I thought I’d bring a question to the AH blog here and find out what people might think.

Earlier I started watching Red Dragon, the 2002 remake based on Thomas Harris’ novel, the basis of Michael Mann’s Manhunter.  Ran out of time this morning.  I’ll start it over and watch it later.  (Yeah, I’m weird.  Either I wake up to a horror flick or CNN.  Is there a difference?)

While wading through one of the slower moments in the flick, I was comparing differences between Manhunter, the original novel, and the film I was zoning out of.  Then I remembered an argument I got into with Kevin J. Anderson at a convention about 10 years ago over the Michael Mann flick.  He thought the movie had steered too far from the book and should’ve kept more from the killer’s POV, including backstory and how it tied into his graphic MO.  I didn’t think any of it was necessary.

“How much horror do you need?” I said.  I was only half-serious, facetious but still curious what he thought was really necessary to make the story work.  He shrugged it off, glowered for a few seconds, clearly annoyed.  We moved on to things , it turned out, we both agreed on.  It ended amiably.  A year later, he even signed a book or two for me and Jamie.

Cut back to June 2004.  My mind’s drifting away from Red Dragon, making comparisons like I said, flitting around that disagreement KJA and I had.  I’d gone back and forth on the use of gore, disillusioned with splatterpunk writing and lame-brained horror flicks until I finally got around to renting Hellraiser.   Between that and Neil Gaiman’s work, I started making a serious study of dark fantasy. ( I’d been dealing with almost a year of constant nightmares, so it gave me a chance to deal with all these dark themes and images in my waking hours.  Kept me sane, got a mini-education.  Doesn’t suck.)

But I came away with a better understanding of gore and violence as storytelling devices.  Until then, I’d seen only the awkward mishandlings of it.  Most slasher flicks lack the skill of Hitchcock, Barker, or Dario Argento.  I knew about public protests against media violence, but only heard smatterings of things like tragedy as drama, catharsis, and Grand Guignol. 

Anyway, it’s gotten wondering what people might say.  Horror isn’t everyone’s cup of tea in the first place.  Graphic violence is the drop of arsenic that only so many have the stomach for.  Is it possible to do a tastefully done gory scene?

Well, we’ve made a few sales and sent out some promo disks for review.  XM Satellite has gotten their copy by now, and we’re still trying to get through to Fangoria Magazine.  Fans will probably see us in horror-oriented search engines.

The inevitable question of course is:  What are people saying about Afterhell?

So far we’ve had only a trickle of feedback, all positive for the most part. All the comments to date have praised the professional quality of the production.  Score one each for Piotr Orloff and Alida Saxon.  Someone thought it wasn’t as violent as advertised.  (I was in danger of overcompensating even before I heard that! 😉 ) 

Meanwhile, our cast is still pulling all the stops for us.  They gave us all thumbs-up on the no-frills contributor copies we burned from our master, and a few have asked for the packaged CDs as well.  And from what I understand, Peter Wright aka Detective Moore keeps the pilot ep on his iPod.

Woo-hoo!  Our disk has been ripped!

Er…wait a minute….

The recent news from Iraq and Nick Berg’s death delivers a painful reminder what horror really is. 

I won’t belabor it or the politics of it here.  But it’s important to note.  Horror isn’t just a genre of spook thrillers and slasher flicks.  We slap the word on books and movies when we should be calling them dark fantasies.  Vampires and black magic don’t happen in the real world.  Horror belongs to the real world.

I’m not knocking horror fiction, dark fantasy, or anything like that.  I wouldn’t have written Afterhell, let alone produced it, if I could dismiss the genre out of hand.  As long as we carve out a place for dreams in our waking hours, our nightmares deserve equal time.  We need the emotional release.

But considering how jaded we are about so many things, in a strange way it’s a relief to know we can still be horrified.

Just got my own copies of the CD this weekend (thanks!) And here’s a quick photo for the curious. I think Cafepress did a real nice job with it.

Afterhell producer here, adding to the messages.

Thank you, Ali, for getting this up and running. It’s beautiful.

To those of you just discovering our dark little corner of the world, welcome. Please do stay … no, really. We mean it. Shared dreams thrive on the contributions of all the dreamers. And the same is true of nightmares.

Feel free to join the community; we’re looking forward to hearing what you have to say.

Testing 1,2,3…is this on? 😉

Hi, folks!  We’re opening a community blog for the Afterhell audio project, so I decided to get a LJ account here for it.  I’ll be using this space mainly to discuss AH, radio shows, dark fantasy, and maybe creativity in general.

Our current status is pretty good so far.  The first ep is available on CD at our online store and looks great.  Props to Alida Saxon, our webmistress and all-around kewl grrl.  This blog was her idea and she’s been generous as well as fast in putting this together.  Contributor copies have gone out to our cast, and we’ve gotten our first few sales!  So far the response has been positive.

We’re hoping to sell at least 100 copies.  Once that happens, we can make more eps!  We’ve already got three scripts and a few story outlines in the pipeline…waiting.

Our main focus now is promotion.  We’ve got to get some CDs into people’s heads ASAP.  We need victims.