Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #79: Unsplatterpunk! 8 is now out in paperback and ebook, edited by Douglas J. Ogurek!
Steel your guts!
The UNSPLATTERPUNK! slaughterscape expands its grisly reach with more tales that blend a positive message into a cesspit of gore and grossness. In this eighth issue, four heroines bash and slice their way to illumination.
A status-seeking it girl takes self-injury to throbbing new heights in a commentary on the allure of attention via victimhood. The Bachelor unites with Squid Game when a hand model joins a reality TV competition and learns that beauty goes beyond designer stilettos and jewellery. Bullied high schoolers achieve vicarious vengeance in an allegorical tale that explores the power of camaraderie. Kung Fu Sue, returning for her third UNSPLATTERPUNK! performance, gives fans another fix of her fighting virtuosity and nonchalance as she takes on a drug cartel with pachydermatous power.
The moral of the gory
If you’re looking for a splatterpunk anthology that wrings some positivity out of the carnage and nastiness, then this is the anthology for you. Mind you, you’ll still get the cracked bones, exploded heads, and ruptured organs… but you’ll get it with a ray of hope.
Contents
- Star Struck – Kevin Brown
- The BTB Royale – DW Milton
- Schoolyard Saints – Alistair Rey
- Kung Fu Sue and the Drug Lord’s Elephant – Harris Coverley
- The Quarterly Review – Stephen Theaker and Douglas J. Ogurek review The Blood-Drenched Honeycomb by Leo X. Robertson, Dating After the End of the World by Jeneva Rose, Dead Scalp by Jasper Bark, Envy by Ash Ericmore, The God of Wanking by Peter Caffrey, A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay, Millionaires Day by Kit Power and the Ploopy Knob.
Here are the blood-spattered contributors to this issue.
Alistair Rey is the author of the fiction collection The Art of Ghost Writing. His work has been featured in the Berkeley Fiction Review, Weirdbook, Juked magazine and Lowestoft Chronicle, among other publications. Rey’s fiction also appears in anthologies alongside such authors as Stephen Graham Jones, Philip Fracassi, Jonathan Sims and Gemma Files.
Douglas J. Ogurek is the pseudonymous and sophomoric founder of the unsplatterpunk subgenre, which uses splatterpunk conventions (i.e. transgressive/gory/gross subject matter) to deliver a positive message. His short story collection I Will Change the World… One Intestine at a Time (Plumfukt Press), a juvenile stew of horror and bizarro, aims to make readers lose their lunch while learning a lesson. His novella Stone Ovaries and Bowling Balls Trapped in Beautiful Prodigy World (Planet Bizarro) offers a minefield of immaturity filled with bodily expulsions, princesses, deranged mothers, malapropisms and guacamole.
DW Milton is a pen name. The author has a day job but would rather be writing speculative fiction.
Harris Coverley has had more than a hundred short stories published in Penumbra, Crimeucopia, JOURN-E and The Black Beacon Book of Horror (Black Beacon Books), amongst many others. He has also had over two hundred poems published in journals around the world. He lives in Manchester, England.
Kevin Brown has two published short story collections, Death Roll and Ink on Wood. His fiction, nonfiction and poetry have been published in over 200 literary journals, magazines and anthologies. He has won numerous writing competitions and was nominated for multiple prizes and awards, including four Pushcart Prizes.
Stephen Theaker’s reviews, interviews and articles have appeared in Interzone, Black Static, Prism, Dark Horizons and the BFS Journal. His story “The Reader-Queens of Tranck” appeared in the BFS anthology Emerging Horizons, edited by Allen Ashley. He has written many novels, none of them well-regarded.
As ever, all back issues of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction are available for free download.
