M_____ is dying of cancer. Only thirty-two, an extra with a meagre list of credits to their name and afraid of being forgotten, M_____ starts recounting the strange, fantastic and ultimately tragic path of their love affair with the world’s greatest living "redshirt" – a man who has died or appeared dead in nearly eight hundred film and television roles.

In a compelling narrative of blog entries interspersed with film script excerpts, The Death Scene Artist immerses readers in a three-act surrealist exploration of the obsessive fault-finding of body dysmorphia and the dangerous desires of a man who has lived several hundred half-minute lives without having ever experienced his own.

Andrew Wilmot is a writer, editor and painter living in Toronto, ON. They hold a BFA in Visual Arts (with a minor in Film and Video Studies) and a master’s degree in Publishing, both from Simon Fraser University. They have won awards for screenwriting and short fiction, with credits including Found Press, The Singularity, Glittership, Turn to Ash, Augur and the anthologies Those Who Makes Us: Canadian Creature, Myth, and Monster Stories and Restless: An Anthology of Ghost Stories, Dark Fantasy, and Creepy Tales. As an editor, they've worked with Drawn & Quarterly, ChiZine Publications, Broken River Books, ARP Books, Playwrights Canada Press, Freehand Books, Wolsak & Wynn and NeWest Press, and are a freelance academic editor specializing in matters of body dysmorphia and eating disorders. Books they've worked on have taken home multiple awards from the Sunburst Awards, the Eisner Awards and, most recently, the Shirley Jackson Awards. They are also co-publisher and co-EIC of the online magazine Anathema: Spec from the Margins. The Death Scene Artist is their first novel. Find them online at: andrewwilmot.ca and anathemaspec.tumblr.com.

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"The novel has the tinge of a scandalous revenge story, which adds to its appeal, as does some incisive commentary about the nature of unrequited love and crises of body, gender, and personal identity."

Quill & Quire

"Violent and grotesque, this book is not for the squeamish. [T]here is a lot for fans or topical horror and dark comedy. Wilmot clearly has something to say here about our culture’s obsession with celebrity and our desire to overshare online, as well as gender identity and loneliness."

Winnipeg Free Press

"Andrew Wilmot’s The Death Scene Artist is unlike anything you’ve ever read. From a structural perspective, the novel is a surrealist experiment in metaphor. . . . A fun novel that satirizes Hollywood clichés."

University of Toronto Quarterly