Nightmare Magazine Issue 22
Page 9
Right now I’m busy working on art for Fireside magazine, Lackington’s, Resurrection House, Ragnarok Publications, and Tyche Books, all stuff that should be going live before fall, fingers crossed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Wendy N. Wagner grew up in a town so small it didn’t even have its own post office, and the bookmobile’s fortnightly visit was her lifeline to the world. Her short fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies including Beneath Ceaseless Skies,The Lovecraft eZine, Armored, The Way of the Wizard, and Heiresses of Russ 2013: The Year’s Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction. Her first novel, Skinwalkers, a Pathfinder Tales adventure, is due out March 2014. An avid gamer and gardener, she lives in Portland, Oregon, with her very understanding family. Follow her on Twitter @wnwagner.
INTERVIEW: DEL HOWISON OF DARK DELICACIES BOOKSTORE
Lisa Morton
Imagine a horror-specialty retail store that has not only survived for two decades but has helped shape the very genre it markets, and you’ll get some idea of why Dark Delicacies is one of horror’s (not so) hidden treasures. Located in the Magnolia Park area of Burbank, California (where Dark Delicacies’ success seems to have spawned neighboring stores with names like Halloween Town and Creature Features), Dark Delicacies was founded by Del Howison and Sue Duncan, who were married in the store (on Halloween, of course) several years after opening in 1994. Although their original focus was on books (new and used), they’ve since expanded into clothing, DVDs, memorabilia, and even horror-themed scents. As the store’s reputation grew, their legion of author friends urged them to expand into areas outside of retailing, and Del (with Jeff Gelb) edited three volumes of the award-winning Dark Delicacies anthologies and a Dark Delicacies comic. This interview was conducted with Del, since Sue prefers the role of silent partner.
This December, Dark Delicacies will be twenty years old, and it remains one of the most unique stores in the world. Did you have any models when you opened the store?
It was from Dangerous Visions in Studio City that I learned the value of signing events. Art and Lydia put on signings religiously for the fans. I also learned a couple of things not to do by attending their and other stores’ signings.
Did you ever consider extending your specialty to other genres as well?
There were mystery stores and stores with large science fiction areas, so we didn’t want to go there. We didn’t want to be competition. We wanted to be unique. We also knew just enough about those other areas to hurt ourselves.
You’ve built up a core of loyal customers. How did you make that happen?
By being here twenty years and making mistakes. But more so by making friends and fans slowly, treating people right, listening and handling things the way we would want them handled if we were walking into the store for the first or fortieth time. You have to be able to adjust. You have to trust your gut. You have to walk around your store and look at different areas and ask if the products there are earning their keep, and change it even if you are dumping something you really like for something that may not really appeal to you personally. Keep your vision and core aim, but change if you need it. A grocery store doesn’t only sell the food that the owner personally likes but food in general. That’s its aim and vision. Within that vision is room for flexibility.
How important was knowledge of the horror genre to making Dark Delicacies a success?
Of prime importance. Yet, at the same time, nobody is born with that knowledge. It is learned. For somebody to work with me, I would prefer customer service and retail experience over horror knowledge. But they’d have to be interested in it and willing to learn, because our customers ask a lot of questions.
Was there a point in your early history when you thought, Hey, I think we’re actually going to make it?
Not yet.
Since you opened the store in 1994, you’ve extended the brand to a series of three highly acclaimed anthologies, a comic book, and even Dark Delicacies scents. Did you always plan on expanding past just a retail store?
Like a shark, keep moving or die. I’m currently looking at a web talk show, a novel, film, whatever. None of these may work out. That’s okay. I’m not afraid of failing. I’m afraid of not trying.
How important to your business model have signings and author events been? Has it changed over time?
The signings and events are our bread and butter. They’ve altered in the respect that we have more of them a month and the focus has changed, or at least grown in scope, to include composers, artists, directors, actors, FX people, etc. They’re not just authors anymore, since horror entertainment has grown by leaps and bounds digitally. The very first month we were open Sara Karloff signed for us. She was our first, and Tony Todd was our second. We have never had a month without a signing, and it has now grown to where we barely have a week without a signing or two.
Aside from your genre focus, are there other aspects of Dark Delicacies that separate it from other specialty bookstores?
After twenty years, it is still a mom-and-pop store. Sue or I are here or in touch with the store every day of our lives. We were married in the store and even on our one day a week that we are closed, we’re usually running around taking care of store business. There is an attempt to cover all bases of horror, from skull-and-crossbones baby bibs to original jewelry. We cater to customers from the womb to old age.
Dark Delicacies has been around long enough to see the genre endure a few ups and downs. How do you ride out the lower parts of the cycle?
There were and probably still will be months where we’ll wonder if we’re going to cover all the bills. But I don’t change my spending and buying philosophy with the roller coaster. When times are good I don’t spend more, nor do I cut down on bill paying when times are tough (although I may cut closer to the minimum on some credit cards to get through). I try to maintain an even flow so that as the business goes up and down I don’t feel the ride as much.
You take a lot of interesting items on consignment. Have you ever been pitched something that you wouldn’t carry because it was just too extreme?
When I started, I had some serial killer art. Not that it was wrong, but it didn’t fit the direction I wanted the store to head in. Now some of that is carried by a local art store called Hyaena who specialize in brutal and horror art. They are doing well with it, I believe.
Do you have any personal favorites among all the items you’ve carried?
Sure, items signed by the masters who have passed and whom I’ll always miss, like Matheson, Bradbury, Bloch, and Harryhausen.
Has the success of shows like Oddities or even American Pickers made you consider carrying more antique items?
I do and always will if I find the items and they fit us, like poison bottles, gargoyle motifs, and such. We’re also a couple of blocks from The Bearded Lady Oddities, which carries some neat stuff, too. This area has turned into a Horror Hood. I love Magnolia Park.
Do you attend a lot of trade shows looking for new items? What are the defining characteristics something needs to have to become part of Dark Delicacies’ stock?
We look everywhere, from trade shows to estate sales. My wife defined it best when she rejected an item of jewelry from a local artisan as not befitting the store when she said, “It can’t look too motorcycle and it can’t look too Grateful Deadish. It’s that other thing.”
Has the recent increase in popularity of e-books affected your business at all?
Yes and no. The only thing it eliminates seems to be the mass market books because they were designed for convenience, which the e-readers have now taken over. But over all I think they help in getting more people to read.
Does social media/an online presence matter much to Dark Delicacies?
Even though we are a brick-and-mortar store we wouldn’t exist without the web and social media. I work it every day.
Have you ever considered opening up branches or a second store somewhere? What about licensing the name?
Has Hollywood figured into the success of Dark Delicacies at all? Could the store work as well anywhere outside of Southern California because of that?
At first we were the epitome of location, location, location. But now it has grown to the point that I’m rethinking that because we have a brand name.
I’ve seen many younger authors talk about how their dream is to sign at Dark Delicacies, or crow about their book reaching a certain ranking on your bestseller list. Was helping new writers be discovered a goal from the beginning, or just a happy by-product of your success?
Absolutely. The same way I always leave some spots open when I edit an anthology to get new blood into them and give some of them a start. The e-market is open to more, but not as highly regarded as the print market, even today. I heard one author at the World Horror Convention in Portland say that they considered it a “Rite of Passage” to sign at Dark Delicacies. That made me smile.
Is it ever hard being both married partners and business partners? Do you ever think horror has taken over your lives?
Twenty-four/seven would be hard with any business partner or marriage partner. She’s lucky I’m so easy to get along with . . . just don’t show her this answer.
Do you ever find yourself wanting to take home everything?
In the beginning, yes, because we were selling our own collection. But now we think of it as a revolving collection that we get to spend time with. Occasionally too much time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lisa Morton is a screenwriter, author of nonfiction books, award-winning prose writer, and Halloween expert whose work was described by the American Library Association’s Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror as “consistently dark, unsettling, and frightening.” Her short fiction has appeared in dozens of anthologies and magazines, including The Mammoth Book of Dracula, Dark Delicacies, The Museum of Horrors, and Cemetery Dance, and in 2010 her first novel, The Castle of Los Angeles, received the Bram Stoker Award for First Novel. Recent books include the graphic novel Witch Hunts: A Graphic History of the Burning Times (co-written with Rocky Wood, illustrated by Greg Chapman), and Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween. More recently, in 2013 she debuted the novellas Summer’s End and Smog, and the novel Malediction. A lifelong Californian, she lives in North Hollywood, and can be found online at www.lisamorton.com.
AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS
AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: LANE ROBINS
Erika Holt
Have you ever had any strange or creepy experiences in old houses or buildings?
Writer’s imagination mixed with architecture? Life can be nothing but creepy experiences. That said, I’m usually well aware it’s only my imagination. There are only two standout moments. When I went to college, the first dorm I stayed in had this weird ghost cat kind of thing happening. I’d be in bed, in the dark, and then there’d be a thump on the bed, the kneading of paws in the blankets. A weight at my side. I figured I was just missing my pets. But apparently most of the rooms in the dorm got a visit. One girl woke us all up shouting: she was convinced rats had gotten into her room and into her bed. Same phenomenon, different reactions.
The other experience was much creepier. I work part time in one of the oldest department stores west of the Mississippi River (I don’t know why it divides the states that way, but that’s our claim to fame), and it’s a really noisy place. They still run pneumatic tubes, so the walls hum and grumble all day long.
I went down to the basement after hours, alone in the store, to shut off the tubes, and there was this single strange moment . . . The basement is partitioned into several sections—some stuffed with merchandise, some with shrouded mannequins, some storage in tiny spaces between the walls, two feet wide at most but forty feet long—and it’s not the most welcoming place. But it was familiar by this time. I had turned off the tubes, bringing silence to the store, and was heading back out of the basement when something snagged in my hair, just caught it, flipped it back, a tiny ouch moment. Then a sigh.
There’s something very human about a sigh. Very distinctive. It doesn’t really sound like much else. There was nothing to catch my hair, no one to make that pained, exhausted sound. But I was completely convinced that someone had been there.
For the first time, I was spooked. Headed up the stairs at a steady clip, finished up, and got gone. I mentioned it later, feeling pretty foolish, and the other clerk, a son of one of the owners, told me that a generation previous, one of the managers had shot himself in the basement.
Do I believe him? Was he pulling my leg? Probably.
I haven’t heard that sound since, in all my trips to the basement. That’s okay by me. I love writing about ghosts; not that enamored of encountering one.
You allude to Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Cask of Amontillado.” Would you say his writings have influenced your work? Any other influences?
Poe almost had to be an influence. My father read “Annabel Lee,” “The Bells,” and “The Raven,” to me while I was still in a crib. Nightly. (As well as de la Mare.)
And what speaks to a fledgling teen writer more than Poe’s “Alone”? From childhood’s hour I have not been/ as others were . . .
Poe just doesn’t mess around. From the first moment you start reading his stories, he builds up this palpable sense of dread, all circling around a central character. I loved that, looked for it in other books.
I found some of that in William Sleator’s novels: he keeps you cruising along, aware that things are going wrong, and finally hits you with this sort of shriek of horror. That moment when you-the-reader and you-the-character have gone too far to turn back, even though the path ahead is terrible. Wonderful.
Does the black window have any symbolic significance?
Windows are rife with symbolism. In this story, I wanted a few things from my window glass—whether I succeeded or not is up to the reader. Windows are great for isolation. Letting you look at other people, other worlds, and still be separate. They’re a barrier that teases. And of course, like a door, they have the potential of opening when you least want them to. Then again, if the window is clear enough, you might not even realize it’s there, keeping you apart. That’s sort of the feel I wanted with Holly. Watching her siblings, but held separate without realizing it.
And a black window . . . if a window is something you see through, then a black window is just a perversion of the natural order of things. Worrying.
This story works both as a literal horror story and as a metaphor for grief and loss. Did you intend it this way?
For me, horror stories need to be reflective. I want the events to happen to just the right character: the one who’ll be most changed, most affected by the events. And while I love scary stories—the pleasant shiver up your spine, that shifting glance to make sure you’re alone as you thought—I feel like horror, like SF, has the potential to speak to people in broad ways. There are things that wake us in the middle of the night, plague us—will we die alone, will we lose a loved one, that sort of thing. Mundane but powerful worries. I wanted to tap into that. And Holly the archaeologist seemed like a good choice. Here’s a woman who’s made her life dealing with the long ago dead, learning that nothing has prepared her for losing her family. She’s very much in denial of that loss, focusing on all the minutiae—her lost job, her new responsibilities—and nearly loses her siblings because of that.
What does your year ahead look like, writing-wise?
To paraphrase Allie Brosh, “Write all the things!” I just turned in a psychic romance novel to Blind Eye Books. I’m working on a complicated tangle of an alternate history SF thriller, and I have a dark fantasy tri
logy nagging at me.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Erika Holt lives in the cold, white North (i.e. Calgary, Canada), where she writes and edits speculative fiction. Her stories have appeared in a number of anthologies including Evolve Two: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead and What Fates Impose. She has also co-edited two anthologies: Rigor Amortis, about sexy, amorous zombies, and Broken Time Blues, featuring 1920s alien burlesque dancers and bootlegging chickens.
AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: DENNIS ETCHISON
Lisa Nohealani Morton
Can you tell us a little bit about the genesis of “Talking in the Dark”?
Here’s how it came about. A friend of mine wrote a nonfiction overview of horror, and after the book was published, he received a great many letters from readers, pointing out what they thought were errors. When it was time for a paperback edition he was busy with other projects and asked me to fact-check the letters for him. Some were right, some were not, but a lot of them came from fans eager for a chance to write to their favorite best-selling author. I began to see a common pattern, and couldn’t help imagining a generic version, which became the letter Victor writes to Rex. They really said such things as “You are my favorite author and greatest fan” (not a typo!) and, more than anything else, “Where do you get your ideas?” My original title was “The Sources of the Nile.” My aunt and uncle once owned an ice cream shop called the Blue-and-White, the colors of Stockton High School across the street, which also happen to be the parts of the Nile River in Egypt that intersect at a place called Gezira, the fictional town in this story. I also remembered a certain editor in our field who used to make cross-country car trips specifically to visit fans who had written letters to his magazine. Hm. The story writes itself, doesn’t it? I intended it to be a tragedy, but some have taken it to be a comedy. So we really can’t control how our work is received. Unless we’re manipulating our readers as source material . . .