Attention, all you folks looking for the coolest anthology ever to submit your crazy, creepy, sexy, bloody little stories to. I'm putting together the story collection outlined below. You're officially invited to submit.
Giallo Re/Mixed & Re/Imagined
(AKA Sending Argento Into Space)
If you're a fan of Argento, Fulci, Bava, or Martino, you are familiar with the Giallo film genre. But did you know it got its name from yellow mystery books? Of course, the movies took it way past mere mystery into something almost synonymous with “Eurosleaze.”
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That's the vibe I'm hoping to recapture here in this anthology.
Twisted mysteries that have one foot in violence and another in crazyville and bring to mind classics such as Twitch of the Death Nerve, Deep Red, What Have You Done with Solange?, Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, Stage Fright, Baba Yaga, Tenebre, All the Colors of the Dark, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, Blood and Black Lace, and Four Flies on Gray Velvet. (If you haven't watched any of these, please do. They're awesome-tastic, whether you choose to write for this anthology or not.
The twist on this, though, for this anthology is:
Sound like fun? I thought so.
The details:
- Stories must be between 5-7k words.
- Stories must use the tropes of Giallo (gloves, up-close killings like knives and garotes, no poisoner or sniper types).
- Stores must be in a setting other than traditional Giallo.
- Story pitches must be approved before you turn in the story. Someone else may have already claimed the Western you had an idea about.
- R is welcome. Hard R can be even better. But let's avoid NC-17 or X though.
- All characters must be original. No public domain characters or characters from Giallo flicks that would need to be licensed.
- The best Giallo stories still drop clues like any good mystery, even with all those twists and turns in the plot.
- When in doubt, remember that "over the top" is your best friend here.
- All stories will be approved by the editor, me. Speed is good, but this isn't first-come, first-served.
- If you have questions, please email me for clarification.
Let me see your ideas, and we'll put a super cool book together.
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For those of you who were interested in the Giallo-inspired book (Giallo Re/Mixed & Re/Imagined), here's a sample of what I'm looking for when you send your pitches. You can also consider the Samurai epic setting no longer on the board. It's all mine.
Petals Fallen Off and Scattered So Suddenly
A giallo-style story set in Edo-era Japan
by Sean Taylor
Hisakichi is a ronin who wanders Japan taking jobs as he finds them. Sute is a disgraced geisha already kicked out of her master's chambers and now wanted for the deaths of three of his heirs. If found by the Daimyō's guards, she will be beheaded with barely an afterthought of a trial.
Having found Sute (whose name means "foundling") weeping over the latest victim), Hisakichi is determined to protect her and vows to buy back her honor by solving the crime and finding the true killer.
The killer slices the neck of each victim with a kaiken, the weapon of choice for a woman for self-defense, and leaves a scattering of cherry blossoms beside each body (which signifies the idea of mikkaminumanosakura, or sudden change in life). There is also a single bloody koto (gauntlet) left on the other side of the body, the one worn for the murder, which only makes the killing so much more confusing -- a warrior's glove paired with a woman's blade and a ritual flower.
But he's no detective or wise man, so he knows the odds aren't in his favor, even as the killer picks up the pace almost as if to taunt him. Not only that, the woman he has vowed to protect is also hiding a devastating secret from him.
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