It's in the new issue, kids!  We're BEST FICTION BOOK of 2008, according to one of the slickest, awesomest, most well-read genre publications in the fucking world!  That's pretty heavy, kids.  It means we beat out every other major horror book that came along in 2008 in the eyes of some major trendwatchers.  Thanks to Jovanna and all the guys up there in Canada who gave us the honor, and to all the people here who helped make the book possible!  I am astonished.  SHOCK FESTIVAL has turned out to be the most well-reviewed project of my entire career, with nothing but raves pouring in every day from major mags, websites, blogs and message boards all over the world.  (Even INCIDENT ON AND OFF A MOUNTAIN ROAD was slammed by a few scabby bastrds on blogsites.)  Word up to anyone here who has read and enjoyed the book---head over to AMAZON.COM and post a "Customer review."  Be a part of the madness!  And if you don't own it yet, pick up a copy while you're over there.  It's really cheap . . . and, after all, just LOOK at what everybody ELSE is saying:

"Take a drop of Joe R. Lansdale's blood. Then a slice from David J. Schow's scalp. Scrape some phlegm off Tarantino's tongue. Inject some of Robert Rodriguez's sperm. Pour in some Karo syrup. Mix it in a blender. Pour. These are just some of the ingredients of Stephen Romano's unique work . . . If the buzz surrounding his new book, SHOCK FESTIVAL, is any indication, Stephen Romano's work will not only turn heads, it's going to make heads roll . . . "
---CHUCKPALAHNIUK.NET

 "A stone groove and as badass a tome as you're likely to come across this year or the next. If you love grindhouse, sleaze cinema, or B-movies in general, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy."
---FILM THREAT.COM

BOOK OF THE MONTH!  "One of the greatest homage to B-cinema ever undertaken . . . Shock Festival is a breathtakingly thorough overview of over 100 movies and a slew of filmmaker and actors who never existed -- but which you'll believe actually did by the time you finish reading.  The breadth and variety of personalities and events rival many a "serious" novel. "
---FANGORIA

BEST FICTION BOOK OF 2008!  "While the term "mockumentary practically wrote itself, it's going to take a clever writer to describe Stephen Romano's fictional alternate history of exploitation films . . . (Romano) has created a vivid universe filled with films you'd love to see and personalities you'd line up at a convention to meet, lavishly illustrated with a plethora of eye-popping posters, lobby cards, on-set still and ad mats for such fictional films as THE UNDERTAKER AND HIS WIFE and STARFIRE BEYOND THE GALAXY . . .  Fans swept up in the recent wave of grindhouse nostalgia NEED to buy this book!"
--RUE MORGUE MAGAZINE

"Stephen Romano is the Robert Rodriguez of horror!  Whether he's writing short stories, novels, comics, screenplays, or designing movie posters, it seems there's nothing this cat can't do.  Not only do I give  (SHOCK FESTIVAL) my highest recommendation, I'm even calling it my favorite book of 2008."

--COMICS 101.COM

"Hilarious, crude, incisive, exploitative . . . Romano's pseudo-journalistic Endeavour (is) a genuine revelation, an event that's rarely, if ever, been done before . . . the merging of fact and fiction into something too outrageous to be the truth, and too disarmingly ghastly/gorgeous to be anything but."

--THE AUSTIN CHRONICLE

"Spectacularly over-the top and gloriously fictional  . . . the posters are eye-poppingly accurate riffs on the genre; the profiles of the principals, though fictional, are arresting and reflect the interview-driven reporting of cinema studies. It's a sure conversation starter, and an inspiration to revisit some of those real guilty pleasures of the grindhouse past."---BUTLER UNIVERSITY OF LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES

"My hat is off and my glass is raised to Stephen Romano for producing one of the most original works of any medium I've seen in a good while. Well written, even better illustrated, Shock Festival is Z-movie fun from start to finish."

---PHANTASMARCHIVES.COM

"My favorite of all new things to come my way this year has to be Stephen Romano's phenomenal love note to the world of exploitation and horror, SHOCK FESTIVAL.  I can't explain how fucking happy it makes me to leaf through this very nice, very well-put together hardcover that just begs to be displayed . . . you get that familiar feeling of displaced nostalgia which just leaps off the page, attacking the senses. And more often than not, I would experience the same sensations as when reading an Alex Ross comic, or watching the amazingly reminiscent GARTH MARENGHI'S DARKPLACE, absorbing the images and info."

---SCANDYFACTORY.COM

"Whatever whacked out genre of 70s/80s grindhouse exploitation cinema you might love, or just remember seeing the advertisements for in the local paper, or theater, or television station, you will find it recreated in loving detail on the pages of this too good to be true book.  That many of the films, their adverts, and the people that made them are clearly parodies and/or homages of real life films and people only makes the jokes funnier to the knowledgeable fan. My only disappointments with Shock Festival were that I could not be a part of the fun and that the book, like the era it so fondly mocks, had to come to an end."

---ZILLAROARS.COM

"It's GRINDHOUSE meets THIS IS SPINAL TAP!  Romano's bizarro-world of fringe movie madness is auethntic, raw, hilarious and brilliant!"

---DREADCENTRAL.COM

" . . . Hugely entertaining . . .  and the detail is incredible – (Romano has) created marvelous, side-splitting taglines for many of the films, have done Japanese posters for some of 'em, have placed copies of fake novels alongside the film adaptations, and show a real insider's knowledge of the era, getting the chronology and the changing trends exactly right."

---BRITISHHORRORFILMS.CO.UK

"A page turner . . . For those of us that dig this whacked-out, creepy, over-the-top, oddball "art," the book is fascinating and reads at a quick pace . . . Anyway, ghoulies and creepy sorts, if gory, racy, kick-ass monster art is what you're wanting to see and read about then go out and hunt up Stephen Romano's Shock Festival. You won't be disappointed."

---THE MASKED MOVIE SNOBS/BLOGCRITICS MAGAZINE

That's just for starters, kids.  With any luck, we'll pick up a few celebrity blurbs next, maybe an award or two, this thing will sell another twenty thousand copies . . . and I can get the fuck on with my life!  Thanks again everybody.  It's been a long, long road . . .