Depravity Lane News # 8
House of Blood origins, Kill The Hunter, store update
Before I get to the main thrust of today’s newsletter, I want to remind everyone that my next novel from Grindhouse Press is available for pre-order. It’ll be out October 1st of this year, just in time for Halloween.
Here’s the latest blurb for the book:
"Kill the Hunter is a full throttle, horror-infused action flick for your brain! With this fast-paced thriller, Bryan Smith reminds the world what top-shelf terror tastes like."
--Patrick C. Harrison III, author of 100% Match
I’m expecting another cool blurb in the middle of the coming week, at which point I may send out another newsletter, a mini one.
One more thing before getting on with it. I’ve added a second “mega box bundle” to my online store. This time there will only be two bundles available. Read full description at the link below for more details.
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And now on with the show…
I've told this story before, years ago, but I have many newer followers, so I'll tell it again.
I started writing what would become my first novel for Leisure Books in early 2001. I wasn't going to finish it originally, but I submitted the first few chapters of it to Leisure anyway, and to my massive shock they were interested.
Anyway, my original title for the book, the one I wrote and eventually submitted it under, was WRONG TURN. Because I didn't know any better, I thought time was of the absolute essence and that I had to send them a finished manuscript absolutely as soon as possible. So, I banged out the last 80,000 or so words of that book in one month, just winging it with no plan in mind other than feeling immense pressure to come up with some kind of completed product in order to capitalize on the kind of opportunity I'd never gotten before. An opportunity I feared might never come around again.
I submitted the finished novel in early September 2001 (one week before, well...you know). Then Leisure held onto my book and kept it "under consideration" for the next TWO AND A HALF YEARS before accepting it.
So much for time being of the essence.
Saying that things were different in publishing back then is a colossal understatement. For me, selling something to a mass market publisher like Leisure was the only acceptable measure of success. Anything else was pointless. Self-publishing was not an option at all, at least as far as I was concerned at the time. It existed in the form of what was called “vanity” publishers, but it was considered a low thing to do among most aspiring writers with any real level of ambition, something no one with any self-respect would do. The indie publishing scene was also nothing like it is today. It existed, but on a much smaller level, with little to no chance of anything published by those outfits breaking out, and with minimal distribution and an extremely low level of visibility for the authors.
So, for most of us aspiring horror scribes of the time, it was Leisure or Zebra or bust, and the number of available publishing slots and opportunities was small. Of course, all of this changed with the advent of Kindle and Amazon’s self-publishing platform. After my run with Leisure Books ended, I self-released several titles before hooking up with Grindhouse Press.
But that’s another story.
TWO AND A HALF YEARS later, the day came when I received an email from Don D’Auria accepting WRONG TURN. And here’s why I started writing this piece today, the issue of the title. In the time that had elapsed since I submitted the novel and its acceptance, a well-known movie by that name had come out. Don D’Auria suggested we change the title to HOUSE OF BLOOD. My reaction was, “Man, whatever you say, I just want this fucking book published.” Of course I didn’t put it like that. I didn’t love the new title, but it was a bluntly direct title, and I guess Don knew what he was doing, because that book wound up selling quite well. It was probably the bestselling book of my Leisure career, with the possible exception of DEPRAVED. I suspect DEPRAVED might have sold more, but I never saw final sales data for that book. We used to get our first sales statements for books a year after release, and, unknown to me at the time, things were starting to go wrong at Leisure/Dorchester by 2010.
But that’s also another story.
Anyway, to this day WRONG TURN is still my preferred title for that book, but I understood then, and understand now, the reasoning behind the change. Of all the books I wrote for Leisure, HOUSE OF BLOOD was the only one that didn’t use my original title. They published mass market paperback editions of seven of my books, but another thing most people don’t know is that before the collapse of Leisure, I was actually contracted for two more with them. Those books were THE DARK ONES and THE LATE NIGHT HORROR SHOW, which of course were eventually both published elsewhere.
Cover flat for the planned but never released Leisure mass market paperback edition of THE DARK ONES:
On a related note, I’ve seen the first three installments in the WRONG TURN movie franchise and liked them well enough, especially the first one. I’ve never seen the remake or any of the latter sequels to the original three. Would welcome feedback on whether any of those are worth watching. In particular, I’ve not heard good things about those later sequels.
And today I’ll leave you with a choice cut by one of my favorite bands for forty years (I have an album cover tattoo to prove it, too):
"You wanna go to the Devil, but you don’t like the flames/Blood on Satan’s Claw is my middle name."