State Of The Neon Union: One Year Later

Madam Splatter, Vice Pedantic, and my fellow Americans. Thank you for joining us. A year ago today we launched this website in the hopes of making a fun island of misfit toys to explore genre, have some fun, and try to boost voices of the oddball outsiders who are passionate about the kooky things they love.

With that being said, we have gathered together one of the best assemblies of talent ever (if I may be so bold), with over 70 contributors turning in works that tackle all sorts of subject matter from all sorts of angles. The theme months of Kaijuly, Mocktoberfest, Season’s Beatings (originally titled “12 Days of Fistmas” because I’m a naive and innocent boy), and Jackie Chanuary were fun ways to drill down into specific genres and sub-genres and performances that left me with a brain full of new knowledge and appreciation, plus a laundry list of movies to check out.

We’ve also started new recurring features thanks to our badass staff writers: Kiley Fox, Jeremy Lowe, Shafi Malik, Mary Kay McBrayer, Khayla McGowan, and Ashley Rappa. I’m excited to announce another new staff member with her own recurring feature—she’s no stranger to the site…it’s Alexis M. Collazo! She will be bringing you some lesser known but truly great indie horror books and films as well on the first Wednesday of every month.

This site is only possible through the immense talents of all of these writers, so be sure to go and support them in their many interesting and incredible endeavors.

And while there have been many successes here on this site, we can do better and we must do better! More consistent schedules (dayjob be damned!), better layout and navigation, and finally taking care of whatever the hell is in the basement and eating all the old people that wander down there. So what does the future hold for your friendly neighborhood Splatter fan?

In the immediate future is another theme, this time celebrating the work of prolific filmmaker Fred Olen Ray.

Fred Olen May will run all next week and feature posts by contributors new and familiar discussing some of the auteur’s wildest movies. How can any week involving chainsaw-wielding prostitutes, menacing cartoons, and super-intelligent motorcycles be anything less than a good time? Answer: It cannot.

There will be other theme weeks and months throughout the year, hopefully bringing in new writers and new readers and spreading the good word of films great and terrible. Also lined up for the future is a video essay (my first) on an unlikely parallel to some of Jordan Peele’s work.

There will be new features and surprises in store. Also coming up in just a couple of weeks will be the launch of a Patreon.

Every feature and post currently available on the site will remain available and not behind the paywall. But the Patreon will bring along some new content, some merch, some unique videos (wasn’t supposed to sound so salacious), and possibly a podcast or two. Stay tuned!

In fact, that is the main message of this little post: stay tuned. This was the first year for Neon Splatter so of course mistakes were made, but so were some great pieces of writing.

We’ve learned from mistakes and figured out what we find the most rewarding and fun to do here. Hopefully that will translate to some dope times ahead with unexpectedly sexy results.

We’re always looking for contributors; you can have a CV or never been published before.

Pitch a new idea or contribute to one of the recurring features like Added To Watchlist or My Mixtape’s A Masterpiece. This is especially true for non-white, non-cishet, non-binary, non-male writers as those voices are often overlooked. If you are interested, please email admin@neonsplatter.com.

So, on this day, on our 365th day as a website, I’ve come to report on the State of our Neon Union. And my report is this: The State of the Neon Union is splat because you, the deranged people, are splat.

We are splatter today — we are splatter today than we were a year ago.

And we’ll be splatter a year from now than we are today. Or something.

gog bless you all.

And may gog bless Neon Splatter. Thank you.