All You Can Eat News — Plate #4: Welcome to McHorror, Can I Take Your Order?
Housekeeping, Announcements, and a Tour of McHorror.net
Let me start this off by, once again, apologizing for not staying consistent with this newsletter. I’ve been a busy, busy boy, and life has been transforming into an American Ninja Warrior level obstacle course as of late, but I WILL stick to my promise of publishing ALL YOU CAN EAT NEWS on a monthly basis!
Which leads me to—
HOUSEKEEPING
Which is really just a nice way of saying, “Here’s all my fuck ups!” And yeah… I’ve got a couple things I’d like to address…
First up is what I was just discussing: this very newsletter. So here’s the plan! I will post the newsletter on the LAST FRIDAY of every month. From this moment forward! “But Shane, today is Thursday, you stupid asshole.” True, there’s no denying that, is there? But it’s fuckin’ Halloween so I made an exception… even though I know it’s weird to declare the last Friday of every month only to immediately break that rule. But I’m a weird guy!
ALL YOU CAN EAT NEWS will consist of project announcements and updates, but also just a place where I can speak directly to you guys, uncensored and raw, about various topics regarding the entertainment business… or just life in general. Along with fun visual aids, of course… like this one:
Wrath James White preparing to punch the shit out of me for throwing him a surprise Roast at Killercon 2024, with a delighted Kristopher Triana and Jeff Strand watching in the background. We roasted the shit out of this man! Second, we need to talk about SCRAPHEAD. When I decided to come back to the world of books, I was full of excitement and enthusiasm. I started writing a new novel, had an amazing cover made… and then went ahead and announced that shit publicly, revealing the cover and a tentative release date. If you want to hear all about it, check out Plate #2: The Legend of Scraphead.
So what I should have done is PRIVATELY planned out my release schedule, so that if and when delays happen, or other projects suddenly appear and take priority, I can adjust accordingly without looking like a flaky, chaotic mess of a person. I originally announced that SCRAPHEAD would be released early 2024, then I made a second announcement (See Plate #3: A Big Year) that explained how I was going to write and release BENJAMIN, my collaborative novel with my homeboy Aron Beauregard, first, and that SCRAPHEAD would be the follow up release later in 2024. Well…
After one of our many strategic meetings, Aron and I came up with the idea of each starting a line of pocket books of quick, fun-sized stories that we could release between our larger, more time-consuming projects. Since I had already opened my online store and had ZERO products to sell as we were working hard on BENJAMIN, it felt like a good way to get McHorror.net going. A huge part of my strategy coming back to writing books and becoming a self-published author is to steadily release a combination of revamped reprints and new work. And since a good amount of my older material is of a shorter length, this pocket book idea made a lot of sense. My pocket book series is called McHorror Stabby Meals, and Aron’s is called Pocket Atrocities.
And so I decided to sandwich BENJAMIN with two of these pocket books. STAB THE RABBIT (originally published in my collection WET & SCREAMING) coming before, and STORK (originally published in my limited edition novella collection DRAWN & QUARTERED) coming after—November 2024 to be exact!
Without giving any dates or titles, my plan is now to release a novel reprint to start 2025, with SCRAPHEAD coming second, probably around Summer. I’ll be finishing up the year with another reprint, one of my most popular novellas, and a brand new pocket book length story that I’m wildly excited about.
Okay… I think that’s just about all I wanted to discuss as far as Housekeeping goes. I have a feeling I’ll have more in the future. So then… onto—
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Since I pretty much broke down my book schedule just now, there’s really only one announcement I’m allowed to reveal at this time (I’ve got a feature film coming out next year that I wrote, but I’ll get more into that later!).
I’m so insanely excited about this, and while I’m not going to get into too much detail about it (because that will be discussed at length in a future newsletter), I just wanted to show off the incredible cover to the first issue of MY UPCOMING COMIC BOOK SERIES… GIGANTE!!!
This series is based on my novel MUERTE CON CARNE, but the story has been totally reimagined and revamped! El Gigante is, far and away, my most popular character, and it has been a fucking delight playing with him again. The series is scheduled for six issues, with hopes of more depending on reader demand. Holy shit, I just can’t WAIT for you guys to see this. The art is so goddamn good, and the folks at Chispa Comics (an imprint of Scout Comics) have been amazing collaborators.
More GIGANTE news to come! Stay tuned, you filthy animals!
Now, last but not least, let’s close this newsletter with a—
TOUR OF McHORROR.NET
It’s been mentioned here already, but in case you didn’t know… I opened my own online store called McHorror.net!
You can get signed and numbered limited edition hardcovers of all my upcoming books, exclusive to the site, as well as merch and eventually signed paperbacks. The store is still new, but bit by bit, I’m adding more products. See?!
When I started this website, I was calling it the Home of Horror Writer Shane McKenzie. So it just didn’t feel right to me for McHorror.net to exclusively sell things. If this is my home, then I wanted to welcome my readers into my world, show a bit of hospitality (not to mention give them a little taste of what they’re in store for). It’s still a work in progress, but I’ve got a page dedicated to my film/tv work with a link to my IMDB page and trailers of movies/shows I’ve written. I’ve got a page dedicated to my comic books where I’ll be posting links and sneak peeks at art work (I’ll also be selling signed copies of comics at some point). I’ve got a page about Bad Dream Books, a collective of like-minded artists, with a link to the site that tells you all about us! There’s even a page that links to this very newsletter!
But also, I included a page where you can watch multiple short films that I’ve written (the ones that are available online anyway). It’s like a miniature movie theater!
Just recently, I decided to add a page where I’ll be posting a free short story a few times a year. Probably mostly reprints, but I’m thinking I’ll start adding some new ones here and there. I’m really excited about this. Because I was off screenwriting and not writing books for so long, so much of my target audience are new readers. And I can understand their apprehension to spend their money on a writer they may be unfamiliar with, especially a pricey hardcover. So I thought it would be a cool way to give them a free sample of the kind of work I do, introduce them to my style of storytelling without having to invest anything but time.
To kick this off, I decided to post one of my personal favorite short stories of mine called ED GEIN’S GARAGE SALE (originally published in my collection WET & SCREAMING) along with a nasty and hilarious visual aid…
So if you haven’t yet, hop over to McHorror.net and have a look around! I’ll be adding more and more… so what’re you waiting for?!
Okay, friends! That’s gonna do it for this post. I’ll be posting again… and regularly! And when will I be doing that? Let’s say it together now… “THE LAST FRIDAY OF EVERY MONTH!”
Oh, and if you want more of my shenanigans, give me a follow on TikTok! I’m posting insanity over there on a pretty regular basis and have been actually having a lot of fun with it. FOLLOW ME!!!
Until next time! LOVE Y’ALL!