John Everson, Putting the Splatter into Splatterpunk By Lionel Ray Green
This year, Bram Stoker Award-winning author John Everson received his first Splatterpunk Awards nomination for his 2023 novel The Night Mother. A sequel to his sexually taboo, blood-soaked, Stoker-nominated novel NightWhere, The Night Mother continues the story of a mysterious underground sex club where the promise of forbidden pain and pleasure awaits.
Recognition is nothing new to Everson. Twenty years ago, he won a Stoker Award for his first novel Covenant, followed by Stoker Award nominations for his short fiction work “Letting Go” in 2007 and, of course, NightWhere in 2012.
Another one of Everson’s career highlights includes watching his character creations Danika and Mila Dubov appear on the Netflix series V Wars. Everson had contributed stories featuring the Dubov sisters to Jonathan Maberry’s shared world vampire anthology V-Wars, which spawned the short-lived Netflix series.
2024 has featured two major Everson releases. On October 8, Flame Tree Press released the author’s 15th novel, The Bloodstained Doll. It’s Everson’s second modern giallo, following his 2022 homage to the stylish Italian mystery thriller genre titled Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds. In July, The Evil Cookie Publishing released his novella Living Death Race: Beauty & the Brains.
Everson agreed to an exclusive interview for Ginger Nuts of Horror, where he discusses why he keeps returning to the NightWhere universe, the convoluted origins of Living Death Race, and his feelings about receiving his first Splatterpunk Awards nomination.
John Everson, Putting the Splatter into Splatterpunk
GREEN: The Night Mother is a sequel to your Bram Stoker Award-nominated novel NightWhere. You also squeezed in a novelette titled Field of Flesh set between the timeline of the two novels. What keeps you returning to the NightWhere universe?
EVERSON: I suppose I’ve revisited it because NightWhere is exactly the kind of supernatural thing that I love reading about – a place that lives between worlds. A place that you can enter if you gain the secret invite or find the secret doorway. Something hidden but something that can be found… if you do it right. A place where anything, literally anything goes.
That said, a lot of people have asked for a third novel in the series and … I don’t know that that will happen. I won’t say it no, but I have no plans for it. The Night Mother, on the other hand, I had wanted to write for 10 years before I finally sat down and DID it. As soon as I finished NightWhere, I wanted to know more about the character of Selena. Because… I didn’t know! That’s the fun part about being an author – part of it is literally telling yourself stories.
I wrote Field of Flesh right after I turned in NightWhere to Samhain Publishing. The intent of that story was to serve as a standalone “teaser” for the novel. So… Selena’s story wasn’t appropriate for that piece. But then Samhain went under, and I couldn’t really sell a sequel to another publisher if they hadn’t published the first one. So … the Selena idea languished. It never went away though, and finally, a couple years ago, I said “even if I have to self-publish this, I’m going to write it. Because I wanna know!
The original idea was that it was going to be more of a prequel … and it starts out telling some of Selena’s backstory … but ultimately, it became focused more on Mark and Selena’s post-NightWhere story than her backstory. I didn’t end the second novel though with a burning need to tell another story there. It seemed finished to me.
GREEN The Evil Cookie Publishing released your novella Living Death Race: Beauty & the Brains in July. A post-apocalyptic zombie tale with classic cars and a Mad Max vibe seems like a departure from the supernatural and taboo sexual content of many of your horror novels. What inspired Living Death Race?
Living Death Race was a blast with a very convoluted past! It is a novella that absolutely wouldn’t exist without the original editor, James Roy Daley, because you’re right, it’s not the kind of thing I usually do.
Over a dozen years ago James asked me to participate in a “shared world” novel about a cross country Death Race 2000 kind of story where the racers are killing zombies to rack up points. It sounded fun, so I wrote a few chapters and turned them in … and then … the project kept getting delayed as authors were late with their parts or dropped out completely and others solicited.
It was finally tabled for good seven or eight years ago. I thought about the story off and on since then, not knowing what to do with it because it wasn’t really complete on its own. Early this year I re-read it and said, “This is too much fun to stay lost on my hard drive.” So, I started editing and adding to the story to make it work as a complete tale on its own, rather than the piece of an unfinished whole that it was. I ended up doubling the length in the process and it became my first full-fledged novella!
GREEN: Flame Tree Press just released your 15th novel, The Bloodstained Doll. It’s another modern giallo in the style of your 2022 novel Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds. The books are homages to the Italian giallo film genre and filmmakers such as Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Sergio Martino, Luciano Ercoli, and Mario Bava. What did these Italian filmmakers understand about horror that makes you such a diehard fan of their works?
It’s kind of funny – for years I said I hated slasher movies and would never write a story about a serial killer because you could read that stuff in the newspaper all the time. A serial killer story wasn’t an “escape” from real life, which is what I like my fiction to be.
The thing is, what I really hated was American slasher movies. When I discovered Italian giallos … I became obsessed with them; I now own over a hundred on DVD and Blu-Ray. Why? Because they are typically so wildly over the top – but with reason! The motives of the killers were always convoluted, often psychosexual, and they often used bizarre murder implements. The amazing locations (to an American), amazing soundtracks, plus the utterly batshit weird scripts make these films work for me in a way I can’t really explain well. They’re just super entertaining (and often titillating) murder mystery thrillers that I can return to again and again. I actually have reviewed over 30 giallo films on my blog.
So, a couple years ago, when I was looking to do something a little different after writing a string of supernatural books, I said to myself, how about trying to write a giallo? And the result was Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds – which I wrote a soundtrack song for, as well. (All good gialli have to have a theme song – you can find mine on YouTube!) My publisher liked the novel so much, they asked me to consider doing another… and the result is The Bloodstained Doll. I feel like Five Deaths is a giallo in the style of the over-the-top films of Dario Argento and Sergio Martino, whereas The Bloodstained Doll is a little more gothic-leaning, along the lines of Mario Bava.
GREEN: You earned your first Splatterpunk Awards nomination with your 2023 novel The Night Mother. As a Bram Stoker Award-winning author, what did that recognition mean to you and what do you think the creation of the Splatterpunk Awards, which debuted in 2018, means to the extreme horror subgenre as a whole?
EVERSON: Honestly, it meant a lot to me for The Night Mother to be nominated for that award. NightWhere was a Bram Stoker Award finalist, which floored me, because it was a novel I was afraid to write for a long time and considered publishing under a pseudonym due to the content. And then The Night Mother had the plug pulled out just before it was due to be published when the distributor balked at the content. My own Dark Arts Books imprint ultimately released it, but that was not the original plan. So, for it to be recognized as being award-worthy because of that content … well… that was more than satisfying to me! It was a bit of redemption.
I think having the Splatterpunk Awards is a great thing for the horror genre. Often, I think the most extreme horror can cause a large segment of horror readers to shy away, but the subgenre has staunch fans and great writers who work in it. Edward Lee is one of my favorite authors of all time and is probably one of the “original” splatterpunks.
GREEN: The list of Bram Stoker Awards winners and nominees rarely cross over with the list of Splatterpunk Awards winners and nominees. This year, CJ Leede’s Splatterpunk Award-winning novel Maeve Fly was the only work nominated for both awards. You’ve won a Stoker and now been nominated for a Splatterpunk Award. What are your thoughts on that lack of crossover?
I’ll be honest, I’ve never compared the two award lists to know anything about crossover, or lack thereof. I’d guess the Stoker Awards veer towards more mainstream horror … but I can’t even say that with surety because I don’t vote in them – I don’t read enough to be informed. I get through less than a book a month and often I’m reading older stuff that I bought a decade ago! I think there are probably a lot of readers who view Splatterpunk as just a gross-out, blood-porn kind of genre and thus don’t read anything that bears that label. And sometimes … that’s true. But not always.
While I’ve written things that can be classified as splatterpunk, I don’t write fiction with the core intent being to “gross people out” or be “as over the top” as I can (which I think is the modus operandi of some authors). I write the amount of blood and sex that supports whatever story I’m telling. In the case of The Night Mother, there needed to be a lot of over-the-top sex and gore. It’s what NightWhere IS. The Bloodstained Doll? Despite the title, it’s a much quieter murder mystery. There are kills, but they’re not “splatterpunk.” But my approach to writing both stories was the same. Tell the story as it needs to be told.
“At the end of the day, every award in every genre and artistic format is ultimately something of a popularity contest for the “in” crowd of that particular niche. “
And I’m not saying that as a bad thing, just as a reality. Awards are by nature subjective. People vote for the things and people that they know … which often means friends and most popular. Something garners buzz and it gets checked out. Doesn’t mean it’s better than the thing released at the same time that didn’t catch the buzz. We’ve all read books and seen movies that we thought were wayyyyyy better than the things that won INSERT AWARD NAME HERE.
Why? Because most of us don’t read every book or watch every movie. We gravitate towards the authors and directors and actors that we like a lot. And (guilty) a lot of us don’t even vote for awards in our spheres of interest. Soooo the awards are not necessarily representative of a large whole. But they are valuable because they do recognize strong work and give readers some indication of worthy works that others should consider checking out. And that’s a good thing.
There are mountains of creative content out there that goes unrecognized because the creator doesn’t have the friend group/promotional skills/money, etc. to become known by a wide enough contingent. Still, new artists do break through (though again, it doesn’t mean they’re the best … they may just be the best lobbyists!). And if there are more award venues, the likelihood is that different “voting pools” are going to nominate different artists. Sooo … it’s good that there is an alternative faction to the Bram Stoker Awards. We need the Splatterpunk Awards. And, I’d say, we need more than that. How about the Supernatural Awards? The Erotic Horror Awards? The INSERT SUBGENRE HERE Awards. More recognition for more niche works just means that more interesting reads may surface and get a little play.
The Bloodstained Doll by John Everson
When Allyson’s mom dies unexpectedly, she thinks her world has hit rock bottom. But that’s before she goes to live with her estranged Uncle Otto in Germany. When a child’s empty casket is unearthed in the backyard during a violent storm, suddenly people close to her uncle start turning up dead. Is there a connection? As the noose tightens and murders draw closer to Berger Mansion, Allyson and her new boyfriend Andrew discover a dark truth hidden in the attic. Soon their lives are at stake if they don’t discover why each broken body is decorated with a Bloodstained Doll.
A modern Giallo, building on Everson’s previous homage to the stylish Italian mystery thrillers, Five Deaths for Seven Songbirds.
FLAME TREE PRESS is the imprint of long-standing Independent Flame Tree Publishing, dedicated to full-length original fiction in the horror and suspense, science fiction & fantasy, and crime / mystery / thriller categories. The list brings together fantastic new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices.
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