All You Can Eat News - Plate #1

Introduction to My Hot & Fresh Newsletter - Who the Fuck is Shane McKenzie? - Teaser Trailer for SCRAPHEAD!

Hello and welcome to the very first helping of ALL YOU CAN EAT NEWS! The monthly newsletter of horror writer SHANE MCKENZIE (that’s me, bitch!), stuffed full with exclusive updates on all my latest book, comic, and movie projects. Plus… whatever the fuck else is on my mind at any random time. I guess that makes this place my diary? Which means you’re like… totally reading my diary right now…

But fuck it… it’s your funeral! AND NOBODY’S CRYING!

So… where do I begin? First of all, for those of you who know me… GODDAMN IT’S GOOD TO BE BACK! Writing books was always my happy place, where my wild animal of an imagination could be uncaged and encouraged to go apeshit with no regard for rules or limitations. Where I never had to pull my punches or worry about offending anyone or hurting the feelings of sensitive people (who have no cockin’ business reading the type of shit I write in the first dickin’ place). Where things like budgets and ratings and egos never even occur to me as I craft and develop my stories.

And most importantly (and what I missed the most) is the unfiltered, raw communication between my readers and me that only a book can accomplish. There’s no one else here, nobody to get in our way! It’s just you and me, baby! And while our imaginations are locked into this intimate connection, I get to tell you the kinds of stories I want to tell in the exact way I want to tell them. For better or worse!

And boy oh boy do I have some stories to tell you… Stories that have been boiling in my brain for years… stories that I was told could either never happen or would have to be heavily altered and tamed to even be considered for film or television. And all my pent-up frustrations will be the high-octane fuel that fires these stories out of my skull and straight into yours… with equal parts aggression, enthusiasm, and love!

Oh yeah, for all of the new folks who are just learning who I am, or who somehow wandered and stumbled their way into this dark, dank place, where everything is moist and sticky and smells kinda like ham…

I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU! Just what in the hell took you so long?! But seriously you guys… I’M SO FUCKING GLAD YOU’RE HERE!!!

And if you came here for why I think you came here, then I make this pledge to you here and now: I will bust my fat, brown ass every goddamn day of the week to make sure your horror cravings are satisfied. And I mean that shit. My job is to entertain you, and one way or another I’ll get the job done, even if it kills me. And it’s come close a time or two…

If you’re the kind of horror fan who feels unfulfilled by the repetitive and watered-down nature of mainstream media, who (in the right hands) enjoys the feeling of being shocked or surprised or even uncomfortable… If you’re the kind of person who laughs hysterically during those scenes in movies that everyone else finds so upsetting and inappropriate?

Then I think this is the start of a very beautiful, disgusting, blood-drenched, fucked up relationship… And I can’t wait to entertain the shit outta you.

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So… who the fuck is Shane McKenzie you ask?

Don’t worry, I’m not gonna get all autobiography here. This isn’t my biopic where you see me as a child reading horror comics under the covers, and then my father rushes in and catches me and tells me that horror is evil and that he’ll be goddamned if any son of his is gonna waste his time with that trash, and then a montage shows how hard I worked despite my father’s beliefs and how bit by bit I found success as a horror writer getting books published and going to movie premieres, and how through all that I met a great woman and we fell in love and got married, and how the darkness of it all eventually made me hit rock bottom and ruined my marriage and proved my father right all along, only to bounce back and clean up my act and make amends with both my wife and my father who finally tells me he’s proud of me, and then at the very end I’m sitting in a theater between my wife and father, holding both their hands as my magnum opus — a horror movie based on my novel — starts and I finally realize that while I had been striving for a successful career in horror my entire life, what I really needed I had all along… none of that’s true my the way.

Oh, and then there’s a freeze frame or title card with a quick summary of my accomplishments that didn’t get covered in the biopic due to time, budget, and their lack of meaningful connection with the theme and my character arc… But like I said, I’m not gonna do that!

I WAS gonna get into my journey as a writer, how I started with writing short stories and novels/novellas and eventually wrote some comic books… how one of my novels was optioned and adapted into a short film which introduced me to screenwriting… how I eventually switched my focus from books to movies and television where I wrote projects for Warner Bros and Blumhouse among others… and how I eventually found my way back to books and comics while continuing my career as a professional screenwriter, all in service of accomplishing my ultimate goal: BECOMING A FULL TIME WRITER!!! A goal that hasn’t changed a bit, from short stories to feature films.

But I’ve got a lot to say when it comes to all that… not to mention all the shit I want to say but can’t/shouldn’t… So I think I’ll dive into all that in a separate post. Maybe the next one, maybe a year from now… but definitely… eventually… I’ll follow my gut on this one!

I think it would be more valuable, especially to those of you who are reading my work for the first time, to explain who I am as an author and what you can expect when you crack open a book with my name on the cover. I chose the term AUTHOR rather than the all-encompassing term WRITER on purpose. Because writing books, writing comic scripts, and writing screenplays are all completely different sports with their own set of rules and regulations, despite how similar they may seem. The types of projects I’m involved in, and even the styles and methods I may use to craft them, will vary depending on which of those three platforms that specific project falls under (and I’ll get into more specifics about this in my post about my writing journey discussed above).

But for now, I’d like to focus on who I am and what you can expect from my work as an author. While my work will always have a dark tone, the level of darkness can fluctuate depending on the type of story I’m telling. and will typically fall under the horror genre, or at least be horror adjacent or contain horror elements in some way… I like to play in various sandboxes. As much as I enjoy writing vivid scenes of brutal violence and gross-out disgustingness in an extreme horror story —

— I also enjoy writing strange and weird bizarro stories with wild concepts and over-the-top characters that tend to have as much dark humor as they do violence and/or nasty, yucky stuff —

— and sometimes I love writing a dark crime or drama story that tend to be a bit more emotional and personal, but still don’t shy away from sex and violence when the story calls for it —

— and then sometimes a book will have a combination of various elements that make it really difficult to categorize…

Sooo… if you were at a video rental store (remember those?) and you’re the kind of person who might grab a few movies from the horror section, a couple foreign films from the cult section, a dark comedy, and maybe a gangster or kung fu movie… and then you throw in a couple packs of Garbage Pail Kids and a box of Reese’s Pieces… there’s a damn good chance you’ll enjoy my books.

WE WERE MADE FOR EACH OTHER!!!

And starting in December of 2023, I will be releasing brand new books, along with new editions of my older books (like the ones shown above) packed full of new content and bonus material!

I’ve got big plans, you guys, and I’m DYING to tell you about them. But for now, how about a tasty little teaser trailer I made for my upcoming extreme horror novel SCRAPHEAD. It’s my first new book in quite a while, and I haven’t felt this level of excitement or enthusiasm in a long time…

I ain’t fuckin’ around with this one! Y’all might not be ready!

Please enjoy the teaser trailer for —

SCRAPHEAD

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