STRANGE TIMES WITH KEVIN STRANGEan interview by David Anderson


Buy Strange's Robama Pocalypse in paperback or for kindle here



This anthology contains Strange's Cotton Candy--a  twisted yarn of erotica and horror!
Wow, Bizarro Whiz KEVIN STRANGE just got done talking to me.  With Anthos out there like STRANGE SEX, it’s no doubt that Mr. Strange is leading a new legion in the Bizarro Army.   I enjoy Kevin’s musings on Facebook, and always keep an eye out for what the guy is doing.We talk about everything from Kevin’s ‘underwater fears’ to SAVED BY THE BELL in this candid interview.  It was definitely a STRANGE time!






 strangehousebooks.com




David Anderson:  Hi, Kevin, thanks so much for joining me for this interview. I appreciate your time tonight.  I'm interviewing you on behalf of Atrophied Gangsters.
Kevin Strange:  Thanks for having me, man! We've been doing these blog interviews for a bit and they always drum up more interest in SHB, and we send our fans your way, so it's kind of like a mutual handjob with your buddy, you know the kind, where you don't make eye contact and never speak of such things again once you blow loads? Yeah, it's like that. Only gayer. So thanks!
DA:  Thanks Kevin!  I'll start off with some light questioning... If you could be any color animal, what color would you be?
KS:  I'd be a giant pink squid. That's just about the only animal that gets away with being pink and eats mammals the size of fucking buses.One of the first novel's I ever read was Peter Benchley's Beast.As if I needed more reason to be scared as fuck of the water after seeing Jaws.The 12 year old me was like, "Holy fucking SHIT! There's pink squids down there with eyeballs the size of fucking dinner plates??? Fuck outta here!!!!"
DA:  Haha, funny answer. Sometimes people are confused by that question, and they just pick a color, not an animal. It kind of forces you to commit to an animal.So, you seem to have a connection with the sea. Does that have to do with Lovecraft?
KS:  I guess me and ole Lovecraft share a mutual terror of underwater predators. When I was like 14, I went on vacation to see my aunt up in Seattle. She took me to Puget Sound and made me swim in this shitty little roped off section of the ocean next to a big dock. I kept diving off the thing in stark terror thinking a shark was going to snatch me right out of the air. I mean what the fuck are the ropes for? It's not like they're keeping any giant crazy monsters out. So I get home and I've got a Guinness book of world records that I liked to look at. So I'm going through it and I see world's largest octopus. Guess where they caught it? Puget Fucking Sound. I've never gone back in the ocean again. An artists interpretation of Kevin's fateful meeting with the "Puget Sound 'Puss"

DA:  Yeah, the ocean is a terrifying place. I mean, were "not supposed" to go in there, so sayeth our biology.But yet the human race has dreams and nightmares about its secrets.Authors often do copious amounts of intense research for a tale.  Describe the research you did for COTTON CANDY.

KS:  I don't research much of anything when I write mainly because the type of fiction I write is linked to the emotional state of my characters and the situations I put them in are largely fantastical and involve allegorical monsters in place of real-world conflicts. Cotton Candy draws a lot from my past experience as a porn shop manager. That was my first (and last) real gig. I started doing that shit when I was 19 and worked at the same shop for 6 years. I saw a LOT of weird ass shit working there, and I'm not talking about the porn. It was a character study man, watching all those men, totally ashamed of themselves for wanting to fulfill their base desire to get off. They'd come up with all sorts of excuses for why they were buying midget gangbang porn. It was for a bachelor party, for their brother, they only like it cause it makes the chick look like a giantess. You fucking name it, I've heard it. So for Cotton Candy, I wanted to take a guy who thought his porn addiction was the most fucked up thing in the world, and then put him in a gang bang with cannibal were-teddy bears.  Lol.
DA:  Wow, that actually makes sense. The porn store clerk who warns 'Mister P' about the 'dangers' of the Gangbang was kind of YOU, in a way. The main character was wonderfully developed, I can see why, given your experiences at the porn shop.So, I heard STRANGEHOUSE has a Lovecraftian Anthology coming out in the near future. What is the theme of that anthology? Can you talk about that yet?
KS:  We're looking for Bizarro stories that use elements of the Cthulhu mythos. That means any characters, monsters, settings, or plot devices like The Necronomicon, but used in a totally weird, original way, preferably involving copious amounts of gore and kinky sex is what we're looking for.  Submissions open January 1st and Close march 1st. Word count is 5000-8000 words FIRM. Bizarro Lovecraftian tales? You bet!

DA:  Cool, so "Bizarro Mythos”.If a man has sex with a random woman, it’s called ‘getting strange’. What happens when someone with the last name of Strange engages in such an act? Do you just put the “Strange” in italics?
KS:  What happens is they get the lay of their life. (winks)
DA:  ZING!
KS:  Hang on, let me elaborate on that.
DA:  Sure.
KS:  Believe it or not, my original pen name was supposed to be Kevin LeStrange, like LeStrange from the Harry Potter novels? I always liked Beatrice LeStrange in those books, and used to be a goth douche bag, so it fit. But one day, at the porn shop, one of the owners called up to bust my balls about it and asked, "Is Kevin Strange there?" And it stuck. It's weird going through 25 years of life known as one thing, and then build a cult career using a fake name. What that means is, there are more people in the world who know my fake name than know my real name. Maybe that's not weird to anybody else, but it fucks me up.(That's the first time I've ever told anyone the origin of my pen name, btw)
DA:  Haha, I think your name is cool, and purposely wanted to avoid questions on its "origin".But it's cool to know. I think building that kind of persona must be 'freeing' in certain ways, right? You can let your freak flag fly so to speak?
KS: Honestly, growing up in a small town, having 9 facial piercings, wearing pentagram T shirts and eye liner... I was more of a freak by my real name BEFORE I became an artist. I just don't find my actual last name all that aesthetically pleasing, and I guess the pen name helps keep my family from taking heat for my extreme movies and books.
DA:  So, I want to ask about TROMA films. I'm 30 years old, and only found out about TROMA a few years ago.I always thought B-Movies were like GREMLINS, THE GATE, and the TALES FROM THE CRYPT movies. I never realized I was missing out on the REAL B-Movies. What do you consider a B-Movie?
KS:  I think those are rightfully called B-Movies. That term was coined, if I'm not mistaken on my film history, by Roger Corman's movies when they'd play as second billing in drive-in theaters in the 50s and 60s. Cult movies are even more obscure than that, and started popping up as midnight theater movies in the 70s and then became the Video Nasties of the home video generation of the 80s when a bunch of horror flicks were famously banned in Europe. Evil Dead was among them. Now, with video stores dead and digital movies being so cheap and easy to make, there's a whole new generation of filmmakers like me who make micro-budget or no-budget straight-to-dvd flicks that, in my opinion, are some of the most original type flicks you'll ever see. One recent example that comes to mind is Thankskilling 3. That movie is like the Muppets on acid. When you have absolutely no one to answer to, art can be made at its purest level.
DA:  Nice! My local drive-in theater just closed. Do you have a local drive-in theater?
KS:  There's one about 25 minutes from here. I've been to it a few times, but honestly I'm a video kid. I grew up getting the shit beat out of me in junior high, so as a way to cope, I'd walk to the video store after school and rent horror movies and titty flicks to jack off to. Drive-in are mainly for gathering together your friends and hanging out on the weekends drinking and trying to get laid. I never got laid, so I sat at home and worked my dick manually.
DA:  Thanks for THAT mental image, haha.Jason Wayne Allen is kind of my ‘Obi Wan Kenobi’, in a way, and if his spirit were hovering here holographically, he would be influencing me to ask you about SAVED BY THE BELL.Please describe your experiences with the show. Jason Wayne Allen trains me in the ways of the Bizarro


KS:  I was actually laying in bed the other night with my girlfriend talking about that show. She's in the middle of a Cheers marathon on Netflix, and I asked her, in the fog of almost sleep, if she'd want to do Saved by the Bell next. She said she hated the show, which lead to weird sleep talk about Skreech's big cock and whether or not she'd be willing to suck it if given the chance. Anyway, I watched it every afternoon after school. Great show. I always wished I was as wise as Zach. And seeing the stuck up bitch go on to star in Showgirls, showing her tits and pussy, well, that was just an added little treat to my childhood boners.
DA:  Yeah, most of us "80's" kids jacked off to SHOWGIRLS. And for some reason that scene where the guy fingers JESSIE SPANO and she's like "stop, I’m on my period!" or whatever…that stuck with me man, it stuck with me.Well, Kevin, on behalf of ATROPHIED GANGSTERS, thanks so much for your time tonight! Awesome interview!KS:  Thank you, sir. Always a pleasure! May your Showgirl's stroke sessions contain much menstrual wonderment!

This is the first interview conducted by David Anderson, my partner here at Atrophied Gangsters. Good job! The pictures were a great touch! Thank you.
Anderson and I have been planning and working to turn Atrophied Gangsters into a legitimate press that releases print books, ebooks, e-zines, and everything in between.  The staff consists of two thirty year old men with a Peter Pan Complex, a love of beer, and a passion for Bizarro and Weird Fiction. If you are a writer, journalist, artist, or have anything to contribute to Atrophied Gangsters, email me at jwallen1018@gmail.com Love , Jason Wayne Allen



David Anderson

David Anderson resides in the dusty oasis of Mesa, Arizona. When he’s not hunting lizards with his pet Schnauzer ‘Sulu’, he’s reading a good yarn, or cracking open a cold one. He dreams of one day owning and operating his own Ostrich Farm. You can find David at beermagik.blogspot.com