Marie Sexton Serves Us A Little Cheesetastic, With A Side Of Craptacular. Oh, And She Has A New Book Release Too!

29 May 2011 8 Comments

by Lisa in authors, Marie Sexton Tags: Marie Sexton

One of the greatest things about writing is learning about my characters, because they rarely go the direction I intend. My latest release, Between Sinners and Saints, is a perfect example. When I started this book, I had in my head that my shy massage therapist Jaime Marshall was a bookworm, but I wasn’t very far into the story before I realized it simply didn’t fit. Jaime is haunted by events of his childhood. He struggles each day to stay just one step ahead of the fears and nightmares that plague him. I couldn’t see him wanting to curl up with any book that might bring those terrors closer rather than helping keep them at bay. When, early in Between Sinners and Saints, he woke in the night, gasping for breath, trying to get away from the memories in his head, he didn’t retreat into a book as I had planned. Instead, he padded downstairs with his dog Dolly at his heels. He turned on the TV. And he watched….

Something.

But what? What exactly would Jaime want to watch? I had to know, because somehow, that information was a key to who he was. What would he choose?

Something not too sappy. Something not too deep. Something that would keep his attention enough to distract him, and yet allow him to fall back asleep too. After a little bit of thought, I realized he’d watch the one thing guaranteed to be on at any hour of the night: a low-budget monster movie on SyFy, where the horror is too absurd to be scary, and the acting too bad to warrant tears.

SyFy has managed to build a name and a reputation for themselves, not to mention a surprising amount of success, on these monster monstrosities. They’ve carved themselves a pop-culture niche with such new classics as Mansquito, Mega-Python vs. Gatoroid, and Mongolian Death Worm. These movies are low on plot and high on imagination. They’re made on budgets of about $30 a piece and apparently filmed on some guy’s iPhone. There’s always a scientist, usually female, in her mid-thirties (she lives), and a slew of young bimbos in bikinis (they don’t). There’s usually a stud-muffin who can’t seem to button his shirt higher than his navel, and a leering bad guy who nobody suspects, despite his evil laugh. The movies are silly. They are predictable. They are gleefully, unapologetically craptastic.

I kind of love them.

Now, I confess, I watch these movies often, yet I don’t ever watch them attentively. After all, I don’t have to. That’s the beauty of them! I can jump in at any time without worrying about having missed a crucial plot point. I can leave the room and come back, and maybe I missed a scantily-clad coed suffering a spectacularly low-budget death, but there’s always another coed lined up to take her place, so it’s okay! I don’t need to see the end, because I know the monster dies and the brainy-but-hot female scientist falls for the can’t-button-my-shirt-up stud-muffin. I’ve turned on Snakehead Terror at least twenty times over the past year, and I don’t actually remember a single second of it. And yet, if it were on again right now, I’d turn it on. I really would.

Wait a minute…

Holy shit! Look at that! It is on!!

Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised. That is, after all, the secret of SyFy’s success: there’s nearly ALWAYS some freak-fest movie to watch. Any day of the week, any time of the day, just turn on SyFy and you’ll be greeted by cheesetastic masterpieces like Caved In: Prehistoric Terror, and Bats: Human Harvest. SyFy movies are more reliable than either UPS or the USPS. They’re like the slippers next to your bed, except without the dog drool. (Okay. I lied. There might be dog drool in Hellhounds.)

So next time you’re flipping through the channels, trying to decide how to kill some time, think about Jaime Marshall in Between Sinners and Saints, and check out SyFy. Keep your mind open and your expectations low. Pour yourself some wine – this is cheese we’re talking about, after all, and it always goes better with wine. (I recommend white over red in this case, because when you burst out laughing and inadvertently spit it across the room, it’s far less likely to stain.) Kick off your shoes. Sit back and relax. Prepare to be blown away by the sheer, unabashed absurdity that only SyFy can deliver. Because seriously, have you ever seen anything as cool as a giant shark jumping out of the ocean to take down a jumbo jet?

I didn’t think so.

For the full cheesetastic glory of SyFy, check out this clip from Mega-Shark vs. Giant Octopus

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