Author: JeremyCShipp

Jeremy C. Shipp is the Bram Stoker nominated author of Cursed, Vacation, and Sheep and Wolves. His shorter tales have appeared or are forthcoming in over 60 publications, the likes of Cemetery Dance, ChiZine, Apex Magazine, Withersin, and Shroud Magazine. Jeremy enjoys living in Southern California in a moderately haunted Victorian farmhouse called Rose Cottage. He lives there with his wife, Lisa, a couple of pygmy tigers, and a legion of yard gnomes. The gnomes like him. The clowns living in his attic--not so much. Feel free to visit his online home at jeremycshipp.com. His twitter handle is @JeremyCShipp

The Atrocities is out today!

On By JeremyCShippIn Book, Uncategorized1 Comment

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The summoning spells finally worked, and my gothic novel THE ATROCITIES is out today!

You can order the book on Amazon, or wherever books are sold. You can also ask a demonic hedgehog to recite the entire tale into your ear while you sleep.

Thanks in advance to everyone who reads the book. You are the reason why I share my stories.

And here are a few blurbs, to whet your most macabre of appetites:

“If I had to narrow down The Atrocities to just a few words, I would choose: surreal, beautiful and grotesque…. It’s got the dread of Shirley Jackson mixed with the funhouse terror of Hieronymus Bosch.” — Outlaw Poet

“Any fans of haunted houses or strange families will thoroughly enjoy reading this short novel.” — Booklist

If Agatha Christie had fallen through a Lovecraftian Portal, and then penned a locked room mystery, with illustrations by William Blake, the result might resemble the vast estate, ‘The Atrocities,’ and its family, in this stunning Gothic panorama.” — Mallory Heart

“A haunting, grotesquely beautiful, atmospheric work of Gothic horror, The Atrocities didn’t play out quite as I expected, but it’s those final twists that elevated it from memorable to unforgettable.” — Bob Milne, Beauty in Ruins

 

Upcoming Tor Release

On By JeremyCShippIn Uncategorized1 Comment
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When Isabella died, her parents were determined to ensure her education wouldn’t suffer.

But Isabella’s parents had not informed her new governess of Isabella’s… condition, and when Ms Valdez arrives at the estate, having forced herself through a surreal nightmare maze of twisted human-like statues, she discovers that there is no girl to tutor.

Or is there…?

Jeremy C. Shipp’s haunting gothic fantasy The Atrocities forthcoming from Tor.com Publishing in April 2018. Read an excerpt here, and check out the full cover by artist Sam Araya here.

Pre-order now at the links below, or from your preferred retailer:

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks

100 Best Films Ever Made

On By JeremyCShippIn Uncategorized1 Comment

When I first decided to create a list of the best films ever to be committed to celluloid, I felt slightly wary. Then, when I actually began the process of curating the list, the wariness transformed into moderate terror. And then, as the days and weeks passed, I felt the daunting weight of my task deep in my spleen. I’m not complaining, mind you. I simply want you to appreciate how much of my heart and soul and time was put into this list. How does one delve into over a century of cinema, and choose only 100 to represent the best of the best? It’s not easy. I’ll tell you that much. Anyway, without further ado, here are 100 of the best films ever made.

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1. Troll 2

2. Foodfight!

3. The Room

4. The Legend of the Titanic

5. Titanic: The Legend Goes On

6. Tentacolino

7. Elf Bowling

8. The Little Panda Fighter

9. The Christmas Tree

10. Fateful Findings

11. The Garbage Pail Kids Movie

12. I Am Here…Now

13. Double Down

14. Cool as Ice

15. Manos: The Hands of Fate

16. Birdemic: Shock and Terror

17. Birdemic 2: The Resurrection

18. Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo

19. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians

20. Death Bed: The Bed that Eats

21. The Beast of Yucca Flatts

22. Catwoman

23. Ben & Arthur

24. Shark Attack 3: Megalodon

25. Saving Christmas

26. Gigli

26. Twin Sitters

27. Glitter

28. Sharknado

29. Master of Disguise

30. Star Wars Holiday Special

31. Kindergarten Cop 2

32. Sharktopus

33. From Justin to Kelly

34. Son of the Mask

35. Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny

36. 8 Crazy Nights

37. God’s Not Dead

38. God’s Not Dead 2

39. Christian Mingle

40. Old Fashioned

41. Fred: The Movie

42. Fred 2

43. Fred 3

44. Left Behind

45. Left Behind 2: Tribulation Force

46. Left Behind: World at War

47. Left Behind (remake)

48. Air Buddies

49. Snow Buddies

50. Space Buddies

51. Santa Buddies

52. Spooky Buddies

53. Treasure Buddies

54. Baby Geniuses

55. Baby Geniuses 2: Superbabies

56. Hobgoblins

57. The Final Sacrifice

58. Final Justice

59. Battlefield Earth

60. Chairman of the Board

61. The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure

62. Reefer Madness

63. 2-Headed Shark Attack

64. 3-Headed Shark Attack

65. 4-Headed Shark Attack

66. 5-Headed Shark Attack

67. 6-Headed Shark Attack

68. 7-Headed Shark Attack

69. Sharknado 2

70. Sharknado 3

71. Sharknado 4

72. Mega Shark Versus Crocosaurus

73. Jaws: the Revenge

74. Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus

75. Mega Shark Versus Mecha Shark

76. Mega Shark Versus Kolossus

77. Sharktopus Versus Pteracuda

78. Sharktopus Versus Whalewolf

79. Sand Sharks

80. Dinoshark

81. Atlas Shrugged

82. Atlas Shrugged Part 2

83. Atlas Shrugged Part 3

84. Mac and Me

85. Disaster Movie

86. Meet the Spartans

87. Epic Movie

88. The Search for Santa Paws

89. Santa Paws 2: The Santa Pups

90. Roboshark

91. The Cobbler

92. The Ridiculous 6

93. The Do-Over

94. Hercules in New York

95. Leprechaun: In the Hood

96. Theodore Rex

97. Super Mario Bros.

98. 8-Headed Shark Attack

99. 9-Headed Shark Attack

100. 10-Headed Shark Attack

Interview with Richard Thomas

On By JeremyCShippIn Interviews1 Comment

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Richard Thomas is a brilliant author, and he’s Editor-in-Chief at Dark House Press. Richard has taken time out of his busy schedule to chat with me about Smurfs, the Singularity, and other topics.

Jeremy C. Shipp: Hi, Richard. Welcome to my little chthonic cave. I hope you didn’t have any problems finding your way here.

Richard Thomas: Hey, Jeremy. Thanks. Just followed the trail of bones, and the colony of bats that came streaming out of the opening. No worries.

JCS: First of all, I should ask the question that’s on everyone’s mind. Do you believe that eating live Smurfs is morally wrong?

RT: I’d have to say yes—no matter how juicy or delicious they might be. Eating anything that’s still alive is pretty cruel. Smurf is a little gamey for my taste, anyway.

JCS: We’ll have to agree to disagree. Anyway, if you were a supervillain, what creatures would you want as your trusty minions?

RT: Huh. Minions—something prehistoric, maybe? Pterodactyl? I wrote a flash fiction piece about a Gandaberunda, a two-headed mythological bird. Those would be cool. Although I do have a slight fear of flying monkeys from my childhood Wizard of Oz days—so maybe that’s too close. As a kid, when asked what animal I wanted to be, it was always a cheetah.

JCS: Which multiverse hypothesis do you find most compelling?

RT: I have a lot of beliefs—some which may contradict each other. I believe in reincarnation, but I want to believe there is some kind of heaven. I believe in ghosts, that there are aliens out there, life on other planets. I’d like to believe in parallel dimensions. I’ve seen some wild things in my life, time rewinding, and playing back, which makes me think what we believe to be true is probably not very accurate. I also love The Matrix. There’s the end of Interstellar to consider, too. Whether you want to apply Occam’s Razor, or believe in quilted, brane, cyclic, or inflationary multiverses, I think we probably know only a fraction of what’s really going on.

JCS: What would you do if you met your doppelganger?

RT: I think there would probably be a handful of gut responses—kill it, have a conversation, or pretend you didn’t see it. I’d probably want to sit down and talk, try to understand what was going on, because it would certainly shake my reality. Saw a movie recently, Enemy, with Jake Gyllenhaal that was really interesting, about a doppelganger. There are days I feel that this is all a dream, and there are days where I feel that I’ve lived this life before. Who knows?

JCS: What question would you least like me to ask? And can you answer that question?

RT: I’m sure I’ve got some skeletons in my closets I’d prefer to leave there. And no, I’d prefer not to get into that.

JCS: How do you deal with withered hands growing out of your walls?

RT: You know, a hand, by it’s definition and nature, just wants to touch—it wants to hold, stroke, caress—just wants to be loved, like the rest of us. They want to feel valued, and special, a part of something. And withered, I imagine there would already be some self-conscious doubt, not the hands they used to be, all of the young, soft hands getting the attention. So, the way I deal with MY withered hands growing out of MY walls is to embrace them—I let them get to work, in a number of ways. Very exciting. The future of publishing, I think.

JCS: By George, I think you’re right. If Earth were an egg, what do you believe would hatch from it?

RT: LOL. Good question. I think it could go one of two ways—all of the love, and peace, and kindness could give birth to some kind of beautiful, angelic creature (why am I thinking about the baby at the end of 2001?) or it could be the opposite—all of our hatred, fear and violence born in some demonic, mythic, destructive beast. Depends on if you’re a half-full or half-empty kind of guy, I think.

JCS: Do you have a favorite Bizarro author/filmmaker/artist?

RT: Oh, man, that’s tricky. I was just thinking about this the other day. The first story I ever published was a bit of bizarro at Opium Magazine, entitled “Animal Magnetism” about a couple that gets a series of animal parts attached, in order to make their sex life better. I think the opening line was something like, “It started out with the elephant penis and went downhill from there.” Bradley Sands passed on it for Beat Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, but suggested Opium. Which brings me to a reading Bradley did at an AWP event, maybe in Denver, where he read a story about soccer moms that just had the room in stitches, so funny. I laughed so much. So, I think I’ll always have a soft spot for Bradley.

JCS: What is the origin story of your interest in neo-noir and transgressive fiction?

RT: I think it all starts with Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club. I saw the movie, and it woke me up. I found his books, and read everything he had out, starting with Choke, Survivor, Diary, Lullaby, etc. That got me to The Velvet, a website for Will Christopher Baer, Craig Clevenger and Stephen Graham Jones. Those guys really spoke to me, the way they bent genres to create dark, lyrical stories that were both exciting and literary, ticking off all of the flavors—salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami. I didn’t know you could write like that. I read some wild authors in college, William Burroughs, for example, but I grew up reading Stephen King and John Grisham, popular writers, mostly. Later, when I got my MFA, I’d study the dark sheep of the literary world—Denis Johnson, Mary Gaitskill, Cormac McCarthy, Joyce Carol Oates, Haruki Murakami, Toni Morrison, etc. So, for me, the ideal story, or novel finds the sweet spot between genre and lit, between visceral and introspective, between tension and lyricism. That’s what I try to write, and that’s what I like to edit and publish.

JCS: Can you tell us a bit about Gamut magazine?

RT: Sure. It’s an online magazine I’m Kickstarting on 2/1/16. It will focus on fiction, with new stories out every Monday, reprints every Thursday, with columns sprinkled in, and poetry, as well. If we can hit a few stretch goals, we’ll expand to more non-fiction, a Flash Fiction Friday, and a Saturday Night Special (which would be a serialization of Stripped: A Memoir, to start). We’ll focus on the kind of genres we’ve been talking about here—fantasy, science fiction, horror, transgressive, magical realism, neo-noir, Southern gothic, bizarro, and new weird—all with a literary bent. It won’t be “classic” in any sense of the word, but contemporary dark fiction. If Gamut were a film it would be directed by David Fincher, Christopher Nolan, or David Lynch. We need to raise $52,000, and the bulk of that will come from an annual subscription of $30, for over 400,000 words of fiction, new art every week, and much more. After the Kickstarter, the regular rate will be $60/year, or $5/ month. We will NEVER offer the $30/year rate again. AND, as long as you keep renewing, you can keep that rate indefinitely. If you’ve read any of my writing, the books I’ve published at Dark House Press, and/or the four anthologies I’ve edited—The New Black and Exigencies (Dark House Press), Burnt Tongues, with Chuck Palahniuk and Dennis Widmyer (Medallion), or The Lineup: 20 Provocative Women Writers (Black Lawrence Press)—then you’re probably familiar with my aesthetic.

JCS: Where do you see Gamut in 10 years? And where do you see it after the Singularity?

RT: I’d like us to be an important part of the landscape—alongside publications like Tor, Nightmare, Apex, F&SF, Clarkesworld, Black Static, Shock Totem, etc. I’d like to see us continue to grow, to gain the kind of following that Tin House and A24 Films have—passionate fans that are invested in what we do. This is all in progress—people can make suggestions, help us to shape and form Gamut, into something special. Hopefully. As for after the Singularity, hopefully Gamut will just start running itself and I can chill out on a beach in Hawaii and sip on Piña Coladas for the rest of my life.

JCS: Perhaps a pterodactyl butler could serve you the drinks? Thank you kindly for taking the time to answer my questions. Here’s a complementary bag of fresh ectoplasm.

RT: My pleasure. Great questions, Jeremy. Oh, and thanks, I just ran out, this saves me a trip to the store.

JCS: *backs away and fades into the shadows*

If you feel so inclined, check out Gamut Magazine’s kickstarter campaign right here. 

richardthomasRichard Thomas is the author of seven books: Three novels, Disintegration and Breaker (Random House Alibi), and Transubstantiate (Otherworld Publications); three short story collections, Tribulations (Crystal Lake), Staring Into the Abyss (Kraken Press), and Herniated Roots (Snubnose Press); as well as one novella of The Soul Standard (Dzanc Books). With over 100 stories published, his credits include Cemetery Dance, PANK, Gargoyle, Weird Fiction Review, Midwestern Gothic, Arcadia, Qualia Nous, Chiral Mad 2 & 3, Gutted, and Shivers 6. He has won contests at ChiZine and One Buck Horror, and has received five Pushcart Prize nominations to date. He is also the editor of four anthologies: Exigencies and The New Black (Dark House Press), The Lineup: 20 Provocative Women Writers (Black Lawrence Press) and Burnt Tongues (Medallion Press) with Chuck Palahniuk (finalist for the Bram Stoker Award). In his spare time he is a columnist at LitReactor and Editor-in-Chief at Dark House Press. He has taught at LitReactor, the University of Iowa, StoryStudio Chicago, and in Transylvania. His agent is Paula Munier at Talcott Notch. For more information visit www.whatdoesnotkillme.com.