Scott Edelman's Books: Fiction
These Words Are Haunted
These Words Are Haunted gathers 13 of my favorite horror short stories in one hardcover volume, including the Bram Stoker Award-nominated "A Plague on Both Your Houses," a five-act play that crosses Romeo and Juliet with Night of the Living Dead. Pulling this volume together in 2001 wasn't as easy as I thought it would be, because in order to winnow down the table of contents to a manageable number of stories, I had to reevaluate my entire writing career. Normally, I think only of the stories ahead of me I still have to write, rather than the ones behind me.
Rereading every story I'd ever written was an odd experience, because whenever I return to one, I have twin emotions—first, the same ones readers have, that is, the experience of the story itself; then, all the memories surrounding the story's creation. I remember where I was when I first had the germ of an idea, what was happening in my life that caused the idea to pop into my head, where I was sitting as I scribbled the first draft, and so forth. I am not, and never can be, a disinterested reader.
The 13 stories I chose to represent my best are "Ten Things I've Learned About Writing," "The Last Leg," "Is This a Horror Story?," "Laurel Fixation"
"Do the Dead Care?,"
"Fifth Dimension,"
"A Plague on Both Your Houses,"
"Making Peace with the Leader,"
"The Elvis Syndrome,"
"Are You Now?,"
"Picture This,"
"These Words Are Haunted" and
"The Suicide Artist." Adam-Troy Castro provided an introduction so complimentary that I can't read it without blushing. I chose Francisco Goya's "Saturn Devouring His Children" to be the cover image because I've always felt it the most nightmarish portrait of madness ever committed to canvas.
Suicide Art
Published by Stefan Dziemianowicz's Necronomicon Press in 1992, Suicide Art is a 36-page chapbook containing two of my short stories. Both were previously unpublished at the time: "Suicide Art" and "The Kindest Cut." I later chose to reprint "Suicide Art" in These Words Are Haunted, above. Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell also chose the piece to to appear as the lead story in their best-of-the-year anthology, Best New Horror 4. In their introduction, they wrote, "We lead off Best New Horror with one of the most powerful stories in the volume."
"The Kindest Cut," on the other hand, received no such accolades. When I presented my original manuscript to Spacecrafts, a monthly writers workshop I attended in Masschusetts (other participants included Geoffrey Landis and Resa Nelson), the story was savaged. I had looked forward to hearing what our guest instructor for that session, Samuel R. Delany, would have to say, since the story dealt with alternate sexuality, the transgendered, and a very bizarre haunting. As with all writers entering a workshop situation, I said I was hoping for insight, but what I was really hoping for was a pat on the head. I didn't get it. Unfortunately, Delany hated, hated, hated the story, and felt it showed a complete lack of understanding of human sexuality, which just goes to show, be careful what you wish for.
The cover art and two interior illustrations are by Robert H. Knox. I've always found the cover particularly chilling.
The Gift
I wrote The Gift in 1980, the summer after attending the Clarion Science Fiction Writing Workshop, but it remained unpublished for 10 years. The book bounced from publisher to publisher until 1990, when Space and Time took a risk with it. It became a 1990 Lambda Award nominee, and received rave reviews such as this one, from Mandate magazine: "If [Anne] Rice's recent efforts have left you out in the cold, Mr. Edelman's book will surely light your fire. ... icy fingers will tap-dance on your spinal cord." With the book so well-liked after publication, why was it so difficult for it to find a home?
The Gift tells the story of a gay couple who move to a small town where they unearth a vampire that had terrorized the town generations before. Editors and agents to whom I'd submitted the book generally liked it, but often said that they'd have difficulty handling a novel with gay characters. Some editors told me that they could only consider the book if I turned the gay couple into a straight one, an option I rejected. One editor for a major publisher phoned me on a Friday to tell me that she thought she could take the book with minor changes, then phoned me early the following Monday to say, to her great embarrassment, that she had been overruled by the sales department, which felt that they'd have trouble keeping the book on the shelves in the South.
Sometimes it is easier for smaller publishers such as Space and Time—which sold out of the first printing fairly quickly and had to rush back to press—to do what the larger ones cannot.
Scott Edelman's Books: Non-Fiction
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