"For sheer fun and enjoyment, one can legitimately argue that author Strand best showcases his unique talents in his short fiction."

"The range displayed by the author within these thirty-two stories, his ability to alternately scare, titillate, and make you laugh, is amazing."

"Many of Strand's tales work upon multiple levels, so that beyond the fearsome and funny, look a bit further and you will find the author also gently skewering certain contemporary conventions or critically commenting on elements of modern society deserving of such approbation. Gleefully Macabre Tales is alternately a wondrously hilarious and frightening, and indeed, gleefully macabre set of stories, and receives my highest recommendation."

The review also contains a lengthy anecdote about the reviewer's attempt to read one of the stories ("The Socket") while sitting in a doctor's office. Check out the whole thing right here:

http://www.fearzone.com/blog/macabre-strand

And then go buy Gleefully Macabre Tales (set to ship any day now!) right here:

http://www.horror-mall.com/Jeff-Strand-p-1-c-250.html