The Death Scene Artist

by Andrew Wilmot, A.G.A. Wilmot

M_____ is dying of cancer. Only thirty-two, an extra with a meagre list of credits to their name and afraid of being forgotten, M_____ starts recounting the strange, fantastic and ultimately tragic path of their love affair with the world?s greatest living "redshirt" – a man who has died or appeared dead in nearly eight hundred film and television roles. In a compelling narrative of blog entries interspersed with film script excerpts, The Death Scene Artist immerses readers in a three-act surrealist exploration of the obsessive fault-finding of body dysmorphia and the dangerous desires of a man who has lived several hundred half-minute lives without having ever experienced his own.

Genres: Fiction, Horror, Queer, Canada

258 pages, Paperback

First published November 6, 2018

About the author

Author also writes under A.G.A. Wilmot

AGA Wilmot (BFA, MPub) is a writer, editor, and painter based out of Toronto, Ontario. They have won awards for fiction, short fiction, and screenwriting, including the Friends of Merril Short Story Contest and ECW Press’s Best New Speculative Novel Contest. For seven years they served as co-publisher and co-EIC of the Ignyte- and British Fantasy Award-nominated Anathema: Spec from the Margins. Their credits include myriad online and in-print publications and anthologies. They are also on the editorial advisory board for Poplar Press, the speculative fiction imprint of Wolsak & Wynn. Books of AGA’s include The Death Scene Artist (Buckrider Books, 2018) and Withered (ECW Press, 2024). They are represented by Kelvin Kong of K2 Literary (k2literary.com). Find them online at agawilmot.ca.

Reviews

[Tan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Completely and utterly biased, as I was AW's very first reader. But I love this book. It's weird, compelling, and so very dark.

[Alexis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the narrative voice and the story. M_ a film extra is dying of cancer. They write a series of blog posts to tell the story of their relationship with D_ an actor who specializes in death scene roles. In fact, D_ has died hundreds of times. The story is dark and twisted, and there will be details that turn off some readers. There's a lot of body dysmorphia and some violence. But the voice and the writing are good, and the pace was excellent. I left the book with questions, which I think is a good thing.


(The author is a friend, but honestly, if I didn't like the book, I wouldn't give it a good review. I'd just say nothing.)

[Lauren Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ah, what a mind. This book might not be for everyone (there is a considerable amount of violence), but for those looking for a fascinating exploration of self, gender, and the body... well, it might just be for you. A brave and imaginative work.

[Sam - Spines in a Line · Rating 4 out of 5]

Those twists were so worth it! What a good book. I may increase my rating later

What a creepy book, but totally in a good way. I received this book at the library conference and had no idea what I was getting into. We’ve got a very unreliable narrator detailing their romance with a mysterious actor, and they may or may not have done some highly illegal and murderous activities together. It’s presented in blog post format, so you are one of the MC’s many readers who get to question and doubt their writings. So many twists, a delightful story despite the often gory descriptions.

Also that cover – wow wow wow. I read so many books with beautiful covers this past year.

[Lucile Barker · Rating 1 out of 5]

45. The Death Scene Artist by Andrew Wilmot
A very strange and disturbing novel about a 32 year old actress, M, who is dying of cancer and has mostly played extra parts. She is obsessed with D, an actor who usually plays dying roles – 800 times. There are pieces of the scripts that they are playing and the blog she is writing, but in their real life, the script seems to be plotless. A lot of self-hatred by M, and selfishness by D. I like twisty and edgy, but this one went too far, even for me. Don’t bother.

[1.1 · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting novel that’s a nice change of pace from the usual, a very dark romp through distress, betrayal, and general dinginess.

I enjoyed it quite a bit: it’s interesting, grim, wild, crazy, a ride through another world through another’s eyes—though it was a bit of a jarring experience finding my way in, the uniqueness of the narrative paid off handsomely.

[Alvaro Zinos-Amaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review forthcoming

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Every night for weeks I watched another film on D_____’s various lists of credits, and following the end of each one I’d write another obit. The more goodbyes and farewells I was able to conjure from his single-serving turns for the camera, the better the picture of him I received. It was never that clear, more like staring at a person through the narrow slits of half-closed blinds, or the white snake of an unfinished crossword puzzle, but it was more than I’d previously known. Words filled in the blanks and letter by letter he appeared - the bare minimum of him, anyway.” (p. 52)

[ken]

i’m too lily-livered for this book. it’s not even that graphic but my brain (my traitorous brain) likes to fill in the gaps and i Can’t Handle it Too Well.

[Kaitlyn Delano · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 - Unfortunately this one missed the mark for me. A combination of disturbing visuals and a meandering plot made it a hard read for me personally.

[Kevin Murphy]

I don't quite know just what to take away from it yet- I need time to digest it and mull it over- but Andrew Wilmot's The Death Scene Artist is a striking novel with significant emotional weight. More than the story of a fucked-up relationship between people who can't decide what their loves actually are, it explores identity and the importance of leaving evidence of one's life, cast sharply in the light of protagonist M________'s deteriorating health.

I don't know that everything landed for me here, but the last act certainly fucking did, in a magnificent way. A worthwhile read not only because it was written by a friend but because in the end it is a powerful story, and a fucking good one.