A Horror World Conversation with Don D’Auria
By Steven E. Wedel

Every horror author working today knows the name Don D’Auria. For many, he is their editor. For legions more, he’s the man they want to work for. He sees more slush in a month than most road crews see in a wet winter, and yet his dedication to the genre never seems to waver.

The long-time editor of Leisure Books’ horror line, Don has seen a lot of changes in the genre. He’s also introduced the world to some of the best writers working in the field today. In short, when it comes to what works in horror and what doesn’t, you’d have to look long and hard to find somebody more knowledgeable than this guy.

But, who is he? Who is the man behind the editor title? And what’s he really looking for in a manuscript? Let’s find out.

Horror World: Don, you have one of the best known names in the business, and yet few people really seem to know you. Tell us where you grew up, where you went to school and what you did before becoming the target of so much mail at Leisure.

Don D’Auria: I grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey. I was the classic “Monster Kid” of the times, watching horror movies on TV, reading Famous Monsters, building monster models. It was horror that really developed a love of reading in me. I started out with the horror comics, Creepy and Eerie and Vampirella, and went into Dracula and Frankenstein and Edgar Allan Poe. By the time I went to Boston for college I was an English major, so the reading bug never went away. After college I moved to New York for grad school and I’ve been here ever since.

HW: Rumor has it there are wedding bells in your near future. Congratulations! Where and how did you meet the soon-to-be bride?

DD: True, I’ll be getting married in June. I never thought I’d find the right woman, but I finally did, and right here at Leisure. She’s also an editor here, but working primarily on romance and women’s fiction.

HW: What do you like to do in your free time?

DD: Well, it probably won’t be a surprise, but I love to read. I’m also a big movie fan with far too many DVD’s, and a lot of them are horror films. But believe it or not there are also a lot of screwball comedies and foreign dramas in there, so I’m a bit all over the map.

HW: Considering your job, one would assume you’ve always loved to read. What were some of your early favorite stories, books or authors?

DD: I think the first non-school book I read was either Frankenstein or Dracula. I read them both right around the same time, so I don’t remember which came first. I read them because I loved the old Universal movies so much, I wanted to see where the stories came from. From there I went into all the books and stories that became movies. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Invisible Man, everything by Poe. It wasn’t long before I saw that the books often had almost nothing to do with the movies, but I enjoyed the books just as much, so I just kept on looking for new books whether they’d become a movie or not.

HW: How long have you been with Dorchester Publishing, Leisure’s parent company? What was your first position there? Have you worked for other publishers?

DD: I started at Dorchester about twelve years ago as an editor, and over the years I’ve moved up to executive editor. Before Dorchester (and its Leisure imprint) I worked for a couple of years as a sales rep for one house, then as an editor for a few others. All together, I’ve been in publishing for more than twenty years, but of all of the publishers I worked for, I can honestly say Leisure has been the most fun for me. I’ve had a great deal of autonomy here and I’ve been able to work on the books I like.

HW: You’ve seen the genre change a lot in that time. There were some pretty bleak times following the horror bust in the early ‘90s. Was there pressure to take “Horror” off the spine of Leisure books at that time?

DD: Actually, when we re-launched the horror line around ’96 or so, the chains and the major wholesalers were very glad to see books labeled as horror again. They all had horror sections or categories in those days, but no publishers were calling their books horror. And readers were hungry for horror, but weren’t able to find any. Nowadays the chains have mostly blended their horror sections in with general fiction, so we’ve shifted to putting “fiction” on the spines.

HW: You’re signing several new authors, and still publishing established authors. Has the genre come back to some degree? Is it healthy now, or do we still have a way to go before it’s safe to say horror is back?

DD: I’d definitely say horror is healthy now. It’s not as inflated as it was during those “boom” years in the eighties, but it’s back to being a nice, solid genre, at least for us. There’s still room to grow it, as long as it’s done carefully and no one floods the market like they did during the boom. That’s what crushed horror for so long; too many publishers forced too many books into the marketplace and it just couldn’t handle it.

HW: Horror movies seem to do well at the box office, even if most of them are bad remakes that fade away quickly. Does a strong showing on the screen help bring readers to the genre?

DD: I think as long as the movies are good, they’ll send readers to the bookstores. If people see a good horror movie, they like it and they want more horror, whether it’s in a movie or a book. If they see a bad movie, they start to think, “Maybe I don’t like this horror stuff after all.” Basically, good horror breeds more horror fans, in books and in movies. Bad horror turns people off from horror. So let’s hope we see a lot of great horror movies coming up.

HW: Your slush pile is legendary. How many submissions to you get in a month?

DD: I couldn’t even guess. Aside from all the complete manuscripts that come in, there are also slews of partials. But I’d much rather have too many submissions than not enough, so I’m not complaining.

HW: What’s the process at Leisure when an unsolicited submission comes in? Are there layers of readers who sift the subs before they come to you? How many submissions do you personally read?

DD: I do have one reader who gives everything a first look. Without her I’d drown. If she doesn’t see any hope for a manuscript, I only give it a quick look and more than likely send it back. Everything else I read.

HW: Do you seek to publish a certain number of new authors each year, authors who haven’t had a mass market deal before? What are some of the benefits and drawbacks of publishing a new author like that?

DD: I make it a point to publish at least one new author every year. In ’08 I’ll publish a couple of them. It’s very important to keep bringing fresh talent and new authors into the genre if we want it to stay alive and growing. As much as I love the established authors, we can’t rely on them exclusively. The drawback, of course, is that the first-time author doesn’t have any name recognition yet, which makes it harder to get their books into stores. But the benefit is being able to discover a new talent, someone who we hope we’ll be able to build into an established author in time.

HW: Many authors report very long wait times on their submissions to Leisure. What is a typical wait time, and is it a good sign if the writer hasn’t heard anything in a year or more?

DD: I admit that the sheer volume of submissions can force me to take longer than I’d like to get back to some people, but you don’t hear about all the submissions that are sent back within two weeks. You have to remember I only have twenty-four slots every year, and those slots were all filled last year and the year before that, etc. So for every manuscript I buy, I have to create room for it, and that takes time. Generally, if I’ve held onto a manuscript, it means I’ve seen something good in it. Rejections can be done very quickly and much more easily. So in many cases, no news really can be good news.

HW: What about agents? Do you prefer working with authors who have agents, or does it matter? When do you think an author needs an agent?

DD: It really doesn’t make any difference to me. Whatever the author is more comfortable with. Some authors aren’t comfortable handling contracts, negotiations and stuff like that. Some have no problem at all. Very roughly, I’d say about half of my authors have an agent, maybe a little more.

HW: You’re known for taking on books that were previously published by small presses or had limited distribution. What are the pros and cons of taking on a book like that?

DD: I have no problems publishing books that have been done previously by small presses. Sometimes I buy them after the small press edition has come out; other times I buy them first and the small press buys them later but publishes them before the Leisure edition. The production times for the small presses tend to be shorter than mine, and they have much more flexible schedules. Either way, in general they don’t compete with us, simply because their print runs are so limited. One advantage to buying something that has already existed in another edition is that often the book will already have gotten reviewed and we can quote those reviews in our marketing.

HW: Who are some of the newest authors you’ve signed that you’re most excited about?

DD: I’ve signed a number of new authors recently, each making his or her mass market debut with Leisure. Like I said, I think it’s important to keep finding fresh talent, and these are some extremely talented folks. We’ll be publishing Mary SanGiovanni’s debut, The Hollower, in September. Then in early 2008 we’ll have novels from Nate Kenyon (Bloodstone), John Everson (Covenant), and Gord Rollo (The Jigsaw Man). I predict we’ll see a lot of terrific things coming from these writers. It’s very exciting to catch them just as they’re taking off.

HW: Zombies. Are they still cool? How long will that trend last? What do you think will be the next big thing?

DD: Zombies will always be cool, thanks to George Romero. Whether they’ll stay as popular as they are now, who can say? I do think readers are beginning to look around for something new right now, but that always happens. I don’t know if it will be the next big thing, but I do feel that werewolves are due for a revival. In fact, Leisure will have a sort of werewolf celebration beginning in January of 2008, with werewolf novels by three of the best writers out there, all being published within a few months of each other. We’ll have Shapeshifter by JF Gonzalez, The Nightwalker by Thomas Tessier, and Ravenous by Ray Garton. Each will be a very different take on the classic werewolf character.

HW: Does an author’s chances of selling you a book increase if she meets you at a convention?

DD: It’s always nice to put a face to a name and have a more personal connection with an author. And a meeting with an author might get me to read their manuscript more quickly if they make it sound really exciting. In the end, though, it’s all going to come down to how good the manuscript is. That’s the important thing. That’s what’s going to determine whether or not I make an offer for the book.

HW: What’s coming up in the near future from Leisure’s horror line?

DD: Spring and summer will be a great time for our line. In May we have Edgewise from Graham Masterton. It’s a return to Native American mythology for Graham, this time dealing with a particularly nasty wendigo. Also in May will be The Everlasting, a ghost story with a twist from Tim Lebbon. In June we’ll have Offspring, Jack Ketchum’s sequel to his classic Off Season, and Wicked Things, a terrific new novel from Thomas Tessier. In July we’ll complete Richard Laymon’s Beast House trilogy with The Midnight Tour, and the latest from Deborah LeBlanc, Morbid Curiosity. Then in August Brian Keene will return to zombie fiction with Dead Sea, and Gary A. Braunbeck will introduce us to Mr. Hands. Congratulations to Gary, by the way, for winning another Stoker Award at the most recent World Horror.

HW: Long term, what are some of the projects you’re most excited about?

DD: Maybe the event I’m most excited about is the return of John Skipp to mass market paperbacks. The guy’s a legend. His work as part of the Skipp & Spector team changed the entire genre and helped to invent splatterpunk. When the Skipp and Spector team split up, John took a break for a while and we haven’t seen new horror from him in years. But now in September, with the release of The Long Last Call, John Skipp is back, and I can tell you he’s as great as ever.

Then in January Leisure will finally be able to publish Triage, an anthology of three brilliant novellas written by Richard Laymon, Jack Ketchum and Edward Lee. The book was published by Cemetery Dance as a limited edition years ago and everyone thought it was a natural for Leisure to do the paperback, since Dick, Jack and Ed are all Leisure authors. But things got held up, the book’s been unavailable for years and people kept waiting and asking when we would publish it. Now the wait is almost over, and it will have been worth it, I promise.

HW: What else do you want people to know about you, Leisure Books or writing and submitting in general?

DD: I hope people get a sense of this from what we do and how we do it, but I want horror fans to know that Leisure takes the genre very seriously and we want to treat it right. I’m a fan, myself. Luckily, what we’re doing seems to be working. Our books are doing well, and I think the genre as a whole is doing well. So if you’re a horror writer, or want to be a horror writer, go for it. Don’t let anyone tell you to switch to some other kind of book because “horror is dead.” Those days are over. And if you want to be a part of the genre, you really need to submit your work and get it in front of editors. No authors on the Leisure list would have been published by us if they hadn’t sent me their work.

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