Lincoln Crisler

I’ve read quite a few of these lists in the last couple weeks from fellow writers and reviewers, so I figured I’d spread some love around, too. I read easily over a hundred books in 2009, and reviewed at least 25% of them here on this website. Outside of the first entry, none of these are ranked in any particular order. They all came out in 2009, except for the honorable mention.

SQUEE OF THE YEAR:  Cherie Priest’s BONESHAKER. Steampunk and zombies against a lavishly-described alternate-Seattle backdrop. Best of all, there’s more coming. If I could buy a copy of this for every genre fan in the world, I’m pretty sure I would. Don’t take my word for it, though: you can read an excerpt here.

THE REST OF THE BEST:

1. Neil Gaiman’s Graveyard Book. I haven’t read too many books that seem geared towards young adults that satisfy me (read: Twilight series), but this one makes the cut. It’s entertaining and will make a great movie adaptation, as well.
2. Jeremy Shipp’s Cursed. Usually, when I can’t make complete sense out of a book, it’s time to leave it laying around on a table for someone else to pick up and enjoy (he said, diplomatically). When Shipp does it, though, I just know it’s because he’s seeing something that’s there, but out of my grasp. Thoroughly entertaining, and one of the most unique voices you’ll find anywhere.
3. Jeff Strand’s Pressure. I was waiting for this book for months, and I was NOT disappointed. This was my first Strand book, so I had the pleasure of reading this without expecting it to be funny (something I’m not particularly into; I take my horror seriously). There’s a little humor, an intense storyline and a bit of heart-wrenching. I’m a Strand fan for life because of this book.
4. John Everson’s Sacrifice. Plain and simple; John Everson has never let me down. The sequel to Covenant has gore, sex and a hint of forbidden fruit. I’m warning you though; you’re going to want more after this, and it might not come as soon as you or I would like. Don’t let that keep you away.
5. Michele Lee’s Rot. Though some definitely do it better than others, I’m starting to think that any random writer can crank out a zombie book (to include myself!). Lee’s novella stands dismembered head and shoulders above the pack, however. She approaches the story from a human angle, with just a few characters that you can really feel for, and none of the ZOMG! IT’S THE APOCALYPSE! stuff we’re so familiar with.

HONORABLE MENTION: Wrath James White’s Succulent Prey didn’t make the cut because it came out in November ’08, but this is hands-down the most disturbing book I’ve read. Ever. It’s horrid, revolting and graphic as Hell; stay far away from it if you’re not into extreme horror. However, if you like your stories (and gore aside, it is a great story) to stick with you long after you close the book, this would be the one. I could write my Master’s thesis on how spectacular this book is.

UPDATE: If you’d like to view this or pass it around to your friends as an Amazon List, you can do so here. ROT will be missing though, since Amazon doesn’t carry it.

This weekend did NOT come quick enough, I’ll tell you what…but it sure WENT swiftly.

Well, kinda… time’s wierd like that. The weekend as a whole flew like the wind, but the last four hours seemed like an eternity. We had to go shopping at… The Maul. Well, my wife had to go shopping at The Maul, and if I hadn’t gone, too, she would have seriously hauled her nine-month-pregnant ass there all by herself, and that wouldn’t have been good. I hate The Maul with a passion… between the prices and, this time of year, the parking and the lines, I’d have rather spent the last four hours competing in a bleach-chugging contest. What makes it even worse is, since I live 20 minutes from Mexico, over half the cars on the road and in the parking lots were from across the border.

I’m not a Republican… honest. But I would totally close the fucking borders during the holidays (and shoot illegal immigrants on site)… but let’s just leave it there. I could write a book about what I’ve learned living here.

I’ve laid hands on a couple of great books today, and that makes it all better. First, I have a review PDF of John Everson‘s Needles and Sins. I love his short fiction! I’ll be writing up a review for the Horror Library once I’ve read the book. In addition, I picked up Brian Keene‘s Dead Sea at WalGreen’s. I’m pretty sure I got the cashier to pick up a copy after his shift, too. I was so stoked to find his book there. I was like, “Hey, I know this guy!” and the cashier was asking me about him and stuff, so hopefully I’ve made Keene a new fan, too.

I only work five days between now and the 2nd of January, so I hope to be doing a lot of writing and promotional work. At the very least I should have a final draft of Despairs & Delights sent to the publisher. I should also be able to read my way through the slush for my two new anthologies Our Shadows Speak and Our Shadows Soar.

And of course, let’s not forget about my son, Liam… he’s due to appear any moment now. Of course there’ll be pictures when he comes… and 15 days off for me, which would mean even more writing (wonder if I could write a salable novel in 15 days… hmmm).

Well, that’s about it for now. Stay tuned to LincolnCrisler.Com for news and updates on my work!

As some of you may be aware, my first book will be published early next year. It’s entitled “Despairs & Delights” and it’s a collection of short stories, some that have appeared elsewhere and others written especially for the book. I’ve heard from several people (message board folks as well as editors and publishers) that I’m doing it backwards, that I should have a novel first, that in fact there isn’t a market for a collection by an unknown author.

Well, I don’t mind flying in the face of popular opinion, especially when I have a publisher betting their money on me, but I don’t want to be stupid and just run into this situation unarmed. Enter John Everson, one of my favorite authors and a guy I can’t wait to have a beer with when I’m able to start attending conventions.

I wrote to him for advice, since he’s made his name the same way I’ll be making mine: backwards, according to all the other advice I’ve recieved. Now, John’s definitely a better writer than I am (part of why I read him) but if he could do it this way, there’s no reason why I can’t. I asked him if there was any particular strategy suited to our way of selling our writing, and his response was so detailed and well-thought that I couldn’t in good conscience keep it to myself.

Without further ado:

Hey Lincoln -
Happy to tell you what I know. And what I can say is that whoever gave you that “general consensus” is… pardon my french, full of shit.

There is no “Right” or “Wrong” way to make it in this business, (aside from the wrong way of pissing off people who might at some point publish you… you never want to do that, but that’s the sort of thing that applies all aspects of life LOL).

It’s a fairly common path, actually, for a writer to make a name for himself by publishing stories for several years in magazines and slowly gaining a bit of recognition that way. Then… some smaller press editor takes a fancy to your work and offers to do a collection… having that book helps raise your profile a little bit more and you go on to the next stage (hopefully). Which could be whatever you decide you want to do next — more short stories, perhaps a novel…

Everyone’s path is different, but virtually all of them have this in common: it generally takes years of writing and publishing stuff before you have “overnight success”. Those novelists who “burst” onto the scene with a big debut novel quite often have a half-dozen novels in their file cabinet that they wrote first and couldn’t sell. I know that’s the case with J.A. Konrath, who scored a 3-book deal a few years back for a crime/mystery series. I don’t think he had done any short fiction publishing prior to this, but he told me once that he had already written several novels that were still in a drawer before scoring the deal…

Here’s how my personal path has gone so far, and everyone’s is obviously different:

From 1993-1999, I published about 30 stories in small to medium sized magazines and a couple anthologies. In ’99, I sold a story to Delirium magazine that Shane, the editor really liked, and not long after, I pitched him on doing a small paperback collection of some of my fiction, since he was starting a book line at that time. A year later, in 2000, that collection finally came out but it wasn’t small –it had 20 stories, some of them brand new, and the book was a full-fledged hardcover production. That was CAGE OF BONES, which got some nice reviews and sold over 200 copies before it went out of print.

About that time I finished the draft of a novel (THE CLIFF) that I’d been tinkering with for a good 5 years. I took a draft to World Horror Con (my first world con) in Denver where I went to promote the upcoming release of CAGE OF BONES. I pitched the novel to Leisure Books and gave a copy to Dave Barnett at Necro, a small press that I’d been doing proofing work for for years. Dave had published a couple of my stories in the ’90s too, and recently published my 3rd short story collection, NEEDLES & SINS.

Leisure eventually passed on THE CLIFF, and I sent it to a couple other publishers and agents during that period, with little response. But Shane Staley at Delirium dug it, and wanted to release it. So in 2003, I went ahead and sold the novel to Delirium and stopped waiting for a mass market deal.

At the same time, since I knew it would be another year before that book was released (turned out to be 18 mos.) and it had now been 3 years since CAGE, I approached Twilight Tales about doing a small collection to keep my name alive out there. VIGILANTES OF LOVE debuted at the World Horror Con in 2003, has slowly sold around three hundred copies and is still in print (CAGE is out of print as it was a limited edition hardcover).

Sometime between 2002 and its release in late 2004, I sat down and did a couple of major rewrites and edits on THE CLIFF, so that by the time it came out in 2004 it was at least 10,000 words longer and had a new title — COVENANT. So when it was released on Delirium, it was substantially different than the book I’d started sending around back in 2000.

COVENANT ended up winning the Bram Stoker award in 2005 for a first novel, and I finished writing the sequel that year as well — SACRIFICE (released earlier this year on Delirium). I obviously went back to pitching a re-issue of COVENANT hard, and sent it to Leisure since it was much different than the manuscript of a couple years before.

I figured with a Stoker award, a couple collections and two novels, that I could get some mass market interest, but it took me two more years before I finally signed a deal with Leisure Books to issue mass market editions of COVENANT and SACRIFICE (COVENANT will be out next Halloween).

And this fall my 3rd short story collection came out on Necro, the NEEDLES & SINS book I sent you a message about on MySpace.

So my scorecard was: six years to build some cred, then two small press short story collections, followed by two small press novels (there was also a novelette in there, FAILURE), followed by a mass market deal and another short story collection.

My first mass market novel will appear 15 years after my first published short story. A long ride.

You’ll find if you look into the current crop of horror authors, many of them followed a similar path. Brian Keene did a couple small press collections and then sold his first novel THE RISING to both Delirium and Leisure.

Michael Laimo, Charlee Jacob, Jeffrey Thomas… they all did small press short story collections consisting largely of their previous magazine output on Delirium and Necro before signing to a bigger press to release novels. And all of them have released small press novels too, some of which later were reissued (and some not). Charlee’s first Leisure novel was originally out 5 years earlier on Necro (I copy edited it!).

P.D. Cacek did a short story collection and then two novels on a small trade paperback company before selling a 3rd novel to Tor and then a 4th book and reissues of the earlier two novels to Leisure.

Gary Braunbeck did a ton of short fiction and a Cemetery Dance collection before his first novel appeared (which was an Asimov tie-in).

Clive Barker did the Books of Blood short story collections before his novels.

The list goes on and on.

Short fiction is a great way to hone your craft, and it’s nice to compile it periodically if someone will release it and actually market it. Doesn’t do much good to put out a collection on a press that only sells 50 copies cuz nobody knows who they are.

But certainly having a collection out doesn’t “hurt” your profitability down the line — every book you’ve got out (assuming they don’t suck!) builds you some fans (if it gets any distribution) and when you start stacking them up, they can start cross-selling each other. But you still have to keep reaching out to new readers. Selling a critical mass of books is tough, even when you’re on a mass market house and have titles in all the major stores.

This is now ridiculously long so I’ll shut up. Hope there’s something in there of use to you!

Yours in Dark Arts,
John

And, since there’s no way I could follow that, I’ll leave you with a link to John’s website. If you haven’t read him, you’re missing a treat… and you can even catch some of his work free of charge before dropping a few bucks on a great book (or three, or four).

http://www.myspace.com/johneverson

http://www.johneverson.com