by Chris McCreary

Launched in 2022, Cul-de-sac of Blood has been lovingly curated by its Philadelphia-based co-editors J †Johnson and Gina Myers to include, in their words, "poems & other writing that engage monstrosity, the macabre, the weird & the eerie, horror films, darkness & night, the mysterious unknown, & the perverse urge to speak the unspeakable." We conducted this interview over email during the summer of 2025, with the editors sometimes chiming in individually and sometimes collectively for CDSOB.

Chris: I definitely want to give folks a sense of how Cul-de-sac of Blood came to be and how it’s evolved since then, but I thought a cool place to start would be talking about the new logo(s) – what inspired you to commission them, and how do you feel like they are representative of the CDSOB aesthetic?

CDSOB: We love the original logos Laura Theobald made for us when we launched in 2022, and had such a good time working with her to develop them that we wanted to revisit the process. We wanted to add to our iconography and also signal our affinity for metal and how it relates to horror & genre aesthetics. JJ is working on a book about extreme metal and has been bringing some of that writing into CDSOB, so we wanted to be more deliberate about making space for music writing in general and metal writing in particular. Plus we’ve always been fascinated with metal logos and the way they ornament & obscure language, make words into elaborate, thorny, dripping, forbidding but also inviting place-things that are always also still words even if you can’t read them. So we asked around and a friend recommended Chris O’Neal, who draws metal logos and is really attentive to different styles. We talked about some favorite metal album covers and band logos, he did a bunch of mockups, and then he walked us through the progression of sketches to pencils to ink. It was incredibly exciting to see them flesh out. We’re using them for the Etc. section of the site, where we push the boundaries of what might go in a horror publication.

Chris: I really love the “Etc.” section of the site because it’s such a smorgasbord of oddities - I’m thinking of the visual art, the metal fest reviews, the Friday the 13th, 2023 post that’s got elements of film review, poetry, music, all thrown at the same wall. Has the conception of the CDSOB project broadened over time, narrowed, morphed more generally from how you both originally conceived of it?

CDSOB: The Etc. section was there from the start, and always felt like a reminder (and a promise) that we can’t & don’t want to categorize everything we publish. We are especially drawn to art that defies categories. Which maybe sounds like a strange thing to say about editing what is essentially a genre publication. But that tension between compartmentalization and that which can’t be defined and won’t act normal is what draws us to the metal records section, the horror comics alcove, or the cult video rack. We’re speaking in terms of commercial artifacts not because we’re particularly oriented toward capitalist production, but as a way to think about how pop culture can lead us to art and art can comment on and work with cultural materials. That dynamic reminds us how important it was to discover subculture when we were weird, lonely suburban kids. Anyway, in cycle 5 we committed to giving more effort and attention to the Etc. section, and we hope it encourages people to explore things that are out there beyond the typical ways we describe, make, and experience art. Lots of wonderful & frightening things happen in the dark, where signposts might not help us orient ourselves. Cycle 666 (launching spring 2025) will bring more of that if our readers and contributors will come along.

Chris: Were there any particular moments in popular culture that were particularly important to you in your younger years? A gateway to hell, in a sense? (For me, there was the fairly standard 1980s introduction to a lot of intriguing lore via D&D, but maybe the most vivid single moment was finding a half-melted cassette of Blizzard of Ozz beside the road one summer… it was of course unplayable, but the cover image, warped and distorted, particularly stuck with me!)

Gina: I saw The Amityville Horror when I was six-years-old and was hooked on horror ever since. I was particularly fascinated by the Fright Night poster in my local video rental store and the satanic panic of the 1980s, which featured prominently in news stories and daytime talk shows. I was obsessed with which of my neighbors was a satanist, telling ghost stories, and playing ghoulish games, like light-as-a-feather and the Ouija Board, at sleepovers. Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video was also an early gateway to hell. I couldn’t have been old enough to remember it upon its release, but I remember a poster my brother had that creeped me out.

JJ: An early memory of seeing Bladerunner at a drive-in with my dad stays with me: in particular, the scene in the tower at the end when Batty breaks Deckard’s fingers. I could hardly stand it, but I was also thrilled by the visceral detail I could feel in my own body & psyche. Similar experiences with Stephen King novels like Pet Sematary, which I stayed up all night reading, got me hooked on the full body/mind experience of speculative & horror genre media. I always loved horror movies, and have my own memories of watching The Amityville Horror with my sister via the pirate ON TV cable box my dad made. We had a big cabinet projector, with three colored lights on the front that would cast onto an unwieldy screen with metal legs I’d play between on the floor with the red blue & green lights beaming overhead. My parents also had some old records, mostly from when they were teenagers, and a decent stereo & turntable they didn’t use anymore. Eventually I figured it out and listened to records & tapes in the living room next to the entry of our little suburban house at the belly of a cul-de-sac in San Dimas, California. There was a round mirror on the wall next to the front door that was out of view of any windows, so I could stand in front of it, sing into my fist, and dance around in the entryway on latchkey afternoons. Hall & Oates and Lionel Richie tapes were my favorites among the newer stuff my mom had.

Chris: What led you to expand with a foray into print - the bundle of four chapbooks in 2024?

CDSOB: From the start, we imagined there would be a print component to the publication. We were inspired by the Philly-based publication MovieJawn, which puts out four print zines a year in addition to all of the publishing they do on their website. We have daydreamed a lot of different ideas for what some of those print publications might be, including a zine collecting together some of our Friday Features and named after however many sacs of blood (we rate out of 5) the total collected ratings add up to, and a possible mall-based horror collection where people are invited to submit short stories or poems influenced by a haunted mall. The chapbook series came naturally, as I (Gina) used to publish chapbooks regularly under various project names. We did an open call for work, but only received poetry submissions. We hadn’t originally planned to publish four, but the submissions we received were so good and offered a nice variety, so we decided to turn it into a series. And then we were able to work with the incredible Philly artist Kayte Terry who created the cover art for the series, the collage elements linking each cover together.

Chris: You mentioned MovieJawn - are there any other particular resources that you rely on to keep you in the know about the horrific things that inspire you? Are there any literary ventures out there that feel especially like kindred spirits to CDSOB?

CDSOB: We listen to horror podcasts like Peaches Christ and Michael Varrati’s Midnight Mass, The Boulet Brothers’ Creatures of the Night, Horror Vanguard, Evolution of Horror, Tender Subject, Fangs for the Memories, Colors of the Dark, The Detective and the Log Lady, and Stacie Ponder’s new one, Final Girl After Dark. These all feel kindred to CDSOB. We also read horror magazines like Fangoria, Delirium, and Rue Morgue, and to keep up with extreme metal, we read Decibel (also out of Philly!). Similar literary ventures we stay tuned to include The Nottingham Horror Collective zines, Bloodletter Magazine, and Hex Literary.

We feel at home at the mighty Mahoning Drive-In in Lehighton and the Colonial Theatre in Phoenixville, both of which feature horror films on 35mm. And of course we love Darcy & Joe Bob’s The Last Drive-In and learn lots from them.

Chris: Gina, I know you’re also co-editor of the tiny, which you began as a project 20 years ago (altho I know there’s been a break along the way). Do the tiny and CDSOB live in separate parts of your brain, in a sense? Or are they maybe just two different products of the same impulse?

I think they are two different products of the same impulse. I think of myself as more of a reader and an editor than as a writer myself (though I still write too). One of my favorite things I get to do is share other people’s work with the world, and I am excited to currently have two outlets where I am able to do that. With the tiny, I am basically a cheerleader for poetry, and with CDSOB, I get to cheer for poetry, fiction, nonfiction, visual art, and reviews!

On the Edge of the Unspeakable: Interview with the Editors of Cul-de-sac of Blood

Chris McCreary

OF INK & ANTLER: THE RENAISSANCE OF WHITE STAG PUBLISHING