SALLEE, Wayne Allen 1959-

PERSONAL: Born 1959.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Silver Salamander Press, 4128 Woodland Park Ave. N., Seattle, WA 98103.

CAREER: Writer and poet.

WRITINGS:

The Holy Terror (novel), Mark V. Ziesing (Shingletown, CA), 1992.

Pain Grin (prose poem), TAL Publications, 1993.

With Wounds Still Wet (stories), Silver Salamander Press (Seattle, WA), 1996.

Dark Tales of the Scarlet Sponge, Dark Tales Publications, 2002.

Also author of For You, the Living, Roadkill Press; contributor of short stories to anthologies.

SIDELIGHTS: Wayne Allen Sallee is primarily a horror writer whose short fiction can be found in magazines, anthologies, and collections, and whose debut novel, The Holy Terror, was deemed "grisly" and "sadistic" by a Publishers Weekly reviewer who noted that Sallee "bludgeons readers with graphic images."

The novel's story, set in Chicago, involves Frank Haid—called the Painkiller by the police—who goes on a killing spree. He murders eighteen disabled people in order to relieve them of their pain with a power he first became aware of when, as a child, he survives a fire that killed nearly one hundred of his classmates. Most of his victims live in a rooming house, and a variety of characters come together to find the person who is preying on the wheelchair-bound. In reviewing the novel for Library Journal, Denise Dumars said that Sallee portrays the lives of the victims compassionately and predicted that "fans of the 'splatterpunk' school of horror fiction will like the novel's extremism."

Locus contributor Edward Bryant wrote that "the supporting cast is large and lovingly detailed, whether cops, street hustlers, or the inhabitants of the Marclinn." Bryant also noted that every character in the novel is handicapped in some way: "This is a very painful book. That pain does not feel made-up. It's the real stuff." Bryant concluded by saying that "in an increasingly 'safe' publishing climate, Wayne Sallee has done an unsafe thing. He has presented the dark fantasy audience with a selection of characters rarely seen—and he has done so with both sympathy and understanding."

With Wounds Still Wet is a collection of Sallee's previously published stories as well as nine entries printed for the first time. In reviewing the volume, Small Press Review contributor Wayne Edwards called Sallee "an original; no one writes like him." Edwards called the collection "an exceptional retrospective" of short-fiction works "revealing obscure gems and introducing his latest endeavors."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Library Journal, October 1, 1992, Denise Dumars, review of The Holy Terror, p. 144.

Locus, April, 1992, Edward Bryant, review of The Holy Terror, p. 19; May, 1993, Edward Bryant, review of Pain Grin, p. 23; June, 2002, Edward Bryant, review of True Tales of the Scarlet Sponge, p. 29.

Publishers Weekly, March 2, 1992, review of The Holy Terror, p. 52.

Small Press Review, February, 1997, Wayne Edwards, review of With Wounds Still Wet, p. 8.*