Welcome back, kiddies! Ahh, the arrival of spring- puddles of rain, the stench of mildew, that nauseating feeling of love in the air and the Psycho-erotic writings of author Hertzan Chimera. If anyone can describe the birds, the bees and the bloodshed of a post-sexed praying mantis, it would indeed be him.

I have a very special surprise for you in this issue, folks. No, I’m not talking about that bound woman shrieking under my cot. I have a guest for you this week and after I read two of his amazing books, I picked his brain clean. That’s right! An exclusive Q and A with he who is known as Hertzan Chimera! Enjoy, and please stop poking him with those sticks. Save that for the bound woman.

Spidered Web Hertzan Chimera Publisher: Cyber-Pulp 13430 Whitchurch Way Houston, Texas 77015 http://come.to/cyberpulp Price: $14.00 Page Count: 166

“Spidered Web” starts out with Mr. Chimera in a dreamlike world, which only an author like Chimera could imagine, standing at the gates of Heaven and sizing up a statue of female proportions. Next to him stands the fake author Jack Ketchum. They exchange words, then the real Jack Ketchum busts in, who seems a bit bewildered by Chimera’s style of interviewing.

After informing Chimera that he prefers directness to Chimera’s odd style of interviewing, he goes on about writing, the sixties, Elvis and everything in between.

Digging further into the book, Chimera sets the scene at Tom Piccirilli’s home, the two of them gathered around the dinner table with Chimera’s brother, Jack, watching as he devours his own brain. Later, while travelling down a cobblestone back alley, Chimera discovers author Alex Severin in a gutter and ends up with a sword to his throat while she demands his bloodshed. Then, Chimera makes a call to author Amy Grech and finds himself sitting in his own feces and slaughtering a poodle. And mixed in with all of the insanity, there is much insight on the authors being interviewed.

Also on the Chimera interview roster are:

Charlee Jacob
Michael A Arnzen
Kurt Newton
Christina Sng
John Lawson
Queenie Tirone
John Turi
MF Korn
Monica J. O'Rourke
Polycarp Kusch
Destiny West
DF Lewis

And my favourite interview of them all, Ed Lee, whose long rant about writing, the Yankee’s, not being rich, lizards, blurbs and Family Dollar clam chowder tossed me into a hysterical frenzy.

This wild group of interviews is an amazing mix of fiction and the reality of today’s most intriguing horror writers. If standard questions had been used, sure, it would have still been interesting, but Chimera’s gore savvy style has taken the standard interview, sliced it into shreds and put the author in an entirely new light, showcasing their own creativity along with their everyday lives and opinions. He has the ability to pull a reader from their reading area and straight into the story, or in this case, interview, so the reader can feel as if they are witnessing the bizarre world he has created with their own eyes.

Next time you watch Barbara Walters bring someone to tears on the television screen, keep in mind Chimera can make them bleed with the simple flip of a page.

United States Hertzan Chimera Double Dragon Publishing www.double-dragon-ebooks.com ISBN: 1-55404-048-5 Pages: 270 Price: $4.99

Reading the writings of psycho erotic horror author Hertzan Chimera is a lot like being shot up with a potent mixture of morphine and ecstasy. It was almost as if I was feverish and in the middle of a nightmare, trying to break free from it while thrashing around in sweat soaked sheets. And no, this isn’t a bad thing. Chimera’s second novel “United States” is an incredible, grim look into the sick reality which is life, sex and mid-eighties insanity.

It starts off with the first half, “The Founding Fathers”, which is filled with a variety of characters all sharing last names taken from the US’ fifty states. In between the sexy, pain packed paragraphs an evil plan is in action resulting in the murders of innocent and not so innocent people, the disappearance and deaths of infants and strange sexual encounters leaving some people dead and others physically changed like pleasurably prodded guinea pigs.

“The Bill of Rights” finishes off the 80,000 word novel with a bizarre, first person ride through the dream-like world and life of an insane man who has no sex organs or thumbs. Like the first half of the book, it is crammed full of sexual horrors, but is painted with science fiction and shape-shifting monsters.

“United States” is definitely a mad mans’ crack- the kind of book you could find yourself addicted too, but have to be crazy to stomach, or not very timid. Chimera’s words are relentless, bold and if he wasn’t so damn intelligent some people would call the book disgusting trash because they don’t know how to separate their reality from their fiction. I don’t suggest ordering this book for your teenage children or your weak hearted grandmother. But if you like them sick, have a set of tough guts and want a page to page high that will make your stomach twist and every part of your body, including your fingertips, perspire, I suggest you get high on Hertzan.

Interview with author Hertzan Chimera

1) You are well known for your over-the-edge tales of psycho-erotic horror ; your writings are outrageously wild, extremely horrific and some people have even gone as far as calling you a madman. I have to ask, would people say you were also a strange child? If so, what was the strangest thing you were ever caught doing?

I have never been caught, though I have sometimes admitted to certain indiscretions.

2) The human body is described brilliantly in "United States" and mentioned many times. Your art also focuses a lot on the human body. Why do you have such a fascination with it?

Human bodies taste real good and smell real good, too - especially the recently dead ones. I jest, but in reality, I love the human body, I love how it feels, how it grows, how it dies and everything in between. I love kisses. I love body language. I like the way every part of the human body is written with the same biological formula. If you look at a gorgeous mouth, you could be looking at an anus - same mechanism. If you're looking at an eye, side on, you could be looking at the wrinkled opening to the vagina. An ear resembles a foetus in the womb. Muscles grow by ripping; the split fibres grow. It's a fascinating organism.

3) I noticed a lot of controversial venting in your writing. Do you use your characters to vent your own views and if so, why all of the anger?

I am a very relaxed person, nothing like the crazy fool who writes Hertzan Chimera fiction. However, I do use my characters to air my rather extreme views on life, the universe and rice pudding - they are a corporate mouthpiece for a dissatisfied loner. Everything in my books is real. It has all happened to me or around me in one way or another; I have merely refigurised and reflavoured it for the reader as entertainment.

4) God: friend or foe? Why?

God - the universe don't need the burden of a god to run. God for me is the way an atom spins, the force behind why the universe pulls together to form the atoms, God is everything in the universe. God is exceptionally happy that the universe continues to pull into itself in every direction. That is God. The problem arises when THE BIBLE (a book written by some possibly mad and/or drug-crazed scribes back in the annals of history from spoken stories of the fantastic and reinterpreted many times since from language to language) claims that God made the Earth and everything on it. People take this to mean, he constructed our planet, period; to me it means that function and structure of Universal Equilibrium forced the earth to cool from the embers of our proto-sun. What.e.v.e.r.

5) Have you ever found yourself in an erotic scenario like you have described in your writings?

Writing is writing. Erotic scenarios are the backbone of the creative urge.
For what are we but romantics about the rutting act? Without art (and writing) the world would be full of schoolyard bullies and political agendas like oh, so many of the horror writers who are spilling their baby-ish attitudes and prejudices all over the net of late.... the amount of message boards that are failing because of jealousy. If only we could learn to collaborate more in the creative field instead of all trying so desperately hard to protect our precious little piece of the market. We need more lovers, and less fighters.

6) What other passions do you have aside from writing?

Absolutely nothing else matters, I live only for writing. I used to be a figurative artist for ten years and I was totally into that such that my weight fell to nine and a half stone (and I'm 5 ft 10 inch tall). I was doing about two hours of karate training a night, too in that frantic time. I was uncontrollable; mood swings up and down, a really horrible person to be near - very nasty. Now I live and breathe only the creativity of the next delicious phrase, the next verbal outrage. My times of craziness are not at an end but they have subsumed into another less-physical form, a new realm of undo. In my spare time (between my job as a 3D artist in computer games and fiction) I write alternative and foreign reviews for video and DVD site: Video Vista.

7) Okay, icky industry question: What are your thoughts on the following:

Self-publishing - the coward's way out.
Small press - the only place where the balls are cast iron.
Big publishing houses - eyes on last year's P&L figures.

8) If you could be any type of animal in the world what would you be and why?

I always thought I was a cheetah. That's how it is, Chimboy the cheetah.

9) If I followed you around with a camera, what would I witness? What is a typical day in the life of Hertzan Chimera like?

You would see a man you do not recognise as Hertzan Chimera getting older and no wiser. You would feel conned. You would wonder where the Mister Hyde of Doctor Jekyll lives. You may even ask people if I really was Hertzan Chimera and they would go, "I dunno. Has anybody even seen a real Hertzan Chimera? What shape is it? Is it fixed or irreal?" You would eventually point your camera in another direction to capture something that was really interesting.

10) You have recently released "Spidered Web" through Cyber-Pulp, which is a warped series of interviews with authors from the horror genre. What was it like shooting the sh** with such incredible writers?

Interviews are a total brain killer; real tedious filth of a chore. The idea with the Spidered Web interviews was to explore the writer. Not by asking him a list of boring questions, but by setting the interview IN THE WORLD OF HIS/HER WORDS. Turn the table on the writer and make him by reference directly responsible for his output. Allow his true nature to come face to face with the nature of his creativity. They were meant to be hard work for the interviewees, true creative collaborations rather than simple question & answer box ticking.

11) You live in the UK, the place where some of the greatest bands ever were formed. What could we find you listening to?

I have eclectic tastes in all things, and music is no exception. I worship Marilyn Manson, Bauhaus, Asalah, Mozart, Arabian music, Aphex Twin, Billie Holiday, Slipknot, Radiohead (a local Oxford band), The Beatles, The Stones, Brian Eno, Michael Nyman, David Bowie, Bjork, JS Bach, Nick Cave, Metallica, Missy Elliot, Busta Rhymes, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Slipknot....... eclectic, you see?

12) Do you have any interesting writing habits- nail biting, brain slurping, coffee chugging- while you type?

Music is a great inspiration. I sometimes fugue out on a track just for the hell of it, letting the feel of the piece carry the word melange onto crazier and crazier rhythms and melodies. I did once write, edit and have accepted by THE URBANITE a story called SHE GIVES ME THE FEAR in the space it took for the Mechanical Animals CD to loop twice. I am a 'sober writer' needing help from no drugs whether narcotic or alcoholic to really let rip and forget that boundaries ever existed - I owe this to history, this literal freedom.

13) What have you got stewing right now and why do we have to wait so long for "Chimeraworld 2"?

Double Dragon Press, publisher of my ebooks, have just released my ANIMAL INSTINCTS collection in fully illustrated oversized paperback version and let me tell you, it is stunning, Mitch Phillips, the illustrator, is gonna be a big name in the future. I have just finished my third novel Yôroppa and already Hellbound Books has read it several times with great enthusiasm and will be publishing it in Q1, 2006. Cyber Pulp recently brought out my Chim & Her collaborative collection, written with eight of the worlds most stunning female writers: Charlee Jacob, Alex Severin, Amy Grech, Destiny West, Dawn Andrews, Brutal Dreamer, Queenie Tirone and Christina Sng. It and Chimeraworld #1 (which I edited) came out the day after Valentine's day, 15th Feb 2004. As well as editing future editions of Terror Tales, finishing off the male collabs CHIM + HIM written with Mark McLaughlin, DF Lewis, MF Korn, John Edward Lawson, Vincent Sakowski, Simon Logan and (subversive site Suspect Thoughts' editor) Greg Wharton. I have a lot of interest from a publisher for my full-colour illustrated cyber series F*** STAR, I will be reading for Chimeraworld 2 through September of 2004 only. There just aren't enough hours in a millennium.

14) Any last words?

Octopus shrivels in a black soup of disguise.