IDW Publishing is proud to announce CLASSICS MUTILATED, an all-new prose collection of genre mash-up stories by top-tier authors, coming in October. At San Diego Comic-Con, IDW will debut the original novella "Dread Island" by noted horror and crime writer Joe R. Lansdale, as an exclusive preview of the upcoming collection. Lansdale will be featured at special autograph sessions at the IDW booth #2643 throughout the convention. CLASSICS MUTILATED offers a different take on the current monster-lit trend by challenging a coterie of major talents to twist fantasy and horror elements with classic tales and icons, creating all-new stories. Lansdale's "Dread Island" showcases the collection's unique tone by featuring Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer in a new adventure, with bizarre fantasy and supernatural elements out of both H. P. Lovecraft and Uncle Remus. "I wrote 'Dread Island' based on my love for Mark Twain," reveals Lansdale, "which collided with my interest in Lovecraft, and the fact that the Uncle Remus tales may have been the first stories I ever read. And then there were comics. I always saw 'Dread Island' as a kind of comic book in prose, the old Classics Illustrated look. That's how it played out in my head."
Author
Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over forty novels and numerous short stories. His work has appeared in national anthologies, magazines, and collections, as well as numerous foreign publications. He has written for comics, television, film, newspapers, and Internet sites. His work has been collected in more than two dozen short-story collections, and he has edited or co-edited over a dozen anthologies. He has received the Edgar Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Grinzani Cavour Prize for Literature, the Herodotus Historical Fiction Award, the Inkpot Award for Contributions to Science Fiction and Fantasy, and many others. His novella Bubba Ho-Tep was adapted to film by Don Coscarelli, starring Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis. His story "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road" was adapted to film for Showtime's "Masters of Horror," and he adapted his short story "Christmas with the Dead" to film hisownself. The film adaptation of his novel Cold in July was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and the Sundance Channel has adapted his Hap & Leonard novels for television. He is currently co-producing several films, among them The Bottoms, based on his Edgar Award-winning novel, with Bill Paxton and Brad Wyman, and The Drive-In, with Greg Nicotero. He is Writer In Residence at Stephen F. Austin State University, and is the founder of the martial arts system Shen Chuan: Martial Science and its affiliate, Shen Chuan Family System. He is a member of both the United States and International Martial Arts Halls of Fame. He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas with his wife, dog, and two cats.
