Guest Post: Genre-Splicing and Why I Do It by Jason Parent

Today I'm delighted to bring you a guest post by the wonderful, the weird - you'll understand once you've read his post, the one and the only Jason Parent. This is one stop of many to promote the release of his new book A Life Removed (and his promotion to the front seat of the special bus, but shhh lets keep that just between us ;) ) I'll be posting a review for A Life Removed tomorrow so be sure to keep an eye out for that.




Genre-Splicing and Why I Do It


Have you ever seen the movie Splice, starring Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley, where two scientists create a new lifeform through gene splicing? The fast-aging “girl” embodies the most resilient genes of the animal kingdom while retaining a somewhat humanoid form.

When I write, that’s what I want to create. No, not some gender-swapping (spoiler alert… oh, too late. Well you should have seen the movie eight years ago) abomination, but a mixture of all the most resilient features of the best genres: political satire, anamorphic romance, and robots who calculate and drink tea.

Actually, more like alcoholic shapeshifting cyborgs who attempt to save the world from a megalomaniac American president (yeah, like we’d ever have one of those) hell-bent on making Russian telepathic huskies birth litters of highly intelligent and genitalia-enhanced (or genetically enhanced, tomayto, tomahto) cyber-doodles to spread plague-infused feces across the planet… while a mysterious figure lurks in the shadows… who sometimes calculates and drinks tea. So, yeah, kind of like the movie, Splice.

Adrian Brody’s nose is genetically enhanced. I wonder if… never mind…

I had a point.

I think.

Oh yeah, genre splicing. Horror authors often claim their tales to be studies of the human condition as everyone experiences fear, there’s inspiration in overcoming it, or some other horseshit while peddling their Eyeball Worms Versus Mutant Sheep Colons Versus the Zombie Apocalypse novel (which I will be releasing next month). But don’t all genres reflect some aspect of the human condition? And don’t we secretly want a little love, mystery, drama, suspense, thrills, and maybe even humor mixed in with our kill, kill, kill, mutilate, cannibalize, kill, have a siesta, kill, rape dead thing, kill (which I will be releasing the month after next)?

I know growing up in the eighties, I waited patiently for that love scene I could expect from every R-rated horror film of the time, the one that made me all tingly in my underpants and by which I define true love even to this day. If that’s not true love in all its beauty, I don’t know what is. Frankly, I don’t know how Jason Voorhees had the heart to interrupt such lovers’ bliss on more occasions than my own quivering hand—heart, I said heart—could endure.

What do you mean that’s not true love? Tomayto, tomahto, my friend. Potayto, potahto. Nellie Furtaydo. I’m calling her that from now on until someone gets annoyed enough to tell me to stop.

My point is (see I told you I have a point) is that you could eat hotdogs all day, every day (haggis for you Scarlet compatriots, except I don’t think anyone could really eat that crap once, never mind daily… as if hotdogs were any better), but eventually, you’ll crave wieners even less than the kind women seem to so often see in their inboxes. (I am saddened that no one has ever sent me a dick pic – I had to literally look up Brett Favre’s beansprout. Like really? No one felt I was good enough to see Brett Favre’s penis? But I digress… again).

Me? I like a buffet. So give me my horror with some sci-fi, some mystery, some thrills, and even some laughs, but timing is everything. Just as I don’t want to mix my cheesecake with my salad (ha, like I eat salad), I don’t want a love story to break out right when the president’s hot dog is being ground into haggis by a mysterious figure drinking tea, unless it’s meant to be funny. Then, I’ll roll with it.

But with a hotdog in that roll, not haggis.

PS - Don't listen to him, a wee bit o haggis beats a hotdog anyday!