This is the third year in a row I have contributed an original piece to the annual spotlight issue. Please refer to my Original Horror Lists, Articles, and Presentations page here on the horror blog to access all three at any time, or to see other original pieces [not reviews] that I have published in a variety of places. Reviews are archived separately here.
In general, don’t forget to use all of the pages in the right gutter of every page of the blog. They contain a lot of useful RA and collection development info, including plenty of ready made book talks for you to share with horror fans immediately.
And now-- What’s Hot in Horror: A Conversation with Don D'Auria
What’s Hot in Horror: A Conversation with Don D’Auria.
Spratford, Becky (author).
FEATURE. First published August, 2018 (Booklist).
Readers’ advisors around the world know: horror is having a moment. Well, more than a moment; it is red hot. But why? It might have something to do with our uncertain times. As Stephen King noted in Danse Macabre, his 1981 analysis of the genre: “Every 10 to 20 years, [horror movies and novels] seem to enjoy a cycle of increased popularity and visibility. These periods almost always coincide with periods of fairly serious economic and political strain.” In other words, in tough times, some people look for escape by reading about something even worse. As bad as life seems, at least you aren’t being chased by a pack of brain-eating zombies.
Readers are clearly thirsting for terrifying tales right now. Recently I had the chance to talk with Don D’Auria, the executive director of Flame Tree Press, a new imprint from Flame Tree Publishing, about the resurgence of the genre and about his 25 years editing horror.
D’Auria first made a name for himself when he was at the helm of the Leisure Books horror line back in 1997, launching the careers of such best-selling authors as Sarah Pinborough and Brian Keene and making classic novels by masters like Ramsey Campbell and Edward Lee available to a whole new generation of fans. He noted that horror is similar to all genres in that it’s constantly shifting in response to the attitudes of its readers. “Its popularity rises and falls, and right now I’d say it’s certainly risen. You only have to look at movies like A Quiet Place or Hereditary, or TV shows like Stranger Things, to see how horror is capturing the public imagination more than it has for years.”
Three years ago, British-based Flame Tree Publishing saw which way the cultural wind was blowing and put out a series of gothic anthologies focused on ghosts, horror, and sf. The response was better than projected, and publisher Nick Wells, a dark-fiction fan himself, tapped D’Auria to start an entirely new, U.S.-based imprint. D’Auria is casting Flame Tree Press’ net wide in terms of content, style, and authors. The launch season covers the breadth of horror: from a classic haunted house (The Siren and the Specter, by Jonathan Janz) to dark fantasy (The Mouth of the Dark, by Tim Waggoner) to sf adventure (The Sky Woman, by J. D. Moyer) to urban thrillers (The Bad Neighbor, by David Tallerman), along with new fiction by household names including Ramsey Campbell (Thirteen Days by Sunset Beach). Flame Tree Press plans to release 13 titles from the September launch through December 2018, and, by 2020, 40 original titles per year.
If it sounds ambitious, it is. D’Auria knows that Flame Tree still has some issues to work through to truly represent the imprint’s tagline, “Fiction without Frontiers.” “The full shape of the list will take a couple of years to become apparent. We’ll have crime and science fiction from China, epic fantasy from Finland, and we’re exploring ways of encouraging more diversity in our submissions. I’d like readers to feel they can trust us to publish books they will love.”
As for where horror is going in the future, D’Auria notes that, in general, horror fiction has been moving away from gothic castles and far-flung places and toward realism. “Increasingly, horror is set in our own world, in the suburbs or cities where we live today. Horror reflects more of our own experience. We can identify with the characters and feel their terror more personally, even if they’re battling vampires or other monsters. And, of course, since Robert Bloch wrote Psycho, monsters can literally be the guy next door.”D’Auria is committed to keeping libraries well stocked with diverse, new voices that respond to the genre’s constantly evolving trends and keep the ever-growing number of fans of these dark tales reading with the lights on high and loving every moment of it. Those of us helping readers on the front lines know we can use all the scary books we can get our hands on—especially with Halloween coming up—and the fact there is a seasoned veteran well positioned to help us is very good news indeed.
Becky Spratford is a horror reviewer for Booklist and the author of The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror, 2nd edition (ALA Editions, 2012).
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