Todd Grimson was a high school athlete who spent his later years contending with the physical limitations of multiple sclerosis. He never went to college and was working as an emergency-room orderly when Gary Fisketjon bought his first novel, WITHIN NORMAL LIMITS, for Vintage Contemporaries. Because the legendary editor departed the imprint before Grimsonās debut was published, the author told The Oregonian, āthere was nobody at Vintage that had anything to gain for their career if my book did well.ā
After his 1987 literary debut died on the vine, and partly at the urging of fellow Oregonian novelist Katherine Dunn (GEEK LOVE), Grimson turned away from documenting modern-day anomie in favor of tapping stranger depths. In the mid-1990s, he put out BRAND NEW CHERRY FLAVOR and STAINLESSātwo extraordinary, lyrical, twisted āhorrorā novelsāwith HarperCollins in quick succession, and again vanished from the scene. When he reappeared, some years later, it was as I. Fontana (later āInnocente Fontanaā), whose short stories developed a following online in the early 2000s. Soon after Grimson revealed himself as the author of this new work, his ā90s novel Brand New Cherry Flavor went into development at Netflix, adapted by Nick Antosca and Lenore Zion. The series premiered in 2021.
Later still, and as yet ignorant of all of the above, our Executive Editor Jeremy M. Davies ran across Grimsonās vampire novel STAINLESS (1996) and fell hard for its bloody charms. McNally Editions acquired the right to reprint it, and before Jeremy had a chance to tell Grimson what a fan heād become, the author passed away.
With our new edition of STAINLESS on shelves in its authorās absence (and a UK edition that launched yesterday
@deadinkbooks ), the great novelist-screenwriter-showrunner
@nickantosca was kind enough to answer some questions about his relationship with Grimson, how Brand New Cherry Flavor (the TV series) came to be, and what makes Grimsonās writing unique in the world of so-called genre fiction.š©øLink in Stories, on Substack, and in subscriber inboxes.
