These novellas are part of a super cool series produced by a friend from my Brisbane writers group.
Garth Jones suspected that his Home Brewed Vampire Bullets novellas would be too transgressive, risky, and outrageous for traditional Australian publishing houses, so he began his own publishing imprint, the strikingly named Pass the Amyl Press. With a background in advertising and graphic art, he has created a literary project that is refreshingly original, often shocking, and utterly entertaining.
Action begins with blues-rock band Toxxic Shokk crammed into a Bedford van that’s limping across country NSW, heading to a remote outpost to play a support gig for a lacklustre audience. The story bursts forward, rather than unfolds, with violence, vice, profanity and vulgarity. Eventually rocker Ed Von Satan, desperate to make a comeback, teams up with a girl band to play a music festival run by a self-help cult.
Home Brewed Vampire Bullets is told through a combination of graphics, typography, illustrations, and shifting narrative perspectives in the tradition of the lurid, sensational pulp fiction novels of the early 1900s. The story is cinematic, with colourful characters and settings, and gritty interactions.
It’s rude and irreverent, and it also offers a funny, provocative commentary on Australian culture from the outback towns, to the leafy harbourside enclaves of inner Sydney, to the unhinged underground music scene in north-western Tasmania. I was especially pleased to see my hometown Launceston mentioned!
Garth Jones describes his genre as mongrel punk. The dark grungy Aussie social realism reminded me of 1990s novel Praise by Andrew McGahan. Jones pushes the boundaries of censorship with a sense of humour but also with an underlying intelligence that keeps the reader in on the joke. Think Hunter S Thompson meets Trainspotting. An added bonus is an interesting soundtrack by Half Majesty, accessed via a QR code inside the cover.
You won’t be able to buy this on Amazon as the author doesn’t want to support them so you should order direct from www.passtheamyl.com
Via Insta.