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| - Erik D. Harshman (born in St. Louis, Missouri on March 19th, 1980) is a novelist, screenwriter, poet and educator. While the beginning stages of his childhood were spent in rural areas (Glencoe and Indian Tree, Missouri) Harshman soon moved to the city after his parents (David Harshman, a cardiologist in West St. Louis County and Kathleen Harshman, a Special Education teacher in Des Peres, Missouri) divorced when he was five. After his initial education Harshman was diagnosed with a learning disability in mathematics and was placed in Churchill School in Ladue, Missouri where he attended grades one through seven. After leaving Churchill in 1993 Harshman moved on to great success at Crossroads College Preparatory (which, at the time, was small, liberal arts private school located at 500 DeBaliviere in St. Louis). It was at Crossroads that Harshman began writing and began preliminary construction on his first (unfinished) novel, Hurts Like Hell. Graduating in 1998 Harshman entered the College of Santa Fe in Santa Fe, New Mexico where he studied Creative Writing with a minor in film. Harshman studied under writers such as Pulitzer Prize-nominated novelist/poet Jack (Nightshade, Dreamer, Living In Little Rock with Miss Little Rock) Butler, celebrated poet Dana (In the Surgical Theater) Levin, Greg (From the Iron Chair) Glazner and Jon (Scrimmage of Appetite) Davis. During his sophomore year Erik declared Moving Image Arts (Film) as his minor and studied under subversive British filmmaker Jonathan (Powwow Highway, Mystery Date, Ed and His Dead Mother) Wacks. It was during his stint at College of Santa Fe where Harshman abandoned Hurts Like Hell (telling friends and peers, “It reads like a bad episode of the 80’s Twilight Zone series.”) and began a new novel during his Junior year. Between the months of January and May (2001) Harshman conceived, wrote and edited the novel Humansville. Humansville (PublishAmerica , 2006) is a small tome of gothic horror concerning a band of four demons (in the guise of humans) who infiltrate a small Midwestern tourist trap in hopes of jump starting the apocalypse by buying up innocent souls in nefarious, Faustian ways. While the novel contains nods to authors who have influenced Harshman greatly (Poe, Lovecraft, Hawthorne and Mark Twain are among those who receive direct nods within the text) the emphasis of the book lays not with splattering viscera or overt exhibitions of supernatural mischief. The book deals subtly with the dynamic of human interaction, the corrupt institution of contemporary morality and theological indecision/confusion. Harshman wrote Humansville second semester of his Junior year as an assignment for the course Advanced Fiction (which was supposed to be taught by Butler, who was on sabbatical and was, instead, taken over by visiting professor Carol (Waking Spell, Meeting the Minotaur) Dawson). The novel was published in early 2006 and hit shelves, appropriately, during the Halloween season of 2006. While Humansville’s success in its native country remains to be seen (as film rights have, as yet, not been optioned), the book is a modest success in Great Britain, where used copies sell for as high as $50. During his senior year at College of Santa Fe, Harshman received word (before classes resumed in the Fall) of the acceptance of two of his short horror stories (“The Man In Church” and “What’s Out There?”) in the September 2001 issue of an e-zine entitled Shadow Voices (which has since folded). After graduating college in 2002, Harshman returned home to St. Louis and lived briefly with his mother in the overtly conservative suburb of Chesterfield, Missouri. Holding down a series of retail managements jobs (at movie theaters and video stores) Harshman put himself through graduate school at Webster University, eventually earning his Missouri state Teacher’s Certification in English grades 9-12, as well as his Masters In the Art of Teaching in Communication Arts with emphasis in Secondary English Education. Currently, Harshman is seeking his Doctorate in Literature. Harshman is a celebrated forerunner in the underground literary scene and has made new breakthroughs in curriculum design and educational methods. Currently, Harshman teaches in the St. Louis Public School system (teaching high school English) and writes on the evenings, weekends and holidays. He enjoys concerts (death metal and punk concerts at small venues, as well as classical music performed at St. Louis’ Powell Symphony Hall), going to films (he is especially found of viewing genre films at the Skyview Drive-In across the river in Belleville, Illinois), reading (he is a frequent patron of the St. Louis Public Library) and attending art exhibits and literary reading. While Harshman’s work generally swings towards the horror genre (though Humansville is his one and only complete venture into full-length literary horror), his other three (unpublished) novels are autobiographical critiques of suburban life, urban existence, general misanthropy and cynical meditations on what it means to be a modern American male, living under the stigma of potential falsehood. These three novels (Suburban Parables: Open Letters To A Society in Shutdown, Dispassion and The Work) are extremely personal accounts of misery, torment, labor, relationships, hardships, victories, creativity and very specifics testaments to the often times bleak and descending state of the social, moral and educational systems of America. While Harshman is immensely prolific in the horror genre (having completed over fifty short stories, one novella, one novel and eight screenplays in the genre) he is equally as prolific in creating literature for one of two literary mythologies he has given genesis to. The first is that of David Kemp, Harshman’s literary alter ego. Kemp, like Harshman, is a lanky, gaunt misanthrope with an affinity for all things counterculture, an intermittent flamboyance, infectious, and often contradicting, sociability and a perspective which favors a dark and macabre perspective. Kemp is the protagonist in such works as The Work (which Harshman describes as “A dark satire of corporate America as seen through the eyes of a retail manager”) and Dispassion (about Harshman’s crippling anti-social behavior and misery following a string of uneven emotional and social occurrences from 2004 – 2008). Kemp is the focal point for two of Harshman’s unpublished novels, the centerpiece for over forty short stories, one screenplay and (Harshman assures) countless novels and short stories to come. Through the travels of David Kemp Harshman not only explicates and divulges for the American public what he feels is wrong with contemporary society (through satirical scenarios and interactions cut directly from the author’s life) but Harshman has said that, “Kemp is a way for me to exorcise my demons and deal with aspects and issues in my life I haven’t quite figured out, or come to terms with yet.” As Hemingway has his Nick Adams and (W.S.) Burroughs has his Bill Lee, so Harshman has his Kemp. Harshman’s other, less public, mythos is that of Robby Sugar. Sugar is the epitome of the human id. Stitched together of equal parts impulsiveness, vulgarity and aberration, Sugar is a manic explosion of everything society treads carefully around. A psychotic literary fusion of William S. Burroughs, de Sade, Hunter S. Thompson, Kafka, Vonnegut, Bukowski, Philip K. Dick and Mark Twain. While the mythos of Robby Sugar has yet remained unpublicized (the short stories Harshman has written for Sugar remain unpublished and unread), Sugar has close to twenty stories to his credit, and a novel and screenplay in the works. While literary horror seems to be on Harshman’s back-burner (reportedly Harshman has three horror novels outlined and ready for the page, with several more tomes ready for outlining; time being the only detractor) the author states that he is merely shopping for the right literary agent to place his beloved horror manuscripts with bigger, more widely circulated publishing houses. Although all his work is copyrighted (with the United States Library of Congress) and or registered with the Writer’s Guild of America (West, in Los Angeles) Harshman has yet to find a home for his catalogue of over fifty horror short stories, a horror novella (Ashes From The Fire, written his Sophomore year at College of Santa Fe) and the three novels resting at the cusp of his creative mind. Harshman’s productivity, as it relates to cinematic horror, is boundless. Harshman has completed five original, unfilmed horror screenplays. Coil (a bizarre piece of theological horror), Hooded, Painsville (Harshman’s entry in the subgenre of rural horror), One Night in Town, Flatdog (a piece of supernatural horror concerning the bayous of Louisiana, which contains a post-Katrina allegory), Petcare (a 60-page script, intended for a “Masters of Horror”-type hourly horror program, about a girl and her pet monster) and his crowning cinematic achievement Invoking Henry. Invoking Henry, Harshman attests, is “a love story concerning ghosts and murderers.” An intensely autobiographical account, Henry tells the story of two young, counterculture professionals (Henry, a school teacher and his wife Emily, a book editor) who are separated by Henry’s untimely death. A strong emotional thread running through the story acts to accentuate and highlight the eventual atmosphere of horror which overtakes the proceedings when a syndicate of drug dealing psychotics becomes a factor. While having made the film festival circuit (including Shriekfest, Eerie Horror Film Festival, Terror Film Festival and Screamfest in Los Angeles) Henry, as well as Harshman’s other scripts, remain unproduced. Harshman continues to write and realize his vision for the perfect horror film, despite Hollywood’s obliviousness. Harshman reportedly has over ten horror scripts in the planning stages, with a dark comedy and two dramas also in their infantile stages. In describing his screenplays Harshman commented, “I like what George Romero said, so I’ll just paraphrase him. He said that there is always a socio-political allegory and subtext in all of his films and if you catch it, at any point in time during the film viewing experience, then fine. However, if you don’t, and you walk out of the theater and find that you’ve enjoyed nothing else but a splattery, scary horror film, then fine. Both are ideal, but I’ll settle for one or the other, since both are my intent.” While Harshman has no direct contemporaries, he cites College of Santa Fe classmates Tim (Funniest Things in the Universe, Nervous Awkward Laughter and Disco Inferno) Scott, with whom he frequently workshops via long-distance phone calls to Santa Fe, and Alicia Eaton, whom Harshman claims is the most unpretentious and talented modern poet who, wrongfully, remains unpublished. Harshman’s favorite color is red.
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