Tuesday, March 25, 2014

HEY-YO!

It's been awhile since I've posted. My bad. There was a little tour here in Canada (which was a really good time), and then I got sick as a dog when I got back. Real sick. My body was ejecting substances that held shades and textures as I've not heretofore encountered. But now I'm better. My bodily emissions have returned to their regular, humdrum shades. You probably didn't want to know that. Well, you do now regardless. You're welcome.

Also, read this if you'd like:

NICK CUTTER PROFILE

Yrs,
Nick.

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Interviews and Etc


Hello All,

Huge thanks to Eric Volmers, tireless (and very thorough!) reporter for the Calgary Herald for taking the time to record and later coalesce my rambling, nonsensical diatribe into a very nice interview. He also unearthed one of my ancient pen names! I'll be reading in Calgary this coming Tuesday the 18th as part of the Dark Side Tour, with some other really great writers. Check the link out for more info!

CALGARY HERALD

DARK SIDE TOUR

Also, an interview with the Ottawa Citizen. I think this is the first interview I've ever done where at least one of my answers might be termed "snippy." I hope not, I am always grateful to anyone for taking the time to ask questions and I always try to give interesting answers—but not pissy ones. Maybe I did so, just this once. I won't make a habit of it.

OTTAWA CITIZEN

Yrs,
Nick

Thursday, March 13, 2014

INTERVIEW AT SUVUDU

Hello Everyone,

Here's a short interview. Thanks to Matt Staggs for taking the time and asking some cool questions.

INTERVIEW

Yrs,
Nick.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

THE TWO PILL SOLUTION

Hello,


So, if you've read The Troop you'll get the meaning of this advert. If you haven't, you won't—but you can rectify that by, y'know, reading the book!


Yrs,
Nick

Sunday, March 9, 2014

A WRITING PLAYLIST

Hello Everybody,

Like a lot of people, I like music! And, like those same people, I especially enjoy listening to it on YouTube, thus depriving those hardworking artists of their royalties!

No, most times those videos are posted by the bands or singers themselves, or by their "people" at least, so I don't feel so bad.

So! I figured it'd be a real gas to post a songlist—the songs I listened to while writing The Troop. Now some of you, perhaps having read the book by now, might figure that I listened to death metal stuff, Cannibal Corpse and the like, or else maybe haunted house music, rattling chains and growling chainsaws and ghosts going "BoooOOOOOoooooOOOOOooo!" in that ululating way that ghosts tend to have.

Wrong!

Now okay, I wasn't listening to super sunny stuff, either. I wasn't putting on KC and the Sunshine Band. I wasn't grooving to Walking on Sunshine, Christopher Cross's Sailing, or the soundtrack to Happy Feet. I'd say my tastes run somewhere between those two poles, Death Metal and overbright/saccharine tune-age ... which is where 99% of us probably wind up.

Without any further ado, here are some of the tunes that I, a horror novelist, listened to while writing my horror novel.

1. City and Color, Sleeping Sickness. This band (not really a band, just one dude) is fronted by Dallas Green, who is awesome and hails from my hometown of Saint Catharines, Ontario. Here he shares vocal duties with Gord Downey of The Tragically Hip, who was the band I loved most growing up. Could it be any better? No.



2. Sigar Ros, Saeglopur. This band is wonderful, trippy, the best. I have no clue what's being sung but it matters not a whit. Just put this tune on, trip out, and write about Boy Scouts hiking in the great wide open (and about the terrible things that eventually happen to them ...)



3. Bon Ivor, Holocene. I first heard of this band because of Rust and Bone (the film; the book sucks); one of their songs plays over that movie's trailer. My fave of theirs is Holocene. Lookit that boy out having fun on the cliffs of Norway or wherever! He looks just like a Scout. 


4. The National, About Today. Really loved this when it played over the final scene of Warrior, a kickass movie that came out a few years ago.


5. Peter Murphy, I'll Fall With Your Knife. Played over the final scene of The Trojan War, that brilliant film about a horny highschooler chasing a condom all over the city for 90 minutes ... I think that was what it was about, anyway. It's been awhile. I don't know. This song works for me. Screw off if you don't agree!



So now you know. I'm sure you can sleep better knowing, too.

Yrs,
Nick.

Thursday, March 6, 2014

SLACK JAW PUNKS PODCAST

Hello Everyone,

I did a podcast interview with Bub Smith at Slack Jaw Punks. Take a listen, if'n you please, or else find another honorable diversion to fill your hours and days.

SLACK JAW PUNKS PODCAST

Yrs,
Nick.

Monday, March 3, 2014

I AM NOT A SOCIOPATH

Hello All,

I'm not a crazyperson. I've never killed anyone and I habour no desire to do so in the future. I love animals and grew up in a home where they were always around and well-treated. I do not live in a dark, ill-lit basement surrounded by terrariums full of tarantulas and scorpions. I have never read the Necronomicon and I don't participate in pagan rites.

I only say so because I, along with plenty of other horror writers, have had to deal with the "you must be a real sicko" question from time to time. The implicit part of that being: I've got to be a sociopath to write the things I write. The deeper implicitness being: if I weren't writing this stuff, I'd probably be out killing people in order to realease those terrible urges.

Now let me make one thing perfectly clear—I live my life the way I want to live it. And if I wanted to kill people, you can bet your ass I'd've been doing it by now. My basement would be full of corpses dissolving under a soothing layer of quicklime. There would be APBs out for me all over, with photos of big-chinned, red-haired face plastered all over the wanted poster. I am a finisher, damn it, so I do what I like and I get things DONE!

But since I have no desire to kill anyone at all, and since I'm a well-adjusted individual free or rage and persecution issues, I just felt that I'd post a few photos of myself and my family to kind of nip those sentiments ("You're a raving lunatic! You're the sickest of all sickos and you ought to be locked up in the bughouse, where you can write your trash on the rubber walls with your own filth!) in the bud.

Now of course, you could see these photos and say to yourself, "Well, what else would a cunning psycho do? Build a family life. Impart that veneer of normalcy. What better smokescreen to shield his heinous deeds?" To which I'd say: there are some people you'll never convince ...

MY SON AND I (TO BE TOTALLY HONEST, I'M WATCHING "HELLRAISER" ON NETFLIX HERE, BUT HE'S ASLEEP, DREAMING OF SUGARPLUM FAIRIES OR WHATEVER BABIES DREAM ABOUT, SO REALLY, I'M SURE THE SHRIEKS OF THE MUTILATED AND OTHER CARNAGE DIDN'T BOTHER HIM AT ALL).


ANOTHER PHOTO OF MY SON AND I (GRANTED, I'M WHISPERING AN ANCIENT DRUIDIC CURSE INTO HIS EAR, BUT HE SEEMS TO LIKE IT ...)


MY FIANCEE WITH OUR SON (AND OKAY, YEAH, SHE'S A SATANIST BUT SO AM I SO THAT WORKS OUT WELL AND WE GET A FAMILY DISCOUNT ON SHEEP'S BLOOD AT THE BUTCHER SHOP).


Yrs,
Nick the Psycho.

SOME MORE REVIEWS

Hello All Good Men and Women and Bloggerland (who've stumbled across this blog, anyway),

Perhaps you'd like to read another few reviews of The Troop? Well, then, have at thee! My huge thanks to Claire Cameron and Joe Hartlaub for taking the time to read the book and give offer impressions.

GLOBE AND MAIL
BOOKREPORTER

Yrs,
Nick.

Sunday, March 2, 2014

FEAR.NET INTERVIEW

Hello My Friends,

Here's an interview posted at FEAR.net. My thanks to Blu Gilliand for taking the time to ask me a few questions about the book!

INTERVIEW AT FEAR.NET

Yrs,
Nick.

Saturday, March 1, 2014

BUZZFEED BODY HORROR BOOKS

Hello Everybody!

So, Body Horror. I talked about it a little bit in my first post on this blog, about how it was the aesthetic or subset of horror that I was playing with in The Troop. Simply stated, it's horror about bodies changing. The breakdown of the body or the alteration of the body, usually without the consent of that body's owner—or maybe their consent at first, but then, as things go steadily more haywire, that character comes to deeply regret his or her decision.

BODY HORROR WIKIPEDIA PAGE

Of course, as a Canadian, my first exposure to this style of horror was through David Cronenberg. For my money, in a modern-day sense anyway, he's The Man. I mean, just look at a few indelible clips to get a sense of what I'm talking about.



... I don't know what kind of bullets James Woods was using in that pistol, but they were some kinda nasty!


Two other fellows who were, to me, real body horror genuises—producer Brian Yunza and director Stuart Gordon. Two of their films, From Beyond and Society, are real body horror gems. You could throw The Reanimator movies in there, too.



Here's the "Shunting" scene from the end of Society. Beware: gross if you're not properly prepared ... or even if you are, I guess.


... anyway, this is a lot of the ideas I was working with in The Troop. Bodies beset from within. As I've said before in other places, it's one thing to be chased/beset by an external evil, a zombie or werewolf or vampire. But it's another thing entirely when that evil is inside of you, under your skin. You can't outrun your own skin, right?

Here's a Buzzfeed list of Body Horror books ... and yeah, mine is there but there are plenty of incredible books on that list that'll provide a great inroads to the subgenre. Give 'er a read, and surf around YouTube for some more of the "good stuff" in body horror!

BODY HORROR BOOKS

Also, here's a weird thing a frenemy of mine wrote about movie trailers:

FUN WITH MOVIE TRAILERS

Yrs,
Nick.