Q&A: THE SPECIAL’s Mark Steensland and James Newman on the Release of Their New Literary Collaboration

Easily one of the wildest and darkly funny stories I’ve read throughout all of 2018 is The Special, from co-writers James Newman and Mark Steensland. A cautionary tale about “too much of a good thing” that morphs into an oozing and cringe-worthy story of body horror, The Special is not only celebrating its recent release, but the story has also been nabbed by filmmaker Harrison Smith for his next feature to boot.

I recently had the opportunity to catch up with both Steensland and Newman, asked them about coming up with the story of The Special, some of their influences and their experiences working together, and what’s next for them as well. And for those of you who are into genre-bending stories that beautifully blend humor and horror, you can purchase The Special on Amazon HERE.

Can you guys talk about the genesis of your creative relationship and coming up with the idea for The Special?

Mark Steensland: I met James thanks to Richard Chizmar, the publisher of Cemetery Dance magazine. At the time, Rick Hautala and I were collaborating, adapting short stories such as Peekers, The Ugly File, and The Weeping Woman into short films. We wanted to move into features. Chizmar told us about a book by James he was going to publish called Animosity. He thought it would make a great movie. Rick and I read it and agreed and optioned the movie rights. We wrote the script and shopped it, but couldn't get it set up. James and I became friends as a result. At the same time, Rick and I had been experimenting with prose adaptations of scripts. We had made a film called Lovecraft's Pillow, which we then wrote as a short story and published. I had written The Special as a screenplay before I met Rick and last year, when I began thinking about a prose version, I asked James if he was interested. He turned me down at first, but then contacted me later and said he couldn't get the story out of his mind and he really wanted to do it.

James Newman: Oh, that’s cool. I had no idea that Chizmar was the one who turned you guys on to Animosity. So, yeah . . . Mark pretty much covered it. We met through his desire to option Animosity, I loved the script he co-wrote with Rick—readers might be interested to know that I even added one small scene to the most recent edition that wasn’t in the original, a really cool moment that was in their screenplay, but not in my novel initially—and we soon became friends. We’ve spoken a few times about collaborating, but never did more than just talk about it. Once things started rolling with The Special, though, we never looked back. I can’t wait to collaborate with Mark again. We just “click,” ya know?

If you had to sum up The Special in one sentence for potential readers, what would you say?

Mark Steensland: "You become what you worship, for better or for worse."

James Newman: “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is and you should run away while you still can.”

What was the collaborative experience like while working on this story together?

Mark Steensland: Amazing! Because James is a great writer, I trust him completely to follow the paths he discovers. To me, that's the reason to collaborate: to find things that you can't find alone.

James Newman: What Mark said. Except, switch out his name for mine. Plus, this guy’s an idea machine. I have little doubt that he just wrote five new treatments while I was replying to your question.

For me, The Special feels like if David Cronenberg were tasked with writing a chapter in a Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark book. Were there certain genre influences you guys leaned into during the writing process?

Mark Steensland: I try not to consciously imitate things I admire, but the fact remains that I grew up in that generation. I saw Scanners opening day. And Dressed to Kill. And Blue Velvet. All those films are part of my artistic education, and they influenced me because they spoke to me in some way. That said, I'm not trying to remake Shivers so much as I'm telling a story in the same genre that deals with some of the same issues.

James Newman: Same here. I’m pretty sure I never consciously thought about it while we were writing The Special, but I’m a child of the ’80s, so I’m sure I was subconsciously influenced by the FX-heavy horror flicks I grew up with. You know the ones—they were always on the cover of Fangoria. Stuff like Re-Animator, Return of The Living Dead, Invasion of The Body Snatchers (although my favorite version was released in ’78), Carpenter’s The Thing, and of course Cronenberg’s The Fly (one of my all-time favorite films in any genre). I don’t think I could turn that off if I tried, when it comes to a story like this. The horror movies that I find most effective, I’ve realized through the years, are those in which the monster comes from within, and people find themselves turning into something else, sometimes because of their own stupidity, but often by no fault of their own. Perhaps that comes from some innate fear I have of chronic illness, of a disease that slowly eats away at you, bit by bit. I don’t know.

Congratulations on The Special getting nabbed to be turned into a feature film—can you discuss how that came about and your thoughts on Harrison Smith’s ability to translate this story for the big screen?

Mark Steensland: I had collaborated several times with an FX artist named Monster Mark Kosobucki. We had developed The Special and when he was working on a film with Harrison, he told him about it and then introduced us. Harrison read the script and really wanted to do it. And now it's happening. I'm very excited to see how Harrison and Mark bring it all to life.

James Newman: I’ll just thank Mark for this one. He’s a wheelin’ and dealin’ Hollywood player!

What’s coming up next for you both? Any new collaborations on the horizon?

Mark Steensland: James and I are co-writing another novella called In the Scrape, which is very different from The Special. It's about a pair of pre-teen brothers who plot to escape from their abusive father during a deer hunting trip. We've also written another draft of the script for Animosity and we're going out with that.

James Newman: Yep. In the Scrape. I think it’s going to be something really special . . . even though it’s as different from The Special as night and day. It’s not horror, although it does go to some dark places. I think folks who have enjoyed my coming-of-age stories, like Midnight Rain and Odd Man Out, are going to dig it a lot. Again, I can’t say enough how much I appreciate Mark bringing the idea to me and allowing me to come along for the ride.

How did working on The Special change you as a storyteller? Was there anything in particular that you took away from your experience working on it?

Mark Steensland: Everything changes you. For the better, if you do it correctly. For the worse if you don't. Which is really what The Special is about: the horror of getting it wrong. And that's an important part of the storytelling experience for me. I get to play at these things and think about what could happen and then take that information into my own life and hopefully prevent the bad stuff.

James Newman: I learned a lot about subtext with this novella. A lot of my horror stuff—as opposed to, say, the stuff I’ve written that leans more toward the thriller/suspense side of things—is pretty much “what you see is what you get.” It’s good, trashy, pulpy fun without a lot of hidden meaning, I’m not ashamed to say. But Mark had this great idea for a morality tale about addiction disguised as a twisted erotic horror story. I love how The Special is smarter than it appears on the surface. At least, that’s what we tried to do with it. I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide if we pulled it off (umm . . . no pun intended).