Uncaged: Can you tell us more about your book, Slasher Crasher? Is this your debut novel?
Yes, this is my debut novel and I’m beyond ecstatic. SLASHER CRASHER is a love letter to my high school friends and eighties slashers. A mix of MEAN GIRLS and HALLOWEEN, it is a dark comedic take on horror films and the “final girl” character. Carol J. Clover in the feminist film theory novel, Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, coined the term the “final girl.” She described “final girls” as sweet, virginal characters in horror films and novels who transform into testosterone-fueled warriors that must take down the killers or monsters who have been stalking them. Typically these “final girls” kill the killers/monsters and the story ends. However, I thought: What would happen if the “final girl” wasn’t so nice? What if she kind of had a thing for the killer/monster? SLASHER CRASHER was born.
Uncaged: What inspired you to write in the horror genre?
I received a film education–specifically a horror one– at a young age from my father. By the time I was nine years old I’d seen most of the classics: THE EXORCIST, ROSEMARY’S BABY, JAWS. Although I was terrified of these films in the beginning, I slowly fell in love with the genre venturing out to the world of horror literature. I was so enthralled by the GOOSEBUMPS and SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK series that I thought, ‘Hey. Maybe I could try this whole writing thing.’
Uncaged: What are you working on now that you can tell us about?
I’m starting my next novel and I felt like switching things up. A total 180. Instead of horror I wanted to try something more soft, sweet. I also wanted to try my hand at alternative stories in existing fictional universes like WICKED. I don’t want to give it away but I hope it’ll be extra sweet.
Read the rest of this interview in Uncaged Book Reviews, October 2019 issue – link below.
Born in Syracuse, NY, David Nora was a normal child until he saw THE EXORCIST at the age of seven. Sleeping with an actual vile of holy water, he finally recovered with his first viewing of the meta-slasher comedy, SCREAM. Since then he has been devouring everything horror related— except the CHILD’S PLAY movies. He wants nothing to do with that devil doll. Currently, he lives in New York City working as a teacher of the visually impaired and blind.
Slasher Crasher
David Nora
Horror/Humor
It’s Halloween. Nick Roesch, a towering figure of evil and stupidity, escapes from the upstate New York mental hospital he’s been committed to for the past five years. Planning to return to his childhood home, where he brutally murdered his babysitter’s boyfriend, his plans are halted when he crosses paths with an even more terrifying beast—two high school friends with some serious beef. Caught in a battle of loyalty that has been brewing for ten years of their friendship, the two girls, Kathleen Strife and Betsy Coleman, force the feud into a savage showdown, pitting the escaped monster against each other. Who will survive this epic deathmatch, and is it totally wrong to fall in love with the murderous lunatic who just tried to kill your ex-best friend with a machete?
Excerpt
Nick Roesch, 5:00 a.m.
It started like an ‘80s slasher film. Not John Carpenter’s Halloween, the classic of suburban horror, but the countless, mostly Canadian copycats that emulated its simple-but-effective formula of the escaped mental patient who [choose one: had been burnt in a high school prank, buried in your runof-the-mill mining accident, and/or mentally abused by Santa Claus] and picks off a sexy group of no-good teenagers on [a beloved American holiday].
In this crude rip-off, it was Halloween, and Nick Roesch, a massive, pineapple-shaped teen wearing an oversized gray sweater and blue scrubs, was running through the vast wooded area surrounding Summer Hill House, the psychiatric hospital in Hannibal, New York, where he’d spent the last five years. After a window dive from the hospital’s second floor, he was following the early-morning light that trickled through the pines, hoping it would lead him to a house or road.
Read the rest of the excerpt from the issue below:
