The Pudge Factor

Dear Partnas in Crime:

Bryan Smith is an author yo boy has read steadily over the years. I discovered

Author Bryan Smith

him when his first book House of Blood came out and remember reading The Freakshow while incarcerated on some bullshit charges. A solid writer and one who I have seen go the self-publishing route, I felt it was essential to send The Pudge Factor in for an interview:

THE PUDGE FACTOR (TPF): Bryan, I still remember when House of Blood first came out. I picked up a copy and enjoyed it tremendously. What made you decide to write that book and what research did you put into it?

BRYAN SMITH (BS): I started that one in 2001.  It was originally called Wrong Turn.  The title only became House of Blood after Leisure bought the book.  Although I grew up as a horror reader and fan, by that point I’d gone some years without writing any horror stories.  The 90′s were a big dry period for horror in general and it seemed like the thing to do was try my hand at mystery and crime fiction.  Back then I had a bad habit of starting projects and not finishing them.  I had a first draft of one mystery novel that I never revised.  Then I wrote most of another mystery novel before giving up on it.  I was in my mid-30′s by that point and was on the verge of finally giving up writing period.  But, just for the hell of it, I decided to try writing something simple and fun.  I made a conscious decision to write a Richard Laymon style horror novel.  I wrote most of that book in about five weeks, after Don D’Auria (the former head editor at Leisure) expressed interest in the sample chapters.  There wasn’t much in the way of research.  I started out with the location, the mountain area of east Tennessee, which I’ve driven through numerous times over the years, and just went from there.

TPF:  Of your books, is there a personal favorite or was there one you found more difficult to write than the other ones? If so, why?

BS: Of my eight novels published by Leisure Books, far and away my three favorites are The Dark Ones, The Killing Kind, and Depraved.  If pressed, I’d have to call my favorite a tie between The Dark Ones and The Killing Kind.  But I think all three of those feature my most assured published writing to date.  The Freakshow might have been the most difficult to write.  Might not seem that way to a casual reader, but it was a difficult journey.  The first problem was just getting started.  It was a difficult time.  I hated my day job and it made me miserably depressed.  And it seemed like during that period I had a lot of difficulty just carving out time to write.  I started, stopped, and started all over again on that thing three times.  One aspect of that book I’m pleased with is that I set out to write a book stuffed with the weirdest shit I could possibly conjure up.  I think I succeeded in that goal, and several of those scenes were a lot of fun to write.  But the other big problem was that I never quite wrapped my head all the way around exactly what was happening in that book, or rather how to pull it all together and make it all make some kind of sense.  I didn’t quite make that happen, I think, and the way I reconciled that internally was just to say, okay, fuck it, this is like a crazy 80′s b-movie in prose form.  Like Blood Diner, Basket Case, or Frankenhooker, that kind of thing.

It doesn’t have to make sense because the fun is in all the crazy shit happening.  But, considering my lingering misgivings, the irony is the book has been a big favorite of my readers since it was released.  So go figure.

TPF: Can you give us some insight into any current projects you’re working on and when they will come out?

BS: The only thing I’m working on currently is a project that’s very different from any of my previously published books.  It’s a darkly humorous urban fantasy tale that’s sort of a cross between Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden books and maybe something by Christopher Moore.  It’s gone very well so far.  I’ve written the bulk of the novel in one month, and I hope to wrap up the first draft within another month.  Right now I’m not willing to divulge any further details, primarily because it is so different from all my other stuff.  I want to get it done and then get a handle on how to sell or market it before I start talking about it in any substantive way in public.

TPF: When Dorchester went under, what happened? Did you immediately get the rights to your books, or did you begin writing new ones to send to publishing houses, or did you turn to self-publishing?

BS: When Dorchester started having problems, there was a lot of confusion at first. There still is, actually, but much more so at the outset.  No one really understood fully what was happening.  I thought at first I might stick around with them and see if they could turn things around.  But I changed my wind when they fired Don D’Auria.  I knew then I wanted nothing further to do with them.  After some negotiation, I got the print rights to all my Leisure releases back, and Deadite Press will be reissuing those through this year and into 2012.  I get the electronic rights to all those books back at the end of this year, after which I’ll put out my own digital editions.

TPF: Recently, the eBook phenomenon has become a huge topic of conversation in the writing world. I’d like to get your input on it. These days, with anyone capable of publishing his/her own work as an eBook via Smashwords or Amazon, do you feel this is diminishing the quality of books available to the public. Do you think that the increase in badly formatted, poorly written, badly edited books will affect the future of the eBook market?

BS: I don’t know that it’s diminishing the overall quality of anything.  It’s like with any other major advance or technological revolution.  There’s a period of adjustment and sorting out.  Over time, consumers will become savvy and find reliable forums and methods for identifying which self-published eBooks are worthy of their attention.  Of course, no one wants to read a badly formatted eBook, which is why self-publishers either need to put in the time necessary to learn how to do it right themselves or else pay a professional to do it for them.  So far I’ve self-published three eBooks–Darkened, House of Blood: The Authorized Edition, and Rock and Roll Reform School Zombies (though Deadite Press does the paperback of that last one).  I’m not a coding whiz myself, so in each case so far I’ve hired someone else to do it.  I think it’s a worthwhile investment.  From a writer’s perspective, I’m all for the eBook revolution.  For writers with a fanbase of any significance, there’s good money to be made in it.  In the future, I’ll be dabbling much more in that arena while at the same time continuing to work with traditional publishers.

TPF: What do you feel is the best route for a beginning author? Should he/she take a traditional approach, sending out manuscripts to literary agents and publishing companies, or should the writer self-publish through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other outlets?

BS: I’ve never had an agent, so I can’t talk about that end of it.  If you’re just starting out and you have a product you’re convinced is good, I’d probably suggest starting out by submitting through the traditional methods.  You don’t have any kind of fanbase at all at that point anyway, so you might as well start by shooting for the top.  If you’re rejected, so what?  You just keep writing and move on to the next target on your submissions list.  If you have multiple unpublished novels, maybe then you might want to consider putting one up on Amazon as an experiment.  Go all out promoting the hell out of it while continuing to market your other books the traditional way.  In a case like that, it might be a good way to build some initial buzz.  The key, though, is that the book you choose to put out there on your own has to be as good as anything else you’re trying to sell.

TPF: What do you think about pricing an eBook? Should an author who is unknown to the public price his/her books as low as possible?

BS: I think eBooks should be priced fairly low in general because there is no physical component to the product.  If there is no cost expended for manufacturing, shipping, etc., then obviously the price of the product should not be the same.  A lot of authors experimenting with self-publishing on Kindle use the $2.99 price point, which I think is fair.  The author gets 70% of that, which is far higher than the royalty rate you’d get from a traditional publisher.  $2.99 is also the lowest price at which Amazon offers that rate.  Below that, it drops to 30%, which is still good, but overall $2.99 is best.  I wouldn’t suggest pricing above that if you’re an unknown.  There’s simply too many other unknown writers competing for the attention of consumers, so obviously if you price your book higher than what everybody else is offering, you’ll probably get passed over by most eBook buyers.  I also take issue with the big publishers pricing digital editions of new releases at the same price or nearly the same price as a paper book.  It’s not just absurd, it’s a ripoff.  The music industry used to gouge consumers with overly inflated CD prices.  Compact discs cost very little relatively to manufacture, yet there was this insanely huge markup.  Eventually it backfired on that industry, and I suspect the same thing will happen here.

TPF: I’d like to switch gears and ask about your writing method. How do you write? By that, I mean what’s your process? Do you outline or let the story take you where it may?

BS: I don’t outline.  Ever.  Different writers have different approaches.  Some will swear that an outline is absolutely necessary to the process.  On the other hand, Stephen King has said that he doesn’t outline, as have many other very successful authors.  To me, outlining takes the fun and sense of discovery out of writing.  So I prefer to let the story develop organically.  Every now and then something doesn’t work out, an idea fizzles, but that doesn’t bother me.  I just move on to the next thing.  Outlining would make me feel too much like I was back in school, putting together some dry paper for some boring class.  Some weird people enjoy that, I guess.  I don’t.  Put it this way–I think “School’s Out” by Alice Cooper is a great song.