Hot Splices

Hot Splices by Mike Watt

Author Mike Watt

Thanks to the gracious and wonderful people at Blackthorn Book Tours, I was afforded the opportunity to read what I consider to be an amazing piece of writing with genius spread all the way through.
 
In the book Hot Splices, we get a glimpse into the other side of life as a film student and/or film junkie…addict, if you will.  This story brings to life a belief and faith in a group of Film Gods, their impact on the students of film, the makers of film and the actual filming material itself.
 
Throughout the entire book there are a multitude of film references.  Some are obvious and most anyone could pick up on.  Others are more obscure and require a little more attention.  Either way, the amount of film knowledge possessed by the author is astounding.  As I said, some of the film references are very easy to get, others are like little Easter Eggs hidden within the text of the novel.  
 
And here’s something very different.  I found this little tidbit to be quite fascinating.  These film students, past and present, all gather in a communal house called The Tower.  Each generation kind of has their own space, you could say.  But what they all use this particular space for…is Flixing.  Flixing is when they take one single frame of film and suck on it.  When they do that the chemicals from the frame melt into their bodies and they start kind of “tripping” in a way, like LSD, except that in their trip, they are part of the movie they are sucking on.  They can pick certain scenes from movies and live them, in a way.  Now, just like with any serious drug use, there are sign that these people are taking the flixing to a whole new level.  They all get these marks on their bodies, like the perforated edges of movie film on those big rolls that theaters use.  Those perforation marks on their bodies are like the track marks of the addicts of flixing.
 
Plus, we even have film mythology.  This was an incredible part of the story to me because it was like the glue that pulled everything together.  This was also where the curiosity and mystery lie in the story.  There’s a set of films, included in this set is a probable snuff film.  The filmmaker has been long gone but, the myth still lives on.  That myth being that if you watch this set of films in a particular order it will induce psychosis and everyone viewing will freak out and become killers.  Totally a fantastic idea for a horror novel, maybe even a movie…?
 
Then, there’s the vivid descriptions of the violence and the sexual encounters, the descriptions of the flixing trips, it’s all so bright and shocking, jaw dropping at some points, at others you feel the fear and suspense pulling you into the pages of the story, as if the text can reach out and grab you by the back of the neck and drag you into the page.
 
Some of the violence is totally gnarly and at times, it’s even intertwined with very tantalizing sexual encounters.  These encounters are written in a very visual way, as any good writer should be able to do, yet, at the same time, they have a very technological, scientific, astrological type imagery that is created.  But, believe me, the sex is done is a classy way to where it’s still hot and steamy but also incorporates the horror aspect in a spectacular way as to make you get the full film going experience but, completely in text form.
 
All of this builds to an ultimately dramatic ending, wickedly and vividly described with spellbinding excitement and action laced with raw animalistic emotion.  
 
Truly in a class of its own, Hot Splices has successfully SPLICED itself into my memory and will stay there for a long, long time.  I even think it’s one of those books that you can definitely read a second or third time and probably pick up on things you may have missed previously.  So, well worth the read.  Mike Watt has taken what could have been just simple subject matter and catapulted it into a realm of deep complexity and sinister dreams.  I would highly recommend this to any film lover and to any horror lover, for the two are rarely combined so well.
 
RATINGS
5/5 Stars
 
Big thanks to Blackthorn Book Tours and Mike Watt!

Visit Mike Watt at the following sites:
mikewatt.me
www.happycloudpublishing.com

Buy Hot Splices Here

​Visit Blackthorn Book Tours Here

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