A Review of my Book and an Interview With ... Me

If you are interested in finding out more about me, you can read Cinema Crazed's interview with me here.  If you want to read a review of Nothing Men that the same site did, you can read that here. (The book can be purchased to the right of this post.)

I want to thank Cinema Crazed, a must-see site for culture junkies.  Danke!

If anyone is interested in doing an interview with me or doing a review of the book, feel free to e-mail me.

A Trailer for "Nothing Men"

Here's a trailer for my book.

Unleashing the Beast

Nothing Men is selling.  Not gangbusters.  Not quit my job and buy a mansion.  But selling enough to get me a royalty check that I can be proud of cashing.  It's taken promotion and some word of mouth, and now that Halloween is over it will take more of that, but I'm fine doing it.  I've heard from a few readers either on my blogs or through an e-mail.  One friend who bought it, however, had a complaint:  It is too violent.

I'm used to complaints about this book.  The first publisher whom I sent it to dismissed it because the ending was "too depressing."  My test reading group was generally positive, but there were a few who couldn't finish it because they either "knew bad things were going to happen," or it was "just too tense."  Regardless, I didn't change anything based on those comments.  It's a horror story of a certain nature.  Certain things had to happen.  If I thought the complaints had been valid, I would've made changes.  However, when one of the test reading group said it read like "one of those movies [exploitation] from the '70s or '80s where you knew everyone was going to die," I knew I had hit the nail on the head.  Home run.  Perfect game.  That was exactly what I was going for.  This is my exploitation novel.

My friend, the one who thought it was too violent, said, "I know you can think of some pretty crazy things, but the stuff in your book bothered me.  I don't think I'll be reading anything other horror stories you write.  I don't like when you unleash your beast."  Out of morbid curiosity I asked what he thought of the novel's ending.

"I didn't make it that far.  I stopped at that part with the boy in the woods.  I was done."

Incidentally, that is where two members of the test reading group stopped as well.  It was something about that scene that really got under their skin.  It's a scene I really enjoyed writing.  It is nasty.  There are threats of sexual violence.  Two nasty men.  One teen boy.  A ball gag.  A meat hook on a chain.  A survival knife.  Urine.  The combination of things and the situation (and dialog, I learned) upset at least three readers I knew about, and I wondered about that.  Two of them I knew for a fact read horror. Why was mine different?  I asked my friend, who was hesitant to talk about it.

He told me, with much hesitation, that the scene bothered him so much because it felt gleefully sadistic (wait until he finds out about the manuscript I'm working on now), and the fact that he knew me made it even worse.  "I can't believe I know someone who would come up with something like that."

That may be what bothered the others, too.  People who know me know I come up with some pretty horrific things, but I guess putting those things into a story makes them more "real."  Oddly enough, that scene in the novel is where I think the tone changed, where it hit its stride and where I first really "unleashed the beast."  It is gleefully sadistic, and it should be.  Those people who stopped reading there didn't upset me.  In fact, it made me feel like I was doing my job right.  I wanted them to finish the story. What writer doesn't?  But the fact that I wrote something disturbing that it caused them to stop reading and made them promise a cold, hard refusal to ever finish it is something I take pride in.  I've never stopped reading a horror story because it was too scary, but I've loved those moments where I've felt hesitant to go on, where I've felt nothing but dread.  And now I've created that moment for others.

I wish those readers who stopped reading would've finished the story.  Again, what writer doesn't want that?  But I know they were right to stop.  If that scene bothered them, the rest of the story would thoroughly ruin their day.  It doesn't get nicer.  The sadism the friend pointed out doesn't lessen.  The violence only gets worse.  They were right in putting it aside to never revisit again.  But damn if it wouldn't have been nice to send them home in tears ...

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The Big Rape And My Depressing End

As I watch the sales for Nothing Men slowly creep up (very slowly), I can't help but think back to the first publisher who got the manuscript.  He turned it down because the end was "too depressing." Of course it is.  It's supposed to be.  It's not a Disney story.  What does that have to do with 1953's The Big Rape?  Well, I'm curious as to how much the times have changed when a horror novel with a depressing is rejected, yet a publisher in the early '50s thought it made perfect business sense to publish a book about a woman who trades her "passion for revenge" which just happened to be called The Big Rape.  That's the kind of thing that keeps me up at night.

I have never read James Wakefield Burke's book.  It could be about rapeseed farmers for all I know.  Somehow, judging by the booze swiggin' men in the background and the half-open shirt of the woman in the foreground, I doubt it.  Were the 1950s more tolerant than the modern era?  Were books like this one commonplace on the shelves and spinner racks?  Again, negative on both.  I do think, however, publishers took more chances.

To think that a horror story such as the one I wrote should have anything but a depressing ending says to me that the publisher had no knowledge of or appreciation for what I was going for with the manuscript.  His idea of horror was probably limited to slasher films (if that) and teen vampires.  What I wrote was more along lines of Jack Ketchum, and there is an audience for that.  Yes, what I wrote may be difficult to sit through at times, but it should be.  Knowing that, I kind of wonder how the story was handled in Burke's work.  Was it graphic and violent?  Or were the rape scenes (if any) kind of glossed over, as was standard for that time period?

In the end, I'm glad that publisher told me my conclusion was too depressing.  I had gone back and forth between two different endings (both radically different), and I went with the depressing one because it felt "right."  His criticism of it told me I was on the mark.  I may have lost out having it published, but now the book is out there, and I can still shop it around to traditional publishers while maintaining all the rights to it.  Win win?  Yes.  All things considered, though, I kind of doubt my book is more offensive or depressing than something called The Big Rape.  It almost has to be, right?


Mandatory FTC Disclaimer: Clicking on a link may earn me a commission.