Music In Hell

BRATS IN HELL was written on a steady diet of Satanic inspired music. Though the story is horror comedy, Frank J. Edler felt keeping the tone of hell required maintaining a certain mood while writing the parts in Hell. This is an exposition of the music that inspired the the underworld of BRATS IN HELL.

I don't normally write with music on. I find it distracting. But for some reason, when it came time to write BRATS, I felt I needed some extra oomph to stay in that zone. True, I was writing a comedic version of Hell, but I still felt the story needed to keep this misfit, chaotic mood for these demons to exist in.

I though about how I saw the demons in my head. I honed their visage from metal album cover art. Two particular albums lent themselves heavily to how I saw these demons and the world they existed within. First is Rob Zombie, particularly White Zombie era Rob Zombie art. I always loved that type of demonic/satanic art. Its colorful and vibrant and conversely gross and disfigured. The Hell that exists in BRATS IN HELL is like that. There are several 'species' of demons which are identified by their primary color and their behavioral demeanor.

More over Rob Zombie type demons, I really saw my demons as the demons from a lesser know cover, Dangerous Toys "Pissed" album. They are a little trickier to pick up on. They are crawling out of the corners from the central image of the Dangerous Toys iconic clown. If you owned they album you saw bigger, isolated images of these demons on the inside folds of the liner notes. These demons were more sinister looking. They were were green and purple and red but they were darker shades of those cover. And they had a mischievous vibe about that. Also, they also had a sense of coming from a communal place where as Zombie's demonic figures are very singularly identified.

So these were the demons I saw in my mind as I wrote the story. I played a lot of Rob Zombie and Dangerous Toys as a result. I found it helped keep me in the zone of the atmosphere of Hell.

I took to Spotify and began to see out more Satanic, creepy, dark music. I knew to go to Venom's "Evil In A League With Satan" which was probably played the most during the writing of BRATS.




But BRATS IN HELL isn't a deeply dark story. I found Twisted Sister's "Burn In Hell" fit the mood of the book perfectly. Anyone familiar with the song probably recalls it being played in the movie Pee Wee's Big Adventure . The song, a dark, growling anthem stands in stark contrast to the silly mood of a Pee Wee Herman movie. If there were a soundtrack to BRATS this would be the lead song on the album.




Those who've not yet read BRATS IN HELL may not realize the book not only takes place in Hell but a good chunk of the book also is set in Heaven. For those more pure moments I turned to more "heavenly metal" to put myself in the proper state of mind. So in order to shift gears from Hell to Heaven I had to find a way to cast the devil out of my mind. The answer was simple, play Stryper's "To Hell With The Devil"




Before I sat down to write BRATS IN HELL, I found trying to listen to music, any music while writing a complete distraction. For BRATS I felt I really need to sink myself into a frame of mind while writing in the setting of Hell. The only way I figured could help that would be to listen to dark chugging heavy metal music with Satanic sounding lyrics.

I don't know if that mindset poured out onto the page but without a doubt it helped me chug though the writing and held my normally jocular, upbeat psyche down in a dark space for a little longer than it cared to linger.

I haven't written anything since that I've felt I needed to force a state of mind for. I do listen to music as I write from time to time. I try to play stuff I'm not familiar with so I don't start focusing on the lyrics and get distracted and start singing along. It's nice to have something in the background sometimes and serves the dual purpose of being able to discover new music at the same time.

I wonder, do you play music while you read? I thing that would be an even bigger distraction that listening while writing. What songs do YOU think would make a great BRATS IN HELL playlist?

South of the Bratwurst

BRATS IN HELL premiers Tuesday, May 30th. Touted as "The WURST Book Ever Written", the latest release from Frank J. Edler is being marketed with a fondness and nostalgia for travel along the I-95 corridor between New York and Florida.

You've never SAUSAGE a book! Brats In Hell, my latest release, is the story of Otto Van Der Noodle and his award winning bratwursts. The bratwursts that taste so good, he influences the power balance over the forces controlling Hell. When it came time to start promoting BRATS IN HELL, I focused in on the bratwurst theme of the story. How do I promote a book about bratwursts?

The answer was simple, because from my childhood forward I traveled along Interstate 95 between New York and Florida more times than I could possibly count. Those who've traveled along I-95 will instantly know where I'm going with this. Those who haven't, let me clue you in.

There is a tourist attraction that people love to hate in the town of Dillon, South Carolina. It's called SOUTH OF THE BORDER. It's called that because, well, its just south of the border between North and South Carolina. It's that kitschy, clever type of pun that gives the place its loathsome charm. But half the fun of South of the Border is getting there.

There are said to be something in the neighborhood of 275 billboards up and down I-95 advertising SOUTH OF THE BORDER. The tourist trap itself features a motel, restaurant, fireworks shop and other shopping facilities and attractions. Each billboard either advertises a specific area of the complex or simply lure you in with something funny, eye-catching and a tease of how much further you have to go until you get there. It's the perfect distraction from the long drive to keep an eye out for Pedro and his billboards.

My absolute favorite were the ones that had a gigantic three dimensional hot dog on them that would read, "You never SAUSAGE a place!" So when it came time to promote my book about sausages the only logical conclusion was to take a cue from the experts of marketing, SOUTH OF THE BORDER billboards.

And just like that magical moment when you finally see the giant sombrero along side of I-95 in
Dillon, South Carolina, you can pick up your copy of BRATS IN HELL after having suffered through miles of my cheesy advertising and hold it proudly like a cheap souvinier and say, "I've made it to the WURST book ever written." and love every rotten moment of the pun.

For more fun information and facts on South of the Border and it's billboards, check out these cool web sites:

South of the Border History

South of the Border on Wikipedia

DWMorrison's Fun Facts of South of the Border

And of course, you can read BRATS IN HELL on Kindle, Kindle Unlimited and Paperback.

Check it out here.

BRATS IN HELL: The Wurst Book Ever Written

BRATS IN HELL: The Wurst Book Ever Written premiers Tuesday, May 30th. Available now for pre-sale, exclusively on Kindle eBook.

BRATS IN HELL is a book that has been three years in the making. Back in the summer of 2014 I sat down with the intention of writing one thousand words a day for 50 days to wind up with a 50,000 word novel in just under two month's time. Well, the story would end up just over 60,000 words and I took just a tad longer than two months to complete it. The end result was a story I was happy with, BRATS IN HELL.

What to do with the story now? I shopped it around. At first, I submitted it to a couple of publishers who said they would be receptive to reading it but alas, it fell on deaf ears, or eyes. I began compiling a list of publishers that I thought might have interest in the story. I submitted to horror publishers, bizarro publishers, weird fiction publishers and a speculative fiction outlet or two. All passed.

Admittedly, I feel BRATS is an odd fit for most publishers. Too strange for straight horror presses, too slapstick for serious speculative and dark fiction outlets and not quite weird enough for the more focused bizarre and weird fiction publishers.

I wrestled with self-publishing it all the while. Early on I felt I needed the skills of a publisher to present the book in the best light possible. But over the past two and a half years, I've self published a short story collection and novella length book. And I got progressively better at it. I've found a solid editor and a cover artist who understands me on a genetic level. I, myself, have gotten good at interior layout for both print and digital editions. So much so that I'm now confident I have the ability to make the book look as good as most any indie press would be capable of producing.

On Tuesday, May 30th, I will unleash the horde of demons collectively knows as BRATS IN HELL upon the world. Fuck it. I love the book and I want it to be out there. It's a great story, it really is. It's available for pre-sale right now. You could order it right now and have it waiting for you first thing on Tuesday morning when you wake up to face another day. You could flick it open on your favorite reading device and forget all your troubles for a few minutes or hours. You could immerse yourself in a world where the demons of Hell have everyday problems like you do. It is Hell, after all.

Also, if you haven't had a chance to read my other work, I've added some incentive ahead of the BRATS IN HELL release. Right now, DEATH GETS A BOOK, is only .99 cents on Amazon Kindle. Now is the prefect time to grab DEATH and get to know my silly, scary style of storytelling. You could also pick up SCARED SILLY, my short story collection which is always .99cents anywhere you buy eBooks.

At the moment, I don't have any appearances scheduled ahead of SCARES THAT CARE in Williamsburg in July. That maybe your first opportunity to score a signed copy of the book. If there are any opportunities that pop up ahead of that, you're going to need to sign up for my newsletter (find the sign-up in the upper right of this page) to be one of the first to get news of my latest appearences, signings and releases.

Until then, don't forget to pick up BRATS IN HELL, it's the WURST book ever written. Who wouldn't want to read that! Find it HERE!