New submission opportunity -- Remixing Giallo

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.”

Black-gloved killers. Sexed-up victims. Blood so red and thick it could never be real. But at its heart, a Giallo thriller was always wrapped up around a twisted murder mystery story that kept viewers guessing until the final blood-drenched scene. 

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:

Each story must take the standard tropes of Giallo and put it in a different genre setting. No two stories can be in the same setting. Wrap your story proposal in the trappings of sci-fi, Western, urban fantasy, summer camp horror, Gothic romance, Dickensian, superheroes, sword and sorcery, planetary romance, 70s urban crime, haunted house ghost story, medical thriller, martial arts, bodice ripper, samurai epic, etc. 

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.

Movie Reviews for Writers: Tenebrae

 

As if we didn't know this one was about a writer, it opens with the book Tenebrae itself, which is then thrust into the fire. So, someone is a little disgusted by the book this movie revolves around. 

That over-simplistic plotting aside, what we have here in this movie is perhaps one of Argento's best Giallo thrillers with perhaps the best absurdist kills. It's almost Giallo biting its bloody tongue in its cheek. 

Like any good Italian "yellow," people die (mainly women) and someone murders and a few folks get wrapped up in trying to solve the mystery before the (usually inept) police can. A special treat in Tenebrae is the role John Saxon plays as Peter Neal's agent, one in which he displays a not often seen talent for comic timing, particularly in regards to his new hat. Seriously, this role alone makes me miss him all over again. 

Beginning with the opening scene of Neal's novel being thrown into a fire and burned to ashes, it's pretty clear this movie has a lot to do with readers' perception of the author's work. This point is driven home early in the film when, Tilde, a reporter interviews Neal and puts the pressure on with perhaps the biggest accusation the 70s had to offer. 

Tilde: Tenebrae is a sexist novel. Why do you despise women so much?
Neal: Sexist. No, I don't think it's sexist. 

Tilde: Women as victims, ciphers, the male heroes with their hairy, macho bullshit. How can you say it isn't?

Neal: Tilde, what's the matter with you. You've known me for ten years, every since you studied in New York. You know very well that I -- 

Tilde:  Look, I'm talking about your work. 

Neal: Well, I don't know. Would you like me to tell you that I supported the Equal Rights Ammendment? 

Tilde: Okay, so explain the books. Do you write to a fixed pattern? Or do your publishers tell you this kind of sexism sells copies?

The argument is, therefore, "If it's not you, is your publishers then? Somehow, it's never "Maybe I misunderstood your intent." Because, as the movie so blatantly states, that doesn't happen. 

As if it were blunt enough from Tilde, even the detective on the case gets to poke his jabs at our poor novelist. Upon interviewing him, the detective mentions that Neal tends to include a lot of sexual deviants in his work.

"It's about sexual deviants. It's about more than that. Well two of the victims are deviants. One is gay. Did I say that was deviant? He's perfectly happy."

The assumption, again, isn't "Maybe I misunderstood the work." It's "if you didn't include stuff like that, maybe a killer wouldn't be using your book as a blueprint for serial murder." 

The characters are simply stand-ins for your readers. They're simply saying the same thing your readers are. Thank you for writing it, but it's our turn now to decide what this story is about. 

This all brings up to the main statement this awesome, bloody flick makes about the life of a writer -- particularly a famous novelist, but it really applies to us all, from self-published to indie house to New York Times best-sellers.

Take notes. Here it is.

After you publish, you lose all control over the message of your story. The words stop meaning what you say they mean or intended them to mean. The "truth" of the tales becomes whatever the eye (or ear) of the beholder feels like it is. Readers and critiquers take over. 

I recently read a bit in Thomas Foster's How To Read Literature Like a Professor that I think summarizes this idea perfectly:

"If I could wave a wand and get rid of everyone's sense of obligation to the writer, I would do it i n a heart. A reader's only obligation, it seems to me, is to the text. We can't interrogate the writer as to intentions, so the only basis of authority must reside in the text itself. Trust the words and the words only. You can never find the motivation behind them. Even if the wirter told you his intent, as a group theire notorious liars and not to be trusted. Plus, writers do thens sometimes because they "just feel right"; that is, not ever choice is made consciously, although that doesn't mean theire's no reason behind it."

I know. I know. That's not fair. Well... tough. 

Even in today's social media and writer's blog-driven world where writers have the luxury of saying what they mean between the lines and espousing out loud for all to see the politics and philosophies they hold dear that drives their fiction, even now, we still don't really hold on to that power anymore. The obligation to the writer is nil. The obligation to society to interpret the text is supreme. 

But instead of pulling out our hair, we can just grab a bottle of the good stuff and get to work on the next book. At least for a while, we can still have control of that one.