Jay A. Hult

Only 3 days left to put in your order for a physical copy of meat4meat!

What is meat4meat?

meat4meat is a body horror anthology featuring a foreword by @cryptotheism, stories from eighteen disabled and/or transgender authors including Claudine Griggs (as featured in Netflix's Love Death Robots), @masonhawthorne, @horrorsong, @jayahult, and many more, illustrated by several other trans and/or disabled artists including @maxbanshees, @himecommunism, @receptor-modulator, and more! Because we met all of the stretch goals during the campaign, we have extra goodies such as three additional stories with illustrations, color printing and absolutely incredible cover art by @celestial-fang.

Still not sold?

Check out our review by @literary-illuminati!

When does it come out?

Digital release early access releases on April 4th, and the full release will be on April 18th!

Physical editions are expected to begin shipping on April 18th, but are subject to change.

Get your copy here!

This is I think the first book I have ever read before it was published – as of posting the crowdfunding campaign is still ongoing! - so it’s a fun novelty to be able to say that I received an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. The book itself is also – well okay no, ‘fun’ is probably not actually the correct word, but it’s a body horror collection that succeeded at making me physically queasy at several points so it’s an unqualified artistic success in at least one dimension.

meat4meat is a short story horror anthology – specifically body horror, extra specifically body horror as written by trans and disabled authors (to quote the marketing copy, ‘by those who know it best’) – properly speaking it is an illustrated anthology, but that art wasn’t ready for inclusion in the copy I read, so I’ll stick to talking about the writing. Within the very vague remit the book sets out for itself, there’s no real unifying theme or much of a throughline between the eighteen stories included. They’re all very much short stories – I don’t think any were over twenty pages? - and flipping between them is a study in serial whiplash. Writing style, subject matter, thematic concerns and perspectives, even just conceptions of what ‘body horror’ means all vary drastically from story to story.

To be clear, I consider this a huge positive – it’s an anthology that really lives up to the potential of the medium, and makes an honest effort of capturing the diversity of perspective that’s pretty clearly part of the artistic project here. It also just keeps the reading experience from ever dragging or getting monotonous – if I do not vibe with one author (as is inevitable with these things), there’s a dozen and change others with entirely different takes on the subject. Even if it is somewhat grating to have one story use different paragraph breaks and spacing from the next.

I’m on record as often being pretty annoyed with how ‘horror’ as a genre label is used in books these days – which is to say how often it ends up being life-affirming tales of togetherness and found family but cast from the universal monsters catalogue – so for the sake of consistency I should really praise meat for really living up to the genre label. Even the stories happily framed from the perspective of something monstrously inhuman and happy about it are more than fucked up enough to still be compelling reading.

I’m also very much on record as thinkingthat horror is far better suited to short stories than novels; the extra length of which seems to bring a pressure towards explaining things and giving neat, validating endings on the one hand and on dragging out the tension past what the reveal can sustain on the other. This book’s an excellent case study of that – most of the stories are bare handfuls of scenes, hitting a particular beat or bit of imagery with as much force as they can; very nearly all of them can be summed up as ‘something really fucked up happens to someone’. Triumphantly happy and reassuring endings are thin on the ground, extended denouncements nonexistent. If anything, there are a couple stories that probably could have used a bit more space to breathe – ending up feeling more like imagery without the connective tissue or context to really make it land – but that’s just the natural tradeoff of the format forcing focus and writing economy.

Speaking of imagery – the book advertises itself as a body horror anthology, and it is not lying. There are several stories I would really recommend skipping if you have a weak stomach (which is, in this context, high praise). There’s also several stories that do take a more symbolic or oblique tack when discussing the ruin and gore they make of the human body (a couple of them are some of my favourites in the whole book), but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the most memorable by far are the gleefully, explicitly vulgar and carnal ones. Here meant in the most literal sense of being fixated on the mess and meat of your body, the way parts of you can swell and suppurate and rot and burst before your eyes (though there are one or two that leave you acutely aware the only difference between horror and niche erotica is framing and perspective).

The anthology is themed around trans and disabled authors, and it’s really very interesting how different stories lean into that. Some are very literally and directly about e.g. the misery and desperate hope of looking for a doctor who can help you until you’re willing to look past every red flag from one who says they will, others are far more symbolic or metaphorical (or else simply aren’t stories I would have though to view through that lens if they were in any other book). There is little (though not no) body horror in the sense of shocking and gory violence or something directly inflicted upon you by an obvious outside force. Instead it’s the horror of the body being usurped or broken from within, horrifying parasitism, some invisible injury or lack making it impossible to do what is expected of you, or a terrifying transformation that’s only dimly understood as it’s lived through that predominate. There are, unsurprisingly, quite a few stories that are in one way or another about the horror of pregnancy, of some disease or failing leaving you so disgusting as to be exiled from conventional society, or both.

While there isn’t much of a unifying subject or throughline between all the stories in the book, the organization and ordering of them actually does a very good job highlighting similarities between specific pairs or small sets of them. One story that is in some sense about or preoccupied with pregnancy or disfigurement or parasitism or romantic connection will be followed by another with an entirely different setting, plot and subject matter which is still very interested in the same theme. It works very well to give the book a sense of cohesion and structure, and makes some of the stories feel like much more than the sum of their parts.

This is definitely a book for a very specific audience – the kind who will read a first story that starts with strange pupating growths breaking across the narrators chest being described in careful and loving detail, and happily power through as it mostly just escalates from there. But for that audience, I absolutely recommend giving this a try.

Physical copies of meat4meat are now available for purchase

What is meat4meat?

Hi everyone, I'd like to announce the next batch of authors for meat4meat, along with our first artist announcements and a sneak peek at a work in progress! If you haven't backed the anthology yet, you only have a week before it closes- we only need 26 more backers to unlock the foreword by @cryptotheism, and we're only $400 away from funding. You can find us on backerkit here!

Today I'd like to introduce our penultimate group of authors, as well as announce some of the artists who are taking part. Without further ado, the author spotlights for @jayahult, E.W.H. Thornton, Cailín Frankland, and @eromancery and the artist announcements for @himecommunism, @zzigzadig, Biscuit Starberry, Camsyn Clair, and Zi!

Since today marks the halfway point of the campaign, I figured I'd share some big news.

First off, a massive thank you to everyone who has helped us reach nearly $4000! At this rate, there's no question whether we'll get funded, only how far that we can go!

To continue, some more fantastic news: a lower quote on our physical edition means that our "Physical Edition" stretch goal has been lowered, from $10,000 to $7500!

"But wait?" you're surely asking. "If the physical edition is unlocked at $7500, what about the Foreword from C.T. Kelly, aka @cryptotheism?" Rather than a funding stretch goal, the Foreword will now be unlocked at 200 backers!

At our current backer count of 143, that leaves only 57 backers until we meet the 200 backer goal, so share this with anyone you know who might want to back. Here's the link for easy sharing.

With news out of the way, that only leaves our third Author Spotlight! Today we'll be introducing four authors: T.T. Madden, A.J. Malachite, Zeb L. West, and Mason Hawthorne!

As promised, today we have the second of our author spotlight series. Previously we introduced Derek Des Anges and gaast, and today we're introducing Rebecca A. Demarast and Christine Lucas!

Rebecca A. Demarest (she/her) is an award-winning author, playwright, book designer, and writing instructor living in Seattle, WA with her husband and three muppets. Her short work has appeared alongside authors like Cat Rambo and been dramatized for the stage and NPR. When not being held hostage by words, you can find her at her day job (supporting a legal aid firm) tending to her indoor jungle, crafting, sewing, playtesting tabletop role playing games, figuring out new and unique ways her disability makes her a dollar store mutant, and failing to teach her muppets new tricks. For more information on her work, please visit rebeccademarest.com.

Christine Lucas is a Greek author, a retired (disabled) Air Force officer, and mostly self-taught in English. Her stories are her way to explore the universe as a queer and neurodivergent person who’s spent too much time in a closet already. Her work appears in several print and online magazines, including Future SF Digest, Pseudopod and Strange Horizons. She was a finalist for the 2017 WSFA award and the 2021 Emeka Walter Dinjos Memorial Award For Disability In Speculative Fiction. Her collection of short stories, titled “Fates and Furies” was published in late 2019 by Candlemark & Gleam.

As a bonus, today we're also announcing our final Bound in Flesh alum, Joe Koch!

Joe Koch writes literary horror and surrealist trash. Their books include The Wingspan of Severed Hands, Convulsive, Invaginies, and The Couvade, which received a 2019 Shirley Jackson Award nomination. His short works appear in Nightmare Magazine, Southwest Review, Vastarien, The Mad Butterfly’s Ball, and many others. Find Joe (he/they) at horrorsong.blog.

Want more?

These excerpts are from meat4meat, an illustrated body horror anthology featuring transgender and disabled authors and artists.

Derek Des Anges is a multigenre author and press-cutter living and working in London, UK, under the tyranny of a horde of houseplants. He occasionally grows mushrooms, sometimes even on purpose, and regularly writes fiction about their relationship with people, some of which can be found at https://derekdesanges.wordpress.com/books. His work has also appeared in the trans-specific body horror anthology Bound In Flesh from Ghoulish Books.

gaast is a ghost that is currently haunting occupied Lenape land. It writes while sharing space with two cats and its partner. You can find its work in Bound in Flesh, Thank You for Joining the Algorithm, Captured, and other publications.