“The morning they found the body…the bus was quiet.” – Brendan Johnson and Chris Corlew, ‘Behind With Knife’
In the two years since Brendan and I launched Lazy & Entitled, we still haven’t figured out the best way to describe ourselves. We still hate “production company,” even if that’s most technically accurate. One description the project that we like is “the band that writes novels.” Of course, our band is three different projects in a trench coat. Our 2023 novel, VINE, is a 66-chapter novel-in-stories that spans hundreds of years and only sort of has an overarching plot. We’re not great at fitting our own logline, is what I’m saying, but we have written something new.
Our 2025 novel—novella? It’s around 43,000 words and 197 pages, pending a few last-minute edits—is coming out Monday. It’s a slasher, and it’s fun one. We’re excited to present:
BEHIND WITH KNIFE
Mara and Tommy are two restaurant workers just looking for an honest shift. Mara’s first day at a bistro is interrupted when a regular is found with his throat slit. Tommy flees a suburban chain when the corporate value of human life is made clear to him. The two find refuge at Olly’s, a friendly, no-frills diner with a close-knit staff. For a while, everything’s sunny side up. When a dead body shows up in the alley outside of Olly’s, though, suspicions start to mount that someone in the kitchen is dicing more than hashbrowns and onions. Are Tommy and Mara cursed? Or can the killer be stopped before another customer is butchered? Behind With Knife delves into the overworked, underpaid world of food service—and what happens when one too many dishes get sent back.
That’s what the back of the book would read! If we had backs of books!
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As with VINE, there won’t be a physical release of the book.1 We’re publishing it as a blog, just like we did with VINE. Monday through Friday, beginning September 29th, we’ll do one chapter per day. The final chapter, chapter 25, will be published on Halloween. ISN’T THAT SPOOKY. We will now take questions.
HEY, YEAH, HOW ARE YA, REAL GOOD, LISTEN, UH: WHY PUBLISH A NOVEL AS A BLOG?
We think serialized novels are super cool. We like owning our own stuff. We like telling these collaborative stories and not going through the hoops of submitting to publishers, worrying about a year-off pub date, worrying about sales. Brendan and I are having fun with these novels, and we want you to, as well. Think our Lazy & Entitled fiction projects as stories around the campfire, except on the internet.
AH GEEZ THAT’S GREAT FELLAS. IS BEHIND WITH KNIFE GOING TO HAVE ITS OWN WEBSITE, LIKE VINE DID?
No! Hosting websites is costly. We’re going to put it all on here, lazy and entitled dot org. And each week, Friday Links will have a roundup of the chapters released.
SWELL, SWELL. WILL THERE BE A COOL AUDIOBOOK WITH SPOOKY MUSIC, LIKE YOU DID FOR VINE?
Possibly eventually. VINE had so many flash fiction chapters and so many different voices that it lent itself well to a radioplay. For accessibility reasons, we’d love to do an audiobook. For creative reasons, we’d love to do an audiobook (any excuse to write some spooky music and do some fun production). We just want to make sure it’s good and worth your time and ours before diving in.
BOY HOWDY, FELLAS, I JUST CAN’T WAIT TO READ THIS NOVEL, BUT IS THERE PUNK ROCK IN IT?
Almost any setting that isn’t the diner is a music venue. Self-publishing can be vain, but self-publishing is also punk. Shoutout to punk rock. Plus, if a production company can have a genre, Lazy & Entitled is post-skatepunk. So.
JUST GREAT, GUYS, JUST GREAT, ONE THING THE WIFE WANTS ME TO ASK YA—CAN I READ BEHIND WITH KNIFE TO MY KIDS?
Well, it’s a slasher, with the usual violence and gore Content Warnings that slashers come with. Without spoiling anything, there’s a throat stabbing and a kidney stabbing. That’s two deaths, and there are five. There is no sexual violence. No animals die, unless you count the meat that the diner serves. One of the characters doesn’t drink alcohol, most others do. Many characters smoke weed. They are all contending with the evils of capitalism being restaurant workers on thin margins. Also, no characters are under the age of 19, so your kids might have trouble identifying with Mara, Tommy, Martín, Amparo, and Parth.
HEY YEAH WHY’D YOU SET IT IN A DINER
Well, we love food, for one thing. Brendan has worked in many different restaurants and currently works in a kitchen at a café. I worked in food service for many years, currently write about food for The Daily Meal dot com, and will probably work in food service again at some point, honestly. Restaurants are rich settings. There are weird class dynamics. Salt-of-the-earth workers. Crooked/corrupted/mobbed-up/drugged-out workers. Lots of messes in service of clean presentation. Most importantly, there are knives. Seemed like a good place for a slasher.
NOW WAIT JUST A GOSHDARN MINUTE. YOU LISTEN HERE. I MAY HAVE A FOLKSY YOKEL PERSONA FOR THIS INTERVIEW, BUT I WEREN’T BORN YESTERDAY. WHY’D YOU REALLY WRITE A SLASHER CALLED BEHIND WITH KNIFE?
Brendan texted me one day and said “what if we wrote a slasher called Behind With Knife“
Okay that’s all. We’re stoked for this novel. Hopefully you will like it and be the right amount of scared. Oh, and if you work in the service industry? This one’s for you.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris
- YET ↩︎