Is Small Press the Cavalry This Time?

GUEST POST BY:   Del Howison, Owner of Dark Delicacies

Dark Continents Publishing is introducing a new forum this month — we present the same question to 10-15 people, and give them an open opportunity to answer the question based on their own interpretations and beliefs. Over the next few weeks, these views will be posted as part of our ongoing series. We encourage everyone to read and react to our questions, and all comments are welcome.

Visit here to support Dark Continents Publishing in our quest to compete with the “Big Boys” in the publishing world

For our inaugural March 2012 forum, the question is:

Why are small publishing companies important?

Dark Continents is pleased to welcome Del Howison to our forum today. Del is a journalist, writer and Bram Stoker Award-winning editor. He is  also the co-founder and owner of Dark Delicacies “The Home of Horror” Bookstore in Burbank, CA.

♦

There was a time in the early nineties when horror had been relegated back to the bargain basement bins of books. It happened not long after publishers like Zebra, Paladin, Jove and others realized the sales figures Stephen King and Anne Rice and Dean Koontz were racking up and figured they’d make a little of that money for themselves. Read “Greed” here. So in the 1980′s we (the reader) were given an over abundance of horror. An over abundance of bad horror. Garish covers of children with bloody weapons and clowns with pointed teeth grinning through die-cut holes assaulted us from the book racks.

By the 1990′s horror was dying on the shelves since people could not discern the wheat from the chaff. They quit trying and the dust of neglect collected over the evil tales. Conventions were packed with panels of Is Horror Dead? and Will Horror Survive? But Horror wasn’t finished, it was over-exposed. It needed to mutate. Only the names known by people who did not even like Horror were surviving on one book a year mega-sales while the fans crept for their fix to the low budget horror films being offered. They were mostly made up of a lot remakes and chapters of series that used to be good. Everything was wrong. Any new writer who had talent found that there was almost no place to go except the magazine market if you wanted to be read.

The small press began to claw its way out of the cemetery where horror went to rot and slowly ever so slowly published a book here and a book there. Copy edition runs of 300 to 1000 collectible signed hardback books brought the horror fan back into the market. New names, new approaches and new cover artists enticed the reader to drop big bucks for a chance at something a little different. It worked and by the end of the decade horror panels switched their topics to Where Will Horror Go from Here? The cycle began again.

Here we are ten years later and horror is repeating the problems of the past. Ebooks give us an over abundance of horror. An over abundance of bad horror. Like the last time, there are plenty of fine writers hiding in the forest but nobody has the time to look at every tree. There is no way to discern between a quality writer and monkey computer operator. No way to find them. No way to sort the wheat from the chaff because anybody with a laptop can write, or steal, anything they want and post it up online as their own book. Payment rates are forcing otherwise fine writers who would have been discovered in the past to look elsewhere for a creative outlet and a living. Everybody jumped into the pool and nobody took the time to think any of this through first. Panic led way to greed which led way to panic.

There is a place now, more than ever, for competent genre editors and inkslingers of the highest caliber to make horror in the small press work. Hope still clings to the inside of the horror box.

Will the small press have the professionalism and knowledge to find those writers and editors and artists needed to make things work again? Will they be able to bring a crap weary reading public back to quality horror with the enticement of good product? Time will tell. But it is the Wild West out there and Boot Hill is going to be crowded before the final showdown. Were I a betting man, and I am, I would never count out the small press.

Biography:

Del Howison is a journalist, writer and Bram Stoker Award-winning editor. He is  also the co-founder and owner of Dark Delicacies “The Home of Horror” in Burbank, CA. He can be reached at Del@darkdel.com

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Small Presses are the Risk-takers

GUEST POST BY:  Cat Rambo

Dark Continents Publishing is introducing a new forum this month — we present the same question to 10-15 people, and give them an open opportunity to answer the question based on their own interpretations and beliefs. Over the next few weeks, these views will be posted as part of our ongoing series. We encourage everyone to read and react to our questions, and all comments are welcome.

Visit here to support Dark Continents Publishing in our quest to compete with the “Big Boys” in the publishing world

For our inaugural March 2012 forum, the question is:

Why are small publishing companies important?

We are pleased to welcome author and Board Member of Broad Universe Cat Rambo as our first guest in the series.

 ♦

I don’t like decisions by committee. Given a choice between the story that had two editors raving and the third threatening to quit the magazine and the story that everyone agreed was “pretty good,” I will always pick door #1.

And to me, that’s often the dividing line between a small press book and one from a large, established press. The small press is willing to risk that some people won’t like the book – heck, they KNOW everyone won’t like the book — where the large press is more worried about that. Small presses live closer to the edge. They’re willing to gamble, willing to test things out.

I’ve worked for small companies and for multinational corporations. Give me the small company, where traditions haven’t become so entrenched that no one knows where they came from and where people are working not for stock options but because they love what they do enough to put insanely long and hard hours into it.

Small presses have a sense of humor, a willingness to poke humor at themselves in a way that the larger ones often lack. They don’t have a projections about fourth quarter earnings, but they do have a complete collection of rubber skulls in the bathroom that everyone’s sharing — assuming there’s office space at all and the enterprise isn’t being run from the cloud.

I’m about to put out another collection, a two volume set, with a small press. Do I think it’ll set the world on fire, or that I’ll be able to see it in airport shops? No. (Though it would be cool.) But I know I’ll be working with people who love my writing and want the books to be beautiful. That my idea for the books will remain intact, and any changes will be ones that make them better, not worse. I can’t guarantee that a small press will work with the writer like this, because sometimes it’s not the case — but it seems much more likely with one.

As e-publishing’s popularity swells and physical books become less common, it’s the small presses that will keep producing them, and will be the ones to be making books that are art objects, because they’ve been doing that all along. Go to the dealer’s room at your next con and look at small press versus large press. Small press doesn’t mean cheap POD paper — sometimes it means books that are lovingly crafted, that feel good in the hand, are legible and lovely and error-free, that didn’t just roll off an assembly line.

Here at least, or so I hope, their gamble will pay off. Because a world without at least a few hard-copy books here and there is surely a lesser one.

Biography:

John Barth described Cat Rambo’s writings as “works of urban mythopoeia” — her stories take place in a universe where chickens aid the lovelorn, Death is just another face on the train, and Bigfoot gives interviews to the media on a daily basis. She has worked as a programmer-writer for Microsoft and a Tarot card reader, professions which, she claims, both involve a certain combination of technical knowledge and willingness to go with the flow. In 2005 she attended the Clarion West Writers’ Workshop.

Among the places in which her stories have appeared are ASIMOV’S, WEIRD TALES, CLARKESWORLD, and STRANGE HORIZONS, and her work has consistently garnered mentions and appearances in year’s best of anthologies. Her collection, EYES LIKE SKY AND COAL AND MOONLIGHT was an Endeavour Award finalist in 2010 and followed her collaboration with Jeff VanderMeer, THE SURGEON’S TALE AND OTHER STORIES.

She has edited anthologies as well as critically-acclaimed Fantasy Magazine, is a board member of feminist science fiction group Broad Universe, a member of the Codex Writers’ Group, and volunteers with Clarion West.

Although no longer actively involved with the game, she is one of the minds behind Armageddon MUD, the oldest roleplay-intensive MUD (an interactive text-based game) on the Internet, which has been described as “like no other mud I have played before“, “the most entertaining game I’ve ever played“, “the most creative, emotionally involved mud on the Net” and “a place of astonishing beauty and detail“. She continues to do some game writing as well as technology journalism and reviews for Publishers Weekly. 

Contact information:
Cat is represented by Ginger Clark of Curtis Brown Ltd.
Contact Cat at catrambo@gmail.com

 

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The Greatest Common Denominator

Guest Post by:  A.J. Brown

Pop Question:  What is the greatest common denominator between most people?

Anyone?

Bueller?

The Answer:  Fear.

I know, I know.  Some of you out there are probably saying to yourselves: ‘Self, I ain’t afraid of nothing.’

Go right ahead and lie to yourselves then.  Everyone is afraid of something, admitted or not.

Fear is one of the driving factors in most lives.  Fear of being homeless makes most people work.  Fear of being alone makes people seek out a mate.  Fear of dying makes some people exercise religiously and eat right.  Speaking of religion, fear of going to Hell drives some folks to a faith in a higher being.  Fear of failure pushes many people to work hard to become successful.

Hmmm… fear of failure.

Once upon a time in a small town in South Carolina lived a little boy who grew into a young man who wanted to become a writer.  However, the man feared that he would never succeed.  So he almost didn’t pursue his dream.

Almost.

Fear of failure almost kept him from trying.
Again, almost.

Did you know Henry Ford failed a few times before finally getting it right with Ford Motor Company?  Thomas Edison was quoted as saying, “I failed my way to success.”  President Lincoln failed in his first foray into politics.

Failure happens.  It’s part of life.  What’s the difference between Ford, Edison, Lincoln and the average person?  They kept trying.  They didn’t let the fear of failure slow them down.  They didn’t even let the reality of failure slow them down.

I used to think failure is not an option.  But, that’s not true.  Not trying is not an option.  Failure may happen, but I have to try in order for that failure (or success) to come.

If every child gave up after their first attempt at walking we would have a bunch of people with calloused hands and knees crawling around the world.  If every athlete gave up when they didn’t succeed there would be no sports.

The fear of failure is great for many.  So great, that I’m sure it paralyzes some people and keeps them from even thinking about trying.

We can’t be that way.  Not in life.

What does all of this have to do with writing?  If Stephen King gave up after throwing Carrie in the trash would the horror genre be what it is today?  If his wife hadn’t fished it out of the trash would King have been what he became?  His wife didn’t give up on him and didn’t let him become a failure at what he loved to do.

Why should we give up on ourselves?

When I first started out I was told I sucked as a writer and that I should stop writing–it wasn’t my thing.  Ouch.  That could have been a mental wound that stayed open for years and later became a scar.  Instead, that was my motivation to prove that editor wrong.  That’s right.  Tell me I can’t do something.  Go ahead.  I’m going to prove you wrong.  And I don’t prove you wrong I’m going to try my best regardless.

Fear is the greatest common denominator.  Add failure to the equation and you have a paralyzing grip that often will not let go of people.  Conquering that fear isn’t easy, but all it takes is one step to get you going.  Then another step.

Start small. Gain confidence then reach higher.  Climbing the ladder of success is all about taking one rung at a time–if you skip a few on the way up, you might just hit them on the way back down.

Learn the craft–not just the technical stuff, but your voice and how to develop it.  Learn about making stories flow and, if at all possible, try to be original.  I don’t listen to people who tell me my work won’t sell.  It does and it will.

Learn from your mistakes.  Samuel Smiles said, “We learn wisdom from failure much more than success.  We often discover what we will do, by finding out what we will not do.”

Use failure as a learning device.  If you do then making the same mistakes over and over will not be something you have to worry about.

And don’t be afraid.  If you want to run with the big dogs you can’t stay on the porch.  You have to leap off and chase after them, chase after that dream.

Nothing good ever happens if you don’t try and not trying is the worse thing you can do–or not do.
As I’ve said, fear is the greatest common denominator.  The fear of failure is paralyzing.  Don’t be afraid to fail.  Be afraid not to try.

Now, get out there and write.

Until we meet again…

AJ Brown is a story teller who pens emotionally charged/character driven stories that often include a touch of dark paranormal. His work has received such honors as a Pushcart nomination, and editor’s choice for Issue #12 of Necrotic Tissue. Bards and Sages Quarterly, Liquid Imagination, and SNM Horror are a few of the literary zines where his stories can be found.

Above all else, AJ is a husband and father of two beautiful children who not only support his creative endeavors, but also provide inspiration (sometimes in rather unexpected ways).

If you’d like to learn more about AJ Brown’s life and work, visit his blog: Type AJ Negative. However, beware, AJ is a unique mixture of strawberry Kool-aid drinking redneck and traditional values Southern gentleman.  The only things he takes seriously are serious things and he isn’t one of them.

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The Muse

Guest Post by: Dean M. Drinkel

As I was growing up it was definitely the Americans that inspired me.  American music, films, writers, history – and that’s just for starters.  My first collection of short stories “The Burial” (hopefully to be re-issued later this year in an “advanced format”) is certainly inspired by the States and my time at Towson State University and subsequent trips to Boston, New York and Baltimore.  When I flick through the pages and the words jump out at me, I can remember the sights, the smells, the people that made those stories possible.

I always thought it was going to be America that I ended up but, the last few years I have found my new muse and that is France – with Paris in particular playing a prevalent role in my work.  My recent story collection “Through a Forest Dark” – published through Dark Continents and their “Tales of Darkness and Dismay” series is certainly testament to that.  If you’ve been to Paris you may know the places I’ve written about, but if not, it doesn’t matter though it does (in my mind at least) add a certain legitimacy to the tales.  Two of the four stories are set in places I regularly visit – I won’t spoil it but there’s a museum and a hotel.  The other two similarly and all four written whilst I was listening to French musicians such as OSNS, SoulKast, Raphael and Lully!

The French have a different way of looking at things, they’re not snobbish about horror or sci-fi, in fact the opposite, they embrace it.  The horror films that they make are mindblowing – yes they can be classed “torture porn” but that’s just on the surface, there are lots interesting metaphors and images in their movies and more often or not there is a twist in the tale that even M. Night Shyamalan would be proud off. 

Of course their most well-known films are about to be remade by Hollywood – so it’ll be interesting to see if they stick to the originals or “re-imagine” them with a Hollywood twist. French directors too are heading to Hollywood with most of the big horror franchises seemingly having French helmers connected to them – time will tell on that one I guess.

For me, I am currently working on a new horror novel set in the South of France as well as a new collection set once more in Paris.  Having been heavily influenced by the poet Rimbaud – I am also currently doing rewrites on a horror novella set in 19^th Century Paris!!!!  And with the Cannes Film Festival soon upon us I hope to be able to pimp my very dark religious script “Magdalene”

Here’s a quick list of four French horror movies worth checking out – don’t say I didn’t warn you, they’re definitely not for the faint-hearted!

Sheitan:                               Directed by Kim Chapiron, 2006

Haute Tension:                 Directed by Alexandre Aja, 2003

Martyrs:                               Directed by Pascal Laugier, 2008

Frontier(s):                         Directed by Xavier Gens, 2007

 

Dean M Drinkel

Dean M Drinkel’s short stories have appeared in diverse publications such as Literal Translations, Estronomicon, Theaker’s Quarterly, Morpheus Tales, M is for Monster and Monk Punk. His short films The Crumps, Fou, Ruby, The Imp Of The Perverse have screened at the Cannes Film Festival. His theatre productions have been staged in various theatres throughout England. He was runner up for the 2001 Sir Peter Ustinov Screenwriting Award with his feature script Ghosts. He recently compiled Phobophobia (Dark Continents Publishing, 2011), Through a Forest Dark (Dark Continents, 2012) and Cities of Death (Static Movement 2012).  He is currently editing a Titanic inspired anthology to be published by Dark Continents during Fall 2012.

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How We Suffer

GUEST POST BY:  AUTUMN CHRISTIAN

He’d been snorting coke again, I think, and drinking in his room. I could  see it in his manic friendliness, his hands gripping the beer can, the  way he leaned in to talk to me as if the entire universe was rushing in  and he could barely hold on. He’d grabbed me and pulled me behind a car  during an outing to talk to me.

“I just wanted to tell you again,” he said, “I don’t think you should go on antidepressants.”

“Why?” I said, because this was one conversation of many, “why? I don’t understand why this means so much to you.”

“Because you’re a wonderful writer. You’re beautiful and talented. Your  personality is a bit dramatic, I mean, don’t get me wrong, but I’d hate  to see all that go to waste.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Autumn, you are dumping a dangerous amount of chemicals inside your brain. You have no idea how that’s going to affect you.”

“So is everyone. I mean, so are you.”

“Don’t trust the pharmaceutical companies. Don’t trust the doctors. And don’t  ever go to a mental hospital. They will take away from you everything  that is human.”

He was an artist living out of a warehouse, a welder and a painter with a tattoo of an Egon Schiele print on his arm. He drew beautifully disturbing and surreal paintings  that reminded me of Clive Barker’s work, dripping with vibrant colors  and broad, bold strokes. He introduced me to writers such as Jean Genet  and Colette, He called me beautiful daily, told me how much he liked me, but promised to never touch me. He was diagnosed with Antisocial  Personality Disorder and rapid-cycling bipolar, and the summer before I  moved into the warehouse he’d stay in his room reading Hemingway with a  gun pointed to his head. The perfect embodiment of the artist – bug  trapped in a sheet of glass – tragic, dramatic, and addicted.

But despite his emphatic opinions, I started taking the antidepressants. I  ended up moving out of the warehouse and I stopped sitting in the  bathroom staring at the shiny row of razors all lined up along the  bathtub. Most importantly, I kept writing.

I remember during the worst part of my depression I went to the World  Horror Convention in Austin and met Stephanie, who slipped me her card.  Her card fell down into the murky haze where I’d stopped writing. I had a book to finish editing but I could barely bring myself to get out of  bed. Only six months later did I find the card and contacted her, and  she invited me to submit a novella to Dark Continents. I put together some of my stories, and that’s how A Gentle Hell was created.

The idea of the tragic artist is so compelling because we want to believe  that our suffering can be quantified, that for X amount of suffering we  get X amount of beautiful art. But it doesn’t always work like that.  Suffering isn’t profound or important in itself, and for those of us who suffer it can be a difficult reality to live with, especially when you  may have other artists espousing its benefits. I often think of how  successful my friend the artist could have been if he’d been able to  take the gun from his head and paint more than a few times a year. And I also wonder if he’d have been an artist at all without the mania  offered by his bipolar, or the need to express yourself that comes out  of trauma.

It’s a line that some of us walk between productivity and desperation, and any misstep could leave us dead.

And that’s where the concept of A Gentle Hell came about: the quiet place I often find myself in those moments when I’m writing, caught between  calm and hopelessness. The place that I run from that always finds me.  The lingering inactivity juxtaposed with the frantic compulsion to  finish my body of work before death catches me. Inside you’ll find  atmospheric and dark stories about carnivorous deer, dead children, and  strippers implanted with sleep machines – but it’s all about coming to  terms with living in this universe when you own a body that wants to  betray you.

About suffering: it is not necessary, or something that needs to be nurtured  with coke and Hemingway, it’s simply there, and like many artists and  non-artists alike I’ve been caught in the inner machinery of it.

And I hope when you read these stories, you’ll find that even in depression there’s a seed of hope, and for those who struggle with suffering and  their art, sometimes that small seed is all we have to grasp on. But at  least we can see it. We’ve seen the place where the light filters in and we don’t have to stay down here in the dark, suffering and sad. Not for art. Not for anyone. Not for long.

- Autumn

BIOGRAPHY:

My name is Autumn Christian. I am a horror writer currently living in Austin, Texas.

I grew up in Fort Worth and attended university as an English literature major before I decided to drop out and run off to an Oklahoman dairy factory for six months. I became small town famous after writing a blog about the monsters that lived in the town pond, but soon after took off for a Texas commune. After getting kicked out of the commune for my ex-boyfriend’s suspected communist leanings, I ended up on the East side of Austin and lived in a Burning Man enclave with a haunted blues band. Later I arrived on the South side of Austin and moved into a demon infested apartment above a coffee shop where I continue to this day to write stories and wake up in the middle of the night to junkies screaming outside my window.

I’ve been a freelance writer, an iPhone game designer, a cheese producer, a haunted house actor, and a video game tester. I consider Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury, Katie Jane Garside, the southern gothic, and dubstep as main sources of inspiration. I’ve been published in numerous literary magazines that are probably too obscure to worth mentioning. I also find writing biographies the proper way in third person intensely uncomfortable.

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