#slasher books

[franticvampirereads]

I picked this audiobook up on a whim because I had a credit on Libro FM and the preview had me so hooked that I had to read it immediately. I’m not usually a horror reader, but this was so freaking good! I spent the whole book thinking one thing and then I was proven totally wrong, but I loved every blood drenched second of it. Charity and the rest of the crew were so much fun and they put up a good fight while they could!

This is definitely a book that I’ll be relistening to, to see if there are things I missed the first time around. If you’re looking for a slasher/horror book with queer characters, this is the one that you should read. And! The audio narration is fantastic, it almost felt like a podcast. You’re Not Supposed To Die Tonight is getting five stars from me!

[mylifeinfiction]

I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

Schting!

I really should have known better. For some ridiculous reason I went into this expecting a straight-forward, bloody slasher book told from the slasher's point-of-view. What I got was an inventively written examination of horror as a whole that gleefully dismantles the tropes of the genre to further understand—and therefore better execute—what they represent at their core.

Just because you learned it from VHS tapes doesn't mean it was bullshit, right?

Stephen Graham Jones's I Was a Teenage Slasher is so much more than just another horror thesis from one of the most resounding voices in literary horror, though. In addition to dissecting the genre, Jones also expertly utilizes each and every one of the tropes he's dissecting to deliver a deeply affecting coming-of-age story about the complex connection of friendship, the crushing weight of grief and trauma, and the forlorn feeling of being an outsider looking in.

The crowd I do run with are . . . well. We're the ones with black hearts and red hands. Masks and machetes.

This may not be the story I was expecting, but through Jones's brilliantly executed prose and astounding character work, he's able to tackle these themes in a wholly unpredictable manner that makes them simultaneously feel every bit as familiar and relatable as they do utterly groundbreaking.

The world's so much simpler when you've got a chainsaw in your hand, isn't it? A chainsaw or a machete or an axe, that's the elegant solution to every problem.

I Was a Teenage Slasher is horror lit in its highest, most unassuming form; a violently empathetic piece that delivers its maniacal slasher mayhem while never solely relying upon it.

It's liberating, not having to be yourself, isn't it?

9/10

-Timothy Patrick Boyer.

[aphantomslibrary]

Killer clowns in a cornfield? Sign me up!

I recently finished this slasher and thought about it for days. I loved the many different levels of horror that were layered throughout the book, the classic 80s slasher tropes, and the modern setting. It was fun and it absolutely freaked me out; I think my jaw permanently unhinged from how hard it hit the floor in that last act, which is saying something because I’m incorporeal. Anywho, a great horror to keep you on your toes and up all night!

Synopsis: Quinn Maybrook and her father have moved to tiny, boring Kettle Springs, to find a fresh start. But what they don’t know is that ever since the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory shut down, Kettle Springs has cracked in half.

On one side are the adults, who are desperate to make Kettle Springs great again, and on the other are the kids, who want to have fun, make prank videos, and get out of Kettle Springs as quick as they can.

Kettle Springs is caught in a battle between old and new, tradition and progress. It’s a fight that looks like it will destroy the town. Until Frendo, the Baypen mascot, a creepy clown in a pork-pie hat, goes homicidal and decides that the only way for Kettle Springs to grow back is to cull the rotten crop of kids who live there now.

[bekah-reading]

95

5/5

Before you results for the poll came out, I was lucky enough to be gifted this book. I absolutely ate this shit up. I have started Vampires of El Norte and I will finish it this week for sure.

This is a book that is about a teenager who ended up going on a killing spree. This is told as a memoir of the man looking back and writing about the experience he had.

I devoured this book. I loved it so much. Absolutely my favourite Stephen Graham Jones novel. The characters were amazing, the humour was funny. And I loved how intimate this felt. You can tell this story had such a personal and emotional impact on Stephen Graham Jones.

I would very much rather people experience this book for themselves rather than me tell about it. If you enjoy Paul Tremblay’s The Pallbearers’ Club; this book is for you.

[island-in-ignorance]

Just finished You're Not Supposed to Die Tonight and wow. If anything this book proved to me that I in no way am emotionally strong enough to be a Final Girl in a horror movie.

I'm so uncoordinated I would take myself out on accident while the Killer just stares at me, slightly amused and mostly annoyed.

[seaside-writings]

What are you working on?

Many, many, many things as all creators are lol.

But one of my favorite wips is a horror slasher I'm working on. It's still in the beginning stages and I don't know how well everything will go I mean I just have a premise and one very specific scene in mind. And I won't lie the premise is pretty cliché, but that's why I love it! Slasher movies have always been simple and they repeat like a loop, that's what makes them so much fun in my opinion!

But I've watched so many slasher movies that I thought it was time to give writing my own a shot!

[spookychloereads97]

Clown In a Cornfield(2020) by Adam Cesare review🤡🌽📚🚜

Synopsis: Quinn Maybrook just wants to make it to graduation, but she might not make it to morning. When Quinn and her father moved to a tiny town with a weird clown for a mascot, they were looking for a fresh start. But ever since the town's only factory shut down, Kettle Springs has been cracked in half.

Most of the town believes that the kids are to blame. After all, the juniors and seniors at Kettle Springs High are the ones who threw the party where Arthur Hill's daughter died. They're the ones who set the abandoned factory on fire and who spend all their time posting pranks on YouTube. They have no respect and no idea what it means to work hard.

For the kids, it's the other way around. And now Kettle Springs is caught in a constant battle between old and new, tradition and progress. Its a fight that looks like it will destroy the town. Until one homicidal clown with a porkpie hat and a red nose decides to end it for ood. Because if your opponents all die, you win the debate by default:

This book was absolutely insane.

I felt like I was watching a slasher movie when I was reading it.

I really liked the how Adam captured the whole conservative adults not understanding the younger generation and the younger generation not understanding the older conservative generation and how the conservative generation feels about how “things were better,” and all that.

I also appreciated the Midwest feel it has to it since it takes place in Missouri as someone who lives in the Midwest myself.

Some things could’ve been a little better but ehh no one is perfect.

I wish got a little more in depth with certain characters but again no one is perfect.

I was definitely getting some 90s teen slasher vibes from this book. Definitely Scream vibes for sure.

I really liked Quinn as the main character, I thought she was badass and well written in my opinion, I really liked the relationship between her and her dad and how they would do anything to help each other.

Some of the characters I didn’t really care for like Ronnie, but whatever.

The plot was a bit hokey if that makes since but I ain’t mad about it.

Overall it was a fun read and I definitely will be looking out for Adam’s work in the future and I will definitely be reading the sequels.

8/10

[deludedimages]

Review for I Was A Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

My first Slasher was Halloween. I was 10. My mom rented a couple of movies from UHaul—yes, you could do that at one point—and I watched them repeatedly. My older sisters were teenagers, and I was left to my own devices. My younger sister was too small to watch it, and I knew that after the first time through. I remember the opening scene vividly. Michael stalked around the house. His mask went…

[egophiliac]

they're baaaaaack

[afabuloussecret]

Me writing and loving content about masked men and stalkers. Knowing damn well this would actually be me if I had one.

[oneinathousand]

I recently got the 1995 book Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and Horror Cinema by Mark A. Miller and decided to put together some of my favorite quotes. I bought the first edition because it was cheaper, but the second edition had some revisions and expansions, what exactly was different I don't know (I'm sure it addressed Lee's big explosion in popularity in the early 2000's among other things), but there's still lots and lots of interesting material in here; plus, to my surprise the copy I got was signed by the author himself back in 1995, so that's pretty cool.

Anyway, here's some quotes for ya:

These first two quotes are Vincent Price talking about Lee and Cushing which I thought were absolutely darling. Here's the one about Lee:

Everybody told me that he was rather stiff and unbending and not very funny. Well, we screamed with laughter from the minute we shook hands until now. We get along just like mad... write each other rude notes and funny letters and telegrams and postcards and, you know, anything we can find that we know will tickle one another. He's one of the few actors in my life that I have stayed in touch with, strangely enough. If you get him on a subject that he likes, he's very warm and vibrant. I think he's got a wonderful sense of humor, but I don't think everybody knows how to get at it. For some reason or other we strike each other as funny, and it's wonderful fun to be with him.

Here's him about Cushing:

He's nothing like Christopher Lee because Peter's a very wiry, little fellow. But Peter is one of the strongest men I ever knew in my life. I had to do several fight scenes with him [in Madhouse]. My God! He can throw you! He doesn't fake it at all. Nobody warned me about this, and I was sort of battered and bruised. He's a very realistic and very serious-minded actor. I like Peter very much, and I hear from him always at Christmas. On our birthdays we send each other the funniest cards we can find too. He's a very gentle, sweet man. I am very, very fond of him.

Cushing was, in fact, not a little man, but of course Price would have seen him as one from his perspective lol... The part about Cushing apparently being incredibly strong is pretty wild considering Price was referring to him during the making of Madhouse, when he had spent the last 2-ish years losing a lot of weight, smoked like a chimney (the book mentions at one point that he could smoke up to 50-60 cigarettes a day before he quit), was a vegetarian, and was in his early 60's. If he was strong enough to toss Price's tall ass around like a rag doll then (which is a very funny mental image), how strong was he during his prime???

Here's a description of the Lee family cheering up Cushing for the holidays during the making of Horror Express:

He faced his first Christmas without Helen and in a country that was not even his own. Luckily he found solace on Christmas Day in the warm family gathering of the Lees in their Madrid hotel. Gitte and Christina had flown over for the holiday, and they invited Peter to spend the day with them. This was the fourteenth film in which they had both acted since The Curse of Frankenstein fifteen years before, and one that offered them many great scenes together. But their best scene together was the one in that Madrid hotel on Christmas in which Peter Cushing received the emotional support he needed so desperately. The next morning Cushing was back at the studio, cheerfully ready for work.

So sweet... For anyone wondering, this book did not mention anything about Lee supposedly comforting Cushing with his presence in case the latter ever had any night terrors while making Horror Express. I'm starting to think that story might be made up! Maybe it was mentioned in the second edition, or maybe it was mentioned in one of the interviews or whatever that Miller used for researching this book. My search for a primary or secondary source continues.

Here's actress Lorna Heilbron about Cushing and Lee during the making of The Creeping Flesh:

Peter Cushing is a brilliant actor I think. I was, of course, playing his daughter, and Peter had quite recently lost his wife Helen and was grieving for her and was very open about this. He related to me as a father and was tremendously caring and supportive, especially as he felt that I resembled Helen, so we had a rather intense relationship where I felt he really "lived" his part in the film. He came the first day on the set with his script covered, literally covered, with notes he had written about what he felt his character would do or be feeling at any particular time. He also knew down to the last detail what props he would require and had obviously chosen his costumes with immense care. Within all this careful forethought he was very flexible so that if an actor gave him something unexpected, he would respond to this and was willing to go with what was happening "now". He was charming, courteous, and clever and was dearly liked and admired by everyone. At that time he was, as I said, feeling very sad and so was clearly very vulnerable. He would take himself on his own to have a bit of a wander and, I suspect, a jolly good cry. I adored him. I didn't get to know Christopher Lee so well, mostly because I didn't actually have many scenes with him and partly because he kept "himself to himself" as we say over here. I remember he had a most wonderful singing voice, of which he was justly proud, and which would go ringing round the corridors of Shepperton. The crew called him "Rabbity Lee" because he loved to talk, which he did very amusingly and at some length. I have often felt he was a much better actor than some of his material. He and Peter seemed close and distant at the same time. They probably didn't have that much in common apart from a very strong symbiotic working relationship.

Rabbity Lee… 🥲

Next is Price, Lee, and Cushing's opinions on House of the Long Shadows, which I feel each perfectly encapsulate their personalities.

Vincent Price spoke bitterly about the film in 1991: "A disaster - because the man, whoever - I can't even remember his name; psychosomatically I've forgotten it - the guy who directed it and the [editor] who cut it... they just cut all the comedy out of it... I hated it. Desi Arnaz, who was very good in it - they just turned it all over to him so that you never had the four people you wanted to see ever doing anything at all. That was that stupid director." When asked in 1992 if he agreed with Price that the film constituted a missed opportunity for the all-star team-up, Christopher Lee quickly responded: "I do, without a doubt. He was absolutely right. It's the old, old story: get it on film, finish it in time and on budget, and if it's in focus, we can sell it." Asked also of his memories of Pete Walker directing him, Lee replied simply, "He didn't." Peter Cushing's only complaint is that he suffered from bronchitis while making the film in a cold, damp, seventeenth-century manor house in Hampshire that had no heat. Because he found working with Lee, Price, and Carradine to be "a joy," Cushing summed up the film as "lovely to do."

Speaking of House of the Long Shadows, I wanted to bring up one particular criticism Mark A. Miller had of the movie to be very ironic if you've been in the fandom for this era of horror whatsoever on Tumblr. Miller absolutely hated the iconic "bitch" line from Price, saying of it:

Instead of the good-natured, funny lines that work so well in horror send-ups like The Raven, A Comedy of Terrors, and Young Frankenstein, in this film we only hear Price's character call Lee's a "bitch" - the embarrassing epitome of the script's nasty, witless spirit. After Price's line, the film seems more like a cruel practical joke on the venerable cast than an amusing parody of their images.

I agree with many of Miller's takes throughout the book, but definitely not all of them, and this is a case of that. That line's the best part of the movie! It's Vincent Price saying "bitch" in cursive, it's so delicious! Did Miller hate fun? I can't ask him because he's dead. What if the line was an ad-lib from Price, huh? If Miller knew how popular that moment is on this website, he'd probably be baffled, lol.

[wormwoodandhoney]

books read in 2024: i was a teenage slasher by stephen graham jones

i was the scary thing in the dark.

tolly driver is a good-hearted screwup in a small town in texas in 1989 when, after a prank gone wrong, he's cursed to be a slasher seeking revenge. he doesn't want to do this, but a curse is a curse and the genre has strict rules.

[mylifeinfiction]

The Angel of Indian Lake by Stephen Graham Jones

Scars proved you lived.

I admittedly have a pretty serious love/hate relationship with Jade Daniels. Her papers throughout My Heart Is a Chainsaw really tested my patience, and her immaturity throughout the events of that book seemed a bit too much. But the person she begins to grow into by the end of Chainsaw and throughout the events of the all-around masterpiece that is the middle book of this trilogy, Don't Fear the Reaper , is so interesting and complete that I couldn't help but fall in love with Jade Daniels and every blood-soaked thing for which she stands.

"...the cool thing about trilogies is you get to use every last part of the buffalo."

Stephen Graham Jones's The Angel of Indian Lake isn't quite the all-around horror masterpiece that Reaper is, but it is a wholly worthy final chapter in The Indian Lake Trilogy, or: The Savage History of Proofrock, Idaho. Throughout the trilogy, we've seen Jade Daniels go from immature, delusional slasher fantasist, to begrudgingly badass final girl, to hesitant horror historian. Best to call it the The Violent Coming-of-Age of a Reluctantly Willing Final Girl. It's an authentically compelling character arc that relishes the romance of the final girl without ever shying away from the traumatic weight of the role and the cyclical nature of violence throughout the history America.

She's right. In the rock/paper/scissors of horror, chainsaw always wins. Cops and guns don't work against slashers, trucks and fire are big fat fails, but a chainsaw? If you've got a chainsaw, you're pretty damn golden.

The Angel of Indian Lake ties the trilogy together so beautifully, so viciously, that even its flaws are fascinating. SGJ makes the risky decision to close out Jade's story by throwing us headfirst into her mind, writing Angel in an (often stream-of-conscious) first-person narrative. Jade's mind is a chaotic, damaged landscape that can often create pacing issues due to her unfocused, rambling narration, but it also gives us a deeper look into the root of these horrific events, bringing the many disjointed storylines together in a brutally bloody, emotionally exhausting and thematically cathartic manner.

And the plotting itself is even more risky, bringing together every last piece of this epic horror saga in a batshit crazy onslaught of slaughter. But thankfully, SGJ's vision is complete, and he conducts these exceedingly insane displays of slasher carnage in a way that only ever enriches the overarching themes; and more than makes up for the lulls between. The climactic massacre is so dam wild, and I loved every bizarre, messy minute of it. Jade and those she loves are seriously put through the wringer, here, but it all comes together for such a fitting, bittersweet ending that brings Jade to exactly where she needs to be.

Despite those pacing issues and some moments of feeling completely lost among all those players and plot-points, SGJ sticks the landing, delivering a third installment that does indeed "mash that pedal to the floor until it gets stuck", and thankfully never loses traction.

It's supposed to mean Proofrock's slasher days are over.

8/10

-Timothy Patrick Boyer.

[y3strr]

Me, fully convinced that the slashers wouldn’t kill me bc I’m basically Y/N

[per-civall]

Any plans on drawing your interpretation of book Carrie?

A quick sketch of Book! Carrie cause I’m always happy to draw my favorite girl! ^^

[lalicel]