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Steve Hussy writes his own mock obituary
Author: Steve Hussy writes his own mock obituary
  Steve Hussy died in 1962. After his death, he found success in zombie movie classics such as 'Night of the Living Dead', 'Grapes of Death', 'Zombie Flesh Eaters', 'Dawn of the Dead', 'Return of the Living Dead', 'The Omega Man' and 'Day of the Dead'. After a downturn of roles during the early '90s, Hussy turned to writing stories and publishing. An upsurge in work caused by 'Ghost of Mars', the new 'Dawn of the Dead' and 'I Am Legend' allowed Hussy to fully devote his energies towards Murder Slim Press. He continues to write, design and co-edit.
Submission Date:
10 Jan 2009 Category:   Interview In Chap-book
Steve Hussy, writer, editor and founder of Murder Slim Publications and The Savage Kick Literary Magazine, is interviewed by Joseph Ridgwell.

Joseph Ridgwell: When and why did you did you decide to go into the publishing business?

Steve Hussy: Myself and Richard White had been talking about the state of online literary sites and magazines for a few years. Almost without exception, we were appalled by it. Awful writers in badly designed magazines and websites. Zero quality control, but plenty of backslapping.

The one or two brilliant gems were lost in an ocean of shit. A number of established, great writers were even struggling to get into print. Why wasn’t Dan Fante getting more attention? Who was talking about Joe R. Lansdale? Why weren’t people recognising Joe Matt and underground comics? Had anyone even heard of Tommy Trantino?  We thought that instead of just bitching about it, we’d try to do something positive.

JR: Do you publish books to make money or produce great art?

SH: The key is to release great books. If something is great enough, people will catch up eventually. We’re small enough, we’re not losing thousands. The key is to pay the author from the first book sold. Without the writer, a publisher is nothing. Back them with money and time.  We realise we have to build from the bottom up. We’d never print or release anything we didn’t love. So don’t expect English Drug Yarns by Harry Miller or Larry Trotter, The Adventures of a Pig Wizard.   As a result, we don’t release many books or issues of The Savage Kick. But we are proud of everything we do put out there.  MSP books need to be distinctive and, above all, well written. People will catch up… and we can always eat bread and cheese until that happens.  

JR: I’ve been told that Murder Slim and The Savage Kick are completely independent and receive no government funding or any other sort of funding. Is this true, and if so why is this important?

SH: Yes, we are completely independent and we receive no funding. Wrecking Ball are with the Arts Council, right?  I don’t know how important it is. We have no-one dictating what we do, and no-one requesting we print a certain number of English writers. I have packer’s forearm from stuffing envelopes and labelling packages, but it’s a good pain…  I work part-time and Richard is unemployed, so we work on a very low budget. But if you’re smart with things, you can make it work. On some levels, you can piss on bigger companies because you have smaller overheads and better friends. We’ve met some great people in Canada, the USA and the UK via The Savage Kick.

Advice? Proof-read your book as many times as possible. Care about design to a psychotic level. Don’t run a car – catch buses and trains – and recycle envelopes. Fuck, I have more hints but I’d go on forever…  Ultimately, find a great book and back it with time and effort. Like I said, things will work out eventually. Just WORK.

JR: What do you think about the current online literary scene?

SH: Disgust on most levels. My main bugbear is quality control. Many websites publish ANYTHING. Here’s a quote from one of the extraordinarily shit writers out there:

“From the open mouth of Grunfeld an obstreperous belch was ejaculated. Grunfeld directed the belch in the direction of Satogata. A deleterious swirl of reek, of sour cabbages, damp socks, sour saccharine wine, putrid phlegm was vacuumed up by Satogata’s hairy mucus encrusted nostrils. Satogata jumped pugnaciously, fatuously to his feet and danced with fist clenched like an old time boxer. A pantomime of doggy braggadolio.”                                                          

Quality control expert Laura Hird has endorsed this bilge by including it on her website. You know, what irritates me most is wordiness and fucking metaphors. Phrases which mean nothing except arty games. SAY what you mean. Stop hiding behind words. Stop writing fucking “poetry”… which seems an excuse-me term for writing “guess what I mean because I’m too scared to tell you” shit.

I’ve debated this issue with a number of writers – one of which is now heavily lauded by the online scene – after they’ve submitted to (and been refused by) The Savage Kick.  When asked why they hide behind a mass of convoluted words, they’ve responded “that was the intention.” The intention should be to COMMUNICATE. To tell a page-turning story and/or open up yourself.   The rest is masturbatory shit – telling stories to feed your ego – or to feed intellectual bullshit artists who sit and decode this garbage. A clear translation can get arty shit down to a few words… showing how little the intellectual writer has to say.

JR: Why do you think the online literary scene has gone down this route?

SH: My nasty side thinks the online “accept-all” policy is self-promotion. Witness LauraHird.com. Why reject writers when they might buy her books? More acceptances = more allies = more sales.  My cheery side thinks it’s maybe some liberal vision of “everyone having a voice”. That people will find their audience, everyone should be given a chance. “Let the readers make up their mind….”

JR: But what’s wrong with that?

SH: Three BIG reasons… and reasons that people should acknowledge.
1. The writers don’t get paid, and the readers don’t have to pay to consume. The writers starve, and the readers feel they can get stuff for free. Fine, download fucking Metallica… but screw over underground writers? The literary sites get tens of thousands of hits, but underground books sell in their tens? Something’s fucking wrong there.

2. A young writer often needs guidance to improve. We had one writer submit to The Savage Kick… and he was an all-around good guy. He said he’d put his rejection slips on a nail hammered into his bedsit wall, until he had a story accepted. If the nail was filled up with rejections, he’d stick his head through it. But that nail could have taken two hundred rejections… and the paper probably would have cushioned the impact.  We turned down his story. It wasn’t good enough, but it had a lot of promise. Next week LauraHird.com accepts the story. Nail is pulled out of the wall. Within fifty stories maximum, he would have been really something great. He had something in him. Now? Who knows.  Do you see the problem? Why improve when you’re already accepted? Receiving intelligent criticism is enormously useful.

3. PRINT something. How many writers say they’re PUBLISHED because they’re online? It’s meaningless, and it can stop writers from having to craft their work. Why go to the effort of proof-reading and honing your stuff when some piece of shit website will “publish” you regardless? Again, it stops good writing. If you’re so great, get your fucking thing in print. If it dies belly-up, work on improving.

JR: How did your print magazine The Savage Kick come about?

SH: We had a mixture of skills that seemed to fit together. I could do graphic design and write. R White knew a massive amount about literature, music and movies. R Watts was a great artist.  Initially, The Savage Kick was a mixture of articles and stories. There was more art, more reviews, and more comedy pieces.  Then Dan Fante agreed to be in SK#1, and we realised we could attract big-name writers to the magazine. After that we decided The Savage Kick could go purely down the literary route.

JR: How did you first start working with Mark SaFranko?

SH: We asked Dan Fante if he knew any writers he thought would be suitable for The Savage Kick. It had been a shock to find how difficult it was to find great new writers in the confessional and crime genres.  Fante recommended Mark SaFranko. We contacted Mark and he sent us Role of a Lifetime. We loved it… and it’s in SK#1. Things snowballed from there.

JR: You seem to have published a lot of SaFranko’s work. Why did that come about?

SH: Wrecking Ball Press had accepted Hating Olivia, but they weren’t pushing the book into print. They’d sat on it for over a year. We read Hating Olivia in a couple of nights and we were blown away by it. Truly eye-opening, page-turning writing.  The next day, we offered Mark a deal to publish the book, basing the contract on paying the author from the first book sold.... fucking rare in the publishing world. Mark accepted… and suddenly we were publishing books.  I have nothing but praise for Mark. I love all his books currently in print… and that’s just scratching the surface of his output. Loners only touches on the range of great stories he’s written.  Mark is an absolute pleasure to work with and – file this away in the brainhole – he will be recognised with the great underground writers. The Zajack novels will be regarded with the Dantes, Bandinis and Chinaskis.

JR: I’ve noticed that there seems to be a good deal of self-publishing going on these days. Do you have any views on self-publishing?

SH: I’m wary of printing my own stuff. Is it self-aggrandising? The best thing to do is run it past good – and honest – writers. And proof-check and hone it over a good year or so.  In the grand scheme of things, it’s great people are willing to put their money behind publishing. Just to get something in print takes a lot of work, and to get it to readers can take even more.  But quality control can suffer hugely. It’s 99% shit, but at least the bad writers will have a 498 unsold copies in their bathroom… a surefire nudge to improve.  However, I do think the quality is higher than websites… which seem a free-for-all purely because it’s free to produce.

JR: There also appears to be a lot of back-slapping and self-congratulatory bullshit occurring on the underground lit scene. Why is it, do you think, that people are afraid to give someone a bad review?

SH: We’re back to the acceptance = more allies = more sales aspect of the scene.  There’s also a disturbing aspect of underground writers and readers wanting to be part of a club. I’ve heard Bukowski fans called “Bukowski-ites”, where they fall behind Bukowski as some deity. Appreciate Bukowski, yes, but spread your net wider.  There’s a huge contradiction between being an outsider and yet wanting to belong somewhere. We can go through all the silly, exclusive clubs – goth, Bowie stuff, drug writers, boozy writers, Bukowski, the Russians, anarchism, brutalism etc. The end result just feeds off some need to belong, whereas honesty will exclude you from all clubs.

JR:  What surprises me is the staggering amount of people who think they have a divine right to be a published writer, even if they possess zero talent. What do you think can explain this delusional and irrepressible aspiring writing fetish?

SH: Fuck, that’s a real thinker. Great question, Joe.  Maybe writing itself is arrogant. You think your ideas are worth something. A passionate writer will invest a lot of their thoughts into their work. To be rejected is like your personality being rejected. You’ve poured all this out… and you’re shit? WHY? So you get angry, you go elsewhere, or you try to improve.  Even someone terrible will keep trying until someone tells them they’re writing garbage. The frustrating thing is that a lot of writers aren’t miles away. They have great life stories but zero ability to express them… or they have good style and nothing to write about. They need to work, but they have no push/anger/passion to do so.

We’re one blob in seven billion blobs in the end. We die and there’s nothing left. Writing gives a little sense of immortality. I believe in no afterlife or god, but I’d like to leave something worthwhile out there. During the death rattle, I’d like to think I fucking tried. It’s a buzz. Just to hold a copy of a book you helped publish… That’s something.  So people try. Good luck to them, to us all. Just work hard at it and stop thinking websites are the way to go.

JR: There also appears to be more writers than readers. What, if anything, can be done to reverse this disturbing trend?

SH: People no longer trying to impress their literary friends.  Publishers/website owners exercising strict quality control on everything they distribute.  Writers constantly criticising themselves. Great writing takes a lot of work. The shit writers will fall by the wayside quicker once they are faced with the long struggle ahead.

JR: When my first chapbook of poetry was published, Where are the Rebels? it seemed that everyone expected to receive a free copy, but were reluctant to actually put their hand in their pocket and purchase a copy. When it comes to buying books why do you think people are so tight?

SH: We’ve had ten times more submissions to The Savage Kick than people buying the magazine, so I know the feeling. Why submit to something you wouldn’t buy?  Maybe we’re back to the online thing again. People expect books for free. For people so “outside” they seem very unwilling to back it up with cash. Maybe people are scared of buying something not endorsed by the mainstream.  I feel an extreme affection towards people that buy Murder Slim Press stuff. They have the balls to buy something different and take a chance. More power to people who back their hunches with their wallets.  Fuck, Joe, smear some shit on their free copies of Where Are The Rebels? That’ll learn ‘em.

JR: Do you think Murder Slim and The Savage Kick will be affected by the current recessive economic climate?  Do you think sales might be affected?

SH: I hope not. I hope people search for something different when they feel like shit. What’s better than watching The Quiet Earth when you feel down? Why not read Journey to the End of the Night when civilisation’s going down the toilet? Maybe the downturn will mean people will turn towards stuff that will make them feel good about hating mainstream society.

JR: Finally, I have a hunch that we are witnessing the accelerated decline of western civilisation, as predicted by Oswald Spengler in his two volume opus The Decline of the West. Do you share similar sentiments, or do you think I’m overreacting?

SH: I think you’re overreacting. But by overreacting you’re being incredibly positive about humanity. I can’t see an uprising or a death of capitalism. I think we’re out of the age of revolutions or societal collapse. There’s too many people outside of manual labour, farming, industrial jobs. It’s mostly a service economy these days. Sadly, people will drift along and suffer rather than change, rise up or fight.  As always, I think a lot of the wrong people will suffer. People in human resources won’t lose their jobs, but true workers will.  This decline just feels like a resetting of society to a few years ago. We’ll be back in same shit in a couple of years’ time, just with fewer brand names.  If anything, maybe the world is turning into Repo Man or They Live. The small will try to survive by becoming more like the mainstream companies, but eventually the big companies will buy out the small. Rebel Inc becomes Canongate… Black Sparrow Press becomes Harper Collins… Corner shops become Tescos and Wal-Marts….  The small fight is a great fight… “beating long odds”. So while I’m hugely pessimistic about humanity, you can fight tooth and nail. As long as you survive, you’ve got a chance.  Only the belligerent ones who obsess over quality control will remain….


12x12 (an excerpt from the novel “Steps”) by Steve Hussy


I climbed those stairs with the thinning carpet, went into the toilet.

“Oh!” came out of me.

Emma was riding some fat dick in the tub. He looked astonished, monged out... all wide eyes and bland flabby features. My eyes found Emma’s pimply ass peeking out from under a shiny black top... all these bright red pimples on a big duck ass. I couldn’t see any other forbidden skin, just that ass, that ass she jutted out and wobbled when she walked.

“Want me to shut the door?” I asked.

They nodded quickly and I shut it.

I pissed in the toilet, desperately needing to let out that night’s booze.

Halfway through I heard them starting to fuck again. It sounded dry... desperate.

I looked up and concentrated. Life wasn’t so bad. Ms. Devgan cleaned the shared toilet facilities... she did it almost psychotically. You might catch a stray pubic hair early in the morning but mostly you were fine. And I usually pissed in my room anyway...

The room is still there, stored in my head. 12 by 12 of detail. The cheapest I could find in the area but plenty good enough... a decent bed, no rats, only the odd cockroach. Burn mark riding up the right-hand wall, stains on the shit brown carpet - all offset by having that sink... good enough to piss and jerk off in. I liked it... my own cave.

I’d lay down in my bed and feel it, feel something different. I didn’t know what. I’d draw up the whisky to my mouth and let it slide down. “Why did I say that?” I’d ask myself over something trivial at the bar. “What if you did this?” I’d analyse it until my stomach churned.

I reached over and took some of the ginger from Ms. Devgan’s baggie. The thoughts would speed, and then race again. Nothing could keep them quiet.

The bats started to crawl above from the roof space and I’d hear them talking to each other chitterchitterchitter crawling over each other chitterchitterchitter probably fucking away but still chitterchitterchitterchitter. They’d keep going until five, six... I didn’t know how many were up there, but it felt like thousands. I’d open the shit brown curtains and watch them, these dark angular forms flying erratically, lurching up down around while the rest still chittered away, above, sometimes just in my head.

And my mind would crawl with them as someone in the room below would start fucking away. Fucking in the bed or fucking against the door, some poster rustling away... stroke, rustle, stroke, rustle. Erg Erg Erg Oooo Erg Erg Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... Quick, desperate fucks. Quick, desperate people.

I knew I had to keep going. Had to keep going to sleep and try to wake the next morning... try to knock down that chattering in my head with booze, with porn, with anything.

I wanted to hug, to fuck, to have anything so they would be close to me. I felt lost, swimming in the shit, confused, with that need, that fucking need... That voice inside, loneliness, that voice that was tired of my right hand, that voice. I disliked my feelings, they twisted my cynicism, the truth I’d created, but they were there... they SCREAMED.

Concentrate chitter-ahhh concentrate chitter-erg CONCENTRATE chitter-aaaaah mmmmmmmm FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT.

* * * * *


I heard Brad first through the wall. He was jerking off, talking to his cock:

“Come on, COME ON.”

The walls were thin, thin enough to smell the cum if my senses didn’t stop me.

“Yeah yeah that’s it, YEAH!”

I tried to block myself off. I listened to music through a personal stereo, tried to use the shared kitchen and the shared toilet as little as possible. But it was impossible. I needed human contact, even in some tiny sense. I’d beaten it down but it was bred into me. A social animal.

I met him in the kitchen, cooking pasta. My microwave couldn’t manage that. It was 12.30, I’d got back from work and felt the hunger pangs. A bottle of red wine was already open.

“Hi,” I said, feeling myself shrink, wanting to get away.

“Hey there... Brad...” American accent.

Brad extended a hand. He was big, tall, muscular. Grey-blue fixed eyes... Scary.

I shook the hand: “Err... you want a drink?” I motioned at the bottle.

I’d drink two or three bottles of wine a day. Or a half-bottle of spirits. Far from heroic, trust me. It was mostly whisky... seemed better than the paint-stripper gin or cheap vodka that reeked like nail varnish remover.

“Sure... Merlot?” he said. I liked that.

We went back to his room. Same box as mine... cleaner though.  A few books on the shelves, a tapestry on the wall, incense burning. Huge army-style kit bag in the corner.

“What do you do?” he asked... the question everyone wants to know.

“I’m training to be a teacher. Errr... You?”

“I’m travelling... Through Europe.”

We talked a while. He had a half-bottle of whisky himself and shared it happily.

“What’d you do... before now?”

“I was a Marine,” he said.

“Yeah? You were in the Gulf?”

“Yeah.”

“What’d you do... Err...  There, I mean.”

“Everyone asks that... I worked comms. Behind shit. Keeping stuff together. Nothing much, no fighting.”

“You see anything?”

“Yeah... everyone asks that...”

“Yeah?”

“Ok...” His dead eyes looked to one side then stared through me. “Look, we worked clean-up. Bodybagging, that shit. So yeah I saw stuff... Shit... One guy in a cab, the top half of him. The other half was laying in the road. We had to fucking shovel ‘em up... had these little fold-out shovels... stick ‘em in the same bag, you know?”

I sat. I wasn’t much good with conversation, sometimes words would catch in my throat so I’d end up just sitting there. So I tried to listen more than talk, but then words raised up anyway and I’d think I’d said the wrong thing. I sensed people’s feelings. Put them on myself.

“You want another drink?” he asked.

“Errr, yeah... ok.”

He poured it.

* * * * *


He was Ms. Devgan’s nephew - staying a while.  He screamed “OH HELP ME PLEASE I AM DYING!” from the corridor as Brad walked through it and locked it behind him.

Brad poured another slammer for me. Tequila from a litre bottle... no lime so we had slices of lemon. They fizzed in my head, my brain, but not my voice.

“Shouldn’t we go and help him?”

“He’s just drunk... leave it...”

“OH HELP ME PLEASE!” the Indian screamed again.

“She’s not about?”

“Nope... I checked her room. I guess she’s with her son... fuck knows.”

I said: “She told me he was a doctor...” as he wailed some more outside.

“Yeah... I think they don’t drink... Sikhs...” He laughed: “Guess he’s been a bad boy!”

The Indian said “Oh help me please!” a little softer. And we took another drink and listened to Emma out there now, cajoling him a while. Then she left too after he didn’t respond.

“So you’re looking forward to teaching?” Brad asked.

“I need a career I suppose, and I think I can do it.”

He took another slammer then filled my glass. “You sound as sure as ever.” There was sarcasm in that.

I wet between my thumb and forefinger, he poured the salt over, I drank. It fizzed again.

“I suppose I’ll see how things go.” I didn’t have many answers, I felt slightly dizzy in conversations... confused. The booze helped but they’d still churn my brain, my stomach.

There was a pause as we drank and thought. The Indian started to whisper, still walking up and down, but now slower... much slower... “oh help me please.”

“Err... Where are you gonna travel to?”

“Here... then Europe, Japan... Shit, wherever. The Marines... it wasn’t enough.”

“You miss home?”

“Fuck no... My father is crazy, he’s nuts. Religious. I needed to get away. That’s why I joined the Marines. To see stuff... I didn’t even FUCK at home you know? I did it first in the Philippines, paid ten dollars to a whore, she did my cleaning too... for a week... Shit!”

I laughed, thinking the Philippines sounded good...

“Man... He got crazy once, over the Armageddon, and I mean he got convinced over it. He went into the garage and boarded it up... stocked it up with canned goods, all that... kool-aid for fuck’s sake! My mom wasn’t into any of it. Shit! His face the day it was supposed to come... looking out of there...” He smiled, but there was a pang of something else to it.

There was quiet again as the Indian whispered outside “I am dying... oh help me...”

“Listen to this,” Brad said. He passed me his Walkman and I stuck in an earphone.

I heard: “Baby, I think of you a lot you know? Like today, like I was listening to Pat Metheny and I thought of you.” It went along much the same for a while, about her day... she worked in a vet’s, she lived on her own but had hung out with friends, she listened to music...

“Cassie,” he said as those dead grey-blue eyes glazed a little.

“She sounds nice,” I said, feeling the weight of expectation. I felt little except a tiny voice whispering “average” and I beat it down. “You with her?”

“We split before I left. I guess it’s complicated... She’s beautiful man... Mexican, she’s 18, maybe she’s too young. I dunno... she’s smart too you know... She’s grown up now.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah...” he thought a little. “Yeah, she has... Man, she’s fucking beautiful, you know?”

Then the Indian was directly out the door... whispering... “oh I am dying...”

Then the Indian started: “HOOOOOOOOROARGH! HOOROARGH!”

“Shit!” said Brad.

The puke pounded against the door and then the Indian must have wheeled round... “HWAAAARGH,” he heaved, “HOOOOURAAAG. HOO-HOO-HORRRRRRRRRRRRG.”

Brad started laughing but I was transfixed, looking at the closed door.

“He’s really fucking going for it!” Brad said loudly over it.

“HUH-HUH-HUH-HUH...” He was hacking, coughing out there.

“Shit... I better go... Wait here.”

He got up and opened the door and a mound of thick puke greeted him... He stepped over it... walked towards the exit. The stench hit me and I stood up. I reeled and veered towards the wall, bounced towards the door off one arm...

I looked left and saw Brad leading the Indian through a door, veered to the right, just avoiding some puke outside my door... I fumbled with my key in the lock feeling it build inside. Spinning... I got the key around, went in, turned on the light... locked the fucking door even...

Then spun round to the sink and it hammered out.

“HARGOUGH,” I coughed... trying to keep it quiet but it hacking out anyway. The puke flew out, brown, thick. It rose up at me, filling the sink...

“HOROUGH.” Another load of acrid brown shit from my mouth. And even in the fucked thoughts, the mayhem in my head, I thought “Why’s it not going down?”

“HUH-HOROUGH,” another load. No, no, no, it lurched up at me again, two thirds full now... That fucking chocolate pudding earlier! I vomited again at the stench of it.

I reached down into it with my right hand... it was warm, wetter on top, thicker further down... I got my fingers into the plughole... started pushing the bits through... I heaved at that too... but came up emptier each time. It went on for only 10 minutes, felt longer.

I dry heaved there, whispering “fuck, fuck, fuck” in caught breaths. But something...

I brushed my teeth to try to calm it down but I hacked that up too, the juice of it.

And then I started to laugh. A big gut laugh wheezed out through the bile-burned throat.

Then I thought “What the hell?” and told myself to feel bad and so I did.

Steps is available from Murder Slim Press

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