Development Hell

"Mick Garris writes like a combination of Robert Bloch and James Ellroy, hardboiled noir with a ghastly little prick of the devil’s own pitchfork."
— Stephen King

Development Hell
by Mick Garris

Cemetery Dance Publications is proud to announce the first-ever novel from Mick Garris, acclaimed director of Desperation, Riding The Bullet, The Shining, The Stand, and many others!

About the Book:
Hollywood, California: the Bermuda Triangle of art, sex, and commerce. The beautiful people make their daily deals with the devil on the sun-dappled patio at the Ivy, not in a fiery underground cavern. Nobodies become somebodies in the blink of an eye, but the flash of heady success can be fleeting. The rocket that shoots you into the atmosphere can be carrying weapons of mass destruction that can send you just as quickly and efficiently to Hell.

And back to Heaven again.

Development Hell is a wicked Hollywood satire, disguised as an extreme erotic horror novel. It is told knowingly from an inside perspective, tracking the career trajectory of a young film school hotshot into the annals of the Big Studio.

This arrogant young director leads us through his own set of unique experiences, starting with his explosive and disastrous first Hollywood movie; his discovery of a mutant baby in the arms of a Mexican news dealer in downtown Los Angeles that will be his ticket back to the top of the heap; into the arms of a re-animated glamorous star who died in the 1930s; and body-hopping through the most glamorous sheaths of human flesh on the planet.

It is a side of Hollywood rarely seen from beneath its unvarnished, Botox-free, crinkling, wrinkling flesh, and features a supporting cast of characters you will surely recognize.

Development Hell welcomes you into a behind-the-scenes peek unlike any other you have witnessed before.

"You want to see Hollywood’s dark side? Read Mick Garris’ Development Hell. Garris has earned the right to tell this story from years of working in the creative salt mines of Tinsel Town. He finally gets to show us the way it looks from the inside, and it isn’t pretty. This is a sharp, funny and chilling book; an unflinching report from the ego-haunted wasteland behind the face lifts and million-dollar smiles."
— Clive Barker, #1 bestselling author of The Books of Blood, Coldheart Canyon, and Weaveworld

"Development Hell is an imaginative and bizarrely funny cross between dark fantasy, Hollywood satire, and hip pop-culture-infused fiction. Wildly entertaining, it is also terrifying—the terror arising not only from the plot, but also from the fact that, as a Hollywood insider, Garris makes it feel all too real…"
— Ridley Pearson, #1 bestselling author of The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer, The Art of Deception, Middle of Nowhere, and The First Victim

"Mick Garris stakes Hollywood’s vain heart with a wit that X-rays, vivisects and soars. His debut novel is fierce poison; unmerciful and hilarious. The writing is wicked, acrobatic abracadabra."
— Richard Christian Matheson, author of Created By and Dystopia

"Mick Garris, the nicest and least offensive of men, exhibits none of those finer tendencies in Development Hell: The Nine Lives of a Hollywood Player. In the studio-speak of movie executives taking a meeting, it would be described as 'The Twilight Zone meets David Lynch on steroids,' but that would be selling it short. It's a wildly original, vicious, and twisted gut-punch of a book that makes my worst day in Hollywood look like a pleasant trip to Disneyland. Garris claws at the walls of the film biz as if it were a padded cell and he himself a howling lunatic who's missed his medication. I love it."
— Frank Darabont, Director of The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption

Award-winning filmmaker Mick Garris has written or co-authored numerous feature films and teleplays, and he is Creator and Executive Producer of Showtime’s Masters of Horror series, as well as creator of the NBC series, Fear itself.

A Life in the Cinema, his first book, was a collection of short stories and a screenplay based on one of the included stories.

His first novel, Development Hell, was published by Cemetery Dance in 2006.

His screenplay and much supporting material for Riding the Bullet was published by Lonely Road Books in 2010.

He has also published short fiction in numerous books and magazines, and he is currently prepping a feature film based on Stephen King’s bestselling novel Bag of Bones.

Garris lives in Studio City, California, with his wife, Cynthia, an actress, musician, composer and muse.  

Published in two states:
• Signed Hardcover Limited Edition bound in cloth ($40)
• Traycased Lettered Edition of 52 signed and lettered copies bound in leather, with a satin ribbon page marker and additional full-color artwork ($200)

Excerpt

Artwork