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spacebras 's review for:
I Was a Teenage Slasher
by Stephen Graham Jones
Hi Stephen! Always a pleasure. While Jade Daniels is and always will be your Final Girl, your work in growing and evolving The Final Girl, is a pleasure to read. The common good & bad hallmarks of your writing style are still here- repetitive phrases, sometimes too much show and not enough tell, a lonely outsider who- even if it's for a second- feels like they're part of something greater than themselves.
Reading I Was a Teenage Slasher after the academic horror heavy weight that is The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (saw that was listed as one of Obama's 2025 summer reading books. I'm sure you have a lot to say about that), was a cool dip in a blood red pond of comfort. Your continued analysis of the Slasher Genre, breaks containment and all the 4th walls, as Lamesa, Texas isn't so much caught up in the "slasher cycle", but a slasher infection. All the players go to the right places as if mind-controlled. And the rabid Tolly must do his duty as much as we must breathe air. But he's still there, under it all, and isn't that the point? All the ghost faces and Jason's are the weird kid underneath. A friend from elementary school that you lost touch with. Who still, after all this time, is trying to prove themselves more than what they are. Even if they have to lie to get there. Someone even the mighty Jade Daniels couldn't reach, even though she tried to understand them from afar. Not Amber though. Amber sees that slasher for who he is underneath. KNOWS him far better than he could himself. And I don't believe for a second she has ever lost Tolly.
I think what makes your books stick with me for so long isn't necessarily the story themselves (though they do), but how you pour your heart and soul out on the page and in the acknowledgements at the end. I'm obsessed with why someone is motivated to write the story they have written, and what has brought them to this point where this is the one they need to tell now. A concept I learned in a dramaturgy course that has stuck deep within me, called "Why This Play Now". And in your case, the answer always leads back to the people in your life who you love and work with. How they inspire you to put your best foot forward and make your writing process truly collaborative sometimes. Their ideas, memories and lives are on the page because they are apart of you.
Reading I Was a Teenage Slasher after the academic horror heavy weight that is The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (saw that was listed as one of Obama's 2025 summer reading books. I'm sure you have a lot to say about that), was a cool dip in a blood red pond of comfort. Your continued analysis of the Slasher Genre, breaks containment and all the 4th walls, as Lamesa, Texas isn't so much caught up in the "slasher cycle", but a slasher infection. All the players go to the right places as if mind-controlled. And the rabid Tolly must do his duty as much as we must breathe air. But he's still there, under it all, and isn't that the point? All the ghost faces and Jason's are the weird kid underneath. A friend from elementary school that you lost touch with. Who still, after all this time, is trying to prove themselves more than what they are. Even if they have to lie to get there. Someone even the mighty Jade Daniels couldn't reach, even though she tried to understand them from afar. Not Amber though. Amber sees that slasher for who he is underneath. KNOWS him far better than he could himself. And I don't believe for a second she has ever lost Tolly.
I think what makes your books stick with me for so long isn't necessarily the story themselves (though they do), but how you pour your heart and soul out on the page and in the acknowledgements at the end. I'm obsessed with why someone is motivated to write the story they have written, and what has brought them to this point where this is the one they need to tell now. A concept I learned in a dramaturgy course that has stuck deep within me, called "Why This Play Now". And in your case, the answer always leads back to the people in your life who you love and work with. How they inspire you to put your best foot forward and make your writing process truly collaborative sometimes. Their ideas, memories and lives are on the page because they are apart of you.
“It’s less about survival, more about who you’re holding when that big irradiated shockwave blows you to ash.”