Horror World Conversation with Scott Nicholson

When it comes to the written word, Scott Nicholson is a jack-of-all-trades. Comics writer. Journalist. Songwriter. Short story writer. Novelist. Nowadays, he's expanding further and further into the digital realm, exploring new ways of reaching readers while trying to stay ahead of the ever-shifting publishing landscape. Nicholson was kind enough to take time out on the eve of a massive "blog tour" to talk about writing, the health of horror, and the fading importance of paper.

HORRORWORLD: There’s a lot I want to get into regarding your current efforts with different publishing platforms, but before we get into that I want to talk about Scott Nicholson, the author. How did you get into writing fiction?

SCOTT NICHOLSON: Crayons and scratch paper, like most kids. I always had that creative buzz, and in some ways that hasn't changed. When it does, I will probably start wearing a beret and become an oil painter.
 
What attracts you as a writer to the horror genre?

That's weird because I've never thought of myself as a "horror writer." And I know a lot of horror writers say that to appear to be "one of the people," but horror and particularly shock are not interesting emotions to me. They are zaps and adrenaline fixes that can be addictive. Watch the faces of kids at the next torture-porn flick--vacuous, unmoved, almost bored.

I'm after the big questions - mystery, faith, love, God, why we're here, what's the point. As a marketing label I now use "paranormal thriller." Horror is dead in books. There's no audience for it, and don't give me King, Sokoloff, Keene, Langan, et al. They are writing about people, not jolts of electrical stimulation. The horror label had a bullet put in its head by the Saw movies, That's what "horror" means to the general public now and it will take a generation to change it. And I realize I am at a web site called "Horror World." Sorry about that, but I'm not, I guess. I just said it.

Anyway, horror doesn't care what I think. It just does what it does.
 
You also write songs and poetry, not to mention your work as a freelance journalist. If you had to pick one area of writing and stick strictly to that, which would it be? Or would you even be able to pick a favorite?

Wow. Comics was my first creative form, then poetry, short stories, songs for a decade, novels, then screenplays, and back to comics, and now I am writing young adult and children's books. I am not sure I even like that old Scott. He was drunk and cranky a lot of the time. Some of those books I barely remember. Today, I am writing love letters to my daughter. I want to leave things that instruct and inspire her and, maybe, with luck and the grace of my god, one or two other people along the way. With the digital age and what I have planned next, I am not sure you can even name the format or even call it "writing." So I'll say I will stick with whatever I end up doing tomorrow.

In your bio, you state that you had over 400 rejections before selling a novel. How many novels does that represent? What kept you going?

My fourth one sold while I was writing the sixth and my fifth got me an agent but never sold. And the fifth was better than the second and third ones that did sell. That's all you need to know about how crazy publishing is. But all has changed now and that fifth one, The Skull Ring, is out on my own and has the most favorable reviews of any of my books. Took a decade, and I had to shed some baggage first, but it was all worth it. Getting rejected was the best part of my writing career, while getting accepted nearly killed it. And me.

Accumulating that amount of rejections had to make the sale of The Red Church extremely gratifying. Tell us a little about the moment you found out it was getting published.

Well, I was at work and the Kensington editor called, and I jumped out of my seat without using my legs. I knew things were getting warm because an agent at a Big Place was liking my stuff, but I'd sent this one on my own. So it was a mix of surprise yet something I knew would happen sooner or later. There were only two possible outcomes: I would publish a book or I would die before I published a book.

You’re doing quite a bit of work these days in comics and graphic novels. How does your approach to writing the scripts for those differ from your prose work?

Well, I am always learning, so I took They Hunger, which is probably my worst novel but the fastest-paced, and turned it into a screenplay, where four pages of prose became a page of script. Then turning it into a comic script cranked down the ratio even tighter. Working with artists is delightful, but juggling files, dealing with paper and printers, and building an entirely new audience is not so fun, so now I am letting an agent handle all that so I can just write the scripts. Basically, in a comic script I just leave room for an artist, just as in a movie script I leave room for a director and actors. In a book, I leave room for one reader.

What’s it like these days running a “cottage industry” as you describe it? You’re not only the author, you’re publisher, publicist, and salesman. In all of that, do you worry that the writing may suffer? Do you enjoy it all equally?

I am writing better than I ever have, and I love promoting and taking responsibility for myself and my work, and sharing this wonderful community we build together. I also run Indie Books Blog (http://indiebooksblog.blogspot.com/) to help other writers find an audience.

Every word I write means money and readers. I get paid on time. I can see the income flow, and I get direct contact from readers. I love it. I have always been 10 or 20 years out of fashion, but now I believe the era is lining up with my interests and abilities, and I get to interact with readers and other authors in intimate, exciting ways--all from the safety of my haunted computer, where I may be dressed in dirty sweatpants or nothing at all. Talk about horror.
 
You seem to be fully embracing the digital era of reading. How important is transitioning to digital platforms going to be for writers and publishers in the future?

Well, if you are just now thinking about it, you are probably too late. Everything is changing faster than anyone predicted or imagined. No, I don't mean back in the 1990s when a handful of self-published computer people were claiming the future of e-books was here, because clearly nobody then or now wants to sit and read a book on a desktop. The technology has coincided with the audience habit at a place called "affordable convenience."

Frankly, I expect bookstores to be dead in five years, on the order of what you're seeing with video stores now. The last ones will be like relics on the order of specialty shops that sell vinyl records. So when you talk about the "future," I think it is the present and rapidly becoming the past. I have plenty of ideas for the next phase and I'm working to find the partners to implement them. The flat-text era will soon be as extinct as paper books.
 
What’s your reaction to Dorchester Publishing’s recent announcement regarding their turn to the e-Book format? Do you think we’ll see other big publishing houses follow suit?

I tried to urge a few Leisure writers to get out of there but they loved having someone put their books in stores for a couple of months. I am truly sorry if anyone is stuck there, earning pennies per e-book sale when they could have been making dollars per sale. I am grateful for what the company did to try to keep dark fiction on the shelves and give new writers a chance without an agent, but I also never understood why it was considered the pinnacle of the publishing ladder for many writers in the genre.

Medallion went first, and after Leisure, I expect the creep to continue, up to Kensington and then some of the bigger small presses and trade publishers, and there are a lot of them below Big Six level. Some never relied on bookstores that much, so they may survive a while without paper.
But I think publishers have been planning this for years, even though the tipping point came in on a tsunami. They have been cynically gobbling up writers with e-book clauses that make indentured servitude look generous and slavery seem morally acceptable. And to think agents have been gleefully encouraging writers to sign deals for 4 to 10 to 15 percent of list price so they could get their cut, all under the banner of "You STILL need a paper publisher." I count my blessings that I got away from all that and learned what my work is really worth while I still had some left. Not a lot, but it's all mine.

If you never published another traditional paper book, would you be upset?

"Traditional" is just a word that changes depending on perspective. Mass market was great in the 1980s, when nobodies were selling six figures. Horror was hot. And mass market was seen as a threat to "tradition." Well, time has proven it was just another fart bubble in the bathtub of publishing. Kids today will laugh at all those old geezers walking around sniffing the moldy pages of paper books.

I will certainly use print-on-demand for anybody who wants that format, and I sell signed books through my site, and I have some loyal fans and crazy stalkers who would do me in if they didn't have a complete catalog of all my work on their shelves. Dump your agent, burn your Joe Muggs coffee card, but always, always placate your stalker.

Ideally, I want people to come to my site and buy an e-book, so I can give them the best price and they give me money in a fair trade of value. I realize that is a couple of years away from universal acceptance. And if you are saying "Not me, paper forever," do you remember how many people said they'd never carry an annoying, expensive phone in their pocket?

So I will still print paper the rest of my life, but I am not fighting the fight to get on store shelves. Selling a book in a bookstore is now the least efficient way possible to sell a book in America, and earns the author the least money. Why should I fight to protect that? It's about as sensible as fighting to drive a car that gets five miles to the gallon on a commute to nowhere.
 
You’re getting ready to kick off a big “blog tour.” Tell us a little bit about that – what you’re trying to accomplish, and how you plan on doing so.

I am trying to accomplish an immediate retirement in pampered luxury. Failing that, I at least hope to make a fool of myself. I started planning it three weeks ago and I now have three Kindles to give away, more than a hundred e-books, and more than 44 book blogs scheduled for the "Kindle Giveaway Blog Tour." Sign up for the tour newsletter at scottsinnercircle-subscribe@yahoo.com and you're eligible for the Kindle 3 and will get daily links to that day's blog, where you can go comment and be eligible for a Kindle DX. Follow "hauntedcomputer" on Twitter and you are automatically eligible to win the Pandora's Box of free ebooks--which I hope will reach 1,000 by Nov. 30. And if at any time during the tour, I break the Top 100 on the UK or US Kindle list, I will throw in an extra Kindle 3 through the blog giveaway. Winners selected in December at the local library. Simple enough? More at http://www.hauntedcomputer.com.blogtour.htm.

What’s coming out soon, and what are you working on now?

Imminent releases of Forever Never Ends, which is the author's preferred edition of The Harvest, and the psychological thriller Disintegration and the crazy metaficitonal thriller As I Die Lying. That book was written by a soul-hopping spirit that is such a sucky writer the book was rejected 117 times despite my best efforts. So it's all his fault.

I'm releasing my US titles for UK since I have the digital rights there and I can now use my titles and pursue the vision I had for the books. I am also trimming them a bit. I've cut 20,000 words from two books. If someone had been as hard on me back then as I am now, I might have been more successful. But then, I'd probably be more stuck, too.

I am releasing two more story collections, the mystery collection Gateway Drug and a pure horror collection that's yet to get a title but I am sure will be cool. Oh, wait, I said I wasn't a horror writer, didn't I? Anyway, I am lining up the five collections by genre, and one is young adult. People who think they know me might be surprised to see all this junk in one place. But I swear it's me. Except that one where I was possessed.

I am co-writing a book with J.R. Rain that will be out in November and my next project is so weird and digital and interactive that I don't even know what it can be called. And I have a pen name going that I am likely to keep secret, so let's strike that last bit, eh?

Really, Speed Dating with the Dead was probably the last I want to say about purely supernatural thrills, though every one of my books has a sequel planted near the end in case I get inspired or else one gets incredibly popular. I only wish there were 38 hours in a day, because this is the most fun I've ever had with my clothes on. Except sometimes I write naked.

All I know is, the crazier I am and the bigger I dream, the happier I am. Thanks for asking.

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