Emmanuelle in Space – Nicholas Diak's Homepage

Personal / Website News

Writing News

I don’t have much to share along the lines of writing and podcast news for the last two weeks. Don’t get me wrong, I have been extremely busy, it just happens I didn’t get a chance to do an article for my website here. However, a quick run down of things that have happened/currently are happening:

Appeared on a handful of Fan2Fan Podcast episodes, taking about monster movies, anime, and TV show themes. Expect those to be published over the next few weeks/months. In the meantime, I encourage folks to check out the Fan2Fan archive, they have some great episodes with some cool people.
Turned my Rene Girard/”The Call of Cthulhu” presentation I did at a prior AnnRadCon into essay format and sent it to the new horror-lit magazine, Dark Dead Things. They launch their debut issue this month, check them out!
Completed an interview with the authors of the upcoming book Heavy Music Mothers that is slated to be published this May from Rowman & Littlefield. The interview will be published here the week before Mother’s Day.
Just interviewed Michael Cisco for the H.P Lovecast Podcast, slated to be released part of our Transmissions programming.
Currently working on my peplum cats essay that is due at the end of the month. Wish me luck! (Note: was turned in on 3/26, yay!)
Reviewing the book Buzzworthy. I’ve been posting cocktails I’ve made over on Twitter.
And, of course, the Emmanuelle CFP (see below). Working on promoting that everywhere I can.

So, lots of cool stuff going on! Also, expect Footage Fiends issue 01 to drop very, very soon! Excited to see that be published.

I also got my contributor’s copy of A Hero Will Endure.

Nice to have the book in my paws. It’s been a long journey!

Emmanuelle / Black Emanuelle CFP

The Call for Papers for Emmanuelle, Black Emanuelle, and Emmanuelle derivative films is open.

The CFP can found on this page. If you know other scholars who would be interested in this project, please share! I’d be super appreciative to get the word out.

Publishing Recap

Starting with this bi-weekly update I will be including a new section called “Publishing Recap” where I will keep a cumulative list of published texts (physical or at other venues) for the year so far. The idea here is to give more visibility to each text and not let them disappear into the website newsfeed.

A Hero Will Endure: Essays at the Twentieth Anniversary of Gladiator

Published in February, this collection contains my essay “Dance or Dēcēdere: Gladiator and Industrial Music Sampling.”

Vernon Press Product Page

Miscellaneous Tidbits

The Night Scavengers

Friend and colleague J. Rocky Colavito has a new fiction book out called The Night Scavengers.

Honored that both Michele and I are mentioned in the front matter!

Colavito’s giallo-influenced novel can be found on Amazon. (Pssst – Colavito also has an essay on WWZ in Horror Literature from Gothic to Post-Modern *wink* *wink* so check that out as well).

CFP for The Princess Bride

Signum University Press has an open CFP (that closes April 1st) on the 50th anniversary of The Princess Bride (both book and movie). Details on the CFP can be read at the downloadable PDF while press submission guidelines can be read at this link.

If you have a pop culture-centric CFP that need proliferation, feel free to share it with me and I’ll post it on my bi-weekly news updates. I’m here to help folks out.

Personal / Website News

Matthew Page Interview

I did an interview with Matthew Page of Bible Films Blog about his upcoming book, 100 Bible Films from BFI.

The interview can be read here.

D. J. Kirkbride Interview

I conducted an interview with comic book writer D. J. Kirkbridge about the upcoming trade paperback release of Errand Boys.

The interview is scheduled to be published Wednesday the 16th. It will be able to be read here.

Fan2Fan Podcast Appearances

In late February I was invited on to the Fan2Fan Podcast to talk about peplum and 80s’ sword and sorcery films. This weekend I was invited back on to continue the dialogue, focusing on specific films. These episodes will be published later on, but in the meantime check out the Fan2Fan Podcast library for some excellent episodes (or better yet, subscribe via your podcast app of preference).

AnnRadCon 2022 In Person Programming

The StokerCon 2022 website has been updating with the conference’s in-person programming, which includes the in-person portion of the Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference. Programming can be viewed here. Of, if curious about AnnRadCon programming only to save you a click:

Thursday, May 12th

Track 1 – Film an Television – 9:00 am

Karley Pardue: “Bathing Bad: Feminine Vengeance and Masculine Vulnerability in the Showers of HorrorSmith”
Jonathan Brooks Sanford: “Between the Known and the Unknown: Stranger Things, the Signifying Body, and the Permeable Border Between the Symbolic and the Real”
Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr: “Killing It on the Field: Athletics and Sport in Horror Cinema”
Sean Woodard: “Narcissistic Love and Object A: Obsession and Desire in Fade to Black“

Track 2 – Vampires – 10:45 am

Rocky Colavito: “Kolchak at Fifty: The Night Stalker Redux, “It’s hard to believe; isn’t it?””
Margaret Yankovich: ““It’s Like I Can Feel God Move Inside Me”: The Religious Ecstasy of Sensual Vampirism in Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass“
Cassandra Yatron: “Rats and the Queer Vampire: Dracula as a Commensal Creature”

Track 3 – Literature and Nature – 12:15 pm

Gavin Hurley: “The Diabolical Dialectics of Clive Barker’s The Damnation Game“
Brenda Tolian: “Gaia Screaming”
Talmage Joseph Wise: “Anatomical Theatre: Freak Show Horrors in Jekyll and Hyde“
Charles Yost: “Crazy Cat Women: The Contemporary Rebrand of Literary Witchcraft”

Highlander Call for Papers

Michele has an active CFP on the Highlander franchise. She is looking for essays on the Highlander movies, the television show, comics, everything.

If you’re interested, check out the CFP at her website and please share with others. With a possible reboot on the horizon, this is definitely a book you want to be a part of.

Unofficial Emmanuelle / Black Emanuelle CFP

Sometime in the latter half of 2022 (after I am finished with AnnRadCon 2022) I plan on publishing an official CFP calling for essays on Emmanuelle and its sequels and spinoffs, Black Emanuelle and its sequels, and all other Emmanuelle knockoffs. I already have an interested publisher, but I want to present to them a fully laid out TOC for an ambitious collection as this.

Though my CFP will not go live until later 2022, if you have any interest in being a part of this collection, let me know! Send me an email or social media message (see my about me page for contact info) to let me know your interest. If you have an abstract already, even better.

General Neo-Peplum News

Recent Acquisitions

My Severin order for their Caligula boxset arrived.

This boxset contains two films: Caligula the Untold Story and Caligula and Messalina. I’ve seen my share of Joe D’Amato and Bruno Mattei films, but not these prono-pepla.

The original Italian cycle had long since been dead since the mid-60s. With Tinto Brass doing Caligula in the 70s, the door creaked open for imitators, which resulted in these films. Was these 80s peplum films, with wanton depravity and sexploitation that was only hinted at in the original 60s cycle be enough to resurrect the genre? No, of course not. It would have to wait almost two more decades when Ridley Scott’s Gladiator was released.

John Carter Video Game Q/A Sessions

The folks developing the John Carter video game have appeared in a few Q/As to help promote the game and answer fan questions. Episode one can be viewed here and episode two here. The Kickstarter can be found here, so consider chipping in a few dollars.