WAKE UP AND OPEN YOUR EYES

BY HAL HEFNER

WAKE UP AND OPEN YOUR EYES WITH PAUL TAMMANY:Art, design and animation created by Hal Hefner. With audio by Hal Hefner and music by  @WhiteBatAudio  Produced by CATMONKEY Studio.

Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is a new novel that captivated Justine and I at Nerd Horror over the last two weeks. It’s the horror novel we need at this point in American history. With biting social commentary on the political and mental state of the United States, news media propaganda and our mindless addictions to dopamine filled social media activity this is one hell of a graphic, horror novel by Clay McLeod Chapman.

From its parody of Fox News as Fax News it hits a nerve with anyone who despises talking head TV and the negative impact it has had on the mental well being of Americans. This book reminds us with a clear warning how propaganda and lies are truly the evil that has taken root in America to divide us, distract us and enrage us, while we are preyed upon by those who wield the media as a weapon. Propaganda is personified as a mass demonic possession and the way Chapman lays it out in flesh eating, orgy filled insanity it sits in your brain long after you've read it (or listened to it).

In Wake up and Open Your Eyes, Fax News is where Americans tune into their daily dose of liberal hatin’ reminders, for "just the facts." Paul Tammany is your "normal" talking head political pundit whose sharp tongue ushers in the netherworld. He stammers nightly, with his slack jawed mouth and ball squeezing voice, full of vitriolic propaganda that he jams down the gullets of truth seeking Americans, sitting by the TV ready to, wake up and open their eyes. But beneath the cigar box charisma, the patronizing smirk and the former high school linebacker bravado, Paul Tammany hides a dark, demonic secret.

I cannot recommend Wake Up and Open Your Eyes enough. I listened to it on Audible and I devoured that thing in three days. What I loved about is that even though its a damning reflection on right wing batshit crazy media, Clay McLeod Chapman doesn’t let Liberals and Liberal media off the hook either in this great little punch in the stomach of a book. As an artist who has created many pieces of art that challenges the political discourse like my CONSUME series (inspired by John Carpenter’s They Live), I personally understand the risk and the courage it took for Clay McLeod Chapman to write and publish this novel. This is a ballsy book and is not for everyone. It’s not smarmy or finger wagging, it’s just fun horror social commentary that gets to the heart of what’s wrong with the way Americans CONSUME, OBEY, CONFORM and have NO FREE THOUGHTS.

I liked it so much, I had to make an animated video about it! As a big fan of Rene Laloux’s Fantatsic Planet I love to play around with animation that feels like a little bit cut paper like with my own style applied to it. Using Adobe; Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Premier and Audition I was able to create a very fun amalgamation of psychedelic, mind fucking horror juxtaposed against a smug prick of a news media masturbator. Using snake skin textures to create iridescent demonic creatures with falic tongues my goal was to leave each viewer disoriented but remembering that it’s time to WAKE UP AND OPEN YOUR EYES!

This was a blast to do and…
Thanks a lot for the inspiration Clay, I hope someday we get to make some really fun horror shit together. I can’t wait to see what you write next!

PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE:

About Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“Clay McLeod Chapman is one of my favorite horror storytellers working today.”—Jordan Peele

“Surreal, hypnotic, unrelenting, profoundly claustrophobic, and an absolutely scathing send-up of the pitfalls of American divisiveness.”—Keith Rosson, author of Fever House

From master of horror Clay McLeod Chapman, a relentless social horror novel about a family on the run from a demonic possession epidemic that spreads through media.

Noah has been losing his polite Southern parents to far-right cable news for years, so when his mother leaves him a voicemail warning him that the “Great Reawakening” is here, he assumes it’s related to one of her many conspiracy theories. But when his phone calls go unanswered, Noah makes the drive from Brooklyn to Richmond, Virginia. There, he discovers his childhood home in shambles and his parents locked in a terrifying trancelike state in front of the TV. Panicked, Noah attempts to snap them out of it.

Then Noah’s mother brutally attacks him.

But Noah isn’t the only person to be attacked by a loved one. Families across the country are tearing each other apart—literally—as people succumb to a form of possession that gets worse the more time they spend glued to a screen. In Noah’s Richmond-based family, only he and his young nephew Marcus are unaffected. Together, they must race back to the safe haven of Brooklyn—but can they make it before they fall prey to the violent hordes?

This ambitious, searing novel from one of horror’s modern masters holds a mirror to our divided nation, and will shake readers to the core.

(FROM THE PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE PRODUCT PAGE)

PURCHASE BOOK HERE:

AUDIO BOOK AVAILABLE HERE: