Fort Worth Weekly // October 11-17, 2023

October 11-17, 2023 FREE fwweekly.com

Thanks to two Fort Worthians, the annual Road Kill anthology has metastasized from a shared vision into a monster.

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B Y

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BY BUCK D. ELLIOTT

B I L L S

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E . R .

B I L L S

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Big, scary ideas are wonderful in theory but difficult in application. I think Mary Shelley said that.

This one emerged at the April 2016 North Texas Book Festival in Denton. I was there to promote my first two or three books, and indie horror film director Bret McCormick was in attendance to promote his own. We were tabling right next to or across from each another. It was devilishly fortuitous.

At some point during the event, probably over a conversation about his or my books, we lapsed into an extended exchange on horror in Texas — authors Joe R. Lansdale and Robert E. Howard and films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Race with the Devil (1975), The Town that Dreaded Sundown (1976, based on the factbased account of the Moonlight Murders in Texarkana), Piranha (1978, filmed by John Sayles in San Marcos), The Swarm (1978, based on the threat of Killer Bees, which eventually wind up being dispatched in the Astrodome), the vampire cult classic Near Dark (1987 starring Fort Worth’s own Bill Paxton), Frailty (2001, directed by Paxton), Lansdale’s Bubba Ho-Tep (2002), and more.

We even discussed the 1972 docudrama cryptid classic The Legend of Boggy Creek (because, of course, there’s a Boggy Creek in Texas) and Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966), which is singularly disturbing pri-

our massive state and also something you could do to kill (pardon the pun) time as you drove across our massive state.

Publisher? Check.

Title? Check.

Stories? Shrug, long sigh.

A house of cards with no cards. But we knew some people. And we knew some people who knew some people. Plus, we had the internet machine. And we had an ace we didn’t know we had access to.

My second book, The 1910 Slocum Massacre: An Act of Genocide in East Texas, had generated national press and contributed to a growing discussion of race in Texas. Some time after publication, an East Texas book club approached me about discussing my work at one of their monthly meetings.

Two representatives from the Fredonia House Book Club, Jonna and Durren Anderson, contacted me about the particulars. Later, the bookish couple from near Longview put me up in a hotel, and, the next day, we had an insightful discussion about nonfiction horror, and then I visited their home, which had an impressive, jaw-dropping library, which I immediately explored. Fast-forward a year or so, and I’ve co-written a screenplay about the Slocum Massacre with a descendant of some of

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Cour tesy the author

FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY

OCTOBER 11-17, 2023

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n the beginning, there was only darkness.

Then everybody’s favorite therapeutic apparition said, Let there be light.

“Well,” He continued under His breath, “besides all the gazillion other lights clearly visible from the infinite tapestry of the universe.”

So there was light.

New light.

Then millions — if not thousands — of years later, depending on how the origin story behind your therapeutic apparition is interpreted (or retrofitted) to fit the archaic narrative, darkness reappeared to challenge the light.

Right here in Fort Worth.

marily because it’s frequently cited as the worst film ever made.

After our fanboy horror nostalgia was exorcised, light bulbs simultaneously went off — I mean “on” — in our heads.

Was there a collection of Texas horror stories by Texas authors?

When the festival concluded, we agreed to look into the question and bid each other stolid farewells. Then we postulated but procrastinated.

By July 2016, we knew there was no Lone Star horror fiction collection and that that was a serious affront to Texas literature, so we decided to do it ourselves. But what would we call it? And shouldn’t we get it out before Halloween?! That was six months away, and we didn’t have Chapter 1. Suddenly we went from spit-balling to taping our shoes to the bike pedals. Who would publish it, who could we get to be in it, and why should anyone read it?

My first two books were with The History Press, but we’d briefly parted ways over the title of my third. I published it with the old Eakin Press, which was now based in Fort Worth.

I had a great relationship with the owner/publisher, Billy Huckaby, and even though Eakin didn’t or hadn’t published fiction — especially horror fiction — Billy agreed to produce the new project, so Bret and I had a Texas publisher of note, and, well, we had a publisher of note.

I think several ideas for a title were bandied about, but I can’t remember them.

Eventually we decided on a double entendre: Road Kill: Texas Horror by Texas Writers — “Road Kill” as in the putrefying morsels that dot the highways and byways of

Cour tesy the author

Thanks to two Fort Worthians, the annual Road Kill anthology has metastasized from a shared vision into a monster.

The author (left) hung out with Texas horror legend Joe R. Lansdale (center) and his buddy Nick Damici at the 2016 Nacogdoches Film Festival before the debut of the first Road Kill with a Landsdale contribution.

its victims, Constance Hollie-Jawaid, and we’re looking for advice on what to do with it. On the phone or internet machine with Jonna, I mention our quandary. She says, “Why don’t you get in touch with Joe?” Joe? “Joe Lansdale.”

“You know him?” I blurt.

“Of course,” Jonna says. “He appeared and discussed one of his books at one of our meetings. I’ve got his phone number and email.”

Joe R. Lansdale.

You can’t tell a King Kong story without an ape. You can’t make Jaws (or Sharknado or Cocaine Shark) without a shark.

And you can’t put an anthology of Texas horror together without Texas Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe R. Lansdale. A native of Gladewater who still lurks behind the pine curtain, he’s our Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, and Dean Koontz all wrapped into one.

I emailed him for advice, and he informed me that the Nacogdoches Film Festival was just a few weeks away and that I should come.

So I did.

I went and looked forward to being a fly on the wall, maybe receiving a wave from Lansdale as he walked by on his way to a panel or presentation — and I was shocked. The current and arguably reigning King Kong of Texas letters spotted me, veered away from his handlers, and shook my hand.

“I was really impressed with your book on the Slocum Massacre,” he said. And I was glad he was shaking my hand, so I didn’t float away. “I’d heard about it all my life,” he continued, “but nobody knew the details until your book.”

Lansdale was as Texan as they get. He walked right up, looked me in the eyes, and shook my hand. For the rest of the weekend, I forgot I was a mere mortal. I hung out with Joe, his wonderful wife Karen, his talented son Keith, and Lansdale’s buddy, actor/screenwriter Nick Damici, who was already famous for cult horror films like Mulberry Street (2006), Stake Land (2010), and We Are What We Are (2013). And he had just made Cold in July (2014), starring Michael C. Hall (Dexter), Sam Shepard, and Don Johnson!

So in mid-2016, I rang up Joe. I explained what Bret and I were trying to do continued on page 5