Josh Viola

Joshua "Josh" Viola (born July 23, 1983) is a science fiction/fantasy/horror writer, artist and film producer best known for Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver - The Dead Shall Rise, True Believers, Denver Moon, The Bane of Yoto and his companies Hex Publishers and Bit Bot Media. He is a 2021 Splatterpunk Award nominee (Psi-Wars: Classified Cases of Psychic Phenomena) and a 2022 Colorado Book Awards winner (Shadow Atlas: Dark Landscapes of the Americas).

Background
In 2012, Viola collaborated with Klayton and his music label/publisher, FiXT Music, where Viola is the author of the novels Blackstar and The Bane of Yoto. He directed the “Unshakeable” animated music video for Celldweller.

Viola is owner of publishing house Hex Publishers. He edited their Denver Post number one best selling horror anthology, Nightmares Unhinged, featuring Bram Stoker, Hugo and Nebula Award winners such as Jason Heller, Steve Rasnic Tem, Edward Bryant and Stephen Graham Jones. He co-edited Cyber World, a cyberpunk anthology, with Jason Heller for Hex Publishers in 2016, which was a 2017 Colorado Book Award finalist and named one of the best anthologies of 2016 by Barnes & Noble. Blood Business, a paranormal crime anthology co-edited by Mario Acevedo, was a 2018 Colorado Book Award finalist. In 2019, his comic book collection, Denver Moon: Metamorphosis, was included on the 2018 Bram Stoker Award Preliminary Ballot for Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel. He was nominated for his fourth Colorado Book Award in April 2020 for his Denver Moon sequel, The Saint of Mars, a year after the first book, The Minds of Mars, was nominated for the 2019 award. In 2021, he edited the StokerCon™ souvenir anthology for the Horror Writers Association's first online convention (due to the COVID-19 pandemic), which included the 2020 Bram Stoker Awards. His 2020 anthology, Psi-Wars, was nominated for a 2021 Splatterpunk Award (award founded by Wrath James White and Brian Keene). He won the 2022 Colorado Book Award in the Anthology category for Shadow Atlas, co-edited by Carina Bissett and Hillary Dodge.

In 2022, he became the Creative Director of Novelization and Comics for Random Games' Unioverse videogame franchise launched by a team of gaming and entertainment industry veterans behind titles such as Grand Theft Auto, Donkey Kong Country, and Crackdown. He worked directly with writer Brent Friedman, whose previous credits include Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Halo 4, The Walking Dead, Call of Duty, and Star Trek: Enterprise.

In 2023, he co-wrote the slasher comic book series True Believers with Stephen Graham Jones, which features official cameos from Jamie Lee Curtis, R.L. Stine, and more. He executive produced a reboot of Roger Corman's Deathstalker (film) franchise, directed by Steven Kostanski (The Void (2016 film), PG: Psycho Goreman), starring Daniel Bernhardt, and co-executive produced by Slash (musician) of Guns N' Roses, as well as Jason Lei Howden's Deathgasm II: Goremaggedon. He is an executive producer on artist Skinner's Shrine of Abominations (featuring work by stop motion animator Phil Tippett ), and associate producer on films such as Chris Stuckmann's Shelby Oaks, and CreatorVC's Aliens Expanded and TerrorBytes.

In 2024, Viola and Klayton formed Bit Bot Media, a multimedia company focused on film, games, comics and licensed IP. Bit Bot announced a partnership with Canadian film studio Raven Banner Entertainment and London-based FreakZone Games to bring a number of projects to the public. Not long after, Bit Bot announced a partnership with the game studio known for the Lara Croft: Tomb Raider series, Crystal Dynamics, to revive the popular video game series Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, with Viola co-writing a prequel graphic novel alongside writer Angie Hodapp and artists Juan Samu, Dave Rapoza, and Aaron Lovett.

Filmography
Films
 * Deathstalker (film) 2024 (Executive Producer)
 * Deathgasm II: Goremageddon (Executive Producer)
 * Shrine of Abominations (Executive Producer)
 * Aliens Expanded (Associate Producer)
 * Shelby Oaks (Associate Producer)
 * TerrorBytes (Associate Producer)