Acknowledgements

Growing up in New York, so close to Connecticut, we knew all about the Melon Heads. Or at least we thought we did. This was before the internet and easy access to all the information in the world. I mean, I was getting my facts from the collection of Peanuts encyclopedias my mother bought at the Finast supermarket. No matter, we feared the Melon Heads and were glad they were another state away. I roamed with a bunch of boys in the woods as often as possible, spending days in abandoned houses and construction sites at the reservoir. We were always hoping to come across a monster, at least in theory. I truly believe if anything the least bit menacing came across our path, we would have burned rubber on our Mongoose bikes as we rushed home to our mommies.

Now, we didn’t have Melon Heads, but we did have the tribe of killer albino dwarves that wielded machetes and would attack you if you went down Buckout Road in White Plains or dared to spend the night in the abandoned Sisters of St. Francis facility in Yonkers. (That’s what we called that creepy place, though it might have been called something else entirely. New condos reside there now, where the rent is scarier than any creature.) Why did they have to be albinos and dwarves? Where did they get all those machetes? Who the hell knows? What I did know is that they were real, not like Bigfoot and UFOs, and they were right in my goddamn backyard. Me and the boys talked a big game about searching for them, but you can bet your bottom dollar nothing ever came of it.

I always thought of them as the New York cousins to the Melon Heads. Now, my Monster Men buddy Jack is a Connecticut kind of guy, so when I was contemplating what to write next, I thought, What would make Jack get all tingly? It was either Melon Heads or Dudley Town. That man loves him some Dudley Town. Since I had come up with a title before the story concept (kind of like the movie magic revealed in Ed Wood), it leaned more toward a Melon Heads-inspired kind of terror. Oh, what was the title? They Eat People. My editor didn’t like it. My wife thought it would piss readers off who thought they bought a zombie book. As in all things, I deferred to them because they’re right.

As I get older, I find myself getting more and more nostalgic. I was a total metalhead in the eighties, complete with long hair, leather jackets with fringes, spurs on my boots, you name it. I can’t convey the beauty of the party that was the eighties. Just glorious. Then I graduated college and there was a war and the economy was in the tank and the party was definitely over. In came grunge rock, and literally overnight, we were wearing dirty flannels and getting depressed and angry right along with Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, The Screaming Trees, Soundgarden, Hole, Stone Temple Pilots, you name it. Man, that was a fucking scene. There may never be another like it. It was dark, dudes and dudettes. Real dark, but it had a beyond great soundtrack. Writing Misfits was my way of going in the time machine and reliving those years. And why Misfits? Aren’t we all misfits? Some more than others, for sure, but the whole world is full of people struggling to belong somewhere and feeling like they’re just a half-step (or more) removed from the lane they desire to cruise within. Mick, Marnie, Chuck, Heidi and Vent are the misfits who knew what they were and embraced it, who gave the finger to those who tried too hard to fit in. My friends and I have a little bit of each and every one of them in us. Thank god.

Big martini thanks to my editor, Don D’Auria, a man who is somehow as ageless as he is priceless. I spent what seemed like a lifetime hoping and praying I’d get the chance to one day work with him, and now I get to spend the rest of my time on this rotating sphere of insanity calling him not just editor, but friend.

Thanks to my mother, I was provided the perfect place to write, alternating between the yard on sunny days and the basement when the season changed. She still reads everything I write, which is why I tend to get a lot more side-eye now. Without her, there is no me, so there are folks who will thank her and some who will question her life decisions.

Jack Campisi is the yardstick by which greatness is measured, handier than a pocket on a shirt and a bad motor scooter and mean go-getter. I had you riding shotgun in my head the whole time I wrote this little yarn.

Huge ups to my A-team of beta readers – Kim Yerina, Shane Keene and Rich Duncan. You are the best. Seriously. If you’re not my target audience, I don’t know who is. If you gave me the thumbs down, this book would be on the scrapheap. Thank you for taking the time out to read it and let me know what worked and what needed work.

Last but not least, thank you to my wife, Amy, who puts up with the highs and lows of an artist (that’s what I call myself to have my shortcomings, outbursts and misfit thoughts excused) and I think loves me for them. Every time I trundled off to write, she would ask, “Which book is this one? Is it the slasher killer one, or the one with the, whaddya call them, big heads?”

Okay, so my wife is the penultimate thank you. I always wanted to put ‘penultimate’ in a book. Thank you, readers, hellions, horror-loving maniacs and even you ‘normies’ who were cajoled into reading a book about cannibal Melon Heads. I hope you enjoyed your time on Dracula Drive. I invite you to come again, because there will be more. Oh, so much more….