INTERVIEW: Adrian Collins
Last Updated on January 29, 2025
With the first ten years of Grimdark Magazine behind us, years of evolution of what grimdark is under our belt, and exciting new things coming for our little publication, we sat down with the founder of Grimdark Magazine, Adrian Collins, to discuss what has come, what is, and what may be.
[GdM] Adrian, I think the best place to start is at the beginning. You are a lover of the written word, can you tell us how you came to love stories and which books inspired you growing up?
[AC] I’ve loved fantasy, science fiction, and history since I can remember being alive. Dad always had a little library of modern history books at home, which I devoured very young, and in that little library of books was a copy of The Hobbit, that, if memory serves, that cheeky bugger stole from his school library back when he was a little tacker. I still have it somewhere on my bookshelf, held together with masking tape, pages yellowed with use, and read more times than I can remember.
In my teens, I allowed myself to be made fun of by people I trusted in regard to my love of reading and writing fantasy stories, and for years I didn’t pick up a single book. When I was waiting at an airport to fly home bored out of my brain after a funeral one year in my early twenties, I spotted a book I loved the cover of. I picked it up on a whim. That book was The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie. The rest, thereafter, is history.
[GdM] Aside from your love of books, what else do you spend time on? Do you have any hobbies?
[AC] Apart from GdM, reading, the ever-demanding day job, and spending time with Fiona and my little toothless doofus of a cat, there’s a few things I sink my time into.
I love training Muay Thai and have done so for over six years now. There’s just something about removing all thought about anything else than the form of your side kick, the snap of a well delivered elbow against a pad, and the one-on-one, tunnel-vision nature of sparring that helps me settle inside mentally and drown out the noise that is my BAU brain.
I also really enjoy collecting, ageing, and drinking barrel aged stouts and barley wines. If importing them from the States wasn’t such an expense, I’d need a much bigger apartment to live in! In general, I’m a big fan of the craft beer scene, and love hitting up a brewery for a couple of frothies and a chin wag with the people I enjoy hanging around.
Having grown up on a beach, I am also a mad-keen bodysurfer. One of the memories I hope I re-live on my death bed is carving across the 6-8ft faces of massive shore breakers at Waimea Bay in Hawaii, hearing the sound of the world cut out as the wave barrelled over, and that momentary sense of peace I got to have each time the wave closed out right before the hiss of spray shot up the barrel.
[GdM] Not many people know this, but you have also written stories. What made you want to transition from being a writer to being an editor?
[AC] In ln all honesty, my own hubris. I thought I was good enough to be published (I wasn’t) and I had convinced myself that the gatekeepers were holding me back (they weren’t). I started GdM because I wanted there to be a place where people who wrote stuff like I did would have a home for their stories.
I am also a major, major fan of origin stories, and often sought out the origin short stories of the characters from the books I loved to get to read more about them.
Merge the two together, and then mix with my career working as a mixture of a project manager, copywriter, and subject matter expert engager, and you have the foundation of this publication.
[GdM] Who are some of your heroes in the publishing industry, and what were some of the important lessons that you learned from them?
[AC] I have a few:
Shawn Speakman: For somebody who has gone through the horror of cancer—and within the US medical system—and made it out the other side, Shawn is an inspiration for the small publisher community. He’s built a cult-like following for Grim Oak Press. They’ve been around as long as I can remember being in this community, have showcased what impact Kickstarter can have on small publishing businesses, and produce gorgeous special editions.
Matt Holland: owner of The Broken Binding. If you’re chasing a better case study in branding, growth, and economy of scale to meet the price-point needs of the market, I think you’ll struggle to find one. The books Matt’s team are producing border on the ridiculous. The authors and publishers they partner with crossed with the investment in art and skill in production, all delivered at easily the most affordable special edition price point in the market—it’s really
hard to go wrong with them.
Ellen Datlow: In my eyes, Ellen is the premier anthologist on the planet, and I am fortunate to have met her three times, and to have been on a panel with her once (Conflux in Canberra Australia). Whenever I’m around her—especially while on a panel—I just want to get out my phone and record what she’s saying so I can spend time later properly deconstructing her knowledge and years of experience.
Geoff Brown: You may know the Australian-owned Cohesion Press from their world-famous SNAFU military horror / SF anthology series. You may also know them from the stories from those anthologies that Tim Miller (Deadpool, Secret Level) turned into episodes of Netflix’s Love, Death, and Robots. Again, another small business owner who has managed to bootstrap his small publisher to success—sometimes dragging the operation kicking and screaming to survival. Geoff’s story is a small business inspiration.
[GdM] How have you seen the grimdark scene evolve over the past decade? Did any of these changes surprise you?
[AC] The grimdark scene has been such an amazing community from day one. If you want a prime example of the way it has been since I joined it over a decade ago, just head to the Grimdark Fiction Readers and Writers Facebook group. On a platform where the greater majority of book groups seem to descend so quickly into anger and spam and trash, it remains a beacon of what those communities could be. Founded by Rob Matheny and now helmed by Phil Overby, it’s a welcoming, supportive, informative, and chill group that perfectly exemplifies the community I love being a part of.
Something I’ve enjoyed so much over the last decade is the diversification of stories. When I started GdM, I wanted grim and bloody stories, and my views on what I wanted, if we’re being reflectively honest about it, were probably quite narrow. Over the last 40 issues and ten years, the authors have sent my reading boundaries to the horizon in all the best ways, and the community who reads our work and buys our books have made their demands for more different stories quite clear.
[GdM] Are there stylistic differences and needs between the Australian, and the UK/US/Canada writing scene?
[AC] I think the Australian scene is a lot smaller than the UK and NA scenes. There are far less people here, so our communitie—irrespective of whatever you’re interested in—are always going to be a smaller scene. The benefit of that is that you get to spend lots of time with those people at Cons (something I really enjoy about the local Cons I attend). The negative side of that is that sometimes the Con runners sometimes struggle to get the volume of people (and revenue) required to get the international guests that you hope for (like you would at a WorldCon or FantasyCon).
I have mostly not gotten involved in the Con scene here, but there are two that I swear by as exemplars of what small Cons should be. The first is ConFlux, held in Canberra, Australia. The community there is just bloody amazing, and I am looking at supporting them next year as a sponsor. AsylumFest in Beechworth Victoria is the other one. A horror-focussed Con, it is held in Australia’s most haunted location (Beechworth Asylum) in one of the coolest little country towns Australia has to offer.
I highly recommend both of them to anyone looking for an awesome little bookish getaway.
[GdM] What do you see as the biggest challenges facing the publishing industry today?
[AC] AI would be my first thing, but I have a bit of a left-of-field take on this. I think the reading community—the part of the market that rabidly follows authors and artists and publishers—have made a pretty strong statement on AI artistic creation. The Hollywood elite have thrown their weight behind it. Large authors are fighting for small authors. I think that, comparatively, the artistic creators are going to have a reasonable amount of safety in the coming years.
Where I worry for the publishing industry is everything around the art. The procurement and line editors. The designers. The publicists and marketers. The warehouse floor workers. The procurement managers. The distribution managers. The lawyers and accountants. All of those people behind the scene—in both a FT/PT employment and freelance manner—who make this industry work by taking relatively average pay (compared to what they could get elsewhere working similar roles) to work in an industry they love.
In the white-collar field, AI is going to have a devastating effect on people. The workers who refuse to work with AI will be the first to fall out of favour with employers. Then, when AI has learned to do the job of those who worked with AI to remain in employment, those workers will be the next to go. It’s just going to be far more economically viable to have a licence for a 24/7 worker than it is to deal with people. Less creative. Less innovative. But more reliable and certainly faster. I worry about what will happen to the publishing industry then, and I pray to the publishing gods that owners of publishers big and small focus on retaining people in all facets of this artistic industry over the coming years.
Without people—both the artists and the network of those who collaborate to help bring their creations to life—I think this industry dies a slow, horrible, stifling death.
[GdM] Could you tell us the origin story of Grimdark Magazine? When did the idea first nucleate in your mind, and how did you decide to take that idea and turn it into reality?
[AC] This magazine was born in my mate’s back room over a six pack of beer. He was working on a start-up consulting business and needed to practice running discovery sessions to help people set up businesses and brands. He asked me if I’d ever had an idea we could play with. That idea was Grimdark Magazine.
After that session I went home and started a costing spreadsheet to see how much money I’d need to put in to make this work for a year. I costed out a website, art costs, author fees, some marketing, etc. The number meant I’d be making financial sacrifices in mine and my (now) wife’s personal lives, but after some discussion, I decided to try it for 12 months to see what happened.
12 months in, I figured I may as well give it a second year. In for a penny, in for a pound.
Ten years down the track, here we are.
[GdM] Looking back over the past decade, what are some of your proudest achievements as Editor-in-Chief of Grimdark Magazine?
[AC] Firstly, the team we’ve built. I am so, so bloody fortunate that you and the wider team dedicate your time to GdM, and have done so for a decade. This place doesn’t exist without our leaders, our review team, our freelancers, and our fans. I just keep pinching myself that this is real.
Evil is a Matter of Perspective was a massive achievement for us, and really put us on the map. That was an experience—good and bad—that helped me understand publishing better while also getting to create something amazing.
I am also so excited about GdM#40 and #41. You’ve created something amazing, Beth. At the publishing of this interview, that issue #40 has outsold our previous most popular issues by a significant margin, and I can’t wait to see how #41 goes.
[GdM] What excites you the most about the future of Grimdark Magazine?
[AC] I am really excited about our novella line at the moment. With the success of In the Shadow of their Dying by Anna Smith Spark and Michael R. Fletcher, and the recent signings of Richard Swan (The Scour, October 2025) and Essa Hansen (Casthen Gain, July 2025), I am hoping that this is the product line that helps kick GdM to the next level of business, allowing me to facilitate the creation of more amazing books and magazines, and to pay more people more money.
This interview with Adrian Collins was first published in Grimdark Magazine Issue #41
Read Grimdark Magazine #41
The post INTERVIEW: Adrian Collins appeared first on Grimdark Magazine.
