The Rising Of Deadite Press

 Today I want to write about a certain joy I'm experiencing knowing that the old Leisure Books horror stable has, to some extent, been replaced by Deadite Press.

I was a member of Leisure's horror book club, and got small orgasms when their monthly box of books lobbed against my door. It's not often that horror comes to you in a surprise package like the one Leisure used to send. For their troubles, I paid them about twelve bucks a month. Hardly a fortune considering the work that goes into a book. I wasn't a fan of all the Leisure authors, and I must admit I read a dozen pages of some books and abandoned them. That was rare, though.

When it comes to horror, some themes just don't float my boat these days. I take a dim view of voodoo stories and voodoo rituals. Fuck off with that. I'm almost beyond being convinced to read another haunted house story. They've been done to death -- literally. Perhaps that's why writers keep writing them. It's arrogance. A belief that their haunted house story will be a fresh one. I'm sure it can be done, but it's hard to work up the energy to read another. New zombie stories are still appearing on bookshelves. I avoid them. Zero interest. Vampires? Time to lay them to rest for a while. Twilight pussified the genre while broadening one side of its audience. The side with vaginas and braces.

If you're on the fringes of or deep inside the horror community, you probably know about the demise of Leisure and the company's shabby treatment of its writers. Film distributors treat their filmmakers like this pretty much all the time, so Leisure's disrespect for writers didn't seem too shocking to me. Terrible, yes, and unforgivable, of course, but not shocking to someone who's been fucked upside-down and sideways by film distributors. Some Leisure authors such as Brian Keene, Bryan Smith, and JF Gonzalez extricated themselves and their book rights from Leisure and fled to Deadite; others are still untangling the mess Leisure left them in. There are rumors, however, that Amazon may offer refuge and some outstanding checks. I wish these folks well.

Deadite Press is an imprint of Eraserhead Press, the home of the Bizarro genre, and base of Bizarro Central. Deadite is releasing both new books and re-releasing older books. Some of Leisure's old horror titles are turning up on Deadite in refined versions with vivid new covers and in trade paperback size. As far as I know, Deadite doesn't have a monthly book club set-up, but their books are very reasonably priced and can be accessed via a link on their site. The link usually carries you through to Amazon. Titles I've purchased recently have been Like Porno For Psychos (Wraith James White), Genital Grinder (Ryan Harding), Hero (JF Gonzalez/White), The Cage (Brian Keene), The Dark ones (Bryan Smith), All You Can Eat (Shane McKenzie), and Take the Long Way Home (Keene).

The presentation of their books and cover art is really impressive and provocative; you get the impression that the folks behind Deadite really do give a flying fuck about what they're doing. Their love shows.  I've yet to see any crappy art like the shit poor old Ray Garten had to endure with Leisure's release of Bestial and Ravenous. Masterton's Blind Panic got fucked up the nasal passage, too. Gary A. Braunbeck's Coffin County paperback had a cover that was conceptually strong but poorly executed. It would hardly have jumped off the shelf at you.

To be fair, Leisure, under editor Don D'Auria, did a lot of things right, too, by getting behind some terrific writers and bestowing some books with potent cover art. Now, some of these guys and gals might argue that Leisure got close enough behind them to slip an unwanted penis (at least financially) into any available orifice, but it needs to be said that Leisure did create a profile for authors like Keene, Smith, Gonzalez, and Wrath James White, a profile that's enabled them to soldier forth into brighter theaters of literary combat. Sad really that it all had to end in a sweaty clusterfuck. Still, these four and others have migrated to Deadite and word from them has been that Deadite are good people whose definition of getting behind you involves check writing, promotion, and timely sales reports instead of fiscal rape.

 

Leisure's very impressive cover art for Lee's The Golem.

 

The not-so-striking art for Braunbeck's Coffin County.

I hope anybody who gives two hoots about horror gives Deadite a decent shot. I don't work for them, have no professional affiliation with them (not yet, anyway!), and don't receive free books for review. I just wanna see 'em doing well... because, if they're doing well, you're getting good horror at a bargain price. That's nothing to blow snot at.

Deadite Press Gears Up

 
One of the saddest horror stories of 2010 was the demise of Leisure Books' horror line and ousting of editor Dan D'Auria. For several years, Leisure published two paperback horror novels a month from literary luminaries such as Brian Keene, Wrath James White, JF Gonzalez, Bryan Smith, Edward Lee, Ray Garton, Gord Rollo, Richard Laymon, Simon Clark, Mary Sangiovanni, Tim Lebbon, and many others.  I was a member of their horror book club and always looked forward to the thud of that cardboard box of pulp goodness on my doorstep. When they started sending me books from other publishers, I smelt a James Herbert-sized rat. 

For many of Leisure's authors, the end, like most ends, was a messy affair. Advances had not been received. Pending releases hung in holding patterns. Anger spilled over into blogs.

With 2011 now upon us, so is some very good news. Deadite Press, a specialty publisher with solid horror bona fides, has embraced and will be releasing the past and future work of Leisure lifeboat authors Brian Keene, JF Gonzalez, Bryan Smith, and Edward Lee, to name a few.

Deadite is already an active horror publisher and has demonstrated a healthy jones for extreme, wild, and deliciously subversive material. They also publish works from Bizarro writers such as Carlton Mellick III (Apeshit), AndreDuza (Necro Sex Machine), Adam Pepper (Super Fetus), and Robert Devereaux (Slaughter House High).

 Upcoming novels from Deadite include re-publishings of the Guy N. Smith-inspired Clickers books (there are two so far)  from JF Gonzalez -- if you haven't read his Survivor, you ought to, because then you'll know what it feels like to be ass-raped through your eyes. Jack's Magic Beans is coming from Brian Keene; and Bryan Smith has Highways to Hell, a new short story collection, and The Killing Kind 2, on the way.

Baby's First Book of Seriously Fuck-Up Shit, by Robert Devereaux, sounds like a must-read based on  title alone; it hits stores in March. Other upcoming Devereaux titles include Santa Steps Out, Santa Conquers the Homophobes (a certain reader of this blog had better watch out!), and Book Three of the Santa Chronicles

Wrath James Wright, who wrote the troubling Succulent Prey, has His Pain out in September, and Population Zero available for immediate fondling.

 Already available from Deadite and recommended is Edward Lee's Trolley No. 1852, a tale so much in the Lovecraftian tradition, it's backstory is that it was written by Lovecraft himself when he was skint. From what I've heard, the dark scribe was skint most of the time. The stories within this framework involve a strange sex club that smells like a more gentlemanly version of Ray Garton's den of slut vampires in Live Girls. By gentlemanly, I'm not suggesting that nothing much happens in Lee's club but cigar smoking and cricket chat --  on the contrary, much perversion occurs, but it's seen from Lovecraft's more sexually conservative point of view, and not described with the relish Mr. Lee is famous for.

Leisure has gone, but Deadite survives, and should thrive with its new roster of warped wordsmiths.  

 

Here's a more official rundown of the blood-, gore-, and semen-soaked magic upcoming from the publisher:

February
Urban Gothic by Brian Keene
Jack’s Magic Beans by Brian Keene
Clickers by J. F. Gonzalez and Mark Williams
Clickers II by J. F. Gonzalez and Brian Keene

March:
A Gathering of Crows by Brian Keene
Take the Long Way Home by Brian Keene
Baby’s First Book of Seriously Fucked-Up Shit by Robert Devereaux (a new collection of short fiction)

April:
Highways to Hell by Bryan Smith (a new collection of short fiction)

Coming later in 2011

The Corporation by J. F. Gonzalez
His Pain by Wrath James White
The Killing Kind by Bryan Smith
Freakshow by Bryan Smith
Depraved by Bryan Smith
Dark Hollow by Brian Keene
A Gathering of Crows by Brian Keene
Darkness on the Edge of Town by Brian Keene
Castaways by Brian Keene
Ghost Walk by Brian Keene
Ghoul by Brian Keene
Dead Sea by Brian Keene
Kill Whitey by Brian Keene
The Conqueror Worms by Brian Keene
The Conqueror Worms: Selected Scenes from the End of the World by Brian Keene
The Rising by Brian Keene
Walking Wounded by Robert Devereaux
Santa Steps Out by Robert Devereaux
Santa Conquers the Homophobes by Robert Devereaux
Book Three of the Santa Chronicles by Robert Devereaux

Cemetery Dancing

Cemetery Dance has hit its 61st issue. I'm comforted by that.

Anything that survives that long is an indicator of good health. Health of the genre? Sure. Health of a loyal readership? Certainly.

If you have a passing interest in horror, you're probably not into Cemetery Dance. The mag's not always easy to find, and it doesn't tend to jump on bandwagons that are currently popular. It's for serious horror fans. And writers. And editors.

The latest issue makes a justified fuss about Peter Straub, the author of Ghost Story (made into a rotten film), Shadowland (an rich, extraordinary fantasy), Koko, The Throat, and The Hellfire Club (for starters). He's subversive with a firm handshake, a trusted member of an exclusive club. I haven't warmed to all his books, but I consider Ghost Story a masterpiece. I felt cold and anxious reading it for the first time. Few books do that to me.

Shadowland, on the other hand, is not terribly horrific, but it is terribly good and transporting in a way few novels are (TM Wright's Strange Seed and Jonathan Carroll's The Land of Laughs are some of those few). I'm not afraid to stick my neck out and say that Shadowland is Straub's Something Wicked This Way Comes. The breath of Bradbury is on its neck.

Mark Sieber, who runs horrordrive-in.com, contributes a great piece on the state of horror in this issue. He explores whether writers are benefiting from the genre's current profile as much as fans. It's a provocative question. Horror is everywhere right now. Not just in films and books, either. It's on-line, in comics, in blogs. To an outsider, it might look like everybody in the biz is working hard, partying hard, and keeping the cash machines ringing, but that's not really the case. Global fragmentation of entertainment has broadened influence and diminished the revenue being channeled back to the creators.

The regular Stephen King section (by Bev Vincent) begins with a short piece on Under The Dome, a 1120-page novel that stands to make It look like a chapbook. Of interest is King's comment (paraphrased from USA Today) on new modes of story delivery such as the Kindle: "The delivery mechanism to my mind is secondary for me as a writer".

As a reader, it is secondary to story for me, too, but only just. I'm very attached to pulp. The prospect of reading future Wright, Ketchum, Carroll, King, Little, Keene, Smith and Herbert novels on an electronic tablet is very disheartening.

Will the Kindle (and its electronic brethren) ever replace the paperback? I don't know. Do I want it to? Definitely not. Hopefully, the delivery mechanisms will co-exist.

Movies can be watched in a theatre, at home, on an ipod, on a computer, and on a small screen in a phallus-shaped sex aid currently being developed by a German electronics company (just kidding about that one).

I don't foresee the built-in convenience of a paperback entertainment centre being usurped by a thing requiring batteries.

Leisure editor Dan D'Auria makes his debut as a regular columnist in CD's 61st issue. He turns in a great piece on how books are selected for publication. It is a sobering, slightly brutal reality check. We need more brutality like that.

The issue's striking cover art is by Alan M. Clark

If you are just getting started with horror fiction, what would be better than ordering dozens of back issues of Cemetery Dance.

From the age of six, I have been a sucker for back issue listings. When I used to crack open the latest issue of Famous Monsters, the Captain Company's back issue spread would call my name. As I leafed through the mag towards the spread, my anxiety level would increase, and I'd start dreaming up ways to finance future purchases with combinations of hard work, lottery wins, and future birthday trade-offs.

Cemetery Dance, which also publishes original and re-printed horror fiction, is one of the go-to destinations for those caught forever in the genre's web-like hold.

Legacy of Leisure

Leisure Books is an imprint of Dorchester Publishing, a large publishing group.

Currently guided by Dan D'Auria, they are a unique presence in mass market publishing because they publish two horror novels a month. In a recent interview (sorry, but I can't find the source) D'Auria did not discount the possibility of bumping the two to three. It will depend, of course, on market forces. I hope sales maintain an upward curve. Twenty-four mass market horror books a year in a country with almost 300,000,000 people (plus the rest of the world) just doesn't seem right, does it? Jesus, do most of those people really prefer American Idol and Dancing With The Stars?

These titles are from a very different era of Leisure horror. None of the authors are currently writing in the genre, if at all.

JN Williamson, a legend of sorts, died in 2005. He wrote novels and edited a shitload of horror anthologies.

William Essex, the author of Slime ('88), wrote material similar to that of Britain's Guy N. Smith, and he shared Smith's love of the lurid. Slime was a fun read, not particularly realistic, and it featured a cautious afterword by Essex warning us of the dangers of chemical contamination.

The slime of the title crawls, oozes, and eats stuff (like fingers) in the style of The Blob. One minute you've got a hand, the next minute you've got stumps. In runs along that tract.

Essex was actually John Tigges, a prolific author of pulp such as Kiss Not the Child, Vessel, Monster, and The Curse. Monster ('95) was his last horror novel.

If anybody could be considered America's answer to Guy N. Smith, it was Tigges (aka William Essex).

Fangs, from Richard Forsythe, was a woman-into-wolf novel, but not a werewolf novel per se. There was more than one, too. I picked it up for fifty cents in the mid-80's and read it on a train to Sydney. In retrospect, I found it readable in a Jack Ketchum way. Salty prose. Good characterization. Gruesome where it needed to be. Certainly not Ketchum subject matter, but a cut above writing-wise.

I have not read Forsythe's Bishop's Landing. If anybody has, please tell us about it.

When I was a lad, the second hand bookshops of suburban Melbourne were full of JN Williamson books. He was a prolific bugger. He died with thirty-five novels to his name and even more short stories and collections he'd edited.

I always liked his straightforward, no-frills style.

Consider this from the opening of Premonition:

"The naked, old white man sitting expressionlessly in the corner of the room was both completely bare and indescribably old. He seemed propped there and left, idly, the way some might lean a dilapidated umbrella against the wall, forgotten until one just had to use it again. His corded sinews and veins, products of a long life spent in ceaseless labor, appeared to be the ribs of the umbrella, his nearly emaciated body the shaft."

Aside from "expressionlessly", which doesn't read easily to me, this paragraph does a great job of conveying age and disregard.

Written in '81 and dedicated to JN's wife Mary and agent Ray Puechner, Premonition is a gripping read.

I'm not crazy about the cover, though. It's just bland. It's hard to picture an editor seeing it and signing off on it. "Awesome cover, guys! Print it!" What were they thinking?

These days, Leisure has asserted itself as the premier mass market publisher of horror. They have a horror book club, too, of which I am a member. No other mass market publisher (at this time) reliably puts out two titles a month.

Would Leisure publish the likes of John Tigges and Richard Forsythe today? I'm not so sure.

JN Williamson. I reckon they would.

When is "Fuck Me!" justified?

When you tear open your monthly horror book package from Leisure and this baby falls out.

Check the fuckin artwork... Je-e-e-e-e-e-s-u-s!!!

If this doesn't give you a hard-on, Boys (and Girls), you're a card-carrying eunuch.

I look so forward to my Leisure box each month.

It's a bloody great bargain, and it lobs right at your door.

Ed Lee's Big Head must be creaming in its jeans at the sight of this.

If the book is half as as good as the amazing art, I won't be able to walk tomorrow.

Congrats to Dan D'Auria, Leisure's Head Honcho, and Monsieur Lee, for this splendid horror package.

Also slipping out of the box was:

Not as great a cover, admittedly (bit generic), but anything by Ray Garton is a must-read for me.

I've had a loose connection to Mr. Garton for a while, even though we've never met or spoken.

I wrote the first couple of drafts of the screenplay adaptation of Live Girls for a producer who is holding the rights.

The writing was an interesting experience.

I believe I'm now the second writer listed on imdb because others have done subsequent drafts.

In this strange business, it's not unusual for new writers to be hired to scribble a brand new draft if the financing of the project changes hands or the country of production is shifted.

Bestial sounds mighty interesting. It's a multiple werewolves novel.

Better put the "Do Not Disturb" sign out tonight.

I'm no necrophile, but I wouldn't kick this out of bed.
Would you?
Tell the truth.
Nobody's judging you here.

A New Book of Lists Walks Among Us

I find lists endlessly fascinating.

Do you?

Even lists of stuff I'm not really into.

I recently read a list of the top ten Russian ballerinas who have suffered from bulimia. I didn't need that information, but I was glad to have it.

What is the appeal of lists?

Is it the way they cut to the chase?

Is it their ability to distill intriguing information?

Or is it the fact that they answer the common question: "What do you think?"

I'm sure it's all three, and more.

The Book of Lists - Horror, edited by Del Howison, Amy Wallace, and Scott Bradley, distills over a century of anything horror-related and allows us to discover what a bunch of true horror practitioners really think.

It's heaven for horror fans.

We get Bob Burns's list of "Eight Worst Monster Movie Costumes" (The Creeping Terror wins), Bob Murawski's "Twelve Greatest Grindhouse Horror One-Sheets (Blood Feast takes the prize),
Anthony Timpone's "Ten Movies I Wish I'd Never Put On The Cover Of Fangoria (King's Maximum Overdrive comes in first), Barry Lost Highway Gifford's "Fifteen Favorite Late Night Tinglers" (Island of Lost Souls scores the touchdown), Johnny Ramone's "Top Ten Favorite Horror Movies" (in 1st place is Bride of Frankenstein), David Wallechinsky's "Six Overlooked Horror Films" (the Japanese Page of Madness gets the richly deserved top spot), Melissa Mia Hall's "Ten Favorite Horrifying Artists" (Paul Delvaux's The Village of the Sirens hits the finish line first) and Nacho Cerda's "Ten Most Profound Horror Experiences" (Jaws and George Grau's Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue don't go unnoticed).

There are hundreds more lists from names such as Gary Brandner, Leisure Books' Dan D'Auria, Victor Salva (who ruminates on the top ten things we have learned from horror movies), JF Gonzalez, Stephen King (naturally), Bentley Little (who shines a light on one-hit wonder writers such as Joan Samson and her amazing The Auctioneer).

The three editors, who also contribute lists, have done an amazing job of gathering a diversity of opinion and fitting it snugly between two paper covers you're going to flip open a lot.

It now joins my own dubious list of "Non-Fiction I Can't Live Without":

Killing For Culture (Kerekes/Slater)
Hitchcock (Truffaut)
Grammatically Correct (Stilman)
A Trip To The Light Fantastic (Hickman)
The Sex Films (Weisser)
The Misfits (Wilson)
Porn Gold (Hebditch/Anning)
A World of Imponderables (Feldman)
A Criminal History of Mankind (Wilson)
An Evil Love ( Wansell)
The Aurum Film Encyclopedia - Horror (Hardy)
Eros in Hell (Hunter)